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Yeats combined his idiosyncratic symbolism with echoes of Japan's noh drama, attempting to create a new kind of theater. This 1921 collection comprises 1919's celebrated Two Plays for Dancers (The Only Jealousy of Emer and The Dreaming of the Bones) as well as At the Hawk's Well and Calvary.
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"The King's Threshold," first performed by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1903, referred to an Irish tradition that dates back to the 7th-8th centuries of commoners enforcing hunger strikes against people of higher status to whom they were indebted. It told the story of a bard who undergoes a hunger strike against the king.
6) Calvary
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William Butler Yeats's close friend, Ezra Pound, exposed the playwright to the symbolic theatre genre of Japanese Noh drama, prompting him to write a series of four plays in that style. The final play in this series, which were first printed together in "Four Plays for Dancers", was "Calvary". With Ireland in the midst of a hunger-strike, the story of the self-sacrificing Christ was particularly relevant. In the story, Christ dreams of his passion,...
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"The Hour Glass," appeared on stage as early as 1902, and underwent many revisions by its final version in 1922. This edition contains the prose version of that play. The story presents a Fool, a Wise Man and an Angel who sort through questions of faith, doubt and the Wise Man's unrelenting rationalism. In this edition we have Yeats' prose version of the play.
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Yeats's Morality play, "The Hour Glass," appeared on stage as early as 1902, and underwent many revisions by its final version in 1922. The story presents a Fool, a Wise Man and an Angel who sort through questions of faith, doubt and the Wise Man's unrelenting rationalism. In this edition we have Yeats' verse version of the play.
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"On Baile's Strand" was first performed here in 1904, as part of one of the inaugural productions. The short play is the earliest of five that Yeats wrote about the legendary Irish hero Cuchulain, a tale that dates from the ninth or tenth century. Cuchulain is being threatened by the Scottish warrior queen Aoife, who has sent her son to kill the hero. Cuchulain has sworn allegiance to King Conchubar, who orders the soldier to fight the Scottish foe....
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William Butler Yeats was prompted to write "At the Hawk's Well" in 1916, after his close friend, Ezra Pound, exposed him to the symbolic theatre genre of Japanese Noh drama. The play, based on the Cuchulain legends of Irish mythology, uses Japanese-style masks and very simple sets to achieve an abstract, stylized form. The story is set by a dried up well on a barren mountainside, guarded constantly by a hawk-woman, and watched diligently by an old...
11) The Green Helmet
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Yeats produced a series of plays based on the legendary Irish hero Cuchulain, a tale that dates from the ninth or tenth century. "The Green Helmet" describes Cuchulain's return from battle, when he discovers that a friend has become indebted to the Red man for a very unusual item, a head. Written in the Noh tradition, this dramatic play marks a period of significant literary and political change for Yeats.
12) The Pot of Broth
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In 1899, Yeats helped found the Irish National Theatre Society, which later became the famous Abbey Theatre of Dublin. He and Lady Augusta Gregory, another of the theatre's founders, collaborated on a few short plays during those first experimental years at the theatre. One such play, "The Pot of Broth", is a "peasant" farce that tells the story of a gullible peasant woman, convinced by a tramp that dropping a magic stone into hot water will make...
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"The Dreaming of the Bones" was first published in 1919 and performed in 1931, it was one of the plays that comprised Yeats' "Four Plays for Dancers." Written in the Japanese Noh tradition, performed with masks, the play reflects on a belief that the dead may dream back.
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Description
In 1899 Yeats helped found the Irish National Theatre Society, which later became the famous Abbey Theatre of Dublin. There, he collaborated on several plays with Lady Augusta Gregory. One such play, "The Unicorn from the Stars", was first performed at the Abbey Theatre on November 23, 1907.
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In 1922 "The Jealousy of Emer" premiered in Amsterdam, and like many of Yeat's plays featured Japanese-style masks. The story is based on a legend from the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology about Emer, the wife of the notorious soldier Cuchulain. The play picks up at the close of "On Baile's Strand," during Cuchulain's fight with the sea.
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Written in collaboration with Lady Gregory, "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" appeared on the bill of plays produced in 1902 by the theatre, and although a short work, it was frequently revived until World War II. The story is based on the battle at Killala, one of many conflicts in Ireland's long fight for independence. Yeats depicts the love of family, poverty, anguish and hardship of the Irish peasantry through the symbolic portrayal of Ireland as a female...
17) Deirdre
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One of several dramas based on the legend of the Irish hero Cuchulain, "Dierdre" is one of Yeats' most popular one-act plays. It tells the story of Deirdre, the imaginative and otherworldly young heroine, and King Conchubar, the faithless and selfish monarch. Yeats explores themes of love, honor, deceit and self-sacrifice in this tragic but artful drama.
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The stage is any bare place in a room close to the wall. A screen with a pattern of mountain and sky can stand against the wall, or a curtain with a like pattern hang upon it, but the pattern must only symbolize or suggest. One musician enters and then two others, the first stands singing while the others take their places. Then all three sit down against the wall by their instruments, which are already there-a drum, a zither, and a flute. Or they...
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The first volume of "Plays for an Irish Theatre" contains W.B. Yeats' play in five acts "Where There is Nothing." This marvelous play will appeal to all lovers of the English language, and especially those with an interest in the work of Yeats' and Irish literature in general.
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