Selected Plays

by W.B. Yeats

Includes plays such as - The Shadowy Waters; Cathleen in Houlihan; The Hour Glass; On Baile's Strabd; The Green Helmet; Deirdre; At the Hawk's Well; The Dreaming of the Bones; The Cat and the Moon; The Only Jealousy of Emer; Calvary; Sophocles' King Oedipus; The Resurrection; and, The Words Upon the Windwo-FPane.

Genres: Plays, Ireland, Fiction, Theatre, Drama, Irish Literature

448 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 1974

About the author

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years Yeats served as an Irish Senator for two terms. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." He was the first Irishman so honored. Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Yeats was born and educated in Dublin but spent his childhood in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth, and from an early age was fascinated by both Irish legends and the occult. Those topics feature in the first phase of his work, which lasted roughly until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and those slow paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser and Percy Bysshe Shelley, as well as to the Pre-Raphaelite poets. From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
--from Wikipedia

Reviews

[Michiel Nicolaï · Rating 4 out of 5]

If not for the too long introduction it would have gotten 5 stars. Mind you I am not a visitor of plays, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I wasn't a fan of Yeats' poetry, due to the constant symbolism which makes them a hard read. Nonetheless somehow I picked up this collection at a bookshop near where he is buried in West-Ireland (macabe I know) and due to this previous experience prepared myself for a slog.

I am glad to have been proven wrong. Yeats was a big innovator for European theatre and learned a lot from different influences. He rewrote Oedipus to make it adaptable for modern theatre and from this got a hang for classical drama concerning characters fighting against their destinies being decided by unfeeling gods. Japanese Noh theatre inspired him to create modernist dance plays.

The subjects of his plays was inspired by his yearning to challenge the lack of a common ground in the Irish society when it came to their Celtic ancestry as separate from the English occupation.

Not so much that Irish people didn't know their myths and legends but a reworking of these by Yeats and like minded Contemporaries like lady Gregory or J.M. Synge created a framework which intellectually backed the rise of a conciousness which helped the founding of the republic of Ireland.

Hopefully I might see some of these plays performed live.

[Frank Ashe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe I wasn't in the right mood when I read these.

[Liam Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Player Queen" - a cryptic one that I didn't grasp the significance of. Can someone illuminate?

"The Resurrection" - a story of the resurrection told by three nationalities: a greek, a hebrew and a syrian. The greek argues about Jesus's holiness metaphysically while the hebrew believes in the incarnation of God in the flesh. The play ends with Jesus appearing to his disciples. Yeats probably wrote this one after reading a lot of books... hard to say what threads he's uniting in this short work. A good literary critic ought to be here to explain it.