The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays

by W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory

Lady Augusta Gregory (born Isabella Augusta Persse) (1852-1932), was an Irish dramatist and folklorist and writer of pamphlets, prose, memoirs, short stories and poems. With W. B. Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous works for both companies. She also produced a number of books of retellings of stories from Irish mythology. Publications included: Arabi and His Household (1882), Over the River (1887), Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and Poets and Dreamers (1903). William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and together with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief during its early years. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature. Yeats is considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize; such works include: The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Classics

88 pages, Paperback

First published November 25, 2009

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

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short plays co-written by W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory. They’re fine but none of them really set my world afire. The best is probably The Hourglass, which I’d already read in short story form in another Yeats collection.

My next book: Sixteen Poems

[T.J. Gillespie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three plays. One is fair, one is passable, one is unforgivably weak. None rivals his verse.

The Unicorn from the Stars, at three acts, is the longest. Mostly the work of Lady Gregory, is an uneven treatment of religion, politics, and work. It has the best lines, but it is a mess.

The second piece and perhaps the most coherent, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, is a one act political allegory set in the rebellion of 1798. Ireland, rendered as an old woman who has lost her land, and demands total commitment. Indeed, she demands sacrifice: "If anyone would give me help he must give me himself, he must give me all."

The Old Woman's call for martyrdom echoes Yeats's more ambiguous act of remembrance in Easter 1916:

"They shall be remembered for ever,
They shall be alive for ever,
They shall be speaking for ever,
The people shall hear them for ever."


The final offering, The Hourglass, can be ignored all together.

[Matthew Hinman · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting premise, but not fulfilling in its execution.

[Matthew Kozak · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty boring, if I'm being honest