Deirdre: Manuscript Materials

by W.B. Yeats

From reviews of The Cornell Yeats "For students of Yeats the whole series is bound to become an essential reference source and a stimulus to important critical re-readings of Yeats's major works. In a wider context, the series will also provide an extraordinary and perhaps unique insight into the creative process of a great artists."―Irish Literary Supplement "I consider the Cornell Yeats one of the most important scholarly projects of our time."―A. Walton Litz, Princeton University, coeditor of The Collected Poems of William Carols Williams and The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound "The most ambitious of the many important projects in current studies of Yeats and perhaps of modern poetry generally.... The list of both general and series editors, as well as prospective preparers of individual volumes, reads like a Who's Who of Yeats textual studies in North America. Further, the project carries the blessing of Yeats's heirs and bespeaks an ongoing commitment from a major university press.... The series will inevitably engender critical studies based on a more solid footing than those of any other modern poet.... Its volumes will be consulted long after gyres of currently fashionable theory have run on."―Yeats Annual (1983) The ancient story of the ill-fated Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach has a special place in Irish literature―as a tale prefatory to The Táin―and a durable hold on the Irish imagination. Building on the many earlier literary retellings of the story, W. B. Yeats deliberately frames his 1906 play as an extension of the legend, writing a new death-tale for Deirdre that is also a personal statement about love, death, and the making of art. This edition of the manuscripts of Deirdre presents the transcription of work from three substantially different versions of the play through its first performance, together with post-performance revisions that throw light on what Yeats learned from producing the play on stage. Deirdre is an important transitional play in Yeats's career as a playwright. The manuscripts included here show him extending the limits of the conventionally staged play and initiating the development of some of the features of the dance plays (the use of chorus and song, the unity of metaphor, the compression of language). Most intriguing, however, is the view they offer of the play as it was first performed at the Abbey Theatre. The Cornell Yeats edition of Deirdre features a series of sketches for staging the play, one of a very few pieces of evidence for Yeats's production plans for any of his early plays.

Genres: Plays, Mythology, Drama, Poetry, Irish Literature

1152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1907

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

[عدنان العبار · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another interesting play of Yeats about a terrible king who takes one of the fine women of his city as his wife, killing her husband, because he thinks her fit only for him, ruining himself in the process. This will also be reread for proper review.

[Eline Martens · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 ☆
Really beautiful prose. I read Yeats' essay on the Celtic element in literature which was so focused on the mystical and magical that I had expected this adaptation of The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu to be more focussed on Deirdre's curse, but it's specifically focussed on the undying love of Deirdre and Naisi. I would've liked the mystical element, but I like that in this play you see more of the interaction between Naisi and Deirdre which you do not get in the original. Although it's debatable whether Naisi was really that in love (if at all) with Deirdre in the original imo.

Some quotes which I adored:
Deirdre to Naisi while she's sitting at his knees
"Do you remember that first night in the woods
We lay all night on leaves, and looking up,
When the first grey of the dawn awoke the birds,
Saw leaves above us. You thought that I still slept,
And bending down to kiss me on the eyes,
Found they were open. Bend and kiss me now,
For it may be the last before our death
And when that's over, we'll be different;
Imperishable things, a cloud or a fire.
And I know nothing but this body, nothing
But that old vehement, bewildering kiss."

Musician
"And though you have suffered all for mere love's sake
You'd live your lives again"
Deirdre
"Even this last hour."

Also some lines I thought were funny:
Deirdre (while playing a game of chess with Naisi, waiting for Conchubar who will probably kill them)
"I cannot go on playing like that woman
That had but the cold blood of the sea in her veins."
Naisi
"It is your move. Take up your man again."
Lmaooo, just completely ignoring Deirdre crashing out.

[The men drag in Naisi entangled in a net.]
Naisi
"I have been taken like a bird or a fish."
Naisi is just chill like that I guess.

[Hana · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must have read this like 4 times by now

[J.E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a fan of Yeats but had never read anything other than his poetry. This work also fits with research I'm conducting for my novel based on Druids and Irish legends. It is always difficult to read a play when it is intended to be seen and heard. I did find his take on the Deirdre legend interesting. The stage directions age the main characters more than I anticipated, and the dual tragedies occurs offstage, so it is the language and the emotion that carries the work. I shall re-visit this play as my own writing progresses, but that's no problem. It is an easy read time-wise.

[Rand Mustafa · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's amazing and revolutionary at the same time. I liked how Yeats adapted it and changed the ending of the original myth. Women portrayed in Deirdre can do a lot..

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

she’s soooo badass