Two plays for dancers. William Butler Yeats

r Yeats

      Two plays for dancers

PREFACE

      In a note at the end of my last book 'The Wild Swans at Coole' (Cuala Press.) I explained why I preferred this kind of drama, and where I had found my models, and where and how my first play after this kind was performed, and when and how I would have it performed in the future. I can but refer the reader to the note or to the long introduction to 'Certain Noble Plays of Japan' (Cuala Press.)

W. B. Yeats. October 11th. 1918

      P. S. That I might write 'The Dreaming of the Bones,' Mr. W. A. Henderson with great kindness wrote out for me all historical allusions to Dervorgilla.

      THE DREAMING OF THE BONES

      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 unfold a cloth as in 'The Hawk's Well,' while the instruments are carried in.

FIRST MUSICIAN(or all three musicians, singing)

      Why does my heart beat so?

      Did not a shadow pass?

      It passed but a moment ago.

      Who can have trod in the grass?

      What rogue is night-wandering?

      Have not old writers said

      That dizzy dreams can spring

      From the dry bones of the dead?

      And many a night it seems

      That all the valley fills

      With those fantastic dreams.

      They overflow the hills,

      So passionate is a shade,

      Like wine that fills to the top

      A grey-green cup of jade,

      Or maybe an agate cup.

      (speaking) The hour before dawn and the moon covered up.

      The little village of Abbey is covered up;

      The little narrow trodden way that runs

      From the white road to the Abbey of Corcomroe

      Is covered up; and all about the hills

      Are like a circle of Agate or of Jade.

      Somewhere among great rocks on the scarce grass

      Birds cry, they cry their loneliness.

      Even the sunlight can be lonely here,

      Even hot noon is lonely. I hear a footfall —

      A young man with a lantern comes this way.

      He seems an Aran fisher, for he wears

      The flannel bawneen and the cow-hide shoe.

      He stumbles wearily, and stumbling prays.

      (A young man enters, praying in Irish)

      Once more the birds cry in their loneliness,

      But now they wheel about our heads; and now

      They have dropped on the grey stone to the north-east.

      (A man and a girl both in the costume of a past time, come in. They wear heroic masks)

YOUNG MAN

      (raising his lantern)

      Who is there? I cannot see what you are like,

      Come to the light.

STRANGER

      But what have you to fear?

YOUNG MAN

      And why have you come creeping through the dark.

      (The Girl blows out lantern)

      The wind has blown my lantern out. Where are you?

      I saw a pair of heads against the sky

      And lost them after, but you are in the right

      I should not be afraid in County Clare;

      And should be or should not be have no choice,

      I have to put myself into your hands,

      Now that my candle's out.

STRANGER

      You have fought in Dublin?

YOUNG MAN

      I was in the Post Office, and if taken

      I shall be put against a wall and shot.

STRANGER

      You know some place of refuge, have some plan

      Or friend who will come to meet you?

YOUNG MAN

      I am to lie

      At daybreak on the mountain and keep watch

      Until an Aran coracle puts in

      At Muckanish or at the rocky shore

      Under Finvarra, but would break my neck

      If I went stumbling there alone in the dark.

STRANGER

      We know the pathways that the sheep tread out,

      And all the hiding-places of the hills,

      And that they had better hiding-places once.

YOUNG MAN

      You'd say they had better before English robbers

      Cut down the trees or set them upon fire

      For fear their owners might find shelter there.

      What is that sound?

STRANGER

      An old horse gone astray

      He has been wandering on the road all night.

YOUNG MAN

      I took him for a man and horse. Police

      Are out upon the roads. In the late Rising

      I think there was no man of us but hated

      To fire at soldiers who but did their duty

      And were not of our race, but when a man

      Is born in Ireland and of Irish stock

      When he takes part against us —

STRANGER

      I will put you safe,

      No living man shall set his eyes upon you.

      I will not answer for the dead.

YOUNG MAN

      The dead?

STRANGER

      For certain days the stones where you must lie

      Have in the hour before the break of day

      Been haunted.

YOUNG MAN

      But I was not born at midnight.

STRANGER

      Many a man born in the full daylight

      Can see them plain, will pass them on the high-road

      Or in the crowded market-place of the town,

      And never know that they have passed.

YOUNG MAN

      My Grandam

      Would have it they did penance everywhere

      Or lived through their old lives again.

STRANGER

      In a dream;

      And some for an old scruple must hang spitted

      Upon