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measures enacted for the application of the conventions which they have ratified. Naturally no self-respecting Government can tolerate such an unwarrantable interference by an international committee. It is also doubtful whether the attempt to secure uniform conditions and hours of labour in all countries is practically possible, or even desirable; it might indeed constitute an unfair discrimination in favour of some peoples to the detriment of others.

The International Labour Organization undoubtedly has its uses for the study of labour problems from an international standpoint. But its work could be accomplished at a very much smaller cost and with a more limited staff. There appears to be no valid reason for leaving the International Labour Organization almost wholly independent of the League, or why the Labour Office should not be converted into a section of the Secretariat, except that such a policy would involve the suppression of some important and well-paid appointments and offend the dignity of certain officials.

In conclusion, it may be said that the League has renderedand will continue to render-many valuable services to humanity. Already its existence is taken for granted, and many political, financial and technical problems are entrusted to it as a matter of course, as to the body capable of solving them most satisfactorily. So large a number of duties are assigned to it that, as was once said of an even more august conception, if it did not exist it would have to be invented. It is through the League that a considerable and increasing part of international affairs is dealt with, and its very existence is at least a serious obstacle to war. But we must avoid trying to make it do what it is as yet obviously unfitted to attempt. Above all, let us liberate it from the ministrations of its too zealous and not too wise supporters, both those who picture the League as an organization in which certain States are the Lord's elect and deserving of the worship of the faithful while others are hopeless reprobates condemned to everlasting damnation, and also those ardent pacifists who are ready to plunge the world into war for the sake of peace.

LUIGI VILLARI

THE LATE DEVELOPMENT OF IRISH DRAMA

THE

HE very prominent position which the Irish drama has secured during the first quarter of the twentieth century tends to obscure the fact that until the end of the nineteenth century Ireland had been without any national drama in either the Irish or the English languages. It is certainly somewhat peculiar that one of the oldest of the world's civilizations, with a culture and a literature continuing almost without a break from the pre-Christian era, should never have attempted to give expression to its hopes and fears in drama at an earlier date. Ireland had attained to a very high state of civilization at the time when Greek and Roman dramatists were in their prime, and it was due largely to the efforts of Irish missionary scholars that the classical languages and literatures were revived in medieval Europe. But Ireland itself remained impassive to the great movement in European culture, which is called the Renaissance. The revival of art and literature elsewhere did not affect Ireland, and it is possible that Ireland remained unaware that the Latin races had brought drama back again to the world, and that this revived drama had reached its apogee in the work of an Englishman named William Shakespeare. It was not that all the people of Ireland were completely unacquainted with the revival of art and letters in Europe, as there is sufficient evidence to suggest that as great a proportion of the Irish population of the time was as literate as any in the world; but there seems to have been a lack of curiosity and a complete absence of that spirit of emulation which is essential to the growth of literature. It would almost seem that Ireland had not belonged to the European system, and that it was completely uninterested in anything that Europe might do or say. Throughout the later Middle Ages there were plays in Latin, Greek, French, German, and English; but it was not until the year 1901 that there was a play in Irish. Ireland was unaware of—or, perhaps, only ignored very ostentatiously—something that other nations valued very highly.

It is true that the political and social conditions in Ireland were not favourable to the growth of the drama in any regular

way; but it may be doubted whether they were entirely responsible for its complete neglect. Admittedly the history of Ireland is one long chronicle of war, pillage, confiscation, and repression. Before the coming of the Norsemen the men of Ireland were busy fighting each other; the Norse invaders provided new combatants and gave greater variety to the warlike combinations. In time these combinations became unfavourable to the Norsemen, and they were defeated. From the Battle of Clontarf in 1014 to the landing of the Normans under Strongbow in 1169, there was a century and a-half of comparative peace, but even then there was no attempt to develop on the lines of other European countries. With Strongbow came many of the Normans, whose people had so recently conquered England, and they allied themselves with, or fought against, sections of the Irish people as occasion demanded. In due time came the plantations and expropriations of Elizabeth, the sanguinary fanaticism of Cromwell, and the tortuous wars of the Stuarts, followed by comparative calm for nearly two centuries. The little war at the end of the eighteenth century, and the engrossment of the people in politics throughout the nineteenth, completes a hurried record of national unrest. For the greater part of the time the Irish people were helots in their own land by the operation of penal laws against their national culture and religious beliefs.

But even when all this has been given due consideration it is not quite sufficient to explain the absence of a national drama. Europe as a whole was, during the Middle Ages, little different from, or better than, Ireland in political and social conditions. Throughout Europe emperors, kings, princes, popes, dukes, doges, barons, and free cities competed with each other for power and domination. Europe, too, had its religious persecutions, robberies, burnings, plunderings, butcheries, and helotry. But, despite all these the arts flourished and the drama had its allotted place in the life of large sections of the population. France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and even England, had their internal wars and persecutions, but these did not prevent the growth of a national drama, as the wars of the Greeks of an earlier age did not prevent the growth of a drama which has delighted the world for two thousand years. Through all their troubles these countries maintained a cultural standard which gave them difference and distinction. In Ireland, too, a cultural standard was maintained,

but in the very maintenance of that standard there originated a system which, probably more than any other single cause, prevented the growth of a distinctively national drama. That system was based upon the poetry recitals given by the bards, and the diffusion of news and stories by the hearthstone. It had its beginnings with the bards and the shanachies* in the halls of the nobles and the cottages of the common people. By the end of the nineteenth century it had so degenerated that it was represented only by the public reading of the weekly newspapers, and the speeches of politicians.

This peculiarity was not confined entirely to Ireland: it may be found in all the countries which it is now fashionable to call Celtic. Scotland had no national drama until very recent years, and Wales has only begun to take an interest in the subject. Some there are who would ascribe the absence of drama from these countries to the alleged dreaminess of the Celt, which is supposed to have prevented the entire race from mastering the mechanics of the stage. Those who advance such a theory seem to forget that in its beginnings the drama had no mechanics at all. Drama began as an offshoot of religious rites. As in classical Greece, so it was in medieval France, Italy, Germany, and England; and there was no obstacle which prevented the comparatively simple people of these countries from performing, understanding, and enjoying the dramatic representations which were generally simple tales simply presented. The Catholic Church actively aided and encouraged the growth of this simple drama, and in England as early as the ninth century tropes," or additional texts to ecclesiastical music in dramatic form, seem to have been fairly common. They were invariably composed by monks or nuns and performed by selected members of the congregations. In the beginning these "tropes" were part of the actual religious services, but gradually they were detached and presented separately as drama with a definitely religious purpose. Gradually, too, in the different countries, fragments of the native speech came to be inserted in the Latin texts, and the drama began to move towards the people and to be shaped by the genius of the different nations. As in classical Greece, song had developed into acted drama, or at least into the germ from

Tellers of old tales.

which drama developed as a separate art, distinct from religious observances and distinct from song.

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In Ireland there was no such development. Song, Ireland seems to have had in abundance, but there were no tropes to give the people that turn towards representation which produced the drama in other countries. The heroic poems of the bards were only recited as an aria, though they would probably have gained very considerably had they been enacted in the presence of those whose feats of valour they were intended to celebrate. But no such representation was attempted, and a very promising basis for acted drama seems to have passed unobserved. Also there seems to have been no association of religious rites with the dramatic form, such as may be found in other Catholic countries. The earliest forms of Druidic worship must have contained something which would nowadays be called dramatic, but all traces of these ceremonies seem to have been erased from the Irish mind at an early period of Christianity. So from neither of its religious systems did Ireland receive any impulse towards drama, and the early forms which are such a conspicuous feature in the drama of other Christian countries have no equivalent in Ireland.

Recitation in Ireland took the place that representation took in other countries. The nobility maintained the bards, and the ordinary folk had the shanachies, or storytellers, to provide recreation and instruction. The spoken word was of the greatest importance, the imagination of the listener supplied all the dramatic action that was required. In these recitals it was the word that was most important, and the use of the fine word was governed by a technique that was probably the most elaborate in medieval Europe. The manner of delivery, too, had to be of the very highest standard if the significance of the fine word were to be recognised by the auditors, and full value to be had by them of the dramatic content of the poem or story. These technical details of manner and matter have left a very deep impression on the Irish mind, an impression that is probably as deep to-day as it was in any period of the national life. It is certainly of some significance that the manner of a speech to-day, its wording and the form of its delivery, is of greater importance than the thought it may contain. A speech in Ireland is just a speech— a form of artistic exercise to be enjoyed or endured according to the mood of the listener and the virtuosity of the performer.

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