The Abbey Row: Not Edited by W.B. Yeats
Page Lawrence Dickinson (1881–1958)
The Abbey Row: Not Edited by W.B. Yeats
Dublin, Maunsel, 1907
The Playboy of the Western World caused riots at the Abbey in January 1907. J.M. Synge’s play tells the story of a young man, Christy Mahon, being valorized for having allegedly killed his father. Offense was taken at profane use of religious phrases and, finally, at Christy’s mention of “a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts.” Gregory telegraphed Yeats, “Audience broke up in disorder at the word shifts.” The Abbey Row parodies the Theatre’s journal The Arrow, edited by Yeats, by replacing its cover design of Queen Maeve and an Irish wolfhound with “Mrs. Grundy”—the prototype of prudery—holding Synge on a leash. For Yeats, the riots marked a key change in Ireland: “I saw the dissolution of a school of patriotism that held sway over my youth.”
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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