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Augusta, Lady Gregory

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Theatre; Writers and
critics

   CAPTION: Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory

   Frontispiece to Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography (1913)
   Born: March 15, 1852
   Roxborough, County Galway, Ireland
   Died: May 22, 1932
   Coole Park, County Galway, Ireland
   Occupation(s): Playwright, poet, folklorist
   Nationality: Irish
   Genre(s): Drama, mythology, essay
   Subject(s): Irish mythology
   Literary movement: Celtic Revival

   Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory ( 15 March 1852– 22 May 1932), née
   Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Anglo-Irish dramatist and folklorist.
   With William Butler Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary
   Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both
   companies. She also produced a number of books of retellings of stories
   from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with
   British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced in
   these writings, was emblematic of many of the changes to occur in
   Ireland during her lifetime.

   However, Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her role as an organiser
   and driving force of the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole
   Park, County Galway served as an important meeting place for the
   leading Revival figures and her early work as a member of the board of
   the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as
   her creative writings were. Her motto, taken from Aristotle, was "To
   think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."

Early life and marriage

   Lady Gregory was born the youngest daughter of an Anglo-Irish landlord
   class family in Roxborough, County Galway. Her mother, Frances Barry,
   was related to Standish Hayes O'Grady, 1st Viscount Guillamore, and her
   family home, Roxborough, was a 6,000 acre (24 km²) estate that was
   later burnt down during the Irish Civil War. She was educated at home,
   and her future career was strongly influenced by the family nurse, Mary
   Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish speaker who introduced the
   young Isabella Augusta to the history and legends of the local area.
   This early introduction probably had a greater impact on her than it
   otherwise would because the house had no library and her mother, who
   was a strict evangelical Protestant, forbade her to read any novels
   until she was 18.

   She married Sir William Henry Gregory, a widower with an estate at
   Coole Park, near Gort, County Galway on 4 March 1880, at a Protestant
   church in Dublin. As the wife of a knight, she became entitled to the
   style "Lady Gregory." Sir William Gregory, who was 35 years older than
   his bride, had just retired from his position of Governor of Ceylon,
   having previously served several terms as Member of Parliament for
   Galway County. He was a well-educated man with many literary and
   artistic interests, and the house at Coole Park housed a large library
   and extensive art collection, both of which his bride was eager to
   explore. He also had a house in London, and the couple spent a
   considerable amount of time there holding a weekly salon which was
   frequented by many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the
   day, including Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, John Everett Millais and
   Henry James. Their only child, Robert Gregory, was born in 1881. He was
   killed while serving as a pilot during the First World War, an event
   that inspired Yeats's poems "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" and "In
   Memory of Major Robert Gregory".

Early writings

   The Gregorys travelled in Ceylon, India, Spain, Italy and Egypt. While
   in Egypt, Lady Gregory had an affair with the English poet Wilfrid
   Scawen Blunt during which she wrote a series of love poems, A Woman's
   Sonnets. Blunt later published these poems under his own name. Her
   earliest work to appear under her own name was Arabi and His Household
   (1882), a pamphlet (originally a letter to The Times newspaper) in
   support of Ahmed Arabi Bey, the leader of an Egyptian nationalist
   revolt against the oppressive regime of the Khedives. She later said of
   this booklet, 'whatever political indignation or energy was born with
   me may have run its course in that Egyptian year and worn itself out'.
   Despite this, in 1893 she published A Phantom’s Pilgrimage, or Home
   Ruin, an anti-Nationalist pamphlet against William Gladstone's proposed
   second Home Rule Act. She also did charitable work in the parish of St.
   Stephen’s, Southwark, London and wrote a pamphlet, Over the River
   (1887) about her experiences there.

   She wrote more literary prose during the period of her marriage. In
   1883/84, she worked on a series of memoirs of her childhood home with a
   view to publishing them under the title An Emigrant's Notebook, but
   this plan was abandoned. She also wrote a number of short stories in
   the years 1890 and 1891, although these also never appeared in print. A
   number of unpublished poems from this period have also survived.

   When Sir William Gregory died in March 1892, Lady Gregory went into
   mourning and returned to Coole Park where she edited her husband's
   autobiography and had it published in 1894. She was to write later 'If
   I had not married I should not have learned the quick enrichment of
   sentences that one gets in conversation; had I not been widowed I
   should not have found the detachment of mind, the leisure for
   observation necessary to give insight into character, to express and
   interpret it. Loneliness made me rich - "full", as Bacon says.'

Cultural nationalism

   A trip to Inisheer in the Aran Islands in 1893 reawoke an interest the
   Irish language and in the folklore of the area in which she lived. She
   organised Irish lessons at the schoole at Coole and began collecting
   tales from the area around her home, especially from the residents of
   Gort workhouse. This activity led to the publication of a number of
   volumes of folk material, including A Book of Saints and Wonders
   (1906), The Kiltartan History Book (1909), and The Kiltartan Wonder
   Book (1910). She also produced a number of collections of Kiltartanese
   versions of Irish myths, including Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) and
   Gods and Fighting Men (1904). In his introduction to the former, Yeats
   wrote "I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my
   time." James Joyce was to parody this claim in the Scyla and Charybdis
   chapter of his novel Ulysses. Flann O'Brien would also parody the book
   in his At Swim-Two-Birds with his overly literal versions of the myths
   of the Fenian cycle.

   Towards the end of 1894, encouraged by the positive reception of the
   editing of her husband's autobiography, Lady Gregory turned her
   attention to another editorial project. She decided to prepare
   selections from Sir William Gregory's grandfather's correspondence for
   publication as Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box 1813-30 (1898). This entailed
   researching Irish history of the period, and one outcome of this work
   was a shift in her own position from the 'soft' Unionism of her earlier
   writing on Home Rule to a definite support of Irish nationalism and
   what she was later to describe as 'a dislike and distrust of England'.

Founding of the Abbey

   A poster for the opening run at the Abbey Theatre from 27 December
   1904, to 3 January 1905.
   Enlarge
   A poster for the opening run at the Abbey Theatre from 27 December
   1904, to 3 January 1905.

   Edward Martyn was a neighbour of Lady Gregory, and it was during a
   visit to his house in Tulira that she first met W. B. Yeats.
   Discussions between the three of them over the following year or so led
   to the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899. Lady Gregory
   undertook the fundraising, and the first programme consisted of
   Martyn’s The Heather Field and Yeats's The Countess Cathleeen. During
   this period, she effectively co-authored Yeats's early plays, including
   The Countess Cathleeen, specifically working on the passages of
   dialogue involving peasant characters.

   The Irish Literary Theatre project lasted until 1901, when it collapsed
   due to lack of funding. In 1904, Lady Gregory, Martyn, Yeats, John
   Millington Synge, Æ, Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman and William
   and Frank Fay came together to form the Irish National Theatre Society.

   The first performances staged by the society took place in a building
   called the Molesworth Hall. When the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in
   Lower Abbey Street and an adjacent building in Marlborough Street
   became available, Horniman and William Fay agreed to their purchase and
   refitting to meet the needs of the society. On 11 May 1904, the society
   formally accepted Horniman's offer of the use of the building. As
   Horniman was not normally resident in Ireland, the Royal Letters Patent
   required were paid for by her but granted in the name of Lady Gregory.
   One of her own plays, Spreading the News was performed on the opening
   night, 27 December, 1904.

   At the opening of Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in January
   1907, a significant portion of the crowd rioted, causing the remainder
   of the play to be acted out in dumbshow. Lady Gregory did not think as
   highly of the play as Yeats did, but she defended Synge as a matter of
   principle. Her view of the affair is summed up in a letter to Yeats
   where she wrote of the riots; "It is the old battle, between those who
   use a toothbrush and those who don't."

Later career

   The cover of Lady Gregory's 1905 play The White Cockade
   Enlarge
   The cover of Lady Gregory's 1905 play The White Cockade

   She remained an active director of the theatre until ill health led to
   her retirement in 1928. During this time she wrote more than 40 plays,
   mainly for production at the Abbey. Many of these were written in an
   attempted transliteration of the Hiberno-English dialect spoken around
   Coole Park that became widely known as Kiltartanese, from the nearby
   village of Kiltartan. Her plays, which are rarely performed now, were
   not particularly popular at the time. Indeed, the Irish writer Oliver
   St John Gogarty once wrote "the perpetual presentation of her plays
   nearly ruined the Abbey". In addition to her plays, she wrote a two
   volume study of the folklore of her native area called Visions and
   Beliefs in the West of Ireland in 1920. She also played the lead role
   in three performances of Cathleen Ni Houlihan in 1919.

   During her time on the board of the Abbey, Coole Park remained her home
   and she spent her time in Dublin staying in a number of hotels. In
   these, she ate frugally, often on food she brought with her from home.
   She frequently used her hotel rooms to interview would-be Abbey
   dramatists and to entertain the company after opening nights of new
   plays. She spent many of her days working on her translations in the
   National Library of Ireland.

   She also gained a reputation as being a somewhat conservative figure.
   For instance, when Denis Johnston submitted his first play Shadowdance
   to the Abbey, it was rejected by Lady Gregory and returned to the
   author with “The Old Lady says No” written on the title page. Johnson
   decided to rename the play, and The Old Lady Says 'No' was eventually
   staged by the Gate Theatre 1928.
   Lady Gregory in later life
   Enlarge
   Lady Gregory in later life

Retirement and death

   When she retired from the Abbey board, Lady Gregory returned to Galway
   to live, although she continued to visit Dublin regularly. The house
   and demesne at Coole Park had been sold to the Irish Forestry
   Commission in 1927, with Lady Gregory retaining life tenancy. Her
   Galway home had long been a focal point for the writers associated with
   the Irish Literary Revival and this continued after her retirement. On
   a tree in what were the grounds of the now demolished house, one can
   still see the carved initials of Synge, Æ, Yeats and his artist brother
   Jack, George Moore, Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Tynan
   and Violet Martin. Yeats wrote five poems about or set in the house and
   grounds: "The Wild Swans at Coole", "I walked among the seven woods of
   Coole", "In the Seven Woods", "Coole Park, 1929" and "Coole Park and
   Ballylee, 1931".

   The woman Shaw once described as "the greatest living Irishwoman" died
   at home at the age of 80 from breast cancer, and is buried in the New
   Cemetery in Bohermore, County Galway. The entire contents of Coole Park
   were auctioned three months after her death and the house was
   demolished in 1941. Lady Gregory's plays fell out of favour after her
   death and are now rarely performed. She kept diaries and journals for
   most of her adult life, and many of these have been published since her
   death. They are a rich source of information on Irish literary history
   for the first three decades of the 20th century and her diaries
   covering the period of the founding of the Abbey are the only extant
   contemporary record of these events written by a major participant.

Works

   Selected plays
     * Twenty Five (1903)
     * Spreading the News (1904)
     * Kincora: A Play in Three Acts (1905)
     * The White Cockade: A Comedy in Three Acts (1905)
     * Hyacinth Halvey (1906)
     * The Doctor in Spite of Himself (1906)
     * The Canavans (1906)
     * The Rising of the Moon (1907)
     * Dervorgilla (1907)
     * The Workhouse Ward (1908)
     * The Rogueries of Scapin (1908)
     * The Miser (1909)
     * Seven Short Plays (1909)
     * The Image: A Play in Three Acts (1910)
     * The Deliverer (1911)
     * Damer’s Gold (1912)
     * Irish Folk History Plays (First Series 1912, Second Series 1912)
     * McDonough’s Wife (1913)
     * The Image and Other Plays (1922)
     * The Dragon: A Play in Three Acts (1920)
     * The Would-Be Gentleman (1923)
     * An Old Woman Remembers (1923)
     * The Story Brought by Brigit: A Passion Play in Three Acts (1924)
     * Sancha’s Master (1927)
     * Dave (1927)

   Prose and translations
     * Arabi and His Household (1882)
     * Over the River (1887)
     * A Phantom’s Pilgrimage, or Home Ruin (1893)
     * ed., Sir William Gregory, KCMG: An Autobiography (1894)
     * ed., Mr Gregory’s Letter-Box 1813-30 (1898)
     * ed., Ideals in Ireland: A Collection of Essays written by AE and
       Others (1901)
     * Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of
       Ulster arranged and put into English by Lady Gregory (1902)
     * Ulster (1902)
     * Poets and Dreamers: Studies and Translations from the Irish (1903)
     * Gods and Fighting Men (1904)
     * A Book of Saints and Wonders, put down here by Lady Gregory,
       according to the Old Writings and the Memory of the People of
       Ireland (1906)
     * The Kiltartan History Book (1909)
     * A Book of Saints and Wonders (1906)
     * Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography (1913)
     * Kiltartan Poetry Book, Translations from the Irish (1919)
     * Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920)
     * Hugh Lane’s Life and Achievement, with some account of the Dublin
       Galleries (1921)
     * Case for the Return of Sir Hugh Lane’s Pictures to Dublin (1926)
     * Seventy Years (1974).

   Journals
     * Lennox Robinson, ed., Lady Gregory’s Journals 1916-30 (1946)
     * Daniel Murphy, ed., Lady Gregory’s Journals Vol. 1 (1978); Lady
       Gregory’s Journals, Vol. II (1987)
     * James Pethica, ed., Lady Gregory’s Diaries 1892-1902 (1995),

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