by W. B. Yeats
Call on Cuchulain now.
EITHNE INGUBA. Can you hear my voice, Cuchulain?
EMER. Bend over whatever thing lies there, call out dear secrets and speak to it as though it were his very self.
EITHNE INGUBA. Cuchulain, listen!
EMER. Those are timid words. To be afraid because his wife is standing by when there is so great need but proves that he chose badly.
Remember who you are and who he is, that we are two women struggling with the sea.
EITHNE INGUBA. O my beloved! Pardon me, pardon me that I could be ashamed when you were in such need. Never did I send a message, never did I call your name, scarce had I a longing for your company but that you have known and come. Remember that never up to this hour have you been silent when I would have you speak, remember that I have always made you talkative. If you are not lying there, if that is some stranger or someone or something bewitched into your likeness, drive it away, remember that for someone to take your likeness from you is a great insult. If you are lying there, stretch out your arms and speak, open your mouth and speak. [She turns to Emer.] He does not hear me, no sound reaches him, or it reaches him and he cannot speak.
EMER. Then kiss that image; these things are a great mystery, and maybe his mouth will feel the pressure of your mouth upon that image. Is it not so that we approach the gods?
EITHNE INGUBA [starting back]. I felt it was some evil, devilish thing!
EMER. No, his body stirs, the pressure of your mouth has called him.
He has thrown the changeling out.
EITHNE INGUBA [going further off]. Look at that hand! That hand is withered to the bone.
EMER [going up to the bed]. What are you, what do you come for, and from where?
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. I am one of the spirits from the sea.
EMER. What spirit from the sea dares lie upon Cuchulain’s bed and take his image?
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. I am called Bricriu, I am the maker of discord.
EMER. Come for what purpose?
[Exit Eithne Inguba.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. I show my face and everything he loves must fly.
EMER. I have not fled your face.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. YOU are not loved.
EMER. And therefore have no dread to meet your eyes and to demand my husband.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. He is here, your lamentations and that woman’s lamentations have brought him in a sort of dream, but you can never win him without my help. Come to my left hand and I will touch your eyes and give you sight.
EMER [seeing the Ghost of Cuchulain]. Husband! Husband!
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. He seems near, and yet is as much out of reach as though there were a world between. I have made him visible to you. I cannot make you visible to him.
EMER. Cuchulain! Cuchulain!
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. Be silent, woman! He can neither see nor hear. But I can give him to you at a price. [Clashing of cymbals, etc.] Listen to that. Listen to the horses of the sea trampling! Fand, daughter of Manannan, has come. She is reining in her chariot, that is why the horses trample so. She is come to take Cuchulain from you, to take him away for ever, but I am her enemy, and I can show you how to thwart her.
EMER. Fand, daughter of Manannan!
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. While he is still here you can keep him if you pay the price. Once back in Manannan’s house he is lost to you for ever. Those who love the daughters of the sea do not grow weary, nor do the daughters of the sea release their lovers.
EMER. There is no price I will not pay.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. You spoke but now of a hope that some day his love may return to you, that some day you may sit by the fire as when first married.
EMER. That is the one hope I have, the one thing that keeps me alive.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. Renounce it, and he shall live again.
EMER. Never, never!
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. What else have you to offer?
EMER. Why should the gods demand such a sacrifice?
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. The gods must serve those who living become like the dead.
EMER. I will get him in-despite of all the gods, but I will not renounce his love.
[Fand, the Woman of the Sidhe, enters. Emer draws a dagger and moves as if to strike her.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN [laughing]. You think to wound her with a knife! She has an airy body, an invulnerable body. Remember that though your lamentations have dragged him hither, once he has left this shore, once he has passed the bitter sea, once he lands in Manannan’s house, he will be as the gods who remember nothing.
[The Woman of the Sidhe, Fand, moves round the crouching Ghost of Cuchulain at front of stage in a dance that grows gradually quicker as he awakes. At moments she may drop her hair upon his head, but she does not kiss him. She is accompanied by string and flute and drum. Her mask and clothes must suggest gold or bronze or brass and silver, so that she seems more an idol than a human being. This suggestion may be repeated in her movements. Her hair, too, must keep the metallic suggestion. The object of the dance is that having awakened Cuchulain he will follow Fand out; probably he will seek a kiss and the kiss will be withheld.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. Cry out that you renounce his love, cry that you renounce his love for ever.
[Fand and Cuchulain go out.
EMER. NO, no, never will I give that cry.
FIGURE OF CUCHULAIN. Fool, fool! I am Fand’s enemy. I come to tell you how to thwart her and you do nothing. There is yet time. Listen to the horses of the chariot, they are trampling the shore. They are wild and trampling. She has mounted into her chariot. Cuchulain is not yet beside her. Will you leave him to such as she? Renounce his love, and all her power over him comes to an end.
EMER. I renounce Cuchulain’s love. I renounce it for ever.
[Figure of Cuchulain falls back upon the bed, drawing or partly drawing its curtain that he may change his mask.
Eithne Inguba enters.
EITHNE INGUBA. Cuchulain, Cuchulain! Remember our last meeting. We lay all night among the sand-hills; dawn came; we heard the crying of the birds upon the shore. Come to me, beloved. [The curtain of the bed moves.] Look, look! He has come back, he is there in the bed, he has his own rightful form again. It is I who have won him. It is my love that has brought him back to life!
[The figure in the bed pulls back the curtain. He wears the mask of Cuchulain.
EMER. Cuchulain wakes!
CUCHULAIN. Your arms, your arms! O Eithne Inguba, I have been in some strange place and am afraid.
EPILOGUE
[The Musicians, singing as follows, draw the wave-curtain until it masks the bed, Cuchulain, Eithne Inguba, and Emer.
FIRST MUSICIAN
Why does your heart beat thus?
Plain to be understood, I have met in a man’s house
A statue of solitude,
Moving there and walking,
Its strange heart beating fast
For all our talking;
O still that heart at last.
O bitter reward
Of many a tragic tomb!
And we though astonished are dumb
Or give but a sigh and a word,
A passing word.
Although the door be shut
And all seem well enough,
Although wide world hold not
A man but will give you his love
The moment he has looked at you,
He that has loved the best
May turn from a statue
His too human breast.
O bitter reward
Of many a tragic tomb!
And we though astonished are dumb
Or give but a sigh and a word,
A passing word.
What makes your heart so beat?
Is there no man at your side?
When beauty is complete
Your own thought will have died
And danger not be diminished;
Dimmed at three-quarter
light,
When moon’s round is finished
The stars are out of sight.
O bitter reward
Of many a tragic tomb!
And we though astonished are dumb
Or give but a sigh and a word,
A passing word.
[The Musicians return to their places. Fand, the Woman of the
Sidhe, enters and dances a dance which expresses her despair for the loss of Cuchulain. As before there may be other dancers who represent the waves. It is called, in order to balance the first dance, ‘Fand mourns among the waves.’ It is essentially a dance which symbolises, like water in the fortunetelling books, bitterness. As she takes her final pose of despair the Curtain falls.
Curtain
THE WORDS UPON THE WINDOW-PANE
First published in 1934, this popular one-act play is set in Dublin during the time of the turbulent 1920’s. The action takes place in the parlour of a now-seedy boarding-house, which in the past had an illustrious history. Built in the eighteenth century and originally owned by friends of Jonathan Swift, the house has had as its occupant’s two celebrated Irish patriots, as well as Esther Johnson (1681-1728), Swift’s “Stella.” As the play opens, guests are arriving for a séance, to be conducted by Mrs. Henderson, a medium who has journeyed from London at the invitation of the Dublin Spiritualists’ Association, tying in with one of Yeats life-long obsessions – spiritualism.
This play was in fact Yeats’ most successful drama, which the playwright himself was particularly surprised to learn. The Words upon the Window-Pane was dedicated to Yeats’ dearest friend and supporter, Lady Augusta Gregory, who died earlier that year. Lady Gregory had been Yeats’ staunchest ally for many years, co-founding the Abbey Theatre and serving as a major literary influence in early twentieth-century literature in Ireland. Yeats wrote this play while staying at Coole Park, Lady Gregory’s magnificent home in County Galway, which he visited every summer for over thirty years.
Lady Gregory (1852-1932)
Coole Park, County Galway, which Yeats visited many times
The 1994 film adaptation of the play
In Memory of
LADY GREGORY
IN WHOSE HOUSE IT WAS WRITTEN
PERSONS IN THE PLAY
Dr. Trench
Miss Mackenna
John Corbet
Cornelius Patterson
Abraham Johnson
Mrs. Mallet
Mrs. Henderson
THE WORDS UPON THE WINDOW-PANE
A lodging-house room, an armchair, a little table in front of it, chairs on either side. A fireplace and window. A kettle on the hob and some tea-things on a dresser. A door to back and towards the right. Through the door one can see an entrance hall. The sound of a knocker. Miss Mackenna passes through and then she re-enters the hall together with John Corbet, a man of twenty-two or twenty-three, and Dr. Trench, a man of between sixty and seventy.
DR. TRENCH [in hall]. May I introduce John Corbet, one of the Corbets of Ballymoney, but at present a Cambridge student? This is Miss Mackenna, our energetic secretary.
[They come into room, take off their coats]
MISS MACKENNA. I thought it better to let you in myself. This country is still sufficiently medieval to make spiritualism an undesirable theme for gossip. Give me your coats and hats, I will put them in my own room. It is just across the hall. Better sit down, your watches must be fast. Mrs. Henderson is lying down, as she always does before a séance. We won’t begin for ten minutes yet.
[She goes out with hats and coats]
DR. TRENCH. Miss Mackenna does all the real work of the Dublin Spiritualists’ Association. She did all the correspondence with Mrs. Henderson, and persuaded the landlady to let her this big room and a small room upstairs. We are a poor society and could not guarantee anything in advance. Mrs. Henderson has come from London at her own risk. She was born in Dublin and wants to spread the movement here. She lives very economically and does not expect a great deal. We all give what we can. A poor woman with the soul of an apostle.
JOHN CORBET. Have there been many séances?
DR. TRENCH. Only three so far.
JOHN CORBET. I hope she will not mind my scepticism. I have looked into Myers’ Human Personality and a wild book by Conan Doyle, but am unconvinced.
DR. TRENCH. We all have to find the truth for ourselves. Lord Dunraven, then Lord Adare, introduced my father to the famous David Home. My father often told me that he saw David Home floating in the air in broad daylight, but I did not believe a word of it. I had to investigate for myself, and I was very hard to convince. Mrs. Piper, an American trance medium, not unlike Mrs. Henderson, convinced me.
JOHN CORBET. A state of somnambulism and voices coming through her lips that purport to be those of dead persons?
DR. TRENCH. Exactly: quite the best kind of mediumship if you want to establish the identity of a spirit. But do not expect too much. There has been a hostile influence.
JOHN CORBET. YOU mean an evil spirit?
DR. TRENCH. The poet Blake said that he never knew a bad man that had not something very good about him. I say a hostile influence, an influence that disturbed the last séance very seriously. I cannot tell you what happened, for I have not been at any of Mrs. Henderson’s séances. Trance mediumship has nothing new to show me — I told the young people when they made me their President that I would probably stay at home, that I could get more out of Emanuel Swedenborg than out of any seance. [A knock.] That is probably old Cornelius Patterson; he thinks they race horses and whippets in the other world, and is, so they tell me, so anxious to find out if he is right that he is always punctual. Miss Mackenna will keep him to herself for some minutes. He gives her tips for Harold’s Cross.
[MISS MACKENNA crosses to hall door and admits Cornelius Patterson. She brings him to her room across the hall.
JOHN CORBET [who has been wandering about]. This is a wonderful room for a lodging-house.
DR. TRENCH. It was a private house until about fifty years ago. It was not so near the town in those days, and there are large stables at the back. Quite a number of notable people lived here. Grattan was born upstairs; no, not Grattan, Curran perhaps — I forget — but I do know that this house in the early part of the eighteenth century belonged to friends of Jonathan Swift, or rather of Stella.
Swift chaffed her in the Journal to Stella because of certain small sums of money she lost at cards probably in this very room. That was before Vanessa appeared upon the scene. It was a countryhouse in those days, surrounded by trees and gardens. Somebody cut some lines from a poem of hers upon the window-pane — tradition says Stella herself. [A knock.] Here they are, but you will hardly make them out in this light.
[They stand in the window. Corbet stoops down to see better.
Miss Mackenna and Abraham Johnson enter and stand near door.]
ABRAHAM JOHNSON. Where is Mrs. Henderson?
MISS MACKENNA. She is upstairs; she always rests before a séance.
ABRAHAM JOHNSON. I must see her before the séance. I know exactly what to do to get rid of this evil influence.
MISS MACKENNA. If you go up to see her there will be no séance at all. She says it is dangerous even to think, much less to speak of, an evil influence.
ABRAHAM JOHNSON. Then I shall speak to the President.
MISS MACKENNA. Better talk the whole thing over first in my room.
Mrs. Henderson says that there must be perfect harmony.
ABRAHAM JOHNSON. Something must be done. The last séance was completely spoiled.
[A knock.]
MISS MACKENNA. That may be Mrs. Mallet; she is a very experienced spiritualist. Come to my room, old Patterson and some others are there already.
[She brings him to the other room and later crosses to hall door to admit Mrs. Mallet-]
JOHN CORBET. I know those lines well — they are part of a poem
Stella wrote for Swift’s fifty-fourth birthday. Only three poe
ms of hers — and some lines she added to a poem of Swift’s — have come down to us, but they are enough to prove her a better poet than
Swift. Even those few words on the window make me think of a seventeenth-century poet, Donne or Crashaw.
[He quotes]
‘You taught how I might youth prolong
By knowing what is right and wrong,