Cathleen ni Houlihan (play)

For other uses, see Kathleen Ni Houlihan.

Cathleen ni Houlihan
Scene from a production c. 1912.
Written by	William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory
Date premiered	2 April 1902 (1902-04-02)
Place premiered	Dublin

Cathleen ni Houlihan is a one-act play written by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1902. It was first performed on 2 April of that year and first published in the October number of Samhain. The play centers on the 1798 Rebellion. The play is startlingly nationalistic, in its last pages encouraging young men to sacrifice their lives for the heroine Cathleen ni Houlihan, who represents an independent and separate Irish state. The title character first appears as an old woman at the door of a family celebrating their son's wedding. She describes her four "beautiful green fields," representing the four provinces, that have been unjustly taken from her. With little subtlety, she requests a blood sacrifice, declaring that "many a child will be born and there will be no father at the christening". When the youth agrees and leaves the safety of his home to fight for her, she appears as an image of youth with "the walk of a queen," professing of those who fight for her: "They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever."^[1]

References

↑ W. B. Yeats, Nine One-Act Plays (1937), p. 36.

External links

Literary Encyclopedia: Cathleen ni Houlihan
Ireland 32 Journal Essay
The National Library of Ireland's exhibition on Yeats; features many manuscript drafts of this play and photographs from the 1902 production featuring M Gonne.

The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays at Project Gutenberg

W. B. Yeats

Poetry

Volumes	The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889) The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics (1892) In the Seven Woods (1903) The Wild Swans at Coole (1919) Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921) The Tower (1928) The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

Poems	"Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven" "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" "Adam's Curse" "Blood and the Moon" "The Circus Animals' Desertion" "Down by the Salley Gardens" "A Drunken Man's Praise of Sobriety" "Easter, 1916" "Ego Dominus Tuus" "In Memory of Eva Gore-Booth and Con Markiewicz" "Lake Isle of Innisfree" "On being asked for a War Poem" "Politics" "A Prayer for My Daughter" "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" "The Rose of Battle" "The Rose-Tree" "Sailing to Byzantium" "September 1913" "Song of the Old Mother" "The Fiddler of Dooney" "The Scholars" "The Second Coming" "The Song of the Happy Shepherd" "The Stolen Child" "Swift's Epitaph" "To the Rose upon the Rood of Time" "The Tower" "Under Ben Bulben "The Wanderings of Oisin" "The Wild Swans at Coole"

Plays

Other works

A Vision (1925)
"The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows"
Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935 (editor)

People

John Butler Yeats (father)
Susan Pollexfen (mother)
Jack Butler Yeats (brother)
Elizabeth Yeats (sister)
Lily Yeats (sister)
Maud Gonne (lover)
Georgie Hyde-Lees (wife)
Anne Yeats (daughter)
Michael Yeats (son)

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