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Anushka Sen UG-III Irrationality, Passion and Ambiguity in the Story of Deirdre: Through the Work of Synge and Yeats INTRODUCTION In his eponymous conclusion to the book The Harvest of Tragedy, T.R. Henn writes of tragedy’s ‘basic material’ as consisting of “the nature and properties of the law… whether ‘divine’, ‘natural’ or ‘human’, under which we live’ (Henn 283). These laws are in a state of actual or apparent conflict, and man bears a certain ‘responsiblity’ when confronted with them (283). Henn goes on to state that such contradictions may be seen as a consequence or an aspect of numerous factors, including ‘the Irrational’ or ‘supra-natural’ (283). Indeed, tragedy is noticeably driven by forces that are difficult for the fictional characters as well as the audience to assimilate as naturally congruous with life’s conventions. Not only does this pertain to the content of tragedy, it also structurally determines the way the genre is processed even where there may be no immediate conflict unfolding before the spectator/reader. Since tragedy frequently ‘work[s] through ambivalences’ and ‘make[s] use of paradox’, it produces a ‘total response which is intuitional rather than logical’(284). Nevertheless it is important to distinguish what comes through as specifically irrational in tragedy, above all the elements which are disturbing in some form. There are certain forces that primarily evoke confusion or wonder; a response which is of epistemological interest and persists beyond the personal response of outrage, fear or indignation at ones fate. Similarly, there are actions which cannot be merely called uncommon or disproportionate; where the lack of reason (at some significant level) surrounding their cause draws as much attention as their tragic potential or effect. This is where irrationality comes into play, often taken into account within the dramatist’s created world itself, where characters accuse each other of madness and express fear, awe, disgust or disapproval at such instances. This irrationality is frequently gendered like nearly all aspects of behaviour, and perhaps more obviously so than most. In an earlier chapter entitled ‘The Woman’s Part’, Henn writes that ‘woman in tragedy may be either the heart’s victim or its torturer; her sufferings while they are simpler than those of man, find expression more easily on the stage’(106). He goes on to list some of the key components of the way women have been represented in tragedy. Of them, one refers to her ‘supra-natural powers… or even of some more than ordinary sensibility which causes man to credit her with mysterious powers’ (106). These attitudes, drawing upon the concept of women as more abstract and emotional beings, enable the strengthening of an association between women and irrationality. Early drama, created in more actively patriarchal societies, is full of such sharply gendered depictions where female passion seems to strain against the boundaries of logic and order. Greek drama is full of ‘women who wept’; the Trojan Women, Medea… Cassandra… Hecuba. The scale of emotion runs from the sense of a terrible collective wrong, woman’s fierce energy for evil and intrigue under the stimulus of unmixed emotion… their confrontation with the alternatives of chastity or death… They confront, in a unity of ageless passion, the actions that wreck the sacrifices of bearing and nurture for pride (Henn 108).
Citation preview
Anushka Sen
UG-III
Irrationality, Passion and Ambiguity in the
Story of Deirdre: Through the Work of
Synge and Yeats
INTRODUCTION
In his eponymous conclusion to the book The Harvest of Tragedy, T.R. Henn writes of
tragedy’s ‘basic material’ as consisting of “the nature and properties of the law…
whether ‘divine’, ‘natural’ or ‘human’, under which we live’ (Henn 283). These laws are
in a state of actual or apparent conflict, and man bears a certain ‘responsiblity’ when
confronted with them (283). Henn goes on to state that such contradictions may be seen
as a consequence or an aspect of numerous factors, including ‘the Irrational’ or ‘supra-
natural’ (283). Indeed, tragedy is noticeably driven by forces that are difficult for the
fictional characters as well as the audience to assimilate as naturally congruous with life’s
conventions. Not only does this pertain to the content of tragedy, it also structurally
determines the way the genre is processed even where there may be no immediate
conflict unfolding before the spectator/reader. Since tragedy frequently ‘work[s] through
ambivalences’ and ‘make[s] use of paradox’, it produces a ‘total response which is
intuitional rather than logical’(284). Nevertheless it is important to distinguish what
comes through as specifically irrational in tragedy, above all the elements which are
1
disturbing in some form. There are certain forces that primarily evoke confusion or
wonder; a response which is of epistemological interest and persists beyond the personal
response of outrage, fear or indignation at ones fate. Similarly, there are actions which
cannot be merely called uncommon or disproportionate; where the lack of reason (at
some significant level) surrounding their cause draws as much attention as their tragic
potential or effect. This is where irrationality comes into play, often taken into account
within the dramatist’s created world itself, where characters accuse each other of
madness and express fear, awe, disgust or disapproval at such instances.
This irrationality is frequently gendered like nearly all aspects of behaviour, and perhaps
more obviously so than most. In an earlier chapter entitled ‘The Woman’s Part’, Henn
writes that ‘woman in tragedy may be either the heart’s victim or its torturer; her
sufferings while they are simpler than those of man, find expression more easily on the
stage’(106). He goes on to list some of the key components of the way women have been
represented in tragedy. Of them, one refers to her ‘supra-natural powers… or even of
some more than ordinary sensibility which causes man to credit her with mysterious
powers’ (106). These attitudes, drawing upon the concept of women as more abstract and
emotional beings, enable the strengthening of an association between women and
irrationality. Early drama, created in more actively patriarchal societies, is full of such
sharply gendered depictions where female passion seems to strain against the boundaries
of logic and order.
Greek drama is full of ‘women who wept’; the Trojan Women, Medea…
Cassandra… Hecuba. The scale of emotion runs from the sense of a terrible
collective wrong, woman’s fierce energy for evil and intrigue under the stimulus
of unmixed emotion… their confrontation with the alternatives of chastity or
death… They confront, in a unity of ageless passion, the actions that wreck the
sacrifices of bearing and nurture for pride (Henn 108).
Often, the heights of irrationality are located in, though not really explained away by
possession. Phaedra for example, repeatedly calls herself a victim of Venus, and
successor to a legacy already infected by a curse. Moving from Greek myth to
Shakespeare, one might recall G. Wilson Knight’s comment on Lady Macbeth- ‘She is
not merely a woman of strong will: she is a woman possessed—possessed of evil passion.
2
No 'will-power' on earth would account for her dread invocation’ (Knight 152). In other
cases, irrationality becomes associated not only with individual women, but with the
feminine worldview, as one might detect in orders like the Bacchae and the Furies, whose
all-female presence has a chaotic or primal energy and whose legitimacy is often
questioned on the grounds of logic. Even where logic functions in murky areas, societal
perception surrounding the woman’s action is usually homogenous and quite confident of
following accepted codes. For example, Clytemnestra voices a powerful argument for her
murder of Agamemnon, crying out against the brutality of their daughter’s sacrifice and
also expressing offended pride at Cassandra’s adulterous relationship with her husband.
The chorus of Elders however, which has discarded its initial horror at Agamemnon’s
sacrifice of Iphigenia, now refuses to acclimatize itself to the credibility of
Clytemnestra’s rage. What is striking is not their lack of support, since her act (unlike
Agamemnon’s) received no prompting from the heavens. It is rather, their outright
condemnation of her act, their disbelief at her self-justification, their absolute association
of Clytemnestra with all that wrong. Their response ranges from a general denunciation
of women—‘Spirit of hate.../ Your power it is engenders thus/ In woman’s brain such
evil art’ (Aeschylus lines 1467-70)—to questioning Clytemnestra’s sanity— ‘Where,
where lies Right? Reason despairs her powers, / Mind numbly gropes, her quick
resources spent, / ... Where can I turn?’(1530-2) If women’s irrationality can stem from
their being too true to femininity as it were, it can also be the mark (as cause or effect) of
an estrangement from womanhood. Once again, Lady Macbeth comes to mind. With the
coming of modernity, these equations shift and readjust themselves. As tragedy becomes
relatively secularized, the possession trope loses relevance1. Moreover, as discoveries in
the field of psychology prove men to be equally capable of delusions and mental
instability, one sees a decline in the skewed representation of ‘mad woman’ versus
‘rational man’. If we have Blance DuBois, we also have Alan Strang. Moreover, there
enters in the literature a note of irony or space for criticism surrounding society’s reaction
to women. Nevertheless, there are memorable instances in modern drama where the
woman becomes a reservoir of conventional gender attributes—sexuality and desire,
1 This is primarily in the context of European tragedy, for drama from other parts of the world is often built around myths and beliefs that have prevailed upto this date and are part of the lived experience of its contemporary audiences.
3
whimsicality and lack of restraint—that have a damaging effect on men, resulting in a
collapse of peace and fruitfulness whose affective impact overwhelms irony. An
illustrative character is the bride in Lorca’s Blooding Wedding. Another area for
exploring the woman’s role in relation to more conventional irrationality in modern
drama is mythology; the rewriting of which may or may not challenge the original
assumptions with radical implications.
This paper seeks to analyse the treatment of the Irish myth of Deirdre in J.M. Synge’s
play, with a retrospective look at Yeats’s version. The focus is on the texts themselves,
and the differences between them, rather than their mode of engagement with the original
myth. The paper attempts to explore the sources of passion and irrationality in the two
plays, and the various ways in they manifest themselves, while taking into account the
possibilities of gendering. Some attention is also devoted to the question of ambiguity,
which though not equivalent to irrationality, often enhances the latter with its obfuscatory
impact.
I.
In Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows, we know even before the protagonist makes her
entrance that she is a force to be reckoned with. Growing up in the woods, with an elderly
aunt who is far from authoritarian, Deirdre is like ‘a lamb of ten weeks and it racing the
hills... It’s not the dread of death or troubles that would tame her like’ (Synge 217). But
though nature grants her an uncontainable energy, it is not till slightly later that we hear
her addressed in terms that question her rationality. In fact, Lavercham initially calls her
‘too wise to marry a big king’ (216). Though the word ‘wise’ does have a touch of irony,
it nevertheless puts the focus on a sense of independence and will that suggest a strong
awareness of ones own identity above all else. A different note is struck with
Lavercham’s comment on Deirdre’s high-strung demeanour following Conchubar’s
departure from their house. As Deirdre storms around the room pulling out material for
garments, Lavercham asks in wonder- ‘What ails you?’ (223) and adding to the fearful
reflections of an old woman present at the scene, she says- ‘it’s more than raving’s in...
[Deirdre’s] mind, or I’m the more astray’ (224). The stage directions for Deirdre’s
4
actions contain the word ‘excitement’ multiple times and this change wrought in her state
of mind makes for an interesting reading when placed adjacent to her exchange with
Conchubor. From initially behaving with supreme dignity, she is reduced to being
‘terrified with the reality that is before her’ 2(222) when given an ultimatum for the
wedding. It is the unsettling aspect of reality itself which launches her into a minor
frenzy. However, this outburst eventually produces a persona that is not exaggerated but
rather amplified into a figure of awe-inducing grandeur. When Deirdre makes her regal
entrance upon the gathering of Lavercham and the three sons of Usna, she is greeted with
a note of reverence that obliterates any possibility of a ludicrous disjuncture between her
glamorous attire and the humble setting of her home.
Of course, there is still a strong note of tension in the air, and when Lavercham comes
upon Deirdre and Naisi locked in embrace, she uses a familiar word to question Deirdre’s
presence of mind, with even stronger connotations than before- ‘Are you raving, Deirdre?
Are you choosing this night to destroy the world?’ (231) But once again, Deirdre’s
decision carries weight, and Lavercham accedes to her sponataneous marriage with a
telling interpretation of Deirdre’s desire- ‘Birds go mating in the spring of the year, and
ewes at the leaves falling, but a young girl must have her lover in all the courses of the
sun and moon’ (232). This isolates human (especially female) pursuit of love as standing
apart from the rest of nature, but still somehow in accordance with a set of governing
principles. This is consistent with the play’s dual presentation of Deirdre’s behaviour as
both irrational and legitimate.
At this point, we may pause to consider some of the sources of irrationality outside
Deirdre’s own character. The character of Owen makes a sudden and brief appearance in
Act II—often criticized for being underdeveloped (Kiberd 72)—but nevertheless
introducing some resonant ideas into the play. There is an abruptness and lack of
moderation in his bearing which lends itself to caricature, and is reminiscent of the court
fool in Renaissance drama. In explaining what brings him from Ulster to Deirdre and
Naisi’s retreat in the woods, he says- ‘The full moon, I’m thinking, and it squeezing the
2 The italics here (and in all instances excepting references to book titles) represent stage directions.
5
crack in my skull. Was there ever a man crossed the nine waves after a fool’s wife and he
not away in his head?’ (237) In a surprising turn, impossible to anticipate despite his
lapses into rage and melancholy, he runs off with a knife, screaming his intentions to
commit suicide when Deirdre’s return to Emain with Naisi is confirmed. Previously
having urged Deirdre to leave her cloistered life in Alban, he now rages against her
imminent destruction in Emain, talking of ‘plots and tricks, and spies’ (246) and ending
with the proclamation- ‘Men who’ll die for Deirdre’s beauty; I’ll be before you in the
grave!’ Owen hurtles out of sight, and Lavercham informs Deirdre that he has ‘gone
raging mad, and he’s after splitting his gullet beyond at the butt of the stone’ (246). This
incident, though it has shades of the tragicomic in its grotesque dimensions, is in keeping
with the violence that has been unleashed by Conchubor’s infiltration into Deirdre and
Naisi’s home in Alban. Owen is also the first character to emphatically state the morbid
thoughts that have already taken seed in Deirdre’s mind- those revolving around age and
decay. Before he appears on the scene, Lavercham dismisses Deirdre’s fears of ‘living on
until you’re dried and old, and... joy is gone for ever’ (235). Lavercham says that there is
‘little hurt getting old’, unless it is ‘seeing the young you have a love for breaking up
their hearts with folly’ (235). Owen however, informs Deirdre that she has a choice
between two options- to stay where she is and ‘rot with Naisi or go to Conchubor’ who
himself is a ‘wrinkled fool with... eyes falling downward from his shining crown’ (238).
Perverse as this may sound; it is his reflections on old age that eventually bring a depth of
‘dignity into his voice’ (238).
The next blow for Deirdre is overhearing an exchange between Fergus and Naisi, where
the latter communicates his doubts regarding his future with Deirdre. He says, ‘I’ll tell
you not a lie. There have been days a while past when... I’ve a dread come upon me a
day’d come I’d weary of her voice... and Deirdre’d see I’d wearied.’(241) Significantly,
he misreads her own thoughts in this sphere, thinking she has ‘no thought of getting old
or wearied; it’s that puts wonder in her ways, and she with spirits would keep bravery and
laughter in a town with plague’(241). Though this is said in praise and even places her at
a superior level, Naisi demonstrates some of the male vanity that assumes it may tire of
love and peace, simultaneously imbuing the woman with a near-mystical capacity for joy
6
(thus recalling Henn’s comments mentioned early on in this paper). Naisi goes on to
reject these potentially debilitating fears, saying ‘my dreams were dreams only’ (241),
and even viewing his conversation with Fergus as an exorcism of them (242).
Nevertheless, the damage appears to be done, for Deirdre overrides his decision to stay
on in Alban. In a ‘very low voice’, she asks- ‘The dawn and evening are a little while, the
winter and summer pass quickly, and what way you would and I, Naisi, have joy for
ever?’(242) None of Naisi’s attempts at consolation prove effective, and Deirdre steps
further into a realm of thoughts that casts a gloom over the vital essence of life. It appears
to be a process of revelation for her, where the bitter truth unfolds as she speaks, and in
one of the most poignant moments of this dialogue she reflects ‘broken-hearted’, that
there is ‘no safe place Naisi, on the ridge of the world’ (243). We get here a sense of
being on the brink of an abyss, and finally Deirdre voices the belief that is to haunt her
till the end of the play (and her own existence)-
isn’t it a better thing to be following on to a near death, than to be bending the
head down, and dragging with the feet, and seeing one day a blight showing upon
love where it is sweet and tender? (244)
The most intriguing aspect of this discourse is that it makes no reference to the prophecy
that foretells a story of destruction for Deirdre, Conchubor and the sons of Usna—a
prophecy which all the characters of the play are aware of. Instead, this strand of thought
posits age and loss of love as the inevitable conclusion, and death hovers on the horizon
as a grim alternative one must take recourse to. There is truly no rational explanation for
this. One way of viewing this is connection to the human fascination for death, where the
attempt at coming to terms with it is so intense that death becomes the matrix through
which life is viewed. Death gains the solidity of experience, whereas life is illusory and
vulnerable, much like desire3. From another perspective, death is actually the means of
escape from degeneration, and the mystery surrounding it makes it easier for the young to
welcome than the more palpable sordidness of old age. The moment of transition from a
pursuit of life to an acceptance of death is not without struggle. This painful interplay
between life, death, youth and age is a prominent feature of Synge’s work, and as Declan
Kiberd suggests, often occurs in connection with his female characters- ‘The women in
3 I would like to acknowledge Prof. Amlan Dasgupta, from whom I have picked up the terms of analogy.
7
all of Synge’s plays are anxious to live in the present moment, but fated instead to take
longer and longer views’(Kiberd 69).
Only once in the play does death appear abject to Deirdre. At the end of Act II, on the
verge of leaving Alban, she says in heartfelt tones- ‘It’s seven years we’ve had a life was
joy only... this day we’re facing death, maybe, and death should be a poor, untidy thing,
though it’s a queen that dies’(Synge 248). In the final act, when Deirdre and Naisi are
faced with the dreadful reality of the open grave next to their feet, death does indeed
come across as foreboding. She asks, ‘isn’t it a hard thing that you and I are in this place
by our opened grave; though none have lived had happiness like ours those days in
Alban...?’(255) However, the rapid progression of events and words that follow the
grave’s discovery soon convinces Deirdre that death is not the most dreadful threat to her
well-being. When Naisi, in a surprising instance of harshness goads Deirdre with the
image of his and his brothers’ demise, and her subsequent marriage to Conchubor, she
protests with the words- ‘Let you not be saying things are worse than death’(255).
Eventually, she is forced to realize that Naisi’s loyalty to his brothers dominates his
desire to stay by her side at all costs. It is a physical act of being pushed aside that
impresses this rift upon her once and for all. She acknowledges that ‘the harshness of
death has come between us’ (258) and with a sinister lucidity, goes on to pronounce-
‘We’ve had a dream, but this night has waked us surely’(259). To her, this is a profound
and irrevocable truth, as illuminating as it is painful. Death clears the air as it were, while
emerging as the ultimate reality and transcending all logical or sentimental qualifications.
In other words, nothing apart from death makes real sense, and yet death is beyond the
boundaries of rationality. Naisi cannot fathom such complexities. He probably tries to
align her reaction with an expected emotional pattern- the woman’s plaintive petulance at
being relegated to the sidelines. Nonetheless, he is flooded with amazement and panic by
the degree of cold restraint he confronts in Deirdre. He counters what he thinks is female
ego with a misogynist and vitriolic condemnation of the female sex (259). This is ironic
when we consider his cruel taunting earlier on—perhaps understandable in the
atmosphere of disenchantment and anxiety that emanates from the grave, but tainted by
the crude and typical rhetoric of jealousy. Moreover, he fails to see that there will be a
8
change in the equation between him and his lover after he has elevated male kinship in
his order of priorities. And significantly, Naisi’s life ends in war whereas Deirdre is left
to a long heartbroken lament, culminating in the solitary act of suicide. Through her
elegiac wails, the memory of a life lived in great happiness resurfaces in painful spurts
but eventually she rests upon the great truth- ‘It was the choice of lives we had in the
clear woods, and the grave, we’re safe, surely’ (267). That this submission to death is not
passive but a concrete achievement is made evident in her last words, which convert her
loss into a ‘triumph to the ends of life and time’ (267). As Ronan McDonald writes-
In Synge’s dramatic practice we often find a tragic incompatibility behind this
‘real life’/dream opposition... a disjunction between the fondness for exuberant
language and the pained sensitivity to dismal reality (McDonald 46).
McDonald goes onto expand upon Christopher Murray’s comment, that
In Synge’s tragedies, underpinned by Nietzsche’s dialectic of Apollo and
Dionysus from The Birth of Tragedy (1872), the song of liberation has a deeper,
more sombre melody, but it is still as in the comedies, a song of deliverance (qtd.
in McDonald 47).
McDonald adds to this by saying that the deliverance is even more fraught with ‘unease’
and the hint of destruction, than Murray allows (47). The meaning of this comes through
most clearly when McDonald applies it to the end of Deirdre of the Sorrows-
Here, the two conflicting urges – to live, yet to escape the transience of life –
reach a climactic nexus when Naisi and Deirdre settle on the grave, not as a
rejection of life, but as a triumphant and hubristic assertion of youth and sensual
experience against its decay and temporal waning. If it is true that comedies end
in marriage and tragedies in death, then the grave forming the centrepiece of the
third act is both tomb and marital bed (52).
At this point, we may look back upon the play to observe Conchubor’s role in the
narrative, and how he too is tied up with forces of irrationality. The most obvious feature
in this regard is his reckless pursuit of a young girl, when she is foretold to be the cause
of his destruction. Lavercham sums up the absurdity of it in the lines-
‘I’m in dread so they were right saying she’d bring destruction on the world, for
it’s a poor thing when you see a settled man putting the love he has for a young
child, and the love he has for a full woman, on a girl the like of her’ (Synge 217).
9
The paradoxes of this prophecy are manifold. For one, it foretells a desire which in itself
is peculiar. Further, Conchubor’s adherence to his desire—and later, Deirdre to hers—
despite foreknowledge of the prophecy may be considered irrational. Yet, the very fact
that it is foretold prompts an acceptance of the actions as inevitable, even though they
provoke unanswerable questions as they are played out in the drama. It is no wonder
therefore, that the representation of Conchubor is marked by an anbivalence. Towards the
beginning of the play, Lavercham points out the absurdity of his attempt to tame Deirdre
by ‘putting her in this wild place’ (214) where unfettered nature acts as Deirdre’s
principal guide. Later, she sneeringly tells Conchubor that ‘It’s a queer thing the way the
likes of me do be telling the truth, and the wise are lying all times’(217). Wisdom or
knowledge, when associated with Conchubor becomes suspect, as we see in his own
words when he comments indulgently on Deirdre’s naivety, saying-
Yet you’ve little knowledge, and I’d do wrong taking it bad when it’ll be my
share from this out to keep you the way you’ll have little call to trouble for
knowledge or it’s want either (219).
There is something distorted in the values of one who uses the weight of his experience to
justify keeping a young girl beyond the reach of knowledge, where neither its presence
nor the lack thereof would prove problematic. The irony is strengthened by the fact that
he attributes resistance on her part to limited knowledge in the first place. He explains to
Deirdre that his world-weary knowledge is of no comfort to him, which is why he
chooses the likes of her to fill his life with freshness and vivacity (219). For Conchubor,
there is no choice between death and old age. Old age signifies death, which is no relief,
and it drives him to desperation. As he says to Lavercham in Act II- ‘the wise knows the
old must die, and they’ll leave no chance for a thing slipping from them they’ve set their
blood to win’(251). Conchubor is erroneous is associating an awareness of his own desire
with wisdom, for he lacks the insight to see its destructive potential. In the end, when
Deirdre is derided for being driven crazy by grief, she hurls back the same accusation
directly at Conchubor, saying ‘It’s yourself has made a crazy story’(265). Soon after, she
describes him by the same term that has already been used for her on multiple occasions-
‘raving’(266). Conchubor is eventually driven to accept his madness, but even when
broken down by loss and humiliation, cannot concede his own mistake without finding
10
culpable company in Deirdre. He links the both of them together in this sentence- ‘It is I
who am out of my wits, with Emain in flames, and Deirdre raving, and my own heart
gone within me’ (266).
II.
Yeats wrote his dramatic take on Deirdre earlier than Synge, whose play was, in fact
posthumously revised and readied for production by Yeats in a joint collaboration
(Kiberd 72). Since this paper treats Synge’s play as the key text, it takes up Yeats’
Deirdre in this later segment to illustrate how the perspective from which the former was
discussed, yields somewhat different results when applied to the latter. This paper argues
that though passion is a dominant current in Deirdre, it is not cloaked with the kind of
unanswerable, pervasive mysteries that are woven into the fabric of Synge’s play. The
depth and vastness of emotion is what comes through most strongly, and references to it
crop up early on in the play. The song sung by the chorus of women, in welcome of
Deirdre and Naoise4 contains a dialogue between a Queen Edain and her lover. The
‘goodman’ tells his Queen- ‘Love would be a thing of naught / Had not all his limbs a
stir/ Born out of immoderate thought’ (Yeats 177)5. Immoderacy proves to be a recurrent
element in Deirdre, but it takes shape in various ways that this paper will go on to
explore.
When Deirdre learns of Conchubar’s evil designs from the chorus, she informs Fergus
and Naoise that she has ‘heard terrible mysterious things, / Magical horrors and the spell
of the wizards’ (184). Though the authenticity of the chorus and its revelations about the
supernatural are questioned in the play, they speak with an air of omniscience which is
convincing, and Deirdre does not exaggerate what she has heard. Nevertheless, her fears
are taken to be the product of a gentle but nervous nature, given to excess, and with not
much basis in reality. Naoise explains it by saying ‘She has the heart of the wild birds
that fear / The net of the fowler or the wicker cage’(185). As we have seen with Synge,
Deirdre contains in herself the strains of natural life but here the comparison is made with 4 The spelling of names in this section follow the specific text of Yeats that has been consulted for this paper. There are some changes from those in Deirdre of the Sorrows.5 Though Yeats’ Deirdre is written in poetry, the citations refer to page numbers and not line numbers, since the latter are not specified in the text consulted.
11
more indulgence than admiration. Deirdre is upset by the lack of receptivity in Fergus
and Naoise, and attempts to break their sense of complacency by feigning love for
Conchubar. The response drawn from Naoise is interesting, for he asks- ‘What frenzy put
these words into your mouth?’(185); and Deirdre, determined to play up to the
expectations of an intemperate woman, declares- ‘No frenzy, for what need is there for
frenzy / To change what shifts with every change of the wind, / Was I not born a
woman?’ (285) Almost comically, Naoise pounces on the cue that Deirdre has given him,
reflecting rhetorically- ‘What woman is there that a man can trust/ But at the moment
when he kisses her/ At the first midnight?’(185) Fergus is more perceptive, and sees
through Deirdre’s ploy but he remains fixed on the belief that Conchubor’s intentions are
innocent. In sheer frustration, Deirdre utters the lines that come closest to genuine
hysteria in the play-
There is but one way to make all safe: I’ll spoil this beauty that brought misery/
And house wandering on the man I loved./ These wanderers will show me how to
do it;/ To clip my hair to baldness, blacken my skin/ With walnut juice, and tear
my face with briars./ O that the creatures of the woods had torn/ My body with
their claws! (186-7)
Nevertheless, we cannot call this irrationality for Deirdre’s fears are not only on the right
track; she has also been prompted to suspect Conchubar by the group of women who
appear to have significant insight into the situation. Interestingly, Naoise himself was the
first person to voice fears on entering the scene, saying- ‘If I had not King Conchubar’s
word I’d think / That chess-board ominous’(179). Naoise’s lack of faith in intuition,
which to him is a feminine value, comes through in his reassessment of the situation at
hand- he says, ‘We must not speak or think as women do’ (180). Deirdre feels the
memory of past trials as well as a sense of looming danger with far more immediacy. Her
outburst comes from a deep-seated core of feeling that has built up through a strenuous
clash with fate. If Deirdre gives vent to this frustration by raging against herself and her
luck, she also constantly remoulds and represses it to project herself in a manner that suits
the time. Peter Ure sees this as part of her struggle against fate. He writes-
Deirdre’s actions... can be summed up as a series of attempts to alter this story, as
it were from inside the story itself. She can endeavour to control events only by
influencing Naoise or Conchubar, and to this end she desperately plays one part
12
after another in the hope of persuading them to change the story, or of persuading
herself to endure it (Ure 53).
Deirdre has already acted a part to provoke action in Naoise. When she realizes that they
have little chance of escaping from Conchubar’s trap, she decides to take on another role-
one of bleak but moving stoicism, inspired by the legend of Lugaidh Redstripe and his
queen who sat calmly at a game of Chess awaiting their death. Deirdre decides- ‘though I
have not been born / Of the cold, haughty waves, my veins being hot,... / I’ll have as quiet
fingers on the board’(Yeats 190). However, it is a role she cannot perform for long. The
chorus, when it sings in tribute to Deirdre and Naoise takes up a word from its earlier
song—a word with all the resonance of a fully-fleshed refrain. They sing- ‘Love is an
immoderate6 thing / And can never be content/ Till it dip an ageing wing/ Where some
laughing element/ Leaps and Time’s old lanthorn dims’ (191). It is almost as though
‘immoderate’ strikes a chord in Deirdre, for she abandons her game and in an extremely
poignant gesture, kneels at Naoise’s feet, saying- ‘I cannot go on playing like that
woman/ That had but the cold blood of the sea in her veins’(192). Ignoring Naoise’s
protests, she argues with great fervour for the overwhelming power and reality of
physical intimacy- ‘I know nothing but this body, nothing/ But that old vehement,
bewildering kiss’(192). Deirdre is torn between an acute sense of who she is and the roles
she needs to play, but at this moment the person she must be is equivalent to fulfilling the
urges that are strongest within her. This is not irrationality but passion, whose tragedy lies
in confronting a cruel necessity that is both imposing and indistinct. Due to this necessity,
Deirdre constantly feels driven to act in various ways, but she cannot ever be sure of the
results they will yield. At the end of the play, when Naoise is killed and Deirdre has only
one major act left to carry out—that of suicide—she uses the word ‘passion’ herself in a
context that reinforces Peter Ure’s analysis of her as the ultimate actress. She tells
Conchubar, in another lie- ‘You’ll stir me to more passion than... [Naoise] could’(200). It
is her very passion for Naoise, and the jolt it has received from his death that allows her
to act with such frightening deliberation and splendid artifice, calculating each moment
as a step towards her own death. It is at the very point that Conchubar expects her to
break down that she demonstrates the most calm- he says, ‘I thought that you would curse 6 Emphasis added.
13
me and cry out, / And fall upon the ground and tear your hair’(199). Deirdre does nothing
of this sort, and yet it would be unwise to believe that her, or anyone’s act of suicide is
performed without any sense of internal turbulence. Indeed, passion and control are
impossible to distinguish in Deirdre. As Peter Ure concludes-
Her last phase, the phase of ‘white-heat’ after the death of Naoise, is certainly not
a phase of pure and almost depersonalized grief, like that of Synge’s heroine.
With... the staginess of the accomplished actress, she presents to Conchubar a
mask of deceit, which depends for its success on its resourceful detail and on the
verisimilitude with which it appears to answer his wish while gaining her own
end (Ure 57).
At the same time,
The state of Deirdre’s soul- if by that is meant the deepest level of her
personality, the fundamental passion of her nature which motivates her behaviour
—changes not all in the course of the play, but remains always her passionate
love for Naoise (57).
This protean quality in Deirdre is certainly linked to her condition of being a woman.
Instances where her shifting states are linked to her gender have already been mentioned
earlier in this paper. The chorus, also female, appears to confirm this when it tells Deirdre
to find some means of salvation by using her ‘woman’s wile’ (Yeats 193). Though this
conforms to gender stereotypes, it is also the quality which emerges as the strongest and
purest (not in a moralizing sense) of the play. The men with their intransigence are the
ones who bypass the truth, and who are responsible (Conchubar far more so than Naoise)
for crushing Deirdre’s efforts at finding emancipation. If Deirdre’s inability to make a
difference is slightly problematic, one cannot say she has no agency at all. From the
beginning, her consciousness is the most fully awakened of all the characters’, and she
never falls into inaction. Though the reasons impelling her to don various disguises may
not be transparent to all the characters surrounding her, to the playwright and the
audience they are clear enough, and indeed call out for empathy.
It must be mentioned that the heroine of Yeats’ Deirdre is not drawn to death the same
way as Synge’s protagonist is. At one point, she mentions death to Naoise as a possible
14
risk of escaping, but one worth taking. Guessing at the gruesome way in which death
would come in their present setting, Naoise refutes the idea, saying –
They would but drag you from me, stained with blood. / Their barbarous
weapons would but mar that beauty, / And I would have you die as a queen
should— / In a death chamber... / I’ll hold them from the doors, and when that’s
over, / Give you a cleanly death with this grey edge (189).
Death here is affiliated with concepts of human honour and dignity. It is a concrete aspect
of reality that can appear crude and distasteful; and the attempt to manipulate its
conditions, no matter how far-fetched, is at least considered. Its metaphysical dimensions
are not taken into account, and it is not given the magnitude or fatal attraction of a great
force that sustains itself. Naoise’s declaration that he would rather provide Deirdre with a
clean death himself, appears somewhat rhetorical as Deirdre does not respond to it.
Instead, she tells him- ‘I will stay here; but you go out and fight’ (189), putting the focus
on action and struggle—the domain of the living—instead. What preoccupies her more is
the idea of leaving this word behind ‘friendless’ (189), and later when she asks the
chorus- ‘Women, if I die, / If Naoise die this night, how will you praise?’(193), the
emphasis is again on winning over sympathetic friends, even if that can be achieved only
through posthumous storytelling. Soon afterwards, when Deirdre and Naoise directly
confront Conchubar, she states her preference for life more equivocally than before. She
is actually prepared to enter into marital union with Conchubar in order to preserve
Naoise’s life. In an agonizing act of self-denial, which also involves denying Naoise the
fulfillment of love, she tells the latter- ‘It’s better to go with him. / Why should you die
when one can bear it all?’(196) It is significant that she is arguing for Naoise’s life rather
than her own, though her offer would ensure the avoidance of bloodshed on either side. It
is when Naoise dies, and Deirdre is deprived of all that symbolizes life to her, that she
can embrace her own death. While on the subject of destruction, we might also mention
how the danger posed by Fergus to Conchubar is far milder here when compared to
Synge. In the latter, a soldier announces that ‘Fergus has come back and is setting fire to
the world. Come up, Conchubar, or your state will be destroyed!’ (Synge 260) Here, the
kingdom is linked to the greater world such that the very order on earth is shaken by
Fergus’ rebellion. These violent expansions and collapsing of boundaries mark Synge’s
15
vision. In Yeats’ Deirdre, though Fergus makes a dramatic entrance surrounded by men
with scythes and torches (202), the reign of Conchubar is not threatened at such a
fundamental level.
The character of Conchubar too, differs from that of Synge’s text. For one, he does not
appear to have placed young Deirdre in the woods with Lavercham. The chorus, in its
introductory song, tells us- ‘Some dozen years ago, King Conchubar found / A house
upon a hillside in this wood, / And there a child with an old witch to nurse her,/ And
nobody to say if she were human’(172). Hence this makes Conchubar’s attraction to
Deirdre appear more incidental, and absolves him of the crime of keeping her secluded.
The play is also relatively ambiguous regarding the prophecy. Though it is obvious that
the chorus has some foreknowledge of the characters’ fates, they do not pronounce the
future as an oracle. Nor do they suggest that the people of Ulster were aware of being
bound by one. Later in the play, Fergus tells Deirdre- ‘Men blamed you that you stirred a
quarrel up / That has brought death to many. I have made peace, / Poured water on the
fire’ (186). The phrasing suggests rumour rather than prophecy. Moreover, the use of past
and present perfect tenses—‘Men blamed you that you stirred a quarrel up / That has
brought death...’7—also allows the possibility that Deirdre has been accused of having
committed strife already, and Fergus has quelled talk about what was once contemporary,
not anticipatory. Therefore we do not feel that Conchubar carries the added baggage of
pursuing Deirdre despite knowing of a predicted outcome. Nevertheless, his attraction to
her is not presented in a sober light, as the chorus tells us- ‘An old man’s love / Who
casts no second line is hard to cure; / His jealously is like his love’ (174). Moreover, in
some aspects, Yeats’ Conchubar suffers from a more static worldview than his
counterpart in Synge. His entrance in Deirdre is dark—literally too, for he comes
accompanied by dark-faced men8 (194)—and forebodes great violence. In Synge, the
character’s first appearance is humanized by confessions of lovesickness and moments of
genuine pleading. Nowhere in Yeats does Conchubar grant the audience a look behind
the veil of kingly authority that he uses to lay claim on Deirdre. His revelation of ‘seven
years/ Of longing and of planning’ (196) bears little trace of humility or emotion. He
7 Emphasis added.8 The politico-racial connotations of this are troubling, but beyond the scope of this paper.
16
promises to let Naoise go unharmed, if Deirdre will voluntarily walk into his house, so
people will believe he has ‘not taken her by force and guile’ (195). Indeed, appearances
and not mercy matter more to him for he lapses into a lavish description of the bridal
chamber that awaits Deirdre, with no thought for her actual sentiments. In Yeats, the
murder of Naoise is more chilling for Conchubar visibly orders for him to be bound,
gagged and taken behind a curtain, even while Deirdre is begging desperately for her
lover’s cause. The differences between the two character portrayals are consolidated most
firmly in the ending. In Synge, the old woman helps a shattered, disillusioned Conchubor
—at his own request—to walk away from the scene of Deirdre’s death. He says, ‘with the
voice of an old man’: ‘Take me with you, I’m hard set to see the way before me’ (Synge
268). In Yeats, we are left with a curt, defiant justification of brute force and contempt
for youthful love- ‘Howl, if you will; but I, being King, did right / In choosing her most
fitting to be Queen, / And letting no boy lover take the sway’(Yeats 203). Is this to be
read as delusional, or a repression of guilt? The text offers us little by way of that
consolation; and the concluding note of stubborn pride is too stifling to provoke many
questions. The most relevant interpretation of Conchubar’s character is probably as a
symbol of rigidity, forming an antithesis to the passionate and multi-faceted Deirdre.9
CONCLUSION
Raymond Williams writes of Deirdre of the Sorrows, that ‘in this play, Synge was
working towards a dramatic method which is genuinely poetic; he is leaving
representation behind’ (Williams 183). Williams notices a transition from naturalism,
which Synge used so effectively in his earlier plays, into a more substantially dramatic
style which bears the flaws of being in an amateur phase but shows great promise (183).
Williams locates this change in the way Synge employs language, which “is no longer
confined to ‘flavouring’, but uses metaphor and verbal symbolism for strict dramatic
ends” (186). Interestingly, poeticism and symbolism are considered integral to Yeatsian
drama; and though Yeats’ admiration of Synge is common knowledge; the two
9 It is worth mentioning one point of difference between the portrayals by Yeats and Synge, where the former exposes more vulnerability. Yeats’ Conchubar has no answer to Deirdre’s taunt that he should let his men search her for a sword, and thus allows her access to Naoise’s corpse (Yeats 201). Contrastingly in Synge, Conchubor chides Deirdre with the very same threat, saying he has no need to touch her, for his ‘fighters’ are there to do so (Synge 265).
17
playwrights have been distinguished from each other in this regard. Declan Kiberd
writes-
Five years [after George Russel]... W. B. Yeats would produce his own Deirdre,
which did centralise the heroine as a tragedy queen, but his play treated the
characters more as symbols than as persons of flesh and blood (Kiberd 66).
Kiberd goes on to describe the new elements that Synge brings to the legacy with his own
adaptation.
Synge’s own take on the legend, when his turn came to dramatise it, was
different – rooted not just in the realities of rural Irish life but also in a modern
psychology of love and of its frustration.
....................................
Before writing it, Synge in his performed plays had written solely of the
peasantry: and there is a very deep sense in which this play is itself a critical
exploration of the relationship between the rather remote, aristocratic characters
of the old tale and the warmly human peasant world in which alone it now
lingered. The underlying project is democratic: to present the characters in all
their humanity not as regal personages so much as terrified persons caught up in
an insoluble crisis of human relations (66).
Kiberd mentions that Synge was well aware of attempting something
different from both Yeats and Russell, and that he even dissociates
himself from their ‘other-worldly’ views in a poem titled ‘The Passing of
the Shee’ (67). How then do we reconcile this notion of Synge with the
analysis presented by Raymond Williams? The answer might lie in the
simple but succint words of Ronan McDonald, who states that ‘Synge
aims, or
claims to aim, for literal as well as symbolic truth’(McDonald 45).
McDonald is of the belief that the tensions between Synge’s interest in
the literal and the symbolic, express themselves through one main
philosophical concern: ‘a tragic incompatibility behind this ‘real
life’/dream opposition... a disjunction between the fondness for
exuberant language and the pained sensitivity to dismal reality’ (46).
Possibly, Synge has displayed a consistent interest in the symbolic that
18
Raymond Williams has not found significant up to this point, but
Williams does acknowledge that even in Deirdre of the Sorrows, Synge
has not delved completely into the new form he has chosen. It is
perhaps this halfway stage which brings his work close to Yeats’ while
being clearly distinct from it. Synge’s characters speak in everyday
(albeit simulated) prose rhythms whereas Yeats’ speak in refined
poetry. Yeats’ play makes additional use of a chorus that straddles
both human and supra-natural dimensions of time, akin to the Greek
mode. His action, unlike Synge’s is condensed into the fixed location
and brief duration that was so preferred by the Neo-Classicals. And
even if we are to accept Williams’ view that naturalism becomes
‘impossible’ (Williams 193) in Synge’s play, we must concede that
nature itself is a far more dominant presence in Synge than in Yeats. In
the latter, the wilderness is glimpsed through various analogies in the
dialogue, and on a visceral level through the backdrop, where ‘great
spaces of the wood’ are seen through the window. In Synge, Deirdre’s
natural surroundings constantly impress themselves upon the
audience. This last difference is made evident by comparing a common
point between the two plays. In both, it is important for Deirdre that
her story be told. Whereas in Yeats, the task is given to the Chorus
(who had in fact, already begun telling her story before she enters it),
in Synge it is to be performed by nature. In Deirdre’s famous speech at
the end of the play, she says-
I see the flames of Emain starting upward in the dark night; and
because of me there will be weasels and wild cats crying on a
lonely wall where there were queens... the way there will be a
story told of a ruined city and a raving king and a woman will be
young forever... I see the trees naked and bare; and the moon
shining. Little moon... it’s lonesome you’ll be this night... and
long nights after, and you pacing the woods... looking every
place for Deirdre and Naisi (Synge 266).
19
Even where naturalism gives way to symbolism, nature itself has the capacity to express
certain qualities in ways a purely human environment cannot. It can be used to recreate
the haunting and disturbing presence of forces which are out of the ordinary, even while
depicting them as a ‘natural’ part of the environment. In such an atmosphere, one can
seamlessly tie up human passion with forces beyond human understanding. Thus in
Synge’s world, darkness and gloom, intensity and exuberance, irrationality and mystery,
all pervade the air and are inexorably woven with the human drama.
LIST OF WORKS CITED
Aeschylus. Agamemnon. The Oresteian Trilogy. Trans. Philip Vellacott. England: Penguin, 1972.
41-100. Print.
Henn, Thomas Rice. The Harvest of Tragedy. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1961. Ebook. 25 April 2012. <http://ia600300.us.archive.org/33/items/harvestoftragedy030449mbp/harvestoftragedy030449mbp.pdf>
Kiberd, Declan. ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’. The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Synge. Ed. P.J.
Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 64-74. Ebook. 25 April 2012.
<http://en.bookfi.org/book/1201644/>
Knight, G. Wilson. ‘Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil’. The Wheel of Fire: Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Tragedy. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1964. 140-159. Ebook. 28 April 2012. <http://archive.org/details/wheeloffire001890mbp/>
McDonald, Ronan. ‘A Gallous Story or a Dirty Deed?: J. M. Synge and the Tragedy of
Evasion’. Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. New York: Palaver, 2002. 42-
84. Ebook. 25 April 2012. <http://en.bookfi.org/book/1053332/>
Synge, John Millington. Deirdre of the Sorrows. The Complete Plays. New York: Random
House, 1960. 213-268. Print.
Ure, Peter. ‘Deirdre’. Yeats the Playwright: A Commentary on Character and Design in the
Major Plays. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. 43-58. Print.
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Williams, Raymond. ‘J.M. Synge’. From Ibsen to Eliot. England: Penguin, 1967. 171-92. Print.
Yeats, William Butler. Deirdre. The Collected Plays. London: Macmillan and Co., 1953. 171-
203. Print.
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