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| Cover of The Nativity script by Lady Gregory |
For a festive themed update from
the archives of the James Hardiman Library, we delved into our collections and
discovered this wonderful overlap between two of the most prolific of literary
and political figures from the West, Lady Gregory and Douglas Hyde. The pair
penned a version and presentation of The Nativity
which took to the national stage, the Abbey Theatre, in Dublin and to the stage
of the Lyric Theatre in Belfast many years apart, but not without incident in between.
The play would begin its life by
being written in Irish by Douglas Hyde in 1902 and translated into English
shortly thereafter by Lady Gregory. However, it would be 1911 before the play
would reach the Abbey Theatre stage in Dublin.
It is noted in Douglas Hyde – Maker of Modern Ireland
(Janet Egleson Dunleavy and Gareth W Dunleavy, University of California, 1991)
how on one of Hyde's many visits to Coole Park, the home of Lady Gregory in
Galway, how Hyde's playwrighting was inspired by his muse – Gregory – and flourished
while writing in quiet solitude in Coole Park. "In late August of 1902,
[Hyde's] diary entry in Irish for (August 25) reads, "They shoved me into
my room and I wrote a small play in three or four hours on Angus the Culdee.
Entitled An Naomh ar Iarraid (The
lost saint), it was published in the 1902 issue of Samhain and performed in
early 1903. A first attempt to adapt for popular theater themes and characters
from the Irish manuscript tradition, it drew upon Hyde's reading and research
in ninth-century monastic Christianity, especially the legends that had been
woven around the figure of Aongus Céile Dé (Oengus the Culdee).
Encouraged by the ease with which
An Naomh had almost written itself,
Hyde decided that his next subject would be the Nativity; his source, a
medieval miracle play.
Dráma Breithe Chríosta, Hyde's nativity play, was finished within
the month that followed and published in the Christmas, 1902, double number
edition of the Weekly Freeman,
accompanied by a translation in English by Lady Gregory. There was trouble
about it almost from the start. A 1904 performance scheduled for Christmas had
to be cancelled when it became the subject of a resolution passed by priests in
Kilkenny, criticizing some questionable passages that they perceived as causing
possible confusion between superstition and dogma. Continually refused for six
years thereafter, Dráma Breithe Chríosta
finally had its premiere at the Abbey Theatre in January 1911, with Sara Allgood
as the First Woman, Máire O'Neill as the Second Woman, and Máire Nic
Shiubhlaigh as Mary. The Abbey sets were designed by Robert Gregory, Lady
Gregory's son.
The production charmed both
audiences and reviewers. Other productions followed. For almost a quarter of a
century—until the offending passages were blacked out in a school edition of
the play printed in 1935—no one took notice of the problem that had troubled
the Kilkenny priests."
The Nativity play as written by Hyde and translated into English by
Gregory did find its production on the Abbey stage in 1911 and again in
December 1932. These records and indeed all of the Abbey Theatre productions
are currently being digitised here in NUI Galway as part of our recent digital
archive partnership with the Abbey Theatre. The Lady Gregory Library also
resides as part of Special Collections here at the James Hardiman Library.
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| Scene from the Lyric Theatre production of The Nativity |
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| First page of the Gregory script of The Nativity, Lyric Theatre Archive (T4) |
What people may not know about is
that this Nativity was in fact also produced
by the Lyric Theatre in Belfast in December 1950. The archive of the Lyric
Theatre here at the James Hardiman Library notes material which includes that
relating to the production of Nativity
by Lady Augusta Gregory, organised and directed by Mary O'Malley prior to the
formation of the Lyric Players Theatre. The files include a copy of the script
with some handwritten annotations, and with a rough drawing of the set design,
and two card-mounted photographs, one showing two female characters on stage,
the other an image of the actors playing Joseph and Mary at the crib, two
copies of a photograph of six male cast members and the introductions to each
piece of entertainment, written by John Irvine.
As you can see in, these wonderful images of the Lyric production highlight what is not just
perhaps a lost or unknown production of this Hyde/Gregory play but also how
this piece, a direct product of the Irish Literary Revival saw
professional productions North and South of the border over forty years apart.
For a full listing of the Lyric
Theatre Archive click here
