N'est ce pas que ce r`ecit, n`e de l'imagination des po`etes
catholiques de la verte Erin, est une V`eritable r`ecit
de car`eme?


The Countess Cathleen was acted in Dublin in 1899, with Mr.
Marcus St. John and Mr. Trevor Lowe as the First and Second
Demon, Mr. Valentine Grace as Shemus Rua, Master Charles Sefton
as Teig, Madame San Carola as Mary, Miss Florence Farr as Aleel,
Miss Anna Mather as Oona, Mr. Charles Holmes as the Herdsman, Mr.
Jack Wilcox as the Gardener, Mr. Walford as a Peasant, Miss
Dorothy Paget as a Spirit, Miss M. Kelly as a Peasant Woman, Mr.
T. E. Wilkinson as a Servant, and Miss May Whitty as The Countess
Kathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition stirred up
by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in a
pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy
because of the language of the demons or of Shemus Rua, and
because I made a woman sell her soul and yet escape damnation,
and of a lack of patriotism because I made Irish men and women,
who, it seems, never did such a thing, sell theirs. The
politician or the newspaper persuaded some forty Catholic
students to sign a protest against the play, and a Cardinal, who
avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both
politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the
audience to break the peace, that a score or so of police were
sent to the theatre to see that they did not. I had, however, no
reason to regret the result, for the stalls, containing almost
all that was distinguished in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans
alike insisted on the freedom of literature.