After the performance in 1899 I added the love scene between
Aleel and the Countess, and in this new form the play was revived
in New York by Miss Wycherley as well as being played a good deal
in England and America by amateurs. Now at last I have made a
complete revision to make it suitable for performance at the
Abbey Theatre. The first two scenes are almost wholly new, and
throughout the play I have added or left out such passages as a
stage experience of some years showed me encumbered the action;
the play in its first form having been written before I knew
anything of the theatre. I have left the old end, however, in the
version printed in the body of this book, because the change for
dramatic purposes has been made for no better reason than that
audiences--even at the Abbey Theatre--are almost ignorant of Irish
mythology or because a shallow stage made the elaborate vision of
armed angels upon a mountain-side impossible. The new
end is particularly suited to the Abbey stage, where the stage
platform can be brought out in front of the prosceniurn and have
a flight of steps at one side up which the Angel comes, crossing
towards the back of the stage at the opposite side. The principal
lighting is from two arc lights in the balcony which throw their
lights into the faces of the players, making footlights
unnecessary. The room at Shemus Rua's house is suggested by a
great grey curtain-a colour which becomes full of rich tints
under the stream of light from the arcs. The two or more arches
in the third scene permit the use of a gauze. The short front
scene before the last is just long enough when played with
incidental music to allow the scene set behind it to be changed.
The play when played without interval in this way lasts a little
over an hour.