The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays

The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume II: The Plays is part of a fourteen-volume series under the general editorship of eminent Yeats scholars Richard J. Finneran and George Mills Harper. This complete edition includes virtually all of the Nobel laureate's published work, in authoritative texts and with extensive explanatory notes. The Plays, edited by David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, is the first-ever complete collection of Yeats's plays that honors the order in which the plays first appeared. It provides the latest and most accurate texts in Yeats's lifetime, as well as extensive editorial notes and emendations. Though best known as one of the most important poets of the twentieth century, from the beginning of his career William Butler Yeats understood the value of his plays and his poetry to be the same. In 1923, when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature, Yeats suggested that "perhaps the English committees would never have sent you my name if I had written no plays...if my lyric poetry had not a quality of speech practiced on the stage." Indeed, Yeats's great achievement in poetry should not be allowed to obscure his impressive and innovative accomplishments as a dramatist. In The Plays, David and Rosalind Clark have restored the plays to the final order in which Yeats planned for them to be published. This volume opens with Yeats's introduction for an unpublished Scribner collection and encompasses all of his dramatic work, from The Countess Cathleen to The Death of Cuchulain. The Plays enables readers to see clearly, for the first time, the ways in which Yeats's very different dramatic forms evolved over the course of his life, and to appreciate fully the importance of drama in the oeuvre of this greatest of modern poets.

William Butler Yeats is generally considered to be Ireland’s greatest poet, living or dead, and one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923.

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Part One

An Introduction for My Plays 1937

The Countess Cathleen 1892

The Land of Heart's Desire 1894

Cathleen Ni Houlihan 1902

The Hour-Glass (prose) 1903

The Pot of Broth 1904

The King's Threshold 1904

On Baile's Strand 1904

Deirdre 1907

The Unicorn From The Stars 1908

The Green Helmet 1910

The Shadowy Waters 1911

The Hour-Glass (verse) 1914

Four Plays for Dancers 1921

At the Hawk's Well. 1917

The Dreaming of the Bones. 1919

The Only Jealousy of Emer. 1919

Calvary. 1920

The Player Queen 1922

Sophocles' King Oedipus 1928

Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus 1934

Wheels and Butterflies (More Plays for Dancers) 1934

The Cat and the Moon. 1917

Fighting the Waves. 1930

The Words Upon the Window-Pane. 1930

The Resurrection. 1931

The King of the Great Clock Tower 1934

A Full Moon in March 1935

The Herne's Egg 1938

Purgatory 1939

The Death of Cuchulain 1939

Part Two: Additional Plays

Diarmuid and Grania [1901]

Where There Is Nothing [1902]

Appendixes

A. Yeats's Notes for the Unpublished Edition de Luxe and the Dublin Edition

Notes to Appendix A

B. Music for the Plays

Notes to Appendix B

Explanatory Notes

Textual Notes