Cathleen ni Houlihan

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For other uses, see Kathleen Ni Houlihan.
Cathleen ni Houlihan

Scene from a production c. 1912.
Written by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory
Date premiered 2 April 1902 (1902-04-02)
Place premiered Dublin
Cathleen ni Houlihan is a one-act play written by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1902. It was first performed on 2 April of that year and first published in the October number of Samhain. The play centers on the 1798 Rebellion. The play is startlingly nationalistic, encouraging in its last pages that young men sacrifice their lives for the heroine Cathleen ni Houlihan, who represents an independent and separate Irish state. The title character first appears as an old woman, at the door of a family celebrating their son's wedding. She describes her four "beautiful green fields," representing the four provinces, that have been unjustly taken from her. With little subtlety, she requests a blood sacrifice, declaring that "many a child will be born and there will be no father at the christening". When the youth agrees and leaves the safety of his home to fight for her, she appears as an image of youth with "the walk of a queen," professing that of those who fight for her: "They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever."[1]

References

  1. ↑ W. B. Yeats, Nine One-Act Plays (1937), p. 36.

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