Anushka Sen

UG-III

Irrationality, Passion and Ambiguity in the

Story of Deirdre: Through the Work of

Synge and Yeats

INTRODUCTION

In his eponymous conclusion to the book The Harvest of Tragedy, T.R. Henn writes of

tragedy’s ‘basic material’ as consisting of “the nature and properties of the law…

whether ‘divine’, ‘natural’ or ‘human’, under which we live’ (Henn 283). These laws are

in a state of actual or apparent conflict, and man bears a certain ‘responsiblity’ when

confronted with them (283). Henn goes on to state that such contradictions may be seen

as a consequence or an aspect of numerous factors, including ‘the Irrational’ or ‘supra-

natural’ (283). Indeed, tragedy is noticeably driven by forces that are difficult for the

fictional characters as well as the audience to assimilate as naturally congruous with life’s

conventions. Not only does this pertain to the content of tragedy, it also structurally

determines the way the genre is processed even where there may be no immediate

conflict unfolding before the spectator/reader. Since tragedy frequently ‘work[s] through

ambivalences’ and ‘make[s] use of paradox’, it produces a ‘total response which is

intuitional rather than logical’(284). Nevertheless it is important to distinguish what

comes through as specifically irrational in tragedy, above all the elements which are

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disturbing in some form. There are certain forces that primarily evoke confusion or

wonder; a response which is of epistemological interest and persists beyond the personal

response of outrage, fear or indignation at ones fate. Similarly, there are actions which

cannot be merely called uncommon or disproportionate; where the lack of reason (at

some significant level) surrounding their cause draws as much attention as their tragic

potential or effect. This is where irrationality comes into play, often taken into account

within the dramatist’s created world itself, where characters accuse each other of

madness and express fear, awe, disgust or disapproval at such instances.

This irrationality is frequently gendered like nearly all aspects of behaviour, and perhaps

more obviously so than most. In an earlier chapter entitled ‘The Woman’s Part’, Henn

writes that ‘woman in tragedy may be either the heart’s victim or its torturer; her

sufferings while they are simpler than those of man, find expression more easily on the

stage’(106). He goes on to list some of the key components of the way women have been

represented in tragedy. Of them, one refers to her ‘supra-natural powers… or even of

some more than ordinary sensibility which causes man to credit her with mysterious

powers’ (106). These attitudes, drawing upon the concept of women as more abstract and

emotional beings, enable the strengthening of an association between women and

irrationality. Early drama, created in more actively patriarchal societies, is full of such

sharply gendered depictions where female passion seems to strain against the boundaries

of logic and order.

Greek drama is full of ‘women who wept’; the Trojan Women, Medea…

Cassandra… Hecuba. The scale of emotion runs from the sense of a terrible

collective wrong, woman’s fierce energy for evil and intrigue under the stimulus

of unmixed emotion… their confrontation with the alternatives of chastity or

death… They confront, in a unity of ageless passion, the actions that wreck the

sacrifices of bearing and nurture for pride (Henn 108).

Often, the heights of irrationality are located in, though not really explained away by

possession. Phaedra for example, repeatedly calls herself a victim of Venus, and

successor to a legacy already infected by a curse. Moving from Greek myth to

Shakespeare, one might recall G. Wilson Knight’s comment on Lady Macbeth- ‘She is

not merely a woman of strong will: she is a woman possessed—possessed of evil passion.

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No 'will-power' on earth would account for her dread invocation’ (Knight 152). In other

cases, irrationality becomes associated not only with individual women, but with the

feminine worldview, as one might detect in orders like the Bacchae and the Furies, whose

all-female presence has a chaotic or primal energy and whose legitimacy is often

questioned on the grounds of logic. Even where logic functions in murky areas, societal

perception surrounding the woman’s action is usually homogenous and quite confident of

following accepted codes. For example, Clytemnestra voices a powerful argument for her

murder of Agamemnon, crying out against the brutality of their daughter’s sacrifice and

also expressing offended pride at Cassandra’s adulterous relationship with her husband.

The chorus of Elders however, which has discarded its initial horror at Agamemnon’s

sacrifice of Iphigenia, now refuses to acclimatize itself to the credibility of

Clytemnestra’s rage. What is striking is not their lack of support, since her act (unlike

Agamemnon’s) received no prompting from the heavens. It is rather, their outright

condemnation of her act, their disbelief at her self-justification, their absolute association

of Clytemnestra with all that wrong. Their response ranges from a general denunciation

of women—‘Spirit of hate.../ Your power it is engenders thus/ In woman’s brain such

evil art’ (Aeschylus lines 1467-70)—to questioning Clytemnestra’s sanity— ‘Where,

where lies Right? Reason despairs her powers, / Mind numbly gropes, her quick

resources spent, / ... Where can I turn?’(1530-2) If women’s irrationality can stem from

their being too true to femininity as it were, it can also be the mark (as cause or effect) of

an estrangement from womanhood. Once again, Lady Macbeth comes to mind. With the

coming of modernity, these equations shift and readjust themselves. As tragedy becomes

relatively secularized, the possession trope loses relevance1. Moreover, as discoveries in

the field of psychology prove men to be equally capable of delusions and mental

instability, one sees a decline in the skewed representation of ‘mad woman’ versus

‘rational man’. If we have Blance DuBois, we also have Alan Strang. Moreover, there

enters in the literature a note of irony or space for criticism surrounding society’s reaction

to women. Nevertheless, there are memorable instances in modern drama where the

woman becomes a reservoir of conventional gender attributes—sexuality and desire,

1 This is primarily in the context of European tragedy, for drama from other parts of the world is often built around myths and beliefs that have prevailed upto this date and are part of the lived experience of its contemporary audiences.

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whimsicality and lack of restraint—that have a damaging effect on men, resulting in a

collapse of peace and fruitfulness whose affective impact overwhelms irony. An

illustrative character is the bride in Lorca’s Blooding Wedding. Another area for

exploring the woman’s role in relation to more conventional irrationality in modern

drama is mythology; the rewriting of which may or may not challenge the original

assumptions with radical implications.

This paper seeks to analyse the treatment of the Irish myth of Deirdre in J.M. Synge’s

play, with a retrospective look at Yeats’s version. The focus is on the texts themselves,

and the differences between them, rather than their mode of engagement with the original

myth. The paper attempts to explore the sources of passion and irrationality in the two

plays, and the various ways in they manifest themselves, while taking into account the

possibilities of gendering. Some attention is also devoted to the question of ambiguity,

which though not equivalent to irrationality, often enhances the latter with its obfuscatory

impact.

I.

In Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows, we know even before the protagonist makes her

entrance that she is a force to be reckoned with. Growing up in the woods, with an elderly

aunt who is far from authoritarian, Deirdre is like ‘a lamb of ten weeks and it racing the

hills... It’s not the dread of death or troubles that would tame her like’ (Synge 217). But

though nature grants her an uncontainable energy, it is not till slightly later that we hear

her addressed in terms that question her rationality. In fact, Lavercham initially calls her

‘too wise to marry a big king’ (216). Though the word ‘wise’ does have a touch of irony,

it nevertheless puts the focus on a sense of independence and will that suggest a strong

awareness of ones own identity above all else. A different note is struck with

Lavercham’s comment on Deirdre’s high-strung demeanour following Conchubar’s

departure from their house. As Deirdre storms around the room pulling out material for

garments, Lavercham asks in wonder- ‘What ails you?’ (223) and adding to the fearful

reflections of an old woman present at the scene, she says- ‘it’s more than raving’s in...

[Deirdre’s] mind, or I’m the more astray’ (224). The stage directions for Deirdre’s

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actions contain the word ‘excitement’ multiple times and this change wrought in her state

of mind makes for an interesting reading when placed adjacent to her exchange with

Conchubor. From initially behaving with supreme dignity, she is reduced to being

‘terrified with the reality that is before her’ 2(222) when given an ultimatum for the

wedding. It is the unsettling aspect of reality itself which launches her into a minor

frenzy. However, this outburst eventually produces a persona that is not exaggerated but

rather amplified into a figure of awe-inducing grandeur. When Deirdre makes her regal

entrance upon the gathering of Lavercham and the three sons of Usna, she is greeted with

a note of reverence that obliterates any possibility of a ludicrous disjuncture between her

glamorous attire and the humble setting of her home.

Of course, there is still a strong note of tension in the air, and when Lavercham comes

upon Deirdre and Naisi locked in embrace, she uses a familiar word to question Deirdre’s

presence of mind, with even stronger connotations than before- ‘Are you raving, Deirdre?

Are you choosing this night to destroy the world?’ (231) But once again, Deirdre’s

decision carries weight, and Lavercham accedes to her sponataneous marriage with a

telling interpretation of Deirdre’s desire- ‘Birds go mating in the spring of the year, and

ewes at the leaves falling, but a young girl must have her lover in all the courses of the

sun and moon’ (232). This isolates human (especially female) pursuit of love as standing

apart from the rest of nature, but still somehow in accordance with a set of governing

principles. This is consistent with the play’s dual presentation of Deirdre’s behaviour as

both irrational and legitimate.

At this point, we may pause to consider some of the sources of irrationality outside

Deirdre’s own character. The character of Owen makes a sudden and brief appearance in

Act II—often criticized for being underdeveloped (Kiberd 72)—but nevertheless

introducing some resonant ideas into the play. There is an abruptness and lack of

moderation in his bearing which lends itself to caricature, and is reminiscent of the court

fool in Renaissance drama. In explaining what brings him from Ulster to Deirdre and

Naisi’s retreat in the woods, he says- ‘The full moon, I’m thinking, and it squeezing the

2 The italics here (and in all instances excepting references to book titles) represent stage directions.

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crack in my skull. Was there ever a man crossed the nine waves after a fool’s wife and he

not away in his head?’ (237) In a surprising turn, impossible to anticipate despite his

lapses into rage and melancholy, he runs off with a knife, screaming his intentions to

commit suicide when Deirdre’s return to Emain with Naisi is confirmed. Previously

having urged Deirdre to leave her cloistered life in Alban, he now rages against her

imminent destruction in Emain, talking of ‘plots and tricks, and spies’ (246) and ending

with the proclamation- ‘Men who’ll die for Deirdre’s beauty; I’ll be before you in the

grave!’ Owen hurtles out of sight, and Lavercham informs Deirdre that he has ‘gone

raging mad, and he’s after splitting his gullet beyond at the butt of the stone’ (246). This

incident, though it has shades of the tragicomic in its grotesque dimensions, is in keeping

with the violence that has been unleashed by Conchubor’s infiltration into Deirdre and

Naisi’s home in Alban. Owen is also the first character to emphatically state the morbid

thoughts that have already taken seed in Deirdre’s mind- those revolving around age and

decay. Before he appears on the scene, Lavercham dismisses Deirdre’s fears of ‘living on

until you’re dried and old, and... joy is gone for ever’ (235). Lavercham says that there is

‘little hurt getting old’, unless it is ‘seeing the young you have a love for breaking up

their hearts with folly’ (235). Owen however, informs Deirdre that she has a choice

between two options- to stay where she is and ‘rot with Naisi or go to Conchubor’ who

himself is a ‘wrinkled fool with... eyes falling downward from his shining crown’ (238).

Perverse as this may sound; it is his reflections on old age that eventually bring a depth of

‘dignity into his voice’ (238).

The next blow for Deirdre is overhearing an exchange between Fergus and Naisi, where

the latter communicates his doubts regarding his future with Deirdre. He says, ‘I’ll tell

you not a lie. There have been days a while past when... I’ve a dread come upon me a

day’d come I’d weary of her voice... and Deirdre’d see I’d wearied.’(241) Significantly,

he misreads her own thoughts in this sphere, thinking she has ‘no thought of getting old

or wearied; it’s that puts wonder in her ways, and she with spirits would keep bravery and

laughter in a town with plague’(241). Though this is said in praise and even places her at

a superior level, Naisi demonstrates some of the male vanity that assumes it may tire of

love and peace, simultaneously imbuing the woman with a near-mystical capacity for joy

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(thus recalling Henn’s comments mentioned early on in this paper). Naisi goes on to

reject these potentially debilitating fears, saying ‘my dreams were dreams only’ (241),

and even viewing his conversation with Fergus as an exorcism of them (242).

Nevertheless, the damage appears to be done, for Deirdre overrides his decision to stay

on in Alban. In a ‘very low voice’, she asks- ‘The dawn and evening are a little while, the

winter and summer pass quickly, and what way you would and I, Naisi, have joy for

ever?’(242) None of Naisi’s attempts at consolation prove effective, and Deirdre steps

further into a realm of thoughts that casts a gloom over the vital essence of life. It appears

to be a process of revelation for her, where the bitter truth unfolds as she speaks, and in

one of the most poignant moments of this dialogue she reflects ‘broken-hearted’, that

there is ‘no safe place Naisi, on the ridge of the world’ (243). We get here a sense of

being on the brink of an abyss, and finally Deirdre voices the belief that is to haunt her

till the end of the play (and her own existence)-

isn’t it a better thing to be following on to a near death, than to be bending the

head down, and dragging with the feet, and seeing one day a blight showing upon

love where it is sweet and tender? (244)

The most intriguing aspect of this discourse is that it makes no reference to the prophecy

that foretells a story of destruction for Deirdre, Conchubor and the sons of Usna—a

prophecy which all the characters of the play are aware of. Instead, this strand of thought

posits age and loss of love as the inevitable conclusion, and death hovers on the horizon

as a grim alternative one must take recourse to. There is truly no rational explanation for

this. One way of viewing this is connection to the human fascination for death, where the

attempt at coming to terms with it is so intense that death becomes the matrix through

which life is viewed. Death gains the solidity of experience, whereas life is illusory and

vulnerable, much like desire3. From another perspective, death is actually the means of

escape from degeneration, and the mystery surrounding it makes it easier for the young to

welcome than the more palpable sordidness of old age. The moment of transition from a

pursuit of life to an acceptance of death is not without struggle. This painful interplay

between life, death, youth and age is a prominent feature of Synge’s work, and as Declan

Kiberd suggests, often occurs in connection with his female characters- ‘The women in

3 I would like to acknowledge Prof. Amlan Dasgupta, from whom I have picked up the terms of analogy.

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all of Synge’s plays are anxious to live in the present moment, but fated instead to take

longer and longer views’(Kiberd 69).

Only once in the play does death appear abject to Deirdre. At the end of Act II, on the

verge of leaving Alban, she says in heartfelt tones- ‘It’s seven years we’ve had a life was

joy only... this day we’re facing death, maybe, and death should be a poor, untidy thing,

though it’s a queen that dies’(Synge 248). In the final act, when Deirdre and Naisi are

faced with the dreadful reality of the open grave next to their feet, death does indeed

come across as foreboding. She asks, ‘isn’t it a hard thing that you and I are in this place

by our opened grave; though none have lived had happiness like ours those days in

Alban...?’(255) However, the rapid progression of events and words that follow the

grave’s discovery soon convinces Deirdre that death is not the most dreadful threat to her

well-being. When Naisi, in a surprising instance of harshness goads Deirdre with the

image of his and his brothers’ demise, and her subsequent marriage to Conchubor, she

protests with the words- ‘Let you not be saying things are worse than death’(255).

Eventually, she is forced to realize that Naisi’s loyalty to his brothers dominates his

desire to stay by her side at all costs. It is a physical act of being pushed aside that

impresses this rift upon her once and for all. She acknowledges that ‘the harshness of

death has come between us’ (258) and with a sinister lucidity, goes on to pronounce-

‘We’ve had a dream, but this night has waked us surely’(259). To her, this is a profound

and irrevocable truth, as illuminating as it is painful. Death clears the air as it were, while

emerging as the ultimate reality and transcending all logical or sentimental qualifications.

In other words, nothing apart from death makes real sense, and yet death is beyond the

boundaries of rationality. Naisi cannot fathom such complexities. He probably tries to

align her reaction with an expected emotional pattern- the woman’s plaintive petulance at

being relegated to the sidelines. Nonetheless, he is flooded with amazement and panic by

the degree of cold restraint he confronts in Deirdre. He counters what he thinks is female

ego with a misogynist and vitriolic condemnation of the female sex (259). This is ironic

when we consider his cruel taunting earlier on—perhaps understandable in the

atmosphere of disenchantment and anxiety that emanates from the grave, but tainted by

the crude and typical rhetoric of jealousy. Moreover, he fails to see that there will be a

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change in the equation between him and his lover after he has elevated male kinship in

his order of priorities. And significantly, Naisi’s life ends in war whereas Deirdre is left

to a long heartbroken lament, culminating in the solitary act of suicide. Through her

elegiac wails, the memory of a life lived in great happiness resurfaces in painful spurts

but eventually she rests upon the great truth- ‘It was the choice of lives we had in the

clear woods, and the grave, we’re safe, surely’ (267). That this submission to death is not

passive but a concrete achievement is made evident in her last words, which convert her

loss into a ‘triumph to the ends of life and time’ (267). As Ronan McDonald writes-

In Synge’s dramatic practice we often find a tragic incompatibility behind this

‘real life’/dream opposition... a disjunction between the fondness for exuberant

language and the pained sensitivity to dismal reality (McDonald 46).

McDonald goes onto expand upon Christopher Murray’s comment, that

In Synge’s tragedies, underpinned by Nietzsche’s dialectic of Apollo and

Dionysus from The Birth of Tragedy (1872), the song of liberation has a deeper,

more sombre melody, but it is still as in the comedies, a song of deliverance (qtd.

in McDonald 47).

McDonald adds to this by saying that the deliverance is even more fraught with ‘unease’

and the hint of destruction, than Murray allows (47). The meaning of this comes through

most clearly when McDonald applies it to the end of Deirdre of the Sorrows-

Here, the two conflicting urges – to live, yet to escape the transience of life –

reach a climactic nexus when Naisi and Deirdre settle on the grave, not as a

rejection of life, but as a triumphant and hubristic assertion of youth and sensual

experience against its decay and temporal waning. If it is true that comedies end

in marriage and tragedies in death, then the grave forming the centrepiece of the

third act is both tomb and marital bed (52).

At this point, we may look back upon the play to observe Conchubor’s role in the

narrative, and how he too is tied up with forces of irrationality. The most obvious feature

in this regard is his reckless pursuit of a young girl, when she is foretold to be the cause

of his destruction. Lavercham sums up the absurdity of it in the lines-

‘I’m in dread so they were right saying she’d bring destruction on the world, for

it’s a poor thing when you see a settled man putting the love he has for a young

child, and the love he has for a full woman, on a girl the like of her’ (Synge 217).

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The paradoxes of this prophecy are manifold. For one, it foretells a desire which in itself

is peculiar. Further, Conchubor’s adherence to his desire—and later, Deirdre to hers—

despite foreknowledge of the prophecy may be considered irrational. Yet, the very fact

that it is foretold prompts an acceptance of the actions as inevitable, even though they

provoke unanswerable questions as they are played out in the drama. It is no wonder

therefore, that the representation of Conchubor is marked by an anbivalence. Towards the

beginning of the play, Lavercham points out the absurdity of his attempt to tame Deirdre

by ‘putting her in this wild place’ (214) where unfettered nature acts as Deirdre’s

principal guide. Later, she sneeringly tells Conchubor that ‘It’s a queer thing the way the

likes of me do be telling the truth, and the wise are lying all times’(217). Wisdom or

knowledge, when associated with Conchubor becomes suspect, as we see in his own

words when he comments indulgently on Deirdre’s naivety, saying-

Yet you’ve little knowledge, and I’d do wrong taking it bad when it’ll be my

share from this out to keep you the way you’ll have little call to trouble for

knowledge or it’s want either (219).

There is something distorted in the values of one who uses the weight of his experience to

justify keeping a young girl beyond the reach of knowledge, where neither its presence

nor the lack thereof would prove problematic. The irony is strengthened by the fact that

he attributes resistance on her part to limited knowledge in the first place. He explains to

Deirdre that his world-weary knowledge is of no comfort to him, which is why he

chooses the likes of her to fill his life with freshness and vivacity (219). For Conchubor,

there is no choice between death and old age. Old age signifies death, which is no relief,

and it drives him to desperation. As he says to Lavercham in Act II- ‘the wise knows the

old must die, and they’ll leave no chance for a thing slipping from them they’ve set their

blood to win’(251). Conchubor is erroneous is associating an awareness of his own desire

with wisdom, for he lacks the insight to see its destructive potential. In the end, when

Deirdre is derided for being driven crazy by grief, she hurls back the same accusation

directly at Conchubor, saying ‘It’s yourself has made a crazy story’(265). Soon after, she

describes him by the same term that has already been used for her on multiple occasions-

‘raving’(266). Conchubor is eventually driven to accept his madness, but even when

broken down by loss and humiliation, cannot concede his own mistake without finding

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culpable company in Deirdre. He links the both of them together in this sentence- ‘It is I

who am out of my wits, with Emain in flames, and Deirdre raving, and my own heart

gone within me’ (266).

II.

Yeats wrote his dramatic take on Deirdre earlier than Synge, whose play was, in fact

posthumously revised and readied for production by Yeats in a joint collaboration

(Kiberd 72). Since this paper treats Synge’s play as the key text, it takes up Yeats’

Deirdre in this later segment to illustrate how the perspective from which the former was

discussed, yields somewhat different results when applied to the latter. This paper argues

that though passion is a dominant current in Deirdre, it is not cloaked with the kind of

unanswerable, pervasive mysteries that are woven into the fabric of Synge’s play. The

depth and vastness of emotion is what comes through most strongly, and references to it

crop up early on in the play. The song sung by the chorus of women, in welcome of

Deirdre and Naoise4 contains a dialogue between a Queen Edain and her lover. The

‘goodman’ tells his Queen- ‘Love would be a thing of naught / Had not all his limbs a

stir/ Born out of immoderate thought’ (Yeats 177)5. Immoderacy proves to be a recurrent

element in Deirdre, but it takes shape in various ways that this paper will go on to

explore.

When Deirdre learns of Conchubar’s evil designs from the chorus, she informs Fergus

and Naoise that she has ‘heard terrible mysterious things, / Magical horrors and the spell

of the wizards’ (184). Though the authenticity of the chorus and its revelations about the

supernatural are questioned in the play, they speak with an air of omniscience which is

convincing, and Deirdre does not exaggerate what she has heard. Nevertheless, her fears

are taken to be the product of a gentle but nervous nature, given to excess, and with not

much basis in reality. Naoise explains it by saying ‘She has the heart of the wild birds

that fear / The net of the fowler or the wicker cage’(185). As we have seen with Synge,

Deirdre contains in herself the strains of natural life but here the comparison is made with 4 The spelling of names in this section follow the specific text of Yeats that has been consulted for this paper. There are some changes from those in Deirdre of the Sorrows.5 Though Yeats’ Deirdre is written in poetry, the citations refer to page numbers and not line numbers, since the latter are not specified in the text consulted.

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more indulgence than admiration. Deirdre is upset by the lack of receptivity in Fergus

and Naoise, and attempts to break their sense of complacency by feigning love for

Conchubar. The response drawn from Naoise is interesting, for he asks- ‘What frenzy put

these words into your mouth?’(185); and Deirdre, determined to play up to the

expectations of an intemperate woman, declares- ‘No frenzy, for what need is there for

frenzy / To change what shifts with every change of the wind, / Was I not born a

woman?’ (285) Almost comically, Naoise pounces on the cue that Deirdre has given him,

reflecting rhetorically- ‘What woman is there that a man can trust/ But at the moment

when he kisses her/ At the first midnight?’(185) Fergus is more perceptive, and sees

through Deirdre’s ploy but he remains fixed on the belief that Conchubor’s intentions are

innocent. In sheer frustration, Deirdre utters the lines that come closest to genuine

hysteria in the play-

There is but one way to make all safe: I’ll spoil this beauty that brought misery/

And house wandering on the man I loved./ These wanderers will show me how to

do it;/ To clip my hair to baldness, blacken my skin/ With walnut juice, and tear

my face with briars./ O that the creatures of the woods had torn/ My body with

their claws! (186-7)

Nevertheless, we cannot call this irrationality for Deirdre’s fears are not only on the right

track; she has also been prompted to suspect Conchubar by the group of women who

appear to have significant insight into the situation. Interestingly, Naoise himself was the

first person to voice fears on entering the scene, saying- ‘If I had not King Conchubar’s

word I’d think / That chess-board ominous’(179). Naoise’s lack of faith in intuition,

which to him is a feminine value, comes through in his reassessment of the situation at

hand- he says, ‘We must not speak or think as women do’ (180). Deirdre feels the

memory of past trials as well as a sense of looming danger with far more immediacy. Her

outburst comes from a deep-seated core of feeling that has built up through a strenuous

clash with fate. If Deirdre gives vent to this frustration by raging against herself and her

luck, she also constantly remoulds and represses it to project herself in a manner that suits

the time. Peter Ure sees this as part of her struggle against fate. He writes-

Deirdre’s actions... can be summed up as a series of attempts to alter this story, as

it were from inside the story itself. She can endeavour to control events only by

influencing Naoise or Conchubar, and to this end she desperately plays one part

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after another in the hope of persuading them to change the story, or of persuading

herself to endure it (Ure 53).

Deirdre has already acted a part to provoke action in Naoise. When she realizes that they

have little chance of escaping from Conchubar’s trap, she decides to take on another role-

one of bleak but moving stoicism, inspired by the legend of Lugaidh Redstripe and his

queen who sat calmly at a game of Chess awaiting their death. Deirdre decides- ‘though I

have not been born / Of the cold, haughty waves, my veins being hot,... / I’ll have as quiet

fingers on the board’(Yeats 190). However, it is a role she cannot perform for long. The

chorus, when it sings in tribute to Deirdre and Naoise takes up a word from its earlier

song—a word with all the resonance of a fully-fleshed refrain. They sing- ‘Love is an

immoderate6 thing / And can never be content/ Till it dip an ageing wing/ Where some

laughing element/ Leaps and Time’s old lanthorn dims’ (191). It is almost as though

‘immoderate’ strikes a chord in Deirdre, for she abandons her game and in an extremely

poignant gesture, kneels at Naoise’s feet, saying- ‘I cannot go on playing like that

woman/ That had but the cold blood of the sea in her veins’(192). Ignoring Naoise’s

protests, she argues with great fervour for the overwhelming power and reality of

physical intimacy- ‘I know nothing but this body, nothing/ But that old vehement,

bewildering kiss’(192). Deirdre is torn between an acute sense of who she is and the roles

she needs to play, but at this moment the person she must be is equivalent to fulfilling the

urges that are strongest within her. This is not irrationality but passion, whose tragedy lies

in confronting a cruel necessity that is both imposing and indistinct. Due to this necessity,

Deirdre constantly feels driven to act in various ways, but she cannot ever be sure of the

results they will yield. At the end of the play, when Naoise is killed and Deirdre has only

one major act left to carry out—that of suicide—she uses the word ‘passion’ herself in a

context that reinforces Peter Ure’s analysis of her as the ultimate actress. She tells

Conchubar, in another lie- ‘You’ll stir me to more passion than... [Naoise] could’(200). It

is her very passion for Naoise, and the jolt it has received from his death that allows her

to act with such frightening deliberation and splendid artifice, calculating each moment

as a step towards her own death. It is at the very point that Conchubar expects her to

break down that she demonstrates the most calm- he says, ‘I thought that you would curse 6 Emphasis added.

13

me and cry out, / And fall upon the ground and tear your hair’(199). Deirdre does nothing

of this sort, and yet it would be unwise to believe that her, or anyone’s act of suicide is

performed without any sense of internal turbulence. Indeed, passion and control are

impossible to distinguish in Deirdre. As Peter Ure concludes-

Her last phase, the phase of ‘white-heat’ after the death of Naoise, is certainly not

a phase of pure and almost depersonalized grief, like that of Synge’s heroine.

With... the staginess of the accomplished actress, she presents to Conchubar a

mask of deceit, which depends for its success on its resourceful detail and on the

verisimilitude with which it appears to answer his wish while gaining her own

end (Ure 57).

At the same time,

The state of Deirdre’s soul- if by that is meant the deepest level of her

personality, the fundamental passion of her nature which motivates her behaviour

—changes not all in the course of the play, but remains always her passionate

love for Naoise (57).

This protean quality in Deirdre is certainly linked to her condition of being a woman.

Instances where her shifting states are linked to her gender have already been mentioned

earlier in this paper. The chorus, also female, appears to confirm this when it tells Deirdre

to find some means of salvation by using her ‘woman’s wile’ (Yeats 193). Though this

conforms to gender stereotypes, it is also the quality which emerges as the strongest and

purest (not in a moralizing sense) of the play. The men with their intransigence are the

ones who bypass the truth, and who are responsible (Conchubar far more so than Naoise)

for crushing Deirdre’s efforts at finding emancipation. If Deirdre’s inability to make a

difference is slightly problematic, one cannot say she has no agency at all. From the

beginning, her consciousness is the most fully awakened of all the characters’, and she

never falls into inaction. Though the reasons impelling her to don various disguises may

not be transparent to all the characters surrounding her, to the playwright and the

audience they are clear enough, and indeed call out for empathy.

It must be mentioned that the heroine of Yeats’ Deirdre is not drawn to death the same

way as Synge’s protagonist is. At one point, she mentions death to Naoise as a possible

14

risk of escaping, but one worth taking. Guessing at the gruesome way in which death

would come in their present setting, Naoise refutes the idea, saying –

They would but drag you from me, stained with blood. / Their barbarous

weapons would but mar that beauty, / And I would have you die as a queen

should— / In a death chamber... / I’ll hold them from the doors, and when that’s

over, / Give you a cleanly death with this grey edge (189).

Death here is affiliated with concepts of human honour and dignity. It is a concrete aspect

of reality that can appear crude and distasteful; and the attempt to manipulate its

conditions, no matter how far-fetched, is at least considered. Its metaphysical dimensions

are not taken into account, and it is not given the magnitude or fatal attraction of a great

force that sustains itself. Naoise’s declaration that he would rather provide Deirdre with a

clean death himself, appears somewhat rhetorical as Deirdre does not respond to it.

Instead, she tells him- ‘I will stay here; but you go out and fight’ (189), putting the focus

on action and struggle—the domain of the living—instead. What preoccupies her more is

the idea of leaving this word behind ‘friendless’ (189), and later when she asks the

chorus- ‘Women, if I die, / If Naoise die this night, how will you praise?’(193), the

emphasis is again on winning over sympathetic friends, even if that can be achieved only

through posthumous storytelling. Soon afterwards, when Deirdre and Naoise directly

confront Conchubar, she states her preference for life more equivocally than before. She

is actually prepared to enter into marital union with Conchubar in order to preserve

Naoise’s life. In an agonizing act of self-denial, which also involves denying Naoise the

fulfillment of love, she tells the latter- ‘It’s better to go with him. / Why should you die

when one can bear it all?’(196) It is significant that she is arguing for Naoise’s life rather

than her own, though her offer would ensure the avoidance of bloodshed on either side. It

is when Naoise dies, and Deirdre is deprived of all that symbolizes life to her, that she

can embrace her own death. While on the subject of destruction, we might also mention

how the danger posed by Fergus to Conchubar is far milder here when compared to

Synge. In the latter, a soldier announces that ‘Fergus has come back and is setting fire to

the world. Come up, Conchubar, or your state will be destroyed!’ (Synge 260) Here, the

kingdom is linked to the greater world such that the very order on earth is shaken by

Fergus’ rebellion. These violent expansions and collapsing of boundaries mark Synge’s

15

vision. In Yeats’ Deirdre, though Fergus makes a dramatic entrance surrounded by men

with scythes and torches (202), the reign of Conchubar is not threatened at such a

fundamental level.

The character of Conchubar too, differs from that of Synge’s text. For one, he does not

appear to have placed young Deirdre in the woods with Lavercham. The chorus, in its

introductory song, tells us- ‘Some dozen years ago, King Conchubar found / A house

upon a hillside in this wood, / And there a child with an old witch to nurse her,/ And

nobody to say if she were human’(172). Hence this makes Conchubar’s attraction to

Deirdre appear more incidental, and absolves him of the crime of keeping her secluded.

The play is also relatively ambiguous regarding the prophecy. Though it is obvious that

the chorus has some foreknowledge of the characters’ fates, they do not pronounce the

future as an oracle. Nor do they suggest that the people of Ulster were aware of being

bound by one. Later in the play, Fergus tells Deirdre- ‘Men blamed you that you stirred a

quarrel up / That has brought death to many. I have made peace, / Poured water on the

fire’ (186). The phrasing suggests rumour rather than prophecy. Moreover, the use of past

and present perfect tenses—‘Men blamed you that you stirred a quarrel up / That has

brought death...’7—also allows the possibility that Deirdre has been accused of having

committed strife already, and Fergus has quelled talk about what was once contemporary,

not anticipatory. Therefore we do not feel that Conchubar carries the added baggage of

pursuing Deirdre despite knowing of a predicted outcome. Nevertheless, his attraction to

her is not presented in a sober light, as the chorus tells us- ‘An old man’s love / Who

casts no second line is hard to cure; / His jealously is like his love’ (174). Moreover, in

some aspects, Yeats’ Conchubar suffers from a more static worldview than his

counterpart in Synge. His entrance in Deirdre is dark—literally too, for he comes

accompanied by dark-faced men8 (194)—and forebodes great violence. In Synge, the

character’s first appearance is humanized by confessions of lovesickness and moments of

genuine pleading. Nowhere in Yeats does Conchubar grant the audience a look behind

the veil of kingly authority that he uses to lay claim on Deirdre. His revelation of ‘seven

years/ Of longing and of planning’ (196) bears little trace of humility or emotion. He

7 Emphasis added.8 The politico-racial connotations of this are troubling, but beyond the scope of this paper.

16

promises to let Naoise go unharmed, if Deirdre will voluntarily walk into his house, so

people will believe he has ‘not taken her by force and guile’ (195). Indeed, appearances

and not mercy matter more to him for he lapses into a lavish description of the bridal

chamber that awaits Deirdre, with no thought for her actual sentiments. In Yeats, the

murder of Naoise is more chilling for Conchubar visibly orders for him to be bound,

gagged and taken behind a curtain, even while Deirdre is begging desperately for her

lover’s cause. The differences between the two character portrayals are consolidated most

firmly in the ending. In Synge, the old woman helps a shattered, disillusioned Conchubor

—at his own request—to walk away from the scene of Deirdre’s death. He says, ‘with the

voice of an old man’: ‘Take me with you, I’m hard set to see the way before me’ (Synge

268). In Yeats, we are left with a curt, defiant justification of brute force and contempt

for youthful love- ‘Howl, if you will; but I, being King, did right / In choosing her most

fitting to be Queen, / And letting no boy lover take the sway’(Yeats 203). Is this to be

read as delusional, or a repression of guilt? The text offers us little by way of that

consolation; and the concluding note of stubborn pride is too stifling to provoke many

questions. The most relevant interpretation of Conchubar’s character is probably as a

symbol of rigidity, forming an antithesis to the passionate and multi-faceted Deirdre.9

CONCLUSION

Raymond Williams writes of Deirdre of the Sorrows, that ‘in this play, Synge was

working towards a dramatic method which is genuinely poetic; he is leaving

representation behind’ (Williams 183). Williams notices a transition from naturalism,

which Synge used so effectively in his earlier plays, into a more substantially dramatic

style which bears the flaws of being in an amateur phase but shows great promise (183).

Williams locates this change in the way Synge employs language, which “is no longer

confined to ‘flavouring’, but uses metaphor and verbal symbolism for strict dramatic

ends” (186). Interestingly, poeticism and symbolism are considered integral to Yeatsian

drama; and though Yeats’ admiration of Synge is common knowledge; the two

9 It is worth mentioning one point of difference between the portrayals by Yeats and Synge, where the former exposes more vulnerability. Yeats’ Conchubar has no answer to Deirdre’s taunt that he should let his men search her for a sword, and thus allows her access to Naoise’s corpse (Yeats 201). Contrastingly in Synge, Conchubor chides Deirdre with the very same threat, saying he has no need to touch her, for his ‘fighters’ are there to do so (Synge 265).

17

playwrights have been distinguished from each other in this regard. Declan Kiberd

writes-

Five years [after George Russel]... W. B. Yeats would produce his own Deirdre,

which did centralise the heroine as a tragedy queen, but his play treated the

characters more as symbols than as persons of flesh and blood (Kiberd 66).

Kiberd goes on to describe the new elements that Synge brings to the legacy with his own

adaptation.

Synge’s own take on the legend, when his turn came to dramatise it, was

different – rooted not just in the realities of rural Irish life but also in a modern

psychology of love and of its frustration.

....................................

Before writing it, Synge in his performed plays had written solely of the

peasantry: and there is a very deep sense in which this play is itself a critical

exploration of the relationship between the rather remote, aristocratic characters

of the old tale and the warmly human peasant world in which alone it now

lingered. The underlying project is democratic: to present the characters in all

their humanity not as regal personages so much as terrified persons caught up in

an insoluble crisis of human relations (66).

Kiberd mentions that Synge was well aware of attempting something

different from both Yeats and Russell, and that he even dissociates

himself from their ‘other-worldly’ views in a poem titled ‘The Passing of

the Shee’ (67). How then do we reconcile this notion of Synge with the

analysis presented by Raymond Williams? The answer might lie in the

simple but succint words of Ronan McDonald, who states that ‘Synge

aims, or

claims to aim, for literal as well as symbolic truth’(McDonald 45).

McDonald is of the belief that the tensions between Synge’s interest in

the literal and the symbolic, express themselves through one main

philosophical concern: ‘a tragic incompatibility behind this ‘real

life’/dream opposition... a disjunction between the fondness for

exuberant language and the pained sensitivity to dismal reality’ (46).

Possibly, Synge has displayed a consistent interest in the symbolic that

18

Raymond Williams has not found significant up to this point, but

Williams does acknowledge that even in Deirdre of the Sorrows, Synge

has not delved completely into the new form he has chosen. It is

perhaps this halfway stage which brings his work close to Yeats’ while

being clearly distinct from it. Synge’s characters speak in everyday

(albeit simulated) prose rhythms whereas Yeats’ speak in refined

poetry. Yeats’ play makes additional use of a chorus that straddles

both human and supra-natural dimensions of time, akin to the Greek

mode. His action, unlike Synge’s is condensed into the fixed location

and brief duration that was so preferred by the Neo-Classicals. And

even if we are to accept Williams’ view that naturalism becomes

‘impossible’ (Williams 193) in Synge’s play, we must concede that

nature itself is a far more dominant presence in Synge than in Yeats. In

the latter, the wilderness is glimpsed through various analogies in the

dialogue, and on a visceral level through the backdrop, where ‘great

spaces of the wood’ are seen through the window. In Synge, Deirdre’s

natural surroundings constantly impress themselves upon the

audience. This last difference is made evident by comparing a common

point between the two plays. In both, it is important for Deirdre that

her story be told. Whereas in Yeats, the task is given to the Chorus

(who had in fact, already begun telling her story before she enters it),

in Synge it is to be performed by nature. In Deirdre’s famous speech at

the end of the play, she says-

I see the flames of Emain starting upward in the dark night; and

because of me there will be weasels and wild cats crying on a

lonely wall where there were queens... the way there will be a

story told of a ruined city and a raving king and a woman will be

young forever... I see the trees naked and bare; and the moon

shining. Little moon... it’s lonesome you’ll be this night... and

long nights after, and you pacing the woods... looking every

place for Deirdre and Naisi (Synge 266).

19

Even where naturalism gives way to symbolism, nature itself has the capacity to express

certain qualities in ways a purely human environment cannot. It can be used to recreate

the haunting and disturbing presence of forces which are out of the ordinary, even while

depicting them as a ‘natural’ part of the environment. In such an atmosphere, one can

seamlessly tie up human passion with forces beyond human understanding. Thus in

Synge’s world, darkness and gloom, intensity and exuberance, irrationality and mystery,

all pervade the air and are inexorably woven with the human drama.

LIST OF WORKS CITED

Aeschylus. Agamemnon. The Oresteian Trilogy. Trans. Philip Vellacott. England: Penguin, 1972.

41-100. Print.

Henn, Thomas Rice. The Harvest of Tragedy. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1961. Ebook. 25 April 2012. <http://ia600300.us.archive.org/33/items/harvestoftragedy030449mbp/harvestoftragedy030449mbp.pdf>

Kiberd, Declan. ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’. The Cambridge Companion to J.M. Synge. Ed. P.J.

Matthews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 64-74. Ebook. 25 April 2012.

<http://en.bookfi.org/book/1201644/>

Knight, G. Wilson. ‘Macbeth and the Metaphysic of Evil’. The Wheel of Fire: Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Tragedy. Cleveland and New York: The World Publishing Company, 1964. 140-159. Ebook. 28 April 2012. <http://archive.org/details/wheeloffire001890mbp/>

McDonald, Ronan. ‘A Gallous Story or a Dirty Deed?: J. M. Synge and the Tragedy of

Evasion’. Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett. New York: Palaver, 2002. 42-

84. Ebook. 25 April 2012. <http://en.bookfi.org/book/1053332/>

Synge, John Millington. Deirdre of the Sorrows. The Complete Plays. New York: Random

House, 1960. 213-268. Print.

Ure, Peter. ‘Deirdre’. Yeats the Playwright: A Commentary on Character and Design in the

Major Plays. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969. 43-58. Print.

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Williams, Raymond. ‘J.M. Synge’. From Ibsen to Eliot. England: Penguin, 1967. 171-92. Print.

Yeats, William Butler. Deirdre. The Collected Plays. London: Macmillan and Co., 1953. 171-

203. Print.

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