Background
Isabella Augusta Persse was born on March 15, 1852, to Dudley Persse and his second wife, Frances Barry, near Gort, County Galway, in the west of Ireland, where Gaelic is still the language spoken by the people.
(Spreading the News is a short one-act comic play by Lady ...)
Spreading the News is a short one-act comic play by Lady Gregory, which she wrote for the opening night of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, 27 Dec. 1904. It was on a double bill with William Butler Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Audiences may have dozed through Yeats's play, but Spreading the News was very successful and it is still acted at the Abbey Theatre as late as 1961. Lady Gregory remarked after seeing an early performance of the play that "the audience would laugh so much at "Spreading the News" that they lost about half the dialogue. I mustn't be so amusing again!" In a small village in rural Ireland, a new (English) magistrate inspects stalls at the local fair, expecting the worst. Because of Mrs. Tarpey's hearing impairment and the villagers' love of gossip, a misunderstanding grows and grows, leading to a false arrest for a murder that never happened. The play ends abruptly, with little resolution; we are left wondering what happened. Most of the humour is situational, rather than playing with language. Because we know what really happened at the beginning, most of the play uses dramatic irony. Spreading the News is a comedy that exploits both English and Irish stereotypes. Lady Gregory was a member of the Protestant upper classes of Ireland, but she had sympathies for Irish Nationalism and was a strong supporter of Irish culture and identity. In this play she carefully reproduces the colloquial style and lower-class dialect of the workers on her estate 4 in an effort to represent their culture accurately, and yet at the same time she reproduces various stereotypes about Irish people. She also includes satire versus the English governing class (of which she was a member) in the character of the Magistrate. The Magistrate comes to the village expecting people to be committing crimes: in a way, he is imposing his idea of their corruption on them, and they accept it/live up to it. However, there are no real "sides" in the play. Spreading the News may have been written to help the Irish and the English understand each other by having them see each other's flaws. Lady Gregorys The Rising of the Moon is an explicitly political play dealing with the relation between England and Ireland trying to fight for freedom from English rule. Lady Gregory presents characters who are torn between duty and patriotism and are ultimately united together as Irishmen through the folklore, myths and songs which they share as a nation. The thought of being the citizen of a country takes precedence over ones feelings of duty towards a foreign nation. Patriotism is the unifying force among the people. The Ballad Singer (Rebel) and the Sergeant are the major characters through whom the issue of unity among Irish people is explored. Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (15 March 1852 22 May 1932), born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the political struggles to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind the Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway, served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."
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(Lady Augusta Gregorys Gods and Fighting Men preserves ...)
Lady Augusta Gregorys Gods and Fighting Men preserves the legends and lore of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland, the coming of the Tuatha De Danaan (The People of Dana) and the stories of Finn MacCumhail. Containing stories for Irish mythology form the earliest legends, Lady Gregorys book preserves the native Irish sense of story-telling throughout her account of the Gaelic world. Lady Gregory's eloquent speech and style breathes life into Ireland's forgotten heroes and gods. Although Lady Gregory was more of a storyteller than an academic, her book remains one of the best available on Irish mythology and is a great starting point for anyone interested in Gaelic lore.
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(This material collected over a period of more than twenty...)
This material collected over a period of more than twenty years proved to be a valuable source not only for Gregory's own plays but also for Yeats' work. A classic, it presents many aspects of the supernatural seers, healers, charms, banshees, forths, the evil eye and contains a treasure trove of Irish folk-beliefs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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(IN the 520 pages of this book you will find the eleven bo...)
IN the 520 pages of this book you will find the eleven books containing the story and adventures of the story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland. Stories of THE COMING OF THE TUATHA, LUGH OF THE LONG HAND, THE EVER-LIVING LIVING ONES, FINN, SON OF CUMHAL and his Helpers, of DIARMUID, OISIN and PATRICK, THE WEARING AWAY OF THE FIANNA and, oh, so much more. ---- Fortunately there is little need for to discuss the credibility or otherwise of the historic records concerning Finn, his family, and his band of warriors. Preceding even the Ottomans, the real objective existence of the Fenians was as a body of Janissaries who actually lived, ruled, and hunted in King Cormac's time, clustering about them hundreds of stories, traits, and legends far older and more primitive than any to which they themselves could have given rise. ---- In recent times the Irish have spread to all four corners of the world, taken these magnificent stories and spread them far and wide. Even though they have left the Emerald Isle they remain steadfastly Irish to their core. And they would say, like Finn to the to the woman of enchantments, ---- "We would not give up our own country-Ireland-if we were to get the whole world as an estate, and the Country of the Young along with it." ---- The ancient story-tellers are there to make us remember what mankind would have been like, had not fear and the failing will and the laws of nature tripped up its heels. The Fianna and their like are themselves so full of power, and they are set in a world so fluctuating and dream-like, that nothing can hold them from being all that the heart desires.
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(GODS AND FIGHTING MEN: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan ...)
GODS AND FIGHTING MEN: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland, was first published in 1904 by Lady Augusta Gregory. It contains many of the mythological histories of early Ireland, the stories of Lugh, of Mananaan, the Children of Lir, the coming of the Tuatha de Danaan, as well as those that deal with Oisin, Finn MacCumhal, the Fianna and their exploits, Oisin, and Diarmuid and Grania. Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852-1932) was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the changes to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings. Her motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."
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dramatist folklorist theatre manager
Isabella Augusta Persse was born on March 15, 1852, to Dudley Persse and his second wife, Frances Barry, near Gort, County Galway, in the west of Ireland, where Gaelic is still the language spoken by the people.
She was educated at home, and her future career was strongly influenced by the nanny, Mary Sheridan, a Catholic and a native Irish speaker, who introduced the young Augusta to the history and legends of the local area.
After her husband's death in 1892, Gregory began collecting legends and history concerning the west of Ireland; these she translated into the dialect she called "Kiltartanese" (from the Kiltartan region of Galway). Her meeting with Yeats in 1896 marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration in "mythmaking" and supplied Yeats with financial support, a summer home, and needed translations.
Gregory's best plays were comedies. The one-act farce Spreading the News (1904) has been popularized through study in high schools in America, and two longer comedies, The Rising of the Moon (1907) and The Workhouse Ward (1908), were perennial favorites in the Abbey repertoire. Her Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902) became the major source of information concerning the heroes of the Red Branch line of Ulster kings, used by Yeats, AE, and others in their poetry and plays. Her longer history plays, Colman and Guaire (1901) and Grania (1911), have been less successful. Among Gregory's other works were The Kiltartan History Book (1909), intended for use in Irish schools, and Our Irish Theatre (1913), still a basic source of information on the Irish literary renaissance. Her prose translation of Gaelic poems, The Kiltartan Poetry Book, appeared in 1919 and was followed by Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (1920), containing valuable material for anthropologists and poets. Because of her tireless activities on behalf of the Irish theater, she has been called the "godmother of the Abbey Theatre, " and George Bernard Shaw referred to her as its "charwoman. " Gregory died on May 22, 1932.
(Lady Augusta Gregorys Gods and Fighting Men preserves ...)
(IN the 520 pages of this book you will find the eleven bo...)
(This material collected over a period of more than twenty...)
(Spreading the News is a short one-act comic play by Lady ...)
(GODS AND FIGHTING MEN: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan ...)
Quotes from others about the person
Of her contribution to his art Yeats wrote, "Lady Gregory helped me . .. in every play of mine where there is dialect, and sometimes where there is not. "
In 1881 she married Sir William Gregory of Coole Park (an estate near Gort), member of Parliament, former governor of Ceylon, and a friend of the English novelist Anthony Trollope. Their only son, the artist Robert Gregory, was shot down over Italy in World War I; he was memorialized in several poems by William Butler Yeats ("An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, " among others).
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