The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays

by Lady Gregory, W.B. Yeats

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Classics

68 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 25, 2009

About the author

Irish playwright Lady Isabella Augusta Persse Gregory wrote a number of short plays, including Spreading the News (1904) for the Abbey theater, which she founded and directed from 1904 to 1928.

This Irish dramatist and folklorist with William Butler Yeats and other persons co-founded the Irish literary theatre and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books retelling stories taken from Irish mythology.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short plays co-written by W.B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory. They’re fine but none of them really set my world afire. The best is probably The Hourglass, which I’d already read in short story form in another Yeats collection.

My next book: Sixteen Poems

[T.J. Gillespie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three plays. One is fair, one is passable, one is unforgivably weak. None rivals his verse.

The Unicorn from the Stars, at three acts, is the longest. Mostly the work of Lady Gregory, is an uneven treatment of religion, politics, and work. It has the best lines, but it is a mess.

The second piece and perhaps the most coherent, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, is a one act political allegory set in the rebellion of 1798. Ireland, rendered as an old woman who has lost her land, and demands total commitment. Indeed, she demands sacrifice: "If anyone would give me help he must give me himself, he must give me all."

The Old Woman's call for martyrdom echoes Yeats's more ambiguous act of remembrance in Easter 1916:

"They shall be remembered for ever,
They shall be alive for ever,
They shall be speaking for ever,
The people shall hear them for ever."


The final offering, The Hourglass, can be ignored all together.

[Matthew Hinman · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting premise, but not fulfilling in its execution.