...Bitter Mystery TAKASHI SUZUKI When Yeats asked his most critical question in 'The Man and the Echo", Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? that particular play in his mind was, of course, Cathleen ni Houlihan, especially its first performance...

...justifiable—about his earlier idealism, although its major concern lies elsewhere. Two rueful lines in it— "Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?"— recall the humane spirit of Yeats's "Easter, 1916" but omit any positive note concerning the poet's...

...unacknowledged legislators of the world':36 Poetry makes nothing happen. Muldoon's Wystan calls Yeats's question Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? 'crass, rhetorical posturing', declaring that the answer is 'Certainly not'. Wystan goes on to a lyrical,...

..."and even poor me shall not be forgotten". Yeats, on his death-bed, thirty-seven years later, asked: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? On the evidence of the witnesses I have cited, (and others we shall consider) we can safely assume...

...preoccupation it demands. However, three decades later, in "Man and Echo", he was still asking himself: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? It was true, all these years earlier, that he took pleasure not just in expressing emotions but in...

...generation of the rebels of 1916. This was a thought that troubled Yeats on his deathbed when he wrote: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? It probably did. In any case, both revolts were symbolic and sacrificial ritual acts. As in the case...

...preoccupation it demands. However, three decades later, in "Man and Echo", he was still asking himself: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? It was true, all these years earlier, that he took pleasure not just in expressing emotions but in...

...Rising. The compunction evident here is to re-emerge in late poems like 'The Man and the Echo' — 'Did that play of mine send out / Certain men the English shot?' But no final position is reached. In 'Under Ben Bulben' we find him feverishly reciting Mitchel's prayer...

...('Collected Poems', p. 393) in 1938 with its record of self-questioning in the sleepless hours of night: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? Some critics had reservations about the dramatic qualities of the play; and while others recognised...

...Ulster and Connacht. The poet later worried that his play may have inspired some young men to die for Ireland: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? But when it was given its first performance in l899. it outraged conservative Catholics and there was...