At the Abbey Theatre

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1912from The Green Helmet and Other Poems14 lines

Imitated from Ronsard

Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case.When we are high and airy hundreds sayThat if we hold that flight they’ll leave the place,While those same hundreds mock another dayBecause we have made our art of common things,So bitterly, you’d dream they longed to lookAll their lives through into some drift of wings.You’ve dandled them and fed them from the bookAnd know them to the bone; impart to us⁠—We’ll keep the secret⁠—a new trick to please.Is there a bridle for this ProteusThat turns and changes like his draughty seas?Or is there none, most popular of men,But when they mock us that we mock again?

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

Yeats asks Douglas Hyde how to please a fickle theatre audience.

A sonnet addressed to Douglas Hyde under his Irish pen-name, "Craoibhin Aoibhin". Yeats sets out the Abbey Theatre's problem. When its plays are lofty and poetic, the audience threatens to leave; when they deal with "common things", the same people mock them and long for high romance. Hyde, the "most popular of men", knows the Irish public "to the bone", so Yeats asks him for his secret. He wonders whether any bridle can hold this shape-shifting crowd, or whether the only answer is to mock them back.

Lines to remember

Is there a bridle for this Proteus

But when they mock us that we mock again?

Line by line

Lines 1 to 7The audience's complaints
Yeats appeals to his friend as if in a court of law: "look into our case". When the theatre is "high and airy", hundreds threaten to leave; when it makes art "of common things", the same hundreds mock it and long, bitterly, for "some drift of wings", the dreamy poetry they had once rejected.
Lines 8 to 10Hyde's secret
Hyde has "dandled" the public like a baby and "fed them from the book", and knows them "to the bone". Yeats asks him, with a conspirator's aside ("We'll keep the secret"), for "a new trick to please".
Lines 11 to 14Bridle or mockery
The crowd becomes Proteus, the Greek sea god who kept changing shape to avoid capture. Yeats asks whether any bridle can hold him. The closing couplet offers the only alternative he can see: when they mock us, "we mock again".

Themes

Art and the public

The complaint is that the audience wants the opposite of whatever it is given. Poetic plays are too "high and airy"; plays of "common things" leave them yearning for "some drift of wings". Yeats presents the public as a Proteus, endlessly changing, and hints that no playwright can win by trying to please it.

Friendship and rivalry

The tone towards Hyde is warm but teasing. "Most popular of men" is both a compliment and a gentle dig: Hyde had won the crowd that Yeats could not. The request for "a new trick" half admits envy, and the final line suggests Yeats would rather fight than flatter.

Context

The poem was added to The Green Helmet and Other Poems in the enlarged Macmillan edition of 1912. Douglas Hyde wrote under the Irish pen-name An Craoibhin Aoibhinn, "the pleasant little branch". He founded the Gaelic League in 1893 and later became the first President of Ireland, and his translations of Irish folk songs had won a wide and devoted readership.

The Abbey Theatre opened in Dublin in 1904, with Yeats as one of its directors. Its audiences were quick to take offence: in 1907 Synge's The Playboy of the Western World provoked riots. The poem reflects Yeats's weariness with a public that attacked the theatre whichever way it turned.

Form

A Shakespearean sonnet: fourteen lines of iambic pentameter rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The three quatrains lay out the problem and the plea, and the couplet delivers the sting. Rhyming "us" with "Proteus" gives a comic chime in the middle of the appeal.