Plays of a Spiritual Anguish: an Analysis of Three of W.B. Yeats’s Most Representative Irish Plays
Plays of a Spiritual Anguish: an Analysis of Three of W.B. Yeats’s Most Representative Irish Plays

Summary/Abstract: Yeats’s Irish plays are part of the efforts of the Anglo-Irish to devise an Irish national identity that would include people of all denominations and people of both Celtic and Saxon descent. The three plays that I examine in some detail in this article focus on the shared spiritual aspects of Irish culture and history: on folk beliefs and superstitions, on the ardent wish for Ireland’s independence, on the memory of the Golden age of Ireland, an age in which the country was semi-independent from Great Britain and could boast enlightened and able leaders. All these aspects entail a spiritual anguish experienced by a people usurped by another nation as well as by a faith and a world-view characterized by parochialism.

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