always equated heroism with self-conquest, that ability of great ones under pressure to
express some emotions while battening down still others held in reserve. This was the same tragic dignity admired in the rebel leaders by the English officer who presided over their execution. By such example, these leaders and their men urged all Ireland to do likewise, to conquer and so to express selves, to recover the literal meaning of the words sinn féin.
If there was an element of play-acting involved in the Rising, men that is best understood in existential terms. "As soon as man conceives himself free, and determines to use that freedom", wrote Jean-Paul Sartre decades later, "men his work takes on the character of play". 24 The rebels' play was staged to gather an Irish audience and challenge an English one. In that sense, the Rising was a continuation of what had begun in the national theatre, which had among its audience "almost everybody who was making opinion in Ireland". 25 The early plays of the Abbey Theatre had taught that the conditions of life are open: the theatre can indeed be a place frequented by the "low" as they study alternative possibilities for themselves, including ways in which they might usurp their masters. Though it seemed to conspire with carni-valesque disorder, the playhouse also provided the necessary antidote, for it encouraged a randomly-gathered crowd to sense its growing, cohesive power. Yeats often liked to quote Victor Hugo: "in the theatre a mob becomes a people". Indeed, the theory of tragedy propounded by Yeats – as the moment when casual differences between individuals are put aside for a communal solidarity of feeling – well captures that moment. So it was fitting that the printing press on which the Proclamation of the Republic was done should have been hidden in the Abbey Theatre. Many of the Risings leaders had been initiated in theatrical methods by the Abbey: no previous Irish insurrection had been mounted in such avowedly theatrical terms. One of the first to fall wasSeán Connolly, an actor with the company whom Yeats would recall in a late poem:
Come gather round me, players all:
Come praise Nineteen-Sixteen,
Those from the pit and gallery
Or from the painted scene
That fought in the Post Office
Or round the City Hall,
Praise every man that came again,
Praise every man that fell.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
Who was the first man shot that day?
The player Connolly.
Close to the City Hall he died;
Carriage and voice had he;
He lacked those years that go with skill,
But later might have been
A famous, a brilliant figure
Before the painted scene.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen. 26
Every man and woman had been assigned a part in life: for Yeats, the question was not whether it was a good or bad one – rather it was whether he or she played it well. The actor could choose to resign the part, or to improvise as best he could in the absence of a clear set of instructions: however creative that improvisation, it would be based on a life-script appropriate to the actor's time and condition. Yeats, like Pearse, believed that eachgeneration was set its own task and that theirs must fulfil a mission to renovate Irish consciousness. This destiny weighed all the more heavily on men and women who were still young when the century turned. To have embarked on life as the twentieth century began must have filled them with a sense of a divinely-ordained task. Pearse's own philosophy of Irish history was cyclical: the 1916 Proclamation noted that six times in the previous three centuries national rights had been asserted in arms. Some generations had surpassed others and carried out their life-task, but a generation which shirked the task would condemn itself to a shameful old age.
This complex of ideas – close enough to those propagated byOrtega Y Gasset in Spain at that period 27 – reflected a sharpened notion of generation, which emerged
express some emotions while battening down still others held in reserve. This was the same tragic dignity admired in the rebel leaders by the English officer who presided over their execution. By such example, these leaders and their men urged all Ireland to do likewise, to conquer and so to express selves, to recover the literal meaning of the words sinn féin.
If there was an element of play-acting involved in the Rising, men that is best understood in existential terms. "As soon as man conceives himself free, and determines to use that freedom", wrote Jean-Paul Sartre decades later, "men his work takes on the character of play". 24 The rebels' play was staged to gather an Irish audience and challenge an English one. In that sense, the Rising was a continuation of what had begun in the national theatre, which had among its audience "almost everybody who was making opinion in Ireland". 25 The early plays of the Abbey Theatre had taught that the conditions of life are open: the theatre can indeed be a place frequented by the "low" as they study alternative possibilities for themselves, including ways in which they might usurp their masters. Though it seemed to conspire with carni-valesque disorder, the playhouse also provided the necessary antidote, for it encouraged a randomly-gathered crowd to sense its growing, cohesive power. Yeats often liked to quote Victor Hugo: "in the theatre a mob becomes a people". Indeed, the theory of tragedy propounded by Yeats – as the moment when casual differences between individuals are put aside for a communal solidarity of feeling – well captures that moment. So it was fitting that the printing press on which the Proclamation of the Republic was done should have been hidden in the Abbey Theatre. Many of the Risings leaders had been initiated in theatrical methods by the Abbey: no previous Irish insurrection had been mounted in such avowedly theatrical terms. One of the first to fall wasSeán Connolly, an actor with the company whom Yeats would recall in a late poem:
Come gather round me, players all:
Come praise Nineteen-Sixteen,
Those from the pit and gallery
Or from the painted scene
That fought in the Post Office
Or round the City Hall,
Praise every man that came again,
Praise every man that fell.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen.
Who was the first man shot that day?
The player Connolly.
Close to the City Hall he died;
Carriage and voice had he;
He lacked those years that go with skill,
But later might have been
A famous, a brilliant figure
Before the painted scene.
From mountain to mountain ride the fierce horsemen. 26
Every man and woman had been assigned a part in life: for Yeats, the question was not whether it was a good or bad one – rather it was whether he or she played it well. The actor could choose to resign the part, or to improvise as best he could in the absence of a clear set of instructions: however creative that improvisation, it would be based on a life-script appropriate to the actor's time and condition. Yeats, like Pearse, believed that eachgeneration was set its own task and that theirs must fulfil a mission to renovate Irish consciousness. This destiny weighed all the more heavily on men and women who were still young when the century turned. To have embarked on life as the twentieth century began must have filled them with a sense of a divinely-ordained task. Pearse's own philosophy of Irish history was cyclical: the 1916 Proclamation noted that six times in the previous three centuries national rights had been asserted in arms. Some generations had surpassed others and carried out their life-task, but a generation which shirked the task would condemn itself to a shameful old age.
This complex of ideas – close enough to those propagated byOrtega Y Gasset in Spain at that period 27 – reflected a sharpened notion of generation, which emerged
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