Translations, Adaptations & Collaborations

As well as writing her own plays, Lady Gregory tried her hand at translating some of Molière's plays into the Kiltartan dialect for performance on the Abbey stage. Her volume of these translations entitled The Kiltartan Molière (Maunsel, 1910) contained The Miser, The Doctor in Spite of Himself and The Rogueries of Scapin. Judging by the press reviews of the time, she was eminently successful in her efforts. Fifteen years later Mirandolina was published, and in 1928 The Would-be Gentleman and Sancho's Master were published in Three Last Plays with one of her supernatural plays, Dave. Sudermann's Teja was first performed in 1907 at the Abbey Theatre but never published. Lady Gregory collaborated with W. B. Yeats on a number of his plays, but such was her natural shyness that she would not allow her name to be put to any but The Unicorn from the Stars; although it is safe to assume that wherever the Kiltartan dialect appears in Yeats's plays, Lady Gregory had a hand. However, only that play jointly signed is included here. Among the Lady Gregory papers, now in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, is the typescript of their joint play Heads or Harps, which is here published for the first time together with an incomplete variant version. Lady Gregory also collaborated with Douglas Hyde over The Poorhouse and later with his permission completely rewrote it as The Workhouse Ward, reducing the number of characters and tightening up the plot. Her direct translations of Douglas Hyde's plays appear in Poets & Dreamers.