As Lady Gregory had restricted herself, until recently, in the forms of modern life which she wrote of and in the kinds of people she selected to write of, so, too, she had restricted herself, until recently, in the motives she considered. It is true that the motive most recurrent in her plays, that of fear of the opinion of the neighbor, an attitude probably sprung of the clan system, is dominant in Irish life; and it is equally true that the motive most notably absent, love, was until yesterday far from a dominant motive in the Irish life that Lady Gregory presents: yet there are many other motives that, in true comedy, and even in farcical comedy, might well have place. That these motives are not there is, I think, not only that Lady Gregory, self-effacingly, put into her plays what was wanted to make them foils to the plays of Mr. Yeats and Synge, but also because of the practice of one type of gentlewoman in literature, of which Jane Austen is characteristic. And yet the mere mention of Jane Austen increases the wonderment that Lady Gregory has not written of people of every condition in her neighborhood, whether that be London or Dublin or Gort, as Miss Austen did of people of every condition in her neighborhood, whether that be Steventon or Bath or Chawton. It can hardly be said, even, that "Grania" her last play, is a play about love. In her note to the play, Lady Gregory declares, "Love itself, with its shadow Jealousy, is the true protagonist!" And yet, I think it is Jealousy only that is the true protagonist. There is much talk about love, but it is not from love, but from jealousy that the action of the play arises. Among all this talk about love, among many eloquent sayings about love, true readings of love, there stands out most clearly in my memory this part of a speech of Finn, a speech uttered before Grania had turned from him to Diarmuid--
And as for youngsters, they do not know how to love because there is always some to-morrow's love possible in the shadow of the love of to-day. It is only the old it goes through and through entirely because they know all the last honey of the summer-time has come to its ferment in their cup, and there is no new summer coming to meet them forever.