Deirdre by William Butler Yeats

First produced: 1906; first published, 1907

Type of work: Drama

Type of plot: Tragedy

Time of plot: Antiquity

Locale: Ireland

Principal characters

• First Musician,
• Fergus, an old man
• Naoise, a young king
• Deirdre, his queen
• Conchubar, the old king of Uladh

The Story:

Two musicians converse in a woodland house. The First Musician rehearses the background of the play: King Conchubar finds Deirdre as a young child in the wood, hires a nurse to care for her, and, as she attains womanhood, falls in love with her. Just before Conchubar is to wed Deirdre, Naoise, a young man, climbs the hill to the woodland house where Deirdre is sequestered and abducts her.

Fergus, an old man, enters the house and informs the musicians that Deirdre and Naoise are to arrive momentarily. They have been in self-exile, hiding from Conchubar’s jealous wrath. Having softened, the old king invites them to return. Fergus insists that King Conchubar has overcome his jealousy and forgives the young lovers. When the musicians express skepticism, Fergus grows angry. Although he insists that he will dance for pure joy at the change in King Conchubar, the First Musician notices forbidding-looking men moving around outside.

Upon entering the house, Deirdre and Fergus express apprehension that King Conchubar did not arrange to welcome them. Fergus conjectures that Conchubar will appear to welcome his guests himself, and he observes to Naoise that Deirdre’s uneasiness is understandable: Having been reared outside polite society, she does not understand the inviolability of the king’s vow. Surrendering his own uneasiness to Fergus’s assurance of safety, Naoise tells Deirdre that it is ungrateful of them to doubt their host. Fergus remarks that he believes the best of everyone, and that such belief is capable of influencing people to behave well.

Deirdre speaks quickly to the First Musician, and from his veiled remarks she divines that Conchubar intends to kill Naoise and force her to become his unwilling queen. Deirdre’s sudden anguished cry attracts Naoise, who admonishes her not to criticize the king. Reminding her of Conchubar’s oath, he instructs Deirdre that, “when we give a word and take a word/ Sorrow is put away, past wrong forgotten.” Fergus pragmatically reminds the lovers that the house stands in the stronghold of King Conchubar’s power and flight is impossible. Realizing that she and Naoise are trapped, Deirdre exclaims that she will buy their freedom by mutilating herself, to “spoil this beauty that brought misery/ And houseless wandering on the man I love.”

Naoise urges her to do nothing, for, indeed, their fate is unalterable. As if to punctuate Naoise’s fatalism, a messenger arrives and announces that Conchubar has prepared supper and awaits the company of his guests. The faithful Fergus gushingly confesses that he, too, had suspected Conchubar’s intentions, but that all is well again. Naoise gently chides himself for doubting Conchubar. Deirdre, who knows better, calmly notes that the messenger did not finish delivering his message.

Only Deirdre and Fergus are being invited to supper, the messenger concludes; Naoise, “the traitor that bore off the queen,” is unwelcome. The trap is sprung and Conchubar’s treachery revealed. Naoise quickly discovers that the woods around the house swarm with Conchubar’s soldiers: Flight and fight are equally futile. In a defiant gesture of self-control, he and Deirdre join in a game of chess.

Conchubar appears at the window, then slips back into the night. Naoise chases him, presuming that Conchubar flees from fear, but Deirdre snatches a knife from the First Musician, pretending that she will help Naoise in his flight. When Conchubar makes his appearance in the room, he gloats that Naoise is entangled in the net set to trap him. Conchubar first sternly warns Deirdre that he will kill Naoise unless she consents to walk into his house, in full public view, and as of her own free will. Deirdre beseeches Conchubar to allow her and Naoise to go free, emphasizing, naïvely, that his subjects will praise and extol him for his forgiveness. Realizing that Conchubar is adamant in his refusal to let her go, Deirdre then poignantly instructs Naoise to depart. “I will not live long, Naoise,” she says, urging him to leave and forget her. Deirdre begs Conchubar to accept that she is to blame for the wrong he suffered. Naoise’s strength and fighting skill could prove useful to the kingdom. Even while Deirdre is begging for Naoise’s life, he is taken outside to be slaughtered by the impassive and vindictive king.

When Deirdre is confronted with the bloody evidence of Naoise’s death, she staggers, trembling, over to the musicians. Conchubar brutishly commands her to come to his room: “The traitor who has carried off my wife/ No longer lives./ For he that called himself your husband is dead.” At the peak of her grief, Deirdre feigns consent to Conchubar’s command, ambiguously asserting, “It is but wisdom to do willingly/ What has to be done.” Conchubar, for all his craftiness, imagines that Deirdre is weary of opposing him and will surrender to him. Deirdre then appeals to the king’s vanity, asking to be allowed to gaze one last time upon Naoise’s body in private. As she slips behind the curtain, where she takes her life, Conchubar boasts to Fergus, “Deirdre is mine.” Conchubar’s delight turns to outrage, however, when he sees that she killed herself. Bitterly, he declares that he acted wisely in choosing Deirdre for his queen and correctly in preventing a boy lover from taking her from him.

Bibliography

Bushrui, S. B. Yeats’s Verse-Plays: The Revisions, 1900-1910. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1965. An exhaustive treatment of Deirdre, covering all aspects of its composition and production. Bushrui’s examination of Yeats’s revisions strongly underscores the influence Deirdre continued to exert upon Yeats’s imagination.

Doggett, Rob. “Setting Ireland’s House in Order: Performances of Gender and Nationhood in Cathleen ni Houlihan and Deirdre.” In Deep-Rooted Things: Empire and Nation in the Poetry and Drama of William Butler Yeats. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Focuses on selected plays and poems which reflect Yeats’s ambivalence toward Irish nationalism in the years when Ireland was making the transition from British colony to partially independent nation. Argues that nationalism for Yeats is a series of masks that he adapts, rejects, and re-creates.

Howes, Marjorie, and John Kelly, eds. The Cambridge Companion to W. B. Yeats. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Collection of essays providing an overview of Yeats’s work in all genres, including a discussion of Yeats and the drama.

Jeffares, A. Norman, and A. S. Knowland. A Commentary on the Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1975. Provides detailed production information, including names of various casts of actors, performance dates, and a bibliography of printings of the play. Includes useful literary background to the characters taken from analyses of traditional texts.

Knowland, A. S. W. B. Yeats, Dramatist of Vision. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1983. An inclusive study of Yeats’s plays, in which one chapter offers an extended textual analysis. Readers might disagree with some of Knowland’s dogmatic judgments, but his steady analysis is generally illuminating.

Richman, David. Passionate Action: Yeats’s Mastery of Drama. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000. Draws on Yeats’s correspondence and the many drafts of his plays to chronicle his work as a playwright and theatrical producer.

Taylor, Richard. A Reader’s Guide to the Plays of W. B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1984. Introductory essay that glosses the plot, characterization, construction, language, and stage imagery of Deirdre. Analyses of Yeats’s other plays add to a broader knowledge of his aesthetic.

Yeats, W. B. Deirdre: Manuscript Materials. Edited by Virginia Bartholome Rohan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004. Contains manuscripts of three substantially different versions of the play that were written through its first performance, as well as subsequent revisions that reflect what Yeats learned over the years about stage production.