Broken Glass and Batoned Crowds

The production in 1902 of Cathleen Ni Houlihan was a key moment in the Anglo-Irish literary revival. It was a play whose authorship was publicly attributed to W.B. Yeats but which, apart from the character of Cathleen Ni Houlihan herself, was in fact largely the work of Lady Gregory, collaboration between authors being common in the early days of the revival. ¹ Its significance lay in the fact that it signalled the high-water mark of the rapprochement — roughly from 1899 to 1904 — between the revival and the generally more Catholic and certainly more pro-Irish language Irish Ireland.