Critical Companion to William Butler Yeats by Ross David A

Author:Ross, David A. [Ross, David A.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

with Laura playing the role of vivien ( MM 35).

(1928)

Yeats included Time and the Witch Vivien in The

Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), but

see Part iii, sophocles.

otherwise chose not to reprint the extract.

Time and the Witch Vivien appears in The Vari-

orum Edition of the Poems of W. B. Yeats (see 720–

722). Vivien and Time appears in full in David R.

Sophocles’ ‘Oedipus at Colonus’ Clark’s W. B. Yeats and the Theatre of Desolate Real-

(1934)

ity (see 23–48). Clark comments that Vivien and

Time “shows us Yeats as he was before ireland and

the occult possessed him” (6). He finds in the early

see Part iii, sophocles.

play the genesis of numerous themes and images

central to Yeats’s mature work, and he proposes

teNNysoN’s “Merlin and vivien” as the play’s most

Time and the Witch Vivien

obvious inspiration (71–74).

DRaMaTis PERsoNaE: vivien, Time.

(1889)

FiRsT PUBLiCaTioN: the wAnDerings of

oisin AnD other poeMs, Kegan Paul, Trench, and

Time and the Witch Vivien is a revised fragment

Co., London, January 1889.

from Yeats’s unpublished two-act play Vivien and

Time, which he wrote between the fall of 1882

sYnopsIs

and January 1884 ( Desolate Reality 67; CL1 129). it

in a marble-flagged and pillared room, vivien

initiates one of Yeats’s most enduring themes: the

peers into a fountain and congratulates her-

battle against time itself. Under the cover of her

self on her beauty and her “power in spells and

own persiflage, vivien attempts one of the most

secret rites.” she senses some “fierce magician”

naked gambits of temporal rebellion in an oeuvre

approaching, but hears only the “wavering steps”

full of such gambits. as stated in a twice-repeated

of an old man. Time enters in the guise of an old

2    Unicorn from the Stars, The

peddler carrying scythe, hour-glass, and black bag.

acterization. The five-act sprawl of the earlier play

vivien asks him to sit, but he neither rests nor

is thus brought under tighter control, but breadth

sits. she asks what his bag contains. He responds,

and intensity of emotion are lost. The most sig-

“Grey hairs and crutches, crutches and grey hairs,

nificant revision concerns the nature of the pro-

/ Mansions of memories and mellow thoughts /

tagonist. Where Paul Ruttledge is a commanding

Where dwell the minds of old men having peace.

and messianic romantic hero, Martin Hearne is a

. . .” vivien wants none of these. He suggests she

visionary naïf, not quite sure of his own powers or

may buy them some day, but she cries “Never!”

purpose. in a note to The Unicorn from the Stars,

she offhandedly lays the hour-glass on its side,

Yeats explains that he had come “to dislike a cen-

and Time turns it right side up. she offers to

tral character so arid and so dominating. We can-

buy the hour-glass, but it is not for sale. vivien

not sympathize with a man who sets his anger at

has heard that the old man is a “gambler and a

once lightly and confidently to overthrow the order

player / at chances and at moments with man-

of the world; but our hearts can go out to him, as

kind,” and offers to roll dice for the hour-glass.

i think, if he speak with some humility, so far as

Time throws double sixes. vivien alleges that

his daily self

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