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    The Shadowy Waters
    The Shadowy Waters
    The Shadowy Waters
    Ebook24 pages19 minutes

    The Shadowy Waters

    By W B Yeats

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    William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an instrumental figure in the "Irish Literary Revival" of the 20th Century that redefined Irish writing. His father's love of reading aloud exposed Yeats early on to William Shakespeare, the Romantic poets and the pre-Raphaelites, and developed an interest in Irish myths and folklore. He was a complex man, who struggled between beliefs in the strange and supernatural, and scorn for modern science. He was intrigued by the idea of mysticism, yet had little regard for Christianity. He spent much of his life seeking out a philosophical system to resolve the conflict he felt between his nature and life. "The Shadowy Waters" was a play that Yeats began writing as a boy, possibly as early as 1885, and spent years reshaping and revising until its final acting version in 1906, which was performed at the Abbey Theatre.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateJan 1, 2011
    ISBN9781420921717
    The Shadowy Waters
    Author

    W B Yeats

    William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in County Dublin. With his much-loved early poems such as 'The Stolen Child', and 'He Remembers Forgotten Beauty', he defined the Celtic Twilight mood of the late-Victorian period and led the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yet his style evolved constantly, and he is acknowledged as a major figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. T. S. Eliot described him as 'one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them'. W. B. Yeats died in 1939.

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      Book preview

      The Shadowy Waters - W B Yeats

      THE SHADOWY WATERS

      (ACTING VERSION)

      1911

      BY W. B. YEATS

      A Digireads.com Book

      Digireads.com Publishing

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4171-5

      Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-2171-7

      This edition copyright © 2011

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      PERSONS IN THE PLAY

      THE SHADOWY WATERS

      PERSONS IN THE PLAY

      Forgael Sailors

      Aibric Dectora

      THE SHADOWY WATERS

      A mast and a great sail, a large tiller, a poop rising several feet above the stage, and from the overhanging stern a lanthorn hanging. The sea or sky is represented by a semicircular cloth of which nothing can be seen except a dark abyss. The persons move but little. Some sailor, are discovered crouching by the sail. Forgael is asleep and Aibric standing by the tiller on the raised poop.

      FIRST SAILOR. It is long enough, and too long, Forgael has been bringing us through the waste places of the great sea.

      SECOND SAILOR. We did not meet with a ship to make a prey of these eight weeks, or any shore or island to plunder or to harry. It is a hard thing, age to be coming on me, and I not to get the chance of doing a robbery that would enable me to live quiet and honest to the end of my lifetime.

      FIRST. SAILOR. We are out since the new moon. What is worse again, it is the way we are in a ship, the barrels empty and my throat shrivelled with drought, and nothing to quench it but water only.

      FORGAEL [in his sleep].

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