Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Wayne K. Chapman • Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Sources: “The Priest's Soul” in Ancient Legends of Ireland (ed. Lady Wilde, 1887) and in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (ed. W. B. Yeats, 1888)
- Yeats's Prefaces
- The Hour-Glass in Prose (1903–1904; first version)
- The Hour–Glass in Prose (1903–1937; incorporating Yeats's revisions)
- The Hour-Glass in Verse (1913–1916; first “mixed” version)
- The Hour–Glass in Verse (1913–1953; final “mixed” version)
- Notes (in two sections, Prose and Verse Versions)
- Appendix A: “The Reform of the Theatre” by W. B. Yeats
- Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews
The Hour-Glass in Verse (1913–1916; first “mixed” version)
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Wayne K. Chapman • Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Sources: “The Priest's Soul” in Ancient Legends of Ireland (ed. Lady Wilde, 1887) and in Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry (ed. W. B. Yeats, 1888)
- Yeats's Prefaces
- The Hour-Glass in Prose (1903–1904; first version)
- The Hour–Glass in Prose (1903–1937; incorporating Yeats's revisions)
- The Hour-Glass in Verse (1913–1916; first “mixed” version)
- The Hour–Glass in Verse (1913–1953; final “mixed” version)
- Notes (in two sections, Prose and Verse Versions)
- Appendix A: “The Reform of the Theatre” by W. B. Yeats
- Appendix B: Contemporary Reviews
Summary
(Base text used: Mask)*
* See “Yeats's Prefaces” (p. xxxi) for the unique introductory note in The Mask.
The following printing is used to establish a starting point from which to note the progress of revisions that Yeats made in particular copies of texts in his personal library—
Mask The Mask: A Quarterly Journal of the Art of the Theatre 5.4 (April 1913), Florence, Italy.
In addition, annotated copies of the following works provided copy texts for Yeats's slight revision of the play after 1914 (keyed to Catherine Phillips's “Census of Manuscripts” in “The Hour-Glass”: Manuscript Materials [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) pp. xvii and to Wayne K. Chapman's Yeats's Poetry in the Making: “Sing Whatever Is Well Made” [London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010] pp. 55–77)—
RPP Responsibilities: Poems and a Play. Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1914. Emory(2)
ROP Responsibilities and Other Poems. London and New York: Macmillan, 1916; rev. 1917. WSU R 1917
THE HOUR GLASS
SCENE:The Wise Man's house. An Hour-glass on a stand and a big chair with a great book on a desk before it.
(Enter Pupils)
1. 1st Pupil. He said we might choose the subject for the lesson.
2. 2nd Pupil. There is none of us wise enough to do that.
3. 3nd Pupil. It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what we
4. want to know.
5. 4th Pupil.I will question him.
6. 5th Pupil. You?
7. 4th Pupil. Last night I dreamt that someone came and told me to
8. question him. I was to say to him, “you were wrong
9. to say there is no God and no soul.…maybe, if there is
10. not much of either, there is yet some tatters, some tag
11. on the wind, some rag.…so to speak of divinity, some
11. bob-tail of a god”. I will argue with him,…nonsense
12. though it be.…according to my dream, and you will see
13. how well I can argue, and what thoughts I have.
14. 1st Pupil. I'd as soon listen to dried peas in a bladder, as listen
15. to your thoughts. (Foolcomes in)
16. Fool.Give me a penny.
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- Information
- Rewriting The Hour-GlassA Play Written in Prose and Verse Versions, pp. 47 - 64Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2016