Mask The Mask: A Quarterly Journal of the Art of the Theatre 5.4 (April 1913), Florence, Italy.

HG 1914 The Hour-Glass. Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1914.

RPP Responsibilities: Poems and a Play. Dundrum: The Cuala Press, 1914.

ROP Responsibilities and Other Poems. London and New York: Macmillan, 1916.

PPV Plays in Prose and Verse. London: Macmillan, 1922; and New York, 1924.

CPl The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. London: Macmillan, 1934; and New York, 1935.

CPl 1952 The Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats. London: Macmillan, 1952; and New York, 1953.

THE HOUR-GLASS

The stage is brought out into the orchestra so as to leave a wide space in front of the stage curtain. Pupils come in and stand before the stage curtain, which is still closed. One Pupil carries a book.

1. 1. First Pupil. He said we might choose the subject for

2. 2. the lesson.

3. 3. Second Pupil. There is none of us wise enough to do

4. 4. that.

5. 5. Third Pupil. It would need a great deal of wisdom to

6. 6. know what it is we want to know.

7. 7. Fourth Pupil. I will question him.

8. 8. Fifth Pupil. You?

9. 9. Fourth Pupil. Last night I dreamt that some one came

10. 10. and told me to question him. I was to say to him,

11. 11. ‘You were wrong to say there is no God and no

12. 12. soul—maybe, if there is not much of either, there

13. 13. is yet some tatters, some tag on the wind—so to

14. 14. speak—some rag upon a bush, some bob-tail of a

15. 15. god’. I will argue with him—nonsense though it be

16. 16. —according to my dream, and you will see how

17. 17. well I can argue, and what thoughts I have.

18. 18. First Pupil. I'd soon as listen to dried peas in a bladder

19. 19. as listen to your thoughts.

20. Teigue the Fool comes in.

21. 20. Fool. Five me a penny.

22. 21. Second Pupil. Let us choose a subject by chance.