JOHN DEVITT,
Madam, - In his otherwise informative piece on the riots which greeted the first production of Sean O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars in 1926, Roy Foster tells us that Yeats's words of rebuke to the audience were "completely inaudible".
My late mother was in the Abbey on the night in question. Having heard what Yeats said, she left the theatre convinced that the poet's words would prompt a violent reaction: "I thought there would be murder done".
In his very useful book, Sean O'Casey: The Man I Knew (1965), our near neighbour Gabriel Fallon, another reliable witness, makes it quite clear that Yeats was heard. Incidentally it was to Fallon that Yeats addressed the remark quoted by Foster: "Fallon, I am sending for the police and this time it will be their own police!"
On the following page (p.93) Fallon describes Yeats's delivery of his speech: "That night at the Abbey Theatre even the finest of actors would have stood transfixed in admiration of Yeats's performance. Every gesture, every pause, every inflection, was geared to a tolerance calculated to meet an angry mob."
Clearly Fallon was not describing a mime or a ballet-dancer. The conclusion is inescapable: the great poet's words were not "completely inaudible". Some of his words, perhaps all of them, were heard. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN DEVITT, Sonesta, Malahide, Co Dublin.