An Anglo-Irish poet midwifed a national theatre
William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) stood at the center of twentieth-century literature and the Irish Literary Revival. Protestant, Dublin-born, Sligo-haunted, he helped build a national theatre while his verse moved from misty myth toward harder political ground after 1900.
The Yeats line ran back to Jervis Yeats, a Williamite soldier and linen merchant who died in 1712; a 1773 marriage into the landed Butlers of Kildare added the middle name. His father John abandoned law for painting, and his mother, Susan Pollexfen, came from a Sligo milling and shipping family. Sligo became what the poet called his country of the heart, and John joked that marrying a Pollexfen had given the sea cliffs a tongue. The whole family was artistic: brother Jack became a noted painter, and sisters Lily and Lollie joined the Arts and Crafts movement.
Schooling was patchy. The family moved to England in 1867, and at the Godolphin School from 1877 a report judged him only fair, strongest in Latin and very poor at spelling; he may have been dyslexic and tone deaf, but loved biology. Back in Dublin from 1880, he haunted his father's studio, met the city's writers, and saw his first poems printed in the Dublin University Review in 1885 while attending the Metropolitan School of Art.
His earliest efforts, one about a magician enthroned in central Asia, leaned on Shelley, Spenser and the Pre-Raphaelites, and the critic Charles Johnston found them utterly unIrish. He soon turned to Irish myth and to Blake, and Oscar Wilde's theory of masks shaped plays such as The Player Queen and Deirdre. He became chief playwright of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1897 and championed younger poets including Ezra Pound.
Born into the Protestant Ascendancy just as its power was draining away through Parnell, home rule and rising Catholic nationalism, he spent his life exploring Irish identity. With Synge and Lady Gregory he founded the Abbey Theatre, won the Nobel Prize in 1923 and served two terms in the Free State Senate. The Wild Swans at Coole and The Tower mark his mature phase.
Source: W. B. Yeats
