Life
[?-?; née Mary Walker]; author of The Splendid Years (1955),
Abbey history ghosted by Edward Kenny. [DIW.]
Works
The Splendid Years: Recollections of M. Nic. Shiubhlaigh, as told to
Edward Kenny (Dublin: James Duffy 1955).
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Criticism
Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama in the English Language
(London: Nelson 1936), p. 177.
A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats, A New Biography (London: Hutchinson 1988), p.152.
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Notes
Lennox Robinson indicates that she was among those who resigned when Miss
Horniman proposed to pay salaries in 1905, ‘it turned the Theatre
from an enterprise undertaken for love of Ireland and dramatic art into
a "commercial" theatre. I was not unnatural that a split should
result and [with others] Maire nic Shiubhlaigh resigned’ [Abbey Theatre,
1951, p.47; cited in W. B. Yeats: A Centenary Exhibition (National
Gallery of Ireland 1965), p.80.
James W. Flannery cites passage from the penultimate page of Yeats Autobiographies, substituting Ní Shuibhlaigh’s name for ‘Miss V–’ in the Macmillan edition, ‘ I am watching Miss Nic Shuibhlaigh to find out if her inanimate movements when on stage come from a lack of experience or if she has them in life. I watched her sinking into a chair the other day to see if her body felt the size and shape of the chair before she reached it. If her body does not so feel she will never be able to act, just as she will never have grace or movement in ordinary life.’(Autobiographies, p.526). There is no reference to her in the index of the edition. (See Flannery, Yeats and the Idea of A Theatre, 1976, 1989, p.210).
Nic Shubhlaigh called Patrick Pearse - without animus or objection - ‘a bit of a poseur’. [The Splendid Years, p.145; see Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 1995, p.223-24.]
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)