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Thomas Keohler
      
Life
[?-?]; Dublin Book of Irish Verse, nos. 444-447; no bio-dates;
Song [I would swathe thee in hues of orient, Queen/Or
sun-dancing sheen of the waves ..]; Supplication [...
O priestess of the silent hills ... Lead me unto thy secret place ..];
The Town Beyond the Trees;Wind and Sea. DBIV
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Notes
Criticised Synge: In a review in Dana for March 1905,
presumably written by Thomas Keohler, the play [The Well of the Saints]
was criticised for being based on a supernatural event, for, says Keohler,
the very fact of a play being based on an incident of this nature
precludes it in a measure from any vital connection with the tendencies
and developments of modern life and thought. He calls this an incongruity
on the part of the dramatist [and] deplores [...] the effect on a gullible
audience[:] As we all know, there are thousands of people in this
country who believe implicitly in the possibility of such a miracle taking
place in this particular manner, and if the play should ever happen to
be produced in rural districts, it would most likely tend to strengthen
this belief, and in so far as it did so, would be allying itself to the
already too numerous forces in the land opposed to intellectual progress.
(Dana, No. 11, p.351; cited in Weldon Thorton, Synge and the
Western Mind, 1979, pp.128-29.)
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