little of the influence of Synge in his three plays of the Black North, but when he turns to Galway in "Red Turf," it is but natural that, writing of other than his own people, he should write in a speech that has in it an echo of that of him who has transmuted this speech into prose of the most beautiful rhythm that English dramatic prose has known. The Bible is the book of books in Ulster, and there is no page of Mr. Mayne's Ulster plays but shows him acquainted with its great rhythms. Mr. Boyle, skillful artificer of situation, and truthful depicter of character that he is, and Mr. Colum, too, for all his closeness to the earth, are now and then betrayed, Mr. Boyle more often than now and then, into the English of the newspaper or of the public speaker; but the English of Mr. Mayne is all but always an unworn English, an English used freshly, or if with reminiscences in it, reminiscences of the seventeenth-century English that has survived in the Bible or in the memory of the folk from the time of King James.
Mr. Mayne has, then, style, and his dialogue is living speech; he has knowledge of the people of North Ireland, earnestness and sincerity; and having these qualities, he has more that is precious to art than have most of the dramatists his countrymen. There is no consistent reading of life in his plays, no great power over the unrolling of plot, but perhaps these will come with the years. An actor himself, he knows the stage; and this knowledge has given him power over situation. Once he learns to lead situation into situation, once he ripens into fuller knowledge of life, Mr. Mayne will be a dramatist to reckon with, indeed.
