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The situation obviously lends itself to comic elaborations, and Lady Gregory misses none of her opportunities. This is a sheer invention of the theatre; it turns the play from living speech into machinery. The Canavans, however, has enough of present-day reality to make us forgive its occasional stage-Elizabethanism. On the whole, its humours gain nothing from their historical setting.
It is because the characters in the comic plays in the book are nearer the peasantry in stature and in outlook that she is so much more successful with them than with the heroes and heroines of the tragedies. She describes the former plays as "tragic comedies"; but in the first and best of them, The Canavans, it is difficult to see where the tragedy comes in.
The Canavans is really a farce of the days of Elizabeth. The principal character is a cowardly miller, who ensues nothing but his own safety in the war of loyalties and disloyalties which is destroying Ireland. He is equally afraid of the wrath of the neighbours on the one hand, and the wrath of the Government on the other.
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