Meldon, Maurice. Aisling. A Dream Analysis by Maurice Meldon. With a Foreword by Seamus Kelly. First Edition. Dublin, Progress House, 1959. 18 x 12 cm. 80 pages. Original paper wrappers. Soft covers. Very good condition. Wrappers a little worn. Internally clean. Name of previous owner on front wrapper.

Meldon, Maurice George (1926-58), playwright, was born 11 May 1926 in Dublin. In 1948 he won a Radio Éireann play competition with ‘Song of the parakeet’ and followed this up with a one-act tragedy, ‘One brave day’, which was staged in 1949, and by ‘Johnny’, also written for the radio. In 1948 he played with Hugh Leonard in an amateur production of ‘Crabbed youth and age’ by Lennox Robinson. Robinson hailed him as a playwright of great promise and in 1951 helped to persuade the Abbey to stage the political allegory ‘House under green shadows’, a study of the declining days of an Anglo-Irish family. The production was not popular and was withdrawn after a week, though one Dublin newspaper selected it as the best play of the year. Hugh Leonard, a strong supporter of Meldon’s work, thought it too slender and derivative and not well served by Robinson’s over-enthusiastic praise; Robert Hogan also terms it overwritten, florid melodrama. Meldon’s next play, ‘The halcyon horseman’, a satirical romp among the Fianna, was accepted by the Abbey but never performed. He therefore gave his next two plays to the 37 Theatre Club, managed by Nora Lever (d. 1996). ‘Aisling’ (performed 4 April 1953) is a socio-political satire, set during a stylised time of the Troubles; Cathleen Ní Houlihan is rescued from British soldiers who are auctioning her off, and led through different kinds of Ireland (as seen by W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge , G. B. Shaw , and Sean O’Casey) before being sold by the county council. With thirty-one roles, it called for a large cast, though the young Norman Rodway (qv) played three different parts. Leonard called it ‘savage, tragic, hilarious, surrealist’ (Ir. Times, 13 Nov. 1958); Robert Hogan, ‘wry and salutary’ (Hogan, 18); and Robert Welch, ‘more energetic theatrical review than drama’ (Welch, 362). His next play, ‘Purple path to the poppy field’ (performed about 1954), was a one-act allegory castigating post-independent Ireland, which Leonard termed ‘a royal jest at the expense of the Synge lovers’ (Ir. Times, 13 Nov. 1958).
Meldon was not, however, rewarded with popular success, and wrote nothing for the next four years. He took a job in the Department of Defence and married (10 October 1955) Bairbre MacCann. They lived at 18 Cremore Drive, Glasnevin, and soon had two daughters. In 1958 he emerged with ‘No moon for the hunter’, a version of the Diarmuid and Grainne story, with which he was uncharacteristically excited (his demeanour was generally modest and imperturbable). Leonard agreed with his assessment that he had knocked all the trimmings out of his work and found it spare and professional. However, the Abbey declined it and Meldon died, his promise unfulfilled, in the Mater Hospital, Dublin, on 11 November 1958 after sustaining head injuries from falling off his bicycle. Only three of his plays have been published: Purple path to the poppy field (1954), Aisling (1959), and House under green shadows (1962).

• Keywords: Irish Literature · Literature · Modern Literature · Plays
• Language: English
• First edition
• Inventory Number: 104467AB

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