The Golden Helmet' and 'The Green Helmet'

William Butler Yeats's Helmet plays (The Green Helmet, in verse, and its earlier prose version The Golden Helmet) are part of the author's cycle of plays dealing with the life and death of the legendary Irish hero Cuchulain. First conceived in 1907, in the aftermath of the riots at the Abbey Theatre over J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World, the Helmet plays were written at a crucial turning point in Yeats's early career: politically, his disillusionment with Irish cultural nationalism was growing; professionally, he was beginning to separate himself in bitterness from the day-to-day operation of the Abbey; and aesthetically, he was continuing to incorporate his interest in the Japanese Noh tradition into his own dramatic vision. All of these developments in Yeats's life and work are visible in the Helmet plays. This Cornell Yeats volume traces the evolution of the Helmet plays from the first versions of The Golden Helmet, published in prose in 1908, to the revision into verse in The Green Helmet, which appeared in 1910. All of the existing manuscript materials for the play-including the author's autograph manuscripts, revised proofs, and printed editions marked in the author's hand-are either reproduced photographically or transcribed in this scholarly edition. The edition also includes a census of the manuscripts, editor's notes, and an introduction outlining the history of the play's composition, production, and publication. This edition makes visible the complex evolution of these texts during pivotal years in Yeats's career.Yeats, W. B. is the author of 'The Golden Helmet' and 'The Green Helmet'', published 2008 under ISBN 9780801447044 and ISBN 0801447046.