“The Rising of the Moon,” by Lady Gregory, is a poignant and restrained version of a trickster tale, set in Ireland in near the turn of the twentieth century. The play begins with an eerie mist of seaport fog as the sergeant and his men post wanted signs for a recently escaped political prisoner. As soon as the ragged ballad-singer “Jimmy Walsh” appears on the docks, the audience understands the ballad-singer must be the wanted man in disguise. During a brief exchange between the man and the sergeant, the man sings three different ballads, and soon the Sergeant begins to consider his own life’s route, pondering:
“If it wasn’t for the sense I have, and for my wife and family, and for me joining the force the time I did, it might be myself now would be after breaking gaol and hiding in the dark, and it might be him that’s hiding in the dark and that got out of gaol would be sitting up where I am on this barrel…"
In fact, what interests me most about this play is not the final outcome, but the means the ballad-singer uses in order to sway the sergeant. The songs the ballad-singer warbles on the wharf force a deep change of mood within the sergeant. Through lyrics and music, the ragged ballad-man seems to open a door inside the sergeant’s heart and mind. For playwright Lady Gregory, it seems as though music (art) itself exists in the world of trickster, straddling two possible worlds at once.
In his seminal book about the mythology of tricksters, Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde states,
“[T]he best way to describe [the] trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found—sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there, the god of the threshold in all forms.”
For me, this play raises several questions: what is the role of the trickster in times of political unrest? How does art function as trickster during moments of rebellion? How does the play interact with an audience or reader? Does the audience reside in the role of the sergeant, or do we journey alongside the ballad-trickster himself?
Finally, there is only one line in the entire play that an actor offers directly to the audience. In his last spoken text, the sergeant himself crosses a boundary, moves beyond the established threshold created by the world of the play, and asks the audience to consider his final thought. The sergeant himself turns into a momentary trickster at the play’s end. What is most notable about this brief play is not the tones of Irish nationalism which marked Lady Gregory’s career, but the several ways which the play itself slyly rises up. Before the sergeant uses direct address towards the audience, the ballad-singing man references his final song, describing an unknown future:
“…when the small rise up and the big fall down…when we all change places at the Rising (waves his hand and disappears) of the Moon.”
The final and titular ballad actually mirrors previous language in the play’s opening moments, when the sergeant tries to convince his police officers of the importance of their work:
Sergeant: Well, we have to do our duty in the force. Haven’t we the whole country depending on us to keep law and order? It’s those that are down would be up and those that are up would be down, if it wasn’t for us.
In the play’s beginning, the sergeant understands and even glorifies his role in suppressing those who might revolt. His ultimate course of action, however, betrays his supposed ideals of law and order. Through writing a trickster tale filled with disguise, surprise, and song, Lady Gregory offers the possibility of change. The titular ballad recounts an Irish rebellion from the previous century, and the moon doubles as a symbol in both the song and the play: for oppressed people, the desire to rise up and resist through action is not only possible, but inevitable, and with unstoppable force, like the rising of the moon.
–April Ranger
New York, 2017
April Ranger is a Brooklyn-based poet, playwright and performer. A nationally touring poet, she performed three times as a member of Boston Cantab’s National Poetry Slam team, and twice as their representative at the Individual World Poetry Slam. Her poems have appeared in Muzzle, apt, and Courage: Daring Poems For Gutsy Girls (Write Bloody 2014.) Her most recent play, The Widest Wingspan, premiered as part of the 2015 Conscious Language Festival through Poetic Theater Productions at the Wild Project.
Introduction to the Play
Playwright's Notes from Lady Gregory