Cathleen as Erie

William Butler Yeats fought for Irish Independence through his writing his entire life. The Abbey theatre became one of his most effective weapons in Yeats’s war against the English colonial force. People would not only attend the theatre to experience Yeats’s plays, going to the theatre became a political statement, like playing the Irish game hurling instead of the popular English sport soccer. Of all the plays performed at the Abbey Theatre, once known as the National Theatre for Irish Independence, Cathleen ni Houlihan illustrated Yeats’s opinions on the plague of the English in Ireland. By analyzing Yeats’s physical depiction, dialogue of Cathleen ni Houlihan as a figure of Ireland, the readers gain insight into Yeats’s image of his captive country Ireland.
From the descriptions of the other people you can infer that the old woman is a symbolic representation of Ireland. Yeats originally depicts Cathleen as a feeble woman that people pity. The family describes the...