The Dreaming of the Bones

William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin in 1865, and was encouraged from a young age to pursue a life in the arts. He attended art school for a short while, but soon found that his talents and interest lay in poetry rather than painting. As a writer in nearly every genre but the novel, he was an instrumental figure in the "Irish Literary Revival" of the 20th Century that redefined Irish writing. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and received honorary degrees from Queen's University (Belfast), Trinity College (Dublin), and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. "The Dreaming of the Bones" was first published in 1919 and performed in 1931, it was one of the plays that comprised Yeats' "Four Plays for Dancers". Written in the Japanese Noh tradition, performed with masks, the play reflects on a belief that the dead may dream back.