The Unicorn from the Stars

In a coachbuilder’s workshop in rural Ireland, a young man awakens from a trance. His uncle hopes he will finish the gilded coach he was building for the English authorities in Dublin Castle, but his visions lead him and the new followers he finds down a different path. Most of Yeats’ plays were written as collaborations with his friend and patron, Isabella Augusta. Just how many of the plays attributed to Yeats were actually written by Gregory is still debated. Yeats titled the collection in which The Unicorn from the Stars appears “Plays in Prose and Verse, written for an Irish theatre, and generally with the help of a friend.” In the preface, he credits Gregory’s help on nearly all his plays, and describes The Unicorn from the Stars as, “but for fable and chief character … wholly her work.” Still, though he admits only a few of his plays are “wholly mine,” only The Unicorn from the Stars, their last collaboration, was ever published with Gregory named as a co-author.