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a screen against a wall. A theatre with half a dozen players, putting all their propertiesinto a cab, which could play anywhere, anytime.""A theatre of masks?" asked Esson."Masks and musicians and dancers and gongs. Short pieces but greatlyconcentrated so that every merest movement means something. It quite rules outthe mob impatient for a laugh.""What is that smell?" asked Esson, "It's beautiful.""What do you think it is?""I've no idea. In Melbourne at this time of night, the only smell would be froma bread factory - or a brewery.""The thing about living in Oxford, Esson, is that here is one of the great librariesof the world. I have been spending a good deal of my time in the Bodleian.""Studying the Noh theatre?""A little. But other things too."Yeats paused."Certain texts of esoteric magic."Esson was a little uncomfortable with all this talk of Japanese. And now therewas to be magic as well. He had taken the master's advice fifteen years ago andgone back to Melbourne where he had written plays set in the slums and the bush,plays about police and prostitutes and pimps. there was no ancient shared mythologyhe could draw on to inspire Melbourne play-goers. Their heroes were living onesand a lot of them were in England today, at Lords. "I wonder how they went," hethought.Esson had written his plays and no one had come. The people simply didn't wantthem. He was much the younger man but he couldn't for the life of him see howhe could possibly write new plays about policemen in Japanese masks dancing togongs down at government house. His great trouble was that he was not a poetbut someone who wrote lurid stories about opium dens in Little Lonsdale Street.Not just read them but wrote them!He remembered how Synge had turned to him as they walked along the EdgewareRoad that night years ago."You ought to have plenty of material in Australia. All those outback stationswith shepherds going mad in lonely huts."Some of his friends had been shocked by this advice. It was not their idea ofdrama at all. They had preferred those plays set in Lady So-and-so's drawing roomwhere the good Lady herself had affairs with MPs bearing double-barrelled names."You have the rich tradition of Celtic mythology to sustain you, Mr Yeats. Butwe're a mongrel breed, a Celtic-Saxon mish mash whose only national passion isfor sport."Yeats nodded but he thought his own people cared too much for sport too andthat the marvellous heritage of mythology was all too often a scholar's obsessionor relegated to children's stories."You see," continued the Australian, "You have made your mark on your country'stheatre. You and Synge and Lady Gregory. But that is because you stirred up themob and forced people to think, even if only for a little. I've done what you advised.I started in a small way with short plays, played by friends in a local hall. Peoplesimply didn't give a damn.""Esson, on the table you'll find paper and pen. Sit there please and take up thepen."Esson did as he was bid."Are you comfortable?"He said he was."Look at the candle nearest to you."48WESTERLY, No.2, JUNE, 1989