Apart from the unfindable juvenilia Et Tu Healy (possibly called Parnell) this is Joyce's first work. It was published in an 8 page pamphlet shared with his friend and fellow student Francis Sheehy- Skeffington, after his and Joyce's articles were turned down by the college magazine at University College, Dublin. Joyce, with whom he also attended school, considered Skeffington “the cleverest man at University College” beside himself (Ellmann 61). The bit at the end of Joyce's even tempered rant about a 'third minister' is said to be a clear reference to himself. It is also worth noting that Joyce translated the Gerhart Hauptmann play Michael Kramer and that Yeats thought it a poor translation. His poem The Holy Office (1904) continues his attack on the Irish theatre, amongst other things...No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself. This radical principle of artistic economy applies specially to a time of crisis, and to-day when the highest form of art has been just preserved by desperate sacrifices, it is strange to see the artist making terms with the rabblement. The Irish Literary Theatre is the latest movement of protest against the sterility and falsehood of the modern stage. Half a century ago the note of protest was uttered in Norway, and since then in several countries long and disheartening battles have been fought against the hosts of prejudice and misinterpretation and ridicule. What triumph there has been here and there is due to stubborn conviction, and every movement that has set out heroically has achieved a little. The Irish Literary Theatre gave out that it was the champion of progress, and proclaimed war against commercialism and vulgarity. It had partly made good its word and was expelling the old devil when after the first encounter it surrendered to the popular will. Now your popular devil is more dangerous than your vulgar devil. Bulk and lungs count for something, and he can gild his speech aptly. He has prevailed once more, and the Irish Literary Theatre must now be considered the property of the rabblement of the most belated race in Europe.
