YEATS prided himself on his subtlety, though as theatre manager he was very unhappy. If the current of opinion was in favour of European masterpieces — which bored him — he would have European masterpieces, but he would not have any damn English director tinkering with the sort of plays that had been written by himself, Synge and Lady Gregory, and producing them in a theatrical idiom he did not like. Though he was responsible for Mrs. Pat Campbell, his whole attitude to English directors and players could be summed up in Synge's comment on Mrs. Pat as Deirdre of the Sorrows:
'She'll turn it into The Second Mrs. Conchobar.'
From Frank O'Connor, My Father's Son (1968), p. 153.