At the Hawk's Well

William Butler Yeats

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Born and educated in Dublin, Ireland, William Butler Yeats discovered early in his literary career a fascination with Irish folklore and the occult. He was a complex man, who struggled between beliefs in the strange and supernatural, and scorn for modern science. He was intrigued by the idea of mysticism, yet had little regard for Christianity. His close friend, Ezra Pound, exposed Yeats to the symbolic theatre genre of Japanese Noh drama, prompting him to write "At the Hawk's Well" in 1916. The play, based on the Cuchulain legends of Irish mythology, uses Japanese-style masks and very simple sets to achieve an abstract, stylized form. The story is set by a dried up well on a barren mountainside, guarded constantly by a hawk-woman, and watched diligently by an old man who has waited fifty years to drink from its miraculous waters and the young Cuchulain who fails to heed the old man's warnings.