Play: The Countess Cathleen

Overview
William Butler Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen is a verse drama set in a mythic medieval Ireland ravaged by famine. Into this spiritually and materially desolate landscape come two mysterious merchants who are, in truth, demons. They tempt the starving poor with food and gold in exchange for their souls, recording each bargain in a ledger. Against their predation stands Cathleen, a young noblewoman renowned for charity. Her struggle to save her people, even at the cost of her own salvation, shapes a fable about sacrifice, temptation, and the measure of a soul.

Setting and Characters
The action unfolds between Cathleen’s hall and the countryside on the brink of collapse. Yeats gives the drama a plaintive, visionary undertone through Aleel, a poet and seer whose unrequited devotion to Cathleen and prophetic songs frame events with foreboding and awe. Oona, Cathleen’s elderly attendant, embodies piety and caution, pleading with her mistress to protect herself. Among the peasants are couples torn between hunger and conscience, husbands driven to strike bargains with the merchants, wives who recoil from damnation yet cannot feed their children. The missionaries of despair are the Merchants themselves, sleek and courteous, whose courtesy only sharpens the cruelty of their trade.

Plot
Rumors spread that strangers are paying for souls, and at first the villagers mock the blasphemy, then falter as hunger gnaws. The Merchants take their time, letting famine do the pleading; one after another, the destitute accept coin and sign away eternity. Cathleen empties her granaries and hands over jewels to ransom souls already sold, but the Merchants refuse her offers, citing the strictness of their ledger. Aleel’s visions darken: he warns that powers beyond human reach have entered the land, and that Cathleen’s pity will be turned against her.

As winter closes in, the disaster becomes moral as well as physical. Some peasants sink into bitterness and avarice; neighbors betray neighbors; those who hold out are shamed by the full bellies of the damned. Cathleen realizes that charity from her stores cannot match the Merchants’ terrible arithmetic, for they pay in the coin of despair. Driven by love for her people, she resolves on an unthinkable bargain: she will sell her own soul if, in exchange, the Merchants will release all contracts signed by her tenants and bring food to the starving.

In the decisive scene, she appends her name to the infernal book. The Merchants gloat, confident they have purchased the highest soul in the land. Food arrives; the poor eat; their names are struck from the ledger. Cathleen grows faint, her spirit already claimed, while Aleel and Oona keep vigil as a storm gathers.

Resolution and Meaning
At the moment of death, a contest erupts over Cathleen’s fate. Angels descend, arguing that Heaven judges the heart, and that a soul surrendered in selfless charity cannot belong to Hell. The demons protest the letter of the contract, but the heavenly claim prevails. Cathleen’s body lies still; her soul is borne upward in triumph, and Aleel hears music no living ear can hold. The Merchants withdraw, thwarted by a love that turns their commerce to dust.

The play fuses Christian iconography with Irish legend to ask what a soul is worth and who has the right to weigh it. Yeats answers through paradox: the soul that gives itself away becomes most its own. Cathleen’s sacrifice restores her people and exposes the predators of famine, while her ascent affirms a moral order where intention outweighs legalistic bonds and grace breaks the cruel economy of despair.