ABSTRACT
In his 1905 study, Le théâtre celtique , Anatole Le Braz put forward the position that drama, in the strict sense, was not a significant part of Celtic culture. Responding to Ernest Renan’s comment that the Celts, as a race, “lack nothing”, Le Braz asked, “Lack nothing? Does it not seem . . . that they lack an important thing, an essential thing: the theatre?” (Renan 1859, 455; Le Braz 1905, 1-2). 1 Instead of true drama, Le Braz proposed, drama in the Celtic lands was expressed in the highly dramatic narratives of the Ulster cycle, the Mabinogion, and the Breton stories of gwerziou , focused especially on the tales’ extensive use of dialogue.
