The hallmark of Yeats’ dramatic writing is a pattern of profound complexity within a Spartan simplicity and brevity. Brevity is easily enough established: most of the plays are quite short. Even the few exceptions indicate that the full-length play was not a form Yeats found sympathetic. Of the two longest plays in the current Collected volume, one is The Countess Cathleen, Yeats's first stage-piece. This work straight forwardly dramatizes the efforts of Satan's agents to buy the souls of Irish peasants and their defeat at the hands of the great lady of the district, who sacrifices her own soul to save the peasants. The conflict is mainly external. Here is none of that spiritual and intellectual subtlety that marks the later plays; every thought and every emotion seem no more than reflections of stock peasant and Christian attitudes. Lady Cathleen gives up her soul; the sacrifice is great but conventional.