A History of Irish Theatre: 1601–2000 (review)

It suited the aesthetic purposes of W.B. Yeats to promote the Abbey Theatre as an accomplishment created in a cultural void, a theatrical en-vironment dominated by the pantomimes and musical fare so popular with Dublin audiences throughout the nineteenth century. This adept manipu-lation of public image, along with the genuine nature of the Abbey's revolutionary achievements, has tended to overshadow if not negate awareness of a pre-existing Irish theatrical tradition. In this informed and eloquently written study, Christopher Morash, a Canadian scholar long based at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth, tracks the four-hundred-year history of that tradition—its playwrights, performances, managers, actors, directors, and themes. However, this excellent study delivers more than its title promises: it provides a sophisticated account of the intimate relationship between the theatre and the social and political environment from which it emerged and offers perceptive analysis of key plays that established the Irish theatrical tradition. In its pre-modern phase, Irish playwrights relied on classical myths, allegorical narratives, and stock characters to tease questions of national allegiance, social and personal identities, and the significance of historical events. In the representational modes employed to explore these recurring topics, the Irish theatrical tradition sometimes embraced a vision of drama closer to his own than Yeats would have realized.

The study begins with an account of a Dublin performance of Thomas Norton's verse tragedy Gorboduc, staged in 1601 by Lord Mountjoy, the newly appointed Lord Deputy of an Ireland increasingly chaffing against systematic English settlement. Facing an open rebellion by Gaelic Chiefs, Lord Mountjoy, as would his successors, used theatrical performances to communicate his authority, both to potential allies and enemies in the shifting political environment that was Dublin at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Morash intersperses his chronological account with several set pieces that offer vivid descriptions of the opening nights of the more important stepping stones in the development of Irish theatre. These evocative re-creations, along with the unfolding chapters of the narrative, emphasize the central role Irish theatre served as a public space for debating current events. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, classical stories and allegorical plots used awe-inspiring pageantry to convey an obvious political charge, implying fealty to the king's representative who might be in the audience and under whose patronage the play was staged. In an environment of political uncertainty and emerging versions of Irish and Anglo-Irish identities, the theatre was the only forum where representatives of different classes and ideologies could gather to witness thinly disguised commentary on issues pertinent to their lives. By the nineteenth century, plays that used realistic characterization to tackle highly charged national issues were presented to audiences drawn from Ireland's growing and increasingly confident Catholic middle class. The informality that was the hallmark of the theatre in Dublin (and London) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—raucous laughter, catcalls, orange-throwing, and general banter with the actors—evolved in the Irish context into frequent verbal and even physical protests. The riots later associated with Synge's Playboy and O'Casey's Plough were not so much an aberration as the culmination of a long-standing theatrical tradition in which drama served as a catalyst for debates on insistent national questions.

Christopher Morash's meticulous research, his eye for telling details, his sophisticated appreciation of Irish cultural history, and his ability to turn a chronology of theatrical events into an engaging narrative, combine to make this study absorbing reading. Along the way, he provides a sense of the evolution of the theatre itself—performance traditions, mechanical innovations, the shifting fashions from managers to touring companies, from playwrights and directors—with an emphasis on how such innovations and changing fashions manifested themselves in the Irish context. Not surprisingly, Morash pays sustained attention to the achievements and influential role of the Abbey Theatre in twentieth-century Irish life. He communicates this familiar narrative with verve and often...