Doyle's Dream: John Bull's Other Island

Shaw's only major play set in Ireland, John Bull's Other Island (1904), was requested by, and then rejected by, the Abbey Theatre. The Ireland of Shaw and Larry Doyle, an "uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland," ¹ was not the idealized Kathleen O'Houlihan of the neo-Gaelic movement. Too realistic for the Irish stage, the play proved to be a huge commercial success in London, where audiences delighted in what they perceived to be unrealistic caricatures.

Like Shaw, Larry Doyle, the hero of John Bull had fled the Ireland of limited opportunities to seek and find a successful career in England. Their Ireland, the Ireland of the play, is mired in poverty, ignorance, superstition, drunkenness, and a certain childlike innocence. Doyle's partner, the oafish and ambitious Thomas Broadbent, has insisted that both partners journey to Ireland to explore the possibility of developing into a luxury tourist resort the area from which Larry had fled at eighteen. Their syndicate would convert unproductive farmland into golf courses and luxury golf course communities, ² into hotels and suburban tract housing. Ancient monuments would become tourist attractions. Tourism would replace traditional industry. Employment would be in the service trades. Those who do not have the potential skills or personalities to be successful in the tourist industry are doomed to failure. Even the Church, the bedrock of Roscullen, the village from which Larry had fled, is torn between the more modern, creative priest who has been defrocked for daring to challenge the old values, and the traditional priest who upholds them. Doyle dreads returning to Ireland and to the no-longer-young woman, Nora, whom he had left behind. The daughter of Larry's father's agent, the seventeen-year-old Nora came to live with the Doyles after her father died. For a year and a half, until Larry left for college, the two were living together as brother and sister, yet were romantically attracted to each other. Larry tells Broadbent that he was "romantic about her, just as I was romantic about Byron's heroines or the old Round Tower . . . but she didn't count any more than they did." Perhaps restrained by an incest taboo of which he is unaware, Larry has refused her presents and delays answering her letters. He fears being trapped by both the country he loves and the woman who still loves him and is still waiting for him.

In Act I, Broadbent tries to convince Doyle to accompany Broadbent to Ireland to acquire land for their syndicate's land development scheme. As they heatedly discuss Doyle's refusal to go, Doyle describes Broadbent as the "idiot and the genius . . . the same man." An Englishman to Doyle is a caterpillar that can disguise itself as a leaf to fool its enemies. "The Englishman does what the caterpillar does. He . . . makes himself look like a fool, and eats up all the real fools . . . while his enemies let him alone and laugh at him." Doyle only changes his mind about returning to Ireland when he realizes that the sentimental Broadbent is infatuated with his idea of Nora, "a very superior woman . . . this beautiful girl." "Heres a chance for Nora! And for me!" exclaims Doyle, and he tells Hodson, the valet, to pack a bag for him, too.

Doyle and Broadbent depart for Ireland on the night train from Paddington Station. Once they do so the structure of the play radically changes. What had been straightforward comic realism becomes surreal fantasy and farce. As the second act opens in Ireland, the gentle Father Keegan talks--on stage--to a grasshopper (a variation on the caterpillar Doyle used to describe Broadbent); offstage Broadbent takes a squealing pig for a ride in that new invention, an automobile. After careening through the town on market day, crashing into a pottery stand, knocking over a woman and killing the pig, he thinks he has...