Theatre of Crisis: The Performance of Power in the Kingdom of Ireland, 1662–1692 by Patrick Tuite (review)

In Theatre of Crisis, Patrick Tuite undertakes an indepth study of theatre and performance and their participation in the complex political, cultural, and religious landscape of Restoration Ireland. Tuite models a “new British history” approach by examining the various identities competing for power within Ireland, and the identity of Ireland itself vis-à-vis the Three Kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland. His work demonstrates a keen understanding of the idiosyncrasies of historical Ireland and its complicated relationship to the city of Dublin, England, and the Continent. Tuite contends that the theatre was Anglo-Protestant Ireland’s “most influential media” (24), and argues that “no other institution could so readily respond to political change or more vividly demonstrate what language, culture, and actions constituted a truly loyal subject during this period” (93). He supports this argument by identifying the changing definitions of Irish loyalty and the people, policies, events, ideologies, and theatrical performances that determined them. Tuite expands previous scholarship on Restoration Ireland by successfully demonstrating not only the pervasiveness of performance, but its political utility and intersection with other “performative” media (that is, pamphlets, sermons, and festivals) of the period.

This well-researched book provides an impressively intricate history of the city of Dublin, using three major events as touchstones to structure the investigation: the 1641 uprising, the restoration of Charles II, and the Jacobite rebellion. Tuite effectively historicizes these events to illuminate the conflicting interests at stake in Ireland and the Three Kingdoms, and the ways in which opposing parties used performance and media to manipulate them throughout the seventeenth century. For example, he demonstrates how the 1641 uprising, in which certain Old Irish and Old English Catholics rebelled against the Anglo government, was commemorated as both a great tragedy for Anglo-Protestants and an impetus for Catholic action. Tuite analyzes these narratives from both sides, putting Wenceslaus Hollar’s depiction of the “rebels” bashing in babies’ heads and assaulting women in James Cranford’s The Teares of Ireland into meaningful conversation with the 1691 Smock Alley production of Othello, which imagined Othello and Iago as defeated Jacobites. In contrast, he considers the procession and Mass orchestrated by the Earl of Tyrconnell, the viceroy, to honor the Catholic takeover of the Protestant Christchurch Cathedral, celebrated four days after the anniversary of the 1641 uprising. For Tuite, “the date symbolically linked the failure of rebellion in 1641 to the success of Tyrconnell’s administration in 1689” (174).

Tuite divides his study into five chapters. The first introduces the strategies and investigations that inform the rest of the book. He uses a performance of Othello and a survey of print media to articulate the social and political circumstances of seventeenth-century Ireland in which they were produced and to which they contributed. He defines and historicizes the major identities that comprised Dublin—Old Irish, Old English, and New English—and returns to them throughout the book. The second and third chapters focus on the makeup and theatrical activity of Smock Alley Theatre, which Tuite evaluates according to its value as a royalist institution with a didactic agenda. He chooses to evaluate plays that reflect “Ireland’s historical situation,” dividing the repertoire into three major categories: comedies that ridicule dissenting Protestants; comedies that present the Three Kingdoms as a unified family; and tragedies that depict the suffering of “innocent royalists” (97). In his fourth and fifth chapters, Tuite investigates theatre and performance in Ireland’s streets and churches that, he argues, either upheld or challenged the Anglo-Protestant administration. In his analysis of the Jesuit school drama Titus of Bungo, he dissects a performance of Irish Catholic royalism staged in the Catholic stronghold of Kilkenny during the War of the Three Kingdoms, which encapsulates the political imperative and widespread deployment of theatre among Ireland’s conflicting identity groups.

Tuite provides an excellent micro-history of...