"Did That Play of Mine …?": Theatre, Commemoration and 1916

In 2012 the Republic of Ireland began a Decade of Commemorations marking the centenaries of significant historical events in the country between 1912 and 1922. Central to these was the anniversary of the Easter Rising, which began on 24 April 1916 (Easter Monday) when armed members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army rose against British rule and occupied strategic sites across Dublin. Patrick Pearse, the leader of the Volunteers, read the Proclamation of the Irish Republic from the steps of the city's General Post Office (GPO), declaring the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies. Although there was some military action in Galway, Wexford and Meath there was little popular support across the country. The rebels in Dublin held out for six days against superior British forces, but on 29 April, with the area around the GPO in ruins and the bulding on fire, Pearse gave the order to surrender. The Rising seemed to have been a failure, but the execution of fifteen of its leaders ignited nationalist sentiment which led ultimately to the War of Independence between 1919 and 1921 and the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.

The Rising was choreographed by a seven-man military council which included three playwrights, and the theatrical nature of the event was marked from the start. Many thought that the preparations for the Rising were rehearsals for a play and the Proclamation, which was printed and ciculated across Dublin, was even mistaken for a playbill. Indeed, as Roy Foster points out in his Vivid Faces: the Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890–1923 (2016), the Rising was 'a climatic performance… the result of intense rehearsals conducted since the turn of the century'. Plays and performances created a culture in which miltary action was regarded as a desirable step towards national liberation. And in keeping with this aspect of the Rising the title of my talk, 'Did that play of mine?', is taken from W. B. Yeats's late poem, 'The Man and the Echo' (1938):

… All that I have said and done,Now that I am old and ill,Turns into a question tillI lie awake night after nightAnd never get the answers right.Did that play of mine send outCertain men the English shot?

'That play' was Cathleen ni Houlihan; 'certain men', the insurgents of Easter 1916. The poem was written a year before Yeats's death, but from the moment of its premiere in April 1902 he had a strong sense of the significance of the play: 'Nothing but a victory on the battlefield could so uplift and enlarge the imagination of Ireland, could so strengthen the National spirit'.

Cathleen ni Houlihan, just to remind you, is a short one-act play set in the home of the Gillane famiy where the son, Michael, is about to get married. It takes place in a cottage close to Killala, Mayo, in 1798. This of course is the Year of the French when the troops of Revolutionary France were to land in the west and join the rebellion led by Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen. Preparations for the wedding are disrupted by A Poor Old Woman who speaks of the loss of her four green fields and the need for sacrifice in the cause of their liberation. Overcome by her message the bridegroom-to-be abandons plans of marriage and leaves to join the rebellion. The key line occurs at the play's end as a new arrival is asked if he saw an Old Woman as he approached the cottage and replies 'No, but I saw a young girl and she had the walk of a queen'. Clearly the Poor Old Woman, Kathleen Ni Houlihan, the personification of Ireland, is rejuvenated by the blood of those willing to die for her liberation.

The play was staged in Dublin in St Teresa's Hall, described by one of the actors as a little hall behind a grocer's shop in Camden Street. It was an...