Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement (review)

Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement. By Mary Trotter. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2001; pp. 232, appendix. $49.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Ireland's National Theaters: Political Performance and the Origins of the Irish Dramatic Movement, Mary Trotter's first book-length study, answers the call voiced recently by other Irish theatre historians to reassess the traditional, linear view of the inception of the Irish dramatic movement. Her project is to analyze historically how different nationalist organizations or institutions represented Irish nationhood on stage. The founding of the Abbey Theatre in 1904, she asserts, did not occur merely because of the efforts of a few high-profile literary figures but resulted from the endeavors and influence of many nationalist groups seeking to perform their political aims. Trotter also shows that "the representations of Irish culture by several nationalist groups contributed to the establishment of both Ireland's dramatic aesthetic and its national identity" (xviii), suggesting that the Irish dramatic movement became an instrument for national debate (168).

Among the strengths of this important, highly accessible book are a helpful chronology of related events in the appendix and informative footnotes. Trotter essentially follows a chronological survey of the most influential of the nationalist groups involved in creating theatre in Dublin between 1897 and 1916. In the first of five chapters, "'Ancient Idealism' on a Modern Stage: The Irish Literary Theatre," Trotter critiques traditional historical methodologies that have often privileged text over performance, and thus, in the case of Irish drama, privileged the historical account of the Irish Literary Theatre over the various other performances by nationalist organizations. The Gaelic League, for example, headed by Douglas Hyde, held festivals and contests throughout Ireland at which the Irish language and culture were celebrated through dance, song, poems, and drama. Trotter astutely notes that performance practices employed by the less acclaimed nationalist organizations influenced the work of the Irish Literary Theatre, started in 1899 by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and others. This perspective calls into question the assumption by past historians that Yeats's society produced the only theatre in turn-of-the-century Dublin. The Irish Literary Theatre may have brought international recognition to the Irish literary and cultural revival, but nationalist groups, such as the Gaelic League, prompted Yeats and Gregory to adopt methods of performance practiced by the nationalist groups, including the use of Irish rather than English actors.

Chapter two analyzes Irish melodramas by Irish playwrights such as Dion Boucicault, J. W. Whitbread, and P. J. Bourke and the difference between the receptions offered by London audiences and by the primarily proletariat audiences at the Queen's Royal Theatre in Dublin. Trotter argues against the long-held belief that the Queen's Royal was home to the same derogatory stage Irish characters that appeared on the London stage. She asserts that the Queen's produced political Irish melodrama, believing that this theatre cannot be discounted as a site for nationalist resistance during the early years of the Irish dramatic movement. With Irish actors on stage and nationalist sympathizers in the audience, the Queen's Royal's productions were political events where the audience cheered the heroes, who were nationalists, and booed the villains, who were landlords, British sympathizers, or traitors to the Irish cause.

Chapters three and four return to the subject of the groups involved in forming Dublin's Abbey Theatre. Chapter three provides the most complete analysis to date of one such group, Inghinidhe na hEireann (Daughters of Erin), whose members were instrumental in forming the Abbey Theatre. Trotter contextualizes the theatrical, social, and political work of the women in Inghinidhe, led by Maud Gonne, within the nationalist movement. She additionally addresses their tableaux vivants of Irish heroines, and the production of Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan that they subsidized and starred in. Significantly, Trotter stresses the...