The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899–1939 by Anthony Roche (review)

The Irish Dramatic Revival, founded during Ireland’s struggle for national independence, sought to imagine and represent the fledgling state of Ireland to its people and the world. Commonly, the Irish Revival has been understood to end with the first production of Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars in 1926, but in his fresh and important re-examination Anthony Roche uses the dramatic output of W.B. Yeats to historically bookend the movement, extending it until 1939. Not only do we begin and end with Yeats, but he also “remains a presence in every subsequent chapter” (3). This structuring works well, as Roche makes a compelling argument for the importance of Yeats, charting his impact on all the major contributors to the Revival with intriguing anecdotes and excellent comparative analysis.

The extended timeline allows for the inclusion of the work of neglected dramatists such as Teresa Deevy and Denis Johnston, as well as of Yeats’s own later plays. These late plays of Yeats are cogently argued to have been an influence on the work of Samuel Beckett, with a particularly fascinating exploration of the connections between Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Yeats’s Purgatory (which, we learn, Beckett attended on its opening night at the Abbey Theatre in 1938). Roche’s foregrounding of Yeats serves as a significant corrective to past dismissals of the poet as a poor dramatist of unproducible plays. In the concluding chapter we find that Yeats even had a part in the development of Ireland’s most globally successful theatrical export, because the “combination of traditional and contemporary Irish music” that composer Bill Whelan developed for a five-year cycle of Yeats productions at the Peacock in the 1990s “laid the foundation for Riverdance” (198).

Although Yeats features prominently, he does not dominate this book, which also delivers expected but insightful chapters on the renowned dramas of O’Casey and J.M. Synge. These chapters offer close critical readings of the plays that identify established issues, characteristics, and themes of the Revival (an emphasis on storytelling, the use of Irish myth, the loss of the native language, and the performativity and representation of a national identity). These readings, particularly useful to newcomers to this subject, are all contextualized in relation to the turbulent history of twentieth-century Ireland.

What is new and welcome in this book is the inclusion of analyses of plays by playwrights often cast as marginal to the achievements of the Revival. In the first chapter, the plays of Dion Boucicault and Oscar Wilde are examined not only as examples of what the Revivalists wished to counter but also, interestingly, in terms of influence. George Bernard Shaw, rarely thought of in terms of the Irish Revival, is also considered in this first chapter but later gets a fuller study with a chapter dedicated to him. Here, Roche convinces us that Shaw haunts the story of the Revival as an “absent presence” (79) with his 1904 John Bull’s Other Island, originally written for the Abbey but first staged at the Royal Court, London, functioning as a “major contribution” (79) to the movement. The dramas of Lady Augusta Gregory are no longer relegated to the status of lesser comedies of a popular playwright; rather, her “formidable achievement” (118) is recognized in a full chapter dedicated to her works. Gregory’s plays are presented as experimental in form, with The Rising of the Moon (1907) anticipating epic theatre, while The Workhouse Ward (1908) in its deadly language games is read as similar to Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West (1997).

Throughout the book, the works of the Revival are firmly situated in relation to world drama, broadening the publication’s appeal. In the opening chapter Ibsen is revealed as a major figure of contention and influence who shaped the dramatic modes and themes of the Revival more than any Irish artist. Correspondingly, in the concluding chapter the legacy...