Irish Theatre Small Beginnings The Court In Kilkenny

The history of Irish theatre begins with the rise of the English administration in Dublin at the start of the 17th century. Over the next 400 years this small country was to make a disproportionate contribution to drama in English.

In the early days of its history, theatrical productions in Ireland tended to serve the political purposes of the administration, but as more theatres opened and the popular audience grew, a more diverse range of entertainments were staged. Many Dublin-based theatres developed links with their London equivalents and performers and productions from the British capital frequently found their way to the Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights from William Congreve to George Bernard Shaw found it necessary to go abroad to establish themselves.

At the beginning of the 20th century, theatres and theatre companies dedicated to the staging of Irish plays and the development of indigenous writers, directors and performers began to emerge. This allowed many of the most significant Irish dramatists to learn their trade and establish their reputations at home rather than in Britain or the United States.

1 Small Beginnings

Although there would appear to have been performances of plays on religious themes in Ireland from as early as the 14th century, the first well-documented instance of a theatrical production in Ireland is a 1601 staging of Gorboduc presented by Lord Mountjoy Lord Deputy of IrelandThe Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (also known as the Viceroy or in the Middle Ages as the Lord Deputy was the head of England's (pre-1707) or Britain's (post 1707) administration in Ireland. The office was originally the central focus of English/British admi in the Great Hall in Dublin CastleDublin Castle in Dublin, Ireland was the seat of British rule in Ireland until 1922. The building itself mainly dates from eighteenth century, though a castle has stood on the site since the days of King John, the first Lord of Ireland''. The Castle serve. The play had been written by Thomas SackvilleThomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset ( 1536 1608) was an English statesman and poet. He was a Member of Parliament, and Lord Treasurer. His house, Knole House, at Knole in Kent, is celebrated. He was author, with Thomas Norton, of the play Gorboduc (1562) and Thomas NortonThomas Norton ( 1532 March 10, 1584) was a English lawyer, politician and writer of verse. He was born in London and was educated at Cambridge, and early became a secretary to the Protector Somerset. In 1555 he was admitted a student at the Inner Temple, for the 1561/2 Christmas festivities at the Inner TempleThe Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court around the Royal Courts of Justice in London, England, to which barristers belong and where they are called to the bar. The others are Middle Temple, Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn. Since the 14th century, t in London and appears to have been selected because it was a story of a divided kingdom descending into anarchy that was applicable to the situation in Ireland at the time of the performance. Mountjoy started a fashion, and private performances became quite commonplace in great houses all over Ireland over the following thirty years.

2 The Court in Kilkenny

In 1642Events January 4 Charles I attempts to arrest five leading members of the Long Parliament, but they escape. Beginning of English Civil War. March 1 Georgeana, Massachusetts (now known as York, Maine) becomes the first incorporated city in America May 17 S, as a result of the English Civil WarThe English Civil War is the period of conflict in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland between 1639 and 1651, and also refers specifically to the two wars ( 1642 1645 and 1648 1649) between the Royalist supporters of Charles I of England and the, Dublin RoyalistThe noun or adjective, Royalist can have several shades of meaning. At its simplest, it refers to an adherent of a monarch or royal family. It can mean a person who wishes to change the political system of his country into a monarchy, thus a monarchist.s were forced to flee the city. Many of them went to Kilkenny to join a confederacy of Old English and Irish that formed in that city. Kilkenny had a tradition of dramatic performance going back to 1366, and the Dublin company, much attenuated, set up in their new home. At least one new play was published in Kilkenny; A Tragedy of Cola's Fury, OR, Lirenda's Misery, a blatantly political work with the Lirenda of the title being an anagram of Ireland.

With the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, Ogilby was commissioned to design the triumphal arches and write masques for the new king's entrance into London. Ogilby was reinstated as Master of the Revels and returned to Dublin to open a new theatre in Smock Alley . Although starting well, this new theatre was essentially under the control of the administration in Dublin castle and staged mainly pro-Stuart works and Shakespearean classics. As a result, Irish playwrights and actors of real talent were drawn to London.

3 The Restoration

An early example of this trend is William Congreve, one of the most important writers for the late 18th London stage. Although born in Yorkshire, Congreve grew up in Ireland and studied with Jonathan Swift in Kilkenny and at Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating, Congreve moved to London to study law at the Temple and pursue a literary career. His first play, The Old Bachelor ( 1693) was sponsored by John Dryden, and he went on to write at least four more plays. The last of these, The Way of the World ( 1700) is the one Congreve work regularly revived on the modern stage. However, at the time of its creation, it was a relative failure and he wrote no further works for the theatre.

With the accession to the throne of William of Orange, the whole ethos of Dublin Castle, including its attitude to the theatre, changed. Smock Alley stayed in existence until 1811 and new theatres, such as the Theatre Royal, Queens' Theatre, and The Gaiety Theatre opened during the 19th century. However, the one constant for the next 200 years was that the main action in the history of Irish theatre happened abroad, mainly in London.

4 The 18th Century

The 18th century saw the emergence of two major Irish dramatists, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage in the 18th century. Goldsmith ( 1728– 1774) was born in Roscommon and grew up in extremely rural surroundings. He entered Trinity College in 1745 and graduated in 1749. He returned to the family home, and in 1751, began to travel, finally settling in London in 1756, where he published poetry, prose and two plays, The Good-Natur'd Man 1768 and She Stoops to Conquer 1773. This latter was a huge success and is still regularly revived.

Sheridan ( 1751– 1816) was born in Dublin into a family with a strong literary and theatrical tradition. His mother was a writer and his father was manager of Smock Alley Theatre. The family moved to England in the 1750s, and Sheridan attended Harrow Public School. His first play, The Rivals 1775, was performed at Covent Garden and was an instant success. He went on to become the most significant London playwright of the late 18th century with plays like The School for Scandal and The Critic. He was owner of the Drury Lane Theatre, which he bought from David Garrick. The theatre burned down in 1809, and Sheridan lived out the rest of his life in reduced circumstances. He is buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

5 The 19th Century

After Sheridan, the next Irish dramatist of historical importance was Dion Boucicault ( 1820– 1890). Boucicault was born in Dublin but was sent to England to complete his eduction. At school, he began writing dramatic sketches and soon took up acting under the stage name of Lee Moreton. His first play was Legend of Devil's Dyke 1838 in which he acted himself in Brighton. His first London production was London Assurance 1841. This was a great success and he seemed set to become the major writer of comedies of his day. However, his next few plays were not as successful and Boucicault found himself in debt. He recovered some of his reputation with The Corsican Brothers ( 1852), a well constructed melodrama.

In 1853, he moved to New York, where he soon became a hit with plays like The Poor of New York ( 1857), Dot ( 1859, based on Charles Dickens's The Cricket on the Hearth) and The Octoroon (1859). These plays tackled issues such as urban poverty and slavery. Boucicault was also involved in getting the 1856 law on copyright passed through Congress. His last New York play was The Colleen Bawn ( 1860). In that year, Boucicault returned to London to stage The Colleen Bawn and the play ran for 247 performances at The Adelphi Theatre. He wrote several more successful plays, including The Shaughran ( 1875) and Robert Emmet ( 1884). These later plays helped perpetuate the stereotype of the drunken, hotheaded, garrulous Irishman that had been common on the British stage since the time of Shakespeare. Other Irish dramatists of the period include John Banim and Gerald Griffin, whose novel The Collegians formed the basis for The Colleen Bawn.

Boucicault is widely regarded as the wittiest Irish dramatist between Sheridan and Oscar Wilde ( 1845– 1900). Wilde was born in Dublin into a literary family and studied at Trinity College, where he had a brilliant career. In 1874 he won a scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. Here he began his career as a writer, winning the Newdigate Prize for his poem Ravenna. His studies were cut short during his second year at Oxford when his father died leaving large debts.

During a short but glittering literary career, Wilde wrote poetry, short stories, criticism and a novel, but his plays probably represent his most enduring legacy. Wilde's first stage success came with Lady Windemere's Fan ( 1892), which resulted in his becoming the most talked about dramatist in London. He followed this up with A Woman of No Importance ( 1893), An Ideal Husband ( 1895) and his most famous play The Importance of Being Earnest that same year.

With these plays, Wilde came to dominate late- Victorian era British theatre. His plays are noted for the lightness of their wit, but he also contrived to address some serious issues around sexual and class roles and identity, as he wrote himself 'treating the serious things lightly and the light things seriously'. Events in Wilde's personal life were to overtake his literary success and he died in Paris in 1900. He remains one of the great figures in the history of Irish theatre and his plays are frequently performed all over the English-speaking world.

Wilde's contemporary George Bernard Shaw ( 1856– 1950) was a very different kind of writer. Born in Dublin, Shaw moved to London in 1876 intending to become a novelist. Here he became active in socialist politics and became a member of the Fabian Society. He was also a very public vegetarian. His writing for the stage was influenced by Henrik Ibsen. His early political plays were not popular, but he made a breakthrough with John Bull's Other Island ( 1904). Shaw was extremely prolific, and his collected writings filled 36 volumes. Many of his plays are now forgotten, but a number, including Major Barbara, Saint Joan (usually considered his masterpiece) and Pygmalion are still regularly performed. Pygmalion was the basis for the movie My Fair Lady, a fact which benefitted the National Gallery of Ireland as Shaw had left the royalties of the play to the gallery. A statue to the playwright now stands outside the gallery entrance. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924

6 The Abbey and After

A sea change in the history of the Irish theatre came with the establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre, later to become the Abbey Theatre. The history of this theatre is well documented, and its importance can be seen from the list of writers whose plays were first performed here in the early days of the 20th century. These included W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, George Moore, and Sean O'Casey. Equally importantly, through the introduction by Yeats, via Ezra Pound, of elements of the Noh theatre of Japan, a tendency to mythologise quotidian situations, and a particularly strong focus on writings in dialects of Hiberno-English, the Abbey was to create a style that held a strong fascination for future Irish dramatists. Indeed, it could almost be said that the Abbey created the basic elements of a national theatrical style.

This period also saw a rise in the writing of plays in Irish, especially after the formation, in 1928, of An Taidhbhearc , a theatre dedicated to the Irish language. The Gate Theatre, also founded in 1928 under the direction of Hilton Edwards and Micheál MacLiammoir, introduced Irish audiences to many of the classics of the European stage.

7 Mid 20th Century

The twentieth century saw a number of Irish playwrights come to prominence. Samuel Beckett is probably the most significant of these. Beckett had a long career as a novelist and poet before his first play, Waiting for Godot ( 1953) made him famous. This play, along with his second, Endgame, is one of the great works of absurdist theatre. Beckett won the Nobel Prize in 1969.

The Lyric Theatre , founded in 1944 by Austin Clarke was based in the Abbey until 1951 and produced many of Clarke's own verse plays. From the mid 1950s, the Unitarian Church at St Stephen's Green, Dublin was home to Amharclann an Damer/The Damer Theatre . The Damer produced both professional and amateur Irish language theatre. The world premier of Brendan Behan's An Giall (The Hostage) took place here in 1957. The theatre closed in the late 1970s. Behan went on to be an extremely popular dramatist, particularly through his work with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London

Other important Irish dramatists of this period include: Denis Johnston, Thomas Kilroy , Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, and John B. Keane.

8 Recent Developments

In general, the Abbey was the dominant influence in theatre in Ireland across the 20th century. Beckett's example has been almost entirely ignored, although his plays are regularly performed on the Irish stage. Behan, in his use of song and direct address to the audience, was influenced by Brecht and Denis Johnston used modernist techniques including found texts and collage, but their works had little impact on the dramatists who came after them. Since the 1970s, a number of companies have emerged to challenge the Abbey's dominance and introduce different styles and approaches. These include Focus Theatre , The Children's T Company , the Project Theatre Company , Druid Theatre, TEAM and Field Day. These companies have nurtured a number of writers, actors, and directors who have since gone on to be successful in London, Broadway and Hollywood or in other literary fields. These include Roddy Doyle, Peter Sheridan , Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Gary Hynes and Gabriel Byrne.

9 Further Reading

Christopher Morash: A History of Irish Theatre 1601–2000
George Moore: Hail and Farewell (gossipy memoir of the early days of the Abbey Theatre)
Anthony Roche: Contemporary Irish Drama—from Beckett to McGuinness

10 References

11 See also:

Irish literature

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