theatre

theatre. The earliest recorded plays in Ireland were mystery plays staged in certain towns by the medieval guilds; these died out as a result of the Reformation, though some attempts were made to adapt them to the new religion. An indigenous tradition of ‘mumming plays’ survived until recently in some areas, and has been drawn on by modern dramatists. Secular theatre first appeared in Ireland in the early 17th century under the patronage of the viceregal court. Later in the century commercial playhouses appeared in Dublin, and during the ensuing century a lively tradition of commercial theatre grew up.

While an important role in the development of Irish theatre was played by migrants from England, the 18th century saw the establishment of a lasting tendency for Irish playwrights and actors of merit to migrate to London as the centre of theatrical activity in the British Isles. (The 19th‐century actor Barry Sullivan was considered unusual because he preferred to remain in Ireland.) The Irishness of London‐based dramatists such as William Congreve, Charles Macklin, Oliver Goldsmith, R. B. Sheridan, the melodramatist Dion Boucicault, Oscar Wilde, and G. B. Shaw was later to be disputed due to a growing emphasis on Gaelic and Catholic culture as the sources of ‘true’ Irishness, the view that national art should find its primary audience among its own people, and critical reaction against their idioms. (These writers were not all equally disparaged; all but the most fervent cultural chauvinists regarded Goldsmith as an honorary Irishman, though this was primarily due to The Deserted Village rather than his plays.) Recent criticism takes a broader view of Irishness and emphasizes the subversive sense of difference from the English that informs the work of these writers.

Nineteenth‐century Ireland saw the further development of commercial theatre in Dublin and provincial cities. (Smaller towns were catered for by travelling repertory companies known as ‘fit‐'em‐ups’, or by local amateurs.) While it drew on the classical repertoire, commercial theatre produced little original work of any value, and its reliance on spectacle is seen as prefiguring the cinema, which eventually superseded it. (An interesting product of this period, on political if not artistic grounds, was the patriotic melodrama focusing on nationalist heroes such as Sarsfield and Robert Emmet.)

The 1890s saw the appearance of an Irish version of the ‘little theatre’ movement, whose founders reacted against the spectacular commercial theatre of the period and wished to produce plays of a higher artistic standard. At this time the first plays in Irish were written (by authors such as Douglas Hyde) and produced by amateur actors. Both developments were often linked to a political outlook which saw commercialism and vulgarity as English importations, and Irish patriotism, spirituality, and artistic excellence as intimately linked.

The mainstream of the ‘national theatre’ produced the Abbey, some of whose founding members seceded to form the Theatre of Ireland (more nationalistic and with a greater emphasis on European drama), which survived into the 1920s. Amateur groups in imitation of the Abbey were founded in Belfast and Cork. The Ulster Literary Society (founders included Bulmer Hobson and ‘Rutherford Mayne’) soon lost most of its founders but survived into the 1950s. The Cork Dramatic Society (1908–14, founders included Daniel Corkery and Terence Mac‐Swiney) initiated an intermittent tradition of Little Theatre in Cork, later represented by such groups as James N. Healy's Theatre of the South.

Despite the symbolist ambitions of Yeats (shared in different forms by other pioneers of the movement), the Abbey and its regional imitators came to be dominated by naturalist drama. At its best this was inspired by a desire to make the audience see and transform the world around them but it easily degenerated into crowd‐pleasing, stereotyped ‘kitchen comedies’ and pseudorealist melodrama, a tendency reinforced by financial pressures.

To some extent the gap was filled by the Dublin Drama League, founded to present modern European drama (a similar group in Cork fell foul of puritanical objectors), and after 1928 by the Gate theatre, founded by Hilton Edwards and Micheal Mac Liammoir with the financial assistance of Lord Longford (1928 also saw the first permanent Irish‐language theatre, An Taibhdhearc, in Galway).

Since the 1960s there has been a large‐scale revival of Irish drama, linked to changes in Irish society which loosened constraints on the theatre and provided dramatists with new opportunities to explore clashing attitudes. An important role has been played by regional groups such as Druid in Galway and Field Day in Derry.

Bibliography

Fitz‐Simon, Christopher , The Irish Theatre (1983)
Hogan, Robert, et al. , A History of Irish Theatre 1899–1926 (6 vols., 1975–92)
Roche, Anthony , Contemporary Irish Drama (1994)

Patrick Maume