IRISH playwrights have always played a central role in shaping the nation’s sense of itself as well as being recognised as creative innovators on the world stage. Synge, Shaw O’Casey and Beckett are but a few of notable playwrights of such international standing that their plays are still regularly performed more than a century after they were first staged. The creative centre for these plays seeing their artistic birth was the Abbey Theatre (above) in Dublin.
The Abbey was founded in 1904 as a national theatre for Ireland by WB Yeats and Lady Gregory. These two towering figures in the national Celtic Revival Movement, established the theatre with the creative manifesto to ‘bring upon the stage the deeper of emotions of Ireland.’ They and their fellow cultural revolutionaries were no West Britons, but proudly Irish in their sentiments and their political goals. Yeats and Lady Gregory were intent on re-Irishing the national culture and rejecting Ireland being a minor partner in in Britain’s imperial project, by pushing cultural nationalism to the forefront of Irish life. Ireland was the Achilles Heel of British imperial hubris and these soldiers of soliloquy would plant a Trojan horse of rebellion on the centre stage of empire as they treaded the boards of the Abbey.
On December 27, 1904, the Abbey first opened its doors. The small 600-seater theatre premiered three new one act plays including Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand and Spreading the News by Lady Gregory. Although, the audience gave a polite reception to Yeats’s worthy, but dull offering, in contrast, Gregory’s play was met with uproarious laughter. Hers was a satire of the British Protestant ruling elite—of which she was a member—and their suspicion of the Irish. The plot centred around gossiping locals in a small village which lead to a misunderstanding and the false arrest of the one of the villagers for a murder that never happened. The play ended with an abrupt and happy resolution to the theatrical dilemma.
Although, the play conformed to most theatrical conventions, it did break with tradition in several important respects. It was written by a woman, who was at forefront of the Celtic cultural revival and she depicted Irish characters speaking in their own colloquial dialect. From that moment on the Irish language and its people would be heard and portrayed on the national stage. The play’s title, Spreading the News was prophetically named, the days of the Irish being West Britons were numbered.
The Playboy Riots
Three years later, in 1907, the Abbey again courted national controversy for daring to stage JM Synge’s work The Playboy of the Western World. Synge made much use of the Irish language to celebrate its poetic lyricism. However, the play’s plot literally caused a riot in the theatre.
The play was set in Flaherty’s pub in Mayo in the early 1900s and told the tale of young Christy Mahon, who had run away from his farm falsely claiming he had killed his father. The women of the village young and old quickly become seduced by Mahon’s charms and his heroic exploits around the village. He is the toast of the town, until his father shows up to puncture a hole in his inflated tale. The villagers turn on him and he is driven out exposed as a charlatan. Despite his fall from grace, Mahon becomes reconciled with his father. However, both are fated to become, like so many Irish, world wanderers. For all his flaws, when Mahon is gone, one lovelorn village woman laments: “I’ve lost the only playboy of the western world.”
In Edwardian Ireland, the play was deemed shocking because it dealt with issues of patricide and portraying female sexuality, showing women on stage in their undergarments and for daring to suggest that a widowed woman might be attracted to a younger man. The moral outrage was encouraged by conservative elements within the nationalist community, including Sinn Féin’s Arthur Griffiths, who viewed the play as an offence to Irish morals. On the opening night of the play, rioting broke out in the theatre itself and spread across city. The city-wide mayhem had to be quelled by the Dublin Police. The disturbances became known as ‘the Playboy Riots.’
In the subsequent storm of public condemnation of the play, the Abbey stood firm and weathered the moral outrage and continued to stage Synge’s work. Gradually the tide of public opinion turned in the play’s favour as its artistic merits began to outweigh Edwardian moral hypocrisy. In the new Ireland that the Abbey envisioned, the Irish
language would have a voice, in all its poetic lyricism, and women would have an important role to play. Yet, although the former has largely been achieved, however, the latter is still a play in progress.
Artistic freedom and the Free State
During the early decades of the 20th century, the Abbey was not just a centre of artistic courage but also of political bravery. Several of its actors were volunteers in the Easter Rising of 1916. The first Nationalist casualty of the Rising was an Abbey Actor. Sean Connolly, an Irish Citizen’s Army officer and Abbey actor, was both the first rebel to kill a British soldier and the first to be killed. From that terrible beauty—which was born from the Rising—also gave birth to one of the great pacifist plays of the 20th century, Sean O’Casey’s Easter Rising masterpiece The Plough and the Stars.
When it was written in 1926, the Free State Government, who had given subsidies to the
theatre in return for a seat on the board of directors, strongly pressurised the company to censor the play. Its placeman George O’Brien, argued that the play should reflect the values of the Free State and that it defamed Irish patriots. O’Brien threatened to withdraw funding for the theatre if the play was not altered. Lady Gregory responded to the threat by stating that: “If we have to choose between the subsidy and our freedom, it is our freedom we choose.” Yeats agreed and argued that removing any part of the play for reasons relating to anything other than dramatic tradition would be denying their traditions.
The play opened to a hostile audience. Many Republicans in the stalls viewed it as an insult to the dead of the Rising and duly rioted midway through the four-act production. The theatre refused to yield and continued to stage the play, with Yeats declaring: “You have disgraced yourself again. Is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?” Again, the Abbey stood firm on artistic freedom and the play is now recognised as a classic of Irish and world theatre.
Beckett, the French Resistance and Godot
Another Nobel Laureate playwright with strong Abbey connections was Samuel Beckett. Beckett initially sought artistic freedom of expression in France and lived there for most of his days. Yet, he would, later in his life, return to the Abbey as a director in the late 1970s. However, the young Beckett, who was also a first-class county cricketer, was not content to ply his trade in what he saw as a culturally claustrophobic Free State Ireland of the 1930s. Beckett shunned the opportunity to pursue an academic career in Dublin, quipping that Trinity College was filled ‘with cream of Ireland, rich and thick.’
The young playwright settled in France and established a close relationship with James Joyce who encouraged Beckett’s experimental writing. When the Second World War broke out and France was invaded and occupied, Beckett being Irish was a citizen of a neutral country and therefore was free to leave France. However, the Irishman refused to abandon his friends and joined the Resistance and fought the Nazi occupation at great risk to himself and his family. General De Gaulle awarded Beckett the Resistance Medal for services to his adopted country. However, the modest playwright spoke little of his exploits, but did wryly comment that: “France at war, is Ireland at peace.”
When not busy fighting the Nazis, Beckett also found time to work on Waiting for Godot, a play which was instrumental in winning him the Nobel Prize. The existential work—which was first premiered in a small theatre on Paris’s Left Bank after the war—reflected the pessimism of the period. It explored the themes of the search for life’s meaning and its absurdity. The only two characters in the play endlessly wait for Godot, who never arrives, serving as metaphor for the quest to find meaning in life through personal experience in the world.
When the two-act play was premiered in London, an English critic sneered: “Nothing happens twice.” However, although the name of the reviewer is but a mere theatrical footnote, Godot was voted the most influential English language play of the 20th century. In the late 1970s, the Irishman would take his play home to his native land and direct it at Abbey to great domestic and international acclaim. The prodigal son had returned to Erin’s shores with his masterpiece and a Nobel Prize.
For over a century, the Abbey Theatre has been at the centre stage of Irish creativity and genius. However, its role in shaping the cultural life of Ireland has gone beyond merely theatrical. It has acted as a hub for free expression of Irishness and how the nation sees itself, even if the mirror it holds up to its audience is, at times, challenging. Today the Abbey is still thriving crucible of artistic innovation reflecting 21st century Ireland.
Dr David McKinstry is a teacher and poet whose poems are widely published and broadcast across Ireland and in the UK. If any readers wish to share their literary output with him, they can contact him at: davmick38h@yahoo.co.uk
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