Introduction

Summary

As long as there has been a distinct Irish drama it has been so closely bound up with national politics that the one has often been considered more or less a reflection of the other: the most recent work on twentieth-century Irish drama is subtitled Mirror up to Nation. It is understandable that it should be so. The Irish national theatre movement was an integral part of that broader cultural nationalism of the turn of the century which sought to create for a long-colonised Ireland its own national identity. There were those sharp encounters over The Playboy of the Western World and The Plough and the Stars which gave dramatic expression to the charged relationship of Irish theatre and national politics. Irish drama since the time of the early Abbey has remained self-consciously aware of its relation to the life of the nation and the state. The aim of this book, however, is to suggest that there is more to the politics of Irish drama than merely a theatrical mimesis of the national narrative. A three-way set of relationships between subject, playwright and audience has to be considered in the complex act of negotiation which is the representation of Ireland on the stage. This could be called a poetics of Irish drama in so far as it is concerned with the way the playwright addresses his/her subject; in considering the interaction of dramatic image and audience, it could be identified as a dynamics of Irish drama.