Patrick Pearse as amateur dramatist.

Markey, Anne

Roisin Ni Ghairbhi and Eugene McNulty, Editors

PATRICK. PEARSE: COLLECTED PLAYS/DRAMAI AN PHIARSAIGH

DUBLIN: IRISH ACADEMIC PRESS, 2013.

22.95 [euro].

PATRICK PEARSE: Collected Plays/ Dramai an Phiarsaigh draws attention to an often neglected aspect of the career of a man whose contemporary significance and subsequent legacy remains disputed almost one hundred years after his death. Indeed, the editors present the volume as a contribution to "the momentum building towards the centenary year of 2016" (ix) and to the ongoing revaluation of the leader of the failed Easter Rising. Following his execution and the foundation of the Irish state in 1922, Pearse was widely regarded as hero and a national icon. In 1932, his Breton biographer, Louis N. le Roux, went so far as to declare that he possessed all the qualities which go to the making of a saint. However, the revaluation of Irish attitudes to violent nationalism triggered by the outbreak of the Northern Troubles in the late 1960s resulted in a revisionist reappraisal of both the 1916 Rising and of Pearse himself. From this perspective, Pearse was a flawed and complex man, whose idealistic dream of an independent Ireland was underpinned by ruthless ambition and doomed to failure. More recent years have witnessed a further reconsideration of Pearse's radical brand of cultural nationalism by drawing attention to his work as a literary theorist, his distinctive approach to education and his achievements as a writer. Patrick Pearse: Collected Plays contributes to this revision of revisionist approaches to Pearse by focusing on and arguing for the significance of his work as an amateur dramatist in the leading up to the Rising.

Between 1909 and 1916, Pearse wrote eleven dramatic works--Macghniomhaire Chuchulainn (The Boy Deeds of Cuchulainn); losagan/ losagan; An Ri/The King-, Eoin/Owen; The Master, The Singer, Eoghan Gabha (Eoghan the Smith); An Phais (The Passion); The Defence of the Ford', The Fianna of Fionn; Fionn: A Dramatic Spectacle--that were staged in St. Enda's, the boys' school he established in 1908, and a few other Dublin venues, including the Abbey Theatre and the Mansion House. This new collection presents the texts of the first seven of these plays, while contextualizsing information, including cast lists, advertisements, plot summaries and recollections, give some flavor of the remaining four for which no scripts survive. This is the first time that all Pearse's known plays, including the previously unpublished Eoghan Gabha, have appeared in one volume. Pearse wrote plays in both Irish and English; he translated three of his Irish-language plays into English; he also provided explanatory English-language summaries of others in accompanying program notes. Given his willingness to move between languages to accommodate different audiences and readerships, the editors are to be particularly commended for their bilingual, multidisciplinary approach to Pearse's work as a dramatist. As they point out, "a false dichotomy has too often been drawn between Revivalists who worked mainly in Irish and those who worked in English" (ix). A similarly regrettable division has too often arisen between contemporary Irish literary critics who work through the medium of the English language and their colleagues employed in Irish departments of third-level institutions. This volume highlights the benefits of negotiating linguistic and disciplinary frontiers by making all of Pearse's dramatic works available to all readers, even those lacking fluency in Irish. To complement the plays, a selection of Pearse's published musings on literature and drama is provided in appendices, while a selective bibliography lists some useful sources for further reading.

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In a generally informative introduction, the editors trace Pearse's lifelong interest in theatre before setting out the performance histories of his plays. They draw useful attention to his involvement in almost every element of the production of the plays staged at St. Enda's and to his experimentation with a range of dramatic genres, including the miracle play and the pageant. It is a pity, however, that the focus remains so consistently on Pearse as dramatist and on the plays he wrote to promote the school. Some broader discussion of theatre in Dublin in the second decade of the twentieth century and more information on the circumstances that led to the staging of some St. Enda's productions in other Dublin venues would help substantiate the claim that Pearse 'emerges as a dedicated theatre practitioner concerned with exploring the limits of dramatic art and its relationship to wider society" (3). Pearse himself stated that he wrote iosagan "for performance in a particular place and by particular players" (29). That place was St. Enda's and the players were his pupils. As iosagan and other plays by Pearse were also staged for particular audiences of invited guests, the extent of the "remarkable impact that his dramatic works had when first performed" (3) is difficult to gauge. The argument that "during the Revival very many important productions were by amateur groups or professional productions aided or instigated by amateurs" (5) is intriguing but unpersuasive because the only evidence provided refers, in a circular fashion, to Pearse's work as a dramatist. Undoubtedly, his plays were Revival texts, but they were so closely linked to the school that they were seldom subjected to the kind of criticism attracted by professional productions. For example, a contemporary review of Fionn: A Dramatic Spectacle, staged in St. Enda's in 1914, makes clear that the pageant was only one of a series of entertainments, including a sports display, afternoon- tea, and a performance by pipers, which went to make the annual school fete an enjoyable social occasion for the invited guests. The Irish Times reviewer provides a brief summary of the legend on which the play is based, praises the picturesque costumes, and lists the boys who took part, but does even mention, much less evaluate, the dialogue, characterization, or dramatic action of Pearse's pageant.

Reading the plays themselves does little to dispel the suspicion that they would not have been gathered together in a modern, critical edition had they not been written by Pearse. The most striking recurrent problem is the awkwardness of the dialogue, which seldom succeeds in establishing character or propelling action. In those plays based on saga material, Pearse deliberately eschewed the vernacular Irish he used when writing fiction in favour of a stylized diction that was intended to underline the epic nature of the material being represented. His English-language plays, meanwhile, alternate between awkward literal translation and stiltedly formal speech. Writing in on "The Irish Stage" in An Claidheamh Soluis in 1906, Pearse made an important distinction between the terms "play" and "drama." In his view, plays, which could refer to any kind of public performance, were inferior to dramas, which were depictions of human life that were primarily distinguishable from other types of theatrical representation by means of their credible characterization. Pearse lamented that most Irish playwrights persisted in presenting representative types--such as the Sean-Fhear (old man), Fear Og (young man) and Cailin Comhursan (neighboring young woman)--rather than credible individuals to their audiences. The majority of Pearse's own characters are representative, interchangeable types rather than complex individuals: Old Mathias in the dramatic version of Iosagan is a far less singular character than his counterpart in the original story; Colm in The Singer is a young man whose main purpose seems to be to act as a foil to MacDara, his more charismatic brother; Brid an Phiobaire is listed as a member of the cast of Eoghan Gabha, but the smith's young neighbor never appears on stage and is only mentioned as a possible love interest of one of the male characters. If they fail to meet their author's own dramatic standards, Pearse's plays nonetheless succeed in providing intriguing insights into his aspirations and preoccupations. Only one--Iosagan--is set in the present, while the others are based on early mythological sagas or draw on significant moments from more recent Irish history, such as the late seventeenth-century Williamite campaign in Ireland and the Fenian Rising of 1867. Collectively, they reveal Pearse's ongoing recourse to the past as a means of reimagining the present and shaping the future. They also reflect Pearse's enduring obsession with heroic masculinity and his progressive commitment to and valorization of violent nationalism, preoccupations which become troubling in the context of his abiding fascination with boys and boyhood. This is particularly the case in Eoin/Owen, which culminates in the death of a young pupil who is shot by the Royal Irish Constabulary as he attempts to help his Fenian schoolmaster escape arrest.

Leaving aside the dramatic shortcomings of Pearse's plays, their overt glorification of violence and endorsement of blood sacrifice, especially of the young, goes a long way towards explaining why they have seldom been re-staged. Nevertheless, they are important sources for anyone interested in Pearse or more generally in amateur drama in Ireland at the beginning of the last century. After all, they attracted large audiences and were generally favorably reviewed when mentioned in the national press, suggesting that Pearse's brand of cultural nationalism resonated with many of his contemporaries. Although the editors' portrayal of Pearse as a major dramatist is not entirely convincing, the collection is consequently a major contribution to "the momentum building towards the centenary year of 2016."

--Trinity College Dublin