Shakespeare and Ireland examines the complex relationship between the most celebrated icon of the British establishment and Irish literary and cultural traditions. Addressing Shakespearean representations of Ireland as well as Irish writers' responses to the dramatist, it ranges widely across theatrical performances, pedagogical practices, editorial undertakings and political developments. The writings of Joyce, Heaney and Yeats are considered, in addition to recent nationalist discourses. In so doing, the collection establishes the multiple 'Shakespeares' and competing 'Irelands' that inform the Irish imagination.

As more and more scholars come to realise that the accepted story of William Shakespeare is untenable, this book tries to unmask the covert Irish influence on his work and the remarkable career of William Nugent, the only Irish candidate ever put forward for Shakespeare. It includes the full text of many original documents on Irish history, from the Reformation to the 1641 Rebellion. "That in these lines I could as well express, As in my soul I do admire her beauty, Or that great Daniel, fit for such a task, This wonder of our Isle, had seen, and heeded, Then should his glorious muse, her worth unmask, And he himself, himself should have exceeded; Then England, France, Spain, Greece and Italy, And all that th'Ocean from our shores divideth, Would over-run their bounds, and hither fly, To find the treasure, that our Ireland hideth, But best is, that we never do disclose it, Since known but of ourselves, we shall not lose it." - RIchard Nugent "Cynthia" (London, 1604)

This book is a comprehensive study of the representation of Ireland in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Through a detailed analysis of a range of canonical and less familiar plays, such as The Misfortunes of Arthur, Captain Thomas Stukeley, Sir John Oldcastle and Dekker's The Honest Whore, this book reveals fascinating interconnections between Ireland as it was figured in Elizabethan and early Jacobean drama, and contemporaneous political and cultural anxieties about Ireland and Irish alterity. Exploring how the stage provided a fluid, though licensed, space where such anxieties were negotiated and confronted, this study questions views of the stage Irishman as a static colonialist stereotype. Instead, it demonstrates that dramatic representations of Ireland were dynamic, heterogeneous, and ideologically unstable. Opening up Renaissance drama to its multivalent Irish contexts, Staging Ireland will appeal to scholars and students of Shakespeare and early modern literature; drama and theatre as well as Irish studies.

Dissent and Authority in Early Modern Ireland: The English Problem from Bale to Shakespeare examines the problems that beset the Tudor administration of Ireland through a range of selected 16th century English narratives. This book is primarily concerned with the period between 1541 and 1603. This bracket provides a framework that charts early modern Irish history from the constitutional change of the island from lordship to kingdom to the end of the conquest in 1603. The mounting impetus to bring Ireland to a "complete" conquest during these years has, quite naturally, led critics to associate England's reform strategies with Irish Otherness. The preoccupation with this discourse of difference is also perceived as the "Irish Problem," a blanket term broadly used to describe just about every aspect of Irishness incompatible with the English imperialist ideologies. The term stresses everything that is "wrong" with the Irish nation--Ireland was a problem to be resolved. This book takes a different approach towards the "Irish Problem." Instead of rehashing the English government's complaints of the recalcitrant Irish and the long struggle to impose royal authority in Ireland, I posit that the "Irish Problem" was very much shaped and developed by a larger "English Problem," namely English dissent within the English government. The discussions in this book focuse on the ways in which English writers articulated their knowledge and anxieties of the "English Problem" in sixteenth-century literary and historical narratives. This book reappraises the limitations of the "Irish Problem," and argues that the crown's failure to control dissent within its own ranks was as detrimental to the conquest as the "Irish Problem," if not more so, and finally, it attempts to demonstrate how dissent translate into governance and conquest in early modern Ireland.

Exploring the influence of Shakespeare on drama in Ireland, the author examines works by two representative playwrights: Sean O'Casey (1880-1964) and Brian Friel (1929-). Shakespeare's plays, grounded in history, nationalism, and imperialism, are resurrected, rewritten, and reinscribed in twentieth-century Irish drama, while Irish plays, in turn, historicize the Subject/Object relationship of England and Ireland. In particular, the author argues, Irish dramatists' appropriations of Shakespeare were both a reaction to the language of domination and a means to support their revision of the Irish as Subject. This study reveals that Shakespeare's plays embody an empathy for the Irish Other. As she investigates Shakespeare's commiseration with marginalized peoples and the anticolonial underpinnings in his texts, the author situates Shakespeare between the English discourse that claims him and the Irish discourse that assimilates him.

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize’s 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award What accounts for Shakespeare’s transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this gripping account, James Shapiro sets out to answer this question, "succeed[ing] where others have fallen short." (Boston Globe) 1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen. James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare’s staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.