Irish Literary Studies Series No. 26.

A compendium of information on all the main events, individuals, political groupings and issues of the 20th century. It provides a guide to current thinking on important historical topics and personalities within the period, and offers a guide to further reading.

A fierce mirth characterizes antic Irish comedy. To the degree to which everyone sympathizes with the need to mock repressive authority, everyone is potentially Irish. It is the Irish dramatists themselves, says David Krause, that are the true authors of the profane book of Irish comedy. The body of literature they have produced desecrates the sacred in Ireland and launches a sardonic attack on the queen of Irish nationalism, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, the old sow who, according to Joyce's tragicomic jest, tries to devour her creative farrow. Krause discusses the major works of fourteen Irish playwrights—Samuel Beckett, Brendan Behan, Dion Boucicault, William Boyle, Paul Vincent Carroll, George Fitzmaurice, Lady Gregory, Denis Johnston, Sean O'Casey, Lennox Robinson, Bernard Shaw, George Shields, J. M. Synge, and W. B. Yeats—and shows the ways in which these works are linked, emotionally and thematically, to early Gaelic literature and the tradition of the mythic pagan playboy Oisin or Usheen. As the last great pagan hero of Ireland, Oisin emerges as an archetype for the many playboys and paycocks of Irish comedy. Oisin was the antithesis of St. Patrick, the first great Christian saint of Ireland, who, condemning pleasure and threatening eternal damnation, came to represent all authority. The bearers of this dark and wild Celtic tradition, which Synge and O'Casey associated with a daimonic or barbarous impulse, laugh irreverently at their own creations. This laughter, the laughter of the culture's mythmakers, brings with it emotional relief, comic catharsis.

The period 1890-1940 was a particularly rich and influential phase in the development of modern English theatre: the age of Wilde and Shaw and a generation of influential actors and managers from Irving and Terry to Guilgud and Olivier. Jean Chothia's study is in two parts beginning with a portrait of the period, setting the narrative context and considering the dramatic social and cultural changes at work during this time. It then focuses on some of the main themes in the theatre, from Shaw and comedy, to the rise of political and radio drama, providing an interpretative framework for the period. This volume will be of great benefit to students and academics of English literature and drama, as it covers the work of the major dramatists of the period as well as considering the dramatic output of literary figures, such as James, Eliot and Lawrence.