SHAKESPEARE AND IRELAND

Transcription

1 SHAKESPEARE AND IRELAND

2 Also by Mark Thornton Burnett NEW ESSAYS ON HAMLET (co-edited with John Manning) MASTERS AND SERVANTS IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA AND CULTURE: Authority and Obedience

3 Shakespeare and Ireland History, Politics, Culture Edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray

4 First published in Great Britain 1997 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / First published in the United States of America 1997 by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y ISBN Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shakespeare and Ireland: history, politics, culture / edited by Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN (cloth) 1. Shakespeare, William, ~Knowledge-Ireland. 2. Ireland-In literature. 3. English literature-irish authors -History and criticism. 4. Shakespeare, William, Appreciation-Ireland. 5. National characteristics, Irish, in literature. 6. Shakespeare, William, ~Influence. 7. Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.) 8. Politics and literature -Ireland. 9. Literature and history-ireland. I. Burnett, Mark Thornton. II. Wray. Ramona PR3069.I7S '3-dc CIP Selection and editorial matter Mark Thornton Burnett and Ramona Wray 1997 Text e Macmillan Press Ltd 1997 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1997 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources

5 Contents Notes on Contributors Foreword by Frank McGuinness Introduction Mark Thornton Burnett vii xi 1 Part One: Shakespeare and Early Modem Ireland 7 1 Neighbourhood in Henry V 9 Lisa Hopkins 2 Shakespeare, Holinshed and Ireland: Resources and Con-texts 27 Willy Maley 3 'Hitherto she ne're could fancy him': Shakespeare's 'British' Plays and the Exclusion of Ireland 47 Andrew Hadfield 4 Where is Ireland in The Tempest? 68 David J. Baker Part Two: National Shakespeares, Postcolonial CuUures ~ 5 'Shakespeare Explained': James joyce's Shakespeare from Victorian Burlesque to Postmodern Bard 91 Richard Brown 6 W. B. Yeats and Shakespearean Character 114 Jonathan Allison 7 Shakespeare and the Definition of the Irish Nation 136 Richard English 8 Bridegrooms to the Goddess: Hughes, Heaney and the Elizabethans 152 Neil Rhodes v

6 vi Contents Part Three: Performance, Pedagogy, Language No 'Brave Irishman' Need Apply: Thomas Sheridan, Shakespeare and the Smock-Alley Theatre 175 Beverly E. Schneller 10 Rug-headed kerns speaking tongues: Shakespeare, Translation and the Irish Language 193 Michael Cronin 11 "Tish ill done': Henry the Fift and the Politics of Editing 213 Andrew Murphy 12 Shakespeare and the Sectarian Divide: Politics and Pedagogy in (post) Post-Ceasefire Belfast 235 Ramona Wray Index 257

7 Notes on Contributors Jonathan Allison is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of Patrick Kavanagh: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1996) and the editor of Yeats ' Political Identities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996). Currently he is co-editing Poetry and Contemporary Culture for Edinburgh University Press and completing a book, Vision and Community in the Poetryof Seamus Heaney. DavidJ.Baker is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Hawai'i. He has published articles on Shakespeare and Spenser, as well as topics in cultural studies. He is the author of Between Nations: Shakespeare, Spenser, Marvell, and the Question of Britain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). Richard Brown has been a Senior Lecturer in the School of English at the University of Leeds since He is the author of James Joyce and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) and James Joyce: A Postculturalist Perspective (London: Macmillan, 1990). He is the founding co-editor of the James Joyce Broadsheet, which has appeared since He is currently working on studies of contemporary British fiction and on James Joyce in relation to English literature. Mark Thornton Burnett is a Lecturer in English Literature at the Queen's University of Belfast. He is the co-editor of New Essays on 'Hamlet' (New York: AMS, 1994) and the author of Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture: Authority and Obedience (London: Macmillan, 1997). Currently he is editing The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe for Everyman Paperbacks. Michael Cronin is the Director of the Centre for Translation Studies, Dublin City University. He is a founding member and past President of the Irish Translators' Association. He is the co-editor of Graph: Irish Cultural Review and the General Editor of DCU Working Papers in Language and Society. He is the co-editor of Tourism in Ireland: A Critical Analysis (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993) and vii

8 viii Notes on Contributors the author of Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996). Richard English is a Reader in Politics at the Queen's University of Belfast. He is the author of Radicals and the Republic: Socialist Republicanism in the Irish Free State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) and A Certain Ideal of Freedom: A Biography of Ernie O'Malley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Andrew Hadfield is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He is the author of Literature, Politics and National Identity: Reformation to Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and of Spenser's Irish Experience: 'WildeFruit and Salvage SoyI' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). He has co-edited Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and 'Strangers to that Land': British Perceptions of Ireland from the Reformation to thefamine (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1994). Lisa Hopkins (nee Cronin) is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Sheffield Hallam University. She is the author of John Ford's Political Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994) and Shakespeare and Marriage: Merry Wivesand Heavy Husbands (London: Macmillan, 1997). She is currently writing the volume on Christopher Marlowe for the 'Macmillan Literary Lives' series. Frank McGuinness is a playwright and a Lecturer in English Literature at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. His plays include The Factory Girls, Observe the Sons of Ulster, Marching Towards the Somme and Someone Who'll Watch Over Me. He has also adapted plays by Brecht, Chekhov, Ibsen and Lorca for the stage. Willy Maley is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Glasgow. He taught previously at the University of London and at Strathdyde University. He is the author of Salvaging Spenser: Colonialism, Culture and Identity (London: Macmillan, 1997) and A Spenser Chronology (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1994), and is the co-editor of Representing Ireland: Literature and the Origins of Conflict, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

9 Notes on Contributors Andrew Murphy is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Hertfordshire. He has edited the 1622 quarto text of Othello for the 'Shakespearean Originals' series, published by Harvester Wheatsheaf, and has co-edited a special issue of Critical Suroey on the topic, Textual Shakespeare. He has published articles on Irish and Renaissance themes in Irish Studies Review, Textual Practice, Literature and History and TEXT, and is the author of Seamus Heaney (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1996). Neil Rhodes is a Reader in English Literature at the University of St Andrews. He has written widely in the fields of the English Renaissance and cultural history. His publications include Elizabethan Grotesque (London and New York: Routledge, 1980), John Donne: Selected Prose (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987), The Power of Eloquence and English Renaissance Literature (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992) and English Renaissance Prose: History, Language and Politics (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997). He is Director of the M.Litt. in Shakespeare Studies at the University of St Andrews. Beverly E. Schneller is an Associate Professor of English Literature at Millersville University, Pennsylvania. She is the author of two Oxford University Press books on technical writing, as well as articles on eighteenth-century fiction, the British book trade, bibliography, Ibsen and Yeats. Ramona Wray is completing a Ph.D. in English at Trinity College, Dublin. She has published articles on women's writing and English Renaissance culture, and is the editor of Women, Writing, Revolution: An Anthology of Writing by Women in the English Civil War (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming). ix

10 Foreword There is so little to go on when you try to decipher the life of William Shakespeare. But we can say with some certainty that he was not an Irishman. Mind you, I don't know for sure if he was an Englishman either. And I would not be remotely surprised if some scholar in the future were to take up the challenge of a certain English novelist and essayist and give me convincing reason to believe Shakespeare was his own sister. I don't know who this writer is. I don't know what is his country. I do want to, very much want to, but the plays keep defying me. I once innocently imagined that the sonnets would give up their secrets to me. Like the narrator of Oscar Wilde's The Portrait of Mr W. H., I would catch his soul. Fortunately, I was not cursed, and the answer to those riddles evaded me. I could invent no solutions: I did not master the code that would identify the lover, his lad and his lass. I suspected that the playful, troubled confusions masquerading under the simple disguise of 'I and you and he and she' were the real lost play that would explain the writer, but my suspicions were unfounded. If these were songs of love, they were not for me. So I went back to the plays and for the past 12 years taught them, struggled with them, tried to fascinate others in the fascination they disturbed in me. I did this in Maynooth, for centuries the centre of Catholic learning in Ireland. There was a reason for this. I believed as an act of faith that in these plays I would come face to face with a Catholic dissident, marvellously subverting the insecurities of Protestant England. His canon would be read as a rewriting of the Mass. The theatre would become the new monastery. Acts of worship would be expressed in blank verse. His poetry would be the psalms of a people in spiritual exile in their own country. Actors would be like priests in a strange order. They would sacrifice themselves on the altar of Shakespeare's imagination, its wood the bare planks of the stage, its passion the empathy of the player with the part. Transubstantiation would occur between audience and author. He denied me again. I was wrong. I was thinking like an Irishman, sentimentalizing as is our dangerous wont about the English. This made me angry. xi

11 xii Foreword In my anger I decided to create Shakespeare. I begun a play, Mutabilitee, where he would appear. He would come to Ireland and be confronted by an Irishwoman. The fight would be to the death, and she would win it. She didn't. She was a wise woman. Full of learning, full of revenge, against him and her tribe. But he belonged to no tribe. In every scene that he appeared in, he changed character and colour. He left as quickly as he arrived, his entrance always being an exit. I think the play is nearly finished. I've accepted he made his escape. I've accepted that's his way: he's a bolter. It is in the nature of bolters to leave some tracks or traces behind them. These essays pick up some of the tracks, bear witness to the traces. They all do so with skill. I admire their detailed investigations. Of course, he's escaped them as well. That is why they love him in their very different ways. They can have him. I'm not possessive. Needless to say, I still love him. At least he's not from Kerry. They claim him, of course, but this book makes clear they're lying. He'd let them, he's like that. But don't start me. Frank McGuinness