Abstract
This chapter makes a series of in-depth comic analyses from a selection of the patriotic plays under the recurring themes of romance, nation and class. The plots are briefly described as a way into the comic structures operating in the plays, its mechanics and its intentions interwoven through the central motifs. The analysis draws out the device of the comedy double act along its porous edges to understand how the women operated in and out of the doubling. It discusses the plays’ usage of satirical attack, light relief and comic violence or slapstick. The chapter reveals the scope of comic expression in the plays and makes plain the levels of comic female agency working through the central motifs.
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Notes
- 1.
One of P.J. Bourke’s earliest plays was an adaptation of Kathleen Mavourneen , which played in the Father Mathew Hall and made it to the boards of the Queen’s in 1910. As a protoplay, it operates as a series of scenes, and as romance principally, although it plays along, and with class lines in so doing. There are some strong comedic scenes in the work; as when Kathleen discusses daily life with her superior Dorothy Kavanagh, and the gravedigger scene is an exercise in Irish commedia; however as the play, while relational, is not thematically built on the politics of the patriotic melodramas in the same way, it falls outside the remit here.
Bibliography
Bourke, P.J. 1991a. When Wexford Rose. In For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas 1890–1925, ed. Cheryl Herr. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
———. 1991b. For the Land She Loved. In For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas 1890–1925, ed. Cheryl Herr. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
Whitbread, J.W. 1991a. Lord Edward or ’98. In For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas 1890–1925, ed. Cheryl Herr. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
———. 1991b. Wolfe Tone. In For the Land They Loved: Irish Political Melodramas 1890–1925, ed. Cheryl Herr. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.
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Colleary, S. (2018). Comic Texts. In: The Comic Everywoman in Irish Popular Theatre. Palgrave Studies in Comedy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02008-8_3
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