Abstract
A wide range of Murphy’s drama is engaged with in this chapter which reflects his interest in several parts of Wilde’s aesthetic, such as the frustrating of national and individual stereotypes as exist between the Irish and English and men and women. The Gigli Concert emerges as the most explicitly Wildean of Murphy’s plays because of the foregrounding of an Irish and an English character, neither of whom conform to type, and because of its probing of the relationship between art and life and the fault lines between the two.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Ivor Browne, ‘Thomas Murphy: The Madness of Genius’, Irish University Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (1987), p. 131.
- 2.
Ivor Browne, ‘Thomas Murphy: The Madness of Genius’, p. 133.
- 3.
Tom Murphy, The Wake, Tom Murphy: Plays 5 (London: Methuen, 2006), p. 165.
- 4.
Shaun Richards, ‘Refiguring Lost Narratives-Prefiguring New Ones: The Theatre of Tom Murphy’, The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 15, no. 1 (1989), p. 97.
- 5.
Tom Murphy, The Sanctuary Lamp, Tom Murphy Plays 3 (London: Methuen, 1994), p. 159.
- 6.
Gerard Stembridge, ‘Murphy’s Language of Theatrical Empathy’. Irish University Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (1987), p. 59.
- 7.
Fintan O’Toole , ‘Introduction’, Tom Murphy Plays 3 (London: Methuen, 1994), p. x.
- 8.
Tom Murphy, The Gigli Concert, Tom Murphy Plays 3 (London: Methuen, 1994), p. 165. All future references will be parenthetically referring to this edition.
- 9.
Mark Lane, ‘Theatrical Space and National Place in Four Plays by Thomas Murphy’, Irish University Review, vol. 21, no. 2 (1991), p. 224.
- 10.
Anthony Roche , Contemporary Irish Drama, second edition (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), p. 102.
- 11.
G.W.F. Hegel , The Phenomenology of the Spirit, trans J.B. Baillie, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 1955), p. 95.
- 12.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 49.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 82.
- 14.
See Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, p. 159.
- 15.
Jose Lanters , ‘Gender and Identity in Brian Friel’s Faith Healer and Thomas Murphy’s’ The Gigli Concert. Irish University Review, vol. 22, no. 2 (1992), pp. 282–83.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 290.
- 17.
See Bracha Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2006), pp. 143–144.
- 18.
Christopher Murray , ‘Introduction: The Rough and Holy Theatre of Thomas Murphy.’ Irish University Review, vol. 17, no. 1 (1987), p. 15.
- 19.
Fintan O’Toole , The Politics of Magic, second edition (Dublin: New Island Books, 1994), p. 224.
- 20.
Richard Kearney , ‘Theatre: Tom Murphy’s Long Night’s Journey into Night.’ Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 72, no. 288 (1983), p. 330.
- 21.
John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, in The Complete Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1899), p. 144.
- 22.
Anne F. Kelly, ‘Bodies and Spirits in Tom Murphy’s Theatre’, in Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish Theatre, ed. Eamonn Jordan (Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2000), p. 167.
- 23.
John Keats, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, p. 244.
- 24.
Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan , Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 2003), p. 451.
- 25.
Anthony Roche , Contemporary Irish Drama, p. 109.
- 26.
Declan Kiberd , ‘Oscar Wilde: The Resurgence of Lying’, in The Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 292.
- 27.
See Shaun Richards, ‘Refiguring Lost Narratives-Prefiguring New Ones: The Theatre of Tom Murphy’. The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 15, no. 1 (1989), p. 89.
- 28.
Alexandra Poulain, ‘“My heart untravelled”: Tom Murphy’s plays of homecoming’, Études anglaises, 2003/2 (Tome 56), p. 188.
- 29.
Mark Lane, ‘Theatrical Space and National Place in Four Plays by Thomas Murphy’, Irish University Review, vol. 21, no. 2 (1991), p. 226.
- 30.
Tom Murphy, Conversations on a Homecoming , Tom Murphy: Plays 2 (London: Methuen, 2005), p. 12. All further references will parenthetically refer to this edition.
- 31.
“‘Introduction: The Rough and Holy Theatre of Thomas Murphy’”, p. 16.
- 32.
Stewart Parker , Pentecost , Plays 2 (United Kingdom: Methuen Press, 2000), p. 245.
- 33.
Stewart Parker , Dramatis Personae, John Malone Memorial Lecture (Belfast: Queen’s University, 1986), pp. 18–19.
- 34.
Margaret Maxwell, ‘Her – she, this woman, me’: the representation of subjectivity in Tom Murphy’s Alice Trilogy’, Irish Studies Review, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 202.
- 35.
See Declan Kiberd , Inventing Ireland, p. 324.
- 36.
Tom Murphy, Alice Trilogy , Tom Murphy: Plays 5 (London: Methuen, 2005), p. 302. All further references to this edition will be inserted parenthetically.
- 37.
Margaret Maxwell, ‘Her – she, this woman, me’: the representation of subjectivity in Tom Murphy’s Alice Trilogy’, Irish Studies Review, vol. 17, no. 2, p. 204.
- 38.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, p. 134.
- 39.
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest. p. 371.
- 40.
Nicholas Grene , ‘Introduction’, Tom Murphy: Plays 5 (London: Methuen, 2006), p. xiii.
- 41.
Emmanuel Levinas , Totality and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 290.
- 42.
Richard Ellmann , Four Dubliners: Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats , James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett (New York: George Braziller Inc., 1988), p. 37.
- 43.
Richard Kearney , ‘Theatre: Tom Murphy’s Long Night’s Journey into Night’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, p. 334.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Price, G. (2018). Tom Murphy: ‘We Are All in the Gutter but Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars’. In: Oscar Wilde and Contemporary Irish Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93345-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93344-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93345-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)