Katharine and Parnell

Abstract

It was an adulterous queen who betrayed Ireland. In the notes for his play Exiles, Joyce writes:

The relations between Mrs. O’Shea and Parnell are not of vital significance for Ireland—first, because Parnell was tongue-tied and secondly because she was an Englishwoman. The very points in his character which could have been of interest have been passed over in silence. Her manner of writing is not Irish—nay, her manner of loving is not Irish. The character of O’Shea is much more typical of Ireland. The two greatest Irishmen of modern times—Swift and Parnell—broke their lives over women. And it was the adulterous wife of the King of Leinster who brought the first Saxon to the Irish coast. (E 127)

It would really have hurt, my Queen, if those devils had got hold of your real name, my Queenie.

—Charles Stewart Parnell (qtd. in Parnell 299)