Riotous Performances: The Struggle for Hegemony in the Irish Theatre, 1712-1784

Abstract

"Riotous Performances" explores the significance of theatre "riots" and other disruptive practices that occurred in Dublin playhouses between 1712 and 1784. Helen Burke's study reveals that during this period Irish theatre was a site of struggle between different ethnic, religious and class factions competing for power in 18th-century Ireland. Key players in this drama included Irish Protestant patriots, an emerging Catholic middle class, dispossessed native gentry, and an increasingly politicized Dublin "mob". Burke contends that these groups expressed their resistance to the ruling British culture through explosive acts as well as through more subtle counter-cultural behaviours such as wearing Irish manufactured clothing, singing Irish songs, and opposing the Theatre Royal. Using a wide array of primary materials, including dramatic texts, newspaper accounts, pamphlets, broadsides and songs, Burke places the riotous performances she describes in their social and historical context. Her analysis reveals that in the 1740s and 1750s the theatre was the focus of intense struggles between Catholic-identified gentry reformers and Protestant-identified populist reformers. But by the 1780s new, united Irish themes were emerging in Dublin playhouses. She argues that the Irish Parliament passed the first Irish Stage Act in 1786 to contain these revolutionary theatrics. This work demonstrates that 18th-century Irish theatre was not a static colonial institution, but rather a deeply contested arena of intense ethnic, religious and class struggle.