‘See a play as a picture’: The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Sister Arts, and the Irish Plays

Abstract

Aesthetic debates concerning relations between the Sister Arts featured prominently among English Victorian thinkers and artists. Questions regarding the moral nature of art were persistent, particularly in the writings of Ruskin. Remport situates Lady Gregory’s ideas on the staging of her plays in this context. She considers the influence on Lady Gregory of narrative painting that Ruskin admired for its didactic ends. Remport traces Gregory’s use of tableaux vivants and narrative techniques in her plays to such narrative painting. She draws contrasts between Lady Gregory’s work and the staging of plays by W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge at the Abbey Theatre in the 1900s. In so doing, Remport illustrates Ruskin’s distinctive influence on Lady Gregory’s plays.