The Plays of Patrick Pearse: A Playwright’s Viewpoint

Abstract

The Plays of Patrick Pearse: A Playwright’s Viewpoint1 Brian McAvera Introduction Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) is not best known for his plays. He is principally remembered in relation to his leadership of the Easter Rising in 1916 (for which he was the first to be executed), and there is as yet no scholarly consensus as to whether his leadership was a triumph or a failure. A bald summary might be: those of a Republican persuasion see it as a triumph whereas those inclined to constitutional nationalism, or scepticism, see it as a failure.2 Pearse wrote a series of plays in both Irish and English, four of which were collected and published, along with stories and poems, by Father P Browne, in the year after Pearse’s death.3 In 2013 the collected plays of Patrick Pearse were published, expertly edited by Róisín Ní Ghairbhí and Eugene McNulty.4 These plays have hardly ever been performed. In the wake of the centenary of 1916, it is not surprising that numerous catalogues, exhibitions and books have emerged, which seek to redefine, in particular, the period between 1912 and 1916, and to re-evaluate the major figures.5 Pearse is a key figure. Whether one views him as an impractical, militaristic and naive idealist, who would have vanished from history if it had not been for the heavy-handed reaction of the British to the Easter Rising, or as a hero, who would later ‘legitimise’ the actions of the Provisional IRA, the accidents of history have ensured that he is a figure with whom we have to come to terms.6 This paper is specifically concerned with the plays of Pearse which were written in English or translated by their author into English. Quite recently, academics have attempted to reframe Pearse. On the basis of a seeming gender variability, he is claimed as a modernist.7 As a playwright in general, we are told that he developed ‘innovative approaches’, that he was a political playwright, that he used theatre to ‘explore the possibilities held out by a properly imagined education system’, that he had ‘a deep understanding of the power and mechanics of theatre’, that he was ‘concerned with exploring Brian McAvera Studies • volume 107 • number 427 356 the limits of dramatic art and its relationship to a wider society’, and that he used ‘contemporary forms and this led Ireland from anglicised backwaters into the European mainstream’.8 It is my contention that none of these statements are true. If he was a Modernist, did he take on board the acting revolution brought about by Stanislavski? Did his staging reflect the experiments of Appia, Craig, Meyerhold and Reinhardt? Was he versed in the latest dramatic theory, be it of Nietzsche or Shaw? As someone whose ‘themes and motifs … [were] embraced in the Irish art world’, one is required to ask of his work: where is the specific evidence for this?9 Is there even any evidence that Pearse was aware of developments in the visual arts, either in a very conservative Ireland or in the rest of Europe?10 Was he aware of impressionism or post-impressionism? Likewise, in relation to contemporary music was he aware of composers like Webern, Schoenberg, Stravinski, Debussy or Ravel?11 I wish to suggest that, in broad terms, Pearse, far from being a modernist, was an arch-conservative, whose closest analogues are to be found in the first half of the nineteenth century. As the American drama critic and historian John Gassner once remarked, ‘We must recognise the breach between ambition and attainment’.12 There are, however, other contexts which need to be considered. How can we evaluate Pearse’s alleged ‘deep understanding of the power and mechanics of theatre’, if he is not placed in relation to, for example, modernist theatrical developments such as Lugné-Poe’s Théâtre de l’Oeuvre and Antoine’s Théâtre Libre in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century, or J T Grein and the Independent Theatre Society (1890f.), William Poel’s Elizabethan Stage Society (1894f.) or Granville-Barker’s Court Theatre (1904–7), all in London? How can we investigate the claim...