Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T02:13:59.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Augusta Gregory, Bernard Shaw, and the Shewing-Up of Dublin Casde

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Lucy McDiarmid
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1909 the lord lieutenant of Ireland attempted to prevent the Abbey Theatre from producing Bernard Shaw's Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet because the English lord chamberlain had denied the play a license. Shaw and the Abbey directors Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats seized the opportunity to contest the extension of English censorship to Ireland. With their genius for hype, they produced the spectacle of their resistance, winning nationalist support for the Abbey. The triumphant first performance was a multivalent occasion, the season's most stylish and seditious event. Gregory filled the theater with Dublin Castle society, members of the very state apparatus that had tried to stop the production; but in meetings with Castle officials and in Abbey press releases, she adopted the idiom of the Irish rebel tradition. Like those other Irish happenings the speech from the dock and the graveside oration, this event was staged not only for its immediate audience but for the Irish people of the future.

Type
Special Topic: Literature and Censorship
Information
PMLA , Volume 109 , Issue 1: Special Topic Literature and Censorship , January 1994 , pp. 26 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

“Abbey Theatre and the Castle.” Dublin Evening Mail 26 Aug. 1909: 5.Google Scholar
“Abbey Theatre. The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet.” Rev. of The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, by Bernard Shaw. Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Irish Times 26 Aug. 1909: 7.Google Scholar
Aberdeen, John Campbell Gordon, Lord Interview. Irish Times 24 Aug. 1909: 7.Google Scholar
Aberdeen, John Campbell Gordon, Lord Tell Me Another. London: Arnold, 1926.Google Scholar
Adams, Michael Censorship: The Irish Experience. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1968.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Boyce, D. G “‘One Last Burial’: Culture, Counterrevolution and Revolution in Ireland, 1886–1916.” The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923. Ed. Boyce. Dublin: Gill, 1988. 115–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cairns, David, and Richards, Shaun Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture. Manchester, Eng.: Manchester UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Carlson, Julia, ed Banned in Ireland: Censorship and the Irish Writer. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1990.Google Scholar
Casement, Roger “Speech from the Dock.” Irish Press 9 Feb. 1937: 15.Google Scholar
“The Castle and the Theatre.” Sinn Féin 21 Aug. 1909: 2.Google Scholar
Deane, Seamus “What Is Field Day?” Insert in the theater program for the first production of Brian Friel's translation of Chekhov's Three Sisters. Derry: Field Day Theatre Company, 1981. N. pag.Google Scholar
Dryhurst, N. F Letter. Irish Times 2 Jan. 1909: 8.Google Scholar
“Dublin Horse Show.” Irish Times 23 Aug. 1909: 9.Google Scholar
Dudley Edwards, Ruth Patrick Pearse: The Triumph of Failure. London: Gollancz, 1977.Google Scholar
Fay, Gerard The Abbey Theatre: Cradle of Genius. New York: Macmillan, 1958.Google Scholar
Fay, William George, and Carswell, Catherine The Fays of the Abbey Theatre: An Autobiographical Record. London: Rich; New York: Harcourt, 1935.Google Scholar
Foster, R. F Modern Ireland: 1600–1972. New York: Viking, 1988.Google Scholar
Foster, R. F “Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History.” Proceedings of the British Academy 75 (1989): 243–24.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel “The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Ed. Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Rabinow, Paul. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. 208–20.Google Scholar
Frazier, Adrian Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990.Google Scholar
Ganz, Arthur George Bernard Shaw. London: Macmillan, 1983.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Colin “Governmental Rationality: An Introduction.” The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Ed. Burchell, Graham, Gordon, Colin, and Miller, Peter. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. 1–51.Google Scholar
Britain, Great Parliament. Commons. Select Committee on Theatres and Places of Entertainment. Report from the Select Committee on Theatres and Places of Entertainment Together with the Proceedings…. London: HMSO, 1892.Google Scholar
Britain, Great. —–. Lords and Commons. Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship). Report from the Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship) Together with the Proceedings…. London: HMSO, 1909.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen “Culture.” Critical Terms for Literary Study. Ed. Lentricchia, Frank and McLaughlin, Thomas. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1990. 225–22.Google Scholar
Gregory, Anne Me and Nu: Childhood at Coole. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1970.Google Scholar
Gregory, Augusta Lady Gregory's Journals. Vol. 1 (books 1–29). Ed. Daniel J. Murphy. New York: Oxford UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Gregory, Augusta Lady Gregory's Journals. Vol. 2 (books 30–44). Ed.Google Scholar
Daniel, J Murphy. New York: Oxford UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Daniel, J Our Irish Theatre. 1913. New York: Oxford UP, 1972.Google Scholar
Haverty, Anne Constance Markievicz: An Independent Life. London: Pandora, 1988.Google Scholar
Hogan, Robert, and Kilroy, James, eds The Abbey Theatre: The Years of Synge, 1905–1909. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1978.Google Scholar
Hunt, Hugh The Abbey: Ireland's National Theatre, 1904–1978. New York: Columbia UP, 1979.Google Scholar
Hynes, Samuel The Edwardian Turn of Mind. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Irish Times 26 Aug. 1909: 6.Google Scholar
Jansen, Sue Curry Censorship: The Knot That Binds Power and Knowledge. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Johnston, John The Lord Chamberlain's Blue Pencil. London: Hodder, 1990.Google Scholar
Joyce, James Rev. of The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet, by Bernard Shaw. Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Il piccolo della sera. Shaw: The Critical Heritage. Ed. Evans, T. F. London: Routledge, 1976. 197–19.Google Scholar
Knapp, James F “Irish Primitivism and Imperial Discourse: Lady Gregory's Peasantry.” Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism. Ed. Arac, Jonathan and Ritvo, Harriet. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1991. 286–301.Google Scholar
Kohfeldt, Mary Lou Lady Gregory: The Woman behind the Irish Renaissance. New York: Atheneum, 1985.Google Scholar
Laurence, Dan H., and Grene, Nicholas, eds Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1993.Google Scholar
Lyons, F. S. L Ireland since the Famine. Bungay: Collins, 1973.Google Scholar
Moore, J. R. A Letter. Irish Times. 29 Aug. 1909: 8.Google Scholar
“Mr. Shaw's Play in Dublin. Lord Aberdeen Takes Action. A Precautionary Notice.” Irish Times 21 Aug. 1909: 7.Google Scholar
Newton, Lord Retrospection. London: Murray, 1941.Google Scholar
Ó Broin, Leon The Chief Secretary: Augustine Birrell in Ireland. Edinburgh: Archon, 1970.Google Scholar
Dubliner, An Old Letter. Irish Times 18 May 1915: 8.Google Scholar
Patterson, Annabel “‘The Very Age and Body of the Time His Form and Pressure’: Rehistoricizing Shakespeare's Theater.” New Literary History 20 (1988): 83–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, B. L The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends. New York: Oxford UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Robertson, Nora Crowned Harp: Memories of the Last Years of the Crown in Ireland. Dublin: Figgis, 1960.Google Scholar
Robinson, Lennox Ireland's Abbey Theatre: A History, 1899–1951. London: Sedgwick, 1951.Google Scholar
Said, Edward The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Shaw, Bernard Collected Letters 1874–1897. Ed. Laurence, Dan H. New York: Dodd, 1965.Google Scholar
Shaw, Bernard Collected Letters 1898–1910. Ed. Laurence, Dan H. New York: Dodd, 1972.Google Scholar
Shaw, Bernard Preface. John Bull's Other Island. Complete Plays with Prefaces. By Shaw. Vol. 2. New York: Dodd, 1963. 433–502.Google Scholar
Shaw, Bernard Preface. Shaw, Shewing-Up 171–243.Google Scholar
Shaw, Bernard The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. Complete Plays with Prefaces. Vol. 5. New York: Dodd, 1962. 169–276.Google Scholar
“The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. The Reported Interview with the Lord Lieutenant.” Irish Times 25 Aug. 1909: 7.Google Scholar
T. C. D. Letter. Irish Times 17 May 1915: 8.Google Scholar
“Viceregal Court.” Irish Times 28 Aug. 1909: 6.Google Scholar
White, Anna MacBride, and Jeffares, A. Norman, eds The Gonne-Yeats Letters 1893–1938. London: Hutchinson, 1992.Google Scholar
Yeats, W. B The Letters of W. B. Yeats. Ed. Wade, Allan. London: Hart-Davis, 1954.Google Scholar