Untitled Flashcards Set

PART 1 (Background terms)

United Irishman Uprising (1798). Inspired by the U.S. and French revolutions of 1776 and 1789, the

United Irishman Uprising of 1798 was a military uprising that started in Northern Ireland and aimed to

strike out against British rule in Ireland. Theobald Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward Fitzgerald led a secret

group named The Society of United Irishmen. The Irish unsuccessfully attempted to fight with wooden

staves against the British who were armed with guns. Tone committed suicide in prison, and Fitzgerald

was fatally wounded in battle. While the uprising was unsuccessful, it has been popularly remembered

for how Catholics and Protestants united for the common cause of Irish independence. The setting for

Cathleen ni Houlihan was the French landing at Killala (in the west of Ireland) to assist the United

Irishman in their uprising.

Irish Republican Brotherhood. Founded in 1858, the Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret society

of militant nationalists who hoped to free Ireland from Great Britain's political control. They were

popularly known as the Fenians, a name that recalls the mythic Fianna, a band of heroic warriors whose

exploits were told in Irish sagas. In 1916, the IRB was instrumental in organizing the Easter Rising. After

the Rising, the IRB became the Irish Republican Army (the IRA).The ballad singer in the Rising of the

Moon was an IRB member who escaped from prison.

Tragedy. Aristotle defines tragedy as “the imitation of an action that is serious, containing magnitude,

and complete in itself, with incidents arousing pity and fear, in order to arouse catharsis for the

audience.” Tragedy typically contains a tragic hero, who looks like us only has greater gifts (of birth, of

strength, valor, etc.); this tragic hero engenders the tragic events of the play through a tragic flaw in

character or an error in judgment. The classic tragic flaw of the most famous tragic heroes (Oedipus,

Macbeth) is hubris (pride). Aristotle does not believe that a tragedy has to end with a death or state of

unhappiness; however, the audience should sense that after the last words are spoken no further story

cries out to be told. Spreading the News is NOT a tragedy, but it almost was. In her introduction to

Spreading the News, Lady Gregory explained that “the idea of this play first came to me as tragedy

[. . . .] But comedy and not tragedy was wanted at our theatre [. . .], and I let laughter has its way with

the little play.”

Comedy is an amusing and entertaining drama. Comic effect is usually achieved through some

incongruity, whether physical, verbal, or conceptual. Most of Aristotle’s remarks on comedy are lost,

but he does remark that comedy differs from tragedy in that comedy depicts men and women as worse

than they are, whereas tragedy generally stresses their best qualities. Spreading the News is a comedy.

In her introduction to Spreading the News, Lady Gregory explained that “the idea of this play first

came to me as tragedy [. . . .] But comedy and not tragedy was wanted at our theatre [. . .], and I let

laughter has its way with the little play.”

Promethean hero. Prometheus was a Greek demi-god who suffered lasting punishment by Zeus for

creating humanity from clay and gifting them with fire. A Promethean hero is a special category of tragic

hero whose flaw is to be boldly creative and/or defiantly original. Promethean heroes are invariably

doomed to disappointment. The young man (Cuchulain) in At the Hawk's Well is a Promethean hero.

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846 – 1891) was considered the “uncrowned King of Ireland” due to his

political leadership skills and his near success in bringing home rule to Ireland through parliamentary,

rather than military, means. He was the founder of the Irish Parliamentary Party of Ireland and focused

on land reform and Irish home rule. In 1889, he lost his leadership position when it was revealed that he

was living with a married woman, Katherine O’Shea. The debate over Parnell’s leadership in the wake of

O’Shea’s divorce trial deeply divided nationalists across Ireland. In Purgatory, the tree (in the play, a

symbol of Ireland) splits in 1889, the year that Parnell was deposed as leader of the IPP.

Big House refers to both the home and the inhabitants of the grand buildings where the English-

speaking landed gentry (the Anglo-Irish or Ascendancy class) lived. Most “Big Houses” were built in the

18th century, the era when the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class wielded significant political and economic

power. During the War of Independence (1919-21), many Big Houses were burned by the IRA. In the

literary tradition, Big House refers to a kind of narrative that closely resembles the Gothic. According to

Vera Kreilkamp, Big House literature generally shares four characteristics: the decaying house as a

symbol of the declining landed class; anxieties over lineage and succession of property; an irresponsible

land owner; and upstart Irish characters who eventually obtain political or economic power. In

Purgatory, the house in the foreground of the setting is a Big House.

Ascendancy Class (also called the Anglo-Irish). Originally, the landed gentry (economic and social upper

class) who settled in Ireland starting in the 17th century. The Ascendancy class was English-speaking,

Protestant High Church (Anglican, called Church of Ireland) and the social and political elite of Ireland,

though they were a tiny minority. They owned large swaths of land that was granted to them by the

British crown during the settlement or "plantation" of Ireland. The Ascendancy class gained their landed

property by dispossessing native Irish from their land. In Purgatory, The Old Man, whose mother was a

member of the Ascendancy class, described them as "great people...magistrates, colonels, members

of Parliament, / Captains and Governors" (30). Yeats (and Lady Gregory) were also members of the

Ascendancy class.

Original Aims of the Irish National Theater

- Perform Celtic and Irish plays (that is, plays about and set in the Celtic rim- Ireland,

Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man, Brittany, Cornwall)

- Plays would be written with high ambition

- Theatre would build audience that is uncorrupted and imaginative, trained to listen to

oratory, willing to view experimental plays

- Theatre will teach its audience that “Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy

sentiment, but the home of ancient idealism.”

PART 2 (ID) and Part 3 (essay)

W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902)

Important quotes (these examples should provide examples of characterization, dialogue, theme, or

how the play fulfills or fails to fulfill the aims of the Irish National Theatre)

Old Woman: Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but there is not quiet in my heart.

When the people see me quiet, they think old age has come on me and that all the stir has gone out of

me. But when the trouble is one me I must be talking to my friends.

Bridget: What was it put you wandering?

Old Woman: Too many strangers in the house.

Bridget: Indeed you look as if you’d had your share of trouble

Old Woman: I have had trouble indeed

[Characterization: this exchange reveals that Cathleen is a symbolic character, who represents

oppressed Ireland and the “strangers” to which she refers represents the colonizer, Great Britain]

Old Woman: They shall be remembered for ever,

They shall be alive for ever,

They shall be speaking for ever,

The people shall hear them for ever.

[Dialogue: this utterance by Cathleen, possibly most famous lines in the play and the most evocative to

those who originally watched the play determined to join the militant fight for independence, explains

the gains for those who “give Cathleen [ie, Ireland] their all”: immortality through story and song.

Old Woman: my land that was taken from me.

Peter: Was it much land they took from you?

Old Woman: My four beautiful green fields

[Characterization: this exchange also reveals how Cathleen is a symbolic character whose metaphoric,

coded words reveal her ambitions: to recruit for soliders who will fight for Ireland’s sovereignty.]

Old Woman: I am come to cry with you, woman

My hair is unwound and unbound;

I remember him ploughing his field,

Turning up the red side of the ground,

And building his barn on the hill

With the good mortared stone;

O! We’d have pulled down the gallows

Had it happened in Enniscrone

Old Woman: I will go cry with the woman,

For yellow-haired Donough is dead,

With a hempen rope for a neckcloth

And a white cloth on his head,

Old Woman: If anyone would give me help he must give me himself, he must give me all.

[Dialogue: The use of song is a key element of Cathleen’s dialogue (communicating through song, most

of which are well-known rebel songs)

With each quote above, note WHICH DRAMATIC ELEMENT is exemplified with each example:

Characterization (what details in the play help you understand this character?)

Plot (how does the action in the play shape the play’s meaning?)

Dialogue (what is notable about the way the characters speak – and speak to one another?)

dramatic style (peasant realism? Noh? Tragedy? Comedy?) peasant realism with element of

supernatural

staging (what details in the setting and staging enhance the meaning in this play?) spare staging that

contributes v little to meaning of the play

Theme(s) of play: [what’s the play’s big message(s)?]

Cathleen Ni Houlihan (code for oppressed Irish) asks young men to fight for her sovereignty; in exchange

for this sacrifice, she promises such men immortality.

The songs she sings are used to evoke emotions and persuade him

- The love for Ireland and the cost of the love

- Will be remembered forever (immortal and live on through songs)

Talks about having sovereignty throughout the songs

The transformation from HAG (oppressed) to the beautiful girl (sovereign)

Irish Nationalism (if you love Ireland this is what you must do, talking to the men)

Fulfills the themes of the Irish national theatre (ups the Irish)

Lady Gregory, The Rising of the Moon (1907)

Important quotes (these examples should provide examples of characterization, dialogue, theme, or

how the play fulfills or fails to fulfill the aims of the Irish National Theatre)

Policeman B: Will we put a notice here on the barrel?

Staging: this simple prop will be important backdrop to a message of the play: two men, on two sides of

the divide btwn law/order and rebellion, have more in common than they first realize.

Man: I’m a poor ballad-singer, your honor. I thought to sell some of these [holds out bundle of ballads]

to the sailors. [He goes on.]

- Characterization: alert audience members will also see link between ragged ballad singer and

the ancient role of bard, one of the most important figures in pre-colonized Ireland, whose

poetry supported the chieftain.

Man: It is a poor man like me, that has to be going the roads and singing in fairs, to have the name on

him that he took a reward? But you don’t want me. I’ll be safer in the town.

- Characterization: the ballad singer reveals himself to be wily and psychologically adept, in

playing on the fears of escaped rebel, who remains faceless to the authorities

Man [sings]: Her head was bare, her hands and feet with iron bands were bound,

Her pensive strain and plaintive wail mingles with the evening gale,

And the song she sang with mournful air, I am the old Granuaile.

Her lips so sweet that monarchs kissed....

Sergeant: Thats not it.... “Her gown she wore was stained with gore.”.... That’s it- you missed that.

- Characterization and dialogue --> Song. Ballad singer uses song as part of his mobile disguise and

as a tool to find ways to connect with the Sergent.

Sergeant: That’s a queer thought now, and a true thought. Wait now til I think it out.... If it wasn’t for

the sense I have, and for my wife and family, and for me joining the force the time I did, it might be

myself now would be after breaking gaol and hiding in the dark, and it might be him that’s hiding in the

dark and that got out of gaol would be sitting up here where I am on this barrel... And it might be myself

would be creeping up trying to make my escape from himself, and it might be himself would be keeping

the law, and myself would be breaking it, and myself would be trying to put a bullet in his head, or to

take up a lump of stone the way you said he did... no, that myself did.... Oh! [Gasps. After a pause]

What’s that? [Grasps man’s arm.]

Theme: This confused speech by the Sergeant expresses the theme of the play: that “both sides” of this

rebellion (law/order vs rebel) are more alike than they first appear.

Sergeant: You are the man I am looking for.

Man [takes off hat and wig].

[sergeant seizes them.]

I am. There’s a hundred pounds on my head. There is a friend of mine below in a boat. He knows

a safe place to bring me to.

Sergeant [looking still at hat and wig.] It’s a pity! It’s a pity. You deceived me. You deceived me well.

Man: I am a friend of Granuaile. There is a hundred pounds on my head.

- Theme: the climax of the play enacts the action that the play encourages: “sacrifice” for Ireland

can take many forms, including simple civil disobedience like allowing the rebel to stay free.

Policeman B: Did anyone come this way?

Sergeant [after a pause]. No one.

Policeman B: No one at all?

Sergeant: No one at all.

- Theme: This exchange anticipates the climax (above) and prepares audience for Sergeant’s

decision to allow the rebel to remain free.

With each quote above, note WHICH DRAMATIC ELEMENT is exemplified with each example:

Characterization (what details in the play help you understand this character?)

Plot (how does the action in the play shape the play’s meaning?)

Dialogue (what is notable about the way the characters speak – and speak to one another?)

dramatic style (peasant realism? Noh? Tragedy? Comedy?) peasant realism with element of

supernatural

staging (what details in the setting and staging enhance the meaning in this play?) spare staging that

contributes v little to meaning of the play

Theme(s) of play: [what’s the play’s big message(s)?]

Similar but different message to Cathleen Ni Houlihan, Rising of the Moon speaks to the whole audience,

not just young men, and reminds them that even if you’re middle class and comfortable, you can fight

for Ireland through simple acts of civil disobedience. The sergeant let the ragged man go, sacrificing the

£100 and the possibility of a promotion, but he didn’t give up everything to join him. Supports the

original goal of the “Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, but the home of

ancient idealism,” by connecting the ragged man and sergeant on the history and love of Ireland

through songs and support of Irish freedom.

Lady Gregory, Spreading the News (1904)

Important quotes (these examples should provide examples of characterization, dialogue, theme, or

how the play fulfills or fails to fulfill the aims of the Irish National Theatre)

Magistrate: Boycotting? Maiming of cattle? Firing into houses?

Policeman: There was one time, and there might be again.

Magistrate: That is bad. Does it go any further than that?

Policeman: Far enough, indeed.

Magistrate: Homicide, then! This district has been shamefully neglected! I will change all that. When I

was in Andaman Islands, my system never failed. Yes, yes, I will change all that. What has that woman

on her stall?

[Dialogue and characterization]: reveals two sides of law and order characters (native and British). The

British soldier misunderstands his Irish colleague’s responses, as he lacks cultural knowledge about the

different style of speaking in Ireland (no word in Irish for no teaches one that Irish natives soften

negatives when speaking). Also, the British Magistrate is determined to find criminal behavior, as his

colonial training has accultured him to thinking of subject of the empire in a one-dimensional way.

Magistrate: What is its chief business?

Mrs. Tarpey: Business, is it? What business would the people here have but to be minding one another’s

business?

Magistrate: I mean what trade have they?

Mrs. Tarpey: Not a trade. No trade at all but to be talking.

[Dialogue and theme: This opening exchange reveals the ways different cultures, using the same

language, can speak at cross purposes, creating humorous or tragic outcomes.

Mrs. Fallon: Leave off talking of misfortunes, and listen to Jack Smith that is coming the way, and he

singing.

Voice of Jack Smith: I thought, my first love,

There’d be but one house between you and me,

And I thought I would find

Yourself coaxing my child on your knee.

Over the tide

I would leap with the leap of a swan,

Till I came to the side

Of the wife of the Red-haired man!

Mrs. Tarpey: That should be a good song if I had my hearing.

[Dialogue and song: Like other early plays of the INT, this one uses song to advance the plot and also to

showcase a key dimension of Irish dialogue, to use song as an expression of character or to reveal coded

messages expressed by characters or the play overall]

Bartley: I’m thinking if I went to America it’s long ago the day I’d be dead!

Jack Smith: If it didn’t itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a

hat, the way you’d not be without some cause of complaining.

[characterization: reveals Bartley as a determined pessimist and Jack as someone who fundamentally

understands that Bartley is determined to see the world in a negative light.]

With each quote above, note WHICH DRAMATIC ELEMENT is exemplified with each example:

Characterization (what details in the play help you understand this character?)

Plot (how does the action in the play shape the play’s meaning?)

Dialogue (what is notable about the way the characters speak – and speak to one another?)

dramatic style (peasant realism? Noh? Tragedy? Comedy?) peasant realism with element of

supernatural

staging (what details in the setting and staging enhance the meaning in this play?) spare staging that

contributes v little to meaning of the play

Theme(s) of play: [what’s the play’s big message(s)?]

Uses comedy to poke fun at both British and Irish tendencies (to see Irish one-dimensionally and to

allow gossip to override their critical reasoning, respectively) and to caution both nationalities of the

potential for tragedy because of these tendencies

To British audience: if you assume the worst of people, you pre-judge them and miss the complicated

truths in their character; to Irish audiences: indulging in the “business of talk” without the application of

reason can have tragic outcomes/

Wavers from Comedy and Tragedy to get at the best and worst in human behavior.

Comedy-

• amusing and entertaining

• depicting men and women as worse than they are

Tragedy-

• “imitation of an action that is serious,

containing magnitude, and complete in itself, with

incidents arousing pity and fear, in order to arouse

catharsis for the audience”

• Typically contains a tragic hero who engenders the

tragic events of the play through a tragic flaw in

character or an error in judgment

• Generally stresses people in their best qualities

W. B. Yeats, At the Hawk’s Well (1916)

Important quotes (these examples should provide examples of characterization, dialogue, theme, or

how the play fulfills or fails to fulfill the aims of the Irish National Theatre)

With each quote above, note WHICH DRAMATIC ELEMENT is exemplified with each example:

Characterization (what details in the play help you understand this character?)

• Young man is too proud to listen to the old man’s wisdom to leave the well and not

get trapped by the dancing and music

• Ageism by the young man

Plot (how does the action in the play shape the play’s meaning?)

Dialogue (what is notable about the way the characters speak – and speak to one another?)

dramatic style (peasant realism? Noh? Tragedy? Comedy?) peasant realism with element of

supernatural

• Staging (influence of Noh drama):

o “Three musicians (their faces made up to resemble masks) The guardian of the well

(with face made up to resemble mask) An old man (wearing a mask) A young man

(wearing a mask).”

▪ Emphasizes the role of supernatural: hawk / guardian of the well is a god/witch

who will, after the play is concluded, wreak vengeance on Cuchulain

▪ Draws attention to the universal issues in the play between artifice v nature;

youth v old age; patience v seizing the day.

▪

staging (what details in the setting and staging enhance the meaning in this play?) spare staging that

contributes v little to meaning of the play

• Staging:

o Play is focused on the characters with the simple well and not much else

▪ “The guardian of the well is sitting upon the old gray stone at its side”

▪ “The old thorn trees are doubled to among the rocks where he is climbing”

▪ There is a sea nearby as it talks about the salt in the wind

• Dialogue: most important message delivered by the musicians, who function like a Greek chorus

and express the Yeatsian moral (the play’s theme): “Wisdom must live a bitter life.” Musicians

are left on stage after the young man (Cuchulain) leaves and the musicians say the message of

the playwright

O lamentable shadows,

Obscurity of strife!

I choose a pleasant life

Among indolent meadows;

Wisdom must live a bitter life.”

• True wisdom comes at a cost

• Bitter life for those who are constantly searching and unattainable desires

• The young man ignores the remarks of the old man, which shows how wisdom is ignored by

those w ambition and selfish desires

• Characterization

o Cuchulain/Young man AND old man are also connected to Ireland’s bid for

independence

▪ Both illustrate a desire for independence is linked to the fruitless and

ongoing desire for immortality. Recalls years fighting for independence even

when there was disappointment and sacrifice

▪ The young man shows the heroism and passion that Irish military have

towards independence. His real identity (Cuchulain) is the romantic, mythic

figure that real Irish rebels in the Irish Republican Brotherhood consider

their model. (This play was written, produced in the year that Irish rebels

staged an important and failed rebellion in Dublin, the Easter Rising.)

▪ The young man’s fate is similar to how Irish military men lost their lives

despite knowing the chances weren’t high

• This play shows the promethean hero (Young Man/Cuchulain) and the disappointment that is

expected and predicted by the musicians.

• The young man didn’t want to listen to the old man’s wisdom

o Old man tries to prevent the young man from becoming a promethean hero / tragic

hero

“You have deluded me my whole life through

Accursed dancers, you have stolen my life.”

• Old man is warning the young man to stay away from the shadows

W. B. Yeats, Purgatory (1938)

Important quotes (these examples should provide examples of characterization, dialogue, theme, or

how the play fulfills or fails to fulfill the aims of the Irish National Theatre)

“And that’s symbolical; study that tree, What is it like?...I saw it fifty years ago before the thunderbolt

had riven it” (pg. 29)--> The tree is symbolic of Ireland and how it was split after C.S. Parnell fell from his

power in the Parliamentary Party.

- STAGING: the tree is the symbol of Ireland and it was split and dying after C.S. Parnell falls from

power.

“Great people lived and died in this house; magistrates, colonels, members of parliament, captains

and governors, and long ago men that had fought at Aughrim and the Boyne”( (pg 30) --> The speaker

talks highly of the Ascendency class and their “Big Houses”. Symbolizes the height of this class and their

power. They were usually high Protestant church members, land owners, and English speakers.

- CHARACTERIZATION: Gives background to who the speaker is and his mother’s lineage of the

great Ascendency class

- STAGING: Gives background to the play. The mother is in the window and illuminated. The

house is also a grand big house and shows how the Ascendency class lives.

- DIALOGUE: Shows how the speaker talks very highly of his mother and her class and how he

believes she is pure and why it is so important to him that her blood not be dirty.

“I gave the education that befits a bastard that a Pedlar got upon a tinker’s daughter in a ditch. When

I had come to sixteen years old my father burned down the house when drunk” (pg. 31) --> The

speaker believes his blood is “dirty” because his father married his mother who was rich and wonderful,

a member of the Ascendency class. When his father burned down the house, it symbolizes the death of

C.S. Parnell.

- CHARACTERIZATION: The speaker describes his mother has wonderful and grand while his father

was a bastard who “dirtied” her bloodline.

- PLOT: Gives his motive behind why he needs to kill his son and make sure his mother can get out

of purgatory. Gives the listener an understanding behind his thought process.

- DIALOGUE: You can understand what the Father thinks of his son and how he believes his son is

dirty and does not deserve his respect.

With each quote above, note WHICH DRAMATIC ELEMENT is exemplified with each example:

Characterization (what details in the play help you understand this character?)

Plot (how does the action in the play shape the play’s meaning?)

Dialogue (what is notable about the way the characters speak – and speak to one another?)

dramatic style (peasant realism? Noh? Tragedy? Comedy?) peasant realism with element of

supernatural

Staging (what details in the setting and staging enhance the meaning in this play?) spare staging that

contributes v little to meaning of the play

Theme(s) of play: [what’s the play’s big message(s)?]

- Tragic cycle of sin and punishment cannot be broken by more violence (old man cannot erase

the sins of the past, the violence and sins continue, as evidence by the silhouette of mother in

the window at the play’s close)

- The Irish Free State (represented by the young boy) is a sullied state because it is ignorant of the

greatness of Ireland’s past and wants to destroy this legacy of Ireland's colonial elite

(Ascendancy class, represented by the burned Big House, lightening-struck tree, and the

silhouette of the mother in the window).