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Conversion in James Shirley's St Patrick for Ireland

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Conversion in James Shirley's St Patrick for Ireland CONVERSION IN JAMES SHIRLEY’S ST PATRICK FOR IRELAND (1640) Alison Searle In his play St Patrick for Ireland (published in 1640), the Caroline dramatist, James Shirley (1596–1666), represents the complex process of Ireland’s conversion from paganism to Christianity.1 There are two distinct reasons why St Patrick for Ireland is unique in Shirley’s oeuvre: it was specifically written for his Irish audience at the Werburgh Street theatre, and it makes extensive use of spectacular stage effects (devils, serpents, fire and so on). It was produced while Shirley was in Dublin, under the rule of the English Deputy, Sir Thomas Wentworth. Shir- ley’s own religious convictions are unclear: his biographer, Anthony Wood, claims that he converted (as an ordained clergyman) from the Church of England to Catholicism before he became a playwright.2 This is largely unverified by biographical evidence to date, but it has had a profound impact on subsequent accounts of Shirley’s life and works.3 Shirley lived during a period of revolutionary religious change. He wrote plays and masques for Charles I and Henrietta Maria; he was principal dramatist at the Werburgh Street theatre in Dublin 1 I am grateful to the anonymous peer-reviewer of this essay for suggestions that clarified the structure and presentation of the overall argument. I have also been helped by discussions with Eugene Giddens, Samantha Rayner, Justine Williams, Eva Griffith and Rowlie Wymer. 2 Anthony Wood, Athenae Oxonienses (London: Thomas Bennet, 1692) vol. 2, 260–261. 3 Sandra Burner notes that James Shirley can probably be identified with the Jaco- bus Shirley listed in a Recusant Role (The National Archives E77/49); however, there is also a record of his assent to the Bill of Uniformity on 18 August, 1662: Burner, S., James Shirley: A Study of Literary Coteries and Patronage in Seventeenth-Century Eng- land (Lanham: 1998) 168, 194, 210. Rebecca Bailey has recently argued that Shirley’s relationship with the court of Henrietta Maria in the late 1620s and early 1630s dem- onstrates strong Catholic affiliations; Bailey R., Staging the Old Faith: Queen Henri- etta Maria and the Theatre of Caroline England, 1625–1642 (Manchester: 2009). Eva Griffith re-examines the evidence of Shirley’s recusancy provided by The National Archives E377/49, membrane 125 recto, in Griffith E., “Till the state fangs catch you. James Shirley the Catholic: Why it does not matter (and why it really does)”, The Times Literary Supplement, 2 April 2010. 200 alison searle (1636–1640); he assisted William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, in his dramatic writing and probably fought under him for the King in the Civil War. He published several plays during the Interregnum and one of his masques was performed for the Portuguese ambassador to Oliver Cromwell’s government; he died in the aftermath of the Great Fire (1666). Examining Shirley’s prodigious output as a dramatist, his patrons, and the religious and social contexts of the production of his plays, provides important insights into how conversion was under- stood, experienced and dramatised in one of the most transformative periods of early modern British history. In this essay I argue that Shirley’s reworking of Ireland’s key hagi- ographical narrative is a specifically dramatic attempt to engage with issues of political and religious controversy. His earlier reproductions of the staple fare of the stage in Caroline London had failed to attract and retain Dublin audiences. At the same time as Shirley and his the- atrical collaborators were facing possible economic ruin in the face of competition from other forms of entertainment, an ‘accepted under- standing of how the political world worked underwent a crisis’.4 Peo- ple were willing to consider new intellectual maps and form groupings that were not necessarily based on ethnic allegiance, but rather shaped by the interpretation of particular texts, such as Scripture.5 Faced with an uninterested clientele, Shirley deliberately chose to focus on a nar- rative that was at the core of Irish Catholic self-identity. But Patrick was also being reclaimed for Irish Protestants through the antiquarian researches of Archbishop James Ussher.6 Shirley’s careful reworking of his most probable primary source, Frater B.B.’s Life of the Glori- ous Bishop S. Patricke (1625)7 – a Catholic hagiographical account of Patrick’s life produced and published on the Continent – demon- strates his awareness of the potentially explosive nature of his subject material and his determination to offer a dramatic representation of Patrick that could not unambiguously be identified on ethnic, politi- cal or religious grounds. Through adopting an anachronistic form of 4 Gillespie R., “Political ideas and their social contexts in seventeenth-century Ire- land”, in Ohlmeyer J.H. (ed.), Political Thought in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (Cam- bridge: 2000) 127. 5 Gillespie, “Political ideas and their social contexts in seventeenth-century Ireland” 127. 6 Ford A., James Ussher: Theology, History, and Politics in Early-Modern Ireland and England (Oxford: 2007) 279. 7 B.B. Frater, The Life of the Glorious Bishop S. Patrick (S. Omers, John Heigham: 1625)..
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