KEYNOTE

Maud Gonne (extreme right) in the lead role in a 1902 production of ‘Cathleen Ni Houlihan’. Later it was customary to spell it Kathleen Ni Houlihan. A Poets’ reCOURTESYvo OF THE ABBEY THEATRElt ARCHIVE PJ Mathews on how culture heavily influenced the Rising and its leaders

NE of the enduring ideas as a moment when ideas of romantic This influential play of the early Irish United Irishmen rebellion of 1798 and about the 1916 Rising is that nationalism radicalised a generation of theatre movement was produced in St blends ideas of Fenian revolution with it was a ‘poets’ revolt’. This rebels who would end up in the GPO in Teresa’s Hall in Clarendon Street on 2 Celtic other-worldliness. The play draws may be partly to do with 1916. There is no mistaking the political April 1902. It marked the beginning of a heavily on the Gaelic aisling tradition in the fact the most famous message behind this drama. The old ground-breaking collaboration between which Ireland is personified as a woman. O statement about the event woman, Cathleen (an allegorical figure a talented band of part-time actors under As is often pointed out, this is a rather is, itself, a poem. Yeats’s ‘Easter 1916’ gave who represents Mother Ireland), has the direction of Frank and Willie Fay, disabling notion of female possibility. The us the unforgettable refrain ‘A terrible lost her four green fields and appeals to and the playwrights of the Irish Literary only option open to the female character beauty is born’, but it also portrayed a young man to help her get them back. Theatre. Starring Maud Gonne in the title in this instance is to inspire male heroic leaders like Pearse and MacDonagh The hero, Michael, is moved by this story role, it was a huge popular success and was action. There is something paradoxical, as cultured men of letters as well as and leaves his bride-to-be to help the revived many times in the years leading up however, in the fact that the actress who revolutionaries. There is no doubt that old woman. As he leaves, Cathleen is to 1916. In fact the play was performed at played the lead role, Maud Gonne, was poetry and theatre played a huge role in transformed into a beautiful young woman the Abbey just weeks before the Rising. anything but a passive woman at this time. the events that led to the Easter Rising but ‘with the walk of a queen’. Set near Killala, Co Mayo, it recalls the She was a leading advocate for women’s it is unlikely that any of the volunteers who rights, a defender of the poor and an saw action on Easter week signed up for UCD’s PJ Mathews important figure in artistic circles. combat solely because they read patriotic photographed at It is instructive, however to look at what poems or attended nationalist plays. Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. else was happening at the time Cathleen It is true that many of the leading Ni Houlihan was written. It is obvious FRANK McGRATH figures were deeply interested in culture: that Yeats and Lady Gregory wrote it as Patrick Pearse was a writer and an a way of counteracting the appeal of the important figure in the Gaelic League; British monarchy in Ireland. The visits Thomas MacDonagh lectured in English of kings and queens were often greeted literature at UCD and wrote poetry; and with enthusiasm by a large proportion Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh was a central of the Irish people. Many welcomed the figure in the shaping of the Irish theatre celebratory occasion and relished the movement. They came of age in a city opportunity to catch a glimpse of the king where experimental art was being created, or queen. Yeats, however, was vocal in his new theatres were being opened, and a objection to royal visits. He pointed out new enthusiasm for the Irish language that in Ireland public displays of loyalty was finding expression. The pubs and were often followed by protracted periods tearooms bristled with energy as people of revolutionary action against the Crown. debated the themes and controversies of Royal visits, it seems, could unmask the the latest literary magazines. rigid hierarchies underpinning the ruling The production of the revolutionary system. play, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, by WB It was largely to neutralise the mystique Yeats and Lady Gregory is often cited of the British monarch with an Irish

4 | Irish Independent 1916 Collection Irish Independent I 21 January 2016 KEYNOTE

Left: A promotional poster for the Abbey Theatre’s scheduled programme for Easter week, 1916

Right: A John Butler Yeats portrait of Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, a central figure in the Irish theatre movement of the time. COURTESY: ABBEY THEATRE ARCHIVE

Below: Rebel leader Patrick Pearse, who was a writer and an important figure in the Gaelic League; and Lady Augusta Gregory, playwright and founding member of the Abbey Theatre. GETTY IMAGES

See ‘The Abbey Theatre and the Easter Rising, 1916’ exhibition on the Google Cultural Institute on www.google.com/ culturalinstitute/ project/easter-rising-1916

equivalent, that he and Lady Gregory anything, the poem endorses the idea of In reality most of the leading figures What is most striking, however, is the exhumed the old Gaelic sovereignty Christian fulfilment in this life as well as were deeply committed civic activists speed with which cultural and intellectual goddess, Cathleen Ni Houlihan. This the next. rather than tortured romantic souls. energies and activities across the networks figure embodied the nation in the form of Plunkett’s friend and fellow signatory Many, too, were important leaders in the of activism transformed into military a woman (as Queen Victoria did in Britain) of the Proclamation, Thomas MacDonagh, re-emergence of enlightenment values of organisation in response to the Home who could inspire the loyalty of the people, was more secular in his thought. His play, civic participation and citizenship that Rule crisis of 1912 and in the context of and the bravery of young men. When the Metempsychosis, a comedy performed revolutionised Irish life in the decades a militarist zeitgeist sweeping Europe ageing Victoria came to Dublin in 1900 by the Theatre of Ireland in 1912 is very prior to 1916. During this period people at the outbreak of the First World War. her mission to recruit young Irishmen revealing in this regard. Significantly, in gathered in their thousands in meeting People who had previously gathered to to fight in the Boer War was widely the light of MacDonagh’s rooms and parish halls all discuss literary matters and political commented upon. Cathleen Ni Houlihan subsequent execution in over Ireland to create a issues were now running guns and taking was performed on the Dublin stage shortly 1916, the play stands as a new civic culture outside part in military manoeuvres. Others were afterwards to remind Irishmen of their firm critique of martyrdom “ the scope of institutional volunteering to fight in the trenches. duty to reclaim the sovereign nation. Yeats to an abstract principle. In People who had previouly religion, the colonial state There is no question that an interest in had this play in mind when he later wrote fact it pointedly satirises gathered to discuss and conventional politics. literature and theatre brought many like- the lines ‘Did that play of mine send out / the wilful, conscious The 1916 generation led minded people of radical intent together Certain men the English shot?’ It was much ending of a life for the sake literary matters and a whole range of clubs, in the years preceding the Rising. It is parodied by post-independence writers of some intangible ideal political issues were leagues, and societies, doubtful, however, that abstract devotion such as Seán O’Casey and Denis Johnston or sense of a higher plan. dedicated to nationalism, to Cathleen Ni Houlihan was a major who regarded it as the apotheosis of a Furthermore, it exposes to now running guns fenianism, women’s factor in the unfolding events. dangerous, unthinking nationalism. ridicule those who proffer and taking part in suffrage, socialism, The actions of Easter 1916 were initiated The themes of stoic idealism and such ideas to others but republicanism, anti- by men and women who regarded mystical sacrifice can also be found in are unwilling to follow military manoeuvres. conscriptionism, Irish themselves as equal citizens but who, the poetry of Patrick Pearse. His poem, such deathly doctrines Others were volunteering language revivalism paradoxically, lacked elected authority. ‘Fornocht Do Chonac Thú’ (‘Naked I Saw themselves. to fight in the trenches and trade unionism. These actions were justified in their minds Thee’), reiterates the idea of self-denial The mystical strain in Significantly, many of by the fact that in Ireland no elected found in Cathleen Ni Houlihan and, eerily, poetry and drama is a the leading figures also national authority was permitted to exist, anticipates Pearse’s own death. Once discernable tone in the literary soundscape contributed to influential publications or could come into being, without the use again, the turning away from earthly of the period. However, it is hardly the like the Irish Review, founded in 1911 by of force. delights is seen as a necessary precursor dominant note. Critics of the Rising often Mary Colum and others. This robust and to heroic action. Joseph Mary Plunkett’s zeroed in on this element after the fact to energetic journal combined an interest in Dr PJ Mathews is a Senior Lecturer in most famous poem, ‘I See His Blood Upon claim that the rebellion was spearheaded literary and cultural matters with social the UCD School of English, Drama the Rose’ is more overtly Christian in by a group of crazed religious fanatics with theory and critique. It was a melting pot and Film. He is the co-editor (with tone. It embraces the mystical idea of the a militarist death wish. It also suited the of ideas on republicanism, female suffrage Declan Kiberd) of Handbook of the incarnation of Jesus in the beauty of the agenda of an ascendant conservative elite and the rights of children — many of Irish Revival, recently published natural world. In contrast to Pearse, the who were eager to claim the Rising in the which would find their way into the 1916 by Abbey Theatre Press. note of self-denial is not so pronounced. If name of the Catholic faith. Proclamation.

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