MARTIN MCDONAGH‟S THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE: NOSTALGIA, MYTHOLOGY, TERRORIST VIOLENCE, AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A NATIONAL LITERATURE
by Brian James Stone
B.A., Southern Illinois University, 2007
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of the Arts
Department of English in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale June 2008 August 2008
1456858 1456858 2008
THESIS APPROVAL MARTIN MCDONAGH‟S THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE: NOSTALGIA, TERRORIST VIOLENCE, MYTHOLOGY AND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A NATIONAL LITERATURE
By Brian James Stone
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the field of English
Approved by: Michael Humphries, Chair Mary Bogumil Ryan Netzley Clarisse Zimra
Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale
June 6, 2008
AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Brian James Stone, for the Master of the Arts degree in English, presented on June 6, 2008, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: Martin McDonagh‟s The Lieutenant of Inishmore: Nostalgia, Mythology, Terrorist Violence, and the Problematic of a National Literature MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Mary Bogumil Since the opening of Martin McDonagh‟s The Lieutenant of Inishmore at London‟s The Other Place in April of 2001, there has been little critical agreement as to how this play should be read. There seems to be a problematic discourse surrounding this apparently “Irish” play written by a playwright who is difficult to identify by way of nationality. McDonagh has successfully divided the world of Irish theatre criticism into those who believe his play perpetuates Irish stereotypes, those who believe it subverts them and those who believe the play‟s dark, satirical form and content provides us with no significant literary contributions what so ever. By looking at critical responses to McDonagh‟s play as well as audience responses in a global context, we see that “Irishness” becomes something to be of less concern. Moreover, by looking at McDonagh‟s treatment of the impulse to identity in “Irish” literature, we can come to see McDonagh‟s place in Irish literature; which may not be “in” Irish literature at all, but in postmodern literature. The intertextual nature of the play can be taxonomized as that which Fredric Jameson calls pastiche, that is, the emergence of cannibalized stylistic forms in the space of the text. These traces no longer have meaning for us as we are unable to come to understand, in this era of late capitalism, Jameson tells i i us, not only an authentic history, but an authentic present as well. The allusions to historical events and to other works of literature emerge in such a way that we cannot take them seriously or identify with them at all. Seeing McDonagh‟s work in this light, as being postmodern and not “Irish,” whatever that means, brings us to see that identification by nationality is inadequate, but more importantly, that it is impossible.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................i CHAPTERS CHAPTER 1 – A Postmodern Situatedness: Martin McDonagh............1 CHAPTER 2 – Identity Politics, Nostalgia and Mythology....................35 CHAPTER 3 –The Emergence of Myth in Pop-Culture........................57 CHAPTER 4 – Conclusion...................................................................66 BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................................................................................67 VITA .............................................................................................................68 iii
1 CHAPTER 1 A POSTMODERN SITUATEDNESS The question of a national identity has become important within the discourse of Irish theatre criticism surrounding the plays of Martin McDonagh, particularly The Lieutenant of Inishmore. This discourse, stuck on the question of the play‟s perpetuation or subversion of Irish stereotypes, on the question of both its and McDonagh‟s nationality, remains deadlocked. In discussing McDonagh‟s situatedness, as well as looking at the play itself and critical reception of it globally, I will argue that McDonagh is a postmodern playwright, both Irish and English and also neither nor, and the same is true of his work. McDonagh‟s play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, perhaps demonstrates this thesis the most adequately. It can be shown that it is the impulse to a national identity that this play reveals as being problematic. Martin McDonagh, the “Irish” playwright, was born in Camberwell, London, on March 26, 1970 to working class, first generation, Irish parents. He grew up in London and as a boy spent many of his summers in rural, South Western Ireland. His experiences in places such as Galway and Connemara can be said to have provided him with the setting of the plays he would come to write later in his life. This situatedness has also provided critics of his work with much to talk about as debate has ensued regarding whether or not McDonagh identifies with the English or the Irish culture. His parents were Irish Catholics, living in London. McDonagh can be said to be neither a Londoner nor an Irishmen, and yet describes himself as both. When discussing his national affiliations in an 2 interview with Sean O‟Hagan, a writer for The Guardain, McDonagh said, “I don‟t feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don‟t feel either. And, in another way, of course, I‟m both” (Chambers 3). In the twenty first century, the era of the postmodern, the question of national identity is not quite so clear cut. The post modern condition is born of the globalizing world economy and we can with confidence identify McDonagh‟s style as such. The Celtic Tiger is not without importance in this identification. This economic booming of American style capitalism in the late twentieth century in Ireland transformed the cultural landscape of the island. Frederic Jameson, the foremost postmodern scholar in America, in “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” discusses America‟s role in the transformation of culture globally: Yet this is the point at which we must remind the reader of the obvious, namely that this whole global, yet American, postmodern culture is the internal and superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world. (Jameson192) Jameson‟s stance is of course a Marxist one. Along with the expansion of American style capitalism, not least in Ireland, comes a transformation of culture. It is the emergence of the postmodern culture. Such an understanding of the global economy in the twenty first century brings with it a deconstruction of the distinctions of national cultures and ultimately, national literatures.
Postmodernism abandons the notion of identity, be it individual or national, and McDonagh‟s play-text demonstrates this tendency. It abandons national 3 identity and renders problematic the impulse to sentiment that provides for the condition of this identity. Jameson discusses the problem or national and cultural identity in “Third-world Literature”: Nor can I feel that the concept of cultural „identity‟ or even national „identity‟ is adequate. One cannot acknowledge the justice of the general poststructuralist assault on the so-called „centered subject,‟ the old unified ego of bourgeois individualism, and then resuscitate this same ideological mirage of psychic unification on the collective level in the form of a doctrine of collective identity. (Jameson 328) In the postmodern world, individual identity is impossible and cultural or national identity is impossible as well. McDonagh‟s play demonstrates such a postmodern tendency as it renders problematic the sentimental mythology which provides for this Republican political position, for this “Irish” national identity. Such a treatment of an identity held dear, indeed fought to the death for by many Irish, would not necessarily be what we identify as an “Irish” literary tendency. For here, McDonagh is not just alluding to specific instances of violence in Ireland‟s history, but the literature which sentimentalized and mythologized such violence as well. The motif of the domestic setting is one that is common in McDonagh‟s work. In The Lieutenant we get a rural, domestic, Irish setting: “A cottage on Inishmore circa 1993” (McDonagh 7). The setting is rural as Inishmore is in the southwest of Ireland, a place commonly romanticized in Irish literature for its pastoral beauty and for being a place where authentic “Irishness” has been 4 preserved. The inside of the cottage is humble. We get “A clock somewhere on back wall along with a framed piece of embroidery reading „Home Sweet Home‟” (McDonagh 7). This embroidery is interesting when considering the absurdly graphic violence that will ensue upon this stage. It is an ironic statement. This setting is important also, as the rurality is meaningful. This is an allusion to much other Irish drama, particularly that of John Millington Synge, who utilized rural Irish villages in his work. Synge did so in an attempt to parody the work of many other Irish dramatists at the time who saw the rural villages of Ireland as harboring this vanishing authentic Irishness. Despite allusions to other “Irish” writers within McDonagh‟s play-text, McDonagh writes within the structure of Irish literature to reveal its tendency to glorify violence in order to establish itself as a national literature. His play is not necessarily “Irish” but is written through the Irish. Many critics have seen McDonagh‟s work as a satire or as a parody of the romanticizing tendencies of much Irish drama of the early twentieth century. These influences are not without importance but also do not render McDonagh‟s play as something necessarily Irish. Christopher Murray, an Irish theatre critic, in “The Cripple of Inishmaan Meets Lady Gregory” discusses these dramatic traces in McDonagh‟s plays: “I think we have probably heard enough about Synge for the present; quite
recently a reviewer of DruidSynge in Edinburgh gave the usual list of modern playwrights indebted [to Synge], including McDonagh” (Murray 79). While Murray is discussing McDonagh‟s play, The Cripple of Inishmaan, these tendencies seen in his work are not limited, in the discourse surrounding it, to this 5 play. This is a frequent phenomenon in discussion of his work in general. The discussion of these traces of Synge and others have become tedious they are so frequent. Yet even though Murray recognizes McDonagh as a postmodern playwright, he still insists upon his Irishness; this is a theoretical contradiction. That these traces would show up in McDonagh‟s work certainly does not render it not postmodern either. Jameson‟s concept of pastiche helps us to understand this more clearly. Pastiche, in the postmodern world, has comes to take the place of what we once may have defined as parody. Jameson defines his conception: “Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar mask, speech in a dead language: but it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody‟s ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse” (Jameson 202). With this understanding in mind, we cannot identify McDonagh‟s play as a satire, but as pastiche. Parody, a style of modernism, is motivated by an attitude that is critical toward the original while pastiche is merely an aping. It is a postmodern phenomenon. The literary precursors of McDonagh show up in his work inevitably. Jameson states, “[T]he producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a now global culture” (Jameson 202). This is exactly what we see in The Lieutenant. Pastiche then, in this understanding, is a demonstration, a parading of these precursors, of these voices. Although it is not parody, we laugh at McDonagh‟s jokes. McDonagh need not satirize these voices, these traces, as they are laughable of themselves in a post modern 6 world. Jameson will always ask us to historicize not only a text we are interpreting, but ourselves as well. The laughter we hear in the playhouse, in productions across the world, reveals much about our situatedness and the nature of the play. Within this postmodern understanding, the play‟s form is no longer something Irish, it is global, and it thematically reveals the danger of the impulse to identify a literature, or an artist, as such. To do so tends to lead to the mythologizing of acts of violence that have, in turn, led to the perpetuation of further violence. We can say with confidence that ideologies which serve to provide for the form of McDonagh‟s play-text are quite post modern and a far cry from anything solely or easily identifiable as “Irish.” In fact, all of these genres, song, drama and poetry, that find their way into The Lieutenant and are used as a means to make an audience erupt with laughter and do so effectively. Most critics speak of Irish traces, as noted particularly those of John Millington Synge, in McDonagh‟s work. Synge‟s play, The Playboy of the Western World, often compared to McDonagh‟s The Cripple of Inishmaan, is also comparable to The Lieutenant as it caused quite a similar reactions concerning the English and Irish
problematic upon its premiere. Synge‟s play opened on the twenty-ninth of January in 1907, following a successful run of his Riders to the Sea. Christopher Morash, author of A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000, discusses prevalent tendencies in Synge‟s work. His The Playboy of the Western World, most frequently cited as that which surfaces in McDonagh‟s work is similar to his preceding play, Riders on the Sea: “which 7 also dealt with a death in a small community in the West of Ireland” (Morash 131). This sounds familiar. The Lieutenant begins with the death of Wee Thomas, a cat, in the small village in the West of Ireland. The production of The Playboy at the Abbey, however, caused a bigger ruckus than even McDonagh could aspire to. The opening night caused such controversy that each subsequent night was a sell out. The Monday following open night, the theater was full. The pit was full of rowdy drunks and the police had to be called in to remove individuals who would not heed the pleadings of Yeats, Gregory and Synge to calm down and let the actors perform. Like McDonagh‟s work, tensions between English and Irish were provoked as individuals cried out from the pit. Morash describes the events of that evening. One drunken man who was out of hand was arrested; he was not alone in his actions: “He was forestalled, however, by his friends in the stalls launching in a rousing chorus of „God Save the King‟, which was matched by an equally energetic version of „God Save Ireland‟” (Morash 135). The play was stopped early due to the unruly crowd who carried this spectacle into the street. The interesting thing here is that this particular event demonstrates the prevalence of these conflicting ideologies in the audience of the Abbey theatre; in the Irish audience. While the intentions of Yeats and Gregory in establishing this theatre was to have an “Irish” theatre, distinct from other theatre, the question of loyalty was not absent from these performances. While the case of McDonagh is not quite so extreme, we can see his play as rousing similar reactions from the theater goers of Ireland. The questions of 8 national identity and the concern of stereotyping or insulting the culture come to the fore. This has undoubtedly been the case with The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which alludes to instances of IRA terrorist violence, as well as violence enacted upon the Irish by the English, in a quite postmodern manner. The force of the plays violence and its humor is driven by these allusions, is reliant upon them. The portrayal of Mairead, a young aspiring militant, notorious for shooting the eyes out of cows from a great distance and who is in love with Padraic, the character whose name sake is Padraic Pearse, the leader of the Easter Rising of 1916, is a case in point. When talking to her brother, Davey, about whether or not he bashed in the head of a cat, the battering of which led Padraic back to Inishmore and serves as the catalyst of the play, she is portrayed as a bit sadistic: “It was on no news, and when do you ever watch the news unless there‟s been a bomb in England gone off you can laugh o‟er?” (McDonagh 19). The killing of innocent civilians is a laughable situation to these Irish characters; even to a young girl such as Mairead. Not only does she take delight in hearing
of these incidents, but she does not watch the news. She does not understand the situation or take steps to; she merely delights in the atrocities. There is more joking about bombings by McDonagh‟s Padraic. In scene 2, we have Padraic, who is the self-appointed lieutenant of a splinter group of a splinter group of the INLA, torturing a young man for selling marijuana to Catholic school children. Through this humorous dialogue, McDonagh makes light of IRA violence. Padraic‟s father, Davey, calls to tell him his cat, that is actually thought dead, has taken ill. They engage in the kind of 9 small talk that all fathers and sons may have: “I haven‟t been up to much else, really. I put bombs in a couple of chips shops, but they didn‟t go off. (Pause.) Because chip shops aren‟t as well guarded as army barracks. Do I need your advice on planting bombs?” (McDonagh 15). Once again, Padraic is portrayed as a moron. The bombs he planted were not of a high enough quality, were not made well enough, to even go off. The domestic nature of this conversation is what is perhaps the most disturbing. An over bearing father gives advice to his son and the son expresses frustration. Within this domestic conversation, we are struck by the humor of a silly joke, one that refers to an immense history of terror and bloodshed; one that permeates Irish society to a degree unimaginable to those on the outside. Murals mark the walls and alleys of Belfast with constant reminders. Songs sung in pubs express the prevalence of the matter. Protests against Catholic schoolgirls, a specific case in point occurred in 2001, taking a route home through Protestant neighborhoods speak of the seriousness of this issue. Moreover, Padraic is portrayed here as a coward as he would prefer to ineffectively bomb a potato chip shop than take his chances in getting caught or killed by attacking a legitimate target, such as an army barracks. He is portrayed as an idiot who would rather kill civilians than risk his own life. One could see why many Irish critics have seen this play as aligned with the English perspective. However, despite the claims of numerous critics, one cannot go so far as to accuse McDonagh of writing from a singularly English perspective either. He can be seen as being located in an emergent global culture; a post-modern 10 playwright. The three characters, Christy, Brendan and Joey, who are actually responsible for the death of Padraic‟s cat, and who killed it so that they could lure him back to kill him, are portrayed as morons themselves. They are members of the INLA splinter group from which Padraic has splintered. In the dialogue between these characters we get a perspective of the English as being senselessly violent themselves. Joey expresses his disdain for having to batter a cat: Joey. I won‟t claim credit for battering a cat, because there is no credit in battering a cat. Battering a cat is easy. There‟s no guts involved in cat battering. That sounds like something the fecking British‟d do. Round up some poor Irish cats and give them a blast in the back as the poor devils were trying to get away, like on Bloody Sunday. Brendan. They never shot cats on Bloody Sunday, did they, Christy?
Joey. It‟s the same principle I‟m saying, ya thick. (McDonagh 26). This bit of dialogue is telling. This is a direct reference to a particular event, which has come to be known as Bloody Sunday, in which Irish civilians were killed by British soldiers in 1972. This is the emergence of a voice “stored up in the imaginary museum of a new global culture” as Jameson would have us put it. It is not treated seriously, there is no nationalistic fervor related in this line. This banter not only makes us laugh, but reveals the ignorance of the characters who do not understand their own history. These revolutionary voices of the past, those that throughout modern revolutionary literature in Ireland were looked to for an understanding of national identity, are without import. The revolutionaries of 11 today are portrayed as individuals who cannot be taken seriously. They take orders willingly without question and the authentic meaning of their nation‟s history is out of their grasps. The Irish can be said to take seriously their revolutionary heroes. Indeed, despite the initial repulsion of the Irish public to the events of Easter 1916, these individuals later became martyrs. This event was never separated from revolutionary activity in Ireland. The name, “provisional IRA” is itself an allusion to the rising. Historian Tim Pat Coogan, in his book The Troubles explains this connection in discussion of the IRA of the late 1960‟s: By the end of a year the new IRA had consolidated itself and dropped the word Provisional. (The term had been chosen to make a connection with the 1916 rising leaders, who had declared a provisional government.) However, it stuck, as did the term „Stiky‟, or „Stickies‟, to denote a member of Goulding‟s organization, which regarded itself as the „Official‟ IRA. Both wings wore Easter lily emblems at Easter, to commemorate the 1916 rising. (Coogan 96). Coogan, a respected authority on the history of the IRA, relates here the discrepancy we see represented in McDonagh‟s play-text. We see the question of an “official” IRA and problems arising between different IRA groups in McDonagh‟s play-text. Any IRA identity includes necessarily a sentiment for the Easter rising. This is why we have Padraic as our anti-hero. Padraic Pearse is the martyr of the Republic and of all revolutionary activity. 12 Padraic, in the play-text, has splintered from a splinter group of the INLA. He was too mad for the IRA: “Isn‟t it him the IRA wouldn‟t let in because he was too mad?” (McDonagh 10). The discrepancy amongst these Irish revolutionaries ultimately working toward the same goal is related humorously. We are given allusions to these historical events that are without weight, that are not authentically graspable to either the characters or to us. This is an aspect of pastiche. The members of the splinter group from which McDonagh has splintered reveal this disconnection in their banter. When discussing the killing of the supposed Wee Thomas, Padraic‟s cat, they reveal not only their inability to agree but their impossible struggle to understand history and revolutionary philosophies: Christy. We none of us enjoyed today‟s business, Joey-o, but hasn‟t
the plan worked? And like the fella said, „Don‟t the ends justify the means?‟ Wasn‟t it Marx said that, now? I think it was. Brendan. It wasn‟t Marx, no. Christy. Who was it then? Brendan. I don‟t know, now. It wasn‟t Marx, is all I‟m saying. (McDonagh 26) Joey, Brendan and Christy cannot agree on whether the ends of their acts justify the means. They humorously volley back and forth in senseless, childlike argument. They cannot get along with themselves and presumably cannot with others either. They are members of a splinter group of a splinter group. None of them knows what it was Marx did say either. This allusion is also of importance 13 historically as socialism played an integral role in the revolutionary consciousness and political ideologies of the IRA. In 1925, at an IRA convention, Peadar O‟Donnell, a Civil War veteran and prominent member of the IRA, announced the call for a new direction for the IRA. The IRA was to break away with governmental ties and as Coogan explains: “[T]o direct its energies into a leftward path of socialist republicanism inspired equally by O‟Donnell and Karl Marx” (Coogan 38). McDonagh was clearly aware of the socialist aspirations of the IRA. The revolutionaries represented in the play-text do not have their fundamentals down and argue like children; they are not only dangerous, but ignorant. This blatant disrespect for the IRA, particularly Pearse, whose activities led to the Irish Civil War in 1922 and to the eventual establishment of the Irish Republic, and who has been mythologized as the Irish hero, is another aspect of the play-text that makes it difficult for us to come to identify it as Irish. While these historical allusions are presented to us, we are not able to access them as such. Instead, they are humorous as they are devoid of authentic meaning. In this scene we also get an allusion to the role of speech in Irish revolutionary ideology. As noted, Easter 1916 was a turning point in Irish nationalism. All subsequent revolutionary activity was inspired and motivated by the change in public attitude that followed the executions of Pearse, Connolly and the nine other fighters killed following the rising. Pearse himself was inspired by the mythology surrounding the rising of 1803 in Kildare known as “The Emmett Rising” as it was led by Roger Emmett. This rising inspired Pearse to such an extent that he sought out Emmett‟s place of hermitage, called “the hermitage,” as 14 the location of his Irish boy‟s school known as St. Enda‟s, something to be discussed at length later. Coogan discusses the activities of Pearse and others: “Padraig Pearse, Seán MacDiarmada, Joseph Plunkett and many others were to give their lives in a tradition of revolutionary activity which had flickered sporadically and unsuccessfully since Wolfe Tone‟s rebellion in 1798; during Robert Emmett‟s insurrection of 1803” (Coogan 10). Emmett is most famous amongst Republicans for the speech he made to Lord Norbury and the bar at the Session House in Dublin at the time of his execution in 1803. This speech was passionate, dramatic and inspiring for generations of young militants. Similarly,
in the preface to the Irish historian Eoin Neeson‟s, The Civil War in Ireland, 19221923, we are given a quote of a speech by Padraic Pearse at the graveside of a fellow revolutionary. That this text, the first ever written on the Irish civil war, begins with a speech is telling. The genre of speech is a great source of inspiration for the IRA. In scene five of the play-text we see once again this pastiche as we see the speech emerge from this cultural museum. Christy, while discussing the slaying of Wee Thomas, goes into a speech that ends with, “That‟s what Padraic doesn‟t understand, it isn‟t only for the school kids and the oul fellas and the babes unborn we‟re out freeing Ireland. No. It‟s for the junkies, the thieves and the drug pushers too!” (McDonagh 27). This moment reveals further the disparity and lack of agreement amongst the revolutionaries. It is also a further jibe at Irish society that serves to distance us from a romanticized vision of the place that revolutionaries fight for. Such a romanticization is common of the Irish 15 literary tradition. Here, the speech of the revolutionary is inauthentic to us as we know that Ireland is not some ideal place. It is a place where junkies, thieves and drug pushers dwell. We see this romanticization of Ireland occurring in nineteenth century ballad poetry, re-tellings of ancient mythology and the work of Yeats. For us, it is lost. Also, this passage shows how the definition of freedom, something all Republicans have fought for, is not understood. Pearse‟s speech at O‟Donovan Rossa‟s graveside in August of 1915 also discusses the definition of freedom: “‟…we know only one definition of freedom: it is Tone‟s definition; it is Mitchell‟s definition. It is Rossa‟s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name and definition than their name and definition‟” (Neeson 13). Here, the definition of freedom is in dispute. This is something alluded to within the play-text frequently; the call to free Ireland and for whom to free it. The disparity amongst these individuals is pushed further as Christy‟s speech is rudely interrupted, Joey. Aye. And for the cat batterers on top of it! Christy. I was making a good speech there and you ruined it! Brendan. He did, Christy. He ruined your speech on you. (McDonagh 27). This, once again, shows that these individuals cannot agree. The tradition and sentiment for the great speech of the revolutionary here is related in the form of a farce. The character giving the speech, as well as his audience, cannot be taken 16 seriously and do not see eye to eye. They are disconnected from the past they seek to identify themselves with. The language of this speech is certainly dead. Given this treatment of a rich tradition in Ireland, it is hard to identify McDonagh‟s play as Irish. That McDonagh seems to be in between cultures was mentioned earlier. Liam Greenslade, quoted in Aidan Arrowsmith‟s “Genuinely Inauthentic: McDonagh‟s Post-diasporic Irishness,” comments upon what may be termed cultural betweenness: Isolation, in the sense of a deeply felt or experienced, classical
alienation is[…]characteristic of these people. They belong completely to neither one culture nor the other and are caught between their parent‟s heritage and their present context, rendered invisible and inaudible from the point of view of recognition. (Arrowsmith 16) Many post-colonial critics would cite this tendency as homelessness. However, it seems that McDonagh is quite at home, just not in Irish or English culture. This is the point that McDonagh‟s play serves to illustrate. He is neither Irish nor English, and yet is both. McDonagh is in-between, but what he is in-between we can not pin down or accurately identify. He gives us a conception of a postmodern identity which is globalized and complex. As Declan Hughes, an Irish theatre critic, says of a twenty-first century Irish identity in “Who the Hell Do We Think We Still Are? Reflections On Irish Theatre and Identity”: “The More people agree on who you are and are not, the more your identity is fixed by others, the less easy it becomes to investigate who you really are – investigate whether an 17 identity defined by nationality, or geography, has a meaning any more” (Hughes 13). Of course, Jameson would tell us it does not. This is not only the nature of McDonagh‟s play, thematically it is the stance McDonagh‟s play is taking on a national identity, not only is it inadequate, but it perpetuates violence in the name of understanding itself. Further problematizing this identification is McDonagh‟s tendency to borrow from American screen writers and directors such as Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. This serves to further rupture this national identification. While McDonagh uses Irish theatrical form and Irish characters, the content of his plays are deeply influenced by American cinema. It was noted above that McDonagh‟s work shares many similarities with that of John Millington Synge, yet it could be argued that Hollywood has had a greater impact upon him and his contemporaries than any of these Irish artists. As Hughes says of the twentieth century, it was “The American century, and that culturally, again for good or ill, we had all been colonized irrevocably by the first beam of light Hollywood had shone on us” (Hughes 9). Hughes goes so far as to suggest the emergence of Hollywood cinema as artistic colonization. How can we identify this play as “Irish” at all with such an understanding in mind? Tarantino‟s influence on McDonagh‟s work has been noted by many scholars. This is an interesting comparison as Tarantino is a noted postmodern filmmaker himself. His films are a hodgepodge of numerous filmic styles including Japanese Kung fu films, Spaghetti Western and even the pulp fiction novels of the twentieth century. We can definitely identify this tendency in 18 Tarantino‟s work as pastiche. In Werner Huber‟s essay “The Early Plays: Shooting Star and Hard Man from South London,” McDonagh is noted as “The Quentin Tarantino of the Emerald Isle” (Chambers 20). We can see this influence in the work itself. In scene two of The Lieutenant we get a Tarantino style torture scene. The stage directions describe the scene:
A desolate Northern Ireland warehouse or some such. James, a barechested, bloody and bruised man, hangs upside down from the ceiling, his feet bare and bloody. Padraic idles near him, wielding a cut-throat razor, his hands bloody. Around Padraic‟s chest are strapped two empty holsters and there are two handguns on a table stage left. James is crying. (McDonagh 13) This scene is more than reminiscent of that in Reservoir Dogs in which a police officer is tied to a chair and doused in gasoline as Mr. Blonde “idles” back and forth before him. Mr. Blonde cuts off the officer‟s ear with his knife which he threatened him with before hand. In McDonagh‟s play, it is a nipple that James is threatened with losing and it is toenails that he has already lost. Both scenes are also set in warehouses that serve as “safe houses” or localities for illicit activities. Also, the dialogue in each example is driven by humour, that is, the reflection upon the scene at hand; the seed planted in the comic moment. The sheer violence, in each case, is undercut by the humour. We are disconnected from any emotion. 19 In “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Jameson discusses such an emotional disconnection. He explains the aesthetic shifting that occurs within this postmodern cultural transformation: As for expression and feelings or emotions, the liberation, in contemporary society, from the older anomie of the centered subject may also mean, not merely a liberation from anxiety, but a liberation from every other kind of feeling as well, since there is no longer a self present to do the feeling (Jameson 200). The anxiety concerning the situation with the English is not present in McDonagh‟s work. These serious historical instances are treated in a light hearted manner. We can see, from various audience receptions of McDonagh‟s work, that a feeling of disgust is not necessarily inspired by a confrontation with such scenes of torture and mutilation. In fact, they are quite humorous. The humorous aspect of the scene, as with the work of Tarantino, undercuts the violence at hand. The absence of an anxiety concerning “the troubles” in Northern Ireland brings us to see McDonagh‟s play as aligned with Jameson‟s postmodern definition. Yet, one must not only consider the content and its treatment, but also the spectacle upon the stage; the force of mise- en-scéne. Many of the productions of The Lieutenant have utilized Hollywood cinematic techniques on stage. In a given night, production companies run through gallons of fake blood that is splattered all over the stage and onto the actors themselves. Real guns, firing blanks, are common to every performance. The humor on stage under cuts the violence, yet there is something in this 20 release of energy that shocks audiences. This pastiche, these voices, these traces of real violence, are brought to the audience in this way. This serves to bring the audience into the reality of terrorist violence. It breaks them out of their passive role as observers and makes this violence a part of their lived experience. In The Theatre and its Double, Artaud relates this dramatic
technique: It is in order to attack the spectator‟s sensibility on all sides that we advocate a revolving spectacle which, instead of making the stage and auditorium two closed worlds, without possible communication, spreads its visual and sonorous outbursts over the entire mass of the spectators. (Artaud 82) Certainly the firing of blank rounds in a closed theatrical space would serve to have such an affect upon the audience. These are not representations of terrorist violence, but what Artaud would call outbursts; they are affective outbursts. The audience, confronted with these violent forces in the midst of laughter, are affectively brought to face the absurd spectacle of terrorist violence. As might be expected, this portrayal of real terrorist violence has led to a multiplicity of reactions from audiences. Also, it is not without importance to note that it was not until after the events of September the eleventh, in New York city, that this play became pertinent. McDonagh finished the play-text in 1996 and had difficulty getting it produced until 2001. The play success didn‟t come until after the bombing of the World Trade Center towers. The play deals specifically with instances of IRA terrorist violence, yet it was not until the world was 21 awakened to the reality of Islamic terrorism that it became a success. This reveals that there is a theme at work here that is reflexive in that the theme of terrorist violence in The Lieutenant is vague enough that it cannot be corralled into a national category . The experience of such violence is global a look at the global receptions of this play reveals that the violence portrayed on stage has not been received as Irish despite the play‟s Irish setting and characters. Patrick Lonergan, a noted Irish theatre critic, discussing the critical conversation in Irish theatre criticism that has remained deadlocked on McDonagh and his work‟s national affiliation in “Martin McDonagh, Globalization, and Irish Theatre Criticism,” enters this conversation and identifies this problematic within this discourse. He claims “the difficulty for critics is not with establishing the truth of McDonagh‟s plays, but in our insistence on applying the term Irish to work that can be fully understood only in a global context” (Lonergan 301). Of course, within a postmodern understanding, truth is out the window along with other metaphysical notions. To seek some kind of authentic or ultimate truth in such a postmodern production is an exercise in futility. Yet, Lonergan is accurate in his insistence that this play can only be understood through its numerous global productions. Despite one‟s locality, subject matter such as terrorist violence and the brutal slayings of innocent civilians can perhaps only be dealt with theatrically through the medium of dark comedy. For McDonagh, this approach has been successful as global productions of The Lieutenant and responses to them have shown. As fore-mentioned, the question of whether or not the productions of 22 McDonagh‟s plays in a globalized context would reinforce negative stereotypes of the Irish has been in the fore critically. Critical responses in the Irish media, such
as that of Michael Billington of the Guardian, are revelatory of this anxiety. Billington saw McDonagh‟s plays as revealing Ireland‟s reality as “murder, selfslaughter, spite, ignorance and familial hatred.” (Billington 12). Productions of The Lieutenant in Dublin were received with similar negative reactions. In October 2003, the play was produced by the traveling Royal Shakespeare Company at the Dublin Theatre Festival and was deemed an over-simplification of the political conflicts of contemporary and historical Ireland. Patrick Lonergan summarizes the Irish reception of McDonagh‟s work: “In Ireland, the representation of terrorists as mindless butchers is thought to be an impediment to the resolution of conflict.” (Lonergan 300). The play was received within the context in which it was set as an immense over-simplification of generations of political and economic struggle. One could see the way in which this play may inspire such reactions. Even in this era of postmodern culture, individuals seek to understand an authentic past to tell them something of who they are today. This is impossible and it is this tendency that McDonagh‟s play reveals as problematic. The treatment of Irish culture in The Lieutenant is brutal. We begin with the death of a cat. Two men, Davey and Donny, are worried about the incident as Padraic will be quite upset to learn of its death. They devise a plan to break the news to the owner as smoothly as possible. We then move to a torture scene in which a man, James, hangs upside down by his feet while Padraic, holds a razor blade to 23 his nipples. Padraic then gets the phone call from his father, Donny, telling him his cat, Wee Thomas, is taken ill. This scene sets the tone for the play in establishing our inability to take the torturer, Padraic, seriously at all. Padraic begins sobbing, after the small talk about bombing potato chip shops, then cuts down James to return home immediately. Donny and Davey lose sleep worrying about how to break this news to the irate and explosively violent Padraic. When Padraic does find out, a bloodbath ensues. That these are Irish characters, particularly Irish revolutionaries, portrayed in such a way has led to extreme reactions from the Irish audiences. Throughout this play we are given allusions to incidents of IRA terrorist violence as well as elements of popular culture which have served to perpetuate the mythology which fuels such violence. In the end, it turns out that the splinter group from which Padraic splintered was out to get him, and they are the ones who killed the cat. In scene nine of the play, the stage is littered in body parts as the survivors saw and hack through the dead bodies. In the midst of this grizzly scene, in walks Wee Thomas, untouched and unscathed. It had been the wrong cat all along: “So all this terror has been for absolutely nothing?” says Davey (McDonagh 55). This moment comments upon terrorism fairly directly. Yet, what is important for us is to who does it comment and why. In this way situatedness, historicization, as Jameson would say, is important to our understanding of these receptions of the play. It is this controversy over the treatment of Ireland‟s history that has brought McDonagh‟s play under fire by many Irish theatre critics, but the situation is quite different in a global context. 24
A point in case is a production in Istanbul, Turkey, directed by Mehmet Ergen in December, 2003, produced only a few months after the performance that caused such controversy in Dublin. The audience responses and critical receptions were quite different than those of the Irish, showing that situatedness does indeed affect one‟s interpretation and that these interpretations of McDonagh‟s play were born of a stubborn refusal of the death of modernity and the emergence of the postmodern subject. The impact of terrorist violence in Istanbul shaped its audience responses. As Susannah Clapp, a theatre reviewer, wrote of the production in The Observer on November 30, 2003, “Some of the cast thought they should cancel. They had all heard about people picking up body parts in the streets; the play ends with body parts strewn over the stage.” (Clapp 392). This is indeed the case. The stage direction for scene nine of the play describes the grizzly scene: Donny‟s house, night. As the scene begins the blood-soaked living room is strewn with the body parts of Brendan and Joey, which Donny and Davey, blood-soaked also, hack away at to sizeable chunks. Padraic‟s two guns are lying on the table. In the adjacent bare room, Padraic is sitting on Christy‟s corpse, stroking Wee Thomas‟s headless, dirt-soiled body. Through Christy‟s mouth, with the pointed end sticking out of the back of his neck, has been shoved the cross with „Wee Thomas‟ on it. (McDonagh 46) The mise-en-scéne here is powerful. The stage and the actors upon it are covered in blood as they hack away at body parts; the remnants of this mad 25 terrorist violence. The symbol of the cross here is important. That this conflict between the English and the Irish has been driven by feverous religious belief is clear. It is the age old battle between the Protestants and the Catholics, the Republicans and the Loyalists. Here, Christy and Padraic are of the same religion, of the same political beliefs, yet they have senselessly come to this point of extreme violence. This is also an important symbol within the play considering its reception in a global context after the events of September eleventh. The talk of jihad, the axis of evil, and the “us against them” mentality that ensued after these events brought this religious perspective of the war on terror to the front. This was the case with the terrorism experienced in Turkey before the production of this play. The scene is grizzly indeed and one could see where this would be upsetting to those confronted with the realities of terrorist violence. The experience of terrorist violence in Turkey shaped audience responses and rendered the play a tremendous success. Mehmet Ergen directed a production of the play at Istanbul‟s National Theatre that opened on December 12th, 2003. For Ergen, the play spoke to his particular experiences with terrorism directly before the production of the play began. Susannah Clapp, this time writing for The Guardian, describes an incident Ergen experienced while writing the press release for the premiere of The Lieutenant: “Mehmet Ergen was at home in Istanbul writing a press release when suddenly „everything went black‟: outside his window, the street filled up with yellow dust.” (Clapp 393). One can only imagine the way in which this play took on significance for Ergen
considering his situatedness in a hot bed of terrorist attacks. 26 The production cast and actors had hesitations about going ahead as well. Susannah Clapp describes their experiences: “[S]ome of the cast thought they should cancel. They had all heard about people picking up body parts in the streets; the play ends with body parts strewn over the stage. And the most recent bombs had come very close to them” (Chambers 393). This situation was not just close in proximity for the cast, it was close personally as well. As Clapp reports, “One of the actors from the country‟s National Theatre was killed as he was making his way to do a voice-over at a TV studio” (Chambers 393). The violence was all too real for the actors involved in the production and we could say that the force of the mise-en-scéne of scene 9 of The Lieutenant was quite powerful. The forces at work, those of cruelty and the economy of their power, were rendered such by the situatedness of not just the audience but the production cast as well. As productions in Turkey, those in Australia were interpreted according to the situatedness and ideologies of the director, actors and audience. Neil Armfeld produced The Lieutenant at the Belvoir Street Theatre in Sidney, Australia in September 2003. This country‟s involvement with the United States in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan shaped its responses to the performance. Terrorism had been a reality for citizens of Australia as well. Brought to mind is the bombing of a Bali nightclub by Al Qaeda in Australia in October of 2002. This bombing was in retaliation to Australia‟s involvement with America in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Armfeld directed this play with a protest against Australia‟s involvement with America in mind. 27 Sandra McClean, a reporter, relates Armfeld‟s intentions in directing the play in “Armed for a Laugh” which appeared in The Courier Mail on March 13, 2004: We‟re being taught values that don‟t seem to represent good parenting – where is the sense of the primacy of tolerance, understanding sympathy, generosity? […] we‟ve been yoked to the preemptive assertion of power, and it doesn‟t seem the right way to go. (McClean 4) While this statement is indefinitely paternalistic in nature, it does reveal the director‟s situatedness ideologically and the impact this has upon the production. In Sidney, this play acted as a participant in the critical discourse surrounding Australia‟s involvement with America under the leadership of Prime Minister John Howard in the occupation of Iraq; an instance of state sanctioned terrorism as the phrase “to shock and to awe” revealed. The question of Irish terrorism is absent from this discourse, and, as Davey says in the opening of scene nine, “You never see the INLA shooting Australians” (McDonagh 46). IRA terrorist violence is not much of a direct concern for Australian audiences. Ergen and Armfeld were situated in quite different cultural situations, yet each interpreted this apparently “Irish” play in a manner relevant to their situatedness. In this way we can see this “Irish” play become difficult to identify as Irish at all. In each case, there was no discussion of Irishness.
Correspondingly, the discourse of Irish theatre criticism insists upon identifying this play, which as has been pointed out can only be fully understood in a global context, as “Irish.” This has led to an endless conversation 28 concerning whether or not McDonagh‟s work perpetuates or subverts Irish stereotypes. Understanding McDonagh‟s play as postmodern, and as being a work of pastiche and not parody, we can come to see that identifying this play as “Irish” is impossible. We are begged to ask the question of what it means to be Irish in the twenty first century. The Celtic Tiger, as was discussed above, transformed the economic and thus cultural landscape of Ireland in the late twentieth century. The notion of a bourgeois ruling class, or even a homogenous national identity have been left behind in the era of late capitalism. As Jameson explains: “If the ideas of a ruling class were once the dominant (or hegemonic) ideology of bourgeois society, the advanced capitalist countries today are now a field of stylistic and discursive heterogeneity without a norm” (201). Considering this economic transformation in Ireland, a single, identifiable and stable Irish identity is impossible. McDonagh‟s work demonstrates this. Laura Eldred, an Irish theatre critic, in her essay “McDonagh‟s Blend of Tradition and Horrific Innovation” tells us that McDonagh is participating in an Irish tradition. She unknowingly identifies the problem at hand: “Many critics have compared McDonagh to his forebears – to Synge, to O‟Casey, to Lady Gregory – with the sense that McDonagh is, however occasionally offensive, part and parcel of an illustrious tradition, a talent to be proud of and claim as an Irish playwright” (Eldred 198). This sense of offensiveness is no doubt present and the same can be said of many Irish dramatists preceding McDonagh. It can also be said that, without a doubt, McDonagh does, as Synge and O‟Casey, utilize Irish characters from the rural west of Ireland. However, to say that McDonagh 29 participates in an Irish tradition is off the mark: “Certainly, there is a tradition represented by figures such as Synge and O‟Casey of disturbing an audience in Irish drama, a tradition that embraces the „brutal‟ as a tool for engaging an audience” (Eldred 199). While this may be true of these writers, that they use brutality as a means to an end, to call this an Irish tradition is a bit ethnocentric; it is to dismiss a long line of predecessors pre-dating the opening of the Abbey. It is to dismiss the works of Shakespeare, the brute violence and horror of Titus Andronicus and King Lear to name only two. Such a utilization of these forms of the past is an element of pastiche: For with the collapse of the high-modernist ideology of style – what is as unique and unmistakable as your own fingerprints, as incomparable as your won body (the very source, for an early Roland Barthes, of stylistic invention and innovation) – the producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museum of a now global culture.” (Jameson 202). In this understanding of postmodern literature we see McDonagh as participating in a global culture, a point re-enforced by those global productions.
The styles of Synge and O‟Casey, if present in McDonagh‟s work, are now dead and meaningless in the context of their original inception. Their meaning now is directly related to our historical and cultural, which as Jameson tells us, is global, situatedness. 30 Eldred goes on to describe the import of such representation of violence: “Contemporary writers like Martin McDonagh and Patrick McCabe are part of the tradition – reaching back at least to Synge and O‟Casey – of using violence and brutality to disturb an audience, often to show the limitations of Irish society” (Eldred 200). Once again, Eldred limits the inter-textual possibilities at work here to those of the Irish. McDonagh‟s work is no doubt heteroglossic, but not only within the structure of the Irish tradition. This is limiting and misleading. Here, we get to the crux of the matter concerning violence in the theater. Having demonstrated that such a tendency in drama, which we could perhaps understand as the nature of tragedy itself, goes back indeed much further than anything called Irish theater, we get a culturally specific critique. That McDonagh‟s work comments upon more than just Irish culture has been demonstrated by reference to Jameson‟s notion of pastiche, but for McDonagh to be conceived as showing the “limitations” of Irish society is perhaps problematic. This is what much of the discourse surrounding this play would seem to suggest. McDonagh is, after all, presumably, an Englishmen. The political implications here need not be elaborated upon. Yet, this comment does go to show the problem which has grown from identification of McDonagh and his work as “Irish.” Moreover, it is important to note, productions of the play in a global context have decisively shown the limitations of societies, of nationality, of the tendency of man to turn to nostalgia to understand a present condition. Ultimately, this nostalgiac identity, this nationality, be it Irish, Afghani, or American, leads to violence. 31 Such a claim as Eldred‟s amongst Irish theater critics has led to heated debate. Many critics have posited McDonagh as an Englishmen, ruthlessly lambasting Irish culture and history. Padraic‟s short speech considering his intended ends as an IRA member perhaps reveal the root of this anxiety: “Ah, Mairead. Y‟know, all I ever wanted was an Ireland free. Free for kids to run and play. Free for fellas and lasses to dance and sing. Free for cats to roam about without being clanked in the brains with a handgun. Was that too much to ask, now? Was it?” (McDonagh 50). While this speech, out of its context, could be read as a sincere patriotic mission, within this play-text where we have a madman torturing individuals for petty offenses and blowing up chip shops to avoid putting himself in harms way by attacking legitimate targets, we know that this is completely absurd. In no way, in the context of this play, is Padraic doing anything to free anyone from anything. The terrorism he perpetuates makes his own father terrified of him. Scene eight, in which Padraic returns home to find his cat dead, demonstrates, if one were to insist upon seeing this as a representation, the IRA as parricidic madmen. Padraic returns to his father‟s house and after discovering that his cat,
“Wee Thomas,” is dead, attempts to kill his father, Donny and a neighborhood boy, Davey. Padraic puts a gun to the men‟s heads and makes a speech. Once again, here, we see the emergence of a voice from the past, cannibalized and rendered in this new context; the speech. Donny and Davey go back forth and interrupt Padraic, who tells them, “Now shut up while I make me speech” (37). Padraic then goes ahead to make his speech: 32 I will plod on, I know, but no sense to it will there be with Thomas gone. No longer will his smiling eye be there in the back of me head, egging me on, saying, „This is for me and for Ireland, Padraic. Remember that,‟ as I‟d lob a bomb at a pub, or be shooting a builder. Me whole world‟s gone, and he‟ll never be coming back to me. What I want ye to remember, as the bullets come out through yere foreheads, is that this is all a fella can be expecting for being so bad to an innocent Irish cat. (McDonagh 38) This speech is revelatory of what McDonagh is doing. For one, we see the emergence of what Jameson calls “dead voices” from the past. The speech emerges here and is treated in this new context as dubious. The bombing of innocents at pubs or of a builder, who was perhaps rebuilding from other bombings, is all done by Padraic for his cat and for Ireland, yet, even though the mention is made to this being done for Ireland, it is the cat that reminded Padraic of this and egged him on. Since we are in a postmodern context, it does us no good to look for the meaning of what the cat may represent here. One could see a man taking homicidal orders from a cat as being insane. It is important to look at this moment as one of parricidical tendencies, as a moment of glorying in the senseless murder of innocents and as an affective relation of terrorist violence. As with the scene of torture discussed above, the sheer absurdity of the violence at hand, of a man with a gun to his own father‟s head, is undercut by the comic undertones of the moment. Mary Luckhurst, an Irish theatre critic, has demonstrated a sense of anxiety over this type of perceived representation. In “Martin McDonagh‟s 33 Lieutenant of Inishmore: Selling (-Out) to the English” Luckhurst says of the content of the play, “McDonagh is intent of avoiding the possibility of allowing informed politics into the play” and that “It is the sheer stupidity of McDonagh‟s characters that English audiences revel in” (Luckhurst 119). This is of course considering only the English productions of the play. Yet, once again, here we are confronted with the problem behind identifying McDonagh as an Irish playwright. This identification brings with it political baggage dating back to the twelfth century; a trace, a history. It limits meaning and our understanding of what the play is trying to do, which is to destabilize the notion of identity. Luckhursts‟ situatedness does influence her interpretation of the play as well. That she is Irish can perhaps be deduced from her reaction to the play. Catherine Rees responds to Luckhurst‟s claims in “The Politics of Morality: The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” She says of Luckhurst‟s position, “The weakness of this argument is the mistake of aligning Irish drama with political drama per se” (Rees 131). However, what drama is not political? If we see, as does Jameson,
all literature as a socially symbolic act, then it must be political in nature. Moreover, identifying a species of drama by nationality indefinitely brings us into the realm of the political. Counter to Luckhursts‟ position, Rees‟ claims that this play in fact subverts Irish stereotypes, yet remains deadlocked in that she maintains that what McDonagh is doing is “Irish.” Often what seems on the surface to be subversion turns out to be nothing more than containment. A subversion of Irish stereotypes relies upon, recognizes and affirms, the existence of these stereotypes. It affirms Irishness. One‟s interpretation comes to bear 34 upon the play, be it a director‟s, actor‟s or audience member‟s interpretation. The play-text and the author are neither Irish nor non-Irish. Interpreting this play and this playwright as “Irish” keeps us within the circular enclosure of this argument.
35 CHAPTER 2 IDENTITY POLITICS: NOSTALGIA, MYTHOLOGY AND LITERATURE “There can be no great literature without nationality, no great nationality without literature” W.B. Yeats To fully understand this reading of McDonagh‟s The Lieutenant, we must look at these dead voices that we see emerging in his work. We must, as Jameson directs, historicize the elements of this pastiche within McDonagh‟s work. Nostalgia plays a role in national identification regardless of the nationality. In the postmodern era, such a retrieval of identity through nostalgia for an authentic past is impossible. Yet this has been the tendency of Irish literature since the nineteenth century; to seek a national identity through a national literature. This national literature was to find its sources from the mythological
tales of Ireland‟s past; a seemingly authentic aspect of Irish history. Jameson, when discussing in “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism” the tendency in film to “remake” older films, tells us of the nature of such pastiche: “[I]n intertextuality as a deliberate, built-in feature of the aesthetic effect, and as the operator of a new connotation of „pastness‟ and pseudo-historical depth, in which the history of aesthetic styles displaces „real‟ history” (Jameson 204). Looking at Irish literature since the nineteenth century, and this phenomenon by no means begins here but dates back as far as we could possibly look, we can see that re-tellings of historical moments always seek to understand the present by a displacement of the actual historical event. 36 Instances of violence that were terrible and bloody become moments of revolutionary inspiration and martyrdom; not least is Easter 1916 in Irish history. By deliberately utilizing intertextuality as a feature of aesthetic effect, McDonagh positions himself as a postmodern and also serves to illuminate the senselessness and impossibility of such a tendency. Not only is this rendered as impossible, but as completely problematic in that of all these allusions that comprise McDonagh‟s pastiche, all the literary styles that combine within his play-text, sought to seek an authentic Irish identity by way of glorying in violent episodes of the past that ultimately served to justify violence in the present. Ashley Taggart, an Irish theatre critic, says in “Theatre of War? Contemporary drama in Northern Ireland,” “The injunction is always, on the murals, in the songs and stories, to „remember‟ this atrocity, or that victory, this victim, that martyr” (Taggart 68). Taggart is speaking of the role that cultural memory, nostalgia for a violent past, plays in Irish society. This has been the explicit role of literature in Ireland since the Celtic Revival movement of the early twentieth century. Ireland looked to its mythological and cultural past to understand something of what it means to be Irish in a present context. Often times, this impulse to sentiment has mythologized instances of violence which themselves were understood and justified according to an ancient mythology which gloried in the nature of the warrior. The myth of Cúchullain is one such myth. This myth is not without importance in understanding McDonagh‟s playtext. Our anti-hero, Padraic, was, in my interpretation, named after Padraic 37 Pearse. Pearse, the commander-in-chief of the Easter Rising has become a mythologized figure himself in Irish culture. As noted earlier, the presence of the rising has never left the revolutionary imagination. It was this event that led to the Irish Civil War in 1922 and the subsequent establishment of the Irish Republic. Pearse was commemorated in the Dublin Post Office with a statue of Cúchullain, revealing the way in which Irish society perceived these martyrs of the Republic. This particular myth and its re-appropriations in new contexts tell of the way in which numerous individuals have defined themselves against the English other by looking to the past. There are numerous allusions in McDonagh‟s playtext to individuals such as Sir Roger Casement and Padraic Pearse, both whom
were executed after the Easter Rising of 1916. I will demonstrate the manner in which these individuals looked to this past mythology to understand their present condition and the way in which others subsequent to them have looked to them, and this event, in a similar manner. Among other figures alluded to in the playtext are Brendan and Dominic Behan, two important figures in Irish literary history and known IRA supporters and Republicans. That the voices of these individuals emerge in the play-text reveals the pastiche comprising McDonagh‟s play as that of a national identity. The question of whether McDonagh‟s allusions to these individuals and their work in the play-text render him an “Irish” writer will certainly be raised at this point. However, the question of identity is raised in this playtext, but not by way of establishing an “Irish” or any other national identity. As a postmodern playwright, McDonagh is revealing the impossibility of such an 38 identity in the present situation. Jameson sheds light upon this postmodern phenomenon: But this mesmerizing new aesthetic mode itself emerged as an elaborated symptom of the waning of our historicity, of our lived possibility of experiencing history in some active way: it cannot therefore be said to produce this strange occultation of the present by its own formal power, but merely to demonstrate, through these inner contradictions, the enormity of a situation in which we seem increasingly incapable of fashioning representations of our own current experience. (Jameson 205) This is precisely the case with McDonagh‟s play. How does one fashion a representation of Irishness in the twenty-first century, especially when considering that the history of such a fashioning itself has always relied upon mythologizing acts of violence? In a postmodern world one cannot, and the manner in which McDonagh utilizes this pastiche, renders this nostalgiac tradition problematic. The myth of “The Death of Cúchullain,” from the cycles of the Red Branch Saga, has emerged in much Irish literature of the nineteenth and twentieth century. Such an emergence tells us about mythology itself, as well as national identity, or the search there of. That Cúchullain‟s stories, and particularly that of his death, have played a role in defining a national literature, and in fueling the fire of Republican terrorist activity, tells us much about the role nostalgia plays in formation of a national identity. A look at the narrativization of this myth in 39 different contexts shows us myth is best understood as a meta-genre which comes to be narrativized under certain circumstances. The re-tellings and re-appropriations of these myths tell us something of the nature of mythology. In the case of the Cúchullain myth, it serves to hearken back to an Irish past before the invasions of the English. It is seen as an authentic aspect of Irish history, a Celtic origin, which tells us something of what it means to be Irish in the twentieth century. That one seeks a truth about the present in the past, in an originary moment, is something not at all uncommon to mankind. What it is we see, or how we interpret such a moment, is perhaps the most telling. This is indeed the case with the myth of Cúchullain. While the
value of origins, or of a nostalgia which seeks to understand origins, plays an integral role in the formation of a national identity, the value of an original telling of a given myth is problematic. Martin Williams, in “Ancient Mythology and Revolutionary Ideology in Ireland, 1878-1916” adheres to such a problematic understanding of mythology. In this essay, he discusses “the significance of the first English translations of the myths, and showing how writers used and adapted them to suit ideological purposes” (Williams 307). In discussing the Red Branch Saga, Williams states that, “First, none is overtly „nationalist‟ in the sense of depicting Ireland as the focus of political devotion” and that “A few changes in detail and emphasis, and a simple legend becomes a piece of propaganda” (Williams 313). This is of course to assume a value of an originary telling of the myth as well as to prescribe a truth value to such a telling. Williams perceives the emergence of mythologies 40 and their re-tellings in the twentieth century as distorted and propagandistic. However, it is difficult to claim that a genre passed on primarily through an oral medium for centuries could really have any correct, originary telling and that thus re-tellings are inaccurate. Of course, when we consider the emergence of these myths in the postmodern context, the accuracy of such a re-telling is completely beside the point. That they are present in the first place tells us something of the impossibility of defining or representing such an identity in that present context. Moreover, the role of ideology in mythology may be more complex than Williams allows. Joseph Falaky Nagy‟s methodological approach to the study of myth illuminates our understanding. In “Myth and Legendum in Medieval and Modern Ireland,” Nagy, an ivy league scholar and noted theorist of Irish mythology, defines mythology as a meta-genre. In this essay, Nagy examines “the way in which mythological themes or story patterns are converted in early Irish literature into the stuff of pious legend, and tracing the continuation of some of these mythological strands within the body of legend into the twentieth century” (Nagy 125). According to Nagy, mythology is a meta-genre in that it is all of the elements of a specific cultural situatedness, including ideology, surrounding the narrativization, or retelling of a given myth. This conception of mythology posits myth not as a narrative which reveals ideology, but as an ideology which can come to be narrated. Contrary to Williams‟ claims, Nagy states that “individual storytellers, whether working in a literary or an oral medium, have plenty of opportunity to apply their own ingenuity, taste, and perspectives to the task of articulating the 41 cultural questions in mythic terms, and of coming up with some tentative answers in narrative form” (Nagy 125). The myth of Cúchullain, in such an understanding of mythology, can be seen as a cultural conversation which is constantly changing and evolving, dealing with the cultural question of national identity and the nature of violence that has ensued in its name. Looking at McDonagh‟s play in this light, we can see it as a conglomeration of numerous myths, a pastiche. McDonagh raises the cultural question of national identity, and with his postmodern sensibility, raises the
question of the value of identity, be it national or otherwise. The answer rendered by this particular narrativization of these numerous myths is one of disdain and absurdity. The quest for national identity by way of nostalgia for a violent past is absurd. The ideologies which led to the telling of these myths, are dead to us and belong to an inaccessible past. In the case of the myth of Cúchullain, we can understand the meaning of such a conversation by looking at how this myth has changed in various representations and re-tellings of the twentieth century. The myth of Cuchulain comes from the saga of the Red Branch. This mythological cycle relates the knights of the Red Branch as being fearless warriors, head hunters, for whom it is noble to die in battle or to emerge victorious with one‟s enemies head in one‟s possession. In the story of The Táin, from the epic Táin Bó Cuailnge, Cúchullain is the hero who defends Ulster and “an bó donn,” the brown cow, from the forces of queen Medb. His heroic fury is great. Of course, many great heroic deeds are related in this epic, yet the one 42 which perhaps relates the greatness of this hero best is that of the killing of the boy troop. In this section, the troop of young boys of the knights of the Red Branch are killed by the forces of Queen Medb. The other knights tell Cúchullain to wait and they shall all go into battle together. Cúchullain refuses and enters into battle on his own. At this point, the value of the warrior, that of risking death over practicality, of pride over woe, of vengeance upon one‟s enemies is revealed. The Táin tells us of Cúchullain preparing for battle: The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood of a reed in the stream[…]Malignant mists and spurts of fire – the torches of the Badb – flickered red in the vaporous clouds that rose boiling above his head, so fierce was his fury[…]In that style, then, he drove out to find his enemies and did his thunder-feat and killed a hundred, then two hundred, then three hundred, then four hundred. (Kinsella 150-51) It is important to relate this passage as it reveals the warrior values of the ancient Celts. It also reveals the reason why a statue of this figure was chosen to represent the soldiers of the Easter Rising of 1916 in the Dublin Post Office. We have one great and fearsome warrior taking on an entire empire, an entire army, and coming out victorious. While the Easter Rising was initially a failure as the rebels were defeated, the mythology which developed around the heroes who led 43 the Rising served to inspire generations of Republican terrorist activity. This myth was in particularly important to Padraic Pearse, the name sake of McDonagh‟s anti-hero in The Lieutenant. Before looking at the emergence of this myth on McDonagh‟s postmodern stage, we must look at the way this myth has been re-told in Irish literature and the role it has come to play in formation of identity.
Irish mythology becomes in the nineteenth century a nostalgia that lends itself to the formation of a national identity in opposition to the English other. It is nostalgia for an authentic Irish past before the coming of the English. This nostalgia can be seen as comprising a discourse that plays a role in ideological formations and that in turn comes to be narrated in order to provide answers to cultural questions. A question we can see posed in these re-tellings of Irish myth is that concerning Irish identity. Such is the case with Irish ballad poetry of the nineteenth century. In “A Lament,” by James Clarence Mangan, originally written in Irish Gaelic, mythology places such a role. In this ballad poem, Mangan alludes to Fergus‟ death by the hands of Lugaid, the same figure who killed Cúchullain. This poem refers to the death of Irish princes in the seventeenth century and the shame that would ensue had Fergus been killed by the English and not Irish warriors: O, had the fierce Dalcassian swarm That bloody night on Fergus‟ banks But slain our chief, When rose his camp in wild alarm44 How would the triumph of his ranks Be dashed with grief! How would the troops of Murbach mourn If on the Curlew Mountains‟ day, Which England rued, Some Saxon hand had left them lorn, By shedding there, amid the fray, Their prince‟s blood! This elegy was written about the death of the princes of Tyrone who, according to Charles Duffy, the author of The Ballad Poetry of Ireland, “having fled with others from Ireland in the years 1607” were later killed in Rome (Duffy 91). The six counties of Ulster which they fled were then confiscated by King James the First. Mangan relates the impact of this shift in power by alluding to the myth of the death of Fergus Mac Róich. Fergus was a great friend of Cúchullain. This defender of Ulster died by the hand of a jealous friend despite his loyalty to him: “It is by Fergus that the great cattle-raid was taken. He did many deeds in the court of Ailill and Medb, and he and his men were more often abroad in the field than they are at court” (Koch 133). In “The Death of Fergus Mac Róich,” Fergus is killed by his friend, Lugaid, the blind poet who also killed Cúchullain, under the orders of Ailill. In this elegy, we get a juxtaposition of historical moments that give us the sense that even the great Fergus would have mourned the loss of these princes of Ulster. Such a betrayal as this was dishonorable and it was 45 grievous for a man of honor to die by unjust means. Mangan calls on these ancient values to bring to the reader the sense of injustice he felt had occurred in this situation that was contemporaneous to him. This allusion also brings with it the chivalric sense of the warrior and his duty to his people; juxtaposing the
passivity of the people of Ireland with the loyalty and honor of the knights of the Red Branch. These nineteenth century poets would have most likely have been informed of these mythologies by way of the first popular translation of “The Death of Cuchulain,” done by Standish O‟Grady in his History of Ireland published in 1878 and 1880. Williams relates O‟Grady‟s discovery of the myths: “O‟Grady had discovered Irish heroic mythology in 1872 when a wet afternoon in a country house led him to browse through the works of Sylvester O‟Halloran[…]He was inspired by what he read and determined to popularize this pre-history” (Williams 310). As so many other re-tellings, the story was re-written for purposes of readability as well as entertainment. Up until the English translations by Lady Augusta Gregory, Published in 1907, these would have been the only versions available to an English speaking audience. Standish O‟Grady published his translations of The Red Branch Saga, entitled, History of Ireland: Cuculain and his Contemporaries, in London in 1880. The title of this book is of interest in and of itself as it portrays these stories as being, perhaps, historical fact. Interestingly, however, O‟Grady‟s translations venture far from the manuscripts of “The Death of Cúchullain.” One can see O‟Grady‟s Romantic tendencies throughout the text. In O‟Grady‟s text, the story 46 of Cúchullain‟s death is given the simple name “The End,” which is fitting for the text over all as O‟Grady translates every story of Cúchullain‟s ventures available and does so in a chronological order from his birth to his death. Considering the title of this text, one could also see this title as implying that the death of Cúchullain was the end of an era in Irish history; that of the great warriors and knights of The Red Branch. Romantic values emerge in O‟Grady‟s retelling of Cúchullain‟s death. His translation is much longer than the manuscript. In this telling, the three witches, the geis and the planning of the witches to call Cúchullain forth, are all left out. Seeing as how O‟Grady was seemingly relating this as a history, it could be that those elements of Irish history were not something he wished to portray to his English speaking audience. The heroes are portrayed as chivalrous knights: It was about noon when Cuculain and Laeg beheld the first signs of the invasion, and saw afar the lurid smoke of conflagrations, and heard the distant noise of battle. The old heroic rage burned in their hearts, and Laeg unfolded and closed the glittering scythes, to see if they would work freely, urging on the steeds, and Cuculain stood erect in the chariot, looking southwards, and he cried. (O‟Grady 336-37) On a practical level, this scene is portrayed quite clearly. This would have fulfilled O‟Grady‟s intentions of making these stories available to a wider audience. The romanticized language was the literary fashion of the time as well. The “old heroic rage” which Cúchullain expresses is quite chivalric and is 47 perhaps not quite an accurate portrayal of the head hunting warrior we read of in the stories.
That O‟Grady sought to portray a heroic past of Ireland in order to help establish a national identity can be seen clearly in that which he leaves out of the text, such as witches and pagan practices. These types of practices and beliefs were one of the aspects of Irish civilization which the English deemed as rendering them inferior and in need of colonization. It would have been perhaps unfruitful, in searching for a proud national identity in nineteenth century Ireland which would set one apart as distinct and independent from the English, to turn to a Pagan and barbaric past. That which is left out is telling, yet that which is added to the text is perhaps the most telling. Cúchullain gives direction to Laeg on their way to battle: On, on, O royal-hearted Laeg, the Tuátha of Erin are around us this day, Lu Lam-fáda on the right, and on the left that mighty queen who rules over the gods, and above us that strong god who showed his mercy upon me when I fell in the wilderness of Mid-lúhara. (O‟Grady 337-38) The implications here are that Cúchullain recognized a single, all powerful, seemingly Christian god. There is also an interesting footnote in this section which relates O‟Grady‟s interpretation of the abduction into the otherworld of Cúchullain, from which he escaped by doing the three great salmon leaps. O‟Grady describes this abduction as having occurred in a Christian Heaven, from which Cúchullain gloriously leaves. No where in the Gaelic transcripts is there such a reference to 48 a Christian Heaven. It seems that the cultural question of the honor of fighting loyally for the Christian God is raised here. The answer the narrative seems to provide is that it is indeed honorable to do just that; an interesting answer when considering the struggle of Catholics in Ireland at this time for emancipation from the English colonizers. O‟Grady‟s text is an attempt at Anglicization and romanticization of this myth is in order to establish a history of Ireland which will serve to give an understanding of the Irish national identity in the nineteenth century. This concern with Irish identity emerges in full force during the Celtic literary revival in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It is this era in Irish literature, that in which Synge thrived; it is that which McDonagh‟s pastiche is comprised of. As noted above, Lady Gregory was responsible for the first popular translations of the Cúchullain myths, and her contemporary, William Butler Yeats, was also fascinated by this tradition. Yeats, while having an interest in Irish mythology in general, for his own literary endeavors focused on the Cúchullain myths. His focus within these mythological cycles was also limited to that of “The Death of Cúchullain” and the story of Cúchullain killing his own son. His focus on these particular aspects of the myths deserves attention as it relates the ideological forces at work in the re-telling, or narrativization of them. As Yeats‟ part in the Celtic Revival is concerned, he felt that a national literature was more important than the revival of the Celtic language. It is important to note that Yeats had no Irish and probably relied upon Lady Gregory‟s translations as his source. Yeats believed whole heartedly in the
49 importance of a national literature: “There can be no great literature without nationality, no great nationality without literature” (Stock 68). Of course, McDonagh would disagree, and McDonagh‟s work is a pastiche of numerous works that sought, like Yeats, to seek a national identity through literature. In order for this national literature to thrive, in order for this national identity to thrive, it was essential to Yeats that Irish mythology be revived. In his retelling, his concern was not with accuracy or attention to the importance of an originary telling, but he was “more interested in revitalizing Ireland‟s ancient mythology to provide a living faith for modern Ireland” (Skene 21). This living faith, however, was one of sheer violence. Here, once again, we see the importance of nostalgia in the telling of one‟s past in order to understand the present. The initial stage directions in Yeats‟ The Death of Cuchulain relate Yeats‟ conception of mythology and re-enforces Nagy‟s definition: “A bare stage of any period” (Finneran 241). This myth can be told through any setting, in any location and at any point in time. It will still have meaning for us. The myth is that which comes to be retold throughout time, taking on a new meaning each time without its value diminishing for us. It is interesting to look at this nature of myth in light of postmodern literature. If we see this pastiche in McDonagh‟s work as a re-telling or re-narrativization of the re-narrativizations of mythologies by literary figures such as Yeats, this sheds light upon the nature of mythology in the postmodern era. It is this type of re-telling that is the most telling. If myth is an ideology that comes to be narrativized, we can see the narrativization of 50 McDonaghs as revealing this postmodern ideology. The subject is no longer centered but is fragmented. One does not look to the past in order to understand the present but in order to reveal that one cannot understand the present in those terms if at all. For the postmodern, identity is impossible, and in McDonagh‟s play, dangerous. For the modern writer Yeats, it was essential. We see this tendency in Yeats‟ work demonstrated in his Cúchullain play. The play begins with a meta-theatrical moment. An old man is on the stage and explains his decisions in producing the play. We then get Eithne on the stage, speaking with Cúchullain. Throughout much of this play, Cúchullain is injured fatally from Lugaid‟s blow and is awaiting death, fastened to the stone. Aoife confronts him and asks about the son they had had together that Cúchullain killed at Baile Strand. A beggar man comes in after her exit and tells Cúchullain he has been paid twelve pennies to take his head. Cúchullain shows disgust and surprise at this. Here we get Yeats‟ Republican ideologies coming through. While Yeats‟ perspective upon the Republican cause was complicated, we can see here his relating this play to the Irish plight. This play was written in 1939 and we can see the way the events of Easter 1916 and the Irish Civil war of 1922-1923 have affected the questions that this play asks. Can we imagine a great hero such as Cúchullain having his head taken by a blind beggar for such a measly price? Can we imagine the fall of such a hero in such a degrading manner? The answer implicit in the narrativization is clear. As is the case with
the opening stage direction, the final stage directions collapse the temporal 51 distance between Cúchullain, the Knights of the Red Branch and the modern audience. Emer, holding the head of Cúchullain, exits the stage. The stage darkens and music begins to play: “It is the music of some Irish Fair of our day. The stage brightens. Emer and the head are gone…There is no one there but the three musicians. They are in ragged street-singers‟ clothes; two of them begin to pipe and drum. They cease. The Street-Singer begins to sing” (Finneran 250). The singer here, relating the rest of the play, is of importance as much mythology has been passed down in Irish culture through this medium. This is especially true of the mythologies surrounding the Easter Rising of 1916. The singer begins the song and once again collapses the temporal gap perceived in the telling of this mythology: “That there are still some living/That do my limbs unclothe/ But that the flesh my flesh has gripped/I both adore and loathe” (Finneran 251). Here the reference is to the heroes whom are dead and that are no longer within her reaches. Yet, there are still some heroes left, and these heroes she both adores and loathes. This is similar to the theme we see in Yeats‟ poem “Easter 1916,” that of the “terrible beauty” (l. 16). In Yeat‟s play-text, the heroes the singer is referring to specifically become clear: Are those things that men adore and loathe Their sole reality? What stood in the Post Office With Pearse and Connolly? 52 What comes out of the mountain Where men first shed their blood? Who thought Cuchulain till it seemed He stood where they had stood? (Finneran 251) In this moment, the myth takes on a whole new meaning in light of this allusion. That there is a reality beyond that which one adores or loathes is suggested. Pearse and Connolly, commanders and leaders of the Easter Rising, are mythologized in Yeats‟ play-text as heroes of Ireland. There seems to be a mystical connection here between the two. Pearse and Connolly were fulfilling their roles as warriors and defenders of Ireland. They are loathed and adored simultaneously by Ireland. The question of whether or not violence and death, martyrdom, are aspects of a national identity and an independence one should value, is posed. The answer seems to be yes and no, not either/or but both/and. It is terrible and beautiful; a national identity is born from horrible, yet honorable, violence. Despite the judgment of these men, the valuing of their role in the Republican cause, there is a reality, a source of their pride and honor for their country which is beyond temporal restraints, beyond the flesh. With these restraints removed, we see them sharing a spatial realm and taking on a role in defending their country. This reference is not merely metaphorical, for Yeats
also alludes to the fact that Cúchullain‟s statue has been placed in the Post Office in memory of this martyrdom. The placing of this statue in this location shows the way the Irish public identifies their more contemporary heroes according to nostalgia for a mythological past. 53 Padraic Pearse himself saw the importance of the Cúchullain myth to an Irish identity. Pearse was an activist in the Celtic Revival movement. He felt that both the Irish language and an Irish national literature were essential in the restoration of Irish culture. His activism went beyond his militaristic activities which immortalized him. He also believed whole heartedly in the importance of a distinctly Irish system of education. Pearse founded St. Enda‟s for such a purpose. As was noted previously, he located the school at an estate known as The Hermitage which had been the retreat of Robert Emmett who led the failed Emmett Rising of 1803 in Kildare. The mythology surrounding Emmett served to inspire Pearse and gave this place a special context in which to educate the young boys of Ireland. The mythology of Cúchullain played an integral role in the education of these boys at St. Enda‟s. In the inner courtyard there was a mural of Cúchullain‟s death. This myth was performed as a pageant by the boys. These school pageants were performed at the Abbey theatre under the approval and support of Yeats, who lectured on English at the school on occasion. Finola O‟Kane explains the way in which mythology worked to provide students with a strong national identity: “St. Enda‟s engages with the breath of social issues from which the revolution sprang. It commemorates the role the aesthetic and educational theory, cultural nationalism and the appropriations of Irish mythology played in the creation of the revolutionary environment” (O‟Kane 85). The appropriation of this mythology, or the re-telling of it under new ideological circumstances, is what we can see at St. Enda‟s. Clearly, the myth of Cúchullain 54 was of great importance to Pearse and his understanding of an Irish identity which he sought to impart to the youth of the country. While Pearse never wrote about Cúchullain or mythology directly in his own stories, plays and poetry, St. Enda‟s reveals the role it played for him in understanding an authentic Irish identity. This mythological trace emerges again in the 1960‟s around the time of the civil rights battle of the Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland. This was the era of Bloody Sunday, which McDonagh alludes to and which occurred in 1972. We can see this in the poetry of Joseph Campbell who, as these other authors and educators, identifies Irishness according to the mythological past. Describing his first book of poetry and his intentions in writing it, Campbell says, Wild and unspoilt, a country of cairn-crowned hills and dark, watered valleys, it bears even to this day something of the freshness of the heroic dawn. Wandering in any field of it, one can still hear Fionn‟s command to Oisin[…]It is out of this country this book has sprung. (Campbell 3) Campbell explains in the book‟s introduction the importance of this heroic mythology to his national identity. While Campbell was active in the Irish literary
scene, and aside from his involvement in the civil rights protests, he was also involved politically with the Republicans and spent time in prison during the Irish Civil War in 1922. We can see in his work the way in which this mythology informed his ideologies and poetry. In an untitled poem in the collection, The Poems of Joseph Campbell, Campbell describes “A fair field, full of folk” (l. 1) which he sees. He lists some of 55 the individuals in the field, “Shepherd, plougher, pensioner/Scholar, priest and labourer” (l. 7-8). Here we are given individuals from all levels of society, from shepherds to scholars. The poem continues, Ireland is the field they tread. Back of them the royal dead. Heroes of an older day, March in companies of greyMiledh in his battle-car Father to the kings that are; Conor, Fergus, Cullan‟s Hound, Soundless on a tide of sound; Luai‟s daughter, Naisi‟s queen, Loved and lover all unseen, Save by me who look with eyes Concsious of the mysteries. Ireland is where these individuals are observed, and once again, we are looking to the past to understand this. That they march in grey gives us a sense that their memory is foggy and opaque. There is a gray substance shielding these heroes, who are the fathers of present kings, from the public‟s consciousness. At this point we can see Campbell as beginning to align himself with a postmodern understanding. These figures from the past are inaccessible. They emerge in a grey, foggy, cloudy memory. There is something between this history and his historical moment. There is a sense that the rest of the people of Ireland, 56 everyone from the shepherd to the scholar, have lost sight of this past and thus with who they are. The heroes of the past, Conor, Fergus and Cúchullain, are “Soundless on a tide of sound” (l. 18). There is a tide changing in Ireland and they remain muted and forgotten. Campbell reveals this unwittingly in that his intentions were to inspire the people of Ireland to look to this past to understand their revolutionary potential in the present. It is this nostalgia for the past, prevalent in Irish literature, but demonstrated in these few examples, that emerges as pastiche in McDonagh‟s play-text. In Campbell‟s poem, Ireland, “the field,” is fair, but is full of folk who neither hear nor see the importance of their mythological past; in our understanding, it would be impossible for them to do so.
57 CHAPTER 3 THE EMERGENCE OF MYTH IN POP-CULTURE We can see from these re-tellings the role nostalgia for the past plays in coming to define a national identity. This also re-enforces our understanding of mythology as a meta-genre and as all of the aspects of a given situatedness in re-telling these ancient tales. It is this nostalgiac impulse that we can see giving form to McDonagh‟s play. Declan Hughes, an Irish playwright, identifies this nostalgia and calls it “The Irish disease” (Chambers 97). That Pearse would look to the ancient mythological past in order to define an Irish culture in opposition to that of the English is an Irish tradition. As with Campbell, it is the tendency of individuals in the twentieth century to look back to these mythologizers themselves in order to establish an Irish identity. That this tendency can lead to the perpetuation of violence in the name of ancient heroic values is what is considered to be problematic. McDonagh recognizes this and his cannibalization of literature which does just this tells us of the impossibility of an understanding of the past and the impossibility of representing the present. The first and foremost example of this attitude towards mythologized Irish heroes is his treatment of his character Padraic. As was touched upon earlier, in scene two we see him as a ruthless psychopath torturing individuals for petty offenses. It is also here that we get the domestic chit chat about bombing innocents. McDonagh‟s Padraic is extreme. In scene six, the young Mairead meets him getting off the boat upon his return to Inishmore. When she meets 58 him she is singing “The Patriot Game” written by the Behan brothers. The lyrics go, “Come all ye young rebels and list while I sing. The love of one‟s land is a terrible thing. It banishes fear with the speed of a flame, and it makes us all part of the patriot game” (McDonagh 29). The presence of this song in the play-text is not without importance. This song, in the Irish imagination, is an acknowledgment of the terrible duty that attends a true patriot. Indeed, this has been what most Irish literature of the nineteenth century has sought to do is to acknowledge the necessary violence that follows liberating oneself from the colonizing force. Behan‟s literature is perhaps the most obvious example. Yet, considering the song‟s place in the context of this play, it can not be interpreted the same way at all. First, we have Mairead, notorious for shooting the eyes out of cows in political protest to their being slaughtered, a quite self-defeating form
of protest and not without interest to our understanding of McDonagh‟s play-text, meeting Padraic as he gets off the boat to come home to check on the health of his sick cat. The catalyst for the emergence of this song is not all there is to be considered. We couldn‟t legitimately invoke this song at this point in the play-text as some kind of authentic reverence for Irish patriotism in that all of our revolutionaries in the play-text are bumbling morons who slaughter innocent individuals in the name of something they do not understand. Such is the case with Padraic. Now, understanding Padraic Pearse‟s role in such an authentic patriotic identity as discussed above, we can understand the way in which this play distances us from any identity of the sort. This is a Padraic who puts a gun 59 to his father‟s head, and not for killing his cat, but for the cat being killed while under his care. This is the Padraic who put a gun against the sixteen year old Mairead‟s head, threatening her “Tell me the fecking message now, ya bitcheen! Has me cat gone downhill or what the feck is it? Eh?” (McDonagh 31). Not only is this Padraic a lunatic who would kill his own father or a teenage girl over his cat, but he is also a self appointed lieutenant. This is humorously related in Scene nine of the play as Mairead explains her newly appointed position: “I‟m a second-lieutenant. Just awarded be Padraic. Padraic‟s just awarded himself a full blow lieutenantship, and he deserves it” (McDonagh 47). The IRA here are portrayed as not only dangerously violent and ignorant, but as completely illegitimate in that they themselves created this terrorist universe in which they exist. This song, in this context, is distanced from us; we cannot relate to this impulse to identity. The context surrounding the emergence of this pastiche within the playtext renders the meaning of it different than it would be in any other context. In this postmodern world, we cannot possibly come to represent our present in order to form a coherent identity. In the past, in the world of modernism, this was indeed the case; the age of modernism is dead. In this context, we see patriotism as a terrible thing in light of terrorist violence. The impulse to national identity is called into question. This song aside, it is interesting that of the three characters who come back to Inishmore to kill Padraic, one is named Brendan. This is perhaps not coincidental. Moreover, this allusion to the Behans is not 60 without importance either, as the most famous of these brothers, Brendan, is an important figure in Irish literary and revolutionary history. The Behan family was active in the Republican cause since the nineteenth century. Dominic and Brendan‟s mother was involved in running weapons for the IRA and this is the ideological environment from which their literary works emerged. The Behan family‟s involvement with the IRA was immense. According to Sean McCann in The World of Brendan Behan: “His uncle Peadar Kearney wrote the Irish National anthem, „The Soldier‟s Song‟” (McCann 18). The tradition of mythologizing the fallen heroes of Ireland, such as Pearse, through the medium of song is a great one. This is certainly the case for the Behan family. Brendan was a member of “The Fianna,” which was like a
boyscout troop that trained young men to sympathize with the Republican cause. We can see in this idea a trace of Pearse‟s ideas in founding St. Enda‟s school. This is not unrelated to the ancient Irish tradition of fostering; a prevalent motif in all of ancient Irish mythology. The Fianna were an ancient mythological band of warriors in Irish mythology. They were a group of men who hunted and trained for battle, protecting Ireland from any threats, and were highly respected in society. “The Fianna” of which Behan was a member as a boy, “Took members on hikes and fed them on legends of Ireland” (McCann 30). At a young age, these boys were “fed” on the mythology of Ireland in an attempt to get them to sympathize with the Republican cause. Brendan Behan was also a believer in the importance of the revival of the Irish language. In his creative endeavors he saw it as important to immerse 61 himself in Gaelic, staying in Gaeltachta, or rural Irish speaking areas of Ireland. This also had a profound influence upon his literary endeavors. As Colbert Kearney explains, The writers involved saw that their basic problem was that of using the resources of Irish to create a medium which would suit modern poetry, increasingly urban in its preoccupations. Yet most of the writers[…]came from rural backgrounds and inherited a poetic tradition which was untouched by the twentieth-century city. (Kearney 51) Behan was a native English speaker, yet his immersion in this culture brought him to be a part of the tradition of the likes of Campbell. The problem with the literary endeavors of the Irish movement was largely that of an audience. With such a small audience of Irish speakers who could read the works, the movement did not gain much momentum. This is one reason why Behan wrote his major works in English. One poem which demonstrates the way in which Behan mythologized IRA figures is demonstrated in his “The Return of McCaughey,” originally written in Irish and translated into English by Behan himself. This poem was written on the occasion of the death of Seán McCaughey an IRA leader who died on hunger-strike. It was published for the first time in Comhar, Irish for collaboration, an Irish language publication. This poem mythologizes McCaughey‟s death: I had expected to witness a funeral With pipes of condolence droning their keen, 62 Had thought that the sound of guns would be mournful, But, like the victorious host of O‟Neill, Come from the Pale having crushed the invader, The Gaels are delighted to carry their trophy, To welcome McCaughey back home to Ulster, For pride is eventually stronger than woe. (Kearney 49-50) Here the ancient heroic value of death in battle is brought to the present circumstance. To die for one‟s country, even by suicide, is noble. This is established in the poem by way of reference to Ireland‟s past; the great host of
the O‟Neill. Once again, sentiment brings one to understand the present, Irish identity. That “pride” is “stronger than woe” is prevalent in terrorist violence in Ireland. While there may be much to be woeful of, sense of pride is stronger than woe, hence the perpetuation of violence and the death of civilians born of this pride. Having been exposed to mythology, and playing a mythopoeic role in developing a mythology around the Republicans, a myth developed around Brendan Behan himself. He was known for his lewd drunken behavior as well as his literary achievements. He had a knack for witticisms, one common argument he made was, “Why are the Irish or even a section of the Irish the only ones not permitted to use bombs?” (McCann 18). This is an interesting question considering the role of Britain and the United States in international affairs. Even after his active involvement in the IRA had come to an end, Brendan was a supporter of the cause. Behan was arrested and did prison time as a young man 63 for running weapons for the IRA. He was a loyal member for a number of years and claimed allegiance right up until the end of his life. His works included Confessions of an Irish Rebel, Quare Fellow and Borstal Boy, a story of the life of a young member of the IRA. These works aside, he also wrote many songs, poems and plays as well, all permeated with the mythology at work in the formation of the Irish national identity. Yet, McDonagh‟s Padraic says of him and his brother, Dominic: Padraic. It‟s a while since I heard that oul song. Wasn‟t it one of the Behans wrote that? Mairead. It was. Dominic. Padraic. If they‟d done a little more bombing and a little less writing I‟d‟ve had more respect for them. Mairead. I still have respect for them. Lieutenant. (McDonagh 29). These loyal Republicans are not extreme enough for Padraic. For him, sheer physical violence is the only way to go. It is important to note, however, that it is Mairead who we hear singing Behan‟s song. It is she who is keeping this tradition alive, this young, aspiring militant; she is the next generation of terror. Mairead is an interesting and important character in this way. She sings songs of this nature and named her cat Sir Roger, after Sir Roger Casement. This individual was active in the Easter Rising and was executed after it for his role in transporting weapons. He is an interesting figure in that he was Protestant and supported the Republican cause. His presence within the playtext contradicts the assertion that it is Irish Catholics who solely perpetuate this 64 violence. In considering the existence of the lesser known Protestant counterpart to the IRA, The Ulster Volunteer Forces, who were responsible for many acts of terrorist violence against Irish Catholics, we can see this as an important allusion. Sir Roger has been mythologized through song and there is a pub song about him that is popular with the Northern Irish. In this play, Mairead‟s cat is named after him and is blown to pieces by Padraic in scene eight of the play. It is as if the understanding of the Republican cause has been destroyed by this
generation of rebels. A postmodern would understand that this is because in the era of late capitalism, this post-industrial world, there is no possible way to understand ourselves or to possess a stable identity. The play-text itself reveals to us that a national identity is now impossible. However, Mairead is perhaps the greatest threat yet, that which is yet to be realized. In the play‟s conclusion she kills Padraic and tells Davey and Donny, “One of ye‟s chop up Padraic, the other be chopping the fella there with the cross in his gob. And don‟t be countermanding me orders, cos it‟s a fecking lieutenant ye‟re talking to now” (McDonagh 53). The humor here is in the fact that every lieutenant in this play is self-appointed. McDonagh portrays them as delusional. Mairead is the next generation of terror, raised upon popularized mythology of the Republican cause that she can possibly understand. We can indefinitely say that the presence of such songs in the play-text, this pastiche, demonstrates McDonagh‟s awareness of this aspect of national identity. One comes to understand identity through this popular medium which looks to the past to understand the present. It is also clear that the allusions to 65 Behan and Pearse are not coincidental in the play-text. Both of these individuals were not only active in the IRA but were also playwrights. McDonagh comes to write this play-text with an understanding of the nature of “Irish” drama in mind. There is an assumption at work in this play-text; one of an assumed listener. McDonagh came to write this text with an audience in mind. This was not an attempt to write in the “Irish” tradition for the sake of writing in the Irish tradition, but to write through it from a postmodern perspective. This understanding of McDonagh‟s play, that his intention is to bring to light the tendency of individuals to seek a national identity through nostalgia and a mythologizing of the past, makes it difficult to identify it as “Irish” at all; it brings us to see McDonagh‟s play as illuminating the impossibility of a national identity in the era of late capitalism.
66 CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION McDonagh‟s play-text is a space of an emergence of numerous “dead voices” from the past, voices that have no meaning within our contemporary
context; what Jameson would call pastiche. McDonagh‟s situatedness is that of a writer in the post-industrial age. The economic condition in Ireland has been one of American style capitalism since the economic booming of the late twentieth century. As economic condition determines consciousness we can see McDonagh as a postmodern playwright and that The Lieutenant of Inishmore is a postmodern play. This postmodern understanding of McDonagh‟s play renders any identification inadequate let alone one determined by nationality. Productions of the play in a global context have shown that the play is not received as Irish as it is outsourced from Ireland. This shifting in context provides for a shifting in meaning. The play itself demonstrates an awareness of this nostalgiac tendency to turn to the past in seeking an identity and renders it problematic in a darkly humorous manner. It is unfruitful to identify McDonagh or The Lieutenant as “Irish,” yet one could say with confidence that Ireland has proven a fruitful locality for McDonagh to relate this reflexive theme through.
67 WORKS CITED Arrowsmith, Aidan. “Genuinely Inauthentic: McDonagh‟s Postdiasporic Irishness.” Chambers, Lilian and Eamonn Jordan, eds. The Theater of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double. Malvin: Blackwell Publishing, 1938. Billington, Michael. “Triple Whammy”, The Guardian 28 July 1997, T 12. Campbell, Joseph. The Poems of Joseph Campbell. Dublin: Allen Figgis, 1963. Chambers, Lilian and Eamonn Jordan, eds. The Theater of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. Clapp, Susannah. “Pack up your Troubles…” The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Ed. Lilian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. Coogan, Tim Pat. The IRA A History. Niwott, Colorado: Roberts and Rinehart, 1994. Coogan, Tim Pat. The Troubles. London: Hutchinson, 1995. Hardt, Michael and Kathi Weeks, eds. The Jameson Reader. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2000. Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan. The Ballad Poetry of Ireland. New York: Scholars‟ Fascimiles and Reprints, 1973. 68 Eldred, Laura. “Martin McDonagh‟s Blend of Tradition and Horrific Innovation.” The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Ed. Lilian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. Finneran, Richard J. The Yeats Reader. New York: Scribner Poetry, 1997.
Grant, Patrick. Literature, Rhetoric and Violence in Northern Ireland 1968-1998. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Gregory, Lady Augusta. Cuchulain of Muirthemne: The Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster. London, John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1907. Kearney, Colbert. The Writings of Brendan Behan. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1977. Koch, T. John, John Carey eds. The Celtic Heroic Age. Oakville: Celtic Studies Publications, 2000. Lonergan, Patrick. “Martin McDonagh, Globalization, and Irish Theater Criticism.” The Theater of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Eds. Lilian Chambers and Eamonn. Jordann. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006, 295-323. Luckhurst, Mary. “ Martin McDonagh‟s Lieutenant of Inishmore: Selling (-Out) to the English.” The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Ed. Lilian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. McCann, Sean. The World of Brendan Behan. London: New English Library, 1965. 69 McDonagh, Martin. The Lieutenant of Inishmore. London: Dramatist‟s Play Service, 2003. McLean, Sandra. “Armed For a Laugh” Courier Mail 13 March 2004, 4. Morash, Christopher. A History of Irish Theatre, 1601 - 2000. Cambridge: University Press, 2002. Nagy, Joseph Falaky. “Myth and Legendum in Medieval and Modern Ireland.” Myth: A New Symposium. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. 125-137. Neeson, Eoin. The Civil War in Ireland. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1966. O‟Grady, Standish James. History of Ireland vol. 2. New York: Lemma Publishing Corporation, 1970. O‟Kane, Finola. “Nurturing a Revolution: Patrick Pearse‟s School Garden at St. Enda‟s.” Garden History, 28, No. 1 (2000), 73-87. Rees, Catherine. “The Politics of Morality: Martin McDonagh‟s The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Ed. Lilian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. Skene, Reg. The Cuchulain Plays of W.B. Yeats. New York: Columbia University Press, 1974. Stock, A.G. W.B. Yeats: His Poetry and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. 70 Taggart, Ashley. “‟An Economy of Pity‟: McDonagh‟s Monstrous Regiment.” The Theatre of Martin McDonagh: A World of Savage Stories. Ed. Lilian Chambers and Eamonn Jordan. Dublin: Carysfort Press, 2006. The Tain. Trans. Thomas Kinsella. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Williams, Martin. “Ancient Mythology and Revolutionary Ideology in Ireland,
1878-1916.” The Historical Journal, 23, No. 2 (1983), 307-328. Yeats, William Butler. The Yeats Reader. Richard J. Finneran, ed. New York: Scribner, 1997.
71 VITA Graduate School Southern Illinois University Brian Stone
Date of Birth: May 27, 1981
46 Kinkaid Hill Lane Gorham, Il 62940
Southern Illinois University Carbondale Bachelor of the Arts May, 2007
Thesis Title: Martin McDonagh‟s The Lieutenant of Inishmore: Nostalgia, Mythology, Terrorist Violence, and the Impossibility of a National Literature Major Professor: Dr. Mary Bogumil
