The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth‐Century Irish Drama Available to Purchase

Extensive in its breadth and including studies of the major playwrights and their most important works, this book offers an excellent introduction to a major dramatic and theatrical tradition. The principal themes are all represented: the struggle for independence; the cruelty of poverty, emigration and exile; the decline of the Anglo‐Irish Ascendancy; the power of religion and land‐hunger; and the social conflicts of a nation in upheaval. The political context of the theatre is particularly stressed in discussion of staging and programming.

The collection actually starts, after an overview, with consideration of the late 19th‐century melodramas, which gave rise to...