Through a selection of essays from a variety of scholarly voices, this volume maps the various ways in which Shakespeare has been adapted, adopted and appropriated in Ireland from the late 17th century through to the present day.
Shakespeare's plays have been performed in Ireland since the 1660s, when Smock Alley theatre was established in Dublin, with Shakespeare serving as its essential stock-in-trade. Since then the playwright's work has played a central role in the formation of Irish culture. Shakespeare's works helped to fashion colonial identity in Ireland from the 18th century and beyond, whilst his presence in Irish cultural life became more dispersed in the 1800s, with Irish writers such as Charles Robert Maturin drawing on Shakespearean sources - something that would become evident in the Irish literary tradition across the ensuing decades.
Considering the ways in which such Irish writers as Samuel Beckett and W. B. Yeats drew on Shakespearean material in producing their own work, whilst analysing Shakespearean influence in both Irish society and its theatrical landscape, essays in this collection explore the history of Irish Shakespeare through the numerous ways in which Shakespeare and his work were reconfigured and recycled into various Irish contexts. Shakespeare in Ireland shows how Shakespeare has been rendered Irish in a variety of complex ways, and is an exercise in tracking how Shakespeare becomes a fully hibernicised figure.
