Shakespeare in Ireland: Adaptations and Appropriations

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. His works helped to fashion colonial identity in Ireland in the 18th century and beyond, but, from the 1800s onwards, Shakespeare also became an important figure for Irish nationalists.

In the modern period, Shakespeare’s influence can also be discerned in the work of a broad range of Irish writers, and this volume considers the impact of his plays on such authors as Synge, Joyce, Beckett and others. The volume also explores the place of Shakespeare in the Irish theatrical tradition.

Shakespeare in Ireland explores the history of Irish Shakespeare through the numerous ways in which the playwright and his work were reconfigured and recycled in various Irish contexts. The volume demonstrates how Shakespeare has been rendered Irish in a variety of complex ways, and it aims to track, over time, the story of how Shakespeare became a fully hibernicised figure.