Elizabeth Mannion • Staging Parnell: Biodrama at the Early Abbey heatre Few Irish political igures have captured the imagination of writers so much as Charles Stewart Parnell. He was, famously, a chosen subject in prose and poetry by such luminaries as James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, and Virginia Woolf. But several Irish dramatists also wrote versions of Parnell, and they wrote close to the historical record with plays that appear current with the output of Parnell biographies and reassessments of the Home Rule movement. All the while, critics— beginning with Herbert Howarth in 1958—have been tracking and cataloguing literary representations of Parnell with regularity. Such surveys appear roughly every two decades, are usually undertaken by a Yeats or Joyce scholar, and focus on poetry and iction. Plays involving Parnell, however, are barely mentioned. But they are worth examining, particularly those staged during the early years of the Abbey heatre, where Parnell was more oten the subject than any other historical igure. his is itting, as, in the decades ater his death, the Abbey heatre itself was one of the few subjects to draw as much debate as Parnell, particularly in the city of Dublin. he Abbey’s Parnell plays provide a glimpse into those debates and show that the national theater was as engaged with ongoing reassessments of Parnell as were the historians and critics. he original study of the literary legacy of Parnell was Howarth’s he Irish Writers 1880–1940: Literature Under Parnell’s Star (1958).1 Howarth’s opening chapter, “A Myth and a Movement,” was the irst attempt to examine messianic motifs in literary treatments of Parnell. Howarth limits his discussion of dramatic representations to a passing mention of Lady Gregory’s he Deliverer (1911), an allegorical play that linked Parnell to Moses. In “James Joyce’s Dublin,” published two decades later, F.S.L. Lyons argued that the Parnell split was as much a catalyst for movement as it was for the paralysis motif in Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: the movement being the fall and the betrayal, both of which become embedded archetypes in Joyce’s 1. Herbert Howarth, he Irish Writers 1880–1940: Literature Under Parnell’s Star (London: Rockclif, 1958). new hibernia review / iris éireannach nua, 22:2 (samhradh / summer, 2018), 146–158 mean, ugly, sordid.”50 Fed up with what political ighting has made of her life, Joan takes of for a life of her own in Dublin. With its allegorical title, and a conclusion illed with regret, Moses’ Rock brings the Parnell cycle back to he Deliverer, closing this chapter on biography-driven drama at the Abbey. he broader scope of historical perspective aforded by the passing of time, though, the regret here is of a diferent sort; this is not a regret of personal actions as was the case in he Deliverer and other plays of the irst wave. Rather, it faces outward toward the political conservatism of those around Joan, all of whom controlled her fate. She regrets the ramiications that their inability to look forward have had on her. In denouncing their victimization, she resolves not to let them or those like them prevent her from going forward. Only two Parnell plays have been staged by the Abbey since the early years: Kenneth E.L. Deale’s courtroom drama he Conspiracy (1966) and Tom MacIntyre’s Kitty O’Shea (1990). Deale broke from Abbey precedent by focusing entirely on Parnell’s early political career. No script appears to exist, but the playwright’s son recalls it as “a documentary re-vamped into dramatic form [that] concerned the events of 1882 and their sequel,” with the Phoenix Park murder and the Kilmainham Treaty, in which Parnell agreed to cooperate with Gladstone, anchoring a sequence events that include the Piggot letters.51 In Tom MacIntyre’s Kitty O’Shea (1990), Parnell is a vehicle by which to deliver a study of the tension that can exist between mothers and daughters. hese two plays make a signiicant departure from the early Parnell plays by disregarding the myth. he Deale play does not appear to have drawn on public response to Parnell, and Kitty O’Shea is a memory play, with little commentary on the public or the myth. Like Joyce, the playwrights chiely use Parnell as a conduit for exploring other issues. he later plays more clearly use the Parnell igure as a facilitator for opening up other concerns—but he served a similar purpose in earlier plays at the Abbey. Regardless of when they are written, biography-driven works inevitably relect the concerns of their own times. • baruch college, city university of new york eemanion@gmail.com 50. O’Connor and Hunt, Moses’ Rock, 97. 51. Julian Deale, e-mail correspondence with author, 14 August 2014. 158