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Cassandra Clark
ENG363 — Sack
December 20, 2017

Irish Appropriation of Greek Tragedy in the Contemporary Era

Theatre has long been a medium used to communicate lessons and information to its

audience through elaborate storytelling. Some of the earliest known, truly theatrical

performances are that of the ancient Greeks. Their narratives often followed that of myth and

legend and incorporated their Gods into these stories of the Greek people. These plays are still

often adapted, translated, and restaged today all over the world. Many modern audiences find

solace in the ancient comedies and even in the tragedies, finding connections between the

mythical experiences of these ancient people and their own modern lives.

But what does it mean when there is a sudden influx of new Greek adaptations from one

particular faction of playwrights in a very short period of time? Classics historian Marianne

McDonald noted, at the turn of the twenty-first century, that “since 1984 we have seen more than

thirty adaptations of Greek tragedy by more than fifteen Irish playwrights” (McDonald 16). This

phenomenal spike in the production of tragic Irish-Greek adaptations seems to reflect national

opinions about the state of Ireland at the end of the twentieth century and the desperate Irish

desire to understand and to meditate on their own precarious situation.

So what is it about these ancient Greek tragedies that has attracted the attention of so

many contemporary Irish playwrights? Such is the question I will begin to answer within this

essay, beginning with an examination of the political and social context from which these tragic

Greek adaptations were born followed by a exploration into the theatrical characteristics that

produce an inherently “Irish” play. Using research from Katherine Anne Hennessey’s
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“Memorable Barbarities and National Myths: Ancient Greek Tragedy and Irish Epic in Modern

Irish Theatre”, from Kelly Younger’s “Irish Antigones: Burying the Colonial Symptom”, from

Loredana Salis’ “‘The root of all evil’: Frank McGuinness’ Translations of Greek Drama”, and

from Marianne McDonald’s “Classics as Celtic Firebrand: Greek Tragedy, Irish Playwrights,

and Colonialism”, I will investigate the ways in which Greek tragedies were interpreted by the

Irish at the end of the twentieth century and the implications of this Irish-Greek connection in the

modern world.

Over the past few hundred years, Ireland has experienced a history fraught with conflict.

From oppressive English colonial rule to the devastating Potato Famine to the infamous

“Troubles”, the Irish people have certainly experienced tragedy of their own. In fact, Irish critic

Shaun Richards has pointed out that “’tragedy’ is a term frequently used to describe the

contemporary Northern Irish situation” even often used “by commentators attempting to convey

a sense of the country and its history in more general terms” (Richards 191). With such a tragic

past, there are numerous connections one can make between the Irish situation and the tragedies

of ancient Greek myth. In this case, however, I would like to specifically examine one of the

most recent Irish misfortunes: a thirty-year domestic conflict from which Ireland has never truly

recovered.

Known now as the Irish “Troubles”, this lengthy conflict pitted Irishman against Irishman

in a violent territorial dispute over Northern Ireland. The predominantly Protestant unionists in

the area desired that Northern Ireland remain part of the United Kingdom while the

predominantly Catholic nationalists/republicans desired for it to become part of the southern

Republic of Ireland. The conflict itself is reported to have lasted from October 1968 to April
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1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed and self-government was restored to

Northern Ireland after years of British intervention. By the end of nineties, 3,600 Irishmen lay

dead and thousands more were left injured. A fragile peace had taken hold in the early days of

the twenty-first century, but such was short-lived and direct rule had to be re-introduced from

2002-2007. Today, these two opposing factions of Northern Irishmen have come to a power-

sharing agreement and partnership that has brought an end to the terrible era of dissension

(BBC).

It was during this period of civil conflict that a significant number of new adaptations of

Greek tragedy were produced in Ireland. In fact, at Dublin’s flagship theaters (the Abbey and the

Gate) between 1984 and 2000, a Greek adaptation was produced, on average, every two and a

half years (Hennessey 170). This era of unrest in Ireland also created some rather notable trends

in which Greek plays were chosen for the Irish stage. “It is noteworthy”, McDonald writes, that

of the thirty Irish adaptations written in this era (1984-2000), “four…are based on Sophocles’

Antigone, three on Euripides’ Medea, two on Trojan Women, and none on Oedipus

Tyrannus” (McDonald 16). It seems it was these tales of strong Greek women that inspired the

Irish playwrights and poets in such a time of national despair. In particular, Medea and Antigone

were re-envisioned and updated countless times by countless writers in countless different ways.

In fact, in the “Orwellian year” of 1984, Antigone was adapted four times by four different

playwrights in Ireland — as Brendan Kennelly’s Antigone, Aiden Carl Matthew’s Antigone, Tom

Paulin’s The Riot Act, and Pat Murphy’s film Ann Devlin (Younger 149).

Each of these thirty some-odd adaptations and translations written since the beginning of

the Troubles seems to carry with it a tone that is distinctly Irish. From the very broad choice of
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play to the very specific choice of words on each page, Irish playwrights seem to carry with them

the history and the circumstances of their people. To pinpoint what exactly makes a play so

notably “Irish” is a difficult task, but many have shared their thoughts on the subject over the

years. In fact, even the British scholar Gilbert Murray said of the play Oedipus Rex, upon

refusing to translate it for W.B. Yeats, “it is a play with nothing Irish about it: no religion, not one

beautiful action, hardy a stroke of poetry” (Hone 257). Along with many others, Murray seems to

have had a clear understanding of which plays were capable of truly conveying the Irish

experience and which were not. And all this was decided before the playwright ever even began

to go about translating and adapting the story.

The writing process of these twentieth (and early twenty-first) century playwrights

worked to expand and clarify this Irish “essence” into a fully-fledged production. For some, the

“Irish-ness” of the plays came purely from the audience. The audiences could project their own

experiences as modern Irishmen onto the very accurate translations of the Greek works. Some,

however, incorporated the Irish essence into each facet of the production. The Chicago Tribune

recently said of a revival of Marina Carr’s 1998 By the Bog of Cats, the play “has its roots in

Euripides’ ‘Medea,’ but its heart and soul is Irish…. A literal Irish backwater serves its physical

setting, but it carries some of the weight of the Irish diaspora on its shoulders” (Reid). For her

modern adaptation, Carr chose to set her Medea story in the midlands of Ireland, turning

Euripides’ titular character into the fiercely passionate Hester Swane and into a tinker (Irish

traveller) living on the margins of traditional Irish society. Here, Carr makes the connection

between this Greek tragedy and her new play grossly apparent.
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Carr also creates an adaptation distinctly Irish in its use of the Irish vernacular. Other

playwrights have also used similar techniques to translate the Greek dramas — using familiar

language and colloquialisms. For instance, in Frank McGuinness’ adaptation of Euripides’ Helen,

“his characters speak a language that is rich with colloquial and idiomatic expressions,

‘Irishisms’ proper that shift the geography of the play to McGuinness’ native land (‘ownio’,

‘arse’, ‘shenanigans’) and resound with the local talk (‘the big man’, ‘she did, so she

did’)” (Salis 157). This technique moves to connect the Irish audience with these strange Greek

mythological characters from the start. Suddenly the situations onstage and offstage begin to

meld and the situational similarities can become readily apparent.

So as to why contemporary Irish playwrights have found such a fascination with updating

these ancient Greek tragedies, especially those with female protagonists, in the years following

the Troubles, it seems there are many possible answers. Marianne McDonald sees this attraction

to ancient tragedy as a means for the Irish to “redefin[e] themselves in the terms provided by the

Greek dramatists” (McDonald 16). She believes the Irish “make full use of the power of Greek

tragedy, not only for the expression of personal feelings, but beyond that, as a vehicle for the

expression of the Irish people and their public concerns” (17). After years of suffering under the

colonial rule of Great Britain and now faced with the instability of the Northern Irish conflict, the

Irish were turning to the ancient Greeks both for consolation and for the purpose of making

noise. In one way, the Irish people could relate Ireland’s own story to each of these great Irish

heroines (“Ireland becomes England’s Trojan women; its Medea exploited by Jason; its

Antigone, who in the face of insufferable odds, does not falter, but retains a sense of

justice” (17)) while also plays such as Aiden Carl Matthew’s Antigone “serve[ed] to remind one
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that in the face of such [human rights] violations, human beings always possess the power to

express their discontent” (21). These plays were meant as both a relatable narrative and a call to

action.

Scholar Kelly Younger would agree that this re-popularization of the Greek tragedy in the

late twentieth century was more or less meant to mobilize the Irish people. With specific

reference to the great apparent interest in Antigone adaptations, Younger claims the character of

Antigone was meant to represent “the strength for political insurgency and the potency of

individual resistance that was denied to the Irish by the English” (Younger 157). The Irish people

were stifled and oppressed by their British neighbors for hundreds of years and so Antigone

could now embody for the Irish people something they desired, but could not yet be. In fact, it

can be argued that Antigones “were never more needed than at present, when every statement

from [Irish] political and church leaders carries with it the implicit injunction: ‘Antigones, lie

down’” (Roche 250). Such would explain the fascination with the Antigone story in the

mid-1980s, right before the introduction of the Anglo-Irish Agreement (which gave the Irish

government an advisory role in the affairs of Northern Ireland (BBC)) in 1985. Therefore, “1984,

accordingly, was an appropriate year for Antigone to walk forth and state her ‘non-servism’ to

the Irish establishment, with the understanding that the establishment would not, could not, be

shaken from its position” (Murray 129). These Greek adaptations were a political statement in

themselves and the Irish playwrights often played up the connections between the mythical

situations and those of modern Ireland.

For it was these tragic Greek heroines that the Irish people could suddenly relate to. Of

course, the story needed to be updated for the modern audience, but suddenly the Irish people
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were not alone. Their struggles and their feelings of hopelessness in an endless war were no

different than that of these Greeks. In some ways, Younger even suggests that it is this sense of

“exhausted fatalism” that both established the audience’s rebel connection to the play and that

allows them also to take enjoyment from admitting to their similarly desolate situation. She

believes the audience “desired [Antigone’s] ability to resist, but took [also] delight in her failure

and fell back into their own familiar space of narcissistic passivity — a space no longer

necessary in their post-colonial situation”. In fact, “if what constitutes a symptom is that one

believes in it, it is also the belief in it that draws one to revisit, repeat, and redramatize the

trauma/tragedy” (Younger 157). She claims that the act of adapting these Greek plays and

connecting them to the “colonial symptom” of the Irish experience, the playwright is in a sense

allowing that symptom to live on. The Irish are consistently disappointed by their lot in life and

love to play the victim, but somehow never seem to actually make the action to change their

situation.

This is not a sentiment I necessarily agree with as I see the revisitation of these traumas

as a means to reflect on the past and to explore a new future. It is impossible not for a playwright

not to leave their personal, political, and historical mark on their piece as it is as much a part of

the play as it is of themselves. In this era in particular, Younger claims that “these Irish-Greek (or

Hiberno-Hellenic) adaptations all, in one way or another, comment upon and question the

instability of twentieth century Ireland — the people, the poets, and the divided country” (149).

Whether the connection is spelled out for the audience or merely suggested, these new

adaptations cannot help but incorporate the history and the politics of the person writing it.

Stories become more relevant and more impactful when chosen to be performed at the right
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moment in history. This era at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century

was this “right” moment, where careful adaptations of these likely mythical stories of ancient

people from a completely different part of the world could incite deep thought in their audiences

and real change in Ireland.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I made in researching this Irish-Greek

phenomenon was in finding the word “futility” interspersed in almost all of my different

resources. It seems feeling futile or useless is a common thread of the Irish experience. Many

outlined feeling drawn to the Greek tragedies as a means to deal with their rage at the futility of

war. In Antigone, Medea, and Trojan Women, the female characters are left to comprehend the

aftermath of war and to despair over their inescapable fates. Such seemed to be the lot of the

Irish during the Troubles, as there was no end to the violence in sight. War felt useless and death

was inevitable. But with the help of the ancient Greeks, the Irish found their voice. These were

“rebellious plays for the rebel Irish” (Younger 150) and they helped Ireland make sense of their

circumstances. In the end, these contemporary Irish adaptations and translations of ancient Greek

tragedy were used as a means to subvert the Irish feeling of futility and to explore what an Irish

future might hold.

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WORKS CITED

Hennessey, Katherine Anne. “Memorable Barbarities and National Myths:

Ancient Greek Tragedy and Irish Epic in Modern Irish Theatre.” University of Notre
Dame, 2008.

Salis, Loredana. ““The root of all evil”: Frank McGuinness’ Translations of Greek Drama.” Studi
irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies [Online], 4.4 (2014): 145-160. Web. 13 Nov. 2017

Younger, Kelly. “Irish Antigones: Burying the Colonial System.” Colloquy, no. 11, May 2006,
pp. 148–162., artsonline.monash.edu.au/wp-content/arts-files/colloquy/
colloquy_issue_11_may_2006/younger.pdf.

“History - The Troubles.” BBC, BBC, www.bbc.co.uk/history/troubles.

Jordan, Eamonn, and Marianne McDonald. “Classics as Celtic Firebrand: Greek Tragedy, Irish
Playwrights, and Colonialism.” Theatre Stuff: Critical Essays on Contemporary Irish
Theatre, Carysfort Press, 2000, pp. 16–25.

Barfoot, C. C., et al. “In the Border Country: Greek Tragedy and Contemporary Irish Drama.”
The Literature of Politics, the Politics of Literature: Proceedings of the Leiden IASAIL
Conference: Vol 2, Rodopi, 1995, p. 191.

Reid, Kerry. “'Bog of Cats': A Spurned Daughter Comes Back in Angry Irish Take on
'Medea'.” Chicagotribune.com, Chicago Tribune, 6 Mar. 2017, www.chicagotribune.com/
entertainment/theater/reviews/ct-bog-of-cats-review-ent-0222-20170221-story.html.

Hone, Joseph. W.B. Yeats: 1865-1939. Penguin Books, 1942.

Kenneally, Michael, and Anthony Roche. “Ireland's Antigones: Tragedy North and South.”
Cultural Contexts and Literary Idioms in Contemporary Irish Literature, Smythe, 1988,
pp. 249–250.

Christopher Murray. “Three Irish Antigones.” Perspectives of Irish Drama and Theatre, edited
by Jacqueline Genet and Richard Alan Cave, Colin Smith Publishers, 1991, p. 129.