Irish Writers and the Theatre

This collection is the second volume in the IASAIL-JAPAN series, which was set up by the Japanese branch of the International Association for the Study of Anglo-Irish Literature. Many major Irish authors have been dramatists as well as poets and novelists, and perhaps the most famous have gained their fame because of their dramatic output. Over the past three centuries many of the dramatists whose names are remembered have Irish connections - Farquhar, Steele, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Boucicault, Wilde, Synge, Shaw, Yeats, O'Casey, Behan, Beckett, Friel, and Leonard come to mind. The essays in this collection deal primarily with dramatists of this century, particularly Shaw, Yeats, O'Casey, Behan, Robinson, Beckett and Stewart Parker, but there are more wide-ranging essays - on contemporary fashions in Irish theatre, on O'Casey's influence on modern drama, on the humour of deprivation, and on dramatisations of the life of Jonathan Swift.