Bernard Shaw’s Irish Cultural Attitude In John Bull’s Other Island And Its Acceptance In The Twentieth Century Ireland

The 1925 Nobel Prize winner George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950)is widely known as a famous English playwright.The theater works he produced in England have set up foundations for the development of plays in west European countries.Shaw was generally considered as “the second Shakespeare” by many of his contemporaries and today’s scholars.One of the distinct features of Shaw’s plays is that they reflect humanitarianism and reveal realistic social problems.Most existed domestic and foreign studies on Shaw’s plays mainly focus on the theme and artistic expression to reflect social and realistic issues in England by analyzing plays like Major Barbara,Pigmalion,etc.,which took place mostly in London.However,the Irish elements in Shaw’s plays have been ignored.His “Irish play”— John Bull’s Other Island,which was written for the inauguration show of the Irish National Theater(Abbey Theater)has received little domestic attention until now.By taking a close look at the text of John Bull’s Other Island and Shaw’s two other Irish plays,namely O’Flaherty and Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman,this thesis aims to analyze Shaw’s cultural attitude by summarizing the features of the Irish characters in his play,with the approach of cultural-literature criticism as well as the theoretical framework of cultural identity.Meanwhile,this thesis will also venture to investigate Shaw’s cultural identity from the shifting attitude towards this play,which is from being repelled at first to be accepted later,in the twentieth century,when Irish plays were undergoing a series of historical development.The main body of the thesis consists of three parts.Following the introductory chapter which covers the background information of Shaw and his works as well as the literature review,the second chapter mainly focuses on Shaw’s critical attitude towards the Irish culture,which can be seen from the images of the Irishmen in John Bull’s Other Island,which may help to find the reason why this play is rejected by the Abbey Theater in 1904.Then,in the third chapter,by studying Shaw’s narration of “Irishness” and how his play was repelled but then accepted,this thesis hopes to explore how Shaw’s Irish cultural attitude was gradually accepted in the twentieth century Ireland.Lastly,with the help of cultural identity and Shaw’s understanding of Irishness,the fourth chapter aims to explore the essence of Irish cultural identity,which is developed from essentialism to a kind of fluidity.From this study,it can be concluded that the Irishmen in John Bull’s Other Island were first created to reflect Shaw’s critical attitude toward the Irish culture,which was first repelled and then got accepted later in the twentieth century Ireland.In the meantime,from the switching attitude towards John Bull’s Other Island,which shows Shaw’s cultural attitude,it is clear that the Irish cultural identity had developed from essentialism to a kind of fluidity.