| This dissertation focuses on the work of the new Irish playwright, Martin McDonagh, and where he fits in the rich tradition of Irish drama. The specific focus is an exploration of each of McDonagh's five produced plays on Ireland: The Beauty Queen of Leenane, A Skull in Connemara, The Lonesome West, The Cripple of Inishmaan, and The Lieutenant of Inishmore. By tracing through the history of Irish drama from the establishment of the Irish Literary Theatre at the turn of the century to Friel and on to the present, this dissertation demonstrates how McDonagh's drama offers a new voice for Ireland. This dissertation focuses on a few key individuals and their "benchmark" plays which laid the groundwork for McDonagh: W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Samuel Beckett, and Brian Friel. In addition, this dissertation examines the notion of Irish identity and what that has meant to the other Irish playwrights.;McDonagh's plays have developed a reputation for being dark and desperate comedies that shine a light on the wickedness of the human spirit. This dissertation takes issue with those misinterpretations and focuses on the empowering nature of McDonagh's message. Within each play, McDonagh creates exaggerated worlds in which the people defy tradition and invent their own moral codes. These exaggerated communities exist to teach the audience---and, more specifically, the Irish people---that they are no longer required to let the traditional power structures control their lives. In the worlds created by McDonagh, the people truly are the masters of their fate and the captains of their soul. McDonagh's plays explore what it means to be human through the centering of the following four binaries: faith and reason, autonomy and responsibility, humans and nature, and individual and community. While the Irish drama of the past has illustrated how the Irish people have always privileged one side of each binary, McDonagh's characters have negotiated these binaries and found the peaceful center. |
