The Change Of Irishness:from Shaw's John Bull's Other Island To Friel's Translations

George Bernard Shaw(1856-1950),born in Dublin,is not only regarded as an outstanding British master of realistic plays in the 20 th century,but also an influential playwright on Irish drama.John Bull's Other Island(1904)is a play focusing on Irish issues.It tells the story of a British man named Broadbent and his partner Doyle,an anglicized Irish,who purchases land in Ireland and squeezes the Irish.Contrary to the stylized characterization of British and Irish characters on the traditional stage,the play presents a complex and multi-dimensional individual.However,as the play created especially for the Abbey Theatre,John Bull's Other Island was not performed as scheduled in that year and was neglected for quite some time.Another interesting phenomenon is that the play Translations(1980)written by Brian Friel(1929-2015),the most important playwright in contemporary Ireland,is also a play focusing on a pair of British and Irish characters and telling their history of mapping fortifications in Ireland in the 1930 s.Different from the fate of Bernard Shaw's John Bull's Other Island at the beginning of the century,Translations was a great success as the opening play of the Filed Day Theatre Company.Therefore,the thesis studies the two characters in two scripts and the different receptions of the two scripts.Through the comparative study of Irish characters Doyle and Owen in John Bull's Other Island and Translations respectively,this thesis focuses on their images and similarities of the two,and then puts the two plays in the historical contexts of the early 20 th century and the 1980 s to analyze the cultural roots of the different acceptances of the two characters(i.e.the two plays),and finally reveals the historical evolution of Ireland's core concept of Irishness as well as Irish identity in the development process of Centennial.This thesis is divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction,which mainly introduces Shaw,his works and the research status of the play at home and abroad.The second part focuses on the text and reveals the similarities between the two characters through close reading of the text.Doyle and Owen are very similar in characterization.However,Irish society has different attitudes towards this kind of Irish characters onstage indifferent periods.The third part traces back to the history of the Irish Literary Revival and explores the reasons why John Bull's Other Island,i.e.the character Doyle is not accepted.It can be seen that the Irish character depicted by Abbey Theatre represented by Yeats at the beginning of the 20 th century is single,idealized and nationalistic,while the diversified,hybrid and changeable Irish character depicted by Shaw is inconsistent with the mainstream ideology of the society at that time.In addition,Yeats and Shaw differentiate between each other in their style,idea and perception of drama creation function,which also leads to their different understanding of the play itself and the characters in it.Therefore,the plural Irishness represented by Doyle is not accepted at the beginning of the century.The fourth part takes the Field Day Theatre Company in the 1980 s as the social context,revealing the reason why Translations,i.e.the character Owen is widely accepted.In the 1980 s,the Irish society is in the white-hot stage of the Northern Ireland crisis and the establishment of Field Day Theatre Company plays a decisive role in easing the crisis on the cultural level.First of all,Irish society in this period becomes more tolerant and tries to solve the Northern Ireland conflict in a completely new way.Secondly,the development of Field Day Theatre Company has prompted Irish people to think about their culture and society,and to put forward the notion of Irishness that is more inclusive and pluralistic.Therefore,Owen's two-sided Irishness meets the needs of the society and becomes very popular in this period.The last part is the conclusion.By comparing the characters in John Bull's Other Island and Translations,this thesis presents the changes of Irishness definition in whole Irish society in Centennial.The single and idealized definition of Irishness,Irish identity and Irish culture with nationalism as its main element in Irish Literal Revival are heading to the pluralism and diversity in contemporary Ireland and Northern Ireland.And the recalling the past of Shaw's Irishness creation aims to eliminate misunderstanding of the past and help Irish society to seek solution to Northern Ireland crisis.