Stage Irish

Stage Irish, also known as Drunk Irish, or collectively as Paddywhackery, is a stereotyped portrayal of Irish people once common in plays.stage Irishman
''The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature'', Oxford University Press, p.534-5. The term refers to an exaggerated or caricatured portrayal of supposed Irish characteristics in speech and behaviour. The stage Irishman was generally "garrulous, boastful, unreliable, hard-drinking, belligerent (though cowardly) and chronically impecunious". This caricature includes many cultural outlets, including the stage, cartoons published in ''Punch'' and English language clichés, including terms such as "Paddywagon" and "hooligan".

The early stage Irish persona arose in England in the context of the war between the Jacobites and Whig supporters of William of Orange at the end of the 17th century. Later, the stage Irish persona become more comic and less threatening. Irish writers also used the persona in a satirical way.

Early examples

The character of Teg in Robert Howard's play ''Committee'' (1662) has been claimed to be the first example of the type, where an Irish servant outwits the enemies of his master with a show of false naïvety.

Captain Macmorris in Henry V by William Shakespeare has the line "What ish my nation?", which was later appropriated by modern Irish writers, becoming what The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature calls a "recurrent epigraph". However, Macmorris is a loyal and valiant supporter of Henry V, quite different from later, generally lower-class, stage Irishmen. ''Ben Johnson's The Irish Masque at Court'' (29 December 1613; printed 1616) is another early example of the conventions.

James Farewell's poem ''The Irish Hudibras'' (1689) was published in the wake of William's invasion of Ireland to suppress the Jacobite uprising. It is considered to be the principal origin of the stereotype. This takes the form of a parody of book VI of Virgil's Aeneid, in which Aeneas descends into the underworld. In the poem, this is replaced by Fingal in County Dublin, in which Irish costume, behaviour, and speech-patterns are parodied as if they were denizens of Hades. A companion piece, ''Hesperi-Neso-Grapica or A Description of the Western Isle'' by "W.M." was published in 1715. Pamphlets published under the title "Bog Witticisms" also parodied the supposed illogicality and stupidity of the Irish.

18th–20th centuries

Irish characters appeared in a number of plays during the 18th century. These were not all negative stereotypes. Sometimes the Irishman could be a noble, or at least sympathetic character. In others he could outwit others. Thomas Sheridan's play ''Captain O'Blunder'' is about a naive Irishman who in the end triumphs over his English rival. Lucius O'Trigger in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's ''The Rivals'' is an excessively quick-tempered individual. The character had to be rewritten because of complaints in Ireland that it was insultingly anti-Irish. All these characters were from the genteel social classes.

By the 19th century, the stage Irishman became more of a lower-class stereotype, associated with the emigrations of mid-century. Dion Boucicault's successful plays ''The Colleen Bawn'' (1860) and ''The Shaughraun'' (1874) included several Stage Irish characters. These melodramas saw an evolution of the stage Irishmen made by Boucicault, a Dublin native. They were stereotypical comic relief characters that, through the medium of melodrama, were framed in a more positive light. Boucicault did this without breaking the negative stereotypes, however. They can still drunks and rogues, but Boucicault attempted to elevate them with more characterization. Though the end product is very similar to the stage Irishman before Boucicault got a hold of him.

Patriotic inversions of the stereotype appeared in Ireland and it was commented upon by writers such as Bernard Shaw in ''John Bull's Other Island'' and by John Millington Synge in ''The Playboy of the Western World''. The latter play was condemned by Irish nationalists, including Sinn Féin leader Arthur Griffith, who described the play as "a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform", and that it insulted Irish men and women.

See also

*Anti-Irish sentiment / Hibernophobia
* Stereotypes of Irish Americans

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stage Irish (Character)
17th-century introductions
Slang
Ireland
Stock characters

de:Anti-Irischer Rassismus