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marina
carr
pastures of
the unknown
Melissa Sihra
Marina Carr
Melissa Sihra
Marina Carr
Pastures of the Unknown
Melissa Sihra
School of Creative Arts
Trinity College Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
ISBN 978-3-319-98330-1 ISBN 978-3-319-98331-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98331-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950727
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Cover illustration: Stephanie Roth Haberle and Julio Monge in McCarter Theatre Center’s
2011 world premiere production of Phaedra Backwards, written by Marina Carr and
directed by Emily Mann. Photo by T. Charles Erickson
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For Theodore
Acknowledgements
For this work I am deeply grateful to many people who have helped
me along the way. Immense thanks go to Eamonn Jordan, an inspir-
ing scholar and teacher, who first identified my passion for the plays of
Marina Carr during my M.A. in Modern Drama Studies at University
College Dublin and who encouraged me to pursue further research.
I also wish to thank Anna McMullan who astutely supervised my Ph.D.
on the Theatre of Marina Carr at the Drama Department, Trinity
College Dublin. I am grateful to the International Centre for Advanced
Theatre Studies (ICATS) at the University of Helsinki which offered
research guidance during my Ph.D. from a leading international fac-
ulty amidst the inspiring surroundings of the Finnish countryside.
Many colleagues have supported me tremendously throughout my
career, for which I am very grateful: Jill Dolan, Janelle Reinelt, Anthony
Roche, Cathy Leeney, Mária Kurdi, Jean Graham-Jones, Pirkko Koski,
Bruce McConachie, Denis Kennedy, Steve Wilmer, Bill Worthen,
Lisa Fitzpatrick, Hanna Korsberg, David Clare, Graham Whybrow,
Rhona Trench, Charlotte McIvor, Tanya Dean, Ciara O’Dowd, Brenda
Donohue, Siobhán O’Gorman, Marie Kelly, Sharon Phelan, Fiona
Fearon, Chris Collins, Patrick Lonergan and Lionel Pilkington.
I wish to thank Colin Smythe, Agent for the Literary Estate of
Lady Augusta Gregory, for his generous advice and knowledge. I wish
to thank James Harte and the staff of the National Library of Ireland
which holds the ‘Marina Carr Archive’. I am grateful to Marina Carr’s
agent Emily Hickman at The Agency and to Dinah Wood at Faber &
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Faber. I am immensely thankful to Marion Cox, Ronnie O’Gorman

and Lelia Doolan of the Lady Gregory Autumn Gathering for welcom-
ing me so warmly every year to the magical weekend at Coole Park and
Thoor Ballylee. I am also grateful to both Rena McAllen of the Kiltartan
Gregory Museum, and Gort Historian Sr. Mary De Lourdes Fahy for
their wealth of knowledge and generosity in sharing it.
My gratitude to the theatre artists who I worked with as dram-
aturg on productions of Marina Carr’s plays in the USA, too many to
name, but in particular Matt O’Brien at the Irish Repertory Theater
Chicago, Andrew Paul and Timothy Douglas at Pittsburgh Irish and
Classical Theater, Timothy Near, Joe Vanek and Holly Hunter at
San Jose Repertory Theater, and Emily Mann and Erica Nagle at the
McCarter Theater Princeton. I am deeply grateful to Olwen Fouéré for
her immense insights into performing Marina Carr’s plays. My huge
thanks also to Bríd Ní Neachtain, Derbhle Crotty, Selina Cartmell, Mark
Lambert, Paul Keogan, Cáitríona Ní Mhurchú, Neil Murray, Graham
McLaren and the late Phyllis Ryan.
For his excellent advice and unfailing assistance with locating images
and securing rights I am indebted to Barry Houlihan, Archivist of the
Abbey Theatre Collection, at the James Hardiman Library, NUIG. My
thanks also to Máiread Delaney at the Abbey Theatre Archive. For their
help locating and securing rights for production images I am grateful to
Jim Culleton at Fishamble Theatre Company, Sarahjane Scaife and Tim
Martin, Hugh O’Conor, Erica Nagle at the McCarter Theater Princeton,
and Al Russell and Aideen Howard at The Ark Cultural Centre for
Children. I am indebted to photographers T. Charles Erickson, Mark
Stedman, Ros Kavanagh, Fionn McCann, Fergus Bourke and Colm
Henry for graciously granting me permission to publish their work.
For his advice on the legal contexts of On Raftery’s Hill I am grate-
ful to Criminal Barrister James Dwyer. For their kind advice with diverse
aspects of the book I thank Chris McCormack, Pamela McQueen,
Marc Atkinson and Caitlin White, Jessica Traynor, Jesse Weaver, James
Hickson and Maura Campbell at the Abbey Theatre.
I am deeply thankful for the continued support and friendship of my
brilliant colleagues in Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College
Dublin; Brian Singleton, Matthew Causey, Eric Weitz, Nicholas Johnson,
Chrissie Poulter, Sinead Cuthbert, Michael Canney, Tim Scott, Rhona
Greene and Ann Mulligan. A special thanks to my students over the
years for their passion, engagement and inspirational contributions and
achievements.
Acknowledgements ix
I offer thanks to the Irish Society for Theatre Research (ISTR) which
enabled me to present excerpts of this book over a period of a decade
in all of the universities in Ireland and also at the University of London,
Birkbeck, and the University of Pecs in Hungary. I am very grateful to
the Feminist Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre
Research (IFTR) where I further developed these ideas with the guid-
ance of Elin Diamond, Sue Ellen Case, Charlotte Canning, Denise
Varney, Aoife Monks, Outi Lahtinen and many other inspiring women
from around the world. I am particularly grateful to Elaine Aston for her
wisdom, support and friendship over the years.
I offer sincere gratitude to Vicky Peters, Editorial Director of Humanities
at Palgrave Macmillan who commissioned and published this book. My
deep thanks goes also to Vicky Bates, Editorial Assistant of Literature and
Theatre & Performance at Palgrave Macmillan, for her continuous support
and excellent guidance throughout the whole process. Thank you to Felicity
Plester, Editorial Director, Humanities, at Palgrave Macmillan for her ini-
tial interest in my book. I wish to thank Sangeetha Kumaresan and all the
editorial team for their hard work in the final stages. My thanks to the peer
reviewers of both the proposal and the final manuscript.
I wish to massively thank my all of my family for their continued love and
interest in all that I do. To my mother Margaret McNamara-Sihra without
whose unwavering daily support through unprecedented snow, gales and sun
this book would never have been written. I wish to thank my father John
Sihra for his constant support and to Maeve Sihra for all her help and to Anya
and Dave Sihra for always being there for me. My greatest thanks goes to my
son Theodore for being a constant gift of love, light and laughter.
I wish to thank my wondrous band of loyal and hilarious friends Jan
Duffy, Sorcha Duggan, Karin McCully, Déirdre Carr, Ellen Rowley, Michelle
O’Connor, Dominic Rowley, Maeve O’Boyle, Joanne Grehan, Annabelle
Comyn, Lynda Madden, Lynda Clarke, Ali Milford and Penny Storey.
Finally, my deep gratitude to Marina Carr for the joy of her plays and
for her unwavering encouragement, immense generosity and friendship
over the decades. My journey into the terrains of Marina’s imagination
has brought us on adventures around the world, and has brought me on
an even bigger personal journey of discovery and transformation through
the work, for which I am eternally grateful.
This book is in honour of the Cailleach, Biddy Early, and all Wise
women past, present and future.
Dublin, 2018 Melissa Sihra

Contents
1 Introduction: Towards a Matriarchal Lineage 1
2 Seeking a Landscape: Early Pastures 39
3 Lakes of the Night: The Mai 73
4 Topographies of the Mind: Portia Coughlan 93
5 Writ in the Sky: By the Bog of Cats… 117
6 The Haunted Kitchen: On Raftery’s Hill 149
7 Psychic Terrains: Ariel and Woman and Scarecrow 177
8 Playing the Field: The Cordelia Dream and Meat

and Salt 205
9 Landscapes of the Mind’s Eye: The Giant Blue

Hand and Marble 223
xi
xii Contents
10 The Nature of Playwriting: Sixteen Possible

Glimpses, Phaedra Backwards and Hecuba 249
11 Conclusion: Through the Gauze 277
Index 293
List of Figures
Image 1.1 Marina Carr’s childhood landscape of Pallas Lake,

Tullamore, Co. Offaly. Photographer Fionn McCann.
Image reproduced by kind permission of Fionn McCann 9
Image 1.2 ‘Her own path’: existing steps and pathway from the
original site of Lady Gregory’s house at Coole Park,
Kiltartan, Co. Galway. Photographer: Melissa Sihra 15
Image 1.3 Coole Lake, Kiltartan, Co. Galway. Photographer:
Melissa Sihra 20
Image 1.4 Coole River, Kiltartan, Co. Galway. Photographer:
Melissa Sihra 22
Image 1.5 Biddy Early’s cottage, Feakle, Co. Clare. Photographer:
Melissa Sihra 30
Image 2.1 Program for This Love Thing by Marina Carr 1991. Image
reproduced by kind permission of Fishamble Theatre
Company and Tinderbox Theatre Company 58
Image 2.2 Clodagh O’Donaghue as Mary Magdalene and Tim Loane
as Michaelangelo in Marina Carr’s This Love Thing 1991,
Old Museum Arts Centre/Project Arts Centre. Image
reproduced by kind permission of Fishamble Theatre
Company and Tinderbox Theatre Company 61
Image 5.1 The Midlands bog landscape of By the Bog of Cats…
Photographer: Fionn McCann. Image reproduced
by kind permission of Fionn McCann 124
Image 5.2 Susan Lynch as Hester Swane and Peter Gowen as
Xavier Cassidy in Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats…,
xiii
xiv List of Figures
Abbey Theatre 2015. Photographer Ros Kavanagh.

Image reproduced by kind permission of Ros Kavanagh 129
Image 6.1 Maeve Fitzgerald as Dinah Raftery and Lorcan Cranitch
as Red Raftery in Marina Carr’s On Raftery’s Hill,
Abbey Theatre 2018. Photographer Ros Kavanagh.
Image 6.2 Production photograph of Lady Gregory in the title role
of Kathleen Ni Houlihan, Abbey Theatre, March 1919.
Image: T13/156, Arthur Shields Archive, James
Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway 168
Image 9.1 David Martin as Johnny Time, Catherine Walker as Queen
Dalia and Patrick Gibson as Timmy Time in Marina Carr’s
The Giant Blue Hand, The Ark, 2009. Photographer:
Mark Stedman. Image reproduced by kind permission
of The Ark 228
Image 9.2 The Golden Apple, 06 January 1920 [stage management
files]. Abbey Theatre Digital Archive at National University
of Ireland, Galway, 10582_SM_0001, p1 232
Image 10.1 Patrick O’Kane as Chekhov and Gary Lilburn as Tolstoy
in Sixteen Possible Glimpses by Marina Carr, Peacock
stage, Abbey Theatre 2011. Photographer: Ros Kavanagh.
Image 10.2 Stephanie Roth Haberle as Phaedra and Julio Monge as
the Minotaur in Phaedra Backwards by Marina Carr,
McCarter Theater 2011. Photographer: T. Charles
Erickson. Image reproduced by kind permission of
T. Charles Erickson 262
Image 10.3 Marina Carr at the Lion’s Gate, Mycenae, Greece 2017.
Photographer: Rosa Hickey. Image reproduced by kind
permission of Marina Carr 269
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Towards a Matriarchal

Lineage
Marina Carr: Shades of Gregory

In a handwritten draft of By the Bog of Cats from 1995 the central char-
acter Angel Waters says, ‘Ah am wan of ye! Noha piece a’ livestock to
be shunted from pasture to pasture’.1 Angel’s plea for inclusion in her
own community echoes women’s refusal to be consigned to the margins
of Irish theatre. This book locates the theatre of Marina Carr within a
female genealogy that revises the patriarchal sweep of modern Irish
drama. The creative vision of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852–1932), play-
wright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, underpins my analysis of
Carr’s dramatic vision throughout the book in order to resituate the
woman artist as central to Irish theatre.2 In exploring the work of Marina
Carr, I will identify resonances between the two playwrights to illumi-
nate a matriarchal lineage in a tradition which has historically ‘shunted’
women from the dominant spaces. As Maureen Waters and Lucy
McDiarmid point out, Lady Gregory ‘gave token respect to the patri-
archy of the Anglo-Irish but her political unconscious was matriarchal’.3
Augusta Gregory and Marina Carr have to a great extent been posi-
tioned as the ‘token-women’ of Irish theatre. When I began researching
Irish theatre in the 1990s the prevailing assumption was that ‘there was
Lady Gregory in the Abbey and then along came Marina Carr sixty years
later’ with no other women before or since. The token woman is the
construct of the ‘successful woman’ who, being validated by patriarchal
standards, is allowed conditional entry to mainstream culture. As a result
© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Sihra, Marina Carr,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98331-8_1
2 M. SIHRA
of her ‘extraordinary’ status the token woman is permitted to stand-in

as a totalising representative of all women. While this might seem like
a role model, tokenism is in fact an oppressive strategy that undermines
both the token woman herself and all other women by reducing them to
one impossible symbol. Tokenism erases the complex identities and many
achievements of Gregory and Carr to one-dimensional symbolic status
and further, distances them from all other women in a clever double
oppression. Through no fault of her own a token woman becomes alien-
ated from other women; she is the impossible patriarchal ideal marked
against an always inadequate female reality. Radical feminist Mary Daly
explains that certain women have been positioned by patriarchy as the
‘A-mazing’ scapegoat or token who is ‘given an artificial self; she is cos-
meticized by her tormentor to such an extent that she is unrecognisable
to her own kind. [T]hose total women taken as tokens before they had a
chance to be Selves’.4
A key publicity image from the glossy 2004 ‘AbbeyOneHundred’
centenary programme depicts Marina Carr’s face encircled by seven male
playwrights and Lady Gregory in profile, whose face is the smallest in
the group.5 The ‘AbbeyOneHundred’ image is an example of the sym-
bolic centrality and subjective disavowal of women throughout Irish
theatre past and present where the mismatch between image and reality
shows how there is indeed ‘a great gap between a gallous story and a
dirty deed’.6 While Carr is the central figure in the picture, women were
all but excluded from the Abbey centenary programme. The image distils
the objectification of women, masking beneath its elegant aesthetic a vio-
lent macro-annihilation on the national stage. Contrary to what would
be perceived from the illustration not one of Gregory’s 42 plays were
produced during the year-long centenary programme of the theatre that
she co-founded and which would not exist today if it were not for her
plays’ unrivalled success in the box office during her lifetime. Her best-
known play Spreading the News was given a one-off Tuesday afternoon
reading in the rehearsal room in the ‘Reading the Decades’ series and
she was the only playwright to share her slot with the work of another
writer—George Bernard Shaw’s The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet.7 Carr’s
Portia Coughlan received a short revival on the Peacock stage. The only
other work by a woman to be included was Paula Meehan’s children’s
play The Wolf of Winter which was staged in schools and the Peacock
Theatre. No play by a woman was produced on the main stage.
1 INTRODUCTION: TOWARDS A MATRIARCHAL LINEAGE 3
Fast forward to 2016 and the notorious re-performed oppression of

the 1916 Centenary Abbey Theatre programme ‘Waking the Nation’
where 90% of the plays were written by men. The only play by a woman
was Ali White’s monologue drama for primary school audiences Me,
Mollser (After O’Casey) which comprised the Schools and Community
outreach as part of The Abbey Theatre’s ‘Priming the Canon series’.8
The ‘Waking the Nation’ programme proudly stated: ‘We consider our
stage to be a platform for freedom of expression. We believe our artists
can tell the story of who we are and who we might become. Will you
bear witness to the stories they have to tell?’9 The grassroots movement
#WakingTheFeminists began on social media at the end of October
2015 in outraged response to this male ‘platform for freedom of expres-
sion’. Theatre maker and activist Lian Bell mobilised the campaign and
the twitter hashtag #WTFeminists rapidly went viral, garnering interna-
tional support from Meryl Streep among others. There were three public
meetings of #WakingTheFeminists during its one year of activity, insti-
gating dialogues between directors, programmers, policy-makers and
the government in terms of implementing and sustaining gender equal-
ity across the theatre sector. In 2017 #WakingTheFeminists published
Gender Counts: An Analysis of Gender in Irish Theatre 2006–2015 which
sourced data on 1155 productions.10 Bell writes, ‘the power of the
campaign took on a life of its own, touching not only the theatre, but
affecting the whole cultural community […]. In one short year of the
campaign there have been some extraordinary shifts, both in the working
practices of many of our major organisations, and in the openness with
which we can discuss gender as an issue’.11
Prior to this new era of gender-equality awareness, Marina Carr and
Augusta Gregory have long endured the beleaguered status of stand-
ing-in for all, and no, women in Irish theatre. In 2007 Carr reflects,
‘If you asked anyone, who are the women in Irish Theatre for the last
one hundred years, I think you would be hard pressed to get a response
beyond Lady Gregory and Maud Gonne’.12 The more successful Marina
Carr became in the 1990s the more she was singled-out as ‘Ireland’s
leading female playwright’.13 In The Irish Times in 2000 Carr is described
as ‘the youngest, most accomplished and many would argue the only
Irish woman playwright who has made her mark’.14 Yet Carr asks the
key question: ‘Why is it that you never hear of “male playwrights”, only
“playwrights”, and you constantly hear about “female playwrights” or
the lack of them’.15
4 M. SIHRA
Arterial Severing
While focusing on the theatre of Marina Carr this book will consider a
meaningful relationship between Gregory and Carr for the first time in
order to acknowledge a continuity and presence of women in Irish thea-
tre past and present. In identifying a lineage between Gregory and Carr,
I might appear to perpetuate tokenism—objectifying them as complete
symbolic entities while simultaneously excluding all other women’s work
in Irish theatre, but it is the operation of tokenism itself that undermines
women. Through this exploration of Carr’s plays I wish to reclaim the
playwrights from this symbolic trap in order to provide a fuller picture
of their, and by association, all women’s work in theatre. When I first
began writing about the plays of Marina Carr in the 1990s I encoun-
tered an absence or gap that was difficult to process or articulate. Carr
was breaking through the glass ceiling of the male-dominated theatre
with The Mai in 1994 but I could ascertain no history or tradition of
women in Irish theatre through which to contextualise her work. I had
been cautioned to uncouple Gregory and Carr as the dual female pil-
lars in Irish theatre so as not to exclude other women. I internalised this
dissociation and purposefully did not think of them in relation to one
another until recently. In rejecting a meaningful relationship between
Gregory and Carr, an arterial severing occurs—a rupture which results
in a non-history of women in Irish theatre that is incomplete and falsi-
fied. Daly explains that the key feminist concern lies in ‘Expelling the
Patriarchal “Past” [where the] Patriarchal expropriation of memory not
only deprives women of our own past; it also negates our present and
future’.16 To acknowledge women’s present and presence more fully we
must dynamically re-engage the plurality of our lived histories in order
to counteract what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls ‘the danger of the
single story’.17
To understand the plays of Marina Carr an awareness of the traditions
and histories of women’s work, before and after Gregory, must now
become a central concern of all considerations of Irish theatre. Women
have long been denied a central position of meaning-making in Irish
theatre while men have been privileged within the narrative. Uneven
distributions of power have enabled endemic blind spots of conscious
and unconscious biases to perpetuate such exclusions and this book
seeks to rebalance the gendered nexus of Irish theatre. Intuitively I felt
that there were masses of women’s work haunting the meta-narrative and
that there was a vast untapped conversation to be had between the women
of the past and the present. Building upon the collective scholarship of the
Irish University Review Silver Jubilee Issue ‘Teresa Deevy and Irish Women
Playwrights’ edited by Christopher Murray in 1995, my collection Women
in Irish Drama: A Century of Authorship and Representation (2007),
Cathy Leeney’s Irish Women Playwrights 1900–1939 (2010), Mária Kurdi’s
Representation of Gender and Female Subjectivity in Contemporary Irish
Drama by Women (2010) and others in addition to recent events such as
the landmark symposium ‘Irish Women Playwrights and Theatre-Makers’
at Mary Immaculate College in 2017 this book seeks to remobilise a con-
nectivity between Gregory and Carr in order to acknowledge a founda-
tional status for all women in Irish theatre.18
Tilt the Lens

In order to illuminate the theatre of Marina Carr I want to first tilt the
lens of Irish theatre history to demonstrate a matriarchal lineage. We
have inherited and internalised the narrative that there was no female tra-
dition in Irish theatre of any significance to draw upon. As Leeney states,
‘Gender conservatism corrals women’s creative energies away from the
mainstream; women’s contribution to Irish theatre continues to be con-
sidered as a separate topic. Women are in relationship (‘and’) to Irish
theatre which is thus naturalised as men’s’.19 Carr makes this point:
[I]n all of the commentary around women’s writing, the assumption

is that you are writing from the margins and I absolutely reject that.
The whole ghettoization of women; the idea that there is “Literature”
and “Women’s Literature” is offensive. It is very difficult in this climate
because it is so condescending. You are left with no recourse; it is out there
and that is the way you are judged. The insinuation is that you are some-
thing less than a playwright, which again is something that I absolutely
reject.20
The idea of a ‘matriarchal lineage’ does not seek to essentialise women’s

identities with regard to motherhood or the maternal. Just as patriar-
chy has nothing to do with literal fatherhood but rather is a politicised
metaphor for the assertion of the dominance of phallocentric struc-
tures of power which serve to privilege men and masculinity in society,
the matriarchal is applied here as the hierarchical organising principle
6 M. SIHRA
of female-centric power structures in socio-cultural production. It is

empowering to call for a matriarchal system of subject relations and this
might have radical feminist political overtones but the transforma-
tive power of such moments of resistance is necessary in order to effect
change. Furthermore, we must not consider how women’s voices merely
‘slot-into’ a pre-ordained male canon but rather tilt the very angles
of theatre history itself in order to reveal new foundational spectrums of
meaning-making in which women’s voices are central.
The Origin Site of Gendered Authority

In tilting the lens onto Gregory a new perspective begins to emerge.
By shifting it just a few degrees it becomes clear that the playwrights
of the Irish Dramatic Revival and beyond are, in fact, all inheritors of
Gregory in some shape or form. A key journey in Gregory’s life in 1898
illustrates this. Gregory was the first of the three future first Abbey
Theatre co-directors to visit the Aran Islands. Before she knew either WB
Yeats or JM Synge, she embarked upon ‘a day trip by yacht in 1887’.21
Recently widowed in 1893 she made a second journey alone, searching
actively, James Pethica observes, ‘for a sustained creative focus’.22 On this
trip, Gregory crossed unaccompanied except for a fisherman by open cur-
rach to Inis Oírr where she spent five days storm-bound in a peasant cot-
tage relishing immersing herself in the remoteness of the culture. At this
point Gregory was a highly accomplished folklorist, had begun to learn
Irish and to collaborate with Yeats on his revised edition of The Celtic
Twilight. She wrote a now lost article about this visit linking the ‘wild’
culture she had experienced there to the ‘anti-modern impulse motivat-
ing the recently published volume The Celtic Twilight’, thus placing her
folklore practice at the core of the emergent Celtic Revival Movement.23
Gregory’s third trip to the Aran Islands in 1898, this time to Inis Meáin,
is the very first time that she laid eyes on Synge. On this visit Gregory
records:
I first saw J.M. Synge in the North Island of Aran. I was staying there
gathering folk-lore, talking to the people, and felt quite angry when I
passed another outsider walking here and there, talking also to the peo-
ple. I was jealous of not being alone on the island among the fishers and
seaweed gatherers. I did not speak to the stranger, nor was he inclined to
speak to me; he also looked on me as an intruder, I only heard his name.24
The emotional power of Gregory’s language is revelatory here; she is

‘angry’ and ‘jealous’; she talks of the ‘stranger’ and the ‘intruder’ with an
honesty that exposes her frustration at Synge’s presence. He too spoke
of his ‘galling jealousy’ at anyone else who visited the Aran Islands.25
What a scene this must have been—the two figures of Gregory and
Synge caught together in a chance moment, for the first time, on a tiny
island at the edge of the known world. We can but imagine their studi-
ous avoidance of one another; their adversarial eyeing-up of one another;
the remarkable possessiveness of the territory of their nascent creativity.
Inís Méan becomes then the origin site of the battleground for gendered
authority in Irish theatre. Gregory’s disappointment that someone else
was there with similar intent marks her fierce self-awareness as an art-
ist and her association with the place, the people and the material that
she was engaging with. This was also the beginning of her and Synge’s
professional rivalry. Though history has monumentalised the effect of
Synge’s visits to Aran upon the instruction of Yeats, the reality is that
Gregory went there first and, in a poignant micro-arc of women in Irish
theatre, has been all but written out.
Situating Gregory as a centrifugal force of Irish theatre offers a lin-
eage with Marina Carr which can be identified through aspects of lan-
guage, myth, landscape, women, storytelling, nature and sites of water.
Carr’s theatre draws upon the rich well of pre-Christian folk belief
which is present in Gregory’s plays such as The Pot of Broth (with Yeats
1902), The Golden Apple (1916) and The Full Moon (1913). Both play-
wrights combine realms of the numinous with transformational modes
of storytelling and strong female characters. Gregory’s Grania (1910)
anticipates Carr’s 1990s heroines who strive for autonomy within sti-
fling patriarchy while rewriting male Greek or Irish mythic structures.
Carr’s and Gregory’s plays are often named after women, the moon, or
places; Gregory dropped the name ‘Diarmuid’ to give centre stage to
Grania and Kathleen commands the title of her play just as Carr presents
the women of The Mai and Portia Coughlan within symbolic terrains.
Internal rhythms of folklore permeate both playwrights’ dramatic visions,
encompassing the intuitive power of the otherworld as an aesthetic and
metaphysical realm. Gregory initiated the action of waiting as a key
dramaturgical device in The Gaol Gate (1906) which influenced Yeats and
Beckett and Carr’s Midlands Cycle. Underpinning much of Gregory’s
and Carr’s work are pockets of the surreal where inverted logic, modes
of excess and irreverent humour can be traced from one of the first
8 M. SIHRA
absurdist Irish plays Gregory’s Spreading the News (1904) through to

Carr’s Low in the Dark (1989). Gregory and Carr foreground the dra-
matic potential of storytelling and poetic language to alter the everyday
world, placing Gregory at the core of Irish theatre. As will be demon-
strated, a visceral connection with the profundity of nature and landscape
as sites of inspiration is central to their visions.
A Feminist Historiography
A feminist historiography requires a new methodology—a new way to
mobilise the synapses of past and present. My exploration of the thea-
tre of Marina Carr follows a chronological pathway to organically chart
the development of her theatrical voice. Within this terrain a small selec-
tion of Gregory’s plays intervene at key nodal-points. This methodol-
ogy evolved intuitively as Gregory’s plays appeared of their own volition
while I wrote and remained steadfastly in place as each playwright speaks
to the other on the page. Through the lens of one comes an image of
the other and vice versa as the possibilities of a larger canvas emerge. The
unusual circular approach of moving back and forth between the voices
of Carr and Gregory allows for open spaces of meaning-making and dia-
logue which in turn challenge what Gregory calls the ‘beaten path of
authorised history’.26
Tilting the lens onto women’s perspectives in Irish theatre reclaims
previously closed-off paths, offering new routes for the present and the
future. On 17 November 1964 Marina Carr was born to parents Maura
Éibhlín Walshe and Hugh Carr in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin. At the
time the family lived in the residence of Gortnamóna National School,
Co. Offaly, where Carr’s mother was the principal teacher. However
Maura Éibhlín wished for her own house and within a few years she
had built a new home overlooking Pallas Lake outside Tullamore
(Image 1.1). The family moved there when Carr was 10 years old and
she recalls her mother’s love of nature: ‘the reason why she wanted to
live on the lake was that she loved swans’.27 Education, music and the
arts were central to the fabric of the family: ‘There was a lot of writing,
reading and music in our house growing up’.28 A native Irish speaker,
Maura Éibhlín was born in Indreabhán, Connemara, in a now derelict
house which overlooks the Aran Islands. She wrote poetry in Irish and
played the violin and the piano in the evenings at Pallas Lake. Carr recalls
that ‘She loved literature, she was an educated woman’.29 Carr’s father is
Image 1.1 The view from Carr’s childhood home of Pallas Lake, Co. Offaly
from the small Atlantic seaboard village of Dunkineely in Co. Donegal.

He is a playwright and novelist and studied composition under Frederick
May. As a child Carr remembers being brought to see her father’s plays
in Dublin: ‘He had one at the Abbey, he had two or three at the Peacock
and he had one at the Gate. And then he had a couple of plays on at the
Dublin Theatre Festival’.30
The second eldest of six siblings, Carr lived at Pallas Lake for seven
years during which time she attended the Sacred Heart School in
Tullamore and then became a boarder at St. Mary’s College, Mount
Mellick. Her childhood was one of great happiness and freedom roam-
ing the countryside with her brothers John, Hugh, Neil, Frank and sister
Déirdre: ‘My first seven or eight summers were spent running around
the fields, eating grass, chasing tractors, picking mushrooms, blackber-
ries, all that stuff. It was quite idyllic for a child. It’s a beautiful part of
the country and still not very well known. […] When I was growing up
it was quite remote’.31 Carr began writing plays from a young age, first
at home where the children fashioned a roughly hewn theatre in the
shed: ‘we lay boards across the stacked turf, hung an old blue sheet for
10 M. SIHRA
a curtain and tied a bicycle lamp to a rafter at the side of the shed so its
light would fall at an angle on the stage’.32 The siblings played all of the
parts, putting on shows for the neighbouring children and took turns in
writing the plays: ‘Our dramas were bloody and brutal. Everyone suf-
fered: the least you could hope to get away with was a good torturing.
And still we lived happily ever after’.33 In secondary school Carr began
to write the annual Christmas play: ‘I’d go to sleep for the year and wake
up for the Christmas play at school. I wrote rural bog plays with barn-
yard humour. The nuns loved it’.34
Amidst this happy childhood tragedy struck the family in 1981
when Maura Éibhlín died from illness at the age of 44. During this
period of grief Carr completed the Leaving Certificate and then
embarked upon her studies at University College, Dublin. She was
awarded a BA Honours degree in English Literature and Philosophy in
1987 and began writing plays towards the end of her degree: ‘When I
went to college I didn’t write for a couple of years. But in my final year
I wrote my first play which was called Ullaloo, and that was performed
at the Peacock three or four years later’.35 Upon completing university
Carr moved to New York City for a year where she taught reading and
writing to the First Grade children of St. Anselm’s School in Bay Ridge,
Brooklyn. Carr returned to Dublin in 1988 and embarked upon an MA
in Anglo-Irish Literature at UCD, formulating a thesis proposal on the
plays of Samuel Beckett under the supervision of Declan Kiberd. During
this period Carr realised her pathway in life and eventually left the MA
course to pursue playwriting full-time, reflecting, ‘I just wanted to write
plays. I was impatient to start living’.36
Carr has written 25 plays to date which have been produced all over
the world from China and Canada, to Iceland, Brazil, North America
and Europe and have been translated into over twenty languages. Carr
has won many awards including The Irish Times Best New Play Award for
The Mai and By the Bog of Cats, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize (1996–
1997) for Portia Coughlan, the E.M. Forster Prize from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, a Macauley Fellowship and the Hennessy
Short Story award in 1994. She held the posts of ‘Class of 1932 Fellow
of the Humanities in Theater and Dance’ at Princeton University in
2007 and ‘Heimbold Professor of Irish Studies’ at Villanova University
in 2003. She was Adjunct Professor of Theatre at Trinity College Dublin
from 2009 to 2012 and has been Writer-in-Residence at the Abbey
Theatre (1995), Trinity College (1998) and Dublin City University
(2014). She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from University

College Dublin in 2011. She is a member of Aosdána and currently
holds the post of Lecturer in English at Dublin City University. In 2017
Carr was awarded one of the world’s most prestigious literary prizes, the
Yale Windham-Campbell Award, which is worth $165,000. Carr lives
in Dublin with her husband and four children. The National Library of
Ireland holds the ‘Marina Carr Archive’. Three collections of Carr’s plays
are published by Faber & Faber as well as single editions which are pub-
lished by Faber & Faber and The Gallery Press. Two of the plays con-
tained in Plays Three have not yet been performed. Carr says, ‘I don’t
think that publication should be contingent upon production. They
should stand alone’.37 Carr is the author of a libretto of Giuseppe Verdi’s
Rigoletto (Opera Theatre Company 2015) and an oratorio Mary Gordon
(National Concert Hall 2016).38 This book will build upon the scholar-
ship of Carr’s plays in Leeney’s and Anna McMullan’s 2001 edited col-
lection The Theatre of Marina Carr: “…Before Rules Was Made” (2003),
Rhona Trench’s Bloody Living: The Loss of Selfhood in the Plays of Marina
Carr (2010), the Marina Carr Archive at the National Library of Ireland,
the many essays on her work and my research and interviews since
1998.39
Like the work of earlier Irish playwrights of the twentieth century
such as Margaret O’Leary and Teresa Deevy, Carr explores female dis-
affection in terms of motherhood, the family and society where the
oppressiveness of patriarchy is set against questions of women’s agency.
Self-exile is one of the key themes of Carr’s theatre where everyday life
and social expectations fail to offer fulfilment. In The Mai Carr explores
a century of Irish women’s history through four generations of seven
female characters ranging in age from 100-year-old Grandma Fraochlán
to 16-year-old Millie, addressing topics such as divorce, abortion and
women’s sexuality. Portia Coughlan (1996) focuses on the life and
death of the 30-year-old protagonist and her alienation from the roles
of wife and mother. In these plays nature and the outdoors are set in
contrast to the insufferable enclosure of the home. The quest for a fully
expressed life beyond banal preoccupations is a common thread in Carr’s
plays. Death features strongly throughout Carr’s work but it is the liv-
ing death of lack of fulfilment which is the greatest loss. In Carr’s first
play Ullaloo (1989) Tomred asks Tilly ‘I’m alive aren’t I?’ Tilly replies,
‘I don’t know Tomred. I just don’t know anymore!’40 Carr reflects
upon this through-line in her work: ‘What I cannot bear is not to be
12 M. SIHRA
alive when you are living. Being alive and not being there. I can’t bear
it. It is like removing yourself from yourself. And that is what we do, so
much’.41 The Ibsenite quest for an authentic self permeates Carr’s dra-
matic vision inspired by A Doll’s House (1879) and Little Eyolf (1894)
and the works of Anton Chekhov. Nature and landscape provide aspi-
rational sites of identification which echo Alfred Allmers’ internal quest
in Little Eyolf on ‘the mountains, up on those huge, open spaces’ where
‘Nothing happened to me. But – In me, something happened. A kind of
transformation’.42
Poised between memory and imagination, between literary allusion
and topographic realism, the quest for self-fulfilment within emotional
landscapes of transformation lies at the heart of the theatre of Marina
Carr. Incorporating spaces that are never fully real and never purely fic-
tional, ‘every barrow and rivulet and bog hole’ resonates with visceral
energy.43 From the Offaly villages of Pullagh, Mucklagh and Belmont
to Lilliput Lake and Mohia Lane, Carr’s Midlands childhood terrain
is a formative aspect of her dramatic vision. Carr reflects upon the inspi-
rational effect of her surroundings at Pallas: ‘the lake was very present;
the landscape was more than physical. There were lots of stories, such
as the witch with seven drops of water’.44 Carr’s Midlands Cycle (1994–
2002) presents a localisation of character, place and language which
simultaneously transcends its specificity. With its extreme form of dialect
Carr indicates that Portia Coughlan ‘is an attempt to explore language
and how language creates character [but] it could be set on Mars’.45 The
Midlands topography is fluid and interconnected in On Raftery’s Hill,
Portia Coughlan and By the Bog of Cats… all of which ‘were written
around the same time and explore the same things’.46
Landscape and place are imbued with folk memory, myth and sym-
bolism in the plays of Carr and Gregory. Just as Gregory’s hometown
of Gort is fictionalised as ‘Cloon’, Carr incorporates real and invented
places and natural features in her plays. Ann Saddlemyer points out that
Gregory’s specificity of speech and character ‘particularised the univer-
sal, making the myth human and the fable real’.47 The Mai is inspired
by Pallas Lake where Carr grew up and is set on the banks of fictional
‘Owl Lake’. Portia Coughlan, with its genesis in Shakespeare’s The
Merchant of Venice, is located in the remote Offaly village of Belmont
while By the Bog of Cats… takes place upon the shape-shifting seams
of the Midlands bog. Bodies of water occur with frequency in Carr’s
plays and offer alternative, often unresolved, symbolic depths of
expression for the central women beyond the confines of the home. Owl
Lake is a source of myth, renewal and death while the Belmont River
cuts through the landlocked county of Offaly, eroding the boundaries
of the male-owned farmlands, breaking fences and powerfully redefin-
ing the contours of patriarchy. Set in a remote farmhouse kitchen On
Raftery’s Hill (2000) deconstructs a century of Irish theatrical iconog-
raphy in order to expose the realities of contemporary society. Nature is
associated with women in Carr’s 1990s Midlands plays through an inter-
section of memory, language and identity which mobilises new pathways
of self-expression. Throughout Carr’s plays empowered modes of female
subjectivity are reinscribed upon ‘pastures of the unknown’ locating
women within fields of reason.48
Chapter 2 explores Carr’s first four plays, all of which foreground
an instinctive interrogation of patriarchy and the canon through humour
and subversion. These early plays incorporate surreal and absurdist modes
which find their roots in Gregory’s comedies and in later Beckettian
form. In Ullaloo and Low in the Dark Carr approaches themes of co-de-
pendency, intimacy and isolation which are developed in her Midlands
plays through to Woman and Scarecrow (2006) and Marble (2009).
Low in the Dark playfully highlights the inanity of mindless repeti-
tion: ‘I build, she knits, I build, she knits, he knocks and builds it up
again’.49 Characters confront an inward-spiralling emotional inertia in
the Midlands plays leading up to On Raftery’s Hill where the theme of
incest is an acute manifestation of arrested development upon the human
psyche. Landscape is central to the meaning of By the Bog of Cats…
expressing a fecund doubleness that is at once mundane and metaphys-
ical. The merging of visceral place and radical otherness that character-
ises the bog is a metaphor for Carr’s dramaturgy as a whole where the
profound unknowability of the bog mirrors the way ‘we are as much not
of this world, as we are of it’.50 By the Bog of Cats… concludes the cycle
of female suicide in Carr’s Midlands plays. The land, farming, nature
and animal imagery run through On Raftery’s Hill as metaphors for the
tragic plight of the family within the home. Confined to the kitchen, the
characters’ lack of movement beyond the farm conveys the isolation of
women and vulnerable children in Irish society. While the rural kitchen
has come to signify an enduring conflation of the family and nation in
Irish drama, Carr’s deconstruction of Gregory’s and Yeats’s co-authored
Kathleen Ni Houlihan (St. Teresa’s Hall, Clarendon Street, 1902) rad-
ically de-idealises hearth and home where generational cycles of sexual
14 M. SIHRA
abuse continue without intervention by Church or State. Psychic land-

scapes of the inner world manifest in Carr’s ‘Dream Play Cycle’ com-
prising The Cordelia Dream (2008 RSC), Marble (Abbey Theatre 2009)
and The Giant Blue Hand (2009 The Ark, Dublin) where the power
of dreaming and the unconscious life powerfully determines the every-
day world. In 16 Possible Glimpses (Abbey Theatre, 2011) Carr explores
her major theme of conscious-living through imagined ‘glimpses’ into
the life of Anton Chekhov while Phaedra Backwards (McCarter Theater
Princeton, 2011) is a re-imagining of the Phaedra/Hippolytus myth
which, like Hecuba (RSC 2015), offers a powerful feminist renegotia-
tion of the Classical mythologies. Due to the scope of this monograph it
was not possible to include all of Carr’s plays, some of which have been
performed but not published, and others which have been published but
not yet performed and which I address in the Conclusion. For reasons of
space I refer in the main to the premiere productions of Carr’s plays.
Challenging the ‘Beaten Path of Authorised History’

What are the matriarchal roots of Irish theatre? In her notes on Grania
Gregory reflects that ‘a question tempts one more than the beaten path
of authorised history’.51 Challenging the previously male-dominated nar-
rative reveals that Gregory is the genesis of the modern Irish literary dia-
lect form and of Irish folk drama at the Abbey Theatre. Gregory is the
precursor to Synge and this alters the route of the ‘beaten path’, mak-
ing Carr the inheritor of Gregory (Image 1.2). Tilting the lens reveals
that Samuel Beckett and Martin McDonagh, as well as Synge, are the
inheritors of Gregory. Anthony Roche states, ‘It is clear that Synge
learned a great deal from Lady Gregory’s drama in terms of speech and
incident and from her farcical situations’.52 The trope of male-doubling
is implanted in Spreading the News (1904) and The Rising of the Moon
(first published 1903 and produced 1907). Christopher Murray charts
Gregory’s influence on Beckett where ‘It is when the two men are sit-
ting on [the barrel] back-to-back (like two characters in Beckett) and the
Sergeant joins in the Man’s patriotic song that one suddenly sees that
they are mirror images of each other’.53 Roche identifies the influence
of Gregory’s 1908 The Workhouse Ward upon Waiting for Godot (1953)
and McDonagh’s The Lonesome West (1997) in terms of integral char-
acter-doubling where ‘The interdependence between the two men in
Beckett and Gregory is almost entirely voluntary and psychological’.54
Image 1.2 ‘Her own path’: existing steps and pathway leading from the origi-
nal site of Lady Gregory’s house at Coole Park, Co. Galway
16 M. SIHRA
Language as ‘Eternal Shape-Changer’

For Carr, theatre at its most effective and profound is ‘people, space,
time and talk’.55 The power of myth-making is a central conceit of
Gregory’s theatre where ‘talk’ spins, unbinds and wondrously recon-
structs reality as, she says, ‘the faculty that makes our traditional history
a perpetual joy, because it is, like the Sidhe, an eternal Shape-changer’.56
From Spreading the News and The Rising of the Moon to The Pot of
Broth, Hyacinth Halvey (1906), The Image (1909) and The Full Moon
Gregory’s theatre is a glorious panoply of all talk, no action, which antic-
ipates Synge, Beckett and Carr. In a key moment of Irish theatre, inmate
of The Workhouse Ward Michael Miskell says ‘All that I am craving is the
talk’.57 Synge inherits Gregory’s revelatory plot device of storytelling
to transform reality from Spreading the News which, with its mythos of
fake-death, male-pairing and the return of the un-dead, is a germ of The
Playboy of the Western World (1907). In her notes on the play Gregory
identifies how the transformational act of telling a story on stage is born
out of ‘some sudden story that had risen out of a chance word’.58 In
terms of hierarchy Gregory’s dramaturgy of linguistic shape-shifting
revises the patriarchal origin story of modern Irish theatre.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, ghostly or real, Yeats felt the
realisation of Gregory’s superiority as a playwright. He attended a séance
conducted by one of his favoured mediums the celebrated Etta Wreidt
in Detroit in February 1914. Immediately after the session he recorded
in his journal that the dead Synge’s voice had appeared to him and had
referred to ‘Lady G’, saying that he, Synge, ‘The speaker was greatly
indeted to her’.59 Synge’s voice went on, Yeats records in his journal,
to state that it was Lady Gregory who was the greatest dramatist of the
three of them: ‘no one known to speaker would surpass her on stage’ the
ghost said.60 Whether this was the voice of the ghost of Synge on that
snowy night in Michigan, or whether it was a projection of Yeats’s feel-
ings, either way Gregory is acknowledged as superior to both of them.
‘The Language Which She Discovered’

Just seven years after Augusta Gregory’s death Una Ellis-Fermor identi-
fies her as the starting point of the new dramatic movement, a fact which
managed to become rapidly obscured:
From [Gregory] derives the characteristic dialogue which often appears,

variously modified by her successors, in one form or another to the pres-
ent-day. The imagery, syntax and vocabulary that she drew from her expe-
rience of the Irish speaking peasants of Galway passed on into the hands
of Synge, and became for a time the familiar dialect of the folk plays of
the Abbey Theatre. […] the language which she discovered made a deep
impression upon the early playwrights and audiences and […] upon, their
descendants.61
Ellis-Fermor ascribes co-authorship of Kathleen Ni Houlihan to Gregory

as early as 1939, which is corroborated by Saddlemyer in 1966 and by
James Pethica in 1988, as well as being the worst kept secret among
the actors at the time of its premiere.62 Gregory and Yeats began writ-
ing Kathleen Ni Houlihan together in Coole Park at the end of August
1901 and finished a first draft before 20 September when Yeats left
Coole. Pethica suggests that Synge was the first person to read or even
more likely to hear (as Gregory usually read the plays aloud) a draft of
Kathleen Ni Houlihan, which, with its ‘disturber figure’ would, ‘serve as
significant influence on his focused turn to playwriting over the follow-
ing 12 months’.63 Gregory’s artistic confidence is apparent even at this
early point when she dismisses Synge’s first play, the incomplete When the
Moon has Set, as being ‘not good at all’.64
‘We Three Always’

Like Grania, Gregory ‘took the shaping of her life into her own hands’.65
Gregory knew that she was an artist in her own right: ‘If I had not met
Yeats I believe I should still have become a writer’.66 Grania’s vocifer-
ous reclamation of agency at the end of the play in the face of stifling
patriarchy with her radical act of ‘crowning herself’ is an articulation of
the woman playwright to claim her ‘own road’, her own ‘beaten path
of history’. Gregory, Yeats and Synge spoke of each other as ‘we three
always’, not without its imbalances of desire and jealousy.67 And perhaps
the real love triangle of Finn, Grania and Diarmuid in Grania is not that
of Augusta, her aged husband Sir William Gregory and her poet lover
Wilfrid Blunt—the most handsome man in Europe, but rather that of
Augusta, Yeats and Synge, all vying, as is the way in any triangle, for the
affection of one over another at some point where, as she says of the
18 M. SIHRA
play, it is ‘Yet where Love itself and its shadow Jealousy, is the true pro-
tagonist’.68 One of Gregory’s most lyrical works, Yeats vetoed the pro-
duction of Grania at the time for reasons which are as yet unknown. It
was not performed during Gregory’s lifetime and has never been pro-
duced by the Abbey Theatre.
The originality, exuberance, comedy, technical skill, popularity and
range of Gregory’s plays have predominantly been erased from the reper-
toire. Roche states; ‘Although during her lifetime and for many decades
afterwards Lady Gregory’s plays proved extremely popular and were reg-
ularly staged, they are now never seen, only read’.69 Yet throughout her
life Gregory’s plays were the most commercially successful on the Abbey
stage and ensured the theatre’s survival. Judith Hill makes the point:
Her success with Spreading the News had given her a confidence, and
in the next few years she would become the most reliable writer for the
Abbey. In 1905 and 1906 the theatre produced ten new plays, five of
which were Augusta’s. […] She would supply two or three new plays a
year until 1912, after which she averaged about one play a year until 1924.
Her plays would also be performed more often than those of the other
writers.70
At the time Annie Horniman offered great praise: ‘Lady Gregory’s

work must be well treated – she is the best “draw” of the lot of you.
I am so proud of her […]’.71 George Bernard Shaw, famously dismiss-
ive of the Celtic Twilight Movement, had similar regard for Gregory’s
plays: ‘They are quite out-of-the-way-good even from a professional
point of view’.72 In her day Gregory was the most popular playwright
at the Abbey Theatre with immense fame in the USA. Yet canons are
a continuous process of formation and self-affirmation. After her death
Gregory’s contribution to theatre was minimised to that of adminis-
trator, manager, nurturer, hostess, patron and sometime playwright of
‘slight’ peasant comedies and adaptations. Una Ellis-Fermor, Elizabeth
Coxhead, Ann Saddlemyer, Colin Smythe, Leeney, Kurdi, Pethica,
Waters and McDiarmid have all worked to uncover the depth and range
of her creative vision. Murray and Roche devote a chapter to Gregory
as a playwright in their respective books and Murray makes the key
point that ‘Lady Gregory is entitled to be assessed as writer on her own
merits’.73
Flowing Genealogies
This book seeks to trace the flowing genealogies which run through the
work of Carr and Gregory. Situating Gregory as the centrifugal force of
Irish theatre offers a lineage with Carr which can be identified through
aspects of language, landscape, women and nature. Water, both real
and imagined, has a deep symbolic association with women’s creativity
in Irish theatre and charting connections between Carr and Gregory
locates a source where one flows into the other. From the banks of Pallas
Lake in Co. Offaly where Carr grew up, the Belmont River in Portia
Coughlan, Owl Lake in The Mai, the river in Teresa Deevy’s Katie
Roche (Abbey 1936), Margaret O’Leary’s ‘poulgorm’ (blue-pool) in The
Woman (Abbey 1929) to Gregory’s Coole River and Coole Lake, water
is ever-present (Image 1.3). Proximity to a lake as a potent site of female
expression in Carr’s theatre manifests in Gregory’s mysterious ‘vanishing’
waters at Coole Park. The preceding linear patriarchal sweep of Irish the-
atre history is challenged by the symbolic resonances of Gregory’s Coole
River and Coole Lough and their topographic undulations as a figurative
re-sourcing of Irish women’s creativity.
Gregory and Carr grew up, and were shaped, by an intimacy with nature
and the energies of flowing water. Gregory’s innate connection to the land-
scape is profound yet largely unexplored. Roxborough River was greatly
loved by young Augusta Persse at her childhood estate which bounded the
lands of Coole Park. Later in Coole, visions of water as a locus of poetic
insight to express the essence of life-flow are described by Gregory:
Our own river that we catch a glimpse of now and again through hazel,
and ash, or outshining the silver beech, stems of Kyle Dortha, has ever
been an idler. Its transit is, as has been said of human life, from a mystery
through a mystery, to a mystery.74
Gregory’s ‘great delight as a child was to be outside at Roxborough […]

with its view of the bare purple slopes of Slieve Echtge. […] She went
alone onto the mountains looking for deer, straining to see the distant,
[…] barren, layered slopes of the Burren Mountains to the south-west.
Or she would go to the river which threaded the demesne, the back-
bone of her childhood games’.75 In later life when Gregory was under-
going a mastectomy in Dublin for breast cancer under local anaesthetic
it was back to the ever-flowing childhood waters of Roxborough that
20 M. SIHRA
Image 1.3 Coole Lake, behind the site of Lady Gregory’s home at Coole Park
she travelled in her mind’s eye to cope with the pain and fear of death.
Uninhibited freedom was a feature also of Carr’s rural Offaly childhood.
Echoing the wild swans of Coole, Carr remembers, ‘The swan is huge
in Irish mythology. […] I grew up by a lake from ten years of age on, so
I had a good seven years looking out and watching swans. They say the
swan is the soul bird’.76
Much has been made of the inspirational effect of the landscape of
Coole upon Yeats, Synge and other men. In his Foreword to Gregory’s
Selected Plays in 1962, Sean O’Casey passionately laments the loss of
Coole Park in terms of Yeats alone: ‘The house gave him great woods, a
fine river, a wide lake, the majestic whirr of wild swans in flight, and eve-
nings of peace full of the linnet’s wings…’77 But for everything that Coole
yielded to the male visitors, it offered more to Gregory and her intimate
connection to the landscape has been underestimated. Here was a vision-
ary landscape for Gregory, a place where she says, ‘the actual world [is] no
more than a shadow of a world of deeper meaning behind’.78 The waters
and Seven Woods offered Gregory a transcendent site of communion with
channels of otherness and creativity, particularly the haunted Inchy Wood,
where she often stayed out late into the evening. Inchy Wood, she reveals,
lies beyond the rock cavern where the water of the lake disappears from us,
on its hidden journey to the sea. The water that had known unearthly visi-
tors, heard unearthly sounds at its rising, is not without them as it vanishes
from our sight.79
Trees were another great source of solace throughout Gregory’s life and
she planted thousands in a legacy which remains: ‘These woods have
been well loved, […] The generations of trees have been my care, my
comforter. Their companionship has often brought me peace’.80 Often
Gregory sacrificed food to buy trees and her writings have shaped the liv-
ing landscape for, ‘Whenever she received a fee or royalty she would first
go out and plant a tree’.81
Women’s Theatre: Radical Curvature

This view of Coole River with its radical curvature offers a moment of
clarity; a visual comprehension at a cellular level of the vital ever-evolv-
ing presence of, not only Gregory’s creative processes, but all women
in Irish theatre past and present (Image 1.4). The self-carved route of
22 M. SIHRA
Image 1.4 Coole River, leading into Coole Lake

Coole River is a counter-patriarchal lineage of women in Irish theatre;

an ‘S-bend’ of self-definition that refuses linear monological cultural pro-
duction. Like Pallas Lake where Carr grew up, Coole Lake and River
gave Gregory a self-renewing source of inspiration. In a current Coole
Park guidebook there is a description of the river which could in fact be
a description of Gregory’s playwriting career: ‘It is an amazing and fas-
cinating place, because Coole River is not simply another river; it is a
river which appears out of nowhere and empties itself into what might
look like a bottomless lake – a lake with no outlflow’.82 Coole Lake is
a turlough and Coole River becomes a startling metaphor of Gregory’s
appearance seemingly ‘out of nowhere’ and sudden disappearance under-
ground, moving unseen through a subterranean passage to eventual sub-
sumation in the vast Atlantic. The accidental metaphor mirrors the rapid
obscurity of Gregory’s plays from the repertoire where, as the guidebook
continues enthusiastically: ‘visitors [to Coole] may be confused when
these often quite large lakes are not to be found on the map! […] All of
these [features] are classed among the best examples of their kind, and
are of international importance’.83
Rising and Receding
The ‘disappearing’ lake disconcerted young Augusta when she first
arrived as a bride at Coole at the age of 28. This rising and receding
water table comprises an unseen network of porous, ever-changing lime-
stone tunnels, expressing the previously hidden worlds of women’s imag-
ination. It is a system of intricate underground passages which, described
as ‘part of the finest turlough complex not merely in Ireland but in all
the world’, becomes a poignant metaphor of the volume, retreat and
ultimate obscurity of Gregory’s body of work.84 Another strange feature
at Coole was the disappearing ‘natural bridge’. The naturally occurring
phenomenon of the limestone bridge frequently appeared or went out of
sight according to the level of the water on the lands at Coole and signi-
fies the broken connections of women’s voices in Irish theatre past and
present. Gregory’s ‘disappearing-bridge’ highlights the fissures and gaps
between once conjoined locations, the lost link of women’s pathways
and routes. She describes how the bridge leads to the lake which, hav-
ing no outflow, is forced back underground in the shadow of the local
mythic king:
24 M. SIHRA
And the river, passing under a natural bridge formed of great limestone
flagstones again sinks, again rises, then joining with another stream flows
on till we see it shining […]. And dipping presently under great limestone
flags that form a natural bridge. […] Then, flowing free, it helps to form a
lake, whose fullness, finding no channel above ground is forced into [that
from] which it flows under the very shadow of the Dun of the ancient leg-
endary King Guaire’.85
The free-flowing energies of the water are forced to recede

underground in the shadow of the ruling male elite, personified as a
king. A photograph of Gregory standing beside the natural bridge exists,
as well as atmospheric water-colour paintings of the bridge by her son
Robert. As the lands of Coole were sold off in parts throughout the
twentieth century the present-day location of the bridge is unclear. Gort
historian Sr. Mary De Lourdes Fahy reveals that although she has ‘never
seen the bridge it must be quite close to the new motorway which was
officially opened today’.86
Marina Carr’s The Mai forms the ‘natural bridge’ to Gregory’s work,
enabling a pathway crossing back, forth and beyond. With its triple frame
of female narrator, characters and playwright The Mai revises the patri-
archal architecture of Irish theatre on the Abbey stage. An intergener-
ational play about women’s work and financial independence, property
ownership, sexual desire and the complexities of motherhood, it offers
a matrilineal model in Irish theatre. The Mai builds her own house by a
lake ‘on the most coveted site in the county’ in the same way that Carr
builds upon Gregory’s foundations for women on the most coveted
stage in the country.87 As shall be explored throughout this book the
‘Poor Old Woman’ from Gregory’s Kathleen Ni Houlihan haunts Carr’s
Midlands plays, passing by windows and crossing the threshold, re-cod-
ing inherited mythologies of nationalism and gender politics.88
‘I Was the First’

A nexus of creativity between Carr and Gregory lies in their use of folk-
lore, myth and original forms of rural dialect. Carr is known for the
lyrical power of her unique Midlands stage dialect in a tradition which
began with Gregory’s groundbreaking translation of the Celtic sagas
Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902). In this work Gregory located the
poetic rhythms of her local Kiltartan townland for the first time. Yeats,
in the Introduction to Gregory’s book, remarks, ‘And now all in a

moment, as it seemed, she became the founder of modern dialect lit-
erature’.89 The reach and influence of Cuchulain of Muirthemne have
been far, transcending that of other translators such as Standish O’Grady
whose writing lacks her originality, vitality and lyricism. Theodore
Roosevelt kept her book on his bedside table and in admiration gave her
a bear’s foot. Yeats continues:
I think this book is the best that has come out of Ireland in my time.
Perhaps I should say that it is the best book that has ever come out of
Ireland; for the stories which it tells are a chief part of Ireland’s gift to the
imagination of the world – and it tells them perfectly for the first time.
[…] Perhaps more than all she has discovered a fitting dialect to tell them
in […] now Lady Gregory has discovered a… living speech’.90
Most interestingly it is the usually self-deprecating Gregory who claims

her position as the founder of the modern Irish literary dialect form, as
well as stating her influence on Synge:
When my Cuchulain of Muirthemne came out, [Synge] said to Mr. Yeats

he had been amazed to find in it the dialect he had been trying to master.
He wrote to me: “Your Cuchulain is a part of my daily bread.” I say this
with a little pride, for I was the first to use the Irish idiom as it is spoken,
with intention and with belief in it.91
An innate connection between Gregory’s and Carr’s dramatic voices lies

in their unique expressions of ‘country speech’, character and place of
action.92 Ellis-Fermor affirms Gregory’s primary influential position,
preceding that of Synge, as a dialect or folk playwright: ‘These habits
of thought and speech, once she had converted them to dialogue and
subdued that dialogue to dramatic function, became an inseparable
part of all her later technique, and led on to the interesting develop-
ment of this form in the hands of Synge’.93 For Gregory and Carr it
is their plays’ rootedness in their location as well as in how they are
expressed that gives them what Gregory calls ‘that poetry of the soil,
those words and dreams and cadences of the people that helped me to
give some echoed expression to that dragging driving force’.94 Yeats
rightly calls Gregory’s original creation of dialect for the stage ‘a musi-
cal and caressing English, which never goes very far from the idiom of
26 M. SIHRA
the people she knows so well’.95 Gregory’s gift of lyricism permeates

Cuchulain of Muirthemne. Lugain says, ‘It is Conall Cearnach it is, with
Dub-dearg, and the birds that you see after him, they are the sods the
horse has scattered in the air from his hooves, and the flakes of snow
are speckling the ground before him, they are the froth that he scatters
from his mouth and from the bit of the bridle’.96 Present-tense speech
is integrated with prose amidst pre-Christian, water and nature imagery
throughout Cuchulain of Muirthemne such as when Emer mourns the
death of Cuchulain, revealing the early seeds of Gregory’s dramatic
writing:
“Happy are they, happy are they, who will never hear the cuckoo again
for ever, now that the Hound has died from us. I am carried away like the
branch on the stream; I will not bind up my hair to-day. From this day I
have nothing to say that is better than Ochone!” And her life went out of
her, and she herself and Cuchulain were laid in one grave by Conall. And
he raised one stone over them, and he wrote their names in Ogham, and
he himself and all the men of Ulster keened them. But the three times fify
queens that loved Cuchulain saw him appear in his Druid chariot, going
through Eamain Macha; and they could hear him singing the music of the
Sidhe.97
Carr intuitively builds upon Gregory’s legacy of dialect, storytelling

and myth, strong female characters, layering of folklore and belief in
the other world. Her Midlands plays capture a similar ‘living speech’
which Carr recalls ‘is very specific to the place where I grew up and
it is probably not even spoken there much now. I spoke like that as a
child. […] It is a very rich language. It is a language of metaphor and
of storytelling’.98 Irish folk belief is characterised by the presence of a
metaphysical realm that is equal if not more powerful than the every-
day world and which can be read in Carr and Gregory as a female-cen-
tric challenge to patriarchal structures. For Carr and Gregory the
otherworld is that of the imagination and alternative values which
challenges the quotidian. Carr expresses this concept in ‘A talk about
the function of art’ which she delivered at the National Library of
Ireland in 1995 as being, ‘The search for the unrepeatable road to
new paths, new roads for ourselves on the journey towards divinity
and eternity. On the unrepeatable road there is a precedence of the
metaphysical world over the physical’.99 Like much of Gregory’s
writings from Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland to the Kiltartan
Wonder Plays, Carr’s plays from Portia Coughlan to Woman and
Scarecrow and Indigo (2015) are imbued with the world beyond,
where the double dimension is an alternative structure of meaning.
One of Gregory’s folk tales of Coole Lake and its association with
female energy echoes the origin myth of Bláth and Coillte at Owl Lake
in The Mai and Lake Cuura in Ariel. ‘King Guaire’, Gregory recounts,
having heard that a child to be born to a certain woman would be
greater than his own son,
bade his people to make an end of her before the child would be born.
And they took her and tied a heavy stone about her neck and threw her
into the deep part of the river where it rises at Coole. But by the help
of God, the stone that was put about her neck did not sink but went
floating upon the water, and she came to the shore and was saved from
drowning.100
‘The Threshold of Eternity’

Gregory was the most accomplished folklorist of her day and trained
her memory to listen and to record her subjects’ stories without the
distraction of a notebook. The precision required for this attention to
language would inform the great gift that she had for writing in dia-
lect for the stage. Sitting close to the storyteller by the hearth it is clear
that the intimate act of listening and remembering speech patterns in
‘the writing of folklore gave [Gregory] a paradigm for the theatre [and
that] she perceived folklore as a continuous tradition to which she was
contributing’.101 Saddlemyer notes how Gregory’s ability with language
demonstrates ‘controlling the dialogue with balance and almost classi-
cal precision’.102 The stories she collected were filled with the fantasy of
piseogs, the Sidhe and worlds beneath the waves. Gregory expresses the
inverse relationship between material impoverishment and imaginative
wealth which marked the minds of the peasants that she encountered
daily and which has become a defining aspect of Irish theatre;
But as I listened, I was moved by the strange contrast between the poverty
of the tellers and the splendours of the tales. These men […] never pos-
sessed enough to think of the possession of more a possibility. It seemed
as if their lives had been so poor and rigid in circumstance that they did
28 M. SIHRA
not fix in their minds, as more prosperous people might do, on thoughts
of customary pleasure. The stories that they love are of quite visionary
things; of swans that turn into kings’ daughters, and of castles with crowns
over the doors, and lovers’ flights on the backs of eagles, and music-lov-
ing water-witches, and journeys to the other world, and sleeps that last for
seven hundred years.103
Gregory’s intuitive comprehension of ‘water-witches’ and journeys to

‘the other world’ provides an intrinsic nexus with Carr’s theatre in plays
such as The Mai, Portia Coughlan, the sea witch ‘Marmal’ in The Giant
Blue Hand and the fairy world ‘beyond the gauze’ in Indigo. For her
neighbouring peasant country-folk Gregory says that the fairies and
banshees ‘were as real as the mountains and sea’.104 She realised that,
far from being esoteric, folklore was central to their lives, as real as the
landscape: ‘Shadows of cloud and rock by day, shadows of thoughts, of
dreams, of the dead by night’.105 This was in contrast to Yeats’s liter-
ary quest in folklore for arcane symbolism through which to develop
stylised imagery and metaphor. Gregory did not analyse the material
but recorded it in ways that enabled the words and stories to retain and
release their own energies. Her 1906 essay ‘The Haunted Islands’ draws
on the well-spring of Aran as a source of pagan imagination where she
universalises the folklore that she gathered on her third visit in 1898
‘never mentioning Aran by name’:
There are no doubters in the Haunted Islands. The veil between things
visible and things invisible has scarcely thickened for them since angels
fought in the air for the souls of the dead…106
Gregory’s pragmatism towards the fairy world is comparable to Carr’s

matter-of-fact integration of the otherworld in her plays. Carr’s invest-
ment in the non-rational reveals a similar understanding of a world
beyond the one-dimensional;
The culture believes in ghosts. […] All of that is entirely natural to me

when I sit down to write. […] I don’t see that as unusual, although it
seems to be, because you are shot down every time you mention the sub-
ject now. People say that you are off with the fairies, which I’m not at all.
I’m very practical. I think that side of your life has to be acknowledged at
some point, or you’re just living in one dimension. It’s a way of seeing the
world.107
In 1919 Gregory wrote in her private journal about the double function
of the Abbey Theatre which, on the one hand, was to serve the practi-
cal everyday revolution of cultural nationalism and, on the other, was to
incorporate a sense of the infinite realm:
I told Robinson, in speaking of the Theatre, that we must have two hori-
zons, one the far one, the laying of it ‘on the threshold of Eternity’; the
nearer one the coming of Home Rule of whatever the new arrangement
that must come may be […]108
Like much of Gregory’s writings, each of Carr’s plays is imbued with

aspects of the otherworld which relate to elements of the self and the
inexpressible mystery of existence where, Carr suggests, writing ‘is more
about the things you cannot understand than the things you can’.109
Intuitive Compulsions
We are all rooted somewhere in the narratives that we write. Our writ-
ings become, on some level, a journey of the self in which we are the
true subjects. Twenty years ago when I lived in East Clare near the
remote village of Feakle, before I knew anything much about Lady
Gregory apart from her name, I went in search of Biddy Early’s cot-
tage. ‘Biddy Early’—her name compelled me; a ‘Wise-Woman’, a herb-
alist, a healer, a ‘witch’, whose memory is often still only whispered on
the breath among the people in the townland. Hidden away, unmarked,
roofless and abandoned, her ruined cottage stands now as a site of wom-
en’s dereliction, a neglected monument to the silencing and exclusion
of women’s inherited knowledge by the patriarchy of Church and State
(Image 1.5). Beyond overgrown thorny briars, up a hilly muck path, lies
this secret, reverberating site of woman’s presence, vision and authority.
I have been there in the night, as dawn comes up, in the cracking bare-
ness of Autumn and the overgrown fullness of summer. Facing Biddy
Early’s cottage lies Kilbarron Lake into which her prophesying blue
bottle was thrown and which many people have since tried to find. It
is a site to which I return when I can, fulfilling in me a sacred compul-
sion to connect with the silenced, severed histories of women’s power
and experiential knowledge. I went there before I knew why. A ghostly,
whispering site that, I grew to learn in recent years, was beloved too of
Lady Gregory. We trace and retrace steps, consciously and unconsciously.
30 M. SIHRA
Image 1.5 Biddy Early’s cottage, Feakle, Co. Clare
My journeys into the depths of Marina Carr’s imagination, beginning

later that year in 1998, brought me to that of Lady Gregory. But I was
already there before I had met either of them, and had begun to track,
however circuitously, the matriarchal lineage that I so craved.
Matrilineal Wisdom
Lady Gregory had become fascinated with Biddy Early (1798–1874) of
whom stories swirled thickly. In Biddy, Gregory had found an unbro-
ken connection to a potent tradition of matrilineal wisdom, grounded in
her love of the elements, the landscape, trees and the magical power of
plants. Here was a woman-centric knowledge of folk belief and nature to
which Gregory could connect through her ‘folkloring’. In 1897 Gregory
made the pilgrimage to seek out Biddy Early’s small peasant holding and
found out that Biddy had died only 23 years earlier: ‘I had been told
how to find Biddy Early’s house, “beyond the little humpy bridge”, and
I walked on till I came to it, a poor cottage enough, high up on a mass
rock by the roadside’.110 In Biddy Early, Gregory recognised a lineage of
female energy, vitality and knowledge into which she intuitively tapped as
a source of inspiration:
So one day I set out and drove Shamrock, my pony, […] setting out for
Feakle. […] It was a wild road, the pony had to splash his way through
two unbridged rivers, swollen with the summer rains. The red mud of the
road, the purple heather and foxglove, the brown bogs were a contrast
to the grey rocks and walls of Burren and Aidhne, and there were many
low hills, brown when near, misty blue in the distance; then the Golden
Mountain, Slieve nan-Or […] Then I was out of Connacht into Clare, the
brown turning to green pasture as I drove by Raftery’s Lough Greine.111
‘Her Fame Will Grow’

In the many stories of Biddy Early gathered by Gregory at the time
she found ingrained narratives of female empowerment. In ‘An Old
Man from Kinvara’ the speaker reveals; ‘Biddy Early beat all women.
No one could touch her’.112 The then still inhabited cottage of Biddy
Early offered Gregory a visceral site of female knowledge and power, and
Gregory reflected:
I think as time goes on her fame will grow and some of the myths that
always hang in the air will gather round her, for I think the first thing I
was told of her was, ‘There used surely to be enchanters in the old time,
magicians and freemasons. Old Biddy Early’s power came from the same
thing.113
The figure of the witch or wise woman recurs throughout this book.
Feminism reclaims misogynist constructions of the witch or crone to
rethink women’s dynamic histories. Daly posits: ‘In living / writing,
feminists are recording and creating the history of Crones. Women who
can identify with the Great Crones may wish to call our writing of wom-
en’s history Croneography’.114 The precursor of female knowledge and
authority, Biddy Early, was vilified throughout her life and excluded
from officialdom as ‘priests were beginning to look askance at Biddy’s
activities’.115 Meda Ryan observes how, ‘[T]he local Catholic clergy
[…] openly spoke out against the deeds and words of Biddy Early. Her
“magic” cures were treated by them with great suspicion, many believ-
ing that her power was obtained from evil sources – “The Devil” they
said’.116 As shall be shown, Carr develops the theme of the otherworld
and ostracisation of woman-as-witch in Portia Coughlan and By the Bog
of Cats…, building upon alternative traces as ‘Continuous efforts were
32 M. SIHRA
made by the Church to erase beliefs in superstitious practices [where] the

clergy were constantly being encouraged by their bishops to speak out
against these survivals of paganism’.117
In Ruins
The death of Augusta Gregory in 1932 is a turning point and a period
of transition from older ways of folk belief to the oppressive nationalist
and Catholic ethos enshrined in the 1937 Irish Constitution. Carr points
out, ‘With the founding of the State the imagination vanished and there
began huge resistance to deep feeling and complexity’.118 The disavowal
of indigenous matrilineal knowledge in Biddy Early’s herblore healing
practice mirrors the expulsion of women’s creative processes in Irish the-
atre, such as the ongoing marginalisation of Gregory today. In the 1970s
the Irish State refused to buy or to fund the preservation of Biddy Early’s
cottage. Now the ruin is on sale for 75,000 euros on the website www.
daft.ie where it is described as: ‘Home of the legendary wise woman of
Clare. Of considerable significance to Ireland’s heritage and folklore.
Uniquely significant historically and spiritually’.119 History repeats itself
as Gregory’s house at Coole Park was left to crippling ruin by the State
within 10 years of her death by 1941, despite being known as ‘the work-
shop of Ireland’. Just as Biddy’s cottage is now an abandoned ruin so
too the foundation site of Gregory’s house at Coole Park, of which only
the footprint and some outhouses remain, is a painful reminder of the
absent, lost spaces of women’s histories in Irish theatre.
Situating the theatre of Marina Carr within a tradition of Augusta
Gregory aims to challenge the ‘single-story’ of Irish theatre history that
we have inherited.120 Characteristic of Carr’s playwriting is the congru-
ence of the otherworld with the everyday realm where synaptic ener-
gies of dreams, ghost figures, traces of death, landscapes of fields, bogs,
ring-forts, folklore and nature expand the interior life. Carr has spoken
throughout her career about the loss of the non-rational and of our need
for mystery: ‘No one talks about the soul anymore’.121 Carr’s evocation
of ‘pastures of the unknown’ forms the thematic through-line of this
book where depictions of nature and realms of the imagination develop
our understanding of women, home and the family. Challenging patri-
archal constructions of gender, place and identity each of Marina Carr’s
plays builds upon the legacy of Augusta Gregory to offer new ways to
process the past and transform the future for all women in Irish theatre.
Notes
1. Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats, Handwritten Draft No. 1. Scene 2, p. 9.
Box 5/Folder 1, 30 November 1995. Marina Carr Archive Acc. 4891.
National Library of Ireland.
2. The Irish Literary Theatre movement was founded in 1899 and the
Abbey Theatre was founded in 1904.
3. Maureen Waters & Lucy McDiarmid (eds.), Lady Gregory: Selected
Writings (London: Penguin, 1995), p. xli.
4. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, p. 334.
5. The seven men are: W.B. Yeats, Brian Friel, Tom Murphy, Jim Nowlan,
J.M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, Frank McGuinness.
6. J.M. Synge, The Playboy of the Western World (Dublin: Mercier Press,
1974), p. 65.
7. Gregory was the only woman to be included in the ‘Reading the
Decades’ which comprised of ten slots. The other playwrights were:
G.B. Shaw, T.C. Murray, Denis Johnston, George Shiels, M.J. Molloy,
Walter Macken, Tom Kilroy, Hugh Leonard, Sebastian Barry, Brian
Friel.
8. ‘Waking the Nation: 2016 at the Abbey’, ‘Schools and Community’, p.
13.
9. ‘Waking the Nation: 2016 at the Abbey’, p. 3.
10. Gender Counts: An Analysis of Gender in Irish Theatre 2006–2015.
Commissioned by #WakingTheFeminists. Researched by: Dr. Brenda
Donohue, Dr. Ciara O’Dowd, Dr. Tanya Dean, Ciara Murphy, Kathleen
Cawley & Kate Harris.
11. Lian Bell, Gender Counts, p. 5.
12. Marina Carr, ‘Foreword’, in Melissa Sihra (ed.), Women in Irish Drama:
A Century of Authorship and Representation (Basingstoke & New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. x.
13. L yn Gardner, ‘Death Becomes Her: Children are raped, mutilated and
murdered in Marina Carr’s plays. What’s this all about, Lyn Gardner
asks Ireland’s leading female dramatist (and mother of three)’, The
Guardian, 29 November 2004, p. 16.
14. Eileen Battersby, ‘Marina of the Midlands’, The Irish Times, 4 May 2000,
p. 14.
15. Marina Carr in Conversation with Melissa Sihra, Unpublished, New York
City, 4 April 2003.
16. Mary Daly, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, pp. 347–8.
17. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie ‘The Danger of the Single Story’,
TEDGlobal. www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_
the_single_story/html. Accessed 12 December 2017.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
jotka kiduttavat viisaimpiakin ihmisiä, ja korvata tässä maailmassa
esiintyvät näennäiset epäoikeudenmukaisuudet ja epätasaisuudet
tulevan maailman yhdenvertaisuudella ja palkitsevalla
oikeudenmukaisuudella. Tuo yksi päivä on sisältävä kaikki edellä
kuluneet päivät, ja niin sanoaksemme viimeisessä kohtauksessa
täytyy kaikkien näyttelijäin astua esille, täydentämään ja loppuun
suorittamaan tätä suurta esitystä. Ja tämä on se päivä, jonka
muistaminen on kyllin tehokas tekemään meidät rehellisiksi
pimeässäkin ja hyveellisiksi tarvitsematta todistajia.
Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi,
hyve on oma palkintonsa,
on vain kylmä järkilause, joka ei kykene pitämään huikentelevaa

tahtoamme muuttumattomasti ja pysyvästi hyvyyden uralla. Minä
olen yrittänyt toteuttaa kelpo Senecan neuvomaa keinoa: kuvitellut
yksinäisyyden hiljaisuudessa, pysyäkseni vapaana paheiden
saastutuksesta, olevani parhaiden ja rakkaimpien ystävieni parissa,
joiden nähden mieluummin menettäisin pääni kuin harjoittaisin
jotakin pahetta. Kuitenkin huomasin sen olevan vain siveellistä
rehellisyyttä, mikä ei vielä merkitse hyveellisenä olemista hänen
tähtensä, joka meidät lopullisesti palkitsee.
Olen koettanut noudattaa Senecan suurta ohjetta: olla hyveellinen

ajattelematta taivasta tai helvettiä. Ja tosiaankin huomasin, että,
ollen luonnostani taipuvainen hyveeseen ja sitä kunnioittamaan,
saatoin sitä palkattakin palvella, mutta en kuitenkaan niin
päättäväisesti ja kunnioitettavalla tavalla, että oman luonteeni
heikkous ei pienenkin kiusauksen esiintyessä voisi viekoitella minua
sitä unhottamaan.
Siitä syystä on kaiken toimintamme elinvoimana ja henkenä usko
ylösnousemukseen ja se vakaa tieto, että tomumajamme saa nauttia
hurskaiden ponnistustemme hedelmiä. Ilman tätä olisi kaikki uskonto
pelkkää harhaa, ja Lukianoksen, Euripideen ja Julianuksen
jumalattomat ajatukset eivät olisikaan mitään herjausta, vaan
ylevintä totuutta, ja ateistit olisivat olleet ainoita oikeita filosofeja.
Kysymys siitä, miten kuolleet nousevat, ei koske minun uskoani.

Mahdollisuuksien olettaminen ei ole uskoa, vaan filosofiaa. Monet
jumaluusopin kohdat ovat tosia siitä huolimatta, ettei niitä järki voi
johdella enempää kuin aistimetkaan vahvistaa, ja monet filosofian
kysymykset aistimilla varmennettavia, vaikka järki ei niihin pysty.
Niinpä on esimerkiksi mahdotonta pätevillä, kouraantuntuvilla
järkisyillä saada ketään uskomaan kompassineulan kääntymistä
pohjoista kohti, vaikka tämä ilmiö on sekä mahdollinen että
todellinen, vieläpä helposti uskottavakin, kunhan vain aistimilla
teemme kokeen.
Uskon, että muuttunut ja hajaantunut tomumajamme jälleen yhtyy,

että sen ainekset, suoritettuaan niin monta kiertokulkua ja muutosta
kivennäisten, kasvien, eläinten ja muiden olioiden kautta, Jumalan
äänen kutsumina palaavat alkuperäiseen muotoonsa ja yhtyvät
jälleen olemaan entisenä alkuperäisenä kokonaisuutena.
Niinkuin luomisessa sekava ainejoukko erotettiin eri lajeihinsa,

samoin maailman häviössä tapahtuu erittely eri yksilöiksi. Niinkuin
luomisessa kaikki eri lajit, joita nyt näemme, piilivät yhdessä
ainejoukossa, kunnes Jumalan hedelmöittävä ääni eroitti ne
toisistansa, niin on viimeisenäkin päivänä, kun kaikki pilaantuneet
tähteet ovat hajallaan lukemattomissa muodoissa ja näyttävät
unohtaneen varsinaiset ominaisuutensa, Jumala väkevällä
kädellänsä ne palauttava varsinaisiin muotoihinsa ja kutsuva ne esiin
kunkin paikallensa.
Silloin esiintyy Aatamin jälkeläisten paljous ja sen siemenen taika,

joka on paisunut niin moniksi miljooniksi. Olen usein ihmeenä
katsellut elohopean uudelleen ilmestymistä ja eri hahmoja, kuinka se
oltuaan ikäänkuin muuna aineena palautuu omaan muotoonsa.
Puhuaksemme luonnollisesti ja filosofien tapaan, voimme sanoa,
että muuttuvaisten kappaleiden muodot eivät häviä näissä
ulkonaisissa turmeluksissa eivätkä, kuten luulottelemme, kokonaan
jätä asuntopaikkojansa, vaan kiintyvät niiden salaisiin soppiin, joissa
ne parhaiten voivat suojella itseään hävittäjältään. Niinpä kasvi, joka
on poltettu tuhaksi, saattaa kamarifilosofeista näyttää kokonaan
hävinneeltä ja sen muoto ainaiseksi menneeltä, mutta herkän
taiteilijan silmissä eivät sen muodot ole hävinneet, vaan kätkeytyneet
palamattomaan olomuotoonsa, missä ne säilyvät turvassa kuluttavan
liekin vaikutukselta. Sen voi näyttää toteen kokeella, sillä kasvin
tuhasta saatamme uudelleen herättää eloon kasvin runkoineen ja
lehtineen. Jos ihmisen taito voi näissä vähäpätöisissä esineissä
jotakin aikaan saada, kuinka suurta pilkkaa onkaan puhua, ettei
Jumalan sormi voisi tehdä samanlaista täydellisemmissä ja
ylevämmissä rakenteissa! Tämä kuuluu siihen salaiseen filosofiaan,
joka ei ketään todellista tiedemiestä tee ateistiksi, vaan
tarkastaessaan luonnon silminnähtäviä ilmiöitä hän kehittyy
todelliseksi jumaluusoppineeksi, joka ei näe vain unessa, kuten
Hesekiel, vaan todellisissa esineissä kuolleistanousemisensa
esikuvia.
Meidän kuolleista nousseen olemuksemme asunnoiksi on

määrätty nämä kaksi vastakohtaista ja toisiinsa soveltumatonta
paikkaa: taivas ja helvetti. Niiden määrittelemiseen tai tarkoin
selittääkseni mitä ja missä ne ovat, ei minun jumaluusoppini riitä.
Sulopuheinen apostoli, joka näyttää saaneen nähdä vilahduksen
taivaasta, on antanut siitä vain kielteisen määrittelyn: mitä silmä ei
ole nähnyt eikä korva kuullut, mikä ei ole ihmisen sydämeen
noussut. Hän oli siirretty pois itsestään, voidakseen sitä nähdä,
mutta saatuaan jälleen palata itseensä ei voinut sitä ilmi lausua. Kun
apostoli Johannes kuvaa taivaan asunnoita rakennetuiksi
smaragdeista, krysoliiteistä ja muista kalliista kivistä, on se liian
laimeata ilmaisemaan todellista taivasta.
Senvuoksi saatamme sanoa, että missä sielulla on täydellinen

onnellisuus, missä henkemme rajaton kaipuu on täydellisesti
tyydytetty, niin ettei se enää toivo lisäystä eikä muutosta, siellä
lienee todella taivas. Ja tämä voi toteutua ainoastaan sen olennon
yhteydessä, joka rajattomassa hyvyydessään kykenee täyttämään
kaikki omat toivomuksensa, samoin kuin meidänkin pohjattomat
kaipuumme. Missä Jumala siten ilmaisee itsensä, siinä on taivas,
vaikka se jäisikin tämän näkyväisen maailman piiriin.
Näin ihmisen sielu voi olla taivaassa missä hyvänsä, vieläpä oman
ruumiinsa sisäpuolella, ja kun se lakkaa elämästä ruumiissa, voi se
jäädä asumaan omassa sielussaan, se on Luojassaan. Ja niin
voimme sanoa, että apostoli Paavali, kun hän ei sanonut tietävänsä
oliko hän ruumiissaan vai ulkona siitä, oli kuitenkin taivaassa.
Taivaan asettaminen kymmenennen kehän ulkopuolelle on
ristiriidassa sen tiedon kanssa, että maailma on häviävä, sillä kun
tämä näkyväinen maailma hävitetään, silloin on kaikki täkäläinen
samanlaista kuin nyt siellä eli tavallaan tyhjyyttä. Jos kysymme,
missä taivas siis on, merkitsee se samaa kuin kysyä, missä on
Jumalan olopaikka tai missä meille se kunnia tulee, että saamme
nähdä hänet.
Mooses, joka oli perehtynyt Egyptin kaikkeen viisauteen, teki
filosofian kannalta suuren erehdyksen tahtoessaan ruumiillisilla
silmillään nähdä Jumalan ja siis pyytäessään tekijäänsä, joka on itse
totuus, kumoamaan itsensä. Niillä, jotka kuvittelevat taivaan ja
helvetin olevan naapureita ja ajattelevat niiden välistä rajaakin,
perustaen käsityksensä Jeesuksen vertaukseen Latsaruksesta ja
rikkaasta miehestä, on liian karkea käsitys noista kirkastetuista
olennoista, jotka silmillänsä voivat helposti katsoa auringonvalonkin
taakse ja nähdä pisimpienkin matkojen päähän. Sillä jos
kirkastetuissa silmissämme tulee olemaan kyky nähdä ja tuntea
esineitä, tahtoisin ajatella näkemiskykymme olevan yhtä rajattoman
kuin nyt ajatuksemme on.
Myönnän, että jos kaksi olentoa on sijoitettu kymmenennen kehän

ulkopuolelle eli tyhjyyteen, niinkuin Aristoteleen filosofiassa
esitetään, eivät he voisi nähdä toisiansa, koska puuttuu välittävä
aine, joka siirtäisi esineen valonsäteet aistimiimme. Mutta missä ei
ole valonsäteitä siirtävää väliainetta eikä edes valoa, joka käyttäisi
tuota välittäjää, ja kuitenkin on olemassa täydellinen kyky nähdä,
siinä meidän tulee syrjäyttää filosofiamme säännöt ja selittää kaikki
johtuvaksi täydellisemmästä näöstä.
En voi ymmärtää, että tuli on helvetin varsinainen olemus, enkä

ymmärrä, mitä ajattelisin kiirastulesta, enkä liioin voi käsittää
sellaista liekkiä, joka voisi kuluttaa tai puhdistaa sielua. Tulikiven
palavat liekit, joita on raamatussa mainittu, eivät mielestäni kuulu
tähän puheena olevaan helvettiin, vaan tulevaiseen, jossa tulella on
täydentävä tehtävä meitä kohtaavassa rangaistuksessa ja jolloin se
voi ruumiillisia olennoita kohtaan valtaansa käyttää.
Muutamat, joilla on ollut kunnia selittää raamattua, ovat sitä mieltä,
että tuli sielläkin on samaa lajia kuin nyt meillä. Sitä on vaikea
käsittää. Mutta voin ymmärtää, että sekin voi polttaa ruumistamme,
kuitenkaan kuluttamatta sitä, sillä tässä aineellisessakin maailmassa
on kappaleita, jotka voittamattomina kestävät ankarimmissakin
liekeissä, ja vaikka ne tulen voimasta syttyvät ja sulavatkin, eivät ne
siinä kuitenkaan häviä. Haluaisin mielelläni tietää, kuinka Mooses
tavallisessa tulessa poltti kultaisen vasikan tuhaksi, sillä tuo
salaperäinen kultametalli, jonka aurinkoista laatua ihailen, tulen
vaikutukselle alttiiksi annettuna vain kuumenee ja sulaa, mutta ei
kulu. Samoin, kun palavat ja haihtuvat osat ruumiistamme
puhdistuvat kestävämmiksi, kiinteämmiksi, siis kullan kaltaisiksi,
jotka tosin kärsivät liekkien vaikutuksesta, eivät ne kuitenkaan häviä,
vaan pysyvät tulessakin kuolemattomina.
Varmasti siis, jos tämä ruumiimme saa kärsiä vain tämän

alkuaineen vaikutuksesta, jää monta ruumista jäljelle. Ja silloin sekä
taivas että myöskin maa pikemmin on vasta kehityksensä alussa.
Sillä nykyjään tämä ei ole maa, vaan tulen, veden, maan ja ilman
kokoomus, mutta tulevaisena aikana, kun se on näistä aineksistaan
vapautunut, se esiintyy itsensä kaltaisemmassa tilassa, tuhkanansa.
Filosofit, jotka arvelivat maailman häviävän tulessa, eivät

kuitenkaan uneksineet sen tyhjään katoavan, mikä on maallisten
syiden vaikutuspiirin ulkopuolella. Sillä tulen viimeinen ja varsinainen
tehtävä on muuttaa ja sulattaa lasiksi, ja senvuoksi muutamat
kemisteistämme naljaillen väittävätkin, että viimeinen palo kiteyttää
ja muuttaa kaiken olevaisen lasiksi.
Ei meidän myöskään tarvitse pelätä häviämistä tai kummeksia,

että Jumala tahtoo tuhota luomistöitänsä. Sillä kun on jäljellä
ihminen, joka nyt on ja sitten vasta oikein on mikrokosmos eli
pienoismaailma, ei maailmaa voi sanoa hävinneeksi. Sillä Jumalan
silmät, samoin kuin ehkä omatkin kirkastetut silmämme, saavat yhtä
todellisesti nähdä maailman tämän supistetussa olemuksessa kuin
se nyt on nähtävissä summakaupalla ja paisutettuna. Niinhän
Jumalan silmissä, samoin kuin ihmisenkin ymmärryksen kannalta,
kasvin siemenessä on jo olemassa, vaikka näkymättömällä tavalla,
sen täydellinen runko, lehdet, kukat ja hedelmät. Sillä se, mikä on
aistimillemme vain mahdollista, on ymmärryksemme kannalta todella
olemassa. Näin siis Jumala näkee kaikki, tuntien omat työnsä yhtä
täydesti niiden vähäisessä alussa kuin täydellisyydessä; hän näki
myös koko maailman yhtä täydesti kuudennen päivän
pienoismaailmassa kuin edellisten viiden päivän hajallisissa ja
moninaisissa tuloksissa.
Ihmiset tavallisesti selittelevät laajalti helvetin tulen tuskia ja

ruumiillisen kidutuksen ankaruutta ja kuvailevat helvettiä yhtä
selkeästi kuin Muhammed kuvasi taivasta. Tosin se on
kouraantuntuvaa ja jylisee jotenkin rahvaan korvissa, mutta jos sen
on esitettävä asian pelottavaa puolta, ei sitä kannata panna
vastakohdaksi taivaalle, siellä kun onnellisuus perustuu siihen
osaan, joka on kykenevin sitä tajuamaan, eli sieluun, Luojan
siirrettyyn jumaluusvoimaan ja uutisasuntoon. Ja vaikka sijoitamme
helvetin maan alle, on paholaisen alue sen ympärillä. Perin
lapsellista taas on selittää sen olevan tulivuorissa, jotka alkeellisen
käsityksen mukaan edustavat helvettiä.
Mutta ihmisen sydän on paholaisen asuinsija, ja joskus tunnen

helvetin suorastaan itsessäni; Lucifer pitää hoviansa rinnassani, ja
koko legiona paholaisia on asettunut minuun. On siis olemassa yhtä
monta helvettiä kuin Anaksagoraan mukaan on maailmoja. Olihan
Magdaleenassa useampia kuin yksi helvetti, koska hänessä asusti
seitsemän paholaista ja jokainen paholainen on helvetti itsellensä,
saaden riittävästi kidutusta omassa olinpaikassansa, tarvitsematta
enää ympäristön kurjuutta lisäksi kärsimyksiinsä. Ja niinhän paha
omatunto on täällä jo tutustuttamista vastaiseen helvetin tuskaan.
Kuka voi muuta kuin säälien ajatella niiden armeliaita aikomuksia,
jotka lopettavat oman elämänsä? Niinhän paholainenkin tekisi, jos
voisi, mutta kun se on mahdotonta, on sen kurjuus loppumaton ja se
kärsii enimmin sen ominaisuuden vuoksi, jossa se on kestävin,
nimittäin kuolemattomuutensa takia.
Kiitän Jumalaa ja ilomielin mainitsen, etten ole milloinkaan

pelännyt helvettiä enkä kauhusta kalvennut, kun sitä on kuvattu.
Olen niin kiinnittänyt katseeni taivaaseen, että olen melkein
tykkänään unohtanut helvetin ajatuksenkin ja pelkään pikemmin
edellisen riemujen menettämistä kuin joutumista kärsimään
jälkimäisen kurjuutta. Edellisten menettäminen on täydellinen helvetti
eikä tarvitse mielestäni mitään lisää täydentämään kärsimyksiämme.
Tuo julma nimitys ei ole minua koskaan pidättänyt synnistä, enkä
sen takia liioin ole mitään hyvää tehnyt. Pelkään Jumalaa enkä
kuitenkaan ole kauhuissani hänen edessänsä; hänen armonsa
saattaa minut häpeämään syntejäni, ennenkuin hänen tuomionsa
minua pelottaa. Tuomiot ovat hänen viisautensa pakollisia ja
toisarvoisia menettelytapoja, joita hän käyttää vain viime keinona ja
siihen yllytettynä, ja pikemmin ne estävät kehnoja aikomuksissaan
kuin innostavat hurskasta häntä palvelemaan. Tuskinpa on ketään
pelotettu taivaaseen. Ne, jotka tahtovat ilman helvetinpelkoa palvella
Jumalaa, pääsevät suorempaakin tietä taivaaseen, kun taas
sellaiset, jotka helvetinpelossa matelevat hänen edessään, ovat siitä
huolimatta, että nimittävät itseänsä Kaikkivaltiaan palvelijoiksi,
kuitenkin vain hänen orjiansa.
Puhuakseni totta ja ilmaistakseni sieluni vakaumuksen, en voi, kun
katselen elämäni tapauksia ja johdatan muistiini Jumalan sormen
jälkiä, havaita muuta kuin rajattoman paljon armotekoja niin hyvin
koko ihmiskunnalle kuin itselleni erityisesti. Ja lisäksi (johtuneeko se
sitten rakkauteni ennakkoluulosta tai hänen armonsa puolueellisesta
käsittämisestä, sitä en tiedä) minusta sellaiset asiat, joita muut
pitävät ristinä, kärsimyksinä, Jumalan tuomioina, onnettomuutena,
tarkastellessani niitä lähemmin kuin vain niiden näkyviä seurauksia,
näyttävät olevan ja perimmälti aina ovat hänen laupeutensa salaisia,
verhottuja osoituksia.
Erikoinen viisauden lahja on oikein ja kiihkottomasti arvostella

Jumalan tekoja, voidakseen niin hyvin eroittaa hänen
vanhurskautensa hänen armostansa, ettei väärin nimitä noita yleviä
ominaisuuksia. Samoin on oikeata logiikkaa selittää Jumalan teot
sillä tavoin, että hänen tuomionsakin on hänen laupeutensa ilmaus.
Sillä Jumala on armollinen kaikille, ollessaan pahimmillekin
laupiaampi kuin parhaat ansaitsevat. Ja jos sanomme, ettei hän
ketään rankaise tässä maailmassa, ei se suinkaan ole järjettömyyttä,
vaikka siltä saattaa tuntua. Järjetöntä olisi nimittää rangaistukseksi
sitä, että tuomari määräisi murhaajalle sakon, ja nureksia tuomiota
sensijaan että pitäisi kiittää tuomarin lempeyttä. Kun siis
rikkomuksemme ovat kuoleman ansainneita ja lisäksi ansaitsevat
kadotuksen, niin jos Jumalan hyvyys tyytyy sivuuttamaan ne vain
jollakin tappiolla tai onnettomuudella tai sairaudella, eikö olisi
järjetöntä nimittää tätä rangaistukseksi eikä hänen armonsa
ylenpalttisuudeksi ja valittaa hänen kurituksensa alaisena pikemmin
kuin ihailla hänen armonsa valtikkaa! Senvuoksi olemme velvolliset
ylistämään ja kunnioittamaan häntä kiitollisina kaikesta siitä, mitä
olemme saaneet ja mitä olemme. Ja kun mielessäni on näitä
ajatuksia, ei Hän, joka ne parhaiten tuntee, ole tunnustamatta, että
minä häntä ihailen. Jos saan osakseni taivaan ja sen autuuden, on
se aivan satunnaista eikä suinkaan hurskauteni tarkoitettu tulos, sillä
se on onnellisuus, jota en uskalla ajatella ansaitsevani enkä
häveliäänä oikein odottaakaan; nämä molemmat kohtalot, sekä
palkinto että rangaistuskin, annetaan meille armosta, aivan
epäsuhteessa tekoihimme, koska toinen niistä on suunnattomasti
kaikkien ansioittemme yläpuolella ja toinen taas rikoksiamme niin
suunnattomasti pienempi.
Niillä ei ole mitään pelastusta, jotka eivät usko Kristukseen,

nimittäin, kuten muutamat sanovat, hänen syntymisensä jälkeen, tai
niinkuin jumaluusoppineet esittävät, jo sitä ennenkin. Tämä saa
minut hyvin pelkäämään niiden rehellisten, kunnianarvoisain ja
viisasten puolesta, jotka ovat kuolleet ennen hänen ihmiseksi
tulemistaan. Vaikeata on ajatella noiden sielujen olevan helvetissä,
sillä heidän arvokas elämänsä on ollut omiansa johtamaan meitä
hyveisiin maan päällä. Ehkäpä heille on varattu helvetin monissa
esikartanoissa jokin helpotus. Kuinka ihmeellistä lieneekään heidän
nähdä runolliset mielikuvituksensa luomat muutettuina
todellisuudeksi ja kuvitellut hornanhenget todellisiksi paholaisiksi!
Kuinka kummalta heistä kuuluneekaan kertomus Aatamista, kun he
saavat kärsiä hänen vuoksensa, josta eivät milloinkaan olleet mitään
kuulleet, ja kun ne, jotka juontivat alkunsa jumalista, huomaavatkin
olevansa syntisen ihmisen onnettomia jälkeläisiä!
On röyhkeätä käydä järjen avulla vastustamaan Jumalan tekoja tai

epäillä hänen toimiensa oikeudenmukaisuutta. Jospa nöyryys saisi
opettaa muitakin, niinkuin se on minua opettanut, muistamaan
ääretöntä ja käsittämätöntä eroa Luojan ja luodun välillä, ja jospa
tutkisimme vakavasti seuraavaa apostoli Paavalin vertausta:
Sanooko saviastia valajalleen: »miksi olet minut tällaiseksi tehnyt?»
niin se estäisi järkeä tuollaisista ylpeistä kiistoista, emmekä
myöskään silloin moittisi Jumalan lopullisia tuomioita, joko hän
tuomitsee taivaaseen tai helvettiin. Ihmiset, jotka elävät järkensä
nojassa, elävät vain omaa elämää niinkuin eläimetkin. He
noudattavat luontonsa vaatimuksia eivätkä senvuoksi kohtuullisesti
voi vaatia palkkaa teoistansa, koska tottelevat vain järkensä
luonnollisia käskyjä. Niinpä siis täytyy lopultakin ilmetä, että kaikki
pelastus tulee Kristuksen kautta. Ja pelkään että nuo suuret hyveen
esikuvat joutuvat vahvistamaan tämän totuuden, jolloin käy ilmi,
etteivät parhaatkaan maan päällä tehdyt työt oikeuta vaatimaan
pääsyä taivaaseen.
Toisaalta en usko, että näiden edellä mainittujen tai kenenkään

muunkaan elämä olisi aina ollut joka kohdassa heidän oppinsa
mukainen. On ilmeistä, että Aristoteles rikkoi omia
siveyssääntöjänsä vastaan. Stoalaiset, jotka tuomitsevat intohimot ja
kehoittavat ihmisiä nauramaan Phalariksenkin sonnissa [Muinaisen
hirmuvaltiaan Phalariksen kerrotaan poltattaneen
kuolemaantuomituita hehkuvassa vaskisonnissa. Suom], eivät
ähkimättä kestäneet sappikiven tai vatsanvaivojen puuskaa.
Skeptikot, jotka väittivät olevansa mitään tietämättä, joutuivat juuri
tuossa väitteessään ristiriitaan itseänsä vastaan, luullen tietävänsä
enemmän kuin kaikki muut. Diogenes on minusta aikansa
turhamielisin ihminen ja paljon kunnianhimoisempi hylätessään
kunnianosoitukset kuin Aleksanteri Suuri, joka ei kieltäytynyt
yhdestäkään.
Paheet ja paholaisen vehkeet virittävät ansoja järjellemme ja

kiihoittaen meitä liian kiireesti pyrkimään pakoon sotkevat meidät
niihin sitä pahemmin. Venetsian herttua, joka vihki itsensä
avioliittoon meren kanssa heittämällä siihen kultaisen sormuksen, ei
minun mielestäni haaskannut, sillä sellaista juhlallista toimitusta
pidettiin valtion asioissa hyvänä ja merkitsevänä, mutta filosofi, joka
heitti rahansa mereen välttääkseen ahneuteen lankeamista, oli
ilmeinen tuhlari.
Hyveeseen ei ole mitään valmiiksi muokattua oikotietä, eikä

meidän ole suinkaan helppo vapauttaa itseämme synnin seiteistä.
Päästäksemme kehittymään täydellisiksi hyveissä samoin kuin
uskonnollisestikin, tarvitaan panoplia eli täydellinen asevarustus, niin
ettemme ollessamme varuilla yhtä pahetta vastaan joutuisi toisen
hyökkäykselle alttiiksi. Ja tosiaankin viisaat ja arvostelukykyiset, joilla
on järjen johto käytettävänään, rikkovat anteeksiantamattomasti,
jotavastoin heikompiälyiset voivat kompastua ilman häpeää. Yhden
ainoan hyvän työn toimittamiseen vaaditaan niin monta asianhaaraa,
että hyväksi tullakseen täytyy perinpohjin harjoitella ja hyveellisyyttä
suorastaan opiskella.
Toistan vielä, että ihmisten käytös ei kulje rinnakkain teorian

kanssa, vaan usein käy tykkänään sitä vastaankin. Luonnostamme
kyllä tiedämme, mikä on hyvää, mutta luonnostamme teemme
myöskin pahaa; se kaunopuheisuus, jolla tahdon toisille jotakin
vakuuttaa, ei tehoa itseeni. Meissä on luonnottomasti kehittynyt halu,
joka kyllä tahtoo kärsivällisesti kuunnella järjen neuvoja, mutta ei
kuitenkaan pane toimeen mitään muuta kuin sen omiin oikkuihin
soveltuu. Lyhyesti sanottuna: me olemme kaikki hirviöitä, se on:
ihmisen ja eläimen sekoituksia, joissa meidän täytyy koettaa esiintyä
niinkuin runoilijat kuvaavat erään Chiron-nimisen viisaan eläneen,
nimittäin pitämällä ihmisen aluetta eläimen tyyssijan yläpuolella ja
aistillista puolta istumassa vain järjen jalkojen juuressa.
Lopuksi toivon, että Jumalan avulla kaikki ihmiset tulisivat
tuntemaan pelastuksen, vaikka tosin ilmenee, että vain muutamat
harvat sen päämäärän saavuttavat. Elämäntie on soukka ja sille
johtava silta kapea; kuitenkin ovat ne, jotka ovat Jumalan
seurakunnan rajoittaneet johonkin erikoiseen kansakuntaan,
kirkkoon tai sukuun, tehneet sen kapeammaksi kuin Vapahtajamme
milloinkaan tarkoitti.
Ne arki-ihmiset, jotka kietovat Jumalan seurakunnan Strabon

viittaan ja rajoittavat sen Eurooppaan, tuntuvat minusta yhtä
huonoilta maantieteilijöiltä kuin Aleksanteri Suuri, joka luuli
valloittaneensa koko maailman, vaikka ei ollut lannistanut vielä
puoltakaan. Sillä emmehän voi kieltää, että Jumalan seurakunta on
myös Aasiassa ja Afrikassa, jollemme tahdo unohtaa apostolien
lähetysmatkoja ja marttyyrien kärsimyksiä, samoin kuin useiden
(meidänkin reformeeratun käsityksemme mukaan laillisten)
kirkolliskokousten istuntoja, joita pidettiin noissa seuduissa silloin,
kun me vielä olimme alaikäisyyden tilassa. Sitäpaitsi eivät pienet
eroavaisuudet, jotka ovat ehkä enemmän huomattavia meidän
silmissämme kuin Jumalan, oikeuta ketään sulkemaan toista pois
taivaan osallisuudesta, saatikka sellaisia kristityitä, jotka kaikki ovat
olleet jollakin tapaa marttyyrejä, ylläpitäen uskoansa jalosti
vainojenkin aikana ja palvellen Jumalaa yksinpä polttoroviollakin,
kun taas me kunnioitamme häntä vain päiväpaisteessa. Totta on,
niinkuin mekin kaikki myönnämme, että monta on kutsuttu, mutta
harvat ovat valitut. Mutta kuitenkin, jos meidän kaikkien mielipiteet
koottaisiin yhteen, ei niiden yleisestä sekasotkusta lainkaan löytyisi
sellaista asiaa kuin pelastus, eikä yksikään tulisi autuaaksi.
Sillä ensiksikin Rooman kirkko tuomitsee meidät ja me

puolestamme heidät; uusreformistit ja lahkolaiset tuomitsevat
meidän kirkkomme opit, ja atomistit eli familistit kiroavat nämä kaikki,
jotka sitten puolestaan sinkauttavat kirouksensa heitä vastaan. Kun
siis Jumalan armo lupaa meille taivaan, niin meidän käsityksemme ja
mielipiteemme sulkevat meidät pois siitä paikasta. Siten on meillä
useampia kuin yksi Pyhä Pietari, sillä erinäiset kirkot ja lahkot
valtaavat taivaan portit ja kiertävät oven toisilta lukkoon, ja niin me
menemme taivaaseen vastoin toistemme tahtoa, käsityksiä ja
mielipiteitä, yhtä armottomina kuin tietämättöminäkin erehtyen, kuten
pelkään, ei ainoastaan oman, vaan myöskin toisten pelastuksen
asiassa.
Uskon, että monet pelastetaan, jotka ihmisten mielestä näyttävät

kadotukseen tuomituilta, ja monta sellaista joutuu kadotukseen, joita
pidetään valittuina. Viimeisenä päivänä on ilmestyvä outoja ja
odottamattomia esimerkkejä sekä Jumalan vanhurskaudesta että
armosta. Ja senvuoksi on yritys tarkoin määritellä kumpaakaan
suoranaista hulluutta ihmisessä ja yksinpä paholaistenkin puolelta
röyhkeyttä. Nämä viimemainitut viekkaat henget kykenevät tuskin
kaikella sukkeluudellaankaan saamaan selville, kutka pelastuvat.
Sillä jos he kykenisivät sen edeltäpäin tietämään, olisi niiden työ
lopussa eikä niiden tarvitsisi enää kiertää maita mantereita
etsimässä, kenen saisivat niellä.
Ne, jotka turhantarkkaan lakia soveltaen tuomitsevat Salomonin

kadotukseen, eivät tuomitse ainoastaan häntä, vaan itsensäkin ja
koko maailman. Sillä Jumalan kirjoitetun sanan mukaan me olemme
kaikki poikkeuksetta ansainneet kuoleman. Mutta Jumalalla on
etuoikeus ja vapaa valta tehdä mielensä mukaan oman lakinsakin
kirjainta vastaan. Ja yksin sen nojalla me voimme odottaa
pelastusta, ja siten Salomokin saattoi yhtä helposti pelastua kuin
nekin, jotka hänet tuomitsevat.
Niiden lukumäärä, jotka luulevat tulevansa pelastetuiksi, ja se
ääretön joukko, joka luulee voivansa pujahtaa neulansilmän läpi, on
hämmästyttänyt minua suuresti. Nimitys »piskuinen lauma» ei
rohkaise, vaan päinvastoin masentaa hartauttani, etenkin kun
ajattelen omaa arvottomuuttani, jossa suhteessa oman nöyrän
pelkäilyni mukaan olen kaikkia muita alempana. Uskon, ettei
taivaassa koskaan ole anarkiaa, vaan niinkuin enkelien kesken on
eri arvoasteita, samoin siellä on Pyhienkin joukossa eri asteita
etevyyden nojalla. Vakuutan kuitenkin, etten suinkaan pyri
ensimmäisille sijoille; toivoni on vain (ja siinä olen onnellinen) saada
olla edes viimeisenä miehenä, taivaan joukkojen jälkipäässä. Olen
vakuutettu pelastuksestani, vaikka en sitä uskalla valalle ottaa. Olen
niin sanoakseni varma ja uskon epäilemättä, että on sellainen
kaupunki kuin Konstantinopoli. Kuitenkin olisi sen vannominen minun
puoleltani tavallaan väärä vala, koska minulla ei ole siitä omin
aistimin saatua pettämätöntä vakuutta. Ja vaikka tosin monet
vakuuttavat ehdotonta varmuutta pelastuksestaan, niin kuitenkin
nöyrä sielu, tarkastaessaan omaa arvottomuuttaan, kohtaa monta
epäilyksen syytä ja äkkiä huomaa, kuinka vähän tarvitsemme
apostoli Paavalin neuvoa: toimikaa pelvolla ja vavistuksella niin että
pelastutte. Sama perustus, jonka nojassa on valitsemiseni, on uskoni
mukaan pelastuksenikin, nimittäin Jumalan armo ja hyvä suosio,
joka oli olemassa ennen minua, vieläpä ennen maailman
perustamista. Ennenkuin Abraham oli, olin minä, sanoo Kristus.
Samaa voin sanoa jossakin merkityksessä myös itsestäni, sillä minä
en vain ollut olemassa ennen itseäni, vaan Aatamiakin, nimittäin
Jumalan ajatuksissa ja iankaikkisessa päätöksessä. Ja siinä
merkityksessä saatan sanoa maailmankin olleen ennen luomista ja
myös loppuneen ennen alkuaan. Ja siten olin kuolleena ennen kuin
sain elämän: vaikka haudakseni koituu Englanti, oli kuolinpaikkanani
paratiisi, ja Eeva synnytti minut keskoisena, ennenkuin Kain sikisi.
Röyhkeät kiihkoilijat, jotka kieltävät hyvät työt ja luottavat

yksinomaan uskoon, eivät kuitenkaan tee tyhjäksi ansiota. Sillä kun
he nojaavat uskonsa tehoon, vahvistavat he Jumalan asemaa ja
näyttävät rikkiviisaasti uhmaavan taivasta. Jumala oli määrännyt,
että vain ne, jotka latkivat vettä koirien tavoin, saivat kunnian päästä
midianilaisia hävittämään, eikä silti yksikään heistä voinut
oikeudenmukaisesti vaatia tai kuvitella ansainneensa tuota kunniaa.
En kiellä, että oikea usko, sellainen, jota Jumala vaatii, on
pelastuksen tuntomerkki ynnä sen välikappalekin. Mutta mistä se
usko on löydettävä, se on minulle yhtä hämärää kuin viimeinen
hetkenikin. Jos Vapahtaja saattoi moittia omia oppilaitaan ja
suosikkejaan uskon puutteesta, joka kuitenkin, vaikka se olisi
sinapinsiemenen kokoinen, kykenisi vuoria siirtämään, kuinka sitten
meidän uskomme, josta kerskaamme, voisi olla muuta kuin tyhjää tai
korkeintaan juuri vähän enemmän kuin tyhjää. Tämä on uskoni
perusajatus. Jos siinä onkin monta eriskummaista kohtaa, johtuen
luonteeni ominaisuuksista, olen valmis, jolleivät ne kestä
kehittyneempien arvosteluja, ne peruuttamaan enkä niitä edusta
enempää kuin mikäli oppineemmat ja kykenevämmät niitä
vahvistavat.
TOINEN OSA.
Mitä tulee toiseen hyveeseen eli laupeuteen, jota ilman usko on

pelkkä käsite, vailla todellista olevaisuutta, niin minä puolestani olen
aina koettanut kehittää sitä lempeätä ja inhimillistä taipumusta, jonka
sain jo vanhemmiltani, sekä soveltaa sitä rakkauden kirjoitettujen ja
säädettyjen lakien mukaan. Ja jos tutkin itseäni totuudenmukaisesti,
niin luullakseni olen alusta asti suunniteltu ja muovaeltu juuri sitä
hyvettä harjoittamaan. Sillä rakenteeni on niin yleislaatuinen, että se
myötätuntoisesti soveltuu ja mukautuu kaikkiin asioihin. Minussa ei
ole minkäänlaista vastenmielisyyttä tai erikoista mielihalua, olkoonpa
puhe ruuasta, ilmasta tai mistä tahansa. En ihmettele lainkaan, että
ranskalaiset voivat syödä sammakoita, käärmeitä ja tatteja, enkä
sitäkään, että juutalaiset söivät heinäsirkkoja, vaan heidän
joukossaan asuessani syön niitä tavallisina ravintoaineina ja
havaitsen niiden soveltuvan vatsaani yhtä hyvin kuin heidänkin
vatsaansa. Voisin sulattaa hautuumaalta kerättyä salaattia yhtä hyvin
kuin vihannestarhasta saatua. En hätkähdä nähdessäni käärmeen,
skorpionin, sisiliskon tai salamanterin. Kohdatessani rupikonnan tai
kyykäärmeen en tunne mitään halua siepata kiveä niitä tuhotakseni.
Yleensä en tunne mitään noista tavallisista vastenmielisyyksistä,

joita on muissa. Kansalliset vastakohtaisuudet eivät koske minua
enkä ennakkoluuloisesti kohtele ranskalaisia, italialaisia,
espanjalaisia tai hollantilaisia, vaan missä huomaan heidän
toimintansa olevan sopusoinnussa oman maani asukkaiden kanssa,
kunnioitan, rakastan ja hyväksyn heitä vastaavassa määrässä.
Olen syntynyt lauhkeassa ilmanalassa, mutta minusta tuntuu, että

sopisin asumaan kaikissa. Minä en ole sellainen kasvi, joka ei
menestyisi puutarhan ulkopuolella. Kaikki paikat, kaikki ilmanalat
ovat minulle kuin yksi ainoa maa. Minä olen Englannissa kaikkialla ja
jokaisen leveysasteen kohdalla ollessani. Olen joutunut
haaksirikkoon enkä kuitenkaan ole meren tai tuulten vihamies. Voin
lukea, huvitella ja nukkua myrskynkin raivotessa. Lyhyesti sanoen:
en viero mitään, ja omatuntoni sanoisi minun valehtelevan, jos
väittäisin jyrkästi inhoavani tai vihaavani jotakin olentoa, paitsi
paholaista, tai ainakin kammoavana siinä määrin, etten voisi siihen
mukaantua. Jos yleisten vihattujen asioiden joukossa on jotakin, mitä
tuomitsen tai halveksun, niin se on tuo kaiken järjen, hyveen ja
uskonnon vihollinen, joukko, monipäinen hirviö, joka eri osiinsa
jaettuna näyttää ihmisiltä, Jumalan luomilta järkeviltä olennoilta,
mutta toisiinsa sekaantuneena on vain yksi ainoa valtava peto,
hirveämpi epäsikiö kuin mikään monipäinen lohikäärme.
Laupeuden kanssa ristiriitaista ei ole nimittää sellaisia olennoita

hulluiksi. Sillä tavoin kaikki pyhät kirjoittajat ovat heitä nimittäneet
Salomonin antaman esimerkin mukaan, ja meidän uskomme
mukaan se tulee hyväksyä. Myöskään en joukkonimityksellä tarkoita
pelkästään alhaisempia ja vähäarvoisempia ihmisiä, sillä
ylempienkin joukossa on huonompia aineksia, jonkinlaista rahvasta,
jonka mieli on yhtä oikullinen kuin edellistenkin ja joka on
käsityöläisten tasolla, vaikka varallisuus jonkun verran kultaa
heikkouksia ja kukkaro on vastapainona hassutuksille. Mutta samoin
kuin lukua laskiessa kolme tai neljä miestä yhteensä voi joutua
takapajulle yhden ainoan rinnalla, joka pitää itseään heitä
heikompana, samoin myös kokonainen joukko noita tietämättömiä
kultakaloja ei ansaitse todellista kunnioitusta senkään vertaa kuin
moni kurja ihminen, joka asemansa puolesta on heidän jalkainsa
juuressa. Puhukaamme poliitikkojen tapaan: on olemassa aatelisia
ilman sukutaulua, luonnollista jaloutta, jonka nojalla pääsee
kohoamaan toisen tasalle vieläpä yläpuolellekin ansioittensa ja
eteväin ominaisuuksiensa mukaan. Vaikka aikamme turmelus ja
nykyiset pyrinnöt näyttävät viittaavan toiseen suuntaan, olivat asiat
edellämainitulla kannalla alkuperäisissä valtioissa, ja siihen perustuu
vieläkin kaikkien oikeinjärjestettyjen yhteiskuntien elämä, kunnes
väärinkäytökset pääsevät valtaan, karkeammat vietit pyrkivät
saavuttamaan sitä, mitä viisaammat ylenkatsovat, ja kullakin on
vapaus koota ja keinotella itselleen rikkauksia, joiden avulla taas
voidaan hankkia, mitä kukin himoitsee.
Luonteeni yleinen ja puolueeton laatu taivuttaa minut etusijassa

yllämainittuun jaloon hyveeseen. Onnellista on olla syntymästään ja
luonnostaan taipuvainen hyveeseen ja niinmuodoin kasvaa kuin
siemenestä, tarvitsematta joutua kasvatuksen kautta oksastetuksi ja
siihen pakotetuksi. Kuitenkaan emme ole muuta kuin siveellisyyden
saarnaajia, jos noudatamme vain omia luonnollisia taipumuksiamme
emmekä anna minkään korkeamman lain kuin järjen niitä
säännöstellä, ja Jumalan sanan mukaan olemme silloin vielä
pakanoita. Siksi täytyy rakkauden suurella työllä olla muitakin
vaikuttimia ja päämääriä. En anna almuja vain tyydyttääkseni veljeni
nälkää, vaan täyttääkseni Jumalan tahtoa ja käskyjä. En ota esiin
kukkaroani pelkästään hänen tähtensä, joka pyytää, vaan Hänen
tähtensä, joka on sen minulle antanut. En tahdo auttaa ketään sen
vuoksi, että hän kaunopuheisesti puhuu kurjuudestaan, enkä
tyydyttääkseni säälintunnettani, sillä se olisi pelkkää moraalista
armeliaisuutta ja johtuisi enemmän intohimosta kuin järjestä. Sillä se,
joka auttaa toista pelkän säälin vaikutuksesta, ei anna apuansa niin
paljon hänen kuin oman itsensä vuoksi, sillä säälien toisten
onnettomuutta otamme sen omaksemme, ja auttaessamme heitä
siitä autamme samalla itseämme. Samoin on erehdyttävää koettaa
korjata toisten onnettomuutta sitä armeliaitten luonteitten tavallista
ajatusta seuraten, että voimme itsekin kerran joutua samanlaiseen
asemaan. Sillä se on nurjaa ja ovelaa laupeutta, koska sitä
osoittamalla näytämme houkuttelevan ihmisten sääliä kaiken varalta.
Olen muuten pannut merkille, että varsinaiset almuihin

turvautuvat, vaikka liikkuvatkin suuressa kansanjoukossa, kuitenkin
osaavat pyynnöillään kääntyä määrättyjen, valittujen henkilöiden
puoleen. Nämä kokeneet ja ammatissaan taitavat kerjäläiset ovat
varmastikin perehtyneet kasvojen ilmeitä tuntemaan, ja sen avulla he
oitis keksivät armeliaan ihmisen. Sillä kasvoissamme on joitakin
salaperäisiä merkkejä, jotka ilmaisevat sielumme laadun ja joista
sekin, joka ei tunne edes aakkosia, voi lukea luonteemme
ominaisuudet.
Olen myös sitä mieltä, että ilmeitä on tavallaan havaittavissa, ei

ainoastaan ihmisissä, vaan kasveissakin, joten kussakin niistä on
jokin ulkonainen piirre ilmaisemassa sisällistä muotoa. Jumalan
sormi on jättänyt merkin kaikkiin töihinsä, ei tosin kuviolla tai
kirjaimilla ilmaistuna, vaan niiden erinäisissä muodoissa,
rakenteessa, osissa ja toiminnoissa, joista yhteensä saadaan niiden
laatua kuvaava sana. Näillä sanoilla Jumala antaa tähdille nimet ja
samojen aakkosten avulla Aatami pani kullekin luontokappaleelle
sen erikoista laatua vastaavan nimen.

Marina Carr Pastures of The Unknown 1St Ed Edition Melissa Sihra Full Chapter

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Marina Carr: Pastures of the Unknown

1st ed. Edition Melissa Sihra

ISBN 978-3-319-98330-1 ISBN 978-3-319-98331-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950727

Faber. I am immensely thankful to Marion Cox, Ronnie O’Gorman

Dublin, 2018 Melissa Sihra

1 Introduction: Towards a Matriarchal Lineage 1

2 Seeking a Landscape: Early Pastures 39

3 Lakes of the Night: The Mai 73

4 Topographies of the Mind: Portia Coughlan 93

5 Writ in the Sky: By the Bog of Cats… 117

6 The Haunted Kitchen: On Raftery’s Hill 149

7 Psychic Terrains: Ariel and Woman and Scarecrow 177

8 Playing the Field: The Cordelia Dream and Meat

9 Landscapes of the Mind’s Eye: The Giant Blue

10 The Nature of Playwriting: Sixteen Possible

11 Conclusion: Through the Gauze 277

Image 1.1 Marina Carr’s childhood landscape of Pallas Lake,

Abbey Theatre 2015. Photographer Ros Kavanagh.

Introduction: Towards a Matriarchal

Marina Carr: Shades of Gregory

© The Author(s) 2018 1

of her ‘extraordinary’ status the token woman is permitted to stand-in

Fast forward to 2016 and the notorious re-performed oppression of

Tilt the Lens

[I]n all of the commentary around women’s writing, the assumption

The idea of a ‘matriarchal lineage’ does not seek to essentialise women’s

of female-centric power structures in socio-cultural production. It is

The Origin Site of Gendered Authority

The emotional power of Gregory’s language is revelatory here; she is

absurdist Irish plays Gregory’s Spreading the News (1904) through to

from the small Atlantic seaboard village of Dunkineely in Co. Donegal.

(2014). She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from University

abuse continue without intervention by Church or State. Psychic land-

Challenging the ‘Beaten Path of Authorised History’

Language as ‘Eternal Shape-Changer’

‘The Language Which She Discovered’

From [Gregory] derives the characteristic dialogue which often appears,

Ellis-Fermor ascribes co-authorship of Kathleen Ni Houlihan to Gregory

‘We Three Always’

At the time Annie Horniman offered great praise: ‘Lady Gregory’s

Gregory’s ‘great delight as a child was to be outside at Roxborough […]

Women’s Theatre: Radical Curvature

Image 1.4 Coole River, leading into Coole Lake

Coole River is a counter-patriarchal lineage of women in Irish theatre;

The free-flowing energies of the water are forced to recede

‘I Was the First’

in the Introduction to Gregory’s book, remarks, ‘And now all in a

Most interestingly it is the usually self-deprecating Gregory who claims

When my Cuchulain of Muirthemne came out, [Synge] said to Mr. Yeats

An innate connection between Gregory’s and Carr’s dramatic voices lies

the people she knows so well’.95 Gregory’s gift of lyricism permeates

Carr intuitively builds upon Gregory’s legacy of dialect, storytelling

‘The Threshold of Eternity’

Gregory’s intuitive comprehension of ‘water-witches’ and journeys to

Gregory’s pragmatism towards the fairy world is comparable to Carr’s

The culture believes in ghosts. […] All of that is entirely natural to me

Like much of Gregory’s writings, each of Carr’s plays is imbued with

Image 1.5 Biddy Early’s cottage, Feakle, Co. Clare

My journeys into the depths of Marina Carr’s imagination, beginning

‘Her Fame Will Grow’

made by the Church to erase beliefs in superstitious practices [where] the

Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi,

Marina Carr: Shades of Gregory

The Origin Site of Gendered Authority

‘The Threshold of Eternity’