Bernard Shaw''s Irish Outlook

Using close readings of Shaw's plays and letters, as well as archival research, David Clare illustrates that Shaw regularly placed Irish, Irish Diasporic, and surrogate Irish characters into his plays in order to comment on Anglo-Irish relations and to explore the nature of Irishness.

Although Bernard Shaw is often regarded as a writer of English society plays, his formative years in Ireland deeply influenced his work for the stage. His use of Irish-born, Irish Diasporic, Surrogate Irish, and Stage English characters reveals the degree to which he maintained a strongly Irish perspective throughout his life. Shaw''s Irish-born characters betray his Irish reverse snobbery; he uses them to suggest that it is better to come from a marginalized background than a privileged one. Some of his English and American characters (including Henry Higgins) derive their strengths - and some of their weaknesses - from their Irish cultural backgrounds, and Shaw occasionally endows non-Irish characters (such as Saint Joan) with Irish qualities and then uses them as crypto-Irish foils in their dealings with English characters. Shaw uses Stage English characters in his three Irish plays to critique the English for what he sees as their national flaws.