WWI, Common Sense, and O’Flaherty V.C.: Shaw Advocates a New Modernist Outlook for Ireland

Abstract

In his 1915 play O’Flaherty V.C., an anti-war recruitment play which addressed the Irish question, Shaw advocated for the Irish public to look towards the future with a more international perspective, and to abandon revering shibboleths of the past. Shaw’s call for a new national outlook, based on economic realities, would be echoed some fifty years later by then Taoiseach Sean Lemass, when, on the bi-centenary of the Easter Rising, Lemass declared that it was time “to forget the Ireland of the Sean Bhean Bhocht and think of the Ireland of the technological expert.” When Britain became involved in World War I in 1914, the question of Ireland’s political and cultural future became inextricably bound to the international conflict.This chapter examines how, importantly today, the value of this play can be seen to lie beyond its status as a social construct of a pivotal time in Irish history.

The very words nation, nationality, our country, patriotism fill me with loathing. Why do you want to stimulate a self-consciousness which is already morbidly excessive in our wretched island, and is deluging Europe with blood? If we could only forget for a moment that we are British, and become really catholic Europeans, there would be some hope for us.

Shaw, personal letter to Lady Gregory, Dec 1917 (Bernard Shaw and Augusta Gregory. Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record, ed. Dan H Laurence and Nicholas Grene [Buckinghamshire, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smyth, 1993], 136)