Speech at the First International Shaw Conference, Dublin

Abstract

This chapter features President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins’ speech that opened the G. B. Shaw: Back in Town Conference, sponsored by the International Shaw Society and University College Dublin, on 29 May 2012. The speech articulates the public Shaw, who embraced the responsibility to speak the truth in order to provoke intelligent debate. The speech also confirmed the focus of the above conference on the various facets of Shaw and Ireland: Shaw’s presence within the early modern Irish literary movement, as well as Shaw’s interactions within political and cultural movements of the same period. It suggests that Shaw, far from being an outside London-based observer, was an integral presence within the Irish debates that determined Ireland in its arduous movements toward independence and modernity. The speech, and now chapter, opens the doors to further deliberations on Shaw within Irish spheres, illuminating directions for future scholarship on Shaw and the making of modern Ireland.