Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“The Rush of Air, the Windows Opened on Extravagance and Storm of Idea …”: Kate O’Brien’s The Last of Summer and Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland

Part of the book series: Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries ((BSC))

  • 107 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter explores the unexpected and underexamined connection between novelist Kate O’Brien and playwright Bernard Shaw. In a key scene of her 1943 novel, The Last of Summer, set in the weeks before World War II, O’Brien foregrounds the name of Bernard Shaw and his 1903 play Man and Superman. The aim of this chapter is twofold. Firstly, it examines in detail the many connections between O’Brien’s novel and Shaw’s play. Both contain triangular relationships, the suggestion of incest and an obstructive Irish parent blocking a proposed marriage. Secondly, it examines how from 1916 on, the situation with regard to Shaw’s plays at the Abbey completely changed. From not staging his plays (most notoriously, John Bull’s Other Island, the play he wrote for the Abbey’s opening in 1904), the Abbey now made Shaw effectively the “house dramatist” for over twenty years, with as many as five or six productions a year.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 129.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. 1.

    Kate O’Brien, Pray for the Wanderer (London, Toronto: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1938), 283.

  2. 2.

    Kate O’Brien, The Last of Summer (London: Virago Press, 1980), 67. All future references are to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the text.

  3. 3.

    Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, in Collected Plays and Their Prefaces: Vol. 2 of the Bodley Head Bernard Shaw (London: Max Reinhardt, 1971), 729. All future references are to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the text.

  4. 4.

    Nicholas Grene and Deirdre McFeely, ‘Shaw Productions in Ireland, 1900–2009’, in Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition, ed. Peter Gahan, SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 30 (2010), 238–59.

  5. 5.

    Kate O’Brien, “As To University Life”, University Review 1:6 (1955), 6. O’Brien gives the year of her arrival at UCD as 1817, which is out regarding both century and year.

  6. 6.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland (London: B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1962), 117; “Shaw Productions in Ireland 1900–2009”, 241.

  7. 7.

    Lennox Robinson, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre: A History 1899–1951 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd., 1951), 115.

  8. 8.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland , 117. Peter Gahan opens his Introduction to Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition by citing this passage and discussing Kate O’Brien in relation to Bernard Shaw. See Peter Gahan, “Introduction”, SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 30, 1.

  9. 9.

    Paige Reynolds, “Spectacular Nostalgia: Modernism and Dramatic Form in Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer”, Special Issue on Kate O’Brien, guest edited by Paige Reynolds, Irish University Review 48:1 (Spring/Summer 2018), 55.

  10. 10.

    Anthony Roche, “The Ante-Room as Drama”, in Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien, edited by Eibhear Walshe (Cork: Cork University Press, 1993), 89. For the plays of Kate O’Brien, see James Moran, “Kate O’Brien in the Theatre”, Irish UniversityReview (Spring/Summer 2018), 7–22.

  11. 11.

    Kate O’Brien, “U.C.D. as I Forget It”, University Review 3:2 (1962), 10.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.,10.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.,7.

  14. 14.

    Kate O’Brien, “As to University Life”, 6.

  15. 15.

    See James Joyce, The Day of the Rabblement, in Occasional, Critical and Political Writing, edited by Kevin Barry (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 50–2.

  16. 16.

    On the Irish Theatre, see William J. Feeney, Drama in Hardwicke Street: A History of the Irish Theatre Company (Cranbury, N.J., and London: Associated University Presses, 1984).

  17. 17.

    William J. Feeney, Drama in Hardwicke Street: A History of the Irish Theatre Company (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1984), p. 163.

  18. 18.

    Ibid.,165.

  19. 19.

    See Anthony Roche, “Thomas MacDonagh’s 1916: Protagonist and Playwright”, New Hibernia Review 21:1 (Spring 2017), 18–40.

  20. 20.

    Kate O’Brien, “U.C.D. as I Forget It”, 10.

  21. 21.

    Kate O’Brien, “As To University Life”, 9.

  22. 22.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland, 117.

  23. 23.

    Ibid., 118.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., 118.

  25. 25.

    Bernard Shaw, “Preface for Politicians”, John Bull’s Other Island, in Collected Plays and their Prefaces: Vol. 2, 808.

  26. 26.

    In addition to regular professional Shaw productions from London starting in 1907, accomplished amateur companies under the direction of Anthony Evelyn Ashley and partner/wife Flora MacDonnell staged some noteworthy Shaw productions in Dublin. This started with a Shaw week in August 1907—the first ever such week in Dublin—performing Arms and the Man, The Man of Destiny, and How He Lied to Her Husband under the name of the Players’ Club. Later, Ashley and MacDonnell staged John Bull’s Other Island in October 1912 (with no company name), which coincided with the Home Rule Bill and the paper edition of the play in the same year, which was arranged to sell for six pennies. In 1913, Ashley and MacDonnell joined with Casimir Markievicz, forming the Dublin Repertory Theatre, to stage The Devil’s Disciple in May, and revived their production of John Bull’s Other Island in October. In November 1914, Ashley and MacDonnell staged Mrs Warren’s Profession under the threat of censorship from Dublin Castle. All of the Ashley-MacDonnell-connected Shaw productions received much Dublin press coverage as all, except for Mrs Warren’s Profession, were staged in week-long runs at the Gaiety Theatre. Judging from the coverage, these were successful Shaw productions and contributed to Shaw’s presence in Dublin. See “Shaw and the Dublin Repertory Theatre” in SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 35.2, by Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, 2015.

  27. 27.

    See The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats: IV 1905–1907, edited by John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 632.

  28. 28.

    The Arrow, 25 August 1909 – “The Shewing -Up of Blanco Posnet: Statement by the Directors”, in The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats 8: The Irish Dramatic Movement, edited by Mary Fitzgerald and Richard J. Finneran (New York and London: Scribner, 2003), 207–8.

  29. 29.

    Joseph Holloway’s Abbey Theatre: A Selection from his Unpublished Journal, edited by Robert Hogan and Michael O’Neill (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967), 130.

  30. 30.

    A visiting company (Jack Dwan’s) presented a production of Shaw’s O’Flaherty V.C. at the Abbey in 1927; it was the first occasion in all of those years on which Lady Gregory had to pay for her own seat. Two performances of the play were given by the Stage Society in London in late 1920. Arthur Sinclair and Sara Allgood played O’Flaherty and his mother; Shaw had written the parts specifically for them in 1915.

  31. 31.

    Letter from W.B. Yeats to St. John Ervine, 16 July 1916, cited in Robert Hogan and Richard Burnham, The Art of the Amateur 1916–1920, The Modern Irish Drama: A Documentary History V (Dublin: The Dolmen Press; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press Inc., 1984), 33.

  32. 32.

    Letter of Lady Gregory to Bernard Shaw, 12 August 1916, Nicholas Grene and Dan. H. Laurence (editors), Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993), 118.

  33. 33.

    Robert Hogan and Richard Burnham, The Art of the Amateur 1916–1920, 33.

  34. 34.

    Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, 118.

  35. 35.

    See Brad Kent “Missing Links: Bernard Shaw and the Discussion Play”, in Nicholas Grene and Christopher Morash (editors), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 147.

  36. 36.

    Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, 119.

  37. 37.

    Ibid.

  38. 38.

    Ibid., 122.

  39. 39.

    Cited in Richard Ellmann, James Joyce: New and Revised Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 401.

  40. 40.

    Letter from J. Augustus Keogh to Lady Gregory, Robert Hogan and Richard Burnham, The Art of the Amateur 1916–1920, 34.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., 36.

  42. 42.

    Letter from Shaw to Lady Gregory, 4 May 1917, Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, 133.

  43. 43.

    Letter from Shaw to Lady Gregory, 28 April 1917, Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, 132.

  44. 44.

    Letter from Shaw to Lady Gregory, 28 April 1917, Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, 132.

  45. 45.

    See Brenna Katz Clarke and Harold Ferrar, The Dublin Drama League 1919–1941 (Dublin: The Dolmen Press; Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press Inc., 1979), 31.

  46. 46.

    Joseph Holloway reported on this on the Tuesday, 24 August 1909 entry in his diary: “All the fuss that is being made over the production of Shaw’s play tomorrow night drew a big house to-night to the re-opening of the Abbey with The Playboy and The Rising of the Moon… I had a chat with James Joyce who had been out of town for five years and had never been to the Abbey before. […] I again had a few words with him after Act 1 of The Playboy, which he said he liked in the acting. He thought [Fred] O’Donovan’s Christy Mahon the true type intended by the author.” Joseph Holloway’s Abbey Theatre, 129. Joyce does not comment on O’Donovan’s performance as Blanco Posnet in his coverage of Shaw’s play. See James Joyce, “The Battle between Bernard Shaw and the Censor: ‘The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet’, Occasional, Critical and Political Writing, edited by Kevin Barry, translations from the Italian by Conor Deane (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 152–4.

  47. 47.

    Hugh Hunt, The Abbey: Ireland’s National Theatre 1904–1978 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1979), 113. O’Donovan, who had directed the first full-length Irish film, Knocknagow , in 1916 wanted to return to working in film.

  48. 48.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland, 46.

  49. 49.

    Ibid.

  50. 50.

    Letter from Lady Gregory to Bernard Shaw, 12 August 1916, Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey, 118.

  51. 51.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland, 47.

  52. 52.

    Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch, in Collected Plays and their Prefaces: Volume 5 of the Bodley Head Bernard Shaw (London: Max Reinhardt, 1972) 491.

  53. 53.

    Ibid., 494.

  54. 54.

    Cited in Kate O’Brien, My Ireland, 45.

  55. 55.

    Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, 496.

  56. 56.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland, 45.

  57. 57.

    Paige Reynolds, “Modernism and Dramatic Form in Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer”, Irish University Review 48:1, 57.

  58. 58.

    Ibid.

  59. 59.

    See Ronan Fanning, Eamon de Valera: A Will to Power (London: Faber and Faber, 2015), 157: de Valera gained “complete of the control of the editorial content of the paper as well as over the appointment of all staff”.

  60. 60.

    David Clare discusses Hector Malone Senior as an Irish Diasporic character in Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 32.

  61. 61.

    Kate O’Brien, My Ireland, 116.

  62. 62.

    R. F. Foster, Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890–1923 (London: Penguin Books, 2015), 112.

  63. 63.

    As Diarmuid Ferriter points out, Kate O’Brien’s autobiographical novel Pray for the Wanderer and its male protagonist were “scathing about de Valera and his Constitution”. See Diarmuid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (London: Profile Books, 2005), 370.

References

  • Clare, David. 2016. Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Clarke, Brenna Katz, and Harold Ferrar. 1979. The Dublin Drama League 1919–1941. Dublin/Atlantic Highlands: The Dolmen Press/Humanities Press Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ellmann, Richard. 1982. James Joyce: New and Revised Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanning, Ronan. 2015. Eamon de Valera: A Will to Power. London: Faber and Faber.

    Google Scholar 

  • Feeney, William J. 1984. Drama in Hardwicke Street: A History of the Irish Theatre Company. Cranbury/London: Associated University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferriter, Diarmuid. 2005. The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000. London: Profile Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foster, R.F. 2015. Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland 1890–1923. London: Penguin Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gahan, Peter. 2010. Introduction. Bernard Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 30: 1–26. 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grene, Nicholas, and Deirdre McFeely. 2010. Shaw Productions in Ireland, 1900–2009. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 30: 236–259.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hogan, Robert, and Richard Burnham. 1984. The Art of the Amateur 1916–1920, The Modern Irish Drama: A Documentary History V. Dublin/Atlantic Highlands: The Dolmen Press/Humanities Press, Inc.

    Google Scholar 

  • Holloway, Joseph. 1967. Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre: A Selection from His Unpublished Journal. Ed. Robert Hogan and Michael O’Neill. Carbondale/Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, Hugh. 1979. The Abbey: Ireland’s National Theatre 1904–1978. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Joyce, James. 2000a. The Day of the Rabblement. Occasional, Critical and Political Writing, 50–52. Ed. Kevin Barry. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2000b. The Battle Between Bernard Shaw and the Censor: ‘The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet’. Occasional, Critical and Political Writing, 152–154.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kent, Brad. 2016. Missing Links: Bernard Shaw and the Discussion Play. In The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre, ed. Nicholas Grene and Christopher Morash, 138–151., 147. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, James. 2018. Kate O’Brien in the Theatre. Irish University Review 48 (Spring/Summer): 7–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Brien, Kate. 1938. Pray for the Wanderer. London/Toronto: William Heinemann Ltd..

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1955. As To University Life. University Review 1 (6): 3–11. 6.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1962. My Ireland, 241. London: B.T.Batsford Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1963. U.C.D. as I Forget It. University Review 3 (2): 6–11. 7–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1980. The Last of Summer. London: Virago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reynolds, Paige. 2018. Spectacular Nostalgia: Modernism and Dramatic Form in Kate O’Brien’s Pray for the Wanderer. Irish University Review 48 (1 Spring/Summer): 54–68. 55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ritschel, NelsonO’Ceallaigh. 2015. Shaw and the Dublin Repertory Theatre. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies 35 (2): 168–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, Lennox. 1951. Ireland’s Abbey Theatre: A History 1899–1951, 115. London: Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roche, Anthony. 1993. The Ante-Room as Drama.Ordinary People Dancing: Essays on Kate O’Brien, 85–100. 89. Ed. Eibhear Walshe. Cork: Cork University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2017. Thomas MacDonagh’s 1916: Protagonist and Playwright. New Hibernia Review 21 (1Spring): 18–40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, Bernard. 1971a. Man and Superman. Collected Plays and their Prefaces: Volume 2 of the Bodley Head Bernard Shaw. Ed. Dan H. Laurence, 489–802. London: Max Reinhardt.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1971b. Preface for Politicians. In John Bull’s Other Island. Collected Plays and their Prefaces: Volume 2 of the Bodley Head Bernard Shaw, ed. Dan H. Laurence, 807–871. London: Max Reinhardt.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1972. Part IV: Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman. In Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch. Collected Plays and Their Prefaces: Volume 5 of the Bodley Head Bernard Shaw, ed. Dan H. Laurence, 491–563. London: Max Reinhardt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shaw, Bernard and Lady Gregory. 1983. Shaw, Lady Gregory and the Abbey. Ed. Nicholas Grene and Dan H. Laurence. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yeats, William Butler. 2003. The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet: Statement by the Directors. In The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats 8: The Irish Dramatic Movement, ed. Mary FitzGerald and Richard J. Finneran, 207–208. New York/London: Scribner.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2005. The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats: IV 1905–1907. Ed. John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Anthony Roche

Authors
  1. Anthony Roche
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anthony Roche .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of English, Drama and Film, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Audrey McNamara

  2. Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Pocasset, MA, USA

    Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Roche, A. (2020). “The Rush of Air, the Windows Opened on Extravagance and Storm of Idea …”: Kate O’Brien’s The Last of Summer and Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman. In: McNamara, A., O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, N. (eds) Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland. Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42113-7_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation