COURSE NAME: DRAMA IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Politicizing Drama in the

Realist Theatre
A Survey on Two Realist Plays

Tahani Ali Al-Hammami

32/‫‏‬01/‫‏‬30‫‏‬
Instructor: Dr. Ieman Al-Khayal

This paper seeks to subject how can drama be politicized by showing a close connection
between what is happening on the stage and what is taking place outside in the real world.
The reader will be exposed to two plays written by two different Realist dramatists as
examples of the important role played by the Realistic Movement in politicizing drama.
Synge's "Riders to the Sea" and Shaw's "Pygmalion" were used in this survey .
Politicizing Drama in the Realist Theatre
A Survey on Two Realist Plays

To speak about the Realist theatre it is important to know the movement

that led up to the production of it, Realism. Realism, actually, refers to the accurate –
or realistic – portrayal of life in literature and the arts. In fiction and drama, the term
is often used to describe works that deal with the daily struggles and
disappointments of ordinary people. This movement was a product of the new
realities that took hold in Europe in the 19th century. These included the ups and
downs of democratic reform, the social and economic changes brought about by the
Industrial Revolution, and new methods of observation opened by science and
photography. Since the Realist Theatre is concerned with depicting life and the
dilemmas of people, it is, therefore, politicizing the situation of its time because this
is actually what politics is all about. "All drama is political in the widest sense of the
world" and so the Realist Theatre is. In this survey, two plays by two different Realist
writers from the same era are used as examples to show a close connection between
what is happening on the stage and what is taking place outside in the real world, J. M.
Synge's Riders to the Sea and G. B. Shaw's Pygmalion.

Riders to the Sea:

Starting, firstly, with J. M. Synge's play, Riders to the Sea (1904), it is

important to display the Irish scene at the time the play was written in order to
depict how much this play is related to its time and to what was happening then.

In 1900, Ireland was a single political region to British rule, governed directly
by the British Parliament in London. The Act of Union brought Ireland into the United
Kingdom along with Great Britain. The British had persuaded the Irish parliament to
surrender its sovereignty in the Act of Union by promising political rights to Catholics
but failed to honor this promise. This actually frustrated the Irish people who had
hopes to have an independent Ireland after losing many of its children in the clashes
with the British army that had killed many of the Irish in Dublin streets and other

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places in Ireland. As a result of this oppression, Irish people started a Nationalist
movement to bring about the independence of Ireland.

Actually, there was a parallel broader movement campaigning for the revival
of a national Irish cultural identity. Writers and artists started a kind of Irish literary
renaissance in which they were looking for a symbol of national identity even though
they may not have been overly interested in the actual politics of the situation. It
was therefore natural that they should depict native Irish life in their writing, Irish
landscapes, mysticism of Ireland, Irish mythology, folklore, culture and history as
well as the peasant life, which is quite typical for the Irish people, to show the Irish
identity.

The Irish literary renaissance was led initially by the romantic sensuous
poetry of Yeats and the realistic prose writing of George Russell and George Moore.
However the turn of the century welcomed an important new voice, that of J. M.
Synge. In 1896, Yeats visited the Aran islands in Galway Bay off the west coast of
Ireland, and upon meeting Synge in Paris three years later, advised him to live
among the Irish peasants in order to acquire a real sense of Irish national identity.
Synge complied and wrote his tragedy Riders to the Sea.

In Riders to the Sea, the scene of the play is a little cabin such as was familiar
to Synge on the Aran Islands, with its hearth and its oilskins, spinning wheel, and turf
stack. The atmosphere is distinctly that of Inishmaan, although Synge designates it
simply as an "island off the West Coast of Ireland." The people are Aran people and
the life they lead is typical of the life Synge came to know during his numerous visits
to the islands. Thus Riders to the Sea is the tragedy of the struggle of the people of
Aran against the sea upon which they must make their living.

As a realist dramatist, Synge portrayed the life of peasants accurately as he

saw it where he raised several issues that bothered that slice of the community
representing in the character of Maurya and her children. Firstly, the play subjected
the danger, representing in facing the sea, that the peasants are exposed to
everyday in order to gain their living. Paradoxically, as the sea is a source of their
living, it is also a source of their death. Secondly, it showed the hardship of the

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typical Irish peasant family by the description of Maurya's cottage, the winds that
blow, the sea. It showed also the poverty of those people by depicting the difficulty
in finding a livelihood in which men risk their lives to secure their families. Thirdly,
the play actually presented another type of hardship, that of the women. The two
sisters, Cathleen and Nora, are working in the house all the time. Cathleen, the
eldest sister, is managing the housework and taking care of the other members of
the family due to the fact that her mother is old woman who can hardly walk
without the help of a stick. The younger sister, Nora, on the other hand, is more or
less helping in the housework as well as knitting most of the time. Mauyra, the
mother, is indeed the most miserable character in the play that she lost all her six
sons, her husband and her husband's father to the sea. By the painting of the
character of Mauyra, Synge was reflecting the mothers' grief in losing their sons, and
therefore their identities, to the sea. He has simply dramatized the real tragedy of
the men who were destined to drown and the women whose only fate was to raise
up their sons for the sea.

Speaking politically, Synge by presenting these images of peasant life and the
sea, he was actually reflecting the Irish scene represented in Maurya's family. The
location of the cottage being it in an "island off the West Coast of Ireland", shows
how Ireland itself is located, that is on sea. Subjecting a poor Irish family reveals the
economic state of Ireland that it is a poor country. Furthermore, the image of sea,
the antagonist in the play, would actually stand for the danger that the Irish face
from the British army who killed many of their men. The grief of the mother Maurya
is symbolically revealing the grief of the Mother Land, Ireland, in losing its children to
the sea and to the British army. Maurya by losing her sons, Ireland loses its identity.

Pygmalion:

Beside the World War I, the Industrial Revolution, colonialism and the British
empire, there was the rise of women and the working classes at the time G. B. Shaw
wrote Pygmalion (1914) which are reflected in his play.

During the decade which produced Pygmalion, the political power of the
working class increased greatly, through massive increases in trade union

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membership. Meanwhile, reforms to laws concerning suffrage, the right to vote,
further brought men (and later, women) of the working class into Britain's ever-more
participatory democracy. Only after many years of political struggle by organizations
of women known as "suffragettes" did woman achieve the right to vote. Increased
political participation further prompted a shift in sex roles: British society had
already noticed the phenomena of "the new woman", and was to see further
changes such as increasing numbers of women in the work force, as well as reforms
divorce laws and other impacts upon domestic life.

Shaw was, indeed, aware of all these issues of his time, mainly the class
differences and women's problems. Pygmalion nevertheless probes important
questions about social class, human behavior and relations between the sexes,
which was the time's main problem. On the other hand, the basic stance of
Pygmalion is, actually, a much more elaborate and less clear-cut critique of society
than Shaw himself implied by his claim that the bulk was written "merely to call
public attention to the importance of the study of phonetics" as a means of breaking
down class barriers; and it is not only a critique of society. It is a defense of a
person's right to own and develop his or her soul.

It is actually not only the study of phonetics that could bridge the classes
together as it is implied in the play, but it is education in general, both morally and
mentally. As the typical Shavian plays, Pygmalion raised problems of its time such as
the working class problems, the middle-class morality and women's education and
left the solutions to its audience to think about.

It is worth noticing that Shaw in this play displayed two main elements to
climb up to the upper-class, education and income or money. These two elements
were depicted in the situation of the Doolittles, Eliza Doolittle and her father. Eliza
gained the education and she no more become one of the poor-class members
because that class does not fit her status anymore. Her father, on the other hand,
became a member of the middle-class as a result of the joke Higgins made when he
wrote a letter to a millionaire suggesting that Mr. Doolittle is the right person to
inherit him. In the two cases, however, both Eliza and her father could not be lifted

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up to the upper-class because Eliza has the education but does not have the money
while her father has the money but does not have the education. So, both elements
are demanded according to the play.

Another issue, raised by Shaw in the play, is the wide range of varieties of
spoken English which is actually a result of the class differences. This varieties of
same language would stand as a barrier against bridging up the classes together.
While Shaw himself, as his character Higgins, hated poor speech and the varieties of
dialect and vocabulary which could present obstructions to conveying meaning,
nevertheless the play suggests that the real richness of the English language is in the
variety of individuals who speak it. Thus one's own way in speaking shows his
identity, and losing it means losing this identity.

As one of the play's themes, the behavior of human was projected through
different characters in the play. Firstly, the behavior of Higgins that shows disrespect
to the people he deals with, whether a flower-girl or a duchess – they are alike.
Though he is with bad morals, people still admire him and respect him just because
he is from the upper-class. This, indeed, shows how each class member is treated
differently regardless of their good or bad behaviors but rather according to their
classes. On the other hand, Pickering though from the upper-class, but he showed
respect to everybody regardless of their classes. He, unlike Higgins, treats a flower-
girl like a duchess, and from him Eliza learned a big deal of how to behave like a lady.

To conclude, Pygmalion was actually reflecting what was taking place outside
the boarders of its stage at its time by presenting the issues and thoughts of people
then.

References:
- The Language of Literature - World Literature by Arthur N. Applebee and others. Copyright © 2006 by
McDoungal Littell Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
- The Modernist Period 1900 – 1945 by Patrick Lee-Browne. Copyright © 2003 by Evans Brothers
Limited. Printed in Italy by G. Canale and C. S.p.A - Turin.
- Drama for Students – Presenting Analysis, Context and Criticism on Commonly Studied Drama Vol. 1 by
David Galens, Lynn Spampintao and others. Copyright © 1998. Printed in the United States of America.
- The Sources of Synge by Adelaide Duncan Estill. Copyright © 1973 by Norwood Editions.