The Irish contribution to world theatre is famous, but today awareness of Irish theatrical activity is chiefly confined to the modern period. This book corrects that imbalance with an unparalleled study of the early history of drama and performance in Ireland, from the seventh century through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and ending on the eve of the arrival of Oliver Cromwell. The work of professional entertainers is discussed, as is that of amateurs, in theatricals sponsored by churches, guilds, civic authorities, and aristocratic patrons. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, many unpublished, Alan Fletcher opens up a vibrant but forgotten Irish landscape in which drama and performance collaborated actively in the mapping and manufacture of social history. Modern Irish drama is acknowledged as having a rich and vibrant tradition. Drama, Performance and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland helps to show how that vibrant tradition of drama and theatre has a very long history. Dr. Fletcher deals not only with performance traditions outside the Pale in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but for the first time delves into such traditions as can be gleaned about Gaelic Ireland during the preceding millennium. Fletcher surveys the 'native' traditions beyond the Pale; early and sixteenth-century activities within Dublin; Kilkenny drama; provincial centres outside Dublin; and Dublin in the seventeenth century up to the arrival of Oliver Cromwell, when the Irish theatres were closed.

Drama, Performance, and Polity in Pre-Cromwellian Ireland (Studies in Early English Drama)

Fletcher, Alan J.

Humor & Entertainment

University of Toronto Press

Eclipses and comets can now be precisely dated and are therefore an invaluable aid in checking the chronology of historical records. This study covers the whole world and provides a list of eclipses and comets century by century.

Chronology of Eclipses and Comets AD 1-1000

History

Schove, D. Justin

Europe

Boydell Press

This book is the winner of the Beatrice White Prize, awarded annually for outstanding scholarly work in English literature before 1590, for 2001. Drama and performance in Ireland call to mind the present rather than the ancient past, yet Irish dramatic and performative traditions were far richer before the coming of Cromwell than has generally been appreciated. This book aims to repair a deficit in our knowledge. It draws together all known documentary evidence for drama and performance in Ireland up until the closure of the first public theatre in Dublin in 1641. Historical documents, many never before published, are given pride of place, but a generous selection of pertinent literary sources has been included among the Appendices. A historical overview of Irish drama and performance prefaces the record collection, and descriptions are given of every manuscript and early printed book from which the records featuring in the book have been taken, as well as translations of items recorded in Irish, Latin or French. The book thus provides an invaluable database for a range of disciplines, from students of Irish culture to social historians, theatre historians and musicologists.ALAN J. FLETCHER is Lecturer in English Language and medieval Literature, University College Dublin.

Drama and the Performing Arts in Pre Cromwellian Ireland : A Repertory of Sources and Documents from the Earliest Times

D.S.Brewer

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre

Beadle, Richard

Cambridge University Press

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