Gender Space and Collaboration Politics: Christine Longford’s The Furies (1933)
2023; Routledge; Volume: 104; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0013838x.2023.2260277
ISSN1744-4217
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoABSTRACTIn the context of intersectional gender economies, collaborative genealogies, and hierarchies of (in)visibility in theatre making, this inquiry turns to Christine Longford's little-known play-version The Furies (1933) to explore how gender exclusions, class privileges, and uneven dynamics of spousal joint authorship have historically been overlooked within modern Irish theatre history. By examining the trajectory of her partnership with the Dublin Gate Theatre's male artistic collaborators, i.e., her spouse Edward Longford as well as Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir (also known as The Boys), this study further attends to the ways Christine Longford created a space for herself within an androcentric/queer collective at the backdrop of the European avant-garde and the rise of fascism. Christine Longford's theatre work in 1930s post-independence Ireland countervails resonances about the political economy of intellectual agency in joint writing which make manifest a complex mosaic of uncharted women's spaces, labour, and biographies.KEYWORDS: Irish dramaChristine Longfordfeminismtheatre collaborationGreek tragedytranslationgender politics AcknowledgementsPart of this article titled “Staging Women’s Rights under Fascism: Christine Longford’s The Agamemnon” was presented during the Irish Women Writers Network (IWWN) online Symposium “Collaborations and Networks,” 3–4 September 2021, Panel IV “Staging Collaboration: Roles, Rights, and Resistance.” Archival research on the Dublin Gate Theatre production of Agamemnon was made possible during the Covid-19 pandemic due to the generous efforts of the librarians at the Charles Deering McCormick Special Collections and University Archives at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, US. I am especially indebted to Kolter Campbell for granting digital access and for offering unfailing support while I was navigating the Dublin Gate Theatre Archives. I would like to extend my gratitude to librarian Martina Burns of Mayo County Library who has been helpful in tracing books during lockdown; and to Philippos Tsalahouris (Professor of Music and Director of the Conservatoire of Athens, Greece) who generously responded to my query during the pandemic when I asked him to read and record the archival music scores composed by Art O'Murnaghan in 1933, for masterfully revivifying the original melodies and sharing them with me during the early stages of my archival research.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Cixous & Clément, The Newly Born Woman, 200.2 Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life, 15.3 Venuti, “The Translator’s Invisibility,” 180.4 Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba, 30. On the impact of the avant-garde and Irish nationalism at the Dublin Gate Theatre, see also Ruud Van den Beuken’s book, Avant-Garde Nationalism at the Dublin Gate Theatre.5 Arrington, “Irish Modernism and its Legacies,” 236.6 Lisa and Lundford, Singular Texts/ Plural Authors.7 Niall Montgomery Papers. “Lady Longford’s Dublin”.8 Longford, A Biography of Dublin, 7.9 van den Beuken, Avant-Garde Nationalism at the Dublin Gate Theatre, 146.10 Longford, Making Conversation, 52. In her autobiographical novel, Longford has her protagonist Martha Freke assume a pro-Irish role against the cultural and political will of her British (and anti-Irish) interlocutors.11 Grogan, “We belong to the World,” 218.12 Leeney, “Class, Land, and Irishness,” 178.13 Grogan, “We belong to the World,” 218.14 Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba, 43.15 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 134.16 Ibid., 58.17 Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba, 121.18 Ibid., 111.19 Fitz-Simon, The Boys, 68.20 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 17.21 Fitz-Simon, The Boys, 68.22 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 18.23 Ibid., 30.24 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 19; Brady, Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–58), 101; and Billington, Preface to Making Conversation (1931), 2.25 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 25; see also Grogan, “We belong to the World,” 233.26 Brady, Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–58), 101. According to Brady, Christine Longford’s writing featured twenty-three times in The Bell which suggests her strong ties to Peadar O’Donnell and Sean O’Faolain – both of whom were prominent members of Irish PEN, and the Academy of Letters. In her book, Brady mentions Longford’s classical education (p. 135) and her review of the following texts: Christopher Fry’s A Sleep of Prisoners, The Helen of Euripide, translated by Rex Warner, and Antigone and Eurydice by Jean Anouilh (1951). The source for this is the National Library of Ireland, The Dublin Magazine, xvii8 (1951), 68–72.27 Dalgarno, “Virginia Woolf,” 149.28 Fitz-Simon, The Boys, 122.29 The majority of plays based on Greek tragedy were written during the 1920s and 1930s: George Thompson translated Alcestis (1932) and Prometheus Bound in Irish; other notable Irish language translations include Pádraig de Brún’s Antigone in 1926, Oedipus Tyrannus (1927; 1928), Oedipus at Colonus (1927; 1929), and Iphigenia in Aulis (1935). Earlier in the century, J.M. Synge’s drama presented on the Dublin stage has strong references to ancient Greek tragedy in plays such as In the Shadow of the Glen in 1903 with echoes of Euripides’ Alcestis, the Abbey Theatre productions of The Playboy of the Western World in 1907 are based on the myth of Oedipus, as well as of Deirdre of the Sorrows in 1910 with elements from Antigone and the Trojan Women. Moreover, George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara (1905) as a retelling of The Bacchae was staged in London’s Court Theatre and at the Playhouse Theatre in Broadway, US; W.B. Yeats’s Deirdre (1906) is based on Euripides’ Helen.30 The first play ever written by Edward Longford, The Melians, had classical references and a political subtext. The action was set during the insurrection on the island of Melos against the tyranny of Athens in 416 BCE and bore overt parallels with Ireland’s struggle for independence from British colonialism with its suggestive subtitle “A Drama of Patriotism and Imperialism.”31 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 99.32 Ibid., 58.33 Ibid., 197.34 Sihra, Women in Irish Drama, 91; see also Milan. “‘Good Translations’ or ‘Mental Dram-Drinking’?” 144.35 Fitz-Simon, The Boys, 72. Fitz-Simon refers to Agamemnon as Edward Longford’s version without referring to Christine Longford (72).36 See Stone and Thompson, “Taking Joint Stock,” 309–30.37 Hutcheon and Hutcheon, “A Convenience of Marriage,” 1365.38 Billington, Preface to Making Conversation (1931), 3–6; see also Brady’s Literary Coteries and the Irish Women Writers’ Club (1933–58), 101–4.39 Fitz-Simon, The Boys, 305.40 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 93.41 Ibid., 101.42 Ibid., 82.43 “Greek Drama Analysed: The Technique of Aeschylus, Divergent Views on the Modern Play.” The Irish Times, Dublin, 9 May 1933; and “Must Break Rules!: Way to Become Dramatist”. The Irish Independent, Dublin, 9 May 1933.44 Quoted in Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 19: “I was determined to be oppressed,” she wrote in her diary “and not [be] an oppressor.”45 Ibid., 58.46 Ibid.47 Ibid., 77 and 213.48 In his memoir, Cowell describes how Christine’s mother, Mrs. Amy Trew, was a radical exception to the norm as she would regularly offer her home as a refuge to gay people who frequented her Oxford premises: “Often her residents included colonials and, of course, Oxford had its homosexuals. Mrs. Trew seemed to have an unusual understanding of these lonely people. Her maternal instinct reached out to them in a special way. She bequeathed to her daughter that same sympathy towards sexual deviants. Capable of making a spot diagnosis of lesbianism or homosexuality, Christine always retained a special understanding of these people’s plight” (16). In another paragraph, we learn that Christine Longford was admitted as “an honorary Irishwoman” to the “tea-parties for oppressed nationalities” (17) among Indians, Egyptians, and Serbian refugees hosted by the eccentric Osmonde Grattan Esmonde, an Irish aristocratic heir.49 Ibid., 99.50 An unconventional and revolutionary arrangement was then put forth between the two parties whereby Longford Productions and Edwards-Mac Liammóir Gate Theatre Company each interchangeably occupied the Dublin Gate Theatre for six months and went on national and international tours for the rest of the year.51 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 231.52 Ibid., 218.53 The Hilton-Mac Liammóir artistic duo were also known as “The Boys.” See Pine, The Dublin Gate Theatre, 1928–78.54 Meaney, O’Dowd and Whelan, Reading the Irish Woman, 196; the phrase is borrowed from Miriam Hansen’s study on modernism, modernity and its aesthetic legacies in “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism” in Modernism/Modernity 6, 2. April 1999: 60.55 Ibid.56 Leeney, Irish Women Playwrights 1900–39, 157.57 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 99: “A brilliant combination of four such diverse and theatrically talented people; three self-willed men and one enigmatical woman.”58 Ibid., 93.59 According to manuscript notes on the prompt copies of the Agamemnon typescript housed at the Gate Theatre Archive of Northwestern University, the cast included the actors: Shelah Richards (Cassandra), Betty Chancellor (Electra), May Carey (Nurse), R.G. Hennessy (Watchman), Fred Johnson (Herald), and members of the chorus and the furies, John Stephenson, Noel Dalton, Edward Lexy, Van Craen, Raymond Percy, Diana Vernon, Esme Biddel, W. Fassbender, and Little.60 “Back 2,500 years for entertainment.” Sunday Dispatch, 11 February 1933.61 Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba, 289.62 Ibid., 293. Leading Greek tragedienne Katina Paxinou had even invited Mac Liammóir to watch her perform in the role of the protagonist in Euripides’ Iphigenia at the theatre of Dionysus under the Acropolis, though he was not able to attend. In keeping with the translators’ background, the classical references were accentuated through the music score arranged by Art O’Murnaghan and consisting of “authentic melodies of adaptations” used in Greek drama with an opening melody for the chorus that was two millennia old. See “Back 2,500 years for entertainment.” Sunday Dispatch, 11 February 1933 and Programme Note to Agamemnon (1933). The Gate Theatre Archive, Northwestern University.63 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 93.64 Macintosh, Tragedy in Performance, 292.65 See Michelakis, “Introduction,” 1–20.66 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 86.67 Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba, 164.68 Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 77 & 118: “The trouble lay with Edward. He never gave Christine sufficient time to work on her plays, especially time to revise them. As fast as she could type what should have been a first draft, he was whisking the pages away to get the play into rehearsal. Had her gift been nurtured, and not forced, Christine might have become a playwright of some stature. Yet, her self-abnegation included her work as a dramatist, as well as everything else. She always maintained that if her husband hadn’t been a theatrical impresario, no play of hers would ever have seen the light of any stage.”69 Mac Liammóir, All for Hecuba, 164 and 245.70 Meaney, O’Dowd, and Whelan, 205.71 Ibid., 165; Cowell, No Profit But the Name, 213.72 Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 34.73 D.M. “Great Tragedy: Aeschylean Trilogy at the Gate Theatre.” The Irish Press, 16 February 1933, Dublin.74 The Sunday Dispatch. 19 February 1933.75 D.S. “Agamemnon up-to-date: Great Gate Play.” The Irish Press, February 1933, Dublin.76 The Sunday Dispatch. 19 February 1933.77 Trimbur and Braun, “Laboratory Life and the Determination of Authorship,” 22.78 Zerilli, “Machiavelli’s Sisters,” 256.79 Ibid.80 Zeitlin, “The Dynamics of Misogyny,” 109. In her article “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in Aeschylus” Oresteia,” Zeitlin explains this antiquarian anthropological theory on the superiority of the masculine by arguing that “The hypothesis is that semen is transmitted from the brain and the spinal column through the genitals to the womb. There is more: the major component of semen is pneuma, a foamlike airy substance that contains the seed of the divine. Originating in the brain, semen is responsible for endowing the offspring with the distinctive human capacity for reason, for logos. Seed of generation, of intellectual ability, and of the divine element in the human species, semen confirms the innate superiority of male over female.”81 Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 34.82 Zerilli, “Machiavelli’s Sisters,” 257.83 Holland, 31.84 Foley, Female Acts in Greek Tragedy, 53.85 Holland, “After Antigone,” 31.86 “Agamemnon: Greek Drama for Dublin.” Irish Independent, 10 February 1933.87 “Back 2,500 years for entertainment.” Sunday Dispatch, 11 February 1933.
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