'Paul Murphy excavates some neglected Irish drama, and re-reads more familiar plays, with an arrestingly original combination of historical and psychoanalytical insight. This is a brave, trenchant work, which probes away most rewardingly at the rich seam where history and fantasy meet.' - Terry Eagleton, John Edward Taylor Professor of Cultural Theory, University of Manchester, UK'In a superbly argued and well theorised book, Paul Murphy shifts the narrative of Irish theatre history beyond nation formation and into the very productive terrain of the class and gender of the country's subalterns in performance.' Brian Singleton, Head of Drama, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; President, International Federation for Theatre Research'Theoretically informed and critically focused, this book is a searching exploration of Irish drama in the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on Lacan and i ek, Murphy demonstrates how central to the construction of that drama were the Peasant and the Woman as symbolic forms onto which political desires could be and were projected. The issue of class is introduced and that of gender extended in a series of meticulous and historicised readings which valuably widens the canon of Irish drama. He makes the case for such unjustly neglected figures as Northern Irish playwright George Shiels while registering with sensitivity the class and gender constraints within which a writer like Lady Gregory was forced to operate. Throughout, Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899-1949 challenges received opinion and raises crucial issues which every student of the subject will need to consider.' - Anthony Roche, Associate Professor of English, University College Dublin, Ireland
