Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama

Dying Acts explores the relationship between the dramatic representations of death in two societies where elaborate rituals make death and dying a part of the process of living, in a way that is now alien to most modern Western societies. But it is not simply the shared conception of death that makes a comparison between the Greek tragedies and the Irish plays, written some two and a half thousand years later, both a valuable and instructive task. The fact that mythical material - just as in classical Greece - forms the basis for many Irish plays written during the Literary Revival also makes such a comparison useful. Moreover, the writers of the Irish tragedies discussed - notably Yeats, O'Casey and Synge - explicitly turned to the Greek tragedians as 'exempla' in their attempt to found a national theatre. The Irish hero Cuchulain was regularly compared to the Greek heroes Heracles and Achilles by Celtic scholars, no less than by the playwrights themselves. This wide-ranging study uncovers the genuine affinities which do exist and examines the political and social context of their works. It is a subtle and intelligent exploration with unexpected and rewarding conclusions.