Oscar Wilde, Dion Boucicault and the Pragmatics of Being Irish: Fashioning a New Brand of Modern Irish Celt

Abstract

This article makes the case that Wilde's engagement with his Irish national identity was sustained. Apparent inconsistencies have led some critics to challenge the appropriateness of identifying Wilde as an Irish writer. Wilde's strategies are similar to those of Dion Boucicault, the most successful Irish playwright of the 1860s and 1870s. The influence of Boucicault in helping Wilde to shape his professional career and develop his stagecraft illuminates not only Wilde's construction of a modern brand of Irish Celt, but also how both writers expressed such a conception on stage. Wilde and Boucicault were not purists in their conception and use of the term Irish, nor indeed when it came to the role of professional playwright. They repudiated the stereotype of Ireland as a backward land; their alternative was not ancient idealism but a modern pragmatism that located them at the heart of an evolving international marketplace.

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