With reference to TWO plays of any twentieth century Irish playwright analyse the role played by Either Memory/memorialising OR Myths and myth-making OR the importance of Symbols OR the role of history OR political values OR landscapes in Twentieth Century Irish theatre and history.

Advice given by tutor (may be insightful)
Once you have decided on your topic, you need to come up with a clear proposition that will steer and frame your argument. For example, ‘Twentieth century Irish theatre has taken as one of its key icons of political values, the changing role of the figure of the matriarch in performing versions of an Irish identity. From the staging of Cathleen ni Houlihan through the work of Synge, O’Casey, Murphy and Friel, the Irish matriarch has been staged, interrogated and reproduced in a variety of ways. This essay will examine two very different stagings of this matriarchal figure – Juno in Juno and the Paycock and Hester in By the Bog of Cats – and will argue that they both stage and disrupt the idea of ‘Mother Ireland’.

You could then divide this central argument into three key aspects – Staging the domestic arena; Responding to outside forces; Staging femininity in a man’s world; – and then go on to develop each strand of this argument in relation to academic material in support of what you are trying to say and drawing on aspects of the two plays together in illustration

Category: Essays