Brendan Behan - Biography into drama

INTRODUCTION

In this paper, I will present a short view over one of the most important Irish dramatists of the 1950s, Brendan Behan.

It is well known that there is an Irish tradition in literature, Irish drama. Irish dramatists have been writing plays for hundreds of years. Irish drama is a phenomenon of the century rooted in the social, historical and political background. The real locus of Irish drama, seen as a strong literary tradition, is Dublin and Belfast, but the rural West of Ireland too. Finally, it is a fact that Irish dramatists write their plays to an Irish audience who understand the best all the realities of the plays.

In this context, Irish dramatists express their ideas very often in Gaelic, Irish language, considered to be for most of them, and especially for Brendan Behan, the most expressive language from all the European languages

This paper will present Irish drama, and one of his major representatives, Brendan Behan, noted for his powerful political views and earthy satire.

The first part of my paper is the INTRODUCTION, a short presentation of my work, BRENDAN BEHAN: BIOGRAPHY INTO DRAMA.

CHAPTER 1 of the paper, entitled IRISH DRAMA, will present a short exposure of Irish tradition into drama. This first chapter will explore the context of Irish drama as a traditional literary gender. The politics of Irish Drama is considered primarily to be the political of national self-expression. The traditional Irish Drama is considered to be he expression of the Irish nationalism or identity. This is one of the most important themes of Irish plays, generally speaking, and Behan’s plays, particularly speaking. Irish playwrights and their plays are concerned to find a theatrical correlative of intellectual, social, historical and political life of Irish and British-Irish people.

CHAPTER 2 of my paper will be a short presentation of TRANSLATING TRADITION for Irish playwrights. According to some critics, the translator is a character in search of an author. Many Irish playwrights prefer Gaelic as a language of their own expression, and they use than translation to share their thoughts to other people. A serious translation is usually an indication of fame and value. Even if texts and events go non translated, it is their translatability, which is significant.

For Brendan Behan Irish is the most expressive language, more direct than English and more bitter. He wrote some of his main works using it. His masterpiece, The Hostage, written in Gaelic first under the title An Giall, was translated then in English .For Behan , Gaelic is the language that helps him better to express his soul and thoughts and this is the reason that he prefers sometimes to write in his own language and then to translate in English.

CHAPTER 3 of this paper, entitled BIOGRAPHY OF BRENDAN BEHAN, will present the most important life-events and the literary work of the Irish playwright . Considered to be the most important playwright of the 1950, Behan passed in his life events that developed him as a writer with an original style that combined humour genuine pathos and social insight. Born in Dublin, Behan passed during his life events that realized his own style.

CHAPTER 4 of my writing, entitled BRENDAN BEHAN AND THE INFLUENCE OF HIS LIFE’S EVENTS IN HIS WORK, will present Behan’s life and his influence on his work. Behan owed much of his education to his family, and of strong Republican sympathies. Arrested several times on sabotage missions in England as an IRA activist and for murder of two detectives latter, Behan spent some years in prison. His experiences as a prisoner determined him to write in this manner, his work being a mirror of his own life. The success transformed him into an alcoholic and soon after, Behan died .

CHAPTER 5, entitled ANALYSIS AND PARALELISM OF THE MASTERPIECES THE QUARE FELLOW AND THE HOSTAGE, will be an exposing of Behan’s main plays, those who made him well known as a writer and representative for Irish drama. The Quare Fellow, set in an Irish jail on the day before the morning of an execution, is a realistic painter of prison’s life, containing details and characters that show without doubt the Behan lived it. The Hostage, the other important play, is a sad story of the confused kidnapped British soldier, who finds out suddenly that he is held as an object used for one British soldier’s redemption in Belfast. The courageous playwright Brendan Behan could dare to write such an off-centre play on such a politically sensitive subject because he spent many years in prison for IRA activity, and knew very well this topic.

Both these plays are very dark comedies that predictably end tragically. This chapter will present too some common features that characterize the plays.

ANNEX: Chronology, will present all the events of Brendan Behan’s life, in a chronological development.

The last part of the paper, entitled conclusions, will show my personal impression about Brendan Behan and the argumentation of this exposure.

CHAPTER 1

IRISH DRAMA

Irish dramatists have been writing plays for hundreds of years. Irish drama, however, is a phenomenon of the century, rooted in large part in the political and social ferment out of which Ireland as an independent nation emerged

All over Ireland, North and South, there is an improvement of drama which, will soon be seen to be much more significant, as the expression of a new Irish nationalism, or identity. A more difficult and intractable reality is now being depicted: Ireland as part of a world threatened by neo-colonialism and by the gross and increasing imbalance between rich and poor nations. Irish audiences are finding through this new drama a new expression of their greater understanding.

Irish theatre today might still be seen to be centred upon Dublin. Any state capital in Europe in the latter half of the twentieth century quite literally capitalises on artistic developments in that country, and Ireland is no exception. It is in the metropolis that theatre professionals find the funding and the audiences, as well as the infrastructure of their profession: theatres, agents, contacts, academies.

Because of this, any new drama in the metropolis is noticed, in both the formal and informal sense of the word: written up in reviews and published.

Dublin, too, and not Belfast, should obviously be the locus of dramatic representation of new Irish realities, in the context of the continuing political and social divisions in the island.

The real locus of contemporary Irish drama is not Dublin or Belfast but the rural West of Ireland. Although the Irish drama there in the early years of the twentieth century appeared to have its aesthetic rooted in the rural Gaeltacht, it was very much an urban Dublin theatre.

Anglo-Irish playwrights used the west as an Irish emblem of their own urban intellectual, European, sensibilities. This is a theatre, which is closer to the dynamics of the new activist theatre among politicised Third World peasants.