"He Calls His Dada Still": Nineteenth-Century English Radicalism and the Drama of Pádraic Pearse

This essay explores the extent to which some of the political upheavals of twentieth-century Ireland, and their related theatrical manifestations, might reveal a series of affinities with the organised political radicalism of nineteenth-century England. Specifically, the playhouse dramas written by the executed leader of the Easter Rising of 1916, Pádraic Pearse (also known as Pádraig or Patrick) point back to the earlier Liberal reform meetings that took place in the English midlands. The key connecting figure is the revolutionary leader’s father, James Pearse, who spent his life between Birmingham and Dublin, but who has tended to be overlooked by historians in the years since 1916. This paper will explore the way that throughout the twentieth-century a focus on Pádraic Pearse’s mother has tended to obscure the influence of James Pearse. Yet I suggest that James—influenced by Liberal thinkers such as the MP John Bright—helped to link one kind of waning English radicalism with the developing nationalism of twentieth-century Ireland. It is in this context that my paper explores the political implications of Patrick Pearse’s theatrical writings, The King, The Master and The Singer, tracing connections between these plays and the Birmingham radicalism of James Pearse, with a particular focus on James’s nonconformist reformism and day-to-day involvement with the Catholic pomp of the Hardman church-furnishing company.