Part 1 (all published, and probably all written). STC 22455. Greg, English Drama, 593 (A). Reprinted with a life of Shirley by W. R. Chetwood in 1750 (Dublin) and 1751 (London). ESTC lists 9 copies in the UK outside the British Library which has one complete copy, a copy made-up by T. J. Wise for himself and the copy mutilated by him); Folger [x 2 (one lacks the title; the other has had A1-3, I2-3, and I1 or I4 supplied)], Huntington [ex Bridgewater], Harvard [not in HOLLIS], Newberry Library, Library of Congress, Texas Christian University, UC-W.A.Clark, University of Chicago [bound with other Shirley plays], University of Illinois [bound with other plays by Shirley], University of Pennsylvania [all leaves detached, mounted, and cropped], University of Texas at Austin [x 3 (one lacks the title and another, ex Wrenn,has had leaves supplied, including the title, by T. J. Wise, presumably from the BL copies)], Yale [Elizabethan Club (title and 3 other leaves mutilated, other leaves repaired]. No copy recorded in Ireland. Commercially scarce: the last copy listed on Rare Book Hub before the present (purchased in 2023) was sold in 1966 but that resource omits the Sir Edmund Gosse - Robert S Pirie copy (Sotheby, New York, 2/12/2015, part of lot 318) subsequently with Bernard Quaritch (unnumbered English Literature, Summer 2016, item 68 and Stuart Bennett Cat. LXXIII/89.)
Reissued by Joshua Kirton in 1657 as part of Two Playes. The Constant Maid. A Comedy. And St Patrick for Ireland. (the unique Huth copy at the Chapin Library, Williams College, is without the title-page to St Patrick; it has that to The Constant Maid (1640), though with the imprint torn-away after “LONDON”. Folger copy 2 is a relic of this reissue and has had the St. Patrick title replaced with the lower part of the “Two Playes” title. The imperfect Texas copy lacking the title and the made-up Wrenn copy there are also probably relics of this reissue which unfortuantely has tempted past booksellers and collectors to contaminate the bibliographical record.
The first published play both themed and premiered in Dublin for an ‘Anglo-Irish’ audience which would have comprised ‘Old English’ Catholics and ‘New English’ Protestants, though Shirley’s prologue for a lost play he may or may not have written titled The Irish Gent[leman]. survives; see the Lost Plays Database.
St. Patrick for Ieland was first performed by John Ogilby’s Men at the New Theatre in St Werburgh Street in late 1639 or early 1640. The first published play written by an Irishman, Langartha (1641) by Henry Burnell (fl. 1640-54), though set in Sweden and Denmark was performed on St Patrick’s Day (17 March 1640). It, “was probably a reply to Shirley’s St Patrick for Ireland: the First Part (1640). Contrary to Shirley’s vision of St Patrick’s civilization of Ireland by conversion, Burnell’s play offers a more military version of conquest.” (ODNB).
James Shirley (1596-1666), a poet and playwright who had been writing for Queen Henrietta Maria’s Men at The Cockpit Theatre in London, had come to Dublin, along with several English actors from the company, after the theatres closed on 12 May 1636 during an outbreak of bubonic plague. The New Theatre, established under the patronage of the Lord Deputy, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, opened on New Year’s Day 1638 with a performance of Shirley’s The Royal Master. It was managed by the Scottish former dancing-master John Ogilby, Master of the Revels in Ireland. Shirley returned to London in April 1640 and the Werburgh Street Theatre struggled on for another eighteen months before it was closed in October 1641 with the outbreak of the rebellion. John Ogilby returned to Dublin in 1662 and built the Theatre Royal in Smock Alley.
“Saint Patrick for Ireland, published in 1640, picks up Patrick’s story as he prepares to return to Ireland as a missionary. It is presented as a “neo-miracle” play, a descendant of the miralce plays (performances of Bible stories, usually) that were common in the medieval era. In the play the Irish king, supported by the Druids, fears Saint Patrick’s arrival as a military invasion and tries to poison him; a servant is accidentally poisoned instead, but is brought back to life by Patrick, thus proving his divine backing. The head druid summons poisonous snakes to kill Saint Patrick as he sleeps, but he awakens and casts them from the island. Eventually, having been persuaded by Patrick’s feats, the king converts to Christianity, and the play ends on that triumphant note.” - Folger website blog: https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/saint-patrick-ireland-james-shirley/
“With St.Patrick for Ireland, however, Shirley appears to have made a genuine attempt to ‘find out the humour’ of the Irish taste. St. Patrick for Ireland does not lend itself to easy description. The play exhibits elements of comedy, tragedy, history, tragicomedy, pastoral, and, perhaps most significantly, medieval miracle play. …
“Contributing to the play’s attempt to please, St.Patrick for Ireland includes more songs than any other play by Shirley (thirteen) along with slapstick comedy, elaboratecostuming, and special effects. Much of the music in the play is performed by a bard, a figure of long-standing importance in Irish history and cuklture. In utilising a bard and making his music integral to the plot and tone of his play, Shirley took clear steps to appeal to his particular audience. The spectacular elements of the play reveal an attempt to go beyond those that had previously been staged at the Werburgh Street theatre. Most impressively, at one point, Patrick’s house is set afire.” - Robert I. Lublin, “Shirley’s Dublin Days: A nervous première of St. Patrick for Ireland” in Ravelhofer (Barbara), ed., James Shirley and the Early Modern Theatre: New Perspectives (2016), Chapter 7.
St Patrick’s predictions of a fair futre for Ireland and the descendants of Prince Conallus, “were deliberately phrased so that they would appeal to that pride in historic Ireland which Shirley thought most of his Dublin audience shared regardless of class or party or religion. In so doing, Shirley, an Englishman, became the first to cultivate on the Irish stage a patriotic sentiment. And thus St. Patrick for Ireland gains the honour of being the earliest formal drama with elements of Irish tradition and feeling.” - William Smith Clark, The Early Irish Stage: The beginnings to 1720 (1955), p. 37.
See also: Rankin (Deana), Between Spenser and Swift: English Writing in Seventeenth-Century Ireland (2005), pp. 102-3.
Provenance: No early marks of ownership. Dr Kenneth D. Rapoport, with his label; purchased from Seven Gables Bookshop, New York, 29 Jan. 1976, $624.
