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The Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory
The title of Lady Gregory’s play, The Rising of the Moon, is a comic tale that presents three Irish police officers trying to find an escaped political criminal. The game has a dynamic representation of prisoners and their captors and English and the Irish people. Lady Gregory not only highlights the tension between Law and Nation but also demonstrates the importance of loyalty to a worthy course such as Irish Nationalism and Law. The play has the Sergeant and the Ragged Man as the two main characters that grapple with the tension of inversion, loyalty, and order. Lady Gregory uses the two characters to demonstrate that Irish nationalism relies on the dynamic of a community and songs to achieve harmony.
The Sergeant and the Ragged Man work as caricatures, not as individual characters. The two men find a common ground in the structure of the Irish community. The Sergeant is flexible to change and puts himself in the prisoners shoes claiming that had things gone differently in his youth; he could be the one attacking police and escaping prison. Initially, Lady Gregory presents the Sergeant as a character bound by social norm, law, and the English while the escaped prisoner is painted as a man loyal to change and revolution and the Irish people. The Ragged man uses songs to convince the Sergeant that despite their different view on loyalty, they both strived to promote positive change in the Irish community. The Sergeant agrees with the views of the prisoner and helps him escaped. In doing so, the Sergeant breaks the law but promotes Irish nationalism.
The Ragged Man utilizes songs to convince the Sergeant and bring harmony. Initially, the Sergeant appears to resist and hate music. Singing folk songs made the Sergeant feel guilty of upholding the law that oppressed the Irish nationalism. Eventually, the Sergeant sings “Granuaile” and at this moment the two characters with different loyalties began to work together. The Sergeant realized that he was loyal to the sentiments expressed in the song: Irish independence. Overall, Lady Gregory suggests that the new Irish culture is fogged through community and song and not ritual or violence.