Characters of Baile Beag

The play’s most important scene takes place immediately after the interval. Yolland and Maire share an intimate moment having fled laughing from a dance. They express their love for one another without understanding the words either is speaking. It is a brilliantly written bit of literary theatre which blends theme and characterisation perfectly. It is also the clearest illustration of the clever gambit of having the entire play performed through English while expressing linguistic and cognitive distance between characters who are supposed to be speaking Irish (and Latin and Greek), and those who speak only the language linked by verbal association to the Imperial centre (the King’s English).
The scene also expresse...