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Life
| [1883-1958; née Mary Elizabeth Walker]; b. Charlemont St., dg. of a printer and proprietor of the Gaelic Press; her mother was a dressmaker and both were Irish speakers; grew up in the Liberties, Dublin; joined Gaelic League in c.1898 and Inghinidhe na Eireann in 1900, acting with the group under direction of the Fays; she also worked as an embroiderer at the Dun Emer Industries, with the Yeats sisters in Churchtown (Dundrum), in 1903-04 and acted the part of Dectora in Yeats’s The Shadowy Waters in Jan. 1904;vregarded as the beauty of the early Abbey Theatre company, she took the title-role in Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan on the opening night, 27 Dec., 1904, when her portrait was painted by John Butler Yeats - the role having previously been acted by Maud Gonne in 1902; |
| she resigned from the Abbey Th. when Miss Horniman put it on a salaried basis, 1905 - in defence of the independence of the nationalist theatre; formed Theatre Ireland, with others, June 1906 but returned to the Abbey in 1910 and left the stage in 1912; appeared again with the Irish Theatre of Edward Martin and Thomas MacDonagh, 1914; also acted in some Gaelic League productions for the Leinster Stage Society [in Irish]; moved to Glasthule [Dun Loaghaire], 1916; commanded the women’s section in Jacob’s Biscuit Factory under Thiomas MacDonagh, supporting the garrison in her role as a member of Cumann na mBan - chiefly dealing with provisions (cooking) and carrying messages to other garrisons; |
| m. Eamon [“Bob”] Price, earlier the Dir. of Organisation for the IRA, and latterly an Irish Civil Servant, 1928; on his retirement in 1929, they settled in Laytown, Co. Meath; she joined anti-Partition League in 1947; made her last appearance in the Olympia Theatre, in Lad Gregory's The Gaol Gate, Nov. 1948; wrote The Splendid Years (1955), a history of the period ghosted by Edward Kenny, a nephew - based on a lecture given by her to the Graduates Assoc. (Galway Branch); d. in Drogheda cottage hospital, 9 Sept. 1958. DIW WIKI RIA/DIB. |
[ The entry on Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh in the Dictionary of Irish Biography is by Frances Clarke (RIA/Cambridge UP 2009) - online. ]
Works
The Splendid Years: Recollections of M. Nic. Shiubhlaigh, as told to Edward Kenny (Dublin: James Duffy 1955). See also Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, ‘The Irish National Theatre Societyֻ, in Abbey Theatre: Interviews and Recollections, ed. E. H. Mikhail (London: Macmillan 1988), pp.40-48.
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Commentary
Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama in the English Language (London: Nelson 1936): ‘Máire ni Shuiblaigh joined a singularly distinguished beauty to a voice admirably adapted by nature to the speaking of verse. Nothing ever replaced her beauty ...’ (p. 177.)
Lennox Robinson, Abbey Theatre (1951): indicates that she was among those who resigned when Miss Horniman proposed to pay salaries in 1905: ‘it turned the Theatre from an enterprise undertaken for love of Ireland and dramatic art into a “commercial” theatre. I was not unnatural that a split should result and [with others] Maire nic Shiubhlaigh resigned.’ (p.47; quoted in W. B. Yeats: A Centenary Exhibition [National Gallery of Ireland] 1965, p.80.)
A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats, A New Biography (London: Hutchinson 1988), p.152, Ní [or Nic] Shuibhlaigh refuses to sign contract; threatened with law suit by Yeats; Nic Shuibhlaigh and others left the Abbey to form Cluithcheoiri n hEireann [the Theatre of Ireland], with Edward Martyn as President and Padraic Colum, James Cousins, Patrick Pearse and Thomas Kettle on the board, May 1906. Stayed in existence till 1916, when the board-member’s interest in the Irish Volunteers precluded it (according to Ní Shuibhlaigh); Russell gave it his blessing and his Deirdre [which Yeats had never liked].
James W. Flannery, Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre (1976, 1989), quotes a passage from the penultimate page of Yeats Autobiographies (Macmillan 1955), substituting ‘Miss V–’ for Ní Shuibhlaigh’s name: ‘I am watching Miss V– [ Nic Shuibhlaigh] to find out if her inanimate movements when on stage come from a lack of experience or if she has them in life. I watched her sinking into a chair the other day to see if her body felt the size and shape of the chair before she reached it. If her body does not so feel she will never be able to act, just as she will never have grace or movement in ordinary life.’ (Autobiographies, p.526; Flannery, p.210.)
Notes
Patrick Pearse: Nic Shubhlaigh called Patrick Pearse - without animus or objection - ‘a bit of a poseur’. (The Splendid Years, p.145; quoted in Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 1995, p.223-24.)
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