Appropriations of Irish Drama in Modern Korean Nationalist Theatre 2022014920, 2022014921, 9780367757755, 9780367757762, 9781003163947

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Tables
Introduction
1 The Modern Korean Theatre Movement and Western Drama
2 Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre under Colonialism
3 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey
4 Appropriation of Irish Plays and the Early Korean Realistic Plays
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

Appropriations of Irish Drama in Modern Korean Nationalist Theatre

This book investigates the translation feld as a hybrid space for the competing claims between the colonisers and the colonised. By tracing the process of the importation and appropriation of Irish drama in colonial Korea, this study shows how the intervention of the competing agents – both the colonisers and the colonised – formulates the strategies of representation or empowerment in the rival claims of the translation feld. This exploration will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance studies, translation studies, and Asian studies. Hunam Yun is a translator and scholar of translation studies. She holds an M.A. and a PhD in translation studies from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Her research topics include literary translation, globalisation and translation, translation of the city, and translation theory.

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Irishness by Harry Jo

Appropriations of Irish Drama in Modern Korean Nationalist Theatre Hunam Yun

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Hunam Yun The right of Hunam Yun to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Yun, Hunam, author. Title: Appropriations of Irish drama in modern Korean nationalist theatre / authored by Hunam Yun. Identifers: LCCN 2022014920 (print) | LCCN 2022014921 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367757755 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367757762 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003163947 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Theater—Korea—History—20th century. | Korean drama—Irish infuences. Classifcation: LCC PN2934 .Y86 2023 (print) | LCC PN2934 (ebook) | DDC 792/.09519/09042—dc23/eng/20220523 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014920 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014921 ISBN: 9780367757755 (hbk) ISBN: 9780367757762 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003163947 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003163947 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

1 2

List of Tables

ix

Introduction

1

The Modern Korean Theatre Movement and Western Drama

12

Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre under Colonialism

64

3

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey

123

4

Appropriation of Irish Plays and the Early Korean Realistic Plays

159

Conclusion

218

Index

227

Tables

2.1 2.2 2.3

Published Irish playwrights and works Staged Irish playwrights and works Translators of Irish drama

98 108 111

Introduction

Before its modernisation, Korean theatre incorporated traditional theatrical genres, such as talchum (mask-dance drama), pansori (musical storytelling), and kkokdu gaksi (puppet theatre). The theatre was performed outdoors and enjoyed predominately by the lower classes. However, the increasing infuence of the Western world in the late 19th century led to a rising demand for a new type of Western-style indoor theatre that differed from its traditional form considerably.1 During this time, indoor playhouses were opened by civilians, a trend in which the Korean government began to participate as part of its project to build a modern nation-state (S. Yi 42–48). The audience, meanwhile, also started to change in the 1910s. While traditionally, theatre audiences were primarily from the lower classes, members of the upper classes, such as high government offcials and their children, were witnessed enjoying the theatre during the frst decade of the 20th century. This trend of modernisation was also affected by Japanese colonial rule in Korea, which started in 1910. The Japanese colonial government seized social, political, and economic power in Korea and sought to eradicate Korean ethnicity by erasing the indigenous culture and imposing their own culture on Korean society. These colonial policies, in turn, infuenced the feld of Korean theatre: traditional Korean theatre declined in its early stages of modernisation, with the colonisers’ theatre becoming more popular. Although the Japanese colonial government assumed direct governance over Korea following French colonialism, it aimed, unlike the French, to eliminate the Korean culture in the name of assimilation (Cha; Y. Choe). Korean theatre was, therefore, signifcantly infuenced by the assimilation policy. While physically stamping out traditional Korean theatre, the colonial government also created a distorted image of the theatre. Regarding the destruction of national culture under colonialism, Frantz Fanon observes that ‘Colonialism is not simply content to impose its rule upon the present and the future of a dominated country. Colonialism is not satisfed merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content’ (The Wretched of the Earth 170). Japanese colonialism held a similar perspective: it not only imposed its rule on the present of the dominated country but also strove to erase the past of the oppressed Koreans by

DOI: 10.4324/9781003163947-1

2

Introduction

decimating traditional Korean culture. Fanon’s statement that ‘by a kind of perverted logic, it [colonialism] turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfgures and destroys it’ (‘National Culture’ 154) describes the situation of traditional Korean theatre under Japanese colonialism precisely. Indeed, as Amilcar Cabral notes, the reason colonisers are concerned about the colonised nation’s past is that with a strong indigenous cultural life, foreign domination cannot be sure of its perpetuation (53). The Japanese colonisers used the mechanism of dichotomisation to construct an image of traditional Korean theatre. According to their logic, while Japanese people had European characteristics, Korean people had Oriental characteristics and thus required guidance and enlightenment. The indigenous culture of the Korean people, in their view, was savage, emotional, inferior, and depraved and needed to be replaced by the civilised Japanese culture (Kim 197; Lee 99–100). Therefore, traditional Korean theatre also needed to be replaced by the more sophisticated Japanese theatre. Another strategy that the Japanese colonial government used to control traditional Korean theatre was censorship. The censorship of plays enabled the colonisers’ control of the material. In July 1909, the Police Department of the Japanese colonial government began to examine senior theatrical practitioners from each Korean theatre and allowed them to perform only after their scripts passed censorship (Daehan Minbo2 9 Jul. 1909). Furthermore, the colonisers dissolved Korean theatre companies and forced Korean theatres to close (Daehan Minbo 28 Jul. 1909). In the process of quashing traditional Korean theatre, the Japanese colonial government tried to embed Japanese sinpa in Korean society. They advertised and encouraged sinpa – literally ‘new wave drama’ – through newspapers. As Japanese theatre gradually encroached upon Korean theatre, traditional Korean theatre sought to survive by enlarging its scale or organising societies for its support. Nevertheless, because of advertisements for and the promotion of sinpa in the newspapers, as well as its thematic adaptations to Korean society, more and more Korean people came to enjoy sinpa, leading to the modern Korean theatrical landscape being dominated by the concept. Sinpa was used to oppose and reform the old style of Japanese drama, kabuki. Originally, sinpa was called sosisibai or shoseisibai, where sosi or shosei refers to young men who joined the Liberal Party to oppose Ito Hirobumi’s extreme Westernisation policies. When Ito suppressed public opinion that was against his policies, these young men used the theatre as a means to appeal to the public. In addition to the propaganda of political arguments, sinpa constituted a reformation of drama: it was ‘the frst to develop outside the kabuki world after the Meiji Restoration as an attempt to modernize and westernize Japan’s drama’ (Ortolani 233). During the early stages of its development (1888–1897), sinpa dealt with political themes. When the Sino–Japanese war broke out in 1894, sinpa was used to encourage hostilities. After the war, it was developed into a

Introduction

3

commercial theatre form that dealt with detective stories, adapted novels, and translated Western plays, and later, following the advent of female actors, with family tragedies or tragic love stories. This form of exaggerated sinpa was imported into colonial Korea under the Japanese colonisers’ policy to transplant the Japanese culture onto the Korean people (D. Yi 46). This imported sinpa featured many melodramatic elements, including stereotypical characters, exaggerated emotions, the subordination of character development to the plot, an emphasis on entertainment, a focus on sensational incidents, an emphasis on practical morals, and popular themes and stories (Choe et al. 262–69). As the Japanese had experience in how theatre could be employed politically, they used it as a tool to infuence the Korean people. The repertoire staged in colonial Korea encouraged sentimentalism, submission to the stronger power, and a taste for tragic beauty; it admired the sorrow of parting rather than the pleasure of reunion, death rather than life, sacrifce rather than love, and submission rather than resistance (D. Yi 66). At a time when the modern theatre had not yet developed into a set of recognisable conventions, melodramatic sinpa, which was not modern in a strict sense, was repositioned within Korean theatre. Accordingly, sinpa theatre could not continue to enjoy popularity among the Korean people. Indeed, the Korean public who watched sinpa, initially out of curiosity, increasingly became tired of this type of theatre. At the end of the 1910s, Korean audiences of sinpa rapidly decreased, and most of the audience were pro-Japanese Koreans: either wealthy women of leisure or students who were studying in Japan (Seo 21). The negative infuence of sinpa also caused criticism among Korean intellectuals, who regarded sinpa theatre as the theatre of propaganda, reactionary ideas, the provocation of animal instincts, the preaching of extreme individualism, and the disregard for human beings and life (Han 237–38). Therefore, there was an underlying risk that sinpa theatre could be subverted at any time. The rapid decline of sinpa from the 1920s onwards proved this to be so. With the rise of the modern Korean theatre movement, sinpa theatre companies lost their dominance in the capital of Seoul and had to travel from province to province, with some sinpa theatre leaders abandoning this form altogether.3 The modern Korean theatre movement began to evolve as the March First Independence Movement in 1919 provided a turning point in Korean society. In March of 1919, the Korean people revolted against the military regime of the Japanese colonisers in mass demonstrations, constituting the greatest mass movement of the Korean people in their entire history. In the face of the stark resistance of the Korean people and international criticism for their harsh colonial rule, the Japanese colonial government reorganised their dominion under the slogan ‘harmony between Japan and Korea’ and adopted the Cultural Policy, which permitted the publication of Korean newspapers and magazines. If Homi Bhabha’s ‘sly civility’ (93–101) is the strategy of the colonised when confronted with colonial power, I would argue that the Cultural Policy was

4

Introduction

an example of ‘sly generosity’: that is, the strategy of the coloniser in the face of resistance from the colonised. According to Bhabha, ‘sly civility’ is furtive opposition: it is a kind of subversion where the subaltern or the colonised recover their own will to power without being overtly disobedient or rebellious (93–101). To bend Bhabha’s notion somewhat, then, I would posit that ‘sly generosity’ is a form of furtive dominance involving the seeking of approval without being overtly oppressive, encapsulated by the Japanese Cultural Policy, which constituted a conciliatory gesture in the face of the Korean people’s resistance and hid their real goal of dominance. The Japanese publication policy mirrored ‘the freeze and thaw of colonial policy’ in colonial Korea; the initial ‘modulating’ controls of publication followed the harsh repression and restrictions between 1910 and 1919 and, subsequently, between 1920 and 1928, these stringent controls were relaxed, only to be tightened again after 1929 (Robinson 314). This fexible publication policy was, therefore, a form of sly generosity enabling the colonisers to shape the content of Korean publications to serve their purposes while claiming to be lenient. Korean intellectuals who experienced the failure of the 1919 independence movement took the best of the coloniser’s Cultural Policy to rouse the Korean people to lay the foundation for a future battle for national independence. In this way, cultural nationalism arose as an alternative to a political struggle. Almost all the cultural movements that Korean intellectuals launched under colonial rule were ultimately related to national independence. The importation and translation of Western literature were part of this cultural nationalism. Korean intellectuals wanted to modernise and educate Korean society through the arrival and translation of Western literature and, in so doing, lay the groundwork for national independence. Ironically, the reason the Japanese colonial government permitted the arrival of Western literature in Korea was to erase the indigenous culture and Korean ethnicity. They sought to uproot Korean ethnicity by implanting Japanese and Western cultures in Korean society while simultaneously banning and suppressing the indigenous culture and language. Nonetheless, although the purpose of translation for the colonisers was to extinguish traditional Korean culture and replace it with something foreign, the Korean people tried to use translation in their struggle for independence and as a tool of cultural resistance to subvert the colonisers’ sinpa theatre. Thus, translation held different meanings for the Japanese colonisers and the colonised Koreans. In his work explaining the role of language in the process of the religious conversion of the Tagalog people of the Philippines – and their subsequent colonisation – during the early period (1580–1705) of Spanish rule, Vincente Rafael describes a similar dual perception of translation: For the Spaniards, translation was always a matter of reducing the native language and culture to accessible objects for and subjects of divine and imperial intervention. For the Tagalogs, translation was a process less of internalizing colonial-Christian conventions than of evading their

Introduction

5

totalizing grip by repeatedly marking the differences between their language and interests and those of the Spaniards. (211) Rafael demonstrates that while the Spanish colonisers viewed translation as a vehicle to perpetuate colonialism, the Tagalogs considered translation a means of decelerating or escaping its arrival. This dual purpose of translation in the colonisation process is seen frequently in the history of translation. Translation has been ‘one of the primary literary tools that larger social institutions [have] at their disposal to “manipulate” a given society in order to “construct” the kind of “culture desired”’ and ‘a kind of intelligence operation to interrogate subjects and maintain control’ (Tymoczko and Gentzler xiii–xxi). To opponents of oppression, translation has been used as a tool of ‘counterespionage, to conspire and rebel, for the ultimate goals of self-defnition and self-determination in both the political and epistemological senses’ (Tymoczko and Gentzler xiii–xxi). For example, Tejaswini Niranjana, referring to Anglo–Indian relations in her seminal book Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context, notes that ‘translation participated … in the fxing of colonized cultures, making them seem static and unchanging rather than historically constructed’, and that it accordingly reinforced ‘hegemonic versions of the colonized, helping them acquire the status of what Edward Said calls representations, or objects without history’ (3). By contrast, Tymoczko describes how the Irish seized upon translations of their native cultural heritage as one means of re-establishing and redefning their nation and people in the struggle for independence: translation ‘constituted a means of inventing tradition, inventing the nation, and inventing the self’ for the Irish people (18). As Leela Gandhi observes, the colonial past ‘is the scene of intense discursive and conceptual activity, characterized by a profusion of thought and writing about the cultural and political identities of colonized subjects’ and that alongside this scene is ‘the counter-narrative of the colonised – politely, but frmly, declining the come-on of colonialism’ (5–22). In a postcolonial context, translation is a linguistic exchange that is ‘dialogic’: it is ‘a process that happens in a space that belongs to neither source nor target absolutely’ (Bassnett 6). The colonising process of Korea was no exception. Translation had different meanings for the colonisers and the colonised, and it was employed by each group for distinct purposes. This book is about this aspect of translation. It is about the feld of Korean theatre, a space in which the Japanese colonisers and the colonised Koreans competed to shape the content of translation to serve their respective aims. Moreover, it explores what the translation of Irish drama meant for Korean nationalists and how they appropriated it for both the purpose of resistance against Japanese colonialism and the nourishment of their culture. At the same time, this book examines how colonial intervention affected this process. The focus, therefore, is on the relationship between the translation feld in Korean theatre and Korean nationalism.

6

Introduction

The concept of appropriation is sometimes used to describe ‘the strategy by which the dominant imperial power incorporates as its own the territory or culture that it surveys and invades’ (Ashcroft et al. 15–17), while in postcolonial discourse, the term may also relate to an ‘exploration of the ways in which the dominated or colonized culture can use the tools of the dominant discourse to resist its political or cultural control’ (Ashcroft et al. 15–17). It is used to refer to the ways in which post-colonial societies take over those aspects of the imperial culture – language, forms of writing, flm, theatre, even modes of thought and argument such as rationalism, logic, and analysis – that may be of use to them in articulating their own social and cultural identities. (Ashcroft et al. 15–17) In other words, in a postcolonial context, appropriation is a strategy of ‘blood transfusion’ in Brazilian translator Haroldo de Campos’ terms. In this book, I use the term ‘appropriation’ to mean a strategy of ‘blood transfusion’ whereby translation is a form of cannibalism, and the emphasis is on the health and nourishment of the appropriator or translator (Bassnett and Trivedi 5). Haroldo de Campos’ ‘cannibalist’ theory of translation derives from the cannibalist movement in Brazil, founded by Oswald de Andrade in 1928. According to Edwin Gentzler, the movement comprised ‘just one of many avant-garde movements characteristic of the age, and indeed intersects with modernist movements and manifestos ongoing in Europe and the Americas at the time’ (24). The ‘cannibalist movement’ derives from the cannibalistic rituals of the Tupi Indians who had inhabited Brazil before its colonisation. For the Tupi Indians, cannibalism was ‘highly religious, and in many ways akin to the Christian practice of communion with its symbolic drinking of the blood of Christ’ (Gentzler 25). Only the bravest and most virtuous warriors were eaten as it was believed that this would lead to their strength and virtue being absorbed and digested. As Gentzler points out, ‘cannibalism was seen as an act of nourishing, in which the positive values of the brave but defeated solder would be digested and absorbed and become part of the future physical and mental identity of the victorious community’ (25). In a cannibalist reading of translation, translation is conceived of ‘as a creative, transformative act, opening multiple lines of signifcation in the receiving culture’ (Gentzler 27). It ‘plays with the language, adding puns, ambiguities, phonetic resonance and multilingual referents’ and, ‘perhaps most radically, the translator has the freedom to interject local referents into the text’ (Gentzler 27–28). Gentzler notes that ‘for the Brazilian writers, translators, and flmmakers’, cannibalism is one of the primary conceits for illustrating Brazilian cultural difference, its bi-cultural development, and its complex and often contradictory identity

Introduction

7

as a nation. Its citizens have developed by absorbing many European values, but at the same time by not ignoring their indigenous roots. (28) The metaphor of the cannibal can thus be utilised to represent the colonised people breaking free from what was imposed upon them and, at the same time, as both a violation of European codes and an act of homage (Bassnett and Trivedi 4–5). In a postcolonial context, appropriation can be compared to cannibalism: it is used by postcolonial societies to devour the imperial culture, nourish their own culture, and articulate their identity. This book is about the translation and appropriation of the aspects of another culture by colonial Korea for the dual purposes of nourishing their own culture and resisting colonialism. It explores how, in the process of relocating theatre, Korean theatre ideologically appropriated drama from the colonised periphery and successfully created its own national theatre. In addition, it examines the elements of the Irish theatre that Korean nationalist theatre assumed in articulating modern Korean theatre and defying colonialism. The modern Korean theatre movement evolved throughout the 1920s and 1930s as a part of the cultural nationalism established after the March First Independence Movement. It aimed to develop a modern form of national theatre and ultimately lay the groundwork for future national independence. The Korean intellectuals involved in the theatre movement considered the theatre a vehicle to educate the public. They sought to stage realistic plays to enlighten and stimulate the public by presenting the tragic realities of the Korean people under colonialism rather than focusing on the melodramatic heroes or heroines depicted in sinpa. Just as anti-colonial and postcolonial writers – including Irish Literary Revival writers such as Yeats and Lady Gregory and African writers such as Chinua Achebe – sought a realistic representation of their people ‘from the inside’ to counteract the misrepresentation of their people by the colonisers, Korean intellectuals endeavoured to realistically represent Korean people and their lives ‘from the inside’ and, in so doing, to thwart the images of Korean people described in sinpa. Indeed, for Korean intellectuals – just as for Fanon, the founders of the Irish Literary Theatre, the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and the Caribbean poet and playwright Derek Walcott – drama was seen as ‘a particularly effective way of reaching the people and creating or recreating a national community’ and ‘a means of speaking directly to an audience and engaging it in a communal experience’ (Innes 118). However, because modern theatre in Korea was in its infancy, it lacked the volume of original Korean plays needed to serve the intellectuals’ purpose, and they had to depend on foreign drama. Thus, many Western playwrights, including writers of realism such as Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekhov, and Bernard Shaw, were translated into Korean and staged. Irish playwrights – especially those involved in the Abbey Theatre, such as W.B. Yeats, Lord Dunsany, Augusta Gregory, J.M. Synge, St. J. Ervine, T.C. Murray, and

8

Introduction

Sean O’Casey – were also translated on a signifcant scale for the frst time in the history of Korean theatre. This book focuses on both the translation of Irish drama in Korean theatre and its infuence on realistic Korean plays. As Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi state, ‘the act of translation always involves much more than language. Translations are always embedded in cultural and political systems, and in history’ (6). Venuti, meanwhile, argues that ideological manipulation occurs from the very choice of a foreign text to translate (67). There is always a motivation, whether cultural, political, ideological, or historical, behind a translation, and the process from selecting a text to translating it involves myriad socio-cultural or political forces. This book explores why Korean theatre looked at the colonised periphery rather than at the imperial centre to nourish their national theatre. It focuses on the political and socio-cultural motivations behind the selection of the Abbey Theatre plays in Korean theatre and their translations. Given the colonial situation at that time, we cannot exclude the interference of the coloniser’s censorship in the process, a factor with which this book also concerns itself. The book investigates how the translation of Irish drama in colonial Korea became a space for the competing claims of the translation feld between the colonisers and the colonised. Additionally, it examines how Sean O’Casey became a peripheral playwright in this space despite his consideration as one of the most important and infuential Irish playwrights in Korean theatre. With regard to the translation and relocation process in theatre, Hale and Upton suggest that: There are ideological questions surrounding the defnition of the target audience. If the theatre mirrors the collective identity of its audience, it also creates it by re-shaping perceptions. The theatre translator therefore has a socio-political responsibility to defne and address the target audience which demands careful mediation of the source text. (2) With this in mind, by looking at the translation strategies of Irish drama and the translators’ social trajectory, this book explains how the relocation process was related to their perception of the audience and illustrates the political and socio-cultural motivations behind the selection of the Abbey playwrights. Finally, it explores how Irish plays contributed to the emergence of realistic Korean plays in colonial Korea. It examines the appropriation of works by Sean O’Casey and J.M. Synge by central Korean playwrights Yu Chi-jin and Ham Se-deok in creating their realistic plays. Although Korea’s colonial period spanned from 1910 to 1945, the focus of this book is on the 1920s and 1930s, when the modern Korean theatre movement evolved on a substantial scale and Irish drama was imported. It exhaustively covers those Irish dramas that were translated or produced in colonial Korea.

Introduction

9

I use the scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers published during the colonial period and research conducted by previous generations regarding traditional and modern Korean theatre to defne the changes in Korean theatre under colonialism and the dramatic activity prevalent at the time. To examine the position of translated drama, I refer to essays concerning translated drama published in magazines or newspapers during the colonial period by the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement. Furthermore, to explore the appropriations of Irish drama in the importation process, I analyse major articles on Irish drama and the Irish dramatic movement published throughout the 1920s and 1930s. For an exhaustive list of translated Irish dramas, I refer to previous studies conducted by Korean scholars of English or Korean literature over the past decades; I also consult newspapers, literary journals, and magazines. To defne the translation strategies of Irish drama, I look at translated Irish plays published in newspapers, journals, and magazines. I rely on literary sources to examine the translators of Irish drama. Lastly, I use the literature on Irish and Korean dramas and other historical sources to investigate the appropriation of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy by Yu Chi-jin and Synge’s Riders to Sea by Ham Se-deok.

Notes 1 Records on both Western theatre and Western-style indoor stages began to appear at that time: Yu Gil-jun (1856–1914), a Korean politician and reformist of the late Joseon Dynasty, introduced the Western dramatic forms of comedy and tragedy, the Western theatre system, and mise-en-scènes in his book Seoyugyeonmun (Travel Sketches of Western Countries), published in 1895, and Min Yeong-hwan (1861–1905), a minister of the late Joseon Dynasty, discussed the scale of the Western-style indoor theatre in the diary he wrote while travelling through Russia in 1896 (D. Yi 3–4). 2 Daehan Minbo was a Korean nationalistic newspaper that launched in June 1909 and was forced to close by the Japanese government in August 1910. 3 Yi Gi-se, one of the leaders of sinpa theatre, quit the sinpa theatre movement and turned to other cultural enterprises immediately after the March First Independence Movement of 1919. Yun Baek-nam, another sinpa leader, also quit sinpa theatre and turned to the modern Korean theatre movement (Yu 179).

References Ashcroft, Bill, et al. Postcolonial Studies: Key Concepts. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2007. Bassnett, Susan. Translation Studies. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2002. Bassnett, Susan, and Harishi Trivedi. Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 1999. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Cabral, Amilcar. ‘National Liberation and Culture’. Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 53–65.

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Cha, Gi-byeok. ‘Ilbon Jegukjuui Singminjeongchaek-ui Hyeongseong Baegyeong-gwa Geu Jeongaegwajeong’ (‘The Formation and Development of the Japanese Imperialist’s Colonial Policy’). Ilje ui Hanguk Singmin Tongchi (Japanese Colonial Rule over Korea). Ed. Cha Gi-byeok. Seoul: Jeongeumsa, 1985. 12–45. Choe, Ung, et al. Hanguk-ui Jeontonggeuk-gwa Hyeondaegeuk. (Traditional and Contemporary Korean Theatre). Seoul: Bookshill, 2004. Choe, Yu-ri. Ilje Malgi Singminji Jibae Jeongchaek Yeongu (A Study on the Japanese Colonial Policy over Korea at the End of Its Rule). Seoul: Kookhak Community Corp., 1997. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1966. ———. ‘National Culture’. The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffths and Helen Tiffn. London: Routledge, 1995. 153–57. Gandhi, Leela. Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia UP, 2019. Gentzler, Edwin. ‘Translation, Postcolonial Studies, and the Americas’. EnterText 2.2. E-journal. 12–38. Hale, Terry and Carole-Anne Upton. Introduction. Moving Target: Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation. Ed. Carole-Anne Upton. Manchester and Northampton: St. Jerome Publishing, 2000. 1–13. Han, Hyo. Joseon Yeongeuksa Gaeyo (The Outline of History of the Joseon Theatre). Pyeongyang: National Publishers, 1956. Innes, C. L. ‘Postcolonial Synge’. The Cambridge Companion to J. M. Synge. Ed. P.J. Mathews. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 117–31. Kim, Yong-jick. ‘Minjokjuui Jinyeong-ui Dongnipundong Noseon-gwa Daejungundong Jeolyak’ (‘The Political Direction of the Independence Movement and the Popular Movement Strategy of the Nationalists’). Ed. Kim Yeong-jak, Hanguk Naesheoneolism-ui Jeongae-wa Geulobeolism (Korean Nationalism and Globalism). Seoul: Baeksan Seodang, 2006. 197–233. Lee, Na-mi. ‘Ilje-ui Joseon Jibae Ideologi: Jayujuui-wa Gukgajuui’ (‘Ideologies of Japanese Imperialism to Colonize Korea: Liberalism and Nationalism’). Ilbongwa Seogu-ui Singmin Tongchi Bigyo (A Comparison of Colonial Rule between Japan and the West). Kang Man-gil, et al. Seoul: Seonil, 2004. 97–142. Niranjana, Tejaswini. Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context. Berkeley: U of California Press, 1992. Ortolani, Benito. The Japanese Theatre from Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism. Revised Edition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990. Rafael, Vicente. Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society under Early Spanish Rule. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. Robinson, Michael. ‘Colonial Publication Policy and the Korean Nationalist Movement’. The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945. Eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. 312–45. Seo, Yeon-ho. Hanguk Yeongeukron (Korean Theatre Theory). Seoul: Samilgak, 1975. Tymoczko, Maria. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999. Tymoczko, M. and Edwin Gentzler, eds. Translation and Power. U of Massachusettes Press, 2002. Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge, 1998.

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Yi, Du-hyeon. Hanguk Singeuksa Yeongu (A Study of the History of Modern Korean Theatre) Seoul: Seoul National UP, 1981. Yi, Sang-u. ‘1900 nyeondae Yeongeuk Gaeryang Undong-gwa Geundae Gungmin Gukga Mandeulgi’ (‘The Theatre Reform Movement of the 1900s and the Making of a Modern Nation State’). Hanguk Yeongeukhak 23 (2004): 37–71. Yu, Min-yeong. Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 (People in the Korean Theatre World 1). Seoul: Taehaksa, 2006.

1

The Modern Korean Theatre Movement and Western Drama

1 The Modern Korean Theatre Movement 1.1 Socio-Political Background The political struggle for independence in 1919 brought a wind of change in the feld of Korean theatre. Facing the military regime of Japanese colonisers, the Korean people rose in mass demonstrations in March 1919, a historic event which was later called the March First Independence Movement. After the failure of the political struggle for independence, Korean intellectuals felt the need to reform and strengthen Korean society and to encourage the Korean people to lay the groundwork for a future battle for national liberation. The resultant alternative to a political struggle was a new form of cultural nationalism, whose infuence launched the modern Korean theatre movement. This movement, which was initiated in 1921 and evolved throughout the 1920s and 1930s, sought to inaugurate a modern form of national theatre through a new type of Western-style theatre that promoted Korean culture and educated the people and, in turn, recovered national independence. Since the modern Korean theatre system was, during this time, not yet established, a model had to be adopted from other countries to present the tragic realities of the Korean people under colonialism. This interaction between Korean nationalism and the Korean modern dramatic system characterised the position and functions of translated drama in Korean theatre. Translation activities, therefore, came to play the role of ‘primary’ activities, which could bring about the establishment and evolution of the Korean drama repertoire by introducing new elements and serving to promote national awakening and national identity. According to Even-Zohar, the primary/secondary dichotomy relates to the degree (and type) of admissibility of new elements into a closed repertoire, while the dichotomy itself refers to innovativeness versus conservatism (‘Polysystem Hypothesis’ 33, ‘Polysystem Studies’ 21). ‘Primary’ activities bring about innovation: ‘the augmentation and restructuration of a repertoire by the introduction of new elements, as a result of which each product is less predictable, are expressions of an innovatory repertoire (and system)’ (Even-Zohar,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003163947-2

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‘Polysystem Studies’ 21; Hermans 108). In contrast, ‘secondary’ activities lead frst to consolidation, but eventually to mummifcation and ineffectiveness by producing models that are constructed in full accordance with what the established repertoire allows (Even-Zohar, ‘Polysystem Studies’ 21; Hermans 108). Translation in the Korean theatrical landscape under colonialism was considered a signifcant ‘primary activity’ aimed at compounding and restructuring Korean drama by importing new elements of Western-style theatre. Thus, translated drama had a central status and was accepted as legitimate by the dominant circles in Korea, displacing the previously popular sinpa, which, according to Gim U-jin and Hong Hae-seong, was rejected during this period. In their 1926 article ‘Uri Singeukundong-ui Cheotgil’ (‘The First Step toward the Modern Korean Theatre Movement’), the authors highlight the crucial distinction between sinpa and Western theatre: the former was deemed as vulgar, popular theatre, while the latter was considered a highbrow theatrical form. The cultural nationalism that prompted a new form of theatre in Korea was the product of the Japanese colonisers’ policies during the frst phase of colonial rule. This frst phase refers to the period from the signing of the Treaty of Annexation in 1910 to the March First Movement in 1919. During this period, the Japanese colonisers hardened the social, political, and economic grounds for thorough colonial rule by monopolising Korea’s natural resources, controlling fnancial and public service enterprises, uprooting potential political opposition, and breaking up the rural communities by reverting to a feudal land-tenancy system. This was the ‘Dark Period’1 in which the human rights of the Korean people were denied under the rule of the bayonet. With the Treaty of Annexation, ‘His Majesty the Emperor of Korea’ came to make ‘the complete and permanent cession to His Majesty the Emperor of Japan of all rights of sovereignty over the whole of Korea’.2 Subsequently, Korean nationalism tended towards fghting against colonialism and attaining national independence. However, during the frst phase of colonial rule or the Dark Period, the nationalist movement was unsuccessful due to the complete suppression of its followers by the Japanese colonisers. During the Dark Period, the socio-political situation of Korea was as follows. The Treaty of Annexation saw a Government-General replacing the Residency-General established in Seoul by Japan for preparation for the Annexation of Korea, and a Governor-General replaced the Resident-General. According to the Case Concerning the Laws and Ordinances to be Enforced promulgated in March 1911 and the Offcial Regulations on the Government-General in Joseon proclaimed in September 1910, the Governor-General, who was appointed by the Emperor of Japan from the ranks of Japanese generals or admirals on active duty, was vested with all legislative, executive, judicial, and military powers. He controlled all state affairs and the army and navy, issued legislative directives, oversaw

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the judicial system, had fscal independence, and managed the appointments within his bureaucracy (G. Bak 40–41). One of the authorities vested in the Governor-General was sovereign power through a military police system, which the Japanese government introduced in June 1910. The police controlled politics, education, religion, and morals and had summary powers regarding misdemeanours (Eckert et al. 259). With these absolute powers, the police assumed the central role in colonial policy to subjugate the Korean people and nationalists during the frst phase of Japanese rule. Under the rule of Terauchi Masatake, the frst Governor-General, political organisations were disbanded, and public gatherings of all types were prohibited according to the existing Peace Preservation Law of 1907 and a new law, the Case Concerning the Ban on Political Assembly or Outside Crowd Assembly, promulgated in August 1910. In addition, assemblies for any purpose held without the permission of the police were punished under the Regulations on Police Offence Punishment proclaimed in March 1912 (G. Bak 51). In December 1910, the Government-General arrested educationalists and intellectuals as a warning to Korean nationalists and to contain the potential for political opposition. This apprehension, later known as the ‘Case of the 105’, aimed to sap the nationalists’ morale and remove obstacles to colonial rule over Korea by arresting Christian leaders and expelling American missionaries from the country. In 1912 alone, there were over 50,000 arrests for illegal political activities and assemblies (Eckert et al. 260). Between 1911 and 1918, there were 330,025 cases of summary conviction under the military regime, according to the Annual Statistical Bulletin of the Japanese Governor-General of Korea (Simons 127). Terauchi Masatake also tried to ‘cripple the political opposition to colonial rule’ by muzzling the press (G. Bak 139). The Korean media, already severely censored under the 1907 Newspaper Publication Law and the 1909 Publication Law, had to suffer even stricter control and supervision after the 1910 Annexation. Any newspapers and magazines involving a hint of patriotism or nationalism were forced to be discontinued, and the sale, circulation, or publication of textbooks and books about Korean history and geography – as well as all translations about nation-building, independence, or the rise and fall of foreign countries – were prohibited (G. Bak 139). Major newspapers, such as Hwangseong Sinmun, Daehan Maeil Sinbo, and Jeguk Sinmun, which had assumed a prominent role in the recovery of national sovereignty among the Korean people, were forced to cease publication, and the magazine Sonyeon (‘Boy’), which had had an important status in the history of Korean literature, was suspended. Due to the blackout of the Korean press, which had been the main channel of communication among the literati, the information exchange among them was restricted, and nationalists’ efforts to mobilise opposition to Japanese rule were thwarted (Eckert et al. 260). The Japanese government, which had begun to control the educational system in Korea during the Protectorate period, also sought to obliterate the very identity of the Korean people through a new educational system.

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The early educational policy of Japanese colonial rule was made explicit in the Joseon Educational Ordinance of 1911 and the Private School Regulations of 1911 and 1915 (G. Bak 144–59). In December 1910, Terauchi Masatake confscated textbooks written by Koreans and disseminated the Joseon Educational Ordinance in September 1911. The Ordinance of 30 articles mandated that Koreans could not be provided with a high-quality education: Koreans were allowed only a short-term, practical education with a minimal budget. According to the Ordinance, the aim of education was to foster faithful and good subjects based on the Imperial Rescript concerning education. The education system included common, vocational, and professional education: common education was intended to ensure the instruction of common knowledge and skills, engendering national characteristics and the spread of the Japanese language; vocational education focused on knowledge and skills about agriculture, industry, and commerce; and professional education was concerned with teaching higher learning and the arts. Under colonialism, there were two sets of schools in Korea: one for Korean people and the other for Japanese people. These two sets of schools were differentiated by the quality of instruction, facilities, and curriculum. The time Koreans spent receiving an education was short, lasting between two and four years, and there were fewer schools for Koreans. For example, in 1919, the number of common schools for Koreans was 484 for a population of 17 million (with 84,000 children), while that for the Japanese (elementary schools) was 393 for 330,000 Japanese immigrants in Korea with 42,000 children. The Korean people were reluctant to have their children attend those schools. They wanted to educate their children in private schools or Seodang, where the quality of education was better and nationalistic courses were open. Thus, the Japanese authorities mobilised the police to coerce them to attend these government-led and public schools (G. Bak 146). The colonial education system during the frst phase of Japanese colonial rule aimed ‘to train a literate labor force for future economic development and to educate Koreans to Japanese customs, culture and language. More importantly, perhaps, it provided a mechanism for the broad transmission of Japanese cultural and political values in order to legitimate Japanese rule’ (Eckert et al. 262). However, contrary to the Japanese goal, the Japanese education system stimulated political consciousness by spreading literacy in both the Korean and the Japanese languages among the Korean people. Increased literacy created a base for a larger group of politically mobilised individuals whose experience of discrimination within the Japanese system drove them to active opposition to Japanese rule (Eckert et al. 262–64). The education system thus laid the foundation for the later March First Independence Movement. As Robinson notes, the nature of Japanese rule during the frst phase of colonial rule stimulated the Korean national identity and the growth of political consciousness while repressing its political expression (Cultural Nationalism 39). Enraged by the harsh military colonial rule at home and

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encouraged by the principle of self-determination championed by the U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his ‘Speech on the Fourteen Points’, articulated as an integral part of the post-World War I peace settlement, Koreans revolted against Japanese colonial rule. Demonstrations for independence gradually spread all over the country and even to Manchuria, the Russian Maritime Territory, and other overseas areas for one year. More than 2 million people participated in the movement during the frst two months, engaging in 1,491 demonstrations in 229 of 232 cities and counties (C. Lee 114). The Japanese government’s response to the demonstrations was merciless and brutal, and military reinforcements were summoned from Japan to suppress the insurgence. There were numerous arrests, beatings, killings, and burnings nationwide. According to Park Eun-sik’s Hanguk Dongnipundongjihyeolsa (The Bloody History of the Korean Independence Movement), which was written based on a feld survey by foreign journalists and missionaries, the damage suffered by the Korean people was enormous: 7,509 were killed, 15,961 were wounded, and 46,948 were imprisoned; moreover, 47 churches, two schools, and 715 houses were burned (198). The March First Independence Movement marked another turning point in Korean nationalism as the Japanese government made a significant change in its colonial policy. In the face of considerable resistance, the Hara government of Tokyo passed the Revised Organic Regulations of the Government-General of Korea in August 1919 and reorganised colonial rule under the slogan ‘harmony between Japan and Korea’. The government appointed Admiral Saito Makoto as the third Governor-General and adopted an appeasement policy instead of a dictatorial military policy, allowing the Korean people to engage in various cultural activities. What followed during this period is often referred to as the ‘Cultural Policy’. This policy was nonetheless an act of ‘sly generosity’: indeed, as Japanese Prime Minister Hara Kei argues in his ‘Personal Opinion about the Rule over Joseon’, the real goal was to hide the colonisers’ stronger assimilationism: I believe we can enforce the same systems in Korea as we have in metropole Japan. We should adopt the same administrative, judiciary, military, economic, fnancial, educational, and guidance systems. Then, we surely will achieve the same effect as we did in metropole Japan as a result. The Joseon people may be easily assimilated into Japanese society as their character and behavior give them a basic tendency to be well assimilated in a way. Therefore, in the principle to rule over the Joseon people, we should adopt the same policy as we have in metropole Japan. (G. Bak 194) This statement shows Hara Kei’s perception of the Korean people and the real intention of the Cultural Policy. Hara Kei infers that the Korean people are easily assimilated and accordingly advocates the Cultural Policy as a means towards assimilationism. However, the Cultural Policy sparked

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the Korean nationalist movement and cultural development amongst Korean elites. Korean nationalists took advantage of the expanded limits for organisations and publishing engendered by the policy, and Korean nationalism became a mass phenomenon. It was ‘no longer the monopoly of Westernized intellectual elites. A decade of harsh Japanese rule had combined with the spread of literacy and communications to galvanise a widespread Korean national consciousness’ (Robinson, Cultural Nationalism 3). The nationalist movement for the independence of the nation went on both inside and outside Korea against this socio-political backdrop. The Korean Provisional Government was organised in Shanghai in April 1919, military anti-Japanese fghts continued abroad, and the national movement to awaken the national consciousness and improve education and economy was unfolded within Korea. By this time, the nationalism associated with the socialism of Lenin, who led the Russian Revolution successfully, began to develop, promising support for the independence of weaker nations. These nationalist movements were divided into two groups – radical and moderate – according to their ideological lines. The radical nationalist group strove to attain independence through social revolution and direct resistance to colonial rule, while the moderate group advocated gradual reform to solve the problem of independence. The moderate nationalist group was related to cultural nationalism: that is, the cultural nationalists launched several movements that came to be known collectively as the Munhwa undong (cultural movement). The terms Munhwa undong and munhwapa (cultural group) were in common use in the colonial press after 1920. They were both general designations for moderate nationalists who favoured long-term national development, both cultural and economic, as an ultimate solution to the problem of independence (Robinson, Cultural Nationalism 167). The reason the cultural nationalists turned to the cultural movement rather than engaging in direct resistance to the colonial rule was as follows: One obvious lesson of the March First Movement was that independence could not be attained through emotional appeals alone. Large-scale uprisings did arouse sympathies abroad and even bring about some reforms in government, but this was far from independence or even from autonomy within the Japanese Empire. In order to acquire independence, it seemed that the Korean people would have to rely on their own strength in terms of economy, education, and politics. (C. Lee 238) This analysis demonstrates how the cultural nationalists wanted to approach the problem of national independence: self-strengthening efforts should precede a political struggle. A remark by Maruyama Tsurukichi, the head of the Japanese police at that time, also indicates the aim of Korean cultural nationalism. He divided the Korean nationalist movement into two camps –

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cultural nationalists and social revolutionaries – and gave the following explanation regarding the former: They [the cultural nationalists] advocate independence through their own means and methods. They realize that they can only depend on their own devices and have no real military power to gain independence now. Thus, they advocate self-strengthening for the future. There is a clear trend since 1919, that is, to work for independence for their grandchildren and reject dependence on great powers. The culture movement is essentially this type of independence movement; they hide their demands in cultural activities.3 (qtd. in Robinson, ‘Colonial Publication Policy’ 329) Tsurukichi’s statement suggests that the Japanese colonial government evidently knew the intention of the cultural nationalists and, therefore, it is no wonder that they supervised and censored all Korean cultural activities to curb the nationalistic movement. The cultural movement aimed to strengthen the nation’s economy, education, culture, and politics and to lay the foundation for future political independence as a modern nationstate (Robinson, Cultural Nationalism 6). Whereas political nationalists concentrated on the ‘practical’ aspects of attaining independence, the cultural nationalists were concerned with enhancing national prosperity and imaginatively constructing a national consciousness and identity that could be mobilised alongside the actual steps towards statehood. As Eckert et al. observe, ‘Although these cultural nationalists were not confned to a single organization or under a common leadership they were unifed by an ideology of non-confrontation, gradualism, and social development’ (290). In many ways, the cultural movement represented ‘a distillation of Korean nationalist thought since 1900, emphasizing education, national consciousness-raising, and capitalist development’ (Robinson, Cultural Nationalism 6); in its purpose and character, this movement was the continuance of the 1905–1910 Patriotic Enlightenment Movement in Korea. The activities of the cultural nationalists were varied, ranging from the establishment of a national university and the Korean Production Movement to academic, literary, and artistic movements. These included initiatives involving the press, publications, education, industry, youth, women, thought, religion, literature, drama, music, art, flm, Hanguel (the Korean language), gymnastics, and the study of Korea’s unique cultural heritage. Primarily, the societies or organisations that emerged after the March First Movement led these activities and assumed the role of sustaining Korean cultural nationalism throughout the 1920s and 1930s: These [academic, literary, and artistic] societies were at the nucleus of an emerging modern national culture in Korea, and they nurtured the development of Korean national consciousness in historiography, literature,

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drama, music, and flm. This represented an indirect form of resistance to the cultural assimilation policy of the Japanese. (Eckert et al. 294) Therefore, the fght for national independence in colonial Korea was the struggle of not only political activists but also writers, poets, and artists who attempted to give a voice to a Korean national spirit. This is the nexus at which the modern Korean theatre movement and translated Irish drama were situated. As the ‘cultural renaissance’ emerged with Saito’s Cultural Policy, the modern Korean theatre movement began as part of the Korean cultural movement, and many playwrights were imported through translation. Thus, the course of the contemporary Korean theatre movement and translated drama leaned towards the formation of national consciousness and identity. The media that assumed the most central role in launching and spreading the cultural movement were newspapers and magazines. As part of the Cultural Policy, Governor-General Saito relaxed publication controls and issued permits for vernacular newspapers and magazines. Upon the news of this permission, applications were made for over 60 kinds of newspapers and magazines. The Government-General permitted the publication of only three Korean-run civilian newspapers: Dong-A Ilbo (Dong-A Daily), Chosun Ilbo (Chosun Daily) and Sisa Sinmun (Sisa Daily) in 1920. The purpose of this switch in policy from the ban on the press was as follows: frstly, the Japanese government wanted to curry favour with the Korean people after experiencing strong opposition to their harsh rule, and secondly, they knew they could gain an insight into the Korean people’s thoughts through newspapers. They had received no warning of the March First Independence Movement because of the press ban during the dictatorial military policy. Nevertheless, contrary to the aim of the Japanese colonisers, Korean nationalists used these newspapers to develop their nationalistic movements. In addition to the three dailies, mass-circulation magazines emerged in the 1920s. Magazines such as Gaebyeok (Creation of the World), Sinsaenghwal (New Life), Dongmyeong (Eastern Light), Sincheonji (New World), and Joseonjigwang (Light of Korea) were granted permission to deal with current affairs. During this period, literary magazines such as Pyeheo (Ruins) and Baekjo (Swan) appeared after a similar magazine, Changjo (Creation), was published for the frst time in 1919, and, together, they launched the Sinmunhak (New Literature) Movement. The Sinmunhak Movement contributed to the Korean literary world by breaking free from the conventions of the Enlightenment Literature of the 1910s, of which representative writers were Yi Gwang-su and Choe Nam-seon. They established, instead, a colloquial style and introduced new patterns of literature, such as realism. During the 1920s and 1930s, these newspapers and magazines became the means by which cultural nationalism evolved. They were not only vehicles for spreading anti-colonial thought but also the means of introducing foreign, radical ideas. Given that no political activities were allowed,

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these media played a vital role in inciting the Korean people to take a stand against colonialism. They publicised the goals, ideological orientations, and activities of various organisations, such as political, social, or educational bodies, and they concentrated their efforts on the national movement via the new cultural movement. They featured essays on social problems, novels, short stories, poetry, and translations, as well as international news and political cartoons, and launched a drive in the felds of literature, art, music, theatre, flm, and science. As Eckert et al. remark, ‘Daily reading of either newspaper was de rigueur for any informed citizen’ (288). Irish drama was also introduced and imported through these media. However, this cultural movement was not without constraints. As mentioned earlier, since the Japanese colonial government knew the intention of the Korean cultural nationalists, they thoroughly supervised and controlled the cultural activities on the one hand while simultaneously permitting them on the other. Censorship was one tool of supervision and control. Japanese censorship in colonial Korea focused on the suppression of insults against the Japanese Emperor and his Imperial House, inspirations of independence and national consciousness among Korean people, negative feelings against Japan, and communism (M. Lee 193). The censorship apparatus of the Japanese colonial government was the Superior Police Department of the Military Police Bureau from 1910 to 1919, the Superior Police Department of the Police Bureau from 1919 to 1926, and the Book Department in the Police Bureau from 1926 to 1943 (Jung 6). The Superior Police Department took charge of censorship and the suppression of underground organisations and political gatherings until 1926 when the Book Department was created to tackle the increase in Korean publications. The Book Department was committed to the censorship of all publications, flms, records, and drawings and paintings in Korea (Jung 6). There were three personnel in charge of censorship in 1910 and six people in 1911, all of whom were Japanese. This was because there were no Korean publications in circulation other than Daehan Maeil Sinbo, the daily newspaper founded in 1904, and they did not need Korean censors. It has been argued that Japanese interpreters or Koreans in the Intelligence Agency in the Military Police Bureau practised censorship when necessary to censor Korean texts during this period (Jung 6–7). These personnel increased in number after the March First Independence Movement when the Japanese colonial government permitted some additional Korean newspapers and magazines. There were ten censors in 1926, 22 in 1929, 31 in 1937, and 38 in 1940. Young Korean people who received a modern education were also recruited as censors: there were four in 1926, six in 1928, and seven in 1930 (Jung 35). Japanese censors oversaw the censorship of Japanese publications and Korean newspapers, while Korean censors were responsible for books (Jung 35). The censors followed the censorship guidelines distributed by the colonial government, but the rules were so generalised that much discretion was allowed (M. Lee 192–93).

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Under the Newspaper and Publication Laws, daily newspapers had to pass a prepublication inspection, and all magazines and books had to be submitted to the censor prior to distribution. They had to suffer warnings, deletions, suspensions, confscations and, in the most serious cases, a publication ban. Furthermore, authors and publishers would often undergo jail sentences for thought crimes. For instance, between 1920 and 1929, the Chosun Ilbo underwent 318 cases of confscation and four suspension cases, and the Dong-A Ilbo faced 299 cases of confscation and two cases of suspension (G. Bak 307). Magazines also suffered from strict censorship. The Gaebyeok, which was granted a permit to publish under the Newspaper Law on 20 May 1920, for example, experienced 34 sales bans, one suspension, and one monetary penalty until the suspension of its publication on 1 August 1926. Meanwhile, amid this severe censorship, the cultural movement of Korean theatre also began to evolve. Intellectuals and drama practitioners voiced their opinions on the colonisers’ sinpa theatre, criticising its form by adopting the same Manichean opposition that the colonisers had used to suppress traditional Korean theatre. They condemned sinpa theatre as being immoral and corrupting. In his article ‘Yeongeuk-gwa Sahoe’ (‘Theatre and Society’), Yun Baek-nam argues that sinpa theatre companies exerted an adverse infuence on Korean society (4). The author pinpoints the Yim Seong-gu and Yi Gi-se theatre groups as representative theatre companies of the day and asserts that while Yim’s theatre group portrayed the cruel, vulgar, immoral, and evil aspects of society to meet the low tastes of the masses, Yi’s theatre group also staged low-quality performances, and thus was unworthy of mention (‘Theatre and Society’ 4). Another article published in the Dong-A Ilbo suggests a similar attitude towards sinpa theatre. It claims that sinpa was not hailed by Korean society; only a few theatre companies for lowbrow audiences in Seoul staged worthless entertainment without any systematic knowledge, serving purely to give theatre a negative reputation.4 Moreover, in a review of the Korean world of theatre in 1923, Gim Jeong-jin, one of the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement, denies the existence of sinpa theatre itself, arguing that theatre companies had not existed in Korea, in a strict sense, because they did not show any practical or artistic achievements (‘Geukgye’ 52). Against this social background, two groups of people seeking to subvert sinpa appeared. The frst group comprised traditional Korean theatre practitioners. With the spread of the national consciousness and a renewed understanding of their traditional culture after the March First Independence Movement, Korean nationalist newspapers and theatre practitioners sought to revive their traditional theatre, which had been almost eradicated by the colonisers’ policies (M. Yu, Hanguk Yeongeuk Undongsa 65). The second group consisted of a new generation that had not previously been related to traditional Korean theatre. They launched the singeuk (‘a new drama’) movement, or the modern Korean theatre movement, to establish a modern national theatre and, ultimately, to recover national independence.

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1.2 The Characteristics of the Modern Korean Theatre Movement According to Jean-Marc Gouanvic, linking social groups with a particular genre is crucial because the struggle for a certain genre is concerned with types of text that relate to the interests of certain groups occupying certain positions in the feld (147–66). It is, therefore, critical to recognise who led the modern Korean theatre movement to identify their interests, which would, ostensibly, be related to the purpose of the theatre movement. The leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement were Korean students at Japanese colleges who had gone to Japan because access to college and university education was limited in colonial Korea. The education system in colonial Korea did not allow for any higher education, such as collegeor university-level tuition. Thus, many intellectuals who wanted to pursue higher education went to Japan and, upon their return to Korea, became the leaders of the cultural nationalist movement during the 1920s and 1930s (Eckert et al. 264). These intellectuals launched the modern Korean theatre movement and imported Irish drama as a part of the movement. While they studied in Japan, the Korean scholars had opportunities to explore radical thoughts and witness the new Japanese theatre movement. These experiences led them to the conception of the modern Korean theatre movement. Indeed, many leaders of the Korean theatre movement were particularly inspired by the Japanese theatre movement: for instance, Hyeon Cheol, a drama critic and playwright, studied theatre under Shimamura Hogetsu, an active member of the shingeki (Japanese modern theatre) movement, before he came back to Korea to launch the contemporary theatre movement (D. Yi 96); Hong Hae-seong worked as an actor at the Tsukiji Little Theatre, the centre of the Japanese modern theatre movement (Jo 202–203); and Yu Chi-jin frequented the Tsukiji Little Theatre to study theatre (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 90–92). College students in Tokyo were also involved in the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe, which launched the frst modern theatre movement, and the Towolhoe (Earth-Moon Association), a leading theatre company during the 1920s.5 Later, Korean intellectuals from almost every facet of society came to be engaged in the modern theatre movement. The leading lights of colonial Korea, including scholars, professors, journalists, and writers, were involved in the Geukyesul Yeonguhoe (Theatre Arts Research Association, hereafter the GeukYeon), which became the central Korean theatre company and had a substantial infuence throughout the 1930s. Most of this company’s prominent members had studied in Japan. The involvement of Korean intellectuals in the theatre movement fostered a change in their view of theatre. Traditionally, Korean theatre was excluded from being considered a literary genre or was deemed unworthy of intellectual or academic interest. Most Korean intellectuals treated Korean theatre merely as lowbrow entertainment. The participation of these intellectuals, however, signalled a shift in

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the function of the theatre: now, the theatre’s position was elevated, and it was considered an indispensable part of the cultural repertoire of Korean society. The modern Korean theatre movement was concerned with the interests of Korean scholars under colonialism, and it was natural that these intellectuals were invested in the independence of their country. The theatre movement evolved both through the stage and through magazines, newspapers, lectures, and academies. The fact that Korean college students in Japan launched the modern Korean theatre movement meant that the movement gained momentum in Japan. The Japanese modern theatre movement was initiated in 1909 – 12 years earlier than that of Korea – under the infuence of European realistic drama, such as that written by Ibsen and Zola, and culminated in 1924 with the opening of the Tsukiji Little Theatre (1924–1929). The purpose of the Japanese theatre movement was to modernise theatre: that is, to establish a ‘new theatre’ with realistic-style performances that could contend with contemporary social issues (D. Yi 96–126). Korean students at Japanese universities were both directly and indirectly infuenced by the movement, but the purpose of the Korean theatre movement was different: the colonial situation of their country directed their movement’s course towards a political end. The articles on theatre published during the Korean theatre movement illustrate this ideological inclination. Leaders of the Korean theatre movement, including Yun Baek-nam, Hyeon Cheol, Gim Jeong-jin, Gim U-jin, Hong Hae-seong, and Yu Chi-jin, wrote articles discussing the motivations behind the modern Korean theatre movement, and their views of theatre can be considered as representing the views of the movement. I will now turn to a discussion of each theory as expressed in each article. Yun Baek-nam’s ‘Theatre and Society’ (1920) was the frst article on theatrical theory in colonial Korea. In this article, Yun defnes theatre as the art form most required in the era and the most effective way to educate the people. He then categorises theatre into Greek, Anglo-American, and European forms and argues that although the ways of promoting the people’s theatre depend on the situation of each country, the intention of all theatre is the same: to encourage and guide people towards a new life. Yun emphasises the importance of culture as the foundation of civilisation: without the foundation of spiritual civilisation required by each country and nation, that civilisation is like a mirage built on sand. Therefore, he asserts, Korea needs a theatre of its own that would lead the national culture towards a fourishing civilisation (Yun 4). Other articles also accentuate the social function of the theatre. Hyeon Cheol, a drama critic and playwright, is said to have shifted paths from following a career in medical science to pursuing one in the theatre to cultivate national will (D. Yi 97). He sought to promote modern theatre and train playwrights and actors by establishing the Arts Academy (1920), the Dongguk Cultural Association (1923), and the Joseon Actors School (1924;

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Choe et al. 297). In a 1920 article titled ‘Yeongeuk-gwa Oin-ui Gwangye’ (‘The Relationship between the Theatre and Me’), Hyeon defnes the social functions of theatre as catharsis, cultivation of intellect and refned taste, and moral education. He also argues that the stage is simultaneously a live republic of letters and the history of a nation, claiming that a national theatre is required to foster the national spirit and will (1). In another article, titled ‘Munhwasaneop-ui Geupseonmu-ro Minjunggeuk-eul Jechanghanora’ (‘I Advocate Korean People’s Theatre as the Most Urgent Cultural Project’), he champions the development of a people’s theatre to educate as many people as possible in the shortest time. According to the scholar, a people’s theatre must encompass three categories: it must be a theatre dealing with people’s lives, a theatre of the people, and an educational theatre for the people (‘Munhwasaneop-ui Geupseonmu-ro’ 112). The frst category, which incorporates elements of people’s lives, is the so-called modern theatre. Hauptman, Gorky, and Ibsen, whose themes include the lives of labourers, the humble, and farmers, are included in this category. The second category, he continues, refers to a theatre created or shared by the people, and the third category refers to the educational theatre. Here, ‘minjung’ (‘the people’) has a different meaning devoid of class connotations. According to Hyeon, ‘the people’ refers to Koreans in general, regardless of their class or residence (Munhwasaneop-ui Geupseonmu-ro 112). Therefore, Hyeon’s people’s theatre refers to a Korean national theatre. Hyeon supports the theatre as a means of cultivating national will and national awakening. He argues that there is no theatre in a country without a robust national will, and what can bring a self-awakening to a nation in ten or 20 years is theatre (‘Geukgye-ro bon Uri Minjokundong’ 51–52). Against this background, Hyeon compares the activities of theatre companies and practitioners to those of a military division protecting their country: if defeated, they would return home dead. Hyeon posits that the duty of the theatre companies and practitioners is no less crucial than that of soldiers and sometimes requires sacrifce; their duty is not mere entertainment (‘Galdophoe Gongyeon-eul Bogo’ 4). He defnes the modern Korean theatre movement not only as a part of an artistic movement but also as a social and nationalist movement (‘Geukgye-e daehan Somang’, ‘Geukgye-ro bon Uri Minjokundong’). Gim U-jin, an initiator of the modern Korean theatre movement, and Hong Hae-seong, one of the movement’s leaders, share a similar view of theatre. In their co-authored article of 1926 titled ‘Uri Singeukundong-ui Cheotgil’ (‘The First Step toward the Modern Korean Theatre Movement’), they highlight the importance of the modern Korean theatre movement to the lives of the people, proposing that the theatre is the school of the society. In another article, Hong argues that a nation without theatre is a mentally ruined one because theatre guides the life of a country (5). Gim Jeong-jin, a representative playwright during the 1920s, calls for an ideological movement to tackle complex realities and pinpoints theatre as the most

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effective means. He focuses on theatre as a means of national restoration, asserting that a new thought is derived from an impulse of life and the theatre expresses the impulse most substantially; therefore, it is most urgent for the Korean society to launch a theatre movement in a practical rather than artistic sense (‘Sasang’ 20). Articles published in the 1930s also foreground the social functions of the theatre in relation to the realities of Korea. Yi Heon-gu, one of the founding members of the GeukYeon, refers to the educational and enlightening purposes of the theatre in his discussion of the Silheom Mudae (the Experimental Stage) Theatre Company under the GeukYeon (‘Joseon-e isseoseoui Geukyesul’). He argues that the central duty of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company is the establishment of modern theatre, emphasising that the theatre company did not pursue commercialism and opposed all kinds of popular entertainment or popular tastes because the theatre in a society such as Korea should become part of a cultural movement whose essential duty is to educate and enlighten the public. As such, Yi Heon-gu claims that theatre in Korea should seek enlightenment, resistance, and criticism in favour of a future genuine national theatre (‘Geukdan Ilnyeongan Donghyang’ 113). Furthermore, Yu Chi-jin, who led the GeukYeon as a director, underscores the educational function of theatre. He notes that genuine theatre provides more than entertainment: representing the delicate phases of life on the stage makes the audience ‘smile’ through the aesthetics of the representation on the one hand and ‘learn’ a lesson in aesthetics on the other. He goes on to argue that the educational function of theatre is the most popular since theatre has a direct infuence on the audience (‘Yeongeuk-ui Daejungseong’ qtd. in C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 39). Another member of the GeukYeon and a playwright, Seo Hang-seok, distinguishes modern theatre from commercial theatre, whose aim is to make a proft. The purpose of modern theatre, he claims, is to stimulate refection and self-examination among the audience by representing a slice of life and society on the stage. Therefore, he continues, modern theatre must be a live theatre, which communicates with the audience by embodying the spirit and the mode of the times (16). As seen above, the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement saw theatre as a means of cultivating a national awakening and accordingly emphasised its social and educational functions. They sought to present the realities of the Korean people under the colonial rule on the stage to achieve these purposes. Thus, the motive and intent of the modern Korean theatre movement were political rather than literary or artistic. These characteristics of the theatre movement affected the patterns of imported foreign drama and, in turn, defned the position of translated drama. In fact, Irish drama, which was imported as part of the modern Korean theatre movement, was appropriated to serve this purpose of the theatre movement.

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2 The Position of Translated Drama and Translational Norms in Modern Korean Theatre The position of translated Irish drama during the colonial period was closely related to that of translated drama in the feld of modern Korean theatre. As such, it is essential to understand the motives and position of translated drama to provide a broader context against which translated Irish drama can be understood. Essays concerning translated drama were published in magazines and newspapers during the colonial period by the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement, including Gim U-jin, Hong Hae-seong, Hyeon Cheol, Seo Hang-seok, Yu Chi-jin, and Gim Gwang-seop. This section examines these articles to identify the motives for and the position of translated drama in the feld of Korean theatre. 2.1 A Model for a Modern National Drama and Theatre While traditional Korean theatre had a centuries-long history, the modern Korean dramatic system was still relatively young. There were few Korean playwrights or contemporary dramatic works that the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement could employ to serve their purposes, namely, to subvert the coloniser’s sinpa theatre and establish a new form of national theatre. As discussed in earlier sections, Korean theatre was colonised just as it had begun to pursue modernisation. Although the colonisers’ theatre that fourished in Korea during the 1910s may be said to have been a new type of theatre in terms of its opposition to traditional Korean theatre, it was not ‘modern’ in terms of its acting style and themes. Moreover, from the perspective of the leaders of Korean society, it was merely the theatre of the colonisers who had conquered their nation. The leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement believed they required an entirely new type of theatre – one that had a completely new concept, role, and function – to replace the coloniser’s sinpa. This was where translated drama was positioned. The critical role of translated drama was asserted by many Korean intellectuals and drama practitioners in numerous articles published during the 1920s and 1930s. The imperative of translated drama as a model for modern Korean drama was frst pointed out by Gim U-jin, one of the leaders of the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe. Just before the Troupe’s performance tour, in June 1921, he published a dramatic criticism titled ‘Sowi Geundaegeuk-e Daehayeo’ (‘About the So-Called Modern Drama’) in Hakjigwang, a bulletin of the Korean students’ society in Tokyo. This essay argues that the purpose of modern theatre is frstly to save and liberate human souls, and secondly, to awaken the public. He also suggests that the idea of a new theatre should frstly be disseminated to achieve this purpose and discusses the advent of ‘the age of translation’ in Korea, taking Osanai Kaoru, a playwright and stage director who played a central role in the Japanese shingeki (new drama)

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theatre movement, as an example. In 1909, Osanai founded the Jiyu Gekijo (Free Theatre) where the Japanese modern theatre movement originated, and, in 1924, he founded the Tsukiji Shogekijo (Tsukiji Little Theatre), the frst tangible shingeki theatre, together with Hijikata Yoshi and other members (Seo and Yi 97–98). Quoting Osanai Karou, Gim highlights the role of translation: the frst task the immaterial theatre should tackle is to make stage scripts, dramaturgy, or the age of sincere translation fourish among the Japanese theatre companies. Gim continues to stress the importance of staging translated drama to produce great Korean playwrights, giving the examples of Germany, the Independent Theatre of England, and the Théâtre-Libre of France (U. Gim, ‘Sowi Geundaegeuk-e Daehayeo’ 70). Hyeon Cheol expresses a similar opinion on translated drama. After watching a performance by the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe in 1921, Hyeon proposes that when producing original Korean plays, staging high-quality translated drama would be more effective than staging original Korean plays of low quality because the latter would delay the advancement of dramaturgy and other dramatic techniques (‘Yesulhyeophoe Geukdan-ui’ 131). Gim U-jin presents this view more explicitly in an article titled ‘The First Step toward the Modern Korean Theatre Movement’, which was co-authored by Hong Haeseong. This article is the frst to discuss how to develop the modern Korean theatre movement. It consists of four sections: the popularisation of the fervour towards modern theatre, foreign drama and original drama, training stage artists, and little theatre and a membership system. According to the authors, ‘foreign drama’ refers to theatre productions from advanced theatre companies in Europe, America, and Japan, and ‘original drama’ relates to Korean plays created solely by Korean dramatists. The former involves import, introduction, imitation, or criticism, and the latter involves creative writing and the creation of new life. They also argue for the need for a ‘new seed’ to grow in Korea, where there is no tradition of a modern theatre, assuming the age of criticism to precede the age of creation: 오늘 朝鮮, 이때껏 참뜻으로 劇場과 舞臺와 演出家와 戱曲이 全無했 던 이 荒蕪地 벌판에서 다른 곳으로부터 輸入해오는 새 種子가 아니 면 무엇으로써 新劇運動을 일으킬까? 不斷한 새 生命의 創造에 있어 서는 模倣이니 複寫니 輸入이니가 單純한 模倣, 複寫, 輸入에 그치 지 아니할 것이다. How could we start a new theatre movement in Korea today, a desert where there has been no theatre, no stage, no stage director, and no play in a real sense, if we do not import a new seed from other countries? For the ceaseless creation of new life, imitation, copying, or import will not end in just imitation, copying, or import. (U. Gim and Hong) Gim and Hong viewed translated drama as a means to establish their own dramatic system. They posit the need to import modern plays from

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advanced theatre companies in foreign countries as the source of ‘new life’, giving examples of modern theatre movements in Europe, America, and Japan. They maintain that the ultimate goal of this importation lies not in the importation itself but rather in the creation of ‘great new life’. Their view of translation appears to be very similar to that of Even-Zohar, for whom the major procedures for making a cultural repertoire are ‘invention’ and ‘import’, and these are not mutually exclusive procedures because invention may be carried out via import (‘Making of a Culture’ 357–58). This perception of the function of translated drama during the 1920s was also advocated by other leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement in the 1930s, such as Gim Gwang-seop and Yu Chi-jin. Their thoughts on translated drama as a model for modern Korean drama seem to have been infuenced by the Haeoe Munhak Yeonguhoe (Foreign Literature Research Society; FLRS). This society was organised in 1926 by Korean students in Tokyo for the study, translation, and introduction of foreign literature. In 1927, these students started a publication known as Haeoe Munhak (Foreign Literature),6 a literary journal that produced extensive translations and introduced foreign literature to Korea for the frst time. The preface to the frst issue states the purpose of foreign literature: 무릇 신문학의 창설은 외국문학 수입으로 그 기록을 비롯한다. 우리가 외국문학을 연구하는 것은 결코 외국문학 연구 그것만이 목적이 아니오, 첫째에 우리 문학건설, 둘째에 세계문학의 상호 범위를 넓히는 데 있다. New literature, in general, starts with the import of foreign literature. Our study and research of foreign literature do not constitute an end in and of themselves. We aim at, frstly, the creation of our literature, and secondly, the broader exchange of world literature. (Jo 158) This view of the role of translation must have affected Gim and Yu, who were both members of the FLRS. As a member of both the GeukYeon and the FLRS, Gim, in particular, published many critical essays during the 1930s, including fve essays relating to the Irish dramatic movement.7 In an essay titled ‘Joseon Geukdan-e Je-eon (Some Suggestions for the Korean Theatrical World)’, he asserts that translated drama is necessary for Korea because the nation has no theatrical heritage or worthwhile plays of its own (Gwang-seop Gim, ‘Joseon Geukdan’). In another essay about the third production of the GeukYeon,8 he points out that the repertoire of the GeukYeon has consisted almost entirely of translated plays due to the lack of original Korean texts or their low quality. However, he argues, the GeukYeon ultimately aims to create original Korean plays that could both represent and criticise the lives, feelings, and ideas of the Korean people. These fragmentary comments on the relationship between translated drama and Korean originals were brought together in a 1933 essay titled ‘Uri-ui Yeongeuk-gwa

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Oegukgeuk-ui Yeonghyang’ (‘Korean Theatre and the Infuence of Foreign Drama’), in which Gim Gwang-seop observes: 우리에게도 假面劇 같은 것이 史的으로 보아 있기는 하였지만 演劇의 傳統이라고는 거의 없다 하여도 과언이 아니다. … 最近 朝鮮에서도 劇 藝術硏究會를 비롯하여 學生劇에 있어서 놀라울 만큼 外國劇을 上 演하고 잇다. 이것은 演劇이 없고 或은 沈滯한 社會에서 그것을 振 興시키고 또는 樹立하는 唯一한 길이다. Although we have traditional theatre such as mask-dance drama, it is within the bounds of truth to say that there is no theatre tradition in Korea … Currently, also in Korea, many theatre productions, including Geukyesul Yeonguhoe’s and student theatre groups’, have been of foreign drama. This is the only way to promote and establish a theatrical culture in a society where the theatrical culture is non-existent or stagnant. (‘Uri-ui Yeongeuk-gwa’) The above statement describes the ‘primary’ or ‘innovatory’ role of translations in creating a new cultural repertoire of Korean theatre where a modern dramatic polysystem was in the process of being established. As Even-Zohar notes, translations can be ‘primary’ (that is, innovative) and contribute to the elaboration of new repertoires when a polysystem has not yet been crystallised (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 200–201). In this context, a ‘primary’ activity refers to the activity that takes ‘the initiative in creating new items and models for the repertoire’ (Even-Zohar, ‘Papers in Historical Poetics’ 7). Gim Gwang-seop’s aforementioned essay is severely criticised by the literary critic Min Byeong-hwi. In a 1933 essay titled ‘Oegukgeuk-ui Iip-maneuro Joseon-ui Geukmunhwa-neun Surip doel geosinga? – Gim Gwang-seop-ege Munham’ (‘To Mr. Gim Gwang-seop: Would it be Possible to Establish a Modern Theatrical Culture in Korea only by Transplantation of Foreign Drama?’), Min condemns Gim’s remark about the absence of a theatrical heritage in Korea and his dependence on foreign drama. Gim, meanwhile, in an essay directed towards Mr. Min Byeong-hwi (1933),9 explains that what he meant by ‘a society without theatre’ was that Korea had no theatrical culture that could be said to be modern. He discusses his dependence on foreign drama as follows, taking Irish theatre as an example: 演劇運動에 있어서 두 가지 길이 있음은 認定한다. 하나는 外國劇輸 入, 다른 하나는 民族的 國粹的 立場에 선 自國劇 建設이나 이것은 愛蘭 演劇史에서 能히 엿볼 수 있는 史實로 後者로 因하여 劇文化를 樹立한 것만은 事實이다. I admit that there are two ways to launch a theatrical movement: one is to import foreign drama, and the other is to establish a national theatre

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The Modern Korean Theatre Movement with a nationalistic approach. One example of the latter can be easily seen in the history of the Irish theatre. It is true that Irish theatre culture was established based on nationalism. (Gwang-seop Gim, ‘Banbak-e daehan Jaebanbak’)

He continues to explain that a purely nationalistic approach to a theatrical movement is not desirable and that it should vary with the situation of each country: 愛蘭에는 예-츠라든지 그레고리 夫人이라든지 오-케시 등 그 外 民 族劇의 優殊한 作家가 있어 外國劇을 輸入치 않더라도 넉넉히 劇文 化 樹立의 現實的 可能性이 있었으나 우리와 같은 社會에서는 우리 가 意味하는 바 劇運動에 適合한 – 적어도 舞臺에 올릴만한 劇本이 缺 乏한 – 다시 말하면 劇作家가 거의 없는 社會에서는 不可避로 外國의 優殊한 劇을 移入 上演함 外에 거의 길이 없다. In the case of Ireland, having excellent national playwrights, including Yeats, Lady Gregory, and O’Casey, it was realistically possible for them to establish their national theatre without foreign plays. However, in Korea, we have no other way but to import and stage excellent foreign plays because we do not have playwrights or dramatic texts that are suited to the theatre movement we intend, or to the stage, at least. (Gwang-seop Gim, ‘Banbak-e daehan Jaebanbak’) The Korean modern dramatic system was still young and different from that of Ireland. Thus, Gim Gwang-seop states that he values the importation of foreign drama above everything else because these texts constitute the most crucial teaching materials in the Korean theatre movement (‘Banbak-e daehan Jaebanbak’). In another essay, he acknowledges specifc playwrights, including Shaw, O’Casey, H.G. Wells, and Galsworthy in the English literary world, as writers whose work was being studied in numerous other countries, including France and Germany, and to whom the Korean literary world should refer (‘Hyeondae Yeongmundan-e’). In the fnal analysis, Gim argues that the interest in and study of the theatre of the Korean people should lie frstly in original Korean drama and secondly in foreign drama, and the former could be said to be much guided by the latter (‘Beonyeokgeuk-ui Saengmyeong’). Yu Chi-jin, a playwright and stage director, published the greatest number of critical essays on the theatre among contemporary critics.10 His articles during the 1930s focused primarily on the relationship between original Korean drama and translated drama. Unlike earlier critics, his discussion of translated drama has a broader and more concrete scope. He warns against too much dependence on translated drama, specifes the objectives of translated drama, and discusses translation methods. In a 1933 essay titled ‘Huigokgye Jeonmang – Beonyeokgeuk-gwa

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Changjakgeuk’ (‘A View of the Korean Theatre World: Translated Drama and Original Drama’), he emphasises the importance of translated drama but counsels against relying on it too heavily to produce Korean originals. He posits that translated drama should play the role of a midwife in the creation of Korean originals and foregrounds the need to stage Korean originals, even if they are poor, to train Korean playwrights and ultimately establish a national theatre. In another essay published in the following year, he argues that the performance of foreign drama is more useful in training dramatists than in educating the audience (C. Yu, ‘Singeuk Surip-ui Jeonmang’). In his 1935 essay, ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’ (‘An Opinion about the Performance of Translated Drama’), Yu details the technical advantages of foreign drama to Korean dramatists and practitioners. He begins by noting the discontent and complaints surrounding the staging of foreign drama while recognising the considerable demand for Korean originals among theatre companies, literary circles, and the public. However, he advances, it is necessary to import foreign drama for the time being. According to Yu, Korean dramatists and producers should not fail in their duties to ‘digest’ foreign drama completely to improve Korean plays as soon as possible. He spotlights three elements that Korean dramatists and producers should learn from foreign drama: staging techniques, stage language, rhythmic play, and philosophical ideas. He notes that the number of foreign drama stage productions would not guarantee the achievement of the goal; the importance, he suggests, lies in ensuring that the material is easy for the Korean audience to digest. Indeed, Yu maintains that the Korean audience should be the criterion by which to assess the aptness of the texts: can they understand them, and are they moved and impressed by them? He does not, therefore, insist on literal translations and proposes adaptations as an alternative. Yu positions the Irish model – especially the Abbey Theatre, which produced nationalist plays under colonial rule – as the model for Korean playwrights to follow and emulate in developing nationalist plays (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). As discussed above, the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement regarded translated drama as a model for the establishment of modern Korean theatre. They sought to adopt high-status texts from advanced areas, such as Europe and the United States. The translated drama was not a means of entertainment but rather a text abundant in stage language, dramaturgy, and staging techniques to be studied by Korean theatre practitioners and dramatists alike. As Even-Zohar points out, when a literary polysystem is ‘young’, it is highly probable that it will depend on other writings to create its own literature (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 201). Thus, as the modern Korean dramatic polysystem was still ‘young’, the leaders of the Korean theatre movement sought to beneft from the experience of other literature, and, in this way, translated drama assumed a central position in Korean theatre.

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2.2 National Awakening and Resistance Another facet of translated drama was related to the purpose of the modern Korean theatre movement: to educate and enlighten the masses through the theatre and establish a modern national theatre that could facilitate a national awakening. The theatre that best suited this purpose was the one that dealt with contemporary social issues. Therefore, the leaders of the Korean theatre movement argued that theatre should portray or depict the realities of the Korean people. Gim U-jin and Hong Hae-seong state that theatre in Korea should put daily themes on the stage: the authors echo the saying ‘the theatre is a school’, and so the stock, companies, shops, or factories in one’s daily life should be the themes displayed in theatre rather than the arts, beauty, or life as an abstract concept (U. Gim and Hong). Gim Jeong-jin, who considered the theatre as capable of promoting an ideological movement, takes a similar view: 우리의 現狀을 – 自由없고 돈 없고 活氣없는 이 慘酷한 悲劇의 一幕을 舞臺에 上演케 하라. 그때에 비로소 우리는 우리의 恥辱을 더 明瞭히 더 쓰리게 깨닭을 것이다. 그리고 直覺的으로 그 舞臺에서 感得한 그 刺戟이 電氣 같이 우리 神經을 찌를 때에 비로소 우리는 反省할 것이 요 그 反省으로부터 陽春의 再生을 얻을 것이다. Let us stage our miserable tragedy – no freedom, no money, and no life. Only then will we more bitterly and clearly awaken to the realities of our disgrace. When we are shocked by the reality on the stage, we will fnally refect on our own lives and fnd a way to be newly reborn from the refection. (‘Sasang’ 19) The purpose of the Korean theatre, then, was to force people to face up to their reality. In this context, Korean intellectuals and theatre practitioners were interested in modern theatre and particularly realist theatre. In fact, modern theatre, through which the role of the theatre became one of illumination that was often critical of traditional society and morality, and realist theatre, which uses a set of theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fdelity towards real life to performances, were inseparably related to each other: both dated from Ibsen’s prose dramas of the 1870s. During the 19th century in Europe, urbanisation following the Industrial Revolution created a host of social problems, most vividly seen in the slums spawned by the industrial towns. Unfortunately, governments were little disposed to deal with those problems, ‘for the memories of the French Revolution haunted Europe throughout the frst half of the nineteenth century and governments sought to ensure that such an event would not recur’ (Brockett and Findlay 2). Thus, a myriad of pressing problems was crying out for solutions and, according to Brockett and Findlay, ‘It was this

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recognition that led dramatists in the late nineteenth century for the frst time to treat the problems of the lower classes with the seriousness formerly reserved for the middle and upper classes’ (3). Dramatists tried to ‘provide a truthful representation of the real world … based upon direct observation of contemporary life and manners’ (Brockett and Findlay 7). Antoine’s Théâtre-Libre in Paris (1887), Brahm’s Freie Bühne in Berlin (1889), Grein’s Independent Theatre in London (1891), and the Moscow Art Theatre (1897) were all establishments that spread realist drama. Korean intellectuals and theatre practitioners were interested in modern theatre because of its relevance to social realities. For Korean scholars and practitioners of drama, the term ‘modern theatre’ was thus synonymous with ‘realist theatre’. Gim U-jin suggests that Korean theatre must depend on the import of foreign drama to enlighten the masses and liberate human souls, as Western modern theatre movements did (‘Sowi Geundaegeuk-e Daehayeo’). The materials to be imported, he continues, are the German Freie Bühne, the French Théâtre-Libre, and the English Independent Theatre. Seo Hangseok, who saw the purpose of modern Korean theatre as being to stimulate the contemplation and self-examination of the audience by representing a slice of life and society on the stage, also highlights several modern theatres as examples, including those mentioned by Gim U-jin with the addition of the Moscow Art Theatre (17). Furthermore, the leaders of the Korean theatre movement were interested in the fact that, as Brockett and Findlay observe, the realist drama and theatre that emerged from the recognition of social problems addressed the problems of the lower classes (2–8). Hyeon Cheol, who emphasises the need for a national theatre to cultivate the national spirit and will and advocates a people’s theatre to rapidly educate the masses, recommends three categories of theatre, one of which was theatre that dealt with people’s lives (‘Munhwasaneop-ui Geupseonmu-ro’ 112). Gim Jeong-jin also refects upon the social changes brought about by realist drama and theatre. He positions the realist playwrights Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gorky, and Ibsen as writers who brought about social changes (‘Sasang’ 19–20). He points out that Dostoyevsky’s and Gorky’s realist dramas revealed the ugly realities, contradictions, and conficts of modern society and, in turn, caused the labourers – the most ill-treated class – to rally against their realities. He argues that the theatre is the most effective way to bring about social changes because it is a space in which large masses and people of all classes could share anger, enthusiasm, and agony (‘Sasang’ 19–20). Korean intellectuals’ interest in expressionist theatre reveals a similar motivation: a refection on reality. For example, Gim U-jin explains that original Korean drama should directly address the realities of life, giving the example of German expressionist theatre (‘Changjak-eul Gwonhamneda’).11 He contends that German expressionism was able to fourish just after World War I because the German people contemplated their realities with deep insights after their bitter experiences of imperialism, capitalism, murder,

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starvation, and conficts between individuals and society and the people and the oppressors. Just as the German people had done, he continues, the Korean people should create a literary art drawn from their lives, and this art should be directly related to their lives (‘Changjak-eul Gwonhamneda’). Indeed, the theory and practice of German expressionism must have been ‘compelling for Korean intellectuals who were agonizing over the colonial situation of Korea and the traditional feudalistic value system which did not allow them to pursue their individual desires’ (H. Lee 48). Korean theatre practitioners seemed particularly attracted to an aggressive view towards the external reality that suppressed their freedom (H. Lee 48). After all, to the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement, modern Western drama and theatre were a means of representing colonial situations on the stage for the education and enlightenment of Korean people, thus stimulating a national awakening and ultimately effecting changes to the reality of the Korean people’s lives. Because of this function of modern Western drama and theatre, especially realist drama and theatre, many realist playwrights, including Ibsen, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, Shaw, Strindberg, and Wilde, and their dramatic plays were introduced in Korea through critical essays, translations, or the stage. While Irish intellectuals sought to create new images of Irish culture that would counter English stereotypes and serve Irish nationalist purposes by translating their own cultural heritage throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (Tymoczko 20–21), Korean intellectuals sought to depict their own images under colonialism on the stage through foreign dramas. Unlike the Irish, however, the reason Korean scholars showed such interest in foreign literature rather than their own was that, under colonial rule, they had to establish a modern nation-state through a modern form of literature. As in the Irish context, translation in Korea was a site of resistance and nation-building. Therefore, translation activity in some cases was regarded by colonisers as subversive, so the work of some playwrights, such as Sean O’Casey, could not be staged in colonial Korea. 2.3 Survival and Reform of the Korean Language The function of translated drama was also related to the Korean language and its downgraded status in relation to the Japanese language. Language status, which is the given position against other languages, may be modifed in terms of its social role according to the governmental attitude to a given language. Heinz Kloss classifes language status into six grades according to this governmental attitude: sole offcial language, joint offcial language, regional offcial language, promoted language, tolerated language, and discouraged language (qtd. in Bell 182). Colonialism may be a signifcant context in which modifcations of language status take place. For example, in India, the English language was circulated in a restricted manner: a select group learnt English to serve the colonial machinery at lower administrative levels,

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as well as to build a consumer base for British commercial interests (Raina 275). Members of the upper castes and classes sought an English education because it promised access to both power and powerful people (Parameswara 24). In this way, language discrimination took place, leading to the heightened status of the English language and the English being aligned with the ruling elite, while, conversely, the local language was downgraded in status. The status of the Korean language was also modifed in a colonial context. During the colonial period, the status of the Korean language underwent a shift through the colonial government’s language policy to ‘Japanise’ the Korean people. The Korean language had enjoyed the status of being the sole offcial language since 1894 when the Korean government promulgated Korean as the offcial national language. However, this status was downgraded to ‘joint offcial language’ in 1904, when both Korean and Japanese began to be used in offcial documents.12 During the 1910s, its status was further demoted to that of a tolerated language. According to Kloss, a tolerated language is one that is neither promoted nor proscribed by the authorities. Its existence is recognised but ignored, much like the languages of migrants in the U.K. were (qtd. in Bell 182). Between 1910 and 1941, the Korean language was a ‘second language’, while Japanese was the ‘national language’. Korean, meanwhile, was no longer a ‘national language’; it was referred to as ‘Joseon language’. The hours allocated to Korean language education in schools were also reduced. The curriculum in place for the Korean people refects how the Korean language had been effaced while Japanese language education was reinforced. In state schools, for instance, the hours allocated for Korean and Chinese writing together were six, six, fve, and fve hours per week for the frst, second, third, and fourth grades, respectively, while the Japanese language was allocated ten hours in each grade during the 1910s (G. Bak 149). The hours for the Korean language were further reduced to fve, fve, three, and three during the 1920s, while those for the Japanese language increased to ten, ten, 12, and 12 (G. Bak 213). Offcially, the Korean language enjoyed the status of a tolerated second language until 1941, when the ‘Joseon’ language course was discontinued, and the status of Korean was degraded to that of ‘discouraged language’; however, the colonial government increasingly began to suppress it during the mid-1920s. For example, the use of Korean was rejected in court,13 and fnes were imposed or corporal punishment was inficted against those using Korean in schools.14 The Korean people were compelled to use Japanese in their everyday lives. Consequently, the number of Korean people who understood Japanese increased from 4.08% of the total Korean population in 1923 to 12.38% in 1938 and 22.15% in 1943 (G. Bak 386). In fact, most of the Korean population who could read and understand Japanese comprised Korean intellectuals. Thus, some scholars argued that there was no need to translate Western or Japanese texts into Korean since many Koreans could already read and understand the Japanese language, and there were already Japanese versions of Western writings. The volume of texts translated into

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Korean began to decline from 1924 due to the high-quality but cheap Japanese translations of Western texts (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 681–91). Korean nationalists witnessing this situation made every effort to save the Korean language. Nationalist newspapers, such as the Chosun Ilbo and the Dong-A Ilbo, sponsored the ‘Korean language use movement’, although their efforts were harshly suppressed by the Japanese colonial government. The leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement were also interested in the survival of the Korean language, and notably, they considered translation to be one of the methods by which the language could be saved and reformed. A 1922 essay titled ‘Joseonmal eopneun Joseon Mundan-e Ileon’ (‘A Word to the Korean Literary World Where There is No Genuine Korean Language’) was the frst to contend with the matter of the Korean language. In this essay, Gim U-jin expresses his concerns about the lack of a genuine Korean language in Korea.15 Criticising magazines and newspapers in Korea for their thoughtless use of borrowed or translations of foreign words, he states: 나는 이까지 생각하여 올 때, 우리 문단에는 과연 ‘우리의 말’이 있 는가 하는 기괴한 의문이 올라옴을 속이지 못하겠습니다. 나는 당장 에 우리의 말이 없다고 판단하겠습니다 … 완전한 문전사전(文典辭典) 이 없고, 어맥문맥(語脈文脈)이 없고, 우리의 시가운률(詩歌韻律)이 없 으면, 그야말로 거택(居宅)없는 부랑자가 화의호식(華衣好食)으로만 지 내려 함과 같지요. I have been wondering whether there is truly ‘our own language’ in our literary world. I would conclude that there is none now … Without our own grammar books, dictionaries, contexts, or poems, we would be like a vagabond who seeks comfort without a dwelling house. (qtd. in Seo and Hong 235–36) Gim asserts that language is specifc to each nation, and writing poems, novels, or dramas while disregarding language is like walking blindfolded. He pays particular attention to the language of the theatre, where direct communication is made between actors and the audience. He argues that the language on the stage, which is restricted by time and place, should be closely and directly communicable to the contemporary audience, and dramatists should use everyday common language for this communication (qtd. in Seo and Hong 233). Gim then reveals his interest in Irish playwrights. He provides Synge as an example, emphasising how the playwright had made efforts to create a colloquial language that was full of local colour when he wrote In the Shadow of the Glen. He states that Synge, whom he considers to be a dramatic genius, listened to maids’ conversations in the kitchen of the cottage where he stayed while writing the play. Moreover, he reports, Synge always listened carefully to beggars’ conversations, folk songs near Dublin, or ranchers’ or fshermen’s language on the west coast for his dramatic writings. As such,

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Gim, highlighting the importance of Korean as a literary language, suggests four schemes to save the Korean language and establish its modern usage: (1) the establishment of a Korean grammar system and the production of Korean dictionaries; (2) the collection of legends, folksongs, and ballads; (3) the translation of foreign literary works; and (4) the popularisation of magazines and newspapers. In relation to the collection of legends, folksongs, and ballads, Gim gives the example of the Irish Renaissance, which engendered a cultural awakening in the Irish people. The Irish seized the translation of their own cultural heritage as one means of re-establishing and redefning their nation and their people. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries alike, translation was engaged for the purposes of nationalism or proto-nationalism, leading to both cultural and armed resistance (Tymoczko 21). Just as the Irish people had saved their language through the Irish Renaissance, so too did Gim seek to protect the Korean language and, in turn, to arouse a national awakening in the Korean people through a collection of ballads, folk songs, and legends. Gim’s interest in fostering a colloquial language with local colour is refected in his three-act play Yi Yeong-nyeo (1925), which features both conversational and local language. The Irish Renaissance was the focus of attention among many other Korean intellectuals because of its relation to the Irish language and its nationalistic aspects. An essay titled ‘Inmolhayaganeun Toeo-reul Bojeonkoja: Aeran-ui Munyebuheung Undong’ (‘Irish Renaissance: The Movement to Save a Declining Vernacular Language’; Dongmyeong 1923) refects the Korean intellectuals’ interest in the revival of the Irish language. The essay discusses the efforts made by Irish scholars to save the Irish language and suggests that although Ireland had a longer history than England, and, therefore, a more glorious culture and literature, the Irish faced a decline in their culture, literature, and language under a long period of English colonial rule. Irish intellectuals made efforts to save the declining Gaelic language, and in the late 19th century, the Gaelic League was organised to revive the Irish language. The essay continues by discussing the contributions of Douglas Hyde, Yeats, Synge, and Dunsany to make Irish literature known worldwide. Jeong In-seop, a translator and leader of the Korean theatre movement, expresses a similar interest in the Irish Renaissance. During his visit to Yeats in 1937, he talks about Gaelic as a language of creative working. In his essay ‘Gagyanal–gwa Oegukmunhak Yeongu’ (‘Gagyanal and the Study of Foreign Literature’), Jeong discusses the infuence of translation on the development of the Korean language: 외국문학 수입에는 국어의 발달이 동반할뿐더러 모어 연구가 필요하게 된다. 번역문학이란 것을 생각해 보면 그 결과로서 번역은 여러 가지 부수적 효과를 볼 수 있는 것이다. 어느 나라를 막론하고 번역시기라 는 것이 있는 것이요 그것이 어느 정도까지 발달된 때에 비로소 그 문 학 범위가 넓어질뿐더러 세계적 비평안으로서 문학을 논하게 된다. 따 라서 국어가 발달되고 창작 범위도 훨씬 넓어질 것이다.

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The Modern Korean Theatre Movement The importation of foreign literature entails the need to study a mother tongue as well as its development. Literature in translation produces many collateral effects. Every country goes through a period of translation, the development of which makes the scope of literature wider and world-class literary criticism possible in the target culture. Accordingly, the mother tongue will develop, and the scope of creative working will be broadened. (‘Gagyanal–gwa Oegukmunhak Yeongu’)

Gim U-jin shares this view concerning the infuence of translation on a target language. He discusses the cultural benefts of not only disseminating the modern spirit and ideas but also extending the usage of a national language when translating foreign literary works. He argues that the effect of translation on the literary world of a nation is to develop the use of the language and reveal new aspects, nuances, and contexts of that language. Therefore, he claims, the translation of foreign poetry, novels, and dramas is a signifcant task in the Korean literary world, which is poor in its substance and lacks literary heritage (qtd. in Seo and Hong 242). Yu Chi-jin was also interested in translation as a means of establishing the usage of the Korean language. He emphasises the role of the theatre in the development of a national language: 近代에 와서는 劇場은 言語의 訓鍊所가 되고 그 試驗管이 되고 그 社交室이 된 것이다. 演劇에 있어서 한 마디 말은 처음에 戱曲으로서 机上에서 文字로 討議되고 다시 그 다음에 俳優의 藝術分野로서 舞 臺에서 實際 訓練을 받는다. 이 때문에 演劇의 말은 小說, 詩等의 文 字藝術에서 보다도 더 重要한 修道와 洗鍊을 받고 더 重要한 役割을 行使하는 것이라 하겠다. Recently the theatre has become a training centre, a test tube, and a social hall for language. Stage language is refned as a written language at frst through writers on the desk and then as a language of an art through actors on the stage. Therefore, stage language is more refned and sophisticated than the language of written arts such as novels or poems and, hence, plays more important roles. (C. Yu, ‘Joseoneo-wa Joseon Munhak’) Yu suggests that the stage language contributes to the development of a mother tongue, much like the language of literature. He gives the examples of Shakespeare, who made possible the extensive vocabulary and delicate usage of the English language, and the Irish Celtic language revival movement. He theorises that stage language could be more refned because it is fltered through two components – writers and actors – which may, to some extent, be true. According to Yu, the modern usage of the Korean language could be extended through the translation of foreign drama to be staged. In an essay titled ‘An Opinion about the Performance of Translated Drama’

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(1935), he stresses the necessity of translating foreign dramas to improve Korean drama. Through translation, he argues, Korean dramatists should learn a language’s colloquialisms and rhythms. Given that the Korean people were on the brink of being deprived of their own language by the colonisers, the translation of foreign drama in Korea was a process of identity formation. Thus, the purpose of translated drama in the feld of Korean theatre was threefold: innovation, subversion, and the formation of a national identity. Accordingly, the translated drama in Korean theatre under colonialism leaned towards somewhat political purposes. The position of translated Irish drama should be understood in this larger context. 2.4 Translational Norms in Modern Korean Theatre In Moving Target, a book about theatre translation and cultural relocation, Hale and Upton relate the following unique set of questions raised in the process of theatre translation: Firstly, there are ideological questions surrounding the defnition of the target audience. If the theatre mirrors the collective identity of its audience, it also creates it by re-shaping perceptions. The theatre translator therefore has a socio-political responsibility to defne and address the target audience, which demands careful mediation of the source text. Secondly, the form itself demands a dramaturgical capacity to work in several dimensions at once, incorporating visual, gestural, aural and linguistic signifers into the translation … Finally, translating for performance within a given context requires a sensitivity to the various agendas in operation in both the source and target cultures – whether in terms of state censorship, cultural bias, or, at a more pragmatic level, institutional production policies. (2) These questions – concerning the target audience, the agendas in operation in both the source and target cultures, and questions raised by the theatre form itself – can be closely related to the function that the translated drama will have in the target culture. Agendas in both the source and target cultures, meanwhile, can be closely associated with the purpose of translation; the audience can be defned and addressed according to the goal of the translated drama, and the theatre form-related questions can be treated according to the purpose of the translated drama. That is, all these questions can be mutually interconnected and require translators to undergo a process of strategic decision-making involving foreignisation, domestication, or, sometimes, manipulation of the text. As noted previously, the function of translated drama in modern Korean theatre was threefold: it was intended to serve the purposes of innovation, subversion, and national identity. These three purposes raise some

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questions, however. What consequences, for instance, might the function of translated drama have on translational norms, behaviours, policies, and the perception of the audience? Furthermore, how did the Korean translators try to defne and address the target audience to fulfl the function of translated drama? The innovatory and subversive functions, in particular, may have an infuence on translation strategies in terms of ‘adequacy’ and ‘acceptability’: that is to say, they may affect the translator’s decision of whether to adhere to ‘the norms realised in the source text (which refect the norms of the source language and culture)’ or to adhere to ‘the norms prevalent in the target culture and language’ (Toury 56–61), or, in more political terms, foreignisation or domestication. When translated literature assumes an innovatory position, it is considered essential to deliver the linguistic, cultural, and artistic elements and contexts of the source text faithfully because it is used as a model. Indeed, the source text is considered sacred, and translators must try to reproduce the source text exactly. In this case, foreignisation is frequently adopted as a translation strategy whereby translators do not feel constrained to follow target literary models and thus produce a target text that is close to the source text in terms of adequacy, as Even-Zohar states: Since translational activity participates … in the process of creating new, primary models, the translator’s main concern here is not just to look for ready-made models in his home repertoire into which the source texts would be transferable … Under such conditions the chances that the translation will be close to the original in terms of adequacy (in other words, a reproduction of the dominant textual relations of the original) are greater than otherwise. (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 203) In fact, when translated literature assumes the role of a model for creation, it can be argued that translations are undertaken for writers rather than for readers or audiences. Conversely, the subversive position of translated literature may involve a translation strategy of ideological manipulation or audience-oriented translation so that the target text can be used to mobilise people to attain specifc goals of the target culture. In this case, translators may impose modifcations that are not textual constraints to serve their purposes, thereby producing a target text that is not close to the source text in terms of ‘adequacy’. Here, the intention of the target text determines the translation methods and strategies. Hans J. Vermeer explains this position in terms of Skopos theory. According to Skopos theory, ‘the prime principle determining any translation process is the purpose (Skopos) of the overall translational action’ (Nord 27). Christiane Nord also argues that ‘In the framework of this theory, one of the most important factors determining the purpose of a translation is the addressee, who is the intended receiver or audience of the

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target text with their culture-specifc world-knowledge, their expectations, and their communicative needs’ (12). Thus, it can be said that the translators defne the audience according to the purpose of the translation and choose translational strategies that correspond as such. The innovative and subversive functions of translated drama that required conficting translation strategies led to controversies over literal versus free translation in modern Korean theatre. These controversies evolved around the Korean literary circle, which included Sim Hun, Gim Gwang-seop, Yi Seok-hun, and Yu Chi-jin. It was Sim Hun who frst raised concerns surrounding literal translation in modern Korean theatre. In an article entitled ‘Towolhoe-e Ileonham’ (‘A Suggestion for the Towolhoe Theatre Company’; 1929), he criticises the repertoire of the Towolhoe Theatre Company, a leading theatre company during the 1920s. Pointing out that sinpa theatre enjoyed popularity among Korean audiences because it dealt with a slice of the Korean people’s daily lives, Sim Hun argues that adaptations of Western drama are diffcult for the Korean audience to understand because they are unfamiliar with their subject matters. Accordingly, he suggests that the Towolhoe should stage original Korean plays rather than Western drama. Although it is not possible for a modern reader to know what the adaptations produced by the Towolhoe were like, it seems, from Sim Hun’s remarks, that they were not a ‘cultural transplantation’, which refers to ‘the wholesale transplanting of the entire setting of the source text, resulting in the text being completely rewritten in an indigenous target culture setting’ (Hervey and Higgins 30). Sim also attacks the repertoire of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company. From the following statement made by Yu Chi-jin, the manager of the theatre company between 1935 and 1938, one can infer that the company staged literal translations of Western drama. 原作者는 世界的으로 이름난 文豪인 同時에 우리의 大先輩이다. 그에 게 對한 우리의 至誠은 그를 地極히 尊敬하게 하고 그를 尊敬하는 마 음은 드디어 그의 作品에다가 絶對値를 두는 것이다. 卽 우리는 그를 배우는 사람이오 그는 우리를 가르치는 사람이다. 그의 作品에 충실하 는 것은 그가 作品에서 보인 바 營養素를 우리가 한방울 남기지 않고 攝取하는 것과 같은 意味이다. 이렇게 우리는 생각하고 原作에 忠實하 게만 하려고 努力하면서 여태까지는 飜譯劇을 상연하였다. The original playwrights are our seniors and great writers with worldwide fame. Therefore, we respect and value their works. In other words, they are our masters, and we are their disciples. To be faithful to them means devouring every nutriment from their works. That was our attitude towards Western drama, and we staged Western plays translated in such a way. (C. Yu, ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’) This remark reminds us of Haroldo de Campos’ concept of ‘blood transfusion’, whereby cannibalistic translation is undertaken for the health and

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nourishment of the translator (Bassnett and Trivedi 5). Indeed, Yu’s attitude towards translation indicates that the translation process was practised for the health and nourishment of Korean theatre by devouring every grain from Western drama. Therefore, translation strategies in this context leaned towards ‘adequacy’. Meanwhile, the purposes of translated drama in modern Korean theatre also caused conficting attitudes towards translation strategies: practitioners were forced to decide whether to reproduce the source text faithfully or to cater for the Korean audience. The following statement by Gim Gwangseop illustrates these diffculties: 늘상 問題되는 것은 外國劇이 어느 程度로 鑑賞되고 理解되는가 하 는 點이다. 勿論 外國劇이란 制作된 그 나라 사람을 鑑賞의 對象으로 된 劇이므로 生活과 感情이 다른 나라의 觀客에게는 理解 못할 點 생 소한 點이 적지 않다 … 우리는 이 可能을 더 可能케 하기 爲하여 飜 案을 試하려는 意圖도 있다. 여기에는 藝術的 立場으로만 하여도 퍽 問題가 있다. 그러나 그것도 考慮하면서. The usual focus of the issue is how much foreign drama is appreciated and understood. Given that foreign dramas were created for foreign audiences, it is natural that, having different sentiments and lifestyles, the Korean audience fnd them unfamiliar and diffcult to understand … Some translators are trying to adapt foreign drama to improve their understanding. Although this is very problematic from the artistic point of view, translators should consider this respect too. (‘Uri-ui Yeongeuk-gwa’) This argument signifes the necessity for translators to defne the audience before deciding on translation strategies. Gim Gwang-seop’s remark demonstrates that the focus of the Korean theatre movement was on the audience, who were unfamiliar with foreign sentiments and lifestyles, and not on the intellectuals, whose learning was enough to allow familiarity with foreign cultures. The issue of theatre practitioners being caught between the need to serve the audience and to establish a model is revealed most prominently in Yu Chi-jin’s dual attitude towards translation strategies. He states that the translated drama staged by the GeukYeon is for dramatists rather than for the audience: 新劇樹立에 있어서 難解의 飜譯劇부터 시작할 것인가, 알기 쉬운 創作 物로써 出發할 것인가의 問題는 識者間의 意見이 많다. 勿論 좋은 創 作物이 있으면 그것을 上演하는 것이 上策이겠지마는 그렇지 않은 以 上 難解의 飜譯劇이라도 上演하여 戱曲術의 具體的 構成과 文學的 內 容을 본받아서 하루바삐 우리의 新劇人의 出現을 促進시키는 수밖에 없는 것이다. 卽, 飜譯物 上演은 觀衆敎化보다도 오히려 作家 敎養에 있어 보다 큰 啓蒙的 役割을 가지는 것이라고 보겠다.

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There are controversies among the intellectuals about how to establish modern Korean theatre: whether to start with translated drama, which is diffcult to understand, or with Korean originals, which are easy to understand. Of course, the best way would be to start with Korean originals if we had excellent ones. Otherwise, the second-best option would be to stage translated drama, albeit diffcult to understand, in order to study dramaturgy and dramatic themes and thereby to hasten the emergence of Korean dramatists. In other words, the performance of foreign drama is more useful for training dramatists than for educating the audience. (C. Yu, ‘Singeuk Surip-ui Jeonmang’) Yu’s reference to the performance of foreign drama as being ‘more useful for training dramatists’ can be considered to mean that translation activity should lean towards ‘adequacy’ rather than ‘acceptability’. In a later essay, Yu makes statements to the effect that translation should be administered for dramatists, theatre practitioners, and the audience simultaneously (‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’). While he does not mention the need for the ‘adequacy’ translation strategy for dramatists and theatre practitioners, his remarks signify the necessity for Korean dramatists and producers to learn staging techniques, stage language and its rhythmic play, and philosophical ideas from foreign drama (‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’). At the same time, Yu postulates a need for free translations or adaptations for the Korean audience. Noting that translated drama led to complaints and criticism from both the Korean audience and literary circles because of its literal translation, he proposes audience-oriented translation strategies. For Yu, the only answer to the problem of appealing to the audience is to assimilate translated drama to the Korean situation based on the audience’s understanding, and, if possible, adaptations or even rewritings of the original drama can be accepted (‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’). One can arguably infer Yu Chi-jin’s position as a dramatist and stage director from his dual attitude towards translation strategies: that is, the relationship between ‘adequacy’ and ‘acceptability’. As a dramatist, he needed translated drama as a model from which to create original Korean plays, and as a stage director, he required translated drama that the Korean audience could understand and appreciate.16 From this discussion, we can see that during the 1920s and 1930s, controversies over what translated drama was supposed to be like in modern Korean theatre were closely related to the roles it was believed translated drama should play. The artistic and ideological purposes of the modern Korean theatre movement characterised the role of translated drama as such and led to considerations being given to entirely different translation strategies in modern Korean theatre. For artistic purposes, it was necessary to reproduce original texts so that a new genre, style, and concept could be transplanted into Korean theatre, and a modern national theatre could be nurtured in turn. In this

44 The Modern Korean Theatre Movement case, translation strategies leaning towards foreignisation were needed. In contrast, for ideological purposes, translated drama had to be acceptable to the Korean audience, so it needed to be translated in such a way that the Korean audience could understand it easily and completely. In this case, because practitioners deemed the audience as unfamiliar with foreign culture, translation strategies leaning towards domestication were necessary. In other words, this meant translation strategies, such as cultural transplantation, were required for the Korean audience, which, at that time, had a cultural background that was entirely different from that of Western countries and that had had little contact with the Western world. Korean intellectuals and theatre practitioners tried to meet these two goals, and their arguments over literal versus free translation, or ‘adequacy’ versus ‘acceptability’, should be considered the result of their efforts to fulfl the artistic and ideological purposes of translated drama in modern Korean theatre. Of course, as Toury points out, ‘There is no necessary identity between the norms themselves and any formulation of them in language’: Verbal formulations of course refect awareness of the existence of norms as well as of their respective signifcance. However, they also imply other interests, particularly a desire to control behaviour, i.e., to dictate norms rather than merely account for them. Normative formulations tend to be slanted, then, and should always be taken with a grain of salt. (55) The arguments over translation strategies in modern Korean theatre may be interpreted as stemming from this desire. Korean intellectuals and theatre practitioners might have aimed to offer guidelines for translation activities in accordance with the position of translated drama in modern Korean theatre. Given that ‘norms are acquired by the individual during his/her socialization’ (Toury 55), it was natural that drama translators during the colonial period were caught between the need to relate to the position of translated drama for innovation and that for ideological purposes.

3 Western Drama in the Modern Korean Theatre Movement Western literature frst began to be translated into Korean in 1895.17 Around the time of the 1894 Gapogyeongjang political reform movement, national awareness arose, and the modernisation movement began in Korea. Korean elitists hoped to modernise their society by importing advanced Western civilisation. Thus, many Western writers were translated into Korean and published. Before Japan’s Annexation of Korea in 1910, many of the translated works were historical, biographical, and political texts (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 303–307). Korean intellectuals thought they needed ‘practical’ rather than ‘artistic’ literature to encourage the public, who were facing the danger of losing their national sovereignty under the

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threat of Japanese and Western powers, to confront the reality of Korea in that context. With the Annexation of 1910, however, the Japanese colonial government prohibited the publication of history- or biography-related translations and confscated and burnt all such books because they thought their publication might awaken the Korean national consciousness (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 414; G. Bak 139). As such, only ‘artistic’ literature was allowed to be translated into Korean during the 1910s (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 414). In the wake of the March First Independence Movement in 1919, the Japanese colonial government adopted what is commonly referred to as the Cultural Policy, which permitted Korean nationalistic newspapers and magazines. These newspapers and magazines became the agents of Korean cultural nationalism, which promoted the national awakening and laid the foundation for a national literature. These media, considered a vehicle for developing national literature and theatre, published a variety of literary genres translated into Korean. During the 1920s, the number drastically increased to 671 literary works, compared to only 89 during the previous decade.18 In particular, many literary magazines, such as Gaebyeok (1920), Pyeheo (1920), Baekjo (1922), and Geumseong (1923), promoted the development of literature and thus motivated the import of foreign literature. The Japanese Government-General also played a part in the increase of translated works: it ‘forced Koreans to reduce their own national cultural activities and to imitate the Japanese adaptation of Western civilization’ (Cho 121). There were additional reasons for the rise in Korean translations. World literary patterns imported through the coloniser, Japan, instigated a literary awareness among Korean intellectuals and made them aware of the need to improve their own literature by importing foreign literature. Furthermore, the increasing number of Korean students studying in Japan had opportunities to analyse foreign literature and a variety of genres. There had been an increase both in the number and the range of literate people and, as they achieved higher educational levels, they wanted to experience foreign literature (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 415). Against this background, Western drama was also imported. The frst translated drama was Katusha, the Korean version of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, in 1916 (M. Yi 321). Western drama began to be translated in earnest during the 1920s when the modern Korean theatre movement started: in fact, in this period, the number of translated dramas exceeded that of novels (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 427). Translated dramatic texts, both classic and modern, were introduced through magazines and newspapers, as well as on the stage. During the 1920s, translated classic playwrights included Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Schiller, and Goethe. Among these, Shakespeare’s works constituted the largest number, with 12 translations, four of which were translated from Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 428).19 However, translations of classic plays

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were far fewer than those of modern plays. During the 1920s and 1930s, modern dramas from England, Russia, France, Germany, the United States, and other countries were imported, with playwrights including Turgenev, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol, Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg, O’Neill, and others. Works by Irish playwrights, including Yeats, Gregory, Synge, Dunsany, Ervine, and O’Casey, and the German expressionist playwrights Georg Kaiser and Reinhard Goering, were also imported during this period. This increased importation of modern drama in Korea is attributable to the modern Korean theatre movement, which evolved to establish a modern Korean theatre and arouse a national awakening. Under the infuence of the Korean theatre movement, the Korean playwrights ‘were drawn to the more realistic works of European dramatists such as Anton Chekhov, August Strindberg, Ibsen, and others in their desire to use theatre realism as a vehicle for modernization and social change’; they ‘especially imitated works by Irish playwrights like John Millington Synge and Sean O’Casey’ (Nichols 5). At the end of the 1930s, as the colonial government’s suppression and control of the press reached its climax, the amount of translated drama and translations of other genres decreased rapidly. From 1937, when Japan launched the second Sino–Japanese War, until 1945, when the Japanese colonial rule over Korea ended, the colonial censorship of the press intensifed (Geun-su Gim 119–26). As a result, there was a substantial decline in the variety of magazines published during this period: the number decreased from 228 to 18 during the 1930s (Geun-su Gim 126–29). Most of the magazines that survived the censorship were pro-Japanese. Nationalist or socialist literary works were rarely published, while pro-Japanese works fourished. In addition, Japan forbade the import of Western literature, which was now deemed the literature of its enemies (Geun-su Gim 119–26). The following section investigates how the modern Korean theatre movement evolved and how Western dramas were received by the feld of Korean theatre. 3.1 Development of the Modern Korean Theatre Movement The modern Korean theatre movement developed amongst amateur student theatre groups, professional theatre companies, and proletarian theatre companies. The importation of modern Irish drama was concerned with the former two groups, which introduced modern Irish playwrights, including O’Casey, Synge, Dunsany, Gregory, and Yeats, to Korea. The proletarian theatre movement was launched in the mid-1920s and grew in the 1930s to stimulate and rally the peasants and urban labourers. From the mid-1920s onwards, several proletarian theatre companies were organised, including the Yeomgun (1923), the Proletarian Theatre Association (1925), the Bulgaemi Theatre Company (1927), and the Total Arts Association (1927). However, due to close observation by the Japanese colonial government, their activities were largely insignifcant. The Japanese government prohibited communist activities in any form (Seo and Yi 134–40). Thus, this

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section focuses on the other two groups: amateur student theatre groups and professional theatre companies. The modern Korean theatre movement was launched in 1921 with a small group of college students in Tokyo who organised a theatrical troupe and started performances throughout Korea. The group comprised the members of the Geukyesul Hyeophoe (Theatre Arts Association), an association organised in 1920 by Korean students at Japanese universities, including Gim U-jin, Hong Hae-seong, and Jo Myeong-hui, to study classical and modern Western drama. This group organised the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe and came to institute a tour of Korea to galvanise the Korean people through theatre (M. Yi 150).20 Their repertoire included two original Korean plays and one Irish play: Jo Myeong-hui’s three-act play Gim Yeong-il ui Sa (The Death of Gim Yeong-il), Hong Nan-pa’s twoact piece Choehu ui Aksu (The Last Handshake), and Lord Dunsany’s oneact play The Glittering Gate.21 Gim Yeong-il ui Sa was Jo Myeong-hui’s frst modern play, which he wrote in 1920 for the Korean tour.22 It was an early version of realistic drama in Korea (Nichols 4), dealing with poverty, ideological conficts, and the nationalistic movement that students in Japan faced at that time. Gim Yeong-il, a poor self-supporting student in Tokyo, fnds a purse on the street and, after much internal confict, returns it to its owner, Jeon Seok-won, a rich student. Later, when Gim Yeong-il receives a telegram about his mother’s serious illness, he asks for Jeon’s help with the travelling expenses to reach his hometown. However, Jeon refuses to offer assistance, and a fght takes place between Jeon and Gim’s friends. When the police come to stop them, seditious documents are found on one of Gim’s friends. Gim and his friends are arrested by the Japanese police, and Gim dies of pneumonia after being released from detention. Choehu ui Aksu is a two-act adaptation from the author’s novel with the same title and tackles the modern awakening of a Korean woman. The author of this play was also a composer. In the play, Heungsu and Hwabong, old friends from elementary school, develop a romantic relationship as they grow up, but Hwabong’s father denies their relationship and seeks instead to marry his daughter into a wealthy family. Unable to change her father’s mind, Hwabong confdes in Heungsu that she wishes to commit suicide. Heungsu, seeking to test her love, agrees to provide her with medicine to fulfl the act; however, the medicine is, in fact, wine. Upon learning the truth, Hwabong ends her relationship with Heungsu. The Dong-A Ilbo introduced the play as having a theme like that of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (27 Jul. 1921, p. 4.). Lastly, The Glittering Gate was a one-act play that Dunsany wrote at the request of William Butler Yeats for the Abbey Theatre. First performed at the Abbey Theatre in April 1909, this play deals with unrealistic supposition within an imaginary realm, Heaven. It centres on two recently deceased burglars who, when Heaven’s gates open, fnd only empty night and stars. The Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe toured 25 cities in Korea from 9 July until 18 August 1921 with signifcant success.23 The Korean audience, who

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had up to this point been used to the sinpa theatre style and had never experienced this new type of theatre, considered it to be genuine theatre.24 The frst performance in Seoul at the Danseongsa Theatre attracted a full house, despite heavy rain.25 On 28 and 29 July 1921, the Troupe prolonged its performances in response to its popularity, and on 31 July, the last production in Seoul, no admission fee was charged so that poor labourers and self-supporting students could have an opportunity to see the performances. The free admission was also an expression of gratitude towards the audience of 300,000; indeed, so many people focked to the theatre even after a ‘House Full’ sign was hung that the police were mobilised.26 Even those Korean intellectuals who had been critical of and had kept away from theatre joined the audience. The Dong-A Ilbo claimed that the best achievement of the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe was to call together the intellectuals who typically never came to the theatre (30 Jul. 1921, p. 3.). Newspapers and critics alike commented very favourably on their performances. The Dong-A Ilbo reported that the Troupe showed a more consistent acting style and stricter attitude towards the script than existing theatre companies (18 Jul. 1921, p. 3.). Before the Troupe’s arrival, theatre practitioners had tried to appeal to popular emotions using an exaggerated sinpa acting style. The performances of the Troupe could be said to be the frst efforts to subvert sinpa, and they were the frst modern theatre performances based on an understanding of the Korean reality under colonialism. Among the repertoire, Gim Yeong-il ui Sa won the greatest sympathy from Korean audiences because of its nationalistic theme. This three-act tragedy was interpreted as representing the stark reality of the Korean people under colonialism. In response, the performance was suspended by the inspectors sent by the Japanese colonial government, and the staff and performers faced problems because of the dialogue in the play: for example, ‘We had freedom ten years ago, but not now’ (M. Yi 151). One can infer, therefore, that the successful performance tour of the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe in 1921 sparked the modern theatre movement in Korea: 이 때부터 순업(巡業)의 신파조와는 다른 경향으로 일반의 연극열이 전국에 휩쓸었던 것이다 … 각 지방 청년회, 교회 등은 연중 사업으로 소인극을 하였으며 도회 유학생의 귀향기에는 반드시 연극을 선물로 가져갔던 것이다. Since its [the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe’s] touring performances, the ardour of the public for the new trend of theatre, which was different from the sinpa of provincial tours, swept the country … Local youth groups and Christian churches organised amateur theatre companies and performed for local audiences throughout the year, and students who studied in cities gave theatre performances when they returned to their native towns as a gift for their villagers. (Yim 344)

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With this new trend in Korean society, many singeuk theatre companies were formed by students to establish a new type of drama in Korea, including the Galdophoe, the Hyeongseolhoe, the Songgyeong Hakuhoe, and the Towolhoe (Choe et al. 301–303). Among these, the Towolhoe, originally organised as a literary group by Korean students attending Tokyo universities in 1922, became a permanent theatre company after its second production. Inspired by the success of the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe, the Towolhoe organised theatre performances during the summer holidays to subvert low-quality sinpa and establish a new theatre movement in Korea (Shin, ‘Yeongguk Yeongeuk’ 34). They staged one original Korean play and three modern Western plays between 4 and 8 July 1923 at the Joseon Theatre. The repertoire comprised Bak Seung-hui’s Gilsik (one act), Eugene Pillot’s The Famine (one act) translated by Gim Gi-jin, Anton Chekhov’s The Bear (one act) translated by Yeon Hak-nyeon, and Bernard Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband (one act) translated by Bak Seung-hui (Shin 1994: 150). Gilsik was Bak Seung-hui’s frst play. As the author states, this play was a realistic drama that refected the awareness of that period and the abolition of old morals and conventionalities (M. Yu, Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 260). The members of the Towolhoe took charge of the frst production, from translating and stage setting to acting and directing, and Bak Seung-hui and Gim Gi-jin played the roles of the protagonists. Due to their lack of theatrical experience, however, the production proved to be a failure both in its artistic achievement and at the box offce (M. Yu, Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 245). The comments on the frst production of the Towolhoe were generally unfavourable. One of the reasons for the failure was that the actors and actresses had no acting experience and lacked practical acting skills: Yi wol-hwa, who played the role of the heroine in How He Lied, even forgot her lines during the performance (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 150). Although unlike sinpa, their performances were realistic in style, the selection of the repertoire was not appropriate: the translated plays were too complicated for the Korean audience to understand because of cultural differences (Sim). Unfortunately, we cannot know anything about the translations, such as whether they were adaptations, whether they kept close to the originals, or whether the quality of the translations was good because neither scripts nor performance records are available today. The failure of their frst production brought debts and an impaired reputation upon the Towolhoe. For the second production, more popular plays were selected: Wilhelm Meyer-Förster’s Alt-Heidelburg (fve acts), August Strindberg’s Creditors (one act), Tolstoy’s Resurrection (four acts), and, notably, a reprise of Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband, met this time with great success. Their realistic stage settings, costumes, natural acting style, and colloquial dialogues impressed the Korean audience (D. Yi 129). The theatre employed the help of a painter, Yi Seung-man, and a stage-setting expert, Won U-jeon, rendering the stage art extremely successful (M. Yu, Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 245). Resurrection and Alt-Heidelburg were

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particularly popular: the audience reported they had never seen such a form of theatre and never heard that kind of story in Seoul, and that only the Towolhoe could achieve such a great success (S. Bak). Although Towolhoe’s performance style lay between sinpa and modern theatre, the Korean audience evaluated their performances as new and realistic. After the success of the second production, the Towolhoe was reorganised as a permanent theatre company under Bak Seung-hui and produced theatrical performances regularly. They staged translations and adaptations of both modern Western and Korean plays. Irish plays, including The Gods of the Mountain and Fame and the Poet by Lord Dunsany and In the Shadow of a Glen by Synge, were also staged by this company. Unfortunately, however, insuffcient revenue at the box offce and a shortage of actors increasingly drew them towards commercialism, sparking criticism from Korean intellectuals, and the group fnally dissolved in 1926 (Choe et al. 302–303). Although they made a comeback performance in 1929, it was not successful. Bak Seung-hui, who led the Towolhoe, explained the failure of his theatre company as follows: 첫째 돈이 없으므로 劇團의 背景이 되는 劇場을 所有하지 못하고, 演 劇人다운 演劇人이 없는 것이 主要한 原因이지만, 觀劇層의 中心이 되 는 中産階級이 加速度로 沒落하는 것이 무엇보다도 重要한 根本的 原 因일까 합니다. Our failure is due to the absence of our own theatre due to fnancial diffculties and lack of genuine theatre practitioners. However, the most fundamental reason, I think, is the rapid collapse of the middle class, who constituted most of the audience. (Maeil Sinbo 13 Jan. 1931) This commentary demonstrates that the modern form of theatre was supported by a middle-class audience, unlike traditional Korean theatre, which was enjoyed by the lower classes. In this context, ‘middle class’ refers to individuals positioned in the interim between the upper and lower classes in terms of education and income and holds no connotation of Marxian class structure. In contrast to traditional Korean theatre, modern theatre in Korea evolved due to the support of intellectuals and the middle class. However, the Japanese colonisers’ Land Survey from 1910 to 1918 widened the gap between the rich and the poor and reduced the number of farm owners, which constituted the middle class. The area of the tenanted farm, for instance, increased to 42% from 1910 to 1920 (Kwak 116). Bak seemed to have this in mind when he attributed the group’s failure to the collapse of the middle class. Nonetheless, Gim Yeon-su, a drama critic, ascribed the failure to the loss of the motivation and passion that the theatre company had shown in its initial stages, as well as the lack of a theatre and suitable scripts. The fact that translated drama constituted most of the performance repertoire during the 1920s (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 155) supports his assertion concerning the lack of scripts.

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Notwithstanding its failure to establish a new theatre in Korea, the Towolhoe contributed much to the advancement of modern Korean theatre by providing the Korean audience with regular, modern drama (Y. Gim). Before the Towolhoe, all singeuk theatre companies were organised on a temporary basis for special occasions and performed over a relatively short period. In addition, the Towolhoe was the frst singeuk company to pay attention to the visual aspects of theatre, such as costumes and stage sets (Jang 88). During the 1920s, there were also some singeuk theatre companies formed by existing theatre practitioners who had previously led sinpa theatre. Refecting on their previous sinpa performances, Yi Gi-se and Yun Baeknam organised the Yesul Hyeophoe (Arts Association) and the Minjung Theatre Company (People’s Theatre Company). They sought to establish a new theatre, but their performances were not new in the strict sense of the word; they could not overcome sinpa (Choe et al. 303). The modern theatre movement continued until 1939, when the colonial government forced the GeukYeon, a leading theatre company during the 1930s, to close. Amateur student theatre groups and the GeukYeon then played a crucial role in the theatre movement during the 1930s. Student theatre groups participated more actively in the movement during this time, seeking to educate the Korean people and spread the modern spirit through theatre. Under the colonial situation, they imposed upon themselves the special mission of social duty. They played a signifcant part in the modern Korean theatre movement as one of the social duties of students in colonial society (Yeong-seop Ju 124 qtd. in Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 154). Student theatre groups actively staged a wide range of modern Western plays, including works by Dunsany, Gregory, Shakespeare, Galsworthy, Ibsen, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and O’Neil, but their performances were discontinued after 1936 because of the colonisers’ censorship (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 162). The GeukYeon led the theatre movement as a permanent theatre company and was the most infuential organisation throughout the 1930s. The theatre company was formerly the Geukyeong Donghohoe (Theatre and Film Club), a group organised by Hong Hae-seong, Yun Baek-nam, Seo Hang-seok, Yu Chi-jin, and Yi Heon-gu in 1931 to hold a theatre and flm exhibition. After the exhibition’s success, the members organised the GeukYeon to deepen the public’s understanding of the theatre arts, correct the conventions of the existing commercial theatre companies, and ultimately establish a ‘modern’ Korean theatre in the true sense of the word (D. Yi 172). The founding members were 12 in total: two leading theatre practitioners – Hong Hae-seong and Yun Baek-nam – and ten young scholars who had studied at Japanese universities and had no experience in the feld of theatre. The GeukYeon had research and operations divisions. The research division conducted research into plays, dramatic theory, dramaturgy, and drama criticism from other countries while writing plays and translating and adapting foreign plays. The operations division engaged in educating the Korean audience; training actors; improving theatre conventions through public

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lectures, publishing articles, reviews, and a technical journal, Geukyesul (Theatre Arts); and stage productions. Among these activities, stage productions were the most notable. The group staged translated and original Korean plays under the name of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company. GeukYeon’s performance activities were distinguished into three periods according to their directors. The frst period, under the director Hong Haeseong, ran from May 1932 until December 1934; the second, under the director Yu Chi-jin, was from November 1935 until March 1938; and the third, under the name of the Geukyeonjwa Theatre Company, was from April 1938 until May 1939 (Sang-u Yi, Yu Chi-jin Yeongu 288). As directors, Hong and Yu had much infuence on the selection of the repertoire for the stage. The GeukYeon made its successful debut in the Korean theatre world with its frst stage production of Gogol’s The Inspector-General (fve acts), translated by Ham Dae-hun. This satirical play was published in 1836 and revised for the 1842 edition. It portrays the deep corruption of powers in Tsarist Russia and the greed and stupidity of human beings. The selection of this play was the result of the company considering the colonisers’ censorship. 사실 당시에 레퍼터리 선정은 매우 어려웠는데, 그 가장 큰 이유는 일 본 총독부의 강력한 검열 때문이었다. 그런데 우리들의 주장이 모두 달 랐지만 한 가지 공통점이 있었다. 그것은 검열을 피할 수만 있다면 민 족의 고통을 어떤 방식으로라도 짚어야 된다는 견해에서였다. 결국 우 리들은 홍해성과 함대훈의 의견을 좇아 러시아 극작가 고골리의 「검 찰관」으로 낙찰을 보았다. It was very diffcult to select plays for the stage because of the strict censorship by the Japanese Government-General. Although each one of us wanted to stage different plays, we had one thing in common: all of us thought we should stage the sufferings of our nation if it was possible to pass censorship. Finally, we decided to stage the Russian dramatist Gogol’s The Inspector-General following the suggestions of Hong Haeseong and Ham Dae-hun. (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 105) The above remark suggests that self-censorship played a considerable part in the process of the company’s selection of foreign drama. The performance of The Inspector-General was favourably reviewed, with a ‘wise choice of drama, great appeal to the Korean audience, serious and refned presentation, and the greatest achievement in the ten years since the productions by the Towolhoe’ (Go). In the second production, two modern Irish plays, Ervine’s The Magnanimous Lover and Gregory’s The Gaol Gate, were included in the repertoire (Seo and Yi 106). During its frst period, the GeukYeon focused predominately on modern Western plays for its repertoire, staging 12 translated plays and two original Korean plays. Korean playwright Yu Chi-jin’s plays Tomak (The Mud Hut) and Beodeunamu seon Dongri-ui Punggyeong (The Scene from the Willow Tree

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Village) were staged for their third and ffth productions. Among the 12 translated plays were the representative modern plays, such as Shaw’s Arms and the Man, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. Six of the 12 translated plays were the same as the repertoire of the Tsukiji Little Theatre in Japan under the infuence of the director Hong Hae-seong, who had worked there as an actor. These six plays were Gogol’s The Inspector-General, Goering’s Seeschlacht, Pirandello’s The Imbecile, Chekhov’s The Festivities and The Cherry Orchard, and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (Sang-u Yi, ‘A Study of Geukyesul Yeongukhoe’ 97–98). However, Irish plays The Magnanimous Lover and The Gaol Gate were not included in the repertoire of the Tsukiji Little Theatre; they were selected for the GeukYeon’s repertoire out of Korean theatre practitioners’ interest in the Irish dramatic movement (Sang-u Yi, ‘A Study of Geukyesul Yeongukhoe’ 97–98). The GeukYeon’s dependence on modern Western plays, which were alienated from the reality of the colonial situation, became the focus of criticism from commercial and proletarian theatre circles and made the Korean audience turn away from the theatre.27 Consequently, the GeukYeon came to focus on original Korean plays for its repertoire during its second period. Nevertheless, this change in the theatre company’s policy was primarily due to the philosophy of Yu Chi-jin, who led the theatre company during its second period. Yu (‘Huigokgye Jeonmang’, ‘Geukmunhak Gyebal-ui’) warned theatre practitioners against too much dependence upon translated drama and emphasised the need to stage original Korean plays. He stated that Korean theatre practitioners should keep in mind that translated plays were nothing but a midwife to assist in the birth of original Korean plays, so they should be careful not to hinder the production of original Korean plays by depending too much on translated drama. According to Yu (‘Huigokgye Jeonmang’, ‘Geukmunhak Gyebal-ui’), the group needed to stage original Korean plays because, frstly, overindulgence in translated plays would ruin actors’ acting styles, and secondly, only original Korean works could attract a wide range of Korean audiences who were alienated from singeuk. However, what was most important was to train Korean playwrights and ultimately establish a modern national theatre. Giving as examples the Abbey Theatre in Ireland and the Provincetown Players in the United States, which, by staging their national plays, produced talented playwrights, such as Synge and O’Casey, and Eugene O’Neill, respectively, Yu stressed the need to stage original Korean plays: 우리는 우리 創作劇이 劇으로서 未完한 點이 있더라도 될 수 있는대 로 레퍼터리에 取入시켜서 그것을 舞臺上에 具象化시키는데 있어서 우 리의 劇作家에게 새로운 衝動과 慾心과 熱情을 주어야 할 것이며 舞 臺로 하여금 그들의 道場으로 提供하여야 할 것은 앞에 말한 바와 같 다. 그렇지 않으면 到底히 우리의 戱曲作家의 輩出을 期하기 어려울 것 이며 드디어 戱曲界의 發展을 바랄 수 없을 것이다.

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Yu considered the stage a space for educating and training Korean playwrights to create original Korean plays, not merely for educating the audience. In another essay (‘Geukmunhak Gyebal-ui’), Yu points out that although they were trying to develop dramaturgy through translated drama, the longer the period lasted, the greater the loss they would suffer; it would be preferable to vitalise original Korean plays while simultaneously seeking the Korean audience’s and actors’ more complete digestion of translated drama. Yu’s remarks reveal the anxiety both of being devoured by the source culture and of losing identity in consuming it through translation for the health and nourishment of the target culture. Due to this anxiety, the number of original Korean plays staged during the second period of the GeukYeon increased, making up ten out of the 17 plays produced (Seo and Yi 106–107). Considering that only two original Korean plays were staged during the frst period of the GeukYeon, this was a signifcant advance. The original Korean plays included Yi Gwang-rae’s Chonseonsaeng (The Country Teacher), Yi Seo-hyang’s Eomeoni (Mother), Yu Chi-jin’s Jamae (Sisters), and Yi Mu-yeong’s Sujeonno (The Miser; Seo and Yi 106–107). The audience-centred policy was also applied in the GeukYeon’s selection of translated plays for the stage. Thus, the repertoire included many works that had the sentiment of sadness towards and resonance with the Korean colonial situation at that time (J. Kim 57). The plays staged were Courteline’s La Paix Chez Soi (Peace at Home), Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness and Resurrection, Galsworthy’s The First and the Last, Karl Schönherr’s Glaube und Heimat (Faith and Homeland), and Porgy by Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward. However, during the second period, the Japanese colonial government tightened its censorship of scripts, treating the theatre company as a political organisation and its members as nationalists. While suffering strict censorship, the members of the GeukYeon were frequently jailed on charges of promoting public disorder (Jang 91). The company was eventually forced to dissolve in March 1938. After its dissolution, the company was reorganised as the Geukyeonjwa by Yu Chi-jin and Seo Hang-seok. Unfortunately, this company was also forced to dissolve within a year due to suppression by the colonial government (Seo and Yi 108–109). So concluded the singeuk movement in Korea. After being engaged in the Sino–Japanese War in 1937, the Japanese government passed the National Mobilisation Law in 1938 to place the national economy of Japan on a wartime footing. The feld of Korean theatre was also restructured under

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this law. The Japanese colonial government founded the Joseon Yeongeuk Hyeophoe (Korean Theatre Association) in December 1940 and later founded the Joseon Yeongeuk Munhwa Hyeophoe (Korean Theatre and Culture Association) in 1942 to bring all theatre companies in Korea under their control. In its attempts to root out Korean culture and tradition, Japanese colonial policy became increasingly blatant, and the colonial censorship of the press intensifed. Eventually, Japan stopped permitting the importation of Western literature altogether (Geun-su Gim 119–26). Only propaganda theatre was allowed under this strict control; as such, singeuk could no longer be found on the Korean stage. 3.2 Infuence of Western Drama on the Korean Theatre Field Notably, although many modern Western playwrights were introduced in the modern Korean theatre movement, their works were not staged comprehensively, and only several of their works were performed. For example, Ibsen was one of the most translated playwrights – together with Chekhov, Wilde, Synge, and Lady Gregory – at the beginning of the modern Korean theatre movement, but the reception on the stage focused primarily on A Doll’s House. Ibsen was perceived as ‘the synonym of modern drama’, and the protagonist of A Doll’s House, Nora, was considered ‘a fgure of modernity symbolising women’s emancipation in Korean society during the 1920s and 1930s’ (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 29). Before his works were performed on stage in colonial Korea, Ibsen and his plays were widely introduced through magazines and newspapers, predominately with a focus on his ideas regarding women’s liberation (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Seoyang 203, 753). His plays staged during the 1920s and 1930s were A Doll’s House, Ghosts, The Lady from the Sea, The Vikings at Helgeland, and Little Eyolf (Ryu 20, 94). While other plays were staged just once, A Doll’s House was presented on the stage fve times, once by the GeukYeon in 1934 and four times by student theatre groups during the 1920s (Ryu 20). Ibsen’s reception in the world of Korean theatre focused largely on women’s liberation. As Ryu notes, the fact that ‘Ghosts and The Lady from the Sea were introduced as a trilogy of women’s emancipation together with A Doll’s House’ (22) also shows how Ibsen was perceived in Korean theatre. Four of Chekhov’s plays were performed during the 1920s and 1930s: The Cherry Orchard and the one-act farces A Marriage Proposal, The Bear, and The Festivities. Each play was staged twice, except for The Festivities (Y. Park 49). The selection of one-act farces was the result of considering the audience who was unfamiliar with modern drama and Western theatrical conventions (Y. Park 89). Expressionist dramas, such as Goering’s Seeschlacht and G. Kaiser’s Gilles und Jeanne, were also staged. They were performed by the GeukYeon in 1932 and 1933, respectively; nonetheless, although it was ‘a desirable effort

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to try to establish modern Korean theatre’ (Y. Bak), it was ‘too diffcult for the audience to understand the essence’ of the plays (Yeong-ha Ju). The modern Western playwrights brought considerable changes to the feld of Korean theatre. The most prominent was the emergence of a new theatre form. Before the modern theatre movement, there existed traditional Korean theatre and Japanese sinpa theatre only, with the latter form dominating the feld. However, with the awakening of the national consciousness after the March First Independence Movement, the sinpa theatre was shunned by the Korean audience, especially in Seoul. Most of the sinpa theatre companies that failed to reform their acting styles, including the Singeukjwa, the Chwiseongjwa, and the Hyeoksindan, had to wander around the provincial areas to fnd their audience (M. Yu, Hanguk Yeongeuk Undongsa 201–202). The following article, which was published at an early stage of the modern Korean theatre movement, illustrates the situation: 今年中에 일어난 劇界의 運動을 좀더 內面的으로 觀察하면 두 가지 의 傾向이 있었다. 그 한 가지는 金錢의 缺乏으로 所謂 興行業者間에 는 慘酷한 打擊을 받았고 그 反動으로 俳優團(職業的)까지도 드디어 解散의 運命을 當한 團體도 있었다. 그러나 이와 反對로 一般社會에서 는 演劇에 對한 要望이 幾分間 두터워진 傾向이 날로 많아간다. 今年 中에 行演된 度數를 보든지 그 內容을 보든지 專門俳優들이 幕을 연 數爻보다 所謂 素人劇이라는 上演이 많았었고 또 內容이 좀 나은 것 도 몇 차례는 있었다. Closer observation of movements in the Korean theatre world this year shows two trends: commercial [sinpa] theatre groups were severely hit by fnancial diffculties, which caused some of their (professional) actors’ groups to face dissolution. On the other hand, the social demand for the theatre somewhat increased among the common people. Amateur theatre groups exceeded commercial theatre groups this year in the quantity of productions, and some of their productions were better than those of commercial theatres. (J. Gim, ‘Geukgye’ 56) This statement illustrates that a new theatre form was beginning to dominate the Korean theatre feld. The singeuk movement was also supported by Korean journalists: in 1923 alone, more than 190 articles concerning amateur student theatre performances were published in the Chosun Ilbo daily (Jang 79). Another change in Korean theatre was the emergence of realist theatre and drama. The modern Korean theatre movement was concerned with objectively representing the Korean people and their life under colonialism on the stage and, accordingly, steered theatrical plays and performances towards greater fdelity to real life, in contrast to the melodramatic sinpa theatre. The movement was concerned with themes that dealt with current issues, as well as realistic stage settings and acting

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styles. They sought to introduce those elements of realist drama to the feld of Korean theatre by staging realistic foreign dramas, which were used as a footing for the creation of their own national theatre and plays. As a result, realistic theatre and original Korean realist plays emerged in modern Korean theatre. Many Korean playwrights, including Yu Chijin, Ham Se-deok, Gim Yeong-su, Yi Gwang-rae, and Gim Jin-su, wrote plays based on realism. As the intellectuals were involved in the theatre movement as audiences and leaders, the position of the theatre and theatrical practitioners in Korean society improved. Theatre practitioners, who had been treated solely as entertainers, now came to be respected as the saviours of Korean society by the Korean people. As such, theatre and dramatic texts came to be included in the legitimate modern literary genre. Lastly, the most important infuence on Korean theatre was the emergence of resistance plays. Although the national theatre movement never fourished in the way that the Korean intellectuals hoped, due mainly to the Japanese colonial government’s strict control over Korean theatre after the second Sino–Japanese war, many Korean playwrights, such as Yu Chijin, Chae Man-sik, and Gim U-jin created their works under the infuence of modern Western playwrights. Among others, Yu Chi-jin’s So (The Ox; 1934) and Tomak (The Mud Hut; 1932) and Chae Man-sik’s Jehyangnal (The Memorial Service Day; 1937) were the most infuential resistance plays. Although these works could not get to grips with the deeper political issues of the times because of the colonial government’s censorship, their description of the suffering of the Korean people under colonialism was enough to awaken the national consciousness.

Notes 1 Colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula spanned from August 1910 until August 1945, when Japan was defeated in the Pacifc War. Korean historians divide the colonial period into three phases: the phase of ‘Military Dictatorial Government’ or the ‘Dark Period’ between 1910 and 1919, the phase of ‘Cultural Policy’ from 1919 to 1931, and the phase of ‘Fascist Rule’ between 1931 and 1945. 2 Article 1 of the Treaty of Annexation (G. Bak 34). 3 Maruyama Tsurukichi, Chosen chian no genjo oyobi shorai (Public Peace and Order in Korea, Present and Future) (Keijo: Chosen Sotokufu, Jimukan, 1922) p. 6. qtd. in Robinson, ‘Colonial Publication Policy’ 329. 4 Dong-A Ilbo 15 Oct. 1921, p. 3. 5 The Towolhoe staged Irish dramas during the colonial period, including The Gods of the Mountain by Lord Dunsany in July 1924, Fame and the Poet by Lord Dunsany in April 1925, and In the Shadow of the Glen by J.M. Synge in April 1925. 6 This magazine, issued in January and July of 1927, was discontinued after serial number 2. It was succeeded by Munye Wolgan (Monthly Literary Art) and Simunhak (Poetic Literature). The former was launched by Yi Ha-yun and Bak Yong-cheol in 1931, and the latter was founded by Jeong In-seop, Byeon Yeong-ro, Jeong Ji-yong, Yi Ha-yun, and others in 1930 (Jo 158).

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7 Gim published as many as 26 critical essays related to the theatre from 1932 to 1939 (Yang 451). Five essays related to the Irish dramatic movement were ‘W.B. Yeats – the Founder of the Irish National Literature’ (Samcheolli 1934), ‘The Establishment of Irish National Theatre: The Abbey Theatre’ (Dong-A Ilbo 1935), ‘The Establishment of the Abbey Theatre and its Contribution to the Nation’ (Dong-A Ilbo 1935), ‘An Outline of Irish Literature’ (Samcheolli 1935), and ‘A Brief Introduction to the Modern Irish Dramatic Movement: The Abbey Theatre’ (Samcheolli 1936). 8 ‘Geukyeon Je Samhoe Gongyeon-eul Apdugo (About the Geukyesul Yeonguhoe’s 3rd Production).’ Chosun Ilbo 2 Feb. 1933, p. 4. 9 ‘Banbak-e daehan Jaebanbak: Min Byeong-hwi-ege Jum (To Mr Min Byeong-hwi: Another Refutation of a Refutation).’ Chosun Ilbo 13–15 Sept. 1933, p. 7. 10 He published 84 critical essays on the theatre from 1931 to 1941 (Yang 451). 11 Gim U-jin was one of the leaders of the Korean theatre movement interested in German expressionist theatre. He also wrote expressionist plays himself, such as Nanpa (A Shipwreck) and Sandoeji (A Wild Hog) in 1926. Hyeon Cheol, Sin Seok-yeon, Gim Jin-seop, and Seo Hang-seok also published critical essays related to German expressionism. During the colonial period, only two German expressionist dramas were staged: Goering’s Seeschlacht (GeukYeon 1932) and G. Kaiser’s Gilles und Juanne (GeukYeon 1933). 12 The Japanese language was treated as a national language in the Seodang Directives and appeared in parentheses with the words ‘national language’ like this: national language (Japanese). However, the parentheses and the word ‘Japanese’ disappeared from the Joseon Educational Ordinance of 1911. 13 Dong-A Ilbo 6 Apr. 1921. 14 Dong-A Ilbo 20 Mar. and 10 May 1925. 15 Gim started writing his diary in Korean in 1919. He had written his diary in Japanese for four or fve years before 1919 (Yang 106). 16 Commenting on Yu’s article, which attributed the unpopularity of translated drama to literal translation, however, Yi Seok-hun (1936), a novelist, journalist, and member of the GeukYeon, argued that poor translation rather than literal translation led to the Korean audience fnding it diffcult to understand. 17 The frst Western literary works translated into Korean were The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, translated by Mr. and Mrs. Jas. S. Gale, and The Arabian Nights, translated by Jeong Sang-geun (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 152–153). 18 During the second decade of the 20th century, 15 translated works were published in book form, 33 in newspapers or magazines, and 41 in Taeseo Munyesinbo magazine. During the 1920s, 151 British works, 65 American works, 68 German works, 100 French works, 127 Russian works, 126 Indian works, and 34 other works were translated (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 414). 19 During the 1920s, The Merchant of Venice (1920, 1922, and 1924), Cymbeline (1920), Hamlet (1921, 1923, and 1929), Othello (1924), Julius Caesar (1926), The Tempest (1926), Macbeth (1923), and Romeo and Juliet (1921) were translated (B. Gim, Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok 426–428). 20 Gim U-jin played a key role in arranging the performance tour. He paid all the travel expenses and production costs and led the Troupe as a director. 21 The repertoire also included a violin concerto by Hong Ran-pa, arias sung by the soprano Yun Sim-deok, and public lectures. 22 Jo Myeong-hui was a member of the Geukyesul Hyeophoe and a close friend of Gim U-jin. Later, he worked as a novelist and poet. 23 Dong-A Ilbo 19 Aug. 1921, p. 3. 24 Dong-A Ilbo 18 Jul. 1921, p. 3.

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25 Dong-A Ilbo 30 Jul. 1921, p. 3. 26 Dong-A Ilbo 1 and 2 Aug. 1921, p. 3. 27 Yi Seok-hun (1936), a drama critic, mentioned fve factors, amongst others, that caused the theatre movement to lose the support of the Korean audience: translation of foreign dramas into poor Korean language, poor acting skills, immature directing skills, lack of acting practice, and imperfect stage settings. He added that the foreign dramas selected for the repertoire did not deal with the emotions of Korean people.

References Bak, Gyeong-sik. Ilbon Jegukjuui-ui Joseon Jibae (Joseon under the Rule of Japanese Imperialism). Seoul: Cheonga Publishing Company, 1986. Bak, Seung-hui. ‘Towolhoe Iyagi’ (‘The Story of the Towolhoe’). Sasanggye May 1963: 328–43. Bak, Yong-cheol. ‘Silheom Mudae Je 2-hoe Siyeon Choil-eul Bogo’ (‘After Watching the Opening Night of the Silheom Mudae’s Second Production’). Dong-A Ilbo. 30 June; 1; 2; 5 July 1932, pp. 4–5. Bassnett, Susan, and Harishi Trivedi. Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 1999. Bell, Roger T. Sociolinguistics, Goals, Approaches and Problems. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976. Brockett, Oscar G. and Robert R. Findlay. Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama since 1870. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Cho, Dong-Il. Korean Literature in a Cultural Context and a Comparative Perspective. Seoul: Jipmoondang, 1997. Choe, Ung, et al. Hanguk-ui Jeontonggeuk-gwa Hyeondaegeuk (Traditional and Contemporary Korean Theatre). Seoul: Bookshill, 2004. Dongmyeong. ‘Inmolhayaganeun Toeo-reul Bojeonkoja: Aeran-ui Munyebuheung Undong’ (‘Irish Renaissance: The Movement to Save a Declining Vernacular Language’). Dongmyeong 33, 1923, p. 6. Eckert, Carter J., et al. Korea. Old and New: A History. Seoul: Ilchokak Publishers, 1990. Even-Zohar, Itamar. ‘Papers in Historical Poetics’. Papers on Poetics and Semiotics 8. Eds. Benjamin Hrushovski and Itamar Even-Zohar. Tel Aviv U Publishing Projects, 1978, http://www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/works/books/php1978.pdf Accessed 3 June 2021. ———. ‘The Polysystem Hypothesis Revisited’. 1978, http://www.tau.ac.il /~itamarez/works/books/php1978.pdf Accessed 3 June 2021. ———. ‘Polysystem Studies’. Poetics Today 11.1 (1990), Special Issue. ———. ‘The Making of a Culture Repertoire and the Role of Transfer’. Target 9.2 (1997): 355–63. ———. ‘The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem’. The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2004. 199–204. Gim, Byeong-cheol. Hanguk Geundae Seoyang Munhak Iipsa Yeongu II (The History of the Imported Western Literature in Modern Korea II). Seoul: Eulji Munhwasa, 1982.

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———. Hanguk Geundae Beonyeok Munhaksa (The History of Modern Literary Translation in Korea). 2nd ed. Seoul: Eulyu Munhwasa, 1988. Gim, Geun-su. ‘Chinil Eolron Gangyosidae-ui Japji Gaegwan’ (‘Magazines in the Period of Forced Pro-Japanese Speech’). Asiatic Research 38. Seoul: Asiatic Research Center of Korea U, June 1970. 119–210. Gim (Kim), Gwang-seop. ‘Joseon Geukdan-e Je-eon’ (‘Some Suggestions for the Korean Theatrical World’). Chosun Ilbo 15 Jan. 1933, p. 4. ———. ‘Uri-ui Yeongeuk-gwa Oegukgeuk-ui Yeonghyang’ (‘Korean Theatre and the Infuence of Foreign Drama’). Chosun Ilbo 30 July, 1933, p. 3. ———. ‘Banbak-e daehan Jaebanbak: Min Byeong-hwi-ege Jum’ (‘To Mr. Min Byeong-hwi: Another Refutation of a Refutation’). Chosun Ilbo 13–15 Sept. 1933, p. 7. ———. ‘Hyeondae Yeongmundan-e daehan Joseon-jeok Gwansim’ (‘The Korean Concern with Contemporary English Literature’). Joseon Munhak 2.1 (1934): 108–14. ———. ‘Beonyeokgeuk-ui Saengmyeong’ (‘The Life of Translated Drama’). Theatre Arts 4 (1936): 2–6. Gim (Kim), Jeong-jin. ‘Sasang Undong-gwa Yeongeuk’ (‘An Ideological Movement and Theatre’). Dongmyeong 18 (1923): 19–20. ———. ‘Geukgye Ilnyeon-ui Gaepyeong’ (‘A Review of the Korean Theatre World of 1923’). Gaebyeok 42 (1923): 52–58. Gim (Kim), U-jin. ‘Sowi Geundaegeuk-e Daehayeo’ (‘About the So-Called Modern Drama’). Hakjigwang 22 (1921): 67–71. ———. ‘Joseonmal eopneun Joseon Mundan-e Ileon’ (‘A Word to the Korean Literary World Where There is No Genuine Korean Language’) (1922). Gim U-jin Jeonjip 2. Eds. Seo Yeon-ho and Hong Chang-su. Seoul: Yeongeuk-gwa Ingan, 2000. 227–44. ———. ‘Changjak-eul Gwonhamneda’ (‘I Recommend Creative Writing’) (1925). Eds. Seo Yeon-ho and Hong Chang-su, Gim U-jin Jeonjip 2. Seoul: Yeongeuk-gwa Ingan, 2000. 63–69. Gim (Kim), U-jin, and Hae-seong Hong. ‘Uri Singeukundong-ui Cheotgil’ (‘The First Step toward the Modern Korean Theatre Movement’). Chosun Ilbo 25 July 2 Aug. 1926. https://gongu.copyright.or.kr/gongu/wrt/wrt/view. do?wrtSn=9000380&menuNo=200019 Accessed 5 February 2022. Gim (Kim), Yeon-su. ‘Geukdan Yahwa’ (‘Fireside Stories about the Korean Theatre World’). Maeil Sinbo 27 May 1931, p. 5. Go, Hye-san. ‘Silheom Mudae Je Il-hoe Siyeon ‘Geomjegung’-eul bogo’ (‘After Watching the First Production of the Silheom Mudae, The Inspector-General’). Maeil Sinbo 8 May 1932, p. 5. Gouanvic, Jean-Marc. ‘A Bourdieusian Theory of Translation, or the Coincidence of Practical Instances’. The Translator 11:2 (2005): 147–66. Hale, Terry and Carole-Anne Upton. Introduction. Moving Target: Theatre Translation and Cultural Relocation. Ed. Carole-Anne Upton. Manchester and Northampton: St. Jerome Publishing, 2000. 1–13. Hermans, Theo. Translation in Systems: Descriptive and System-oriented Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999. Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins. Thinking Translation. A Course in Translation Method: French-English. London: Routledge, 1992.

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Hong, Hae-seong. ‘Minjok-gwa Geukyesul – Geukyesul Undong-gwa Munhwa-jeok Samyeong (The Nation and Theatre Arts: The Theatre Arts Movement and Its Cultural Mission)’. Dong-A Ilbo 15–27 Oct. 1929, p. 5. Hyeon, Cheol. ‘Yeongeuk-gwa Oin-ui Gwangye’ (‘The Relationship between the Theatre and Me’). Maeil Sinbo 30 June–3 July 1920, p. 1. ———. ‘Munhwasaneop-ui Geupseonmu-ro Minjunggeuk-eul Jechanghanora’ (‘I Advocate a Korean People’s Theatre as the Most Urgent Cultural Project’). Gaebyeok, April 1921, 107–14. ———. ‘Galdophoe Gongyeon-eul Bogo’ (‘About the Galdophoe Theatre Performance’). Dong-A Ilbo 1 Aug. 1921, p. 4. ———. ‘Yesulhyeophoe Geukdan-ui Je Il-hoe Siyeon-eul Bogo’ (‘About the First Production of the Theatre Arts Association’). Gaebyeok 17 Nov. 1921. ———. ‘Geukgye-e daehan Somang’ (‘My Wishes for the Theatre World’). Dong-A Ilbo 1 Jan. 1923, p. 13. ———. ‘Geukgye-ro bon Uri Minjokundong’ (‘Our Nationalist Movement in the Theatre World’). Donggwang Jan. 1927, pp. 47–59. Jang, Won-Jae. Irish Infuences on Korean Theatre during the 1920s and 1930s. Diss. Royal Holloway U, 2000. Jeong, In-seop. ‘Gagyanal–gwa Oegukmunhak Yeongu’ (‘Gagyanal and the Study of Foreign Literature’). Dong-A Ilbo 19 Mar. 1927. Jo, Yong-man. ‘Iljeha-ui Uri Sinmunhwa Undong’ (‘The New Cultural Movement in Korea under Colonialism’). Iljeha- ui Munhwa Undongsa (A History of the Cultural Movement under the Japanese Imperialism). Eds. Jo Yong-man, et al. Seoul: Hyeoneumsa, 1982. 3–209. Ju, Yeong-ha. ‘Geukpyeong Pyohyeonpageuk “Haejeon’’’ (‘Theatre Review: Expressionist Drama Seeschlacht’). Chosun Ilbo 1 July. 1932, p. 4. Ju, Yeong-seop. ‘Joseon Haksaenggeuk Undong-ui Baljeon-eul Wihaya’ (‘For the Development of the Student Theatre Movement in Joseon’). Sindong-A 35 (1934). Jung, Keun-sik. ‘Iljeha Geomyeol Gigu-wa Geomyeolgwan-ui Byeondong’ (‘Censorship Apparatus and Censors in Colonial Korea’). Daedong Munhwa Yeongu 51 (2005): 1–44. Kim, Jaeseok. ‘Geukyesul Yeongukhoe Je 2gi Beonyeokgeuk Gongyeone daehan Yeongu’ (‘The Study on the Performance of Translated Drama of the Theatre Arts Research Association in Its Second Period’). Hanguk Geukyesul Yeongu 46 (2014): 57–91. Kwak, Hyo Moon. ‘Ilje Gangjeomgi Bingon Jeongchaek Hyeongseong-ui Jaejomyeong’ (‘Revisiting the Poverty Policy under the Japanese Occupation Period’). Hanguk Haengjeong Sahakji 21 (2007): 115–38. Lee, Chong-sik. The Politics of Korean Nationalism. Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1963. Lee, Haekyoung. The Transplantation of Western Drama in Korea: Basis of Modern Korean Theatre. Diss. U of Michigan, 1989. Lee, Minju. ‘Ilje-sigi Geomyeolgwan-deul-ui Joseoneo Media-wa Geomyeol Eommu-e daehan Insik’ (Japanese Censors’ Perception on the Korean Media and their Works in Colonial Korea’). Hanguk Eollon Hakbo 55:1 (2011): 169–95. Min, Byeong-hwi. ‘Oegukgeuk-ui Iip-maneuro Joseon-ui Geukmunhwa-neun Surip doel geosinga? – Gim Gwang-seop-ege Munham’ (‘To Mr. Gim Gwang-seop:

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Would it be Possible to Establish a Modern Theatrical Culture in Korea only by the Transplantation of Foreign Drama?’). Chosun Ilbo 19 Aug. 1933, p. 3. Nichols, Richard. Introduction. Modern Korean Drama: An Anthology. Ed. Richard Nichols. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. 1–12. Nord, Christiane. Translating as a Purposeful Activity: Functionalist Approaches Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1997. Parameswaran, Radhika E. ‘Colonial Interventions and the Postcolonial Situation in India: The English Language, Mass Media and the Articulation of Class’. Gazette 59:1 (1997). 21–41. Park, Eun-sik. Hanguk Dongnipundongjihyeolsa (The Bloody History of the Korean Independence Movement). Trans. Kim Do-hyung. Seoul: Somyeong Press, 2008. Park, Young-eun. Anton Chekhov-ee Hanguk-ui Geundae Yeongeuk-e Kichin Yeonghwang (The Infuence of Anton Chekhov on the Modern Korean Theatre: Focused on the History of Adoption of Chekhov in East-Asia). MA thesis. Seoul: Chung-Ang U, 1999. Raina, Badri. ‘A Note on Language and the Politics of English in India’. Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, and History. Ed. Svati Joshi. New Delhi: Trianka Publishers, 1991. 264–97. Robinson, Michael. ‘Colonial Publication Policy and the Korean Nationalist Movement’. The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945. Eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. 312–45. ———. Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920–1925. Seattle: U of Washington Press, 1988. Ryu, Jin-hee. Hanguk Geundae-ui Ibsen Suyong Yangsang-gwa Euimi (The Aspect and Signifcance of Ibsen’s Reception in Modern Korea with a focus on A Doll’s House in the years of 1920s and 1930s). MA thesis. Seoul: Sungkyunkwan U, 2004. Seo, Hang-seok. ‘Singeuk-gwa Heunghaenggeuk’ (‘Modern Theatre and Commercial Theatre’). Theatre Arts 1 (1934): 15–21. Seo, Yeon-ho, and Chang-su Hong, eds. Gim U-jin Jeonjip 1–3. (The Complete Works of Gim U-jin 1–3). Seoul: Yeongeuk-gwa Ingan, 2000. Seo, Yeon-ho and Sang-u Yi. Uri Yeongeuk 100 nyeon (Korean Theatre, The History of One Hundred Years). Seoul: Hyeonamsa, 2000. Shin, Jeong-ok. Hanguk Singuek-gwa Seoyang Yeonguek (Korean New Drama and Western Drama). Seoul: Saemunsa, 1994. ———. ‘Yeongguk Yeongeuk (British Theatre)’. Hanguk-eseoui Seoyang Yeongeuk 1900–1995 (Western Theatre in Korea from 1900 to 1995). Eds. Shin Jeong-ok, et al. Seoul: Sohwa, 1999. 29–155. Sim, Hun. ‘Towolhoe-e Ileonham’ (‘A Suggestion for the Towolhoe Theatre Company’). Chosun Ilbo 6 Nov. 1929, p. 5. Simons, Geoff. Korea: The Search for Sovereignty. London: Macmillan, 1995. Toury, Gideon. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995. Tymoczko, Maria. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999. Vermeer, Hans J. ‘Skopos and Commission in Translational Action’. The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Trans. Andrew Chesterman. Ed. Lawrence Venuti (2004): 227–38. Yang, Seung-guk. Gim U-jin: Geu- ui Sam-gwa Munhak (Gim U-jin: His Life and Literature). Seoul: Taehaksa, 1998.

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Yi, Du-hyeon. Hanguk Singeuksa Yeongu (A Study of the History of Modern Korean Theatre) Seoul: Seoul National UP, 1981. Yi, Heon-gu. ‘Joseon-e isseoseoui Geukyesul Undong-ui Hyeondangye’ (‘The Present State of the Korean Theatre Movement’). Chosun Ilbo 15 and 19 Nov. 1931, p. 5. ———. ‘Geukdan Ilnyeongan Donghyang’ (‘The Theatre Companies This Year’). Jeilseon 2:11 (1932): 112–16. Yi, Mi-won. Hanguk Geundaegeuk Yeongu (A Study of Modern Korean Theatre). Seoul: Hyeondae Mihaksa, 1994. Yi, Sang-u. Yu Chi-jin Yeongu (A Study of Yu Chi-jin). Seoul: Taehaksa, 1997. ———. ‘A Study of Geukyesul Yeongukhoe: Beonyeokgeuk Repertoire-reul Jungsimeuro’ (‘A Study of the Theatre Arts Research Association with a Focus on the Translated Drama Repertoire’). Hanguk Geukyesul Yeongu 7 (1997): 95–135. Yi, Seok-hun. ‘Singeuk Surip-gwa Gwanjung Bonwi Munje’ (‘Establishing Modern Theatre and an Audience-oriented Policy’). Chosun Ilbo 10–14 Mar. 1936, p. 5. Yim, Hwa. ‘Joseon Geundaegeuk Baldal Gwajeong’ (‘The Evolvement of the Modern Korean Theatre’). Yeongeuk Undong May. 1932: 344. Yu, Chi-jin. ‘Yeongeuk-ui Daejungseong’ (‘The Popularity of the Theatre’). Sinheung Yeonghwa 1 (1932): 7–13. ———. ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga Sean O’Casey’ (‘Sean O’Casey, a Playwright from the Working Class’). Chosun Ilbo 3–27 Dec. 1932, p. 4. ———. ‘Huigokgye Jeonmang – Beonyeokgeuk-gwa Changjakgeuk’ (‘A View of the Korean Theatre World: Translated Drama and Original Drama’). Dong-A Ilbo. 29 Sept. 1933, p. 3. ———. ‘Singeuk Surip-ui Jeonmang [1]’ (‘The Prospects for the Establishment of a Modern Theatre [1]’). Dong-A Ilbo 6 Jan. 1934, p. 4. ———. ‘Singeuk Surip-ui Jeonmang [2–4]’ (‘The Prospects for the Establishment of a Modern Theatre [2–4]’). Dong-A Ilbo 7; 11; 12 Jan. 1934, p. 3. ———. ‘Geukmunhak Gyebal-ui Du Gaji Gwaje’ (‘Two Tasks for the Development of Korean Dramatic Literature’). Dong-A Ilbo 8 Jan. 1935, p. 3. ———. ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’ (‘An Opinion about the Performance of Translated Drama’). Chosun Ilbo 7–8 Aug. 1935, p. 4. ———. ‘Joseoneo-wa Joseon Munhak: Geukmunhak-i Yoguhaneun Eoneo-ui Jiwi’ (‘Korean Language and Korean Literature: the Position of the Korean Language that Dramatic Literature Requires’). Dong-A Ilbo 4 Jan. 1938, p. 13. ———. Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 (The Complete Works of Yu Chi-jin 7). Seoul: Seoul Yedae Chulpanbu, 1993. ———. Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 (The Complete Works of Yu Chi-jin 9). Seoul: Seoul Yedae Chulpanbu, 1993. Yu, Min-yeong. Hanguk Yeongeuk Undongsa (The History of the Korean Theatre Movement). Seoul: Taehaksa, 2001. ———. Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 (People in the Korean Theatre World 1). Seoul: Taehaksa, 2006. Yun, Baek-nam. ‘Yeongeuk-gwa Sahoe’ (‘Theatre and Society’). Dong-A Ilbo 4–16 May. 1920, p. 4.

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Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre under Colonialism

According to Edward Said, the Irish frequently fail to appreciate the infuence of their anti-colonial literary legacy on other similar movements worldwide (177–85). Indeed, the Irish Literary Revival inspired similar literary movements not only in Western countries – such as the American Harlem Renaissance – but also in Asian countries, such as China and Japan. In China, the New Culture Movement began around 1915 as a protest by elite groups when the Republican President Yuan Shikai attempted to restore Confucianism as the basis of the country’s political system. It was further crystallised by the May Fourth Movement of 1919, a Chinese anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement that grew out of student demonstrations protesting the Chinese government’s inadequate response to the Treaty of Versailles. The New Culture Movement sought to adopt Western ideals of science and democracy and rejected traditional Confucian values. Chinese writers ‘attempted to reimagine a new futurity for China, one that was both modernized and infuenced by Western literature and science’ (O’Malley-Sutton 487) and turned to the literature of oppressed peoples, including the Irish, the Polish, the Jewish, and the Harlem Renaissance movements (Eber 1–10). Given this agenda, it was no wonder that China’s writers looked to those writers shaping the new Ireland for inspiration (McCormack 167). As O’Malley-Sutton contends: The Irish Literary Revival provided the Chinese May Fourth generation with an alternative way to modernize through literature, one that bypassed discourses on race provided by the imperial center and that focused instead on what it meant to be subalternized, from the colonized peripheries and yet, capable of writing successful modern literature from that position as ‘other’. (486) The Chinese literary circle, which included the founding fathers of China’s new literature, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, and Lu Xun, also played a part in introducing the Abbey playwrights to the country during the 1920s (Wang 151). A collection of Synge’s plays was translated into Chinese by poet Guo Moruo (1892–1978) and published in 1926 (McCormack 168). Many of Lady

DOI: 10.4324/9781003163947-3

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Gregory’s plays were translated into Chinese and even formed part of the school curriculum (O’Malley-Sutton 491). For example, Lady Gregory’s The Gaol Gate was translated in weekly instalments by Su Chaolung in 1925, and her play The Travelling Man was translated specifcally for the intermediate grades (O’Malley-Sutton 495). Lady Gregory’s Rising of the Moon became widely popular in China during the 1930s and was performed both on university campuses and in theatres. During this period, in which the Chinese saw themselves as fghting for independence, Yeats’ play Cathleen Ni Houlihan (1902) was also received with enthusiasm (Chen 5). In 1936, Sean O’Casey’s Juno and Paycock was adapted for the Chinese stage by director Zhang Mon and, under the Chinese title Zui Shen Meng Si (Intoxicated and Daydreaming), performed to packed houses in Shanghai (Chen 5; Wang 151). O’Casey’s works were more widely appropriated in China after the Chinese Communists assumed power from 1949 onwards due to several factors: his proletarian origins, his years of hard work as a common labourer, and his commitment to communism (Eber 89; Wang 151). In Japan, meanwhile, Irish drama was extensively translated and staged in the early 20th century when the shingeki (Western-style drama) movement was developed. It was also used to lay the foundations of the ‘Kyoto Renaissance’, a movement that had ‘Kyoto as Dublin’ as its slogan and aimed to counter the ‘literary centralization’ in Tokyo (Suzuki 33–48). Akira Nobuchi, a Japanese stage director and flm director who helped shingeki thrive in Kyoto Prefecture and neighbouring areas, headed his own drama troupe, Elan Vital Shogekijo, and performed many Irish plays, including works by Lord Dunsany, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, and Sean O’Casey.1 Kan Kikuchi, who sought to use literary drama to modernise society, is widely known as a playwright who reoriented Irish plays into a Japanese context (Kojima 109; Wetmore 3). Kikuchi was particularly infuenced by the works of Synge: at least four of Kikuchi’s plays are adaptations of Synge’s writings (Kojima 101). In 1914, he wrote Umi no Yuusha (Heroes of the Sea), a play inspired by Synge’s Riders to the Sea (Poulton 86), and in 1922, he wrote Kayano Yane (Thatched Cottage), its theme being the languor of love taken from Synge’s Deirdre of the Sorrows (Kojima 99). Yeats perceived Kan Kikuchi as ‘a playwright who writes dramas marked by national or racial traits’ and called him the Synge of Japan (Suzuki 33–48). Like China and Japan, the Irish Literary Revival movement also provided inspiration to colonial Korea. It was around the 1920s that Irish playwrights began to be translated into Korean and introduced through publications, the stage, and broadcasting in Korea. With Lady Augusta Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon and Lord Dunsany’s The Glittering Gate frst published and produced on the Korean stage in 1921, Irish dramatic texts began to be introduced to the Korean theatre sphere. Although British works made up the greatest number of published translations throughout the colonial period, translated and published Irish dramas exceeded British texts during the 1930s when the modern Korean theatre movement reached its climax.2

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Whereas in the 1920s, the number of published translations was 16 for British dramas and four for Irish dramas, during the 1930s, the corresponding fgures were eight for British dramas and 13 for Irish dramas. Those dramas translated were predominately the works of the Abbey Theatre playwrights who were involved in the Irish dramatic movement, including William Butler Yeats, Lord Dunsany, Lady Augusta Gregory, J.M. Synge, and Sean O’Casey. Even-Zohar highlights prestige as one of the reasons for a source literature being selected (‘Polysystem Studies’ 59), and the international reputation of the Abbey must have contributed to the selection of these playwrights. Certainly, the Abbey had an international reputation by the late 1920s, and 1931 saw the beginning of the long American tours, which consolidated this renown (O’Flaherty). Apart from prestige, what other reasons were there behind the Abbey playwrights being selected for Korean theatre? This part of the book seeks to explore the formation of Irish drama in the feld of Korean theatre under colonialism and identify the factors involved in the process of this formation.

4 Representation of the Irish Dramatic Movement The Irish playwrights imported to colonial Korea were extremely varied, ranging from the fantasy writer Lord Dunsany to the cynical realist writer, Sean O’Casey. According to Bentley, ‘even more than other arts... drama is a chronicle and brief abstract of the time, revealing not only the surface but the whole material and spiritual structure of an epoch’ (105). Nevertheless, since there appears to be no consistency in these playwrights’ themes or subjects, it is diffcult to determine why these specifc playwrights were selected. Some works, such as The Rising of the Moon, The Gaol Gate, The Shadow of a Gunman, and Riders to the Sea, may be interpreted as being relevant to the Korean situation at that time, yet some works, especially Dunsany’s works, seem to be too remote from the Korean reality of that era. Normally, in interpreting the selection criteria, one would study the translators’ prefaces (Bassnett, Translation Studies xiii), but in this case, no translators’ prefaces can be found. It would, therefore, be helpful to examine the articles related to Irish drama translation published in the magazines and newspapers at the time to identify the motives behind the selection of these playwrights. These articles suggest that one of the rationales behind these choices is that Irish plays were regarded as a model to emulate in the feld of modern Korean theatre. For instance, Gim Gwang-seop (‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’) gives an example of Irish writers from whom the Korean writers could proft for the development of modern Korean literature. Yu Chi-jin (‘Huigokgye Jeonmang’) presents the Abbey Theatre as a model to establish a national theatre, while An Yong-sun, a drama critic, proposes that modern Irish drama be the benchmark to which modern Korean theatre could refer. Then, what aspects of Irish drama appealed to Korean intellectuals and made them consider Irish drama a model for their future national drama? The only clue

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is that the Irish playwrights chosen were those involved in the Irish dramatic movement. Thus, it would be more appropriate to identify the motives from the Irish dramatic movement rather than from individual texts. Major articles on Irish drama and the Irish dramatic movement began to appear in 1921 in Korea and continued to be published throughout the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, more than 30 articles on the subject by 20 writers were published in newspapers or magazines. Korean writers emphasised certain aspects of the Irish dramatic movement that they wanted to achieve in the Korean theatre movement, or sometimes distorted facts to serve their ideological purposes (W. Jang 119). Korean writers’ understanding and knowledge of Irish drama and the Irish people were based on similarities rather than any differences between the two nations’ situations. First, Korean writers stressed an affnity with Ireland as a fellow victim of colonialism. News or articles on the Irish political situation frst appeared even before the Annexation of Korea by Japan and increased in number after the March First Independence Movement in 1919: in the three years between 1920 and 1922, 476 articles, including ten leading articles, were published in the Dong-A Ilbo, one of the nationalist newspapers, regarding the Irish political situation and the Irish independence movement. Similarly, almost all essays related to Irish drama referenced the colonial history of Ireland and focused on the sufferings of the Irish under colonialism. Gim Gwang-seop (‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip’), a poet and drama critic, begins his essay on the Abbey Theatre by discussing the history of Ireland as a victim of invasions. He argues that the most tragic part of this history is that Ireland, being located near Great Britain, became a political slave of the latter nation. Another article on the Irish language revival (Dongmyeong 6) shows how the strong antipathy of the Irish people towards England strengthened their love of their motherland, adding that you should never be a homeless race. Some Korean writers, such as An Yong-sun, state that the existence of an Irish national theatre was impossible because of the absence of political freedom: 愛蘭은 十二世紀 中葉以來 英國의 壓迫에 시달린 政治的 自由를 갖지 못 한 民族이었다 … 英國의 專制抑壓은 極에 達하여 愛蘭民族의 勇躍하는 熱情으로 하여금 一時라도 演劇藝術을 享樂할 心的餘裕를 주지 않았던 것이다. 그뿐 아니라 世紀를 거듭함에 따라 이 政治的外的 專制는 必然 的으로 그들에게서 演劇에 對한 敏感性을 去勢하여 버렸으니. Ireland has had no political freedom under the British [colonial] rule since the mid-twelfth century3 … The extreme despotism by England removed any leeway to enjoy the theatre from the hearts of the Irish people. Furthermore, this centuries-long political despotism eradicated the sensitivity to the theatre from their hearts. (An) An Yong-sun concludes that it is not surprising that there had been no Irish theatre movement before the Abbey Theatre.

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Gim Jong, a literary critic, expresses warm comradeship in his essay on the Irish Renaissance, noting the 30-year span since the Abbey Theatre frst opened and wholeheartedly wishing his comrades on the other side of the earth good luck and a great victory (28). The interest of Korean intellectuals in the Irish political situation led to increased attention towards Irish drama and the Irish dramatic movement as the product of an oppressed people. Of course, the Korean people also had an affnity for other colonised countries, such as India, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Articles on the political situations of those countries were published quite often. Scholars in Korea secretly sought to arouse the national consciousness and ultimately strove for national independence by broadcasting information about the situations and independence movements of other colonised countries. Accordingly, during the colonial period, the Japanese Government-General prohibited articles that dealt with independence movements in Ireland, India, and the Philippines (J. Jeong 343). In the case of other colonised countries, however, this affnity did not lead to an interest in their drama. One of the reasons was that they were not European countries, and modernisation was synonymous with Westernisation to Korean intellectuals at that time. Ireland was the only Western European country perceived as having both an early and a late colonial experience. As such, Korean writers gave special attention to the fact that the Abbey Theatre was the frst Irish national theatre. Just as they considered Japanese sinpa theatre as being the colonisers’ theatre because it had originated in Japan, they deemed the thriving theatres in Dublin in the 18th century as bearing no meaning on the development of Irish theatre, as they were the colonisers’ theatres (An). True Irish drama, in their view, appeared only after the Abbey Theatre, one of Europe’s earliest national theatres, which opened in 1904 (An; G. Gim, ‘Aeran Yeongeuk Undong Sogwan’). It was true that although Ireland had played a signifcant part in the theatrical life of the British Isles, Dublin had long been a distant second to London as a dramatic centre; since the 17th century, the theatre in Ireland had, before the Abbey Theatre, been essentially a branch of that in England rather than a truly native institution (Brockett and Findlay 160). The frst step towards a native Irish drama was the Irish Literary Theatre, which was founded in 1899 by Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore, and Edward Martyn. This theatre evolved frstly into the Irish National Theatre in 1902 and then into the Abbey Theatre in 1904 due to the combined efforts of the Irish brothers, William and Frank Fay, and an Englishwoman, Annie Horniman (Hunt). Therefore, ‘the Abbey Theatre which opened its doors to the public in December 1904 was the frst Irish theater which was more than a provincial or colonial derivative of the London theatre’ (Rubin 467). Indeed, as Walsh points out, ‘The canonical reading of modern Irish drama begins with the founding of the Irish Literary Theatre that later evolved into the National Theatre Society or Abbey Theatre’ (1).

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In this context, Korean writers treated Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, and George Bernard Shaw as belonging to the British literary world and so excluded them from their list of Irish writers. They might have considered their ‘nationalistic outlook and mission’ when distinguishing Irish writers from British ones. Wilde, for instance, was thought not to conform with the type of Irish work created by the Abbey Theatre directors. In November 1926, Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest was performed in the Abbey, constituting the frst of the playwright’s works to be staged there. However, Wilde was not thought to ft in with the type of Irish work considered suitable by the directors. According to Rynne, His plays, presumably, were too precious, had too many of their scenes set in English drawing-rooms, to warrant inclusion in the repertoire of a theatre with such an overtly nationalistic outlook and mission, although the Wilde humour could surely have been acceptable as Irish. (85) George Bernard Shaw, meanwhile, contributed in important ways to the development of the Abbey, from the contribution of John Bull’s Other Island to the opening of an Irish national theatre in 1904 to his support for O’Casey when the Abbey turned down the latter’s experimental play The Silver Tassie in 1928. (Roche 3) Nonetheless, as noted by Nicholas Grene, John Bull’s Other Island was Shaw’s only play that dealt with the portrayal of Ireland as its primary subject (1–2). In addition, Korean writers saw Shaw as belonging to the British literary world because he wrote for the Royal Court Theatre in London and worked towards the creation of a National Theatre in England. In fact, Sheridan, Oscar Wilde, Goldsmith, and Shaw were not engaged with Irish themes and ‘the plays of Farquhar and Goldsmith, all of Wilde and most of Shaw, with the exception of John Bull’s Other Island’ were not ‘self-consciously concerned with the representation of Ireland as its main subject’ (Grene 1–2). Furthermore, Korean writers’ view of the Irish people was related to their colonial history. They sometimes described Irish people as having a poetic imagination, a mystical nature, humour, unyieldingness, or a non-cooperative essence (An; G. Gim, ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’). However, the language they used most frequently when discussing the Irish included words such as ‘wanderer’, ‘vagabond’, ‘roamer’, ‘stranger’, ‘tears’, ‘lamentation’, or ‘fantasy’: 이 現實의 專制에서 그들은 精神的으로 放浪에의 길을 憧憬하며 바다 건 너의 逃避를 追想하며 They [the Irish people] are longing for wandering and dream of escape from the despotism of Great Britain. (G. Gim, ‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip’)

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Gim and An demonstrate that the Korean writers’ interpretation of Irish characteristics was based on an active Irish break from imperialist oppression and mistreatment. Therefore, Korean writers understood, ‘Irish literature, which described these national traits, was closely related to the political path Irish people have walked in and represented Irish history full of tears and regrets’ (G. Gim, ‘Aeran Munhak-ui Yungwak’). This understanding was also refected in their appreciation of Irish plays. Korean writers sometimes interpreted Irish characteristics differently from the way they appeared in the original texts. An Yong-sun interpreted the works by Dunsany, Yeats, and Synge in this context: 그들은 보이지 않고 알지 못하는 事物을 求하여 永久히 渴望하는 民族이 다. 던세이니가 『輝煌한 문』에서 嘲笑한 바와 같이 그들은 죽어서 地獄에 있으면서도 亦是 그러한 追求를 잊지 않는다 … 예-츠의 거의 全部의 作 品은 幻想의 追求이요 어떤 心安의 樂土에의 憧憬이다. …『캐스린 니 후리한』같은 愛國的 熱情에 타는 作品도 亦是 괴로운 現實의 桎梏에서의 離脫을 企圖하는 自由의 王國에의 憧憬이라고 볼 수 있다. 씽그가 描寫한 放浪性에 찬 愛蘭人도 亦是 長久한 世紀 동안에 받은 抑壓과 虐待를 忘 却하려는 積極的 離脫의 露現이다. They [the Irish people] are the nation who everlastingly yearns for the unseen and the unknown. As described in Dunsany’s The Glittering Gate, they never give up the yearning even in the world beyond … Almost all of Yeats’ works described the pursuit of fantasy and yearning for a spiritual paradise … His patriotic work Cathleen Ni Houlihan also can be interpreted as having described the yearning for a free kingdom in efforts to break the fetters of the painful reality. The wandering of Irish people portrayed in Synge’s works are also the product of the efforts to forget the oppression and maltreatment of hundreds of years. (An) Cathleen ni Houlihan is a one-act play set in 1798, the year of the Irish Rebellion. In the play, an old woman persuades a young man to fght for his country, forgoing marriage; at the end, she is reported to have been transformed into a young queen, thereby allegorising the rejuvenation of Ireland by heroic male sacrifce. This play presents ‘the world of Ireland embodied in a single fgure, the old lady who appears on the day the French land at Killala in 1798’ (Welch, The Oxford Companion 212). Yeats sought to create

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Irishness by reviving Cuchulanoid Irishness, although An interprets the text as being the product of colonial experience. In the opinion of Korean writers, the Irish cultural movement, part of which was the Irish dramatic movement, was a form of resistance to colonial rule: 英本國의 高壓的 政治는 民族을 달리한 그들에게 無限한 苦吟과 怨恨을 주었다. 政治的 反抗과 慘劇이 그들에게 얼마나 있었으며 이 精神이 漸 次로 國民文化運動으로 옮아가기는 꽤 오랜 歷史를 가지고 있다. British high-handed politics planted endless agony, groan, and grudge in the hearts of the Irish people. Irish history has been one of political resistance and tragedies, and this spirit of resistance has gradually evolved into a national cultural movement throughout the long history. (N. Bak) However, the Irish cultural movement or cultural nationalism, like political nationalism, was more complex than Korean writers initially thought and encompassed the identity of numerous groups. It frst crystallised as a signifcant movement in the 18th century among Irish Protestant settlers whose weak ethnic identity gradually evolved out of a series of conficts between native Catholics and metropolitan Britain (Hutchinson 46). Later in the 19th century, the movement emerged among the native Irish community, already powerfully defned by its Catholic religion and onto which native Gaelic revivalism was grafted. While the Catholic groups tended to concentrate on reviving the native languages, the Anglo-Irish Protestant groups supported a literary revival. From the mid-1880s to 1914, William Butler Yeats was at the hub of the Anglo-Irish literary revival, producing a stream of poems, plays, and manifestos (Hutchinson 131). Korean writers emphasised the Irish dramatic movement as being part of the Irish nationalist movement. They drew attention to the fact that the Irish dramatic movement had emerged as a form of cultural nationalism due to the failure of political struggles following the downfall of Charles S. Parnell (An; N. Bak; G. Gim ‘Aeran Minjokmunhak Geonseolja’, ‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip’, ‘Aeran Yeongeuk Undong Sogwan’). As Hutchinson points out, between 1869 and 1900, the Irish mind was dominated by a movement for political autonomy that, with increasing momentum, mobilised large sections of the Irish population at home and in a radical, mass-based Catholic organisation, led by the charismatic Charles Stewart Parnell and dedicated to the destruction of the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland (152). In 1890, when Parnell was suddenly involved in a public divorce scandal, there arose a struggle for moral and political authority in Ireland. These were ‘an alliance between party loyalists and the Church (driven to condemn Parnell on moral grounds) against Parnell, who was forced to play the full nationalist card, appealing to the idea of an Ireland

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free of clerical and British dictation’, and the fght by the Church and its political spokesmen to seize the control of the party machine from the radicals led by Dillon after Parnell’s death and the defeat of his supporters in the general election of 1892 (Hutchinson 162). It was within this context of ‘grand disillusionment’ with mass democratic politics that followed Parnell that ‘the national cause took new and deeper channels than mere politics’ (Curtis 388), and ‘a series of competing revivalist organizations formed to reconstruct Irish society on authentic native values’ (Hutchinson 162). The Irish dramatic movement, which resulted in the establishment of the Abbey Theatre, was ‘an integral part of that broader cultural nationalism of the turn of the century which sought to create for a long-colonised Ireland its own national identity’ (Grene 1). Similarly, the Korean cultural movement arose after the failure of a political struggle, the March First Independence Movement in 1919. Korean writers, therefore, understood the Irish cultural movement in this context. They regarded the movement as an alternative political struggle, as did Standish O’Grady, a leader of the Irish Literary Renaissance. Regarding the position of the Irish literary movement, O’Grady prophesied in 1899: ‘We have now a literary movement, it is not very important; it will be followed by a political movement, that will not be very important; then must come a military movement, that will be important indeed’ (qtd. in Tymoczko 82–83). As O’Grady had foreseen, the literary movement did, indeed, lead to the 1916 Easter Rising (Tymoczko 83). In this regard, Korean writers stressed the function of the Abbey Theatre as a national awakening: 아베이 座는 그 時代의 思潮 – 씬 폐인(우리 것은 우리가)라는 民族精神에 步調를 맞추어서 自國民性의 表現에 努力하였다. 國民的인 傳說을 잡 아서 劇化하여 그로써 民族精神을 促進하고 愛蘭人의 自覺覺醒에 채질 한 것이었다. The Abbey Theatre has striven to express the nature of the Irish people, in keeping with the national spirit of Sinn Féin [We Ourselves]. They stimulated and promoted national consciousness and awakening by presenting national legends. (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) Consequently, the Abbey Theatre contributed to the emergence of the Irish Free State in 1922 (G. Gim, ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’; Jo). This fact was signifcant to Korean writers because the goal of their own theatre movement was also the liberation of Korea from colonial rule. As Sean Cronin puts it in his book Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology, we can identify fve strands of Irish nationalism: traditionalism, constitutional nationalism, physical-force republicanism, radical republicanism, and cultural nationalism (3–4). Irish cultural nationalism, which emphasises ‘the moral regeneration of the national community’, originated ‘after the full-scale colonization of the island by English Anglicans

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and Scots Presbyterians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and its absorption into the British Empire’ (Hutchinson 48). At that time, the modern nationalist idea of the island emerged as an island ‘chosen by providence to be the homeland of an autonomous and unitary civilization endowed with a peculiar creative power that destined it for a formative role in the continuous evolution of Western culture’ (Hutchinson 48). Yet, it was not until the mid-18th century that the frst clear formulation appeared: a small group of scholars, ‘pleading for a rejection of the destructive English images of the Irish past, advocated a revival of national life by the return of their fellow Irishmen to the authentic wisdom encoded in the distinctive linguistic, literary, religious and political culture of their ancestors’ (Hutchinson 48–49). Subsequently, the ethnic revivalism, which sought ‘to return to an identity in Ireland’s Gaelic past’ and ‘unite the members of its different religious and social groups, and provide alternative models for national economic, social and political development’, continued throughout the nineteenth century: the second in the 1830s and the third in the 1890s (Hutchinson 49). It was the third revival – that is, the Gaelic Revival – that led to the establishment of an independent Irish state in 1921. Literary, linguistic, and politico-cultural movements comprised this third revival. Although Irish cultural nationalism had a major impact, ‘mobilizing against English hegemony a large-scale movement in Ireland and the Irish diaspora of Britain and America’ during the third ethnic revivalism, it was between 1918 and 1921 that ‘it became a signifcant political force and the vehicle for a successful independence movement’ (Hutchinson 49, 152). Nonetheless, Korean writers focused on the activities of the Abbey Theatre as having brought about the emergence of the Irish Free State. As such, Korean writers considered the playwrights involved in the Irish dramatic movement and their works to be nationalistic. They accentuated patriotic and nationalistic aspects in the introduction of Irish playwrights and their plays: 愛蘭劇의 特徵은 『劇과 詩』의 統一에 있다고 보는 사람도 있으나 그것 은 一二 作家의 特徵에 不過한 것으로 決코 愛蘭劇의 全的特質을 云謂함 이 아니다. 만일 우리가 愛蘭劇에서 國民的이란 特色을 除去한다면 우리 는 全英國劇에서 特히 愛蘭劇이란 名稱을 冠할 何等의 區別을 發見할 수 가 없는 것이다. Although some people say that the unifcation of ‘drama and poetry’ is characteristic of Irish drama, it is only a part of its characteristics. Without its nationalistic character, there would be no distinction between Irish drama and British drama. (An) This attitude towards Irish drama was also revealed in the Korean interpretation of Irish plays. For example, Gim Gwang-seop asserts that The Countess Cathleen is nationalistic, arousing an immortal national spirit

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by presenting the beautiful soul of Ireland through Countess Cathleen, an angel (‘Aeran Yeongeuk Undong Sogwan’ 226). He also praises Synge as the greatest playwright the Abbey Theatre produced, noting that the subject matters of some of his plays, such as The Playboy of the Western World, The Well of the Saints, In the Shadow of the Glen, and Riders to the Sea, are concerned with the primitive state of nature in Ireland, which had not been contaminated by civilisation (‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’). In fact, not all of the plays produced at the Abbey Theatre were considered nationalistic in Ireland. As Donal Dorcey comments, ‘The Abbey’s insistence on the broadest possible view of Irish nationality, not hesitating to show the bad with the good, caused endless trouble’ (126). Yeats’ The Countess Cathleen was attacked for its ‘slanderous caricature of the Irish peasant’ (Dorcey 128) since ‘no Irishman, no matter how hungry or destitute, would ever sell his soul’ (Dorcey 126). Synge’s frst play, In the Shadow of the Glen, was also condemned for its ‘farcical libel on the character of the average decently reared Irish peasant women’ (Dorcey 130–33), and his The Playboy of the Western World attracted the criticism that ‘the dialogue was just “barbarous jargon”’, ‘the hideous caricature would be slanderous of a Kaffr Kraal’, and that ‘the worst specimen of stage Irishman of the past is a refned acceptable fellow compared with that imagined by Mr. Synge’ (Dorcey 133–36). However, Korean writers focused on the nationalistic spirits of the plays. For instance, Korean writers’ portrayal of Dunsany played a part in making him a central playwright in modern Korean theatre, despite his not being considered a signifcant playwright in the Irish dramatic movement. Dunsany was rarely included as one of the major playwrights in the history of the Abbey Theatre, an absence noted by Welch: ‘In 1924 it became apparent that a new master had arisen in the Irish theatre, to join the other established talents: O’Casey now took his place alongside Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, T.C. Murray, Lennox Robinson, and St. John Ervine’ (The Abbey Theatre 87). Indeed, according to Roche, ‘the story of the Irish Dramatic Revival, in terms of Irish playwrights’, was ‘the story of the writing and the staging of the plays of W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, John Millington Synge, and Sean O’Casey’ (3). Dunsany was thus not considered one of the leading talents of Irish theatre. Nevertheless, Korean writers introduced him as one of the major writers, together with Yeats, Synge, Lady Gregory, and O’Casey, who stimulated and promoted national consciousness and awakening by presenting national legends (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’; Yong-su Gim; G. Gim ‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip’, ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’). His plays were also treated as nationalistic and presented as being ‘full of the mystic colour of Norse mythology’ and ‘native Irishness’ (Dongmyeong 6). According to An Yong-sun, Dunsany’s career can be considered as comprising two parts: his earlier career as a patriotic playwright and the later period between 1911 and 1919, when he was no longer a part of the Abbey

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Theatre. The former period was emphasised in Korean theatre: indeed, from a Korean perspective, Dunsany’s plays dealt with all ‘things Irish, that is to say, Irish gods, legends, or peasants’ (An). Notably, however, Dunsany was expelled from the Abbey Theatre in the latter part of his career. According to his countrymen, he did not deal with ‘things Irish’, and after Ireland became a free state, his plays were no longer staged at the Abbey because Dunsany betrayed the Irish people by pointing a gun at Irishmen in the Easter rebellion of April 1916. Dunsany did, indeed, betray the Irish people. In the Easter rebellion in April 1916, ‘Dunsany, attempting to aid the government, was seriously injured by the rebels. He, Dunsany, was shot in the face during the Easter rebellion in Dublin and imprisoned by both sides’ (Joshi 5). Moreover, the imaginary worlds and events he depicted in his plays were not related to Irish reality as Korean writers thought. As Joshi points out, the single overriding theme that united nearly the whole of Dunsany’s work was the need for reunifcation with the natural world by a repudiation of industrial civilisation (2). For Dunsany, ‘the creations of a fantastic world serve as symbols for the natural world, a natural world whose “realistic” portrayal does not interest him because it is too concerned with petty details and not with imaginative overtones’ (Joshi 4). As stated in his essay ‘Romance and the Modern Stage’, Dunsany saw art as an antidote to the evils of industrial civilisation: I know of the boons that machinery has conferred on man, all tyrants have boons to confer, but service to the dynasty of steam and steel is a hard service and gives little leisure to fancy to fit from feld to feld … The kind of drama that we most need today seems to me to be the kind that will build new worlds for the fancy, for the spirit as much as the body needs sometimes a change of scene. (Dunsany, ‘Romance and the Modern Stage’ 830–34 qtd. in Joshi 56) Nonetheless, Korean intellectuals still interpreted his fantastic world as describing the realities of the Irish people under colonial rule. In their conception of Lady Gregory, Korean writers emphasised her contribution to the Abbey Theatre as a mother fgure who led the theatre (C. Yu, ‘Segye Yeoryu Geukjangin’; Jo). It was partly because of this position in the Irish dramatic movement that Lady Gregory was treated as a major Irish playwright in modern Korean theatre, although the possibility of a political interpretation of her plays also played a part (W. Jang 213). In any case, her plays were not valued highly in modern Korean theatre. Jo Won-gyeong, a drama critic, argues in a 1934 essay titled ‘Gregory Buingwa Aeran-ui Yeongeuk Undong’ (‘Lady Gregory and the Modern Irish Dramatic Movement’) that Lady Gregory neither had the poetical talent of Sappho nor the literary talent of George Sand; she was second or third grade at most among female artists (123). Jo posits that Gregory was considered a great woman despite this fact because of her contribution to the Irish

76 Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre Literary Renaissance. Jang Gi-je, a leading fgure of the modern Korean theatre movement, also judges the quality of Gregory’s plays as unparallel to that of plays by Synge and Yeats: Gregory ‘wrote a mystery drama though not matching Yeats’, and some signifcant peasant plays though not as great as Synge’s plays’ (‘Silheom Mudae Gongyeon’). In the modern Korean theatre sphere, despite the lesser value placed on her work, Gregory was considered one of the foremost playwrights of the Abbey Theatre because of her contribution to the Abbey. The international prestige of the Abbey Theatre was another important aspect for Korean writers because it contributed to the introduction of Irish culture to the world and to the improvement of the standard of Irish drama on an international level (I. Jeong, ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 1’ 161; G. Gim, ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’; C. Yu, ‘Segye Yeoryu Geukjangin’; Hyo-seok Yi). The international acclaim of the Abbey Theatre that Korean writers lauded seemed to play a part in Irish plays being selected in the feld of Korean theatre. After all, international prestige was one of the goals that modern Korean theatre aimed to achieve. Moreover, Korean writers expressed an interest in the English language in which Irish playwrights wrote their works. As discussed earlier, leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement considered translation one of the methods to save and reform the Korean language. It was, therefore, natural that Korean writers were interested in the language used in Irish plays. While it is reasonable that a nation’s language is used in creating a national literature, the language the Abbey playwrights used was the language of the conquerors: English. Korean writers explained the situation by deducing that the Abbey playwrights had to write in English, as opposed to Irish Gaelic: the Irish people had been severed from their national language by the long history of the colonisers’ political oppression, and the bulk of the population was not able to understand Irish Gaelic (I. Jeong, ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 2’ 142; An). Additionally, Korean writers stressed that the English language used by the Irish playwrights was different from that of the colonisers (An; I. Jeong ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 1’, ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 2’): 우리가 主意할 것은 愛蘭人이 使用하는 英語와 英蘭人이 使用하는 英語에 는 거기에 儼然한 區別이 存在하여 있다는 것이다. 愛蘭에서 使用되는 英 語에는 그 自身의 個性이 있고 明確한 特徵으로서의 愛蘭的 語調의 리듬 이 있다. 예-쯔, 그레고리 夫人, 씽그를 비롯한 現代國民劇作家에서 우리 는 이러한 愛蘭人 獨特의 리듬을 明確히 찾아낼 수 있으니 所謂 英語愛蘭 文學 (앵글로 아이리쉬 리터러춰)이란 이러한 獨特한 英語를 使用하는 愛 蘭文學을 말함이다. We must take note of the fact that there is a strict distinction between Irish English and British English. Irish English has its own individuality and Irish rhythm and tone. We can fnd the Irish rhythm in the works of

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modern Irish national playwrights, including Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Synge. The so-called Anglo-Irish literature refers to the Irish literature that uses this unique English. (An) It was true that the Anglo-Irish Protestant groups who supported a literary revival wrote in English. In late 19th-century Ireland, foremost among the cultural developments, including the Irish Dramatic Revival, was the ‘revival of the Irish language as the primary aim of a nationalist movement dedicated to pursuing an agenda summed up in the title of a seminal lecture, Douglas Hyde’s “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” (1892)’ (Roche 7). However, although Hyde’s Irish language play, Casadh an tSúgáin/The Twisting of the Rope, was staged by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory as an early contribution to their nascent theatre movement, ‘almost every play which followed, especially once the Abbey Theatre opened in 1904, was to be in English; and the Abbey Theatre’s claim to be a national theatre was often challenged on the language front’ (Roche 7). Of course, they attempted to incorporate Irish dialects and syntax, as well as ancient myths and legends, into their works (Hutchinson 131), and the language they used was a means of arousing national consciousness (An). As Dawn Duncan observes, ‘What some Irish dramatists, stripped strategically of the Irish language, have tactically turned to their advantage [was] the once alien English tongue, making of it their own weapon of resistance in the process of claiming their identity’ (3). All of Abbey’s playwrights were interested in ‘the conscious creation of a theatrical language written in English but based on the various idioms and constructions of Irish speech’ (Roche 5). To sum up, the Korean writers were interested in the political connotations of the Irish dramatic movement rather than its aesthetic aspects. They focused on the context in which the plays were produced rather than on individual works or playwrights and represented the Irish dramatic movement based on their ideological purposes. Although more than half of the publications were written by leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement, such as Gim Gwang-seop, Yu Chi-jin, Jang Gi-je, and Jeong In-seop, the rest were written by poets, novelists, journalists, or scholars. Thus, Irish drama was considered a means of fostering a nationalistic movement among Korean intellectuals as well as in the literary world (W. Jang 12–13). Some Korean translators of Irish drama, including Gim U-jin, Jeong In-seop, and An Yong-sun, also played a part in forming this representation through their articles. Regarding the formation of translated domestic canons in the host culture, Venuti points out that ‘When translation projects refect the interests of a specifc cultural constituency … the resulting image of the foreign culture may still achieve national dominance, accepted by many readers in the domestic culture whatever their social position may be’ (73). Venuti’s remark is certainly applicable in this case. The interest of Korean intellectuals was refected in translation projects under colonial rule and affliation between Korean scholars and the publishing industry, which possessed

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a cultural authority of suffcient power to create a dominant image of the foreign culture and moulded the dominant image of the Irish dramatic movement accepted by many readers in Korea. Irish drama translation was formed in this context. As Even-Zohar argues, ‘Translated works do correlate … in the way their source texts are selected by the target literature’ (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 199): Irish dramas in Korean theatre were correlated in the way they were selected in relation to the ideological system of Korean culture.

5 Reception of Irish Drama and Playwrights Modern Irish playwrights were frst introduced into Korea in 1916 by Baek Dae-jin, a literary critic, in a magazine called Sinmungye. In his article, Baek highlights Yeats, Synge, and Shaw as the leading writers of the British literary world (qtd. in Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 147). In 1918, he introduced Irish playwrights again in his article titled ‘Choegeun-ui Taeseo Mundan’ (‘The Recent Western Literary World’), commenting that Irish playwrights occupied a central position in British theatre: 극작가(劇作家)로 유명한 이는 쇼오, 골즈워-디, 바-커 등 세 사람이며 거 기에 웃점을 친 이는 … 매-스필드이올시다. 이외로 신진작가로 유명한 사 람은 아일랜드의 그레고리의 뒤를 이어 일어난 사람들이올시다. 그럼으로 써 아일랜드가 영국 극계에 대해 중심지가 되었습니다. Famous playwrights [in British theatre] are Shaw, Galsworthy, and Barker. We can add one more writer, Masefeld, to this group … Famous new playwrights are Irish playwrights who appeared after Lady Gregory. Hereby, Ireland has come to occupy a central position in British theatre. (5) Until this time, information about Irish playwrights had been fragmentary. It was during the 1920s and 1930s that Irish playwrights and their works were introduced in earnest through publications, stage productions, and broadcasting. Although texts by George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were frequently discussed during this period, these playwrights were excluded from discussions of modern Korean theatre because they were regarded by Korean critics as belonging to ‘the lineage of English theatre’.4 Of course, their works nonetheless had resonances that came from their national background as Irishmen, as Malone states: [We can see in them] a perfection of dialogue which is quite distinctively Irish; and they all have that wit which is no less a distinguishing mark of the Irishman. They are all satirists, viewing English life with a somewhat disapproving smile … Comedies by English writers tend to be humorous and sentimental, while comedies by Irishmen tend to be witty and ironic. (14–15)

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However, despite these elements, Korean drama critics excluded these writers when discussing Irish drama because they ‘wrote for Englishmen [and] produced their works on the English stage’ (G. Gim, ‘Aeran Yeongeuk Undong Sogwan’). True Irish drama in modern Korean theatre was considered to have appeared after the Abbey Theatre was established, and the dramatists who wrote for the Abbey Theatre were treated as being the most important.5 5.1 Translations of Irish Playwrights and Works According to Gideon Toury, translation is the product of socio-cultural constraints rather than solely the reproduction of a source text or the outcome of the translator’s cognitive apparatus (53–69). These socio-cultural constraints, he argues, have been described along a scale anchored between two extremes: general, relatively absolute rules on the one hand and pure idiosyncrasies on the other. Between these two poles lie intersubjective factors known as norms. Here, norms are ‘the translation of general values or ideas shared by a community into performance instructions appropriate for and applicable to particular situations’ (Toury 55). They are the key concept and focal point in any attempt to account for the social relevance of activities. Toury maintains that, like any other socio-cultural activity, translation is also a norm-governed activity. He posits that translation of all kinds – and every stage in the translating event – is governed by norms: that is, norms dictate the choices that translators make; they determine the receptor text and hence the relationship between the translation and its source (Toury 56–67). Thus, an examination of the relationship between the translation strategies of the target text and the dominant translational norms in the target culture can reveal the position of translated texts. If the translation strategies of a particular target text observe the prevailing translational norms in the target culture, it can be said that the translated text was received to serve specifc cultural and ideological imperatives in the target culture. What follows is a review of all plays translated into Korean from the Irish playwrights of the Abbey Theatre during the 1920s and 1930s. The translation strategies of the plays will be examined against the translational norms in Korean theatre under colonialism. Due to the function of translated drama in Korean theatre, there were arguments over conficting criteria and adequacy versus acceptability. Translated drama was intended to serve the cultural and ideological imperatives in Korean theatre at that time. This section will examine how those norms were refected in the translational strategies of Irish plays. 5.1.1 Lady Gregory The frst Irish play translated into Korean was Lady Augusta Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon. This one-act play was written in the summer of 1903 and was frst performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1907. Lady Gregory

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(1852–1932) was a founding member of the Abbey Theatre; she remained a mother fgure in Irish theatre until her death and was the driving force at the Abbey Theatre. Pursuing realistic-domestic ideals, she enjoyed far more success with the Abbey’s audiences than Yeats (Fitz-Simon 140; Brockett and Findlay 165–66): There were, from the beginning of the Irish Renaissance, two conficting dramatic ideals: the poetic-mythic and the realistic-domestic. Yeats was the most important of those who pursued the frst type, but it was in productions of the second type that the Abbey was most successful, perhaps because it dealt with a world familiar to Irish audiences. Furthermore, the actors felt much more at home with this type and thus gave more convincing performances. Among those who wrote the second type of play, the most successful in the early years was Lady Gregory. (Brockett and Findlay 165) Brockett and Findlay’s statement shows Lady Gregory’s infuential position in the Irish theatre, to which she contributed not only as a founding member of the Abbey Theatre but also as a popular playwright. The Rising of the Moon describes the dilemma of a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary, who, as a boy, sang rebel songs but now hangs posters for an escaped nationalistic leader. A ballad singer, who later confesses himself to be the escaped prisoner, arouses a long-buried sense of patriotism in the sergeant by showing that the two have a shared heritage and a collective memory, which is apparently beyond political ideology, and, consequently, the sergeant gives up the chance of winning the £100 reward and lets him go. This play was favourably received by neither nationalists nor unionists, as Gregory observes: This play was considered offensive to some extreme Nationalists before it was acted, because it showed the police in too favourable a light, and a Unionist paper attacked it after it was acted because the policeman was represented ‘as a coward and a traitor’; but after the Belfast police strike that same paper praised its ‘insight into Irish character’. (‘The Rising of the Moon [Backgrounds and Criticism]’ 432–33) In fact, the play was not positively received by the actors at the Abbey Theatre either. According to W.B. Yeats, the actors refused to perform it on the grounds that a police offcer should not be depicted as having patriotic instincts (Welch, The Abbey Theatre 79). The Rising of the Moon was frst translated into Korean by Bak Yongcheol, a poet, literary critic, and translator, and was published in 1921 in the literary magazine Gaebyeok. The play was translated again in 1930 and 1931 by Choe Byeong-han and Choe Jeong-u, respectively. Although he was not directly involved in the modern Korean theatre movement, Choe

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Byeong-han participated in theatre-related activities in Tokyo, while Choe Jeong-u was one of the leading fgures of the modern Korean theatre movement. While there is no record of the reason for choosing to translate this play, the motive behind its selection may be inferred from a comment made by Gim Gwang-seop: Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon aroused a sense of patriotism among Irish people (‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’) and was, in turn, considered a patriotic political play in Korean theatre. It could have been, for instance, that the relationship between the police offcer and the prisoner resonated with the relationship between the Korean police and the colonised population they were asked to control. Indeed, during Japanese colonial rule, it was not uncommon to fnd pro-Japanese collaborators in Korea who worked for Japanese soldiers or police offcers – or even as police offcers – and acted against the independence movement under the colonial government. It is interesting to note that this play was also adapted and staged in China in the early years of the anti-Japanese war (1937–1945). With its patriotic themes and its simple but effective dramaturgy, its adaptation San Jian Hao was one of the most popular plays at that time (Wang 151). Each of the Korean translators of The Rising of the Moon employs different translation strategies. Bak renders a faithful translation of the source text but shows a trace of self-censorship, perhaps to enable the translation to pass the colonisers’ censorship. For example, via a process of lexical alteration and changing the subject, Bak weakens the image of the Fenian in the source text into being less resourceful and less coercive. In the original text, the Fenian is described as a man of resources to the extent that he oversees all the organisation’s plans, yet in Bak’s translation, he is described as a mysterious man with power. The colonisers would have preferred this image because the Fenian could have evoked the idea of a Korean independence fghter for Korean readers and audiences. SERGEANT. […] They say he’s a wonder, that it’s he makes all the plans for the whole organization. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 55) This is translated as: 巡査部長. 어떤 怪異한 人物이래. 團體의 行動은 모두 그 者이 命令 아래 服從한대. SERGEANT. […] They say he’s a mysterious man, that the whole organisation obeys his orders. (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by Y. Bak] 125) The Fenian in the original text can disguise himself (as a ragged man) to achieve his purpose. However, he can be very coercive if necessary: he is ready to shoot the sergeant when his identity is revealed. As James Pethica points out, his stage-Irish charm is only a tool, and the potential for real violence

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lurks uncomfortably close beneath the surface humour of the action (69). When the Fenian reaches an impasse in the original, he says to the sergeant: ‘Will you let me pass, or must I make you let me?’ (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 61). Bak translates this line as ‘나를 逃亡시켜주겠소, 또는 無理로 나를 捕縛하겠소?’ (‘Will you let me escape, or arrest me by force?’; Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by Y. Bak] 132). In Bak’s reproduction, the ragged man’s attitude is much less coercive and threatening than in the original text. By altering ‘must I make you let me pass?’ to ‘Will you arrest me by force?’, the ragged man seems to leave his fate in the sergeant’s hands. This alteration could have been a case of self-censorship. The Fenian belonged to a movement that wanted to overthrow the English coloniser, which could have resonated with Korean independence fghters who sought to supplant the Japanese colonisers. Accordingly, the threatening image of the Fenian would not have been allowed by the Japanese colonisers’ censorship. Choe Jeong-u uses the Korean alphabet in his translation, while two other translators combine the Korean alphabet and Chinese characters. Choe’s translation is generally close to the source text but shows traces of censorship by the Japanese colonial government. Expressions that could be interpreted by the colonisers as being subversive, such as ‘free’, ‘breaking gaol’, ‘law’, and ‘when the small rise up and the big fall down’, are censored. In addition, terms and phrases that could be construed as strengthening the national unity of the colonised, such as ‘comrade’ and ‘did me a good turn’, are also censored. In the following original texts, the underlined parts are censored in the Korean version. And maybe one night, after you had been singing, if the other boys had told you some plan they had, some plan to free the country, you might have joined with them. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 59) SERGEANT. If it wasn’t for the sense I have, and for my wife and family, and for me joining the force the time I did, it might be myself now would be after breaking gaol and hiding in the dark. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 59) MAN. Sergeant, I am thinking it was with the people you were, and not with the law you were, when you were a young man. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 60) MAN. [going towards steps] Well, good-night, comrade, and thank you. You did me a good turn to-night, and I’m obliged to you. Maybe I’ll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up and the big fall down. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 62) MAN.

That Choe Jeong-u’s translation shows traces of the censorship of words or expressions permitted to be printed in the other two Korean versions suggests that Choe Jeong-u tried to convey a subversive meaning through lexical choices, although we cannot know which Korean words he used because they are censored.

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Choe Byeong-han’s translation is the most colloquial and least faithful to the source text. In addition to the play’s title, the translator reveals his alteration of some of the original content by adding, ‘translated and amended by Choe Byeong-han’. While the setting of the source text is unchanged, his translation is thoroughly target-reader-oriented. He tries to make his translation acceptable to Korean readers by adopting translation strategies such as adding, generalising translation, lexical domestication, and dynamic equivalence. From the frst line of the text, his intention to improve the Korean readers’ understanding of the text is laid bare. The setting of the original drama is the ‘Side of a quay in a seaport town’ (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 54). This is translated as ‘愛蘭의 어떤 港(棧橋)’: ‘A quay in a seaport town in Ireland – a pier’ (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 192). Choe Byeong-han adds ‘Ireland’ to help the Korean audience understand the background. Moreover, he adopts a generalising translation strategy to augment the Korean readers’ comprehension. Generalising translation refers to ‘rendering an ST [source text] expression by a TL [target language] hyperonym – that is, the literal meaning of the TT [target text] expression is wider and less specifc than that of the corresponding ST expression’ (Hervey and Higgins 250). In the following, Ballyvaughan, a location that would have been unfamiliar to the Korean reader, is translated into ‘他地方’ (‘another province’): MAN. There was a poor man in our place, a sergeant from Bally-vaughan. – It was with a lump of stone he did it. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 57) 男. 우리게서 그만 잘못 죽은 사람이 있었지요. 他地方에서 온 警部인데 그때에 그만. MAN. There was a poor man in our place who was put to death wrongly. He was a sergeant from another province. (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 195) Lexical domestication was also adopted to increase understanding: the British currency ‘pound’ was translated into Korean currency ‘원’ (‘won’). The most drastic strategy employed throughout the text is domestication for dynamic equivalence, a translation strategy based on ‘the principle of equivalent effect, [where] the relationship between receptor and message should be substantially the same as that which existed between the original receptors and the message’ (Nida 159). This translation strategy is most prominent in the translation of the song that the ragged man sings to stimulate the sergeant’s patriotism: MAN. [sings] As through the hills I walked to view the hills and shamrock plain, I stood awhile where nature smiles to view the rocks and streams,

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Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre On a matron fair I fxed my eyes beneath a fertile vale, And she sang her song it was on the wrong of poor old Granuaile. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 58)

This song was completely altered in the target text as follows: 男. (노래를 부른다) (노래) 넓고도 널따란 三千里江山! 발 멈추고 바라보니! 좋고도 좋다 바위와 샘! 늙은 어멈 하나 이 산골에 앉아! 슬프다 부르짓는 노래곡조 「쿠라니엘」 MAN. [sings] Vast and open Samcheolli Gangsan! I stood awhile to view! The rocks and streams, good and nice! An old mother sat in the vale! And she sang her sad song of Granuaile. (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 197) In this rendering, the Samcheolli Gangsan, the literal meaning of which is ‘rivers and mountains of three thousand li’,6 refers to the Korean Peninsula. The distance from the northern to the southern end of Korea is estimated to be about three thousand li. The atmosphere the song conveys is different from the original: while the original is very bright with positive lexical choices of ‘smile’, ‘fair’, and ‘fertile’, the ambience of the target text is gloomy due to the inclusion of negative words, such as ‘old’ and ‘sad’. This strategy may be interpreted as refecting the depressing reality of colonial Korea. Through these lexical devices, the translator creates a song that could stimulate patriotism among Korean readers. In this way, the equivalent effect is achieved. The Korean translations of some words, such as ‘ballad-singer’ and ‘Green on the Cape’, are also made in relation to Korean culture. When the sergeant and the ragged man frst meet, the latter introduces himself as ‘a poor ballad-singer’ (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 55). In Choe’s translation, he introduces himself as ‘場타령이나 하고 다니는 거지’ (‘a beggar and Jangtaryeong-singer’; Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 193). A Jangtaryeong is a type of Korean folk song that was handed down orally. Beggars often sang a Jangtaryeong when asking for charity. Among the titles of the songs the ragged man cites, asking if the sergeant knows them, is ‘Green on the Cape’ (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 59). This title is translated into ‘靑山백두’ (‘Cheongsan Baekdu’; Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 198). Cheongsan Baekdu, the literal meaning of which is ‘Green Baekdu Mountain’, refers to Baekdu

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Mountain, the highest mountain in Korea and a symbol of the country. These domestication translation strategies suggest the translator’s intention of making his work acceptable and understandable to Korean readers. In Choe Byeong-han’s translation, the most notable alteration to the source text is the change to the end of the play. The original text reads as follows: [going towards steps] Well, good-night, comrade, and thank you. You did me a good turn to-night, and I’m obliged to you. Maybe I’ll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up and the big fall down... when we all change places at the rising [waves his hand and disappears] of the Moon. SERGEANT. [turning his back to audience and reading placard] A hundred pounds reward! A hundred pounds! [turns towards audience] I wonder, now, am I as great a fool as I think I am? (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 62) MAN.

Although the sergeant lets the ragged man go out of patriotism, he still dwells on the reward of £100. As Pethica comments: The Ragged Man is far from being an idealized healer. While his talk and song inspire benefcial human connection, they leave the Sergeant acutely conficted at the end of the play between the claims of political idealism and the materialist concerns of ordinary life, and far from sure he has done the right thing. (69) This is the realistic aspect of the play. In contrast, the ending in the target text is very different: 男. 큰놈이 넘어지고 적은 놈이 일어날제 – (손을 흔들며) 동산에 달이 들 때! (男 노래부르며 退場. 警官 바삐 上場) 警部. 千圓! 償金千圓! 에잇 (달려가서 피스톨을 쏜다) (悲命. 同時에 巡査 X, B가 달려온다) 警部. 잡아라, 저놈 저놈. 部長. (男이 退場한 便을 물끄러미 본다) When the small rise and the big fall down... [waving his hand] when the moon rises over a hill! [Man disappears, singing. A police offcer enters in a hurry] POLICE OFFICER. A thousand won! A thousand won reward! Hang it! [run out and shoots] [A scream. At that very moment, policemen X and B run in] POLICE OFFICER. Get him! Get him! SERGEANT. [looks blankly in the direction in which the Man disappeared] (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 200) MAN.

The translator creates a character – a police offcer – who does not exist in the original text, and some of the dialogue is omitted. In the target text, the

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sergeant shows no psychological confict between ‘political idealism’ and ‘materialist concerns’. The creation of the new character might have been a case of self-censorship because the colonisers would not have accepted the original ending: that is, the Japanese censors would never have let the Fenian, who could echo the Korean independence fghters, go without being chased. Like Choe Jeong-u’s translation, Choe Byeong-han’s translation also shows traces of censorship. A peculiar thing about his translation is that the censorship is of words or expressions that might have been entirely innocuous: POLICEMAN B. A hundred pounds is little enough for the Government to offer for him. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 55) In the translation of this line, ‘the Government’ is censored: B. xx에서 놈잡는 데 千圓償金이라는 것은 너무 적은데 POLICEMAN B. One thousand won (*Korean currency) is too little for XX to offer for him. (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 193) ‘The Government’ might have been translated into an expression that bore a resemblance to the Japanese colonial government; thus, the colonial government must have censored the term to avoid the impression that they suppressed Korean independence fghters, given the resemblance between the Fenian and the Korean independence fghters. In the following line by the sergeant, ‘the force’ is also censored: SERGEANT. Well, we have to do our duty in the force. (Gregory, ‘The Rising of the Moon’ 55) 部長. 如何튼 우리는 xx에 義務를 지키지 않으면 안돼. SERGEANT. Anyway, we must do our duty XX. (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by B. Choe] 193) Given that both ‘the Government’ and ‘the force’ represent the colonisers, it seems the translator translated these words into expressions that could be interpreted as abusing or defaming the Japanese colonial government. The Rising of the Moon was translated again by An Yong-sun and published in the monthly journal Saegyoyuk in September 1948 after the liberation of Korea.7 Regarding the motive of its translation, An comments that this play is worthy of close re-examination since the nature of the Irish people is refected in the text (Gregory, The Rising of the Moon [translated by An] 139). In this translation, culture-specifc terms such as ‘shamrock’ are translated using footnotes. This constitutes an interesting change of strategy from domestication to foreignisation. Earlier versions depended on a

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domestication strategy to improve the Korean readers’ understanding, so Korean readers had perhaps come to better recognise the context of the play through earlier versions. Two other plays by Lady Gregory, The Workhouse Ward and The Gaol Gate, were translated by Choe Jeong-u and published in the magazine Donggwang in 1932 and in the Chosun Ilbo in 1933. The Workhouse Ward, which was written with Douglas Hyde – the founder of the Gaelic League – under the title The Poorhouse (3 April 1907) and later The Workhouse Ward (1908), was frst produced at the Abbey Theatre in April 1908. This one-act farce, set in a workhouse in Cloon, a fctional township, portrays two scolding paupers, who are argumentative but who nonetheless have a close relationship. When the sister of one of the paupers offers him a place to live with a relative, he refuses to accept the prosperous home and be separated from his friend. According to Pethica, Lady Gregory viewed this pair as ‘potential symbols of “ourselves in Ireland” in their preference for the familiarity of antagonistic co-dependency over productive action, and their privileging of linguistic creativity over material advancement’ (71). The Workhouse Ward was not produced on stage in colonial Korea. The Gaol Gate, staged at the Abbey Theatre in 1906, depicts the emotions of two women, the mother and the wife of Denis Cahel, who was held in Galway Jail for fring a gun and later chose to be hanged rather than become an informer. As Pethica argues, the self-sacrifce of Denis Cahel provides ‘the dramatic climax, as his mother and widow, in tragic pride, call for his name to be entered in the pantheon of martyrs’ (66). The Kiltartan dialect from the Kiltartan region of Galway, which was developed by Lady Gregory, was employed in this play. In the Korean translation, the Kiltartan dialect was not translated in its original form; like other Korean translations of Irish plays, it was translated into the standard Korean language. In fact, there was nothing to indicate that the play had originally been written in non-standard English. There are, of course, some manipulations of words in the Korean translation, changing the original tone. In the original play, when the two women arrive at the gate of the gaol where her son, Denis, is imprisoned, Mary Cahel wonders: ‘What call had he to go moonlighting or to bring himself into danger at all?’ (Gregory, Seven Short Plays 175). In Choe Jeong-u’s translation, however, ‘moonlighting’ was translated into ‘夜間暴動’ (‘night rioting’; Gregory, The Gaol Gate). The choice of ‘暴動’ (‘rioting’) may signify that the translator secretly tried to convey the associated meaning of the word: political action. Thus, the Korean translation may be read as a play about political fghting against the colonisers, during which a martyr dies. Another notable change is the translation of ‘sergeant’. In the original play, the sergeant searches Denis’ village Daire-caol to fnd people involved in the ‘moonlighting’ and is described as having won a confession from Denis with alcohol. Mary Cushin, Denis’ wife, says, ‘The sergeant was boasting … the day he came searching Daire-caol, it was he himself got his confession

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with drink he had brought him in the gaol’ (Gregory, Seven Short Plays 176). Later, when only Denis is to be hanged, it is revealed that the sergeant lied about the confession. In response, Mary Cahel asks, ‘Then the sergeant was lying, and the people were lying when they said Denis Cahel had informed in the gaol?’ (Gregory, Seven Short Plays 184). In the Korean translation, ‘sergeant’ was translated into ‘辯護士’ (‘lawyer’; Gregory, The Gaol Gate). This change might have been made either on the translator’s initiative to pass the colonisers’ censorship or as the result of the colonisers’ censorship. From the Japanese colonisers’ point of view, the original text could have been interpreted as inspiring Korean antagonism towards the colonisers because the sergeant, working for the government, makes martyrs. In the Korean version, it is ambiguous as to for whom the lawyer stands. On the face of it, then, the Korean translation has no trace of censorship. This play was produced on the Korean stage in June 1932 by the Silheom Mudae, about eight months before its publication. Although the translator for the stage was also Choe Jeong-u, who later translated it for publication, it is not known whether his published translation was the same as the script for the stage because the script has been lost. The reason for the choice of this play to be both translated and staged can be deduced from the Korean situation under colonialism: under the colonisers’ assimilation policy, martyrs could be found quite frequently. For example, as one of the assimilation policies, the Japanese colonial government forced Korean people to visit Shinto8 shrines, but many Christians refused to obey because idolatry was against their faith; consequently, they were killed by the colonial government. 5.1.2 J.M. Synge Following Lady Gregory, the next Irish playwright to be translated was J.M. Synge, one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre. Although Riders to the Sea was the only one of his plays to be translated and published in colonial Korea, it seems, together with Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon, to have been considered the most important play in modern Korean theatre: both plays were translated as many as three times, each time by a different translator. Gim Gwang-seop described Synge’s play as an acme of a one-act play dealing with the primitive nature of Ireland, which has no contact with other cultures (‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’). Riders to the Sea was frst translated by Bak Yong-cheol and published in 1922 in Gaebyeok. The play was later translated by Jang Gi-je and another translator, whose name is not known, and published in 1930 in the monthly magazines Daejung Gongron and Byeolgeongon, respectively. The play was not staged in colonial Korea. Riders to the Sea is a one-act tragedy, frst performed at Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1904. Set in a cottage on an island off the west coast of Ireland in the 1900s, this play depicts the

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struggles of rural fshermen to make a living in the Aran Islands. Maurya, who has already lost her husband, father-in-law, and four sons to the sea and is worrying about her other son, Michael, who is missing at sea, appeals to her last and only remaining son, Bartley, to stay when he plans to sail to Connemara to sell a horse. Maurya’s daughter, Nora, brings her sister a bundle of clothes taken from a drowned man in Donegal, which, they are sure, belonged to Michael. Later, some villagers bring in the corpse of Bartley, who has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned. This play is based on the author’s experiences on the Aran Islands, which he visited several times from 1898 to 1902. It is abundant in Anglo-Irish dialect (Kiberd 81–82) and strong Irish folk beliefs and mythology (Kiberd 163–68). Notably, this was the ‘only one of Synge’s plays presented during his lifetime that did not occasion angry denunciations from audiences in Ireland’ (Gerstenberger 36). The reason for choosing this play to translate seems to be that it was, as Gim Gwang-seop notes, ‘an acme of a one-act play’ (‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’). The translator might have had in mind the idea that model plays were required to improve the ‘young’ modern Korean dramatic polysystem. When the modern Korean theatre movement was launched in 1921, the modern Korean dramatic polysystem was young. In this case, as Even-Zohar argues, translated literature is crucial to improve the host polysystem (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 200–201). Another reason might have been that the rural Irish fshermen’s struggles to make a living for themselves could have been familiar to rural Korean people and their hardships living under colonialism. Although the theme Synge intended to deliver in Riders to the Sea was ‘man face to face with his mortality’ (Brockett and Findlay 167), this play might have had resonances for poverty-stricken, rural Korean people. Bak Yong-cheol’s translation (Synge, Riders to the Sea [translated by Y. Bak]) was the frst translation of Riders to the Sea in modern Korean theatre and reveals many mistranslations. For instance, the relationship between the characters is misrepresented. Nora, who is Maurya’s younger daughter in the original play, is introduced as ‘a young girl’; she is sometimes described as Maurya’s future daughter-in-law and sometimes as her granddaughter. Jang Gi-je’s translation and the anonymous translation show similar translation strategies of alteration, deletion, substitution, and addition. These translation strategies were used to accentuate the suffering of Irish fshermen, who might have been interpreted as the Korean people under colonialism, and to narrow the gap between Korean and Irish cultures in order to improve the Korean readers’ understanding. Firstly, the title of the play was changed from Riders to the Sea to Badaro Naaganeun Saramdeul (People Going to the Sea) in the anonymous translation (Synge, Riders to the Sea [translated by unknown] 160). The choice of the word ‘Saramdeul’ (‘people’) in the translated title broadens the range of

90 Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre the people to which the story can refer. In the original text, the riders could mean Bartley and Michael, the only riders in the play. However, changing the word into ‘people’ encompasses other characters in addition to the two riders. It also removes the allusion to a Biblical story potentially evoked by the original title: when Moses held out his staff, the sea parted for the Israelites to walk on dry ground, but when he lifted his arms again, the sea closed, causing the drowning of the Pharaoh and all his horse-riders. As such, the sufferings of the play’s characters were given more emphasis than in the original play. The two translators situate the characters in a condition of poverty: in the description of the setting, Jang translates ‘cottage kitchen’ as ‘makseori jip bueok’ (‘odd jobber’s cottage kitchen’; Synge, Riders to the Sea [translated by G. Jang] 208), while the anonymous translator translates it into ‘jogoman eomin-ui jip’ (‘small fsherman’s cottage’; (Synge, Riders to the Sea [translated by unknown] 160). Both translators highlight the characters’ poverty by adding ‘odd jobber’ and ‘small’, neither of which are in the original text. The two translators also adopt similar strategies to reduce the cultural differences between Ireland and Korea. The religious terms used in the original would not have been familiar to Korean readers because Korea was not a Christian country. Thus, both translators change ‘the young priest’, which refers to a Catholic priest, into a Protestant clergyman and either omit or rephrase religious expressions such as ‘God help her’ into secular phrases such as ‘Poor mother’. Irish culture-specifc terms were also substituted by Korean culture-specifc terms: for example, ‘cake’ was replaced with Korean rice cake in both translations. Some scenes were described using these substitutions so that Korean readers would feel as if the play were set in Korea. The translation of the frst stage directions is an example. CATHLEEN, a girl of about twenty, fnishes kneading cake, and puts it down in the pot-oven by the fre; then wipes her hands. (Synge, The Complete Plays 83) This is translated as: 스무 살쯤된 카스린 밀가루를 반죽하여 火窯에 걸린 가마에 넣고 행주치 마로 손을 닦는다. CATHLEEN, a girl of about twenty, fnishes kneading four and puts it down in the cauldron over a fre hole; then wipes her hands on her haengjuchima. (Synge, Riders to the Sea [translated by unknown] 160) The translated text describes the image of a traditional Korean woman cooking using a black cauldron, which was traditionally used for cooking rice, a staple food of Korea, and a haengjuchima, an apron worn with the Korean traditional costume Hanbok. This image of the traditional Korean

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woman is maintained throughout the play. In Synge’s original, the scene is as follows: CATHLEEN. She’s lying down, God help her, and may be sleeping, if she’s able. [Nora comes in softly, and takes a bundle from under her shawl] (Synge, The Complete Plays 83) This is translated as: 카스린 (끝까지 沈着해서) 주무시나보다. 어머니도 가여우시지. 아마 고생 고생하시다 잠이나 들어보실려는게지. (노-라, 살그머니 들어와서 치마 속에 서 보퉁이 하나를 내놓는다) CATHLEEN. [calmly throughout] She may be sleeping, poor mother. She probably is sleeping after she twisted and turned in pain. [Nora comes in softly and takes a bundle from under her skirt] (Synge, Riders to the Sea [translated by unknown] 160) In the translated version, Nora takes a bundle from her skirt instead of from her shawl. This characterisation is reminiscent of a traditional working-class Korean woman since it was usual for a common Korean woman to carry something under her skirt. In general, Jang and the anonymous translator tend to lean towards ‘adequacy’, in Toury’s terms, in their translations: that is to say, they tried to be faithful to the source language and culture,9 but they also tried to make their translations acceptable to the target culture by domesticating culture-specifc terms. None of the Korean versions retains the traces of Anglo-Irish dialect that Synge employed in his play. For instance, many features of Synge’s dialect include: The frequent suppression of the relative ‘that’, ‘which’, ‘where’, to introduce a subordinate or relative clause as in ‘it is the fairy host put me a-wandering’; the use of ‘it is’ to emphasise the words immediately following, as in ‘it is not here is your mare’, which also involves the suppression of the relative ‘that’; the use of ancillary ‘and’, rather than ‘when’ or ‘where’ to introduce an adverbial clause, as in ‘and he looking’; and fnally, the use of stock phrases, later to become mainstays of the dialect, such as ‘the black fall of night’. (Kiberd 81) Such features of Synge’s dialect were not refected in Korean versions. Accordingly, the ambiguities of the Anglo-Irish – between the meaning of standard English and the sense of the Irish original – were not mirrored in the Korean translations; indeed, it was very likely almost impossible to do so. Synge exploits such ambiguities in Riders to the Sea when, for example, Nora says of Bartley, who has left for a sea voyage without taking any bread: ‘And

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it’s destroyed he’ll be going till dark night, and he after eating nothing since the sun went up’ (Synge, The Complete Plays 66). As Kiberd observes: On one level, ‘destroyed’ is used in the idiomatic Gaelic sense of being ‘destroyed with hunger, thirst, work etc.’, a sense which normally denotes great discomfort. However, on another level, there are echoes of the standard English meaning of ‘destroyed’, suggesting dissolution and death. At the early stage in the play when the word is used, the Gaelic echo is the dominant one; but, as the play continues and as the sense of fated doom grows, the word uttered in all innocence becomes grimly prophetic. (81) 5.1.3 Lord Dunsany Lord Dunsany’s plays were translated into Korean during the 1920s and 1930s. All of them were fantasy plays, set in invented, fctional worlds with their own gods and geographies. Dunsany was a poet, novelist, and lecturer as well as an Irish chess champion, a big game hunter, a traveller, and a soldier. He began writing plays when Yeats, who wished to ‘get him into the movement’ (that is, the Irish Renaissance), asked him to write a play for the Abbey Theatre, where his early plays were eventually staged with considerable success (Joshi 1–4). His early plays ‘achieved greatest renown at the Haymarket in London and on Broadway, where in 1916, Dunsany became the only playwright in history to have fve plays running simultaneously [and by 1916, he had become] one of the most critically acclaimed writers in both Great Britain and the United States’ (Joshi 1–4).10 The frst of his plays to be translated into Korean was The Glittering Gate, which was translated by Gim U-jin and published in the weekly magazine Dongmyeong in 1923. This was Dunsany’s frst play written for production at the Abbey Theatre at the request of Yeats. It was frst performed at the Abbey on 29 April 1909 and later in Manchester, Belfast, and London. When it reached New York in 1915, the reviews were, according to Schweitzer, ‘mostly lukewarm’; a few were ‘favourable’, and some faced ‘objections on religious and other grounds’, although the play ‘went over well enough with audiences’ (41). Like many of his plays, The Glittering Gate deals with an imaginary realm. Two recently deceased burglars are before the locked gates of Heaven. One is wearily uncorking beer bottles, each of which proves to be empty. The other manages to jimmy the lock on the gate, expecting to fnd orchards full of apples, his old mother, and angels; however, when the gates swing open, he is greeted only by dark night and stars. The reason behind the choice of this play for publication and staging in Korea might have been its relevance to the Korean situation from the perspective of Korean intellectuals. As discussed earlier, the Korean people viewed the Irish as yearning for fantasy and wandering to escape from colonial despotism. Consequently, The Glittering Gate could have resonated with the Korean people.

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In 1924, Dunsany’s Fame and the Poet was translated by Jo Yeong-dae and published in the monthly magazine Sincheonji. The play was translated again by An Yong-sun in 1934. As in other works by Dunsany, fantastical elements, such as the appearance of gods, are used. In the play, Harry de Reves, a poet, has offered all his creations without reward or recognition at the altar of Fame. He has just completed his best work, a sonnet, but he feels that he has wasted his life in pursuit of an illusion, a Fame he shall never see realised. Just as he is about to burn all his work, Fame herself, in a Greek dress with a long golden trumpet in her hand, appears before him. He fnds, however, that ‘she talks like a Cockney street girl with dropped ‘aitches, is loud, and has hopelessly bad manners’ (Schweitzer 62). As Schweitzer comments, ‘The obvious message is that fame is cheap and vulgar, not at all to be desired by the true artist’ (Schweitzer 62).11 Jo Yeong-dae’s translation is no longer available, so it is not possible to know how the Cockney dialect was translated. A Yong-sun’s version, meanwhile, did not translate the Cockney element, so Fame was not depicted as ‘cheap’ and ‘vulgar’. The reason An translated this play seems to be his interest in Dunsany: he also published an essay about the playwright in 1933. Dunsany’s Golden Doom (written in 1912) was translated by Jang Gi-je and published in 1931, and his The Tents of the Arabs (written in 1910) was translated by Yi Ha-yun and published in 1932.12 The Golden Doom, set at a King’s great door in Zericon, sometime before the fall of Babylon, is a concise one-act play that addresses the inconsequentiality of politics and the role of chance in human affairs. A little boy who wants a hoop to play with approaches the King’s great door with a little girl to ask for it. Using a lump of gold that he has found in a stream, he writes a silly, short poem on the wall, as dictated by the girl. A prophet discovers the poem, interprets it as a warning against pride, and urges the King to lay down his crown and sceptre by the door as a peace offering to the gods for his hubris. Finally, the little boy comes back, believes the crown is the hoop he has asked for and takes it away. As Darrell Schweitzer points out, ‘The blatant point is that in the overall scheme of things the fate of a kingdom and the whim of a child are the same’ (48). The translator might have wanted this play to be read in relation to the situation of Korea under colonial rule: after all, although colonial power seems powerful and eternal on the surface, it is inconsequential and can easily collapse due to chance. The Tents of the Arabs was performed in Paris in 1914, Detroit, the U.S., in 1916, and later at the Abbey Theatre in 1920. This two-act play tells the story of a King who escapes to spend a year of freedom in the desert. On his return, he fnds his place has been taken by an impostor and so returns to the romantic life of the desert. This play was translated by Yi Ha-yun for the second production of the Silheom Mudae. It was supposed to be performed together with St John Ervine’s The Magnanimous Lover (Dunsany, The Tents of the Arabs 113), but it was excluded from the repertoire, likely because it was not a one-act play. Regarding the selection criteria for the

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second production of the theatre company, Jang Gi-je, who translated The Magnanimous Lover for the production, states in the Dong-A Ilbo: 實驗舞臺는 그 第 二回 試演의 레퍼-터리를 特別히 一幕物을 取하였다 … 于先 우리는 本來의 演劇 시즌이 아닌 夏期上演으로 하여금 우리의 生理的要件에 可及的의 適應性을 찾게 하자는 것이니 길게 連續되는 一 個의 事件을 進展시켜가는 多幕劇보다는 차라리 짤막 짤막한 몇 個의 一 幕物이 炎熱과 支離에서 나는 倦怠의 嫌을 救하기에 얼마 나으리라는 것 이오 또 우리 劇場의 觀衆은 흔히 一幕劇의 形式에 接하였음이 事實이다. The Silheom Mudae Theatre Company has selected one-act plays for their second production for some reasons … First, this production has been scheduled for the summer, the low season, when it is too hot for the theatre. It was necessary to meet physiological conditions of the audience: it was considered desirable to stage a series of one-act plays rather than a full-length play, so that the audience could concentrate and not feel bored. Furthermore, the Korean audience has been accustomed to one-act plays. (‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe’) This statement suggests that the choice of more one-act plays than any other type to be translated and published might have been due to the practical reason that a one-act play would also be easier to print in magazines or newspapers. The Tents of the Arabs, which describes a king who longs for Mecca, gives up his crown, and returns to a life of freedom, must have given both the Irish and the Korean audiences under colonialism romantic dreams and ideals (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 217); it might, alternatively, have refected their existing dreams and ideals. Translations of Dunsany’s works accounted for the greatest number of plays in the list of translated Irish drama in colonial Korea: fve translations of his four works were published. The reason behind the popularity of his writings was related to his representation in modern Korean theatre. He was treated as a leading dramatist of the Irish dramatic movement (C.  Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’; Yong-su Gim; G. Gim, ‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip’, ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’), and his works were thought to describe the Irish people under colonialism (An). From the perspective of Korean intellectuals, the Irish people depended on fantasy as a way to escape from the harsh reality of their world (G. Gim, ‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip’; An). 5.1.4 St. J. Ervine and W.B. Yeats In 1932, St. J. Ervine’s one-act play The Magnanimous Lover was translated by Jang Gi-je and staged in Korea in the same year. This play was frst performed at the Abbey Theatre in October 1912. Ervine was from Belfast and

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13

managed the Abbey Theatre for a year from July 1915. It was at the Abbey where he had begun his career with plays on Northern Irish subjects: Mixed Marriage (1911), The Magnanimous Lover (1912), and John Ferguson (1915). These plays completed the national geography of Abbey’s drama: Ervine was the cartographer of this province, Co. Down particularly. He knew its vernacular and was accustomed to its convivialities as well as its dull angers and ancient rages (Maxwell 81). The Magnanimous Lover focuses on Henry Hind’s proposal of marriage and Maggie Cather’s refusal of his proposal. Henry has come back to his hometown to propose to Maggie, whom he had abandoned ten years ago. Maggie was forced to live through contempt and disgrace with her illegitimate son in her hometown, where everybody knew her. Knowing that Henry is asking for marriage not out of love for her but out of a desire for salvation, Maggie refuses the proposal. When this play was produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1912, critics were certainly hostile. According to Malone, ‘the critic of one Dublin newspaper dismissed the play in a few sentences, with the comment that he was “not a sanitary inspector”. This play … was also attacked in the American press as a part of the effort to disparage the entire Irish drama’ (117). As a way of countering this attack, Ervine, who knew the newspaper critics of Dublin, wrote a play, The Critics, which had as its setting the vestibule of the Abbey Theatre and ridiculed the critics. The play did nothing to change the newspaper critics or their standards of criticism (Malone 117). The Korean translation of this play is faithful to the source text, although the language used in the translation is not as colloquial. One peculiar aspect of the translation is that some maxims in the stage description, such as ‘What is a Home without a Mother’, ‘There is No Place like Home’, and ‘Blessed are the Humble and Meek’, are printed in English together with their Korean translations (Ervine 101). This was probably for performance use because this translation was for the stage production. At the end of the translated text, a note was added: 「寬大한 愛人」은 六月廿八日부터 三日間 朝鮮劇場에서 上演할 「實驗舞 臺 第二回試演」의 脚本입니다. The Magnanimous Lover is a script for the second production of the Silheom Mudae, which will be presented for three days from 28 June at the Joseon Theatre. (Ervine 113) This play was staged by the Silheom Mudae in 1932. The choice of this play to be translated and staged seems to be ascribed to its story, which could be easily understood by the common Korean audience. In selecting a repertoire for performance, one of the criteria that the GeukYeon always considered was the level of the Korean audience’s sophistication (C. Yu, ‘Nongmingeuk Jechang-ui Bonjiljeok Uiui’). The group tried to

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select those plays that the audience could easily understand. It seems that The Magnanimous Lover was chosen for both publication and staging in this context. In 1936, Yeats’ The Only Jealousy of Emer was translated into Korean with the title Fighting the Waves by Yim Hak-su, a poet and scholar of English literature. This play, written in 1917 and 1918, was staged in May 1926 at the Abbey Theatre and adapted in 1929 by Yeats into the ballet Fighting the Waves for the Abbey School of Ballet (Flannery 285). The play addresses the struggles of three women to own Cuchulain: Cuchulain’s wife Emer, his mistress Eithne Ingube, and Fand, a spirit of immortal beauty. Cuchulain’s dead body is brought back to life through a kiss by Eithne, but upon awakening, the ghost of Cuchulain is seen to have been possessed by Fand. In order to reawaken Cuchulain, Emer renounces her right to his love forever, and Cuchulain is roused, calling out for the arms of Eithne Ingube. As James Flannery points out, the play explores the ambiguous relationship between love, sexual desire, and mortal versus immortal fulflment (46). Emer has the hope that someday and somewhere, she and Cuchulain will ‘sit together at the hearth again’, but she must give up her right to his love forever to reawaken him. It can be argued that she is immortal when she has hope but is dead when she renounces the hope; she should be mortal to make Cuchulain immortal. Another play by Yeats, The Words upon the Window Pane, was also translated by Yim Hak-su and published in the monthly magazine Munjang in 1939. This one-act play was frst staged at the Abbey Theatre in 1930 and explores the occult, in which Yeats had a lifelong interest. Featuring a séance where the ghost of Jonathan Swift appears, the play centres on a romantic triangle involving Jonathan Swift and two women: Vanessa, who proposed marriage to him, and Stella, whom he loved. The most prominent element of this translation is that it has a translator’s note, the only case of this among translations of Irish drama. The translator’s note includes the background of the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, Yeats’ contribution to it, and the plot of The Words upon the Window Pane. Regarding the background of the Abbey Theatre, Yim states that the Irish people have been exhausted with the wandering and oppression of 700 years, and rather than this world full solely of suffering and sorrow, they have come to long for the realm of youth where immortal and ever-young heroes and elves live (Yeats, The Words upon the Window Pane 93–94). This understanding of the Irish people as victims of colonialism refects the representation of the Irish people in Korean theatre. These two plays of Yeats were not staged in colonial Korea. They seem to have been selected for translation because of Yeats’ reputation. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923 and was a famous writer. Given that prestige can be one of the reasons for a source literature being selected (Even-Zohar, ‘Polysystem Studies’ 59), the choice of Yeats’ works might have been to improve the ‘young’ Korean dramatic polysystem.

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During the 1920s and 1930s, 17 translations of 12 works by six Irish playwrights were published, including four plays by Lord Dunsany, three plays by Lady Gregory, two plays by Yeats, and one play each by J.M. Synge, Sean O’Casey, and St. J. Ervine. This list shows that Dunsany and Gregory were the most popular playwrights. Although O’Casey was a signifcant fgure in the Irish dramatic movement, he appears as a peripheral playwright in the published Irish drama list in colonial Korea. Furthermore, O’Casey’s work was never performed in Korea under colonialism. The list of Irish dramas published in Korea is as follows. The selection and translation strategies of Irish plays show that the choice of which play to translate was made in relation to the Korean situation or the Korean dramatic polysystem. Thus, the position of Irish drama in Korean theatre was related to that of translated drama in modern Korean theatre. The function of translated drama was threefold, focusing on innovation, subversion, and the formation of a national identity. This position resulted in the arguments over literal versus free translation, or ‘adequacy’ versus ‘acceptability’ in Korean theatre in efforts to fulfl the artistic and ideological purposes of translated drama in modern Korean theatre. Translation strategies adopted in the translation of Irish plays refect these efforts, although the intervention of the colonisers’ censorship was seen to interrupt these purposes. Generally, translation strategies, such as domestication, generalisation, and adding, were adopted to improve the understanding of the Korean readers while retaining the original setting and plot. This should be interpreted as the result of trying to fnd the balance between the need to improve the ‘young’ Korean dramatic polysystem and the need to enhance the understanding of Korean readers and, in turn, educate the Korean people. As such, conficting strategies of foreignisation and domestication were adopted to achieve the purposes of Korean theatre, resulting in hybrid texts. In the production of translated text, hybrid texts have been defned as ‘target texts where linguistic and cultural traces of the source language are preserved’ (Farahzad). Arguably, then, all translations are hybrid texts because ‘translated text as target text cannot but contain or even betray certain features of its other, prior identity, the translated text as a source text. This birthmark is responsible for a certain hybrid character of any translation, past and present’ (Neubert 182). However, a hybrid character of a translation contains not only linguistic and cultural traces of the source language but also those of the target language: The process of hybridisation consists in the blurring of the very notion of identity. The only possibly registered feature is a structural one, that is, hybrid texts are composite and made out of heterogeneous features, specifc to every hybridisation. In the case of translations those features will come from both source and target cultures, and not by mere adoption of source culture features … Integrated elements are modifed

The Magnanimous Lover

The Only Jealousy of Emer

St. J. Ervine

William B. Yeats

The Words upon the Window Pane

The Shadow of a Gunman

Riders to the Sea

Riders to the Sea

The Rising of the Moon The Workhouse Ward The Gaol Gate Riders to the Sea

The Rising of the Moon The Rising of the Moon

Sean O’Casey

J.M. Synge

Lady Gregory

Fame and the Poet

The Tents of the Arabs

Golden Doom

Fame and the Poet

Wolchul Binminwon Okmun Badaro Ganeun Jadeul Badaro Ganeun Gija Badaro Naaganeun Saramdeul Pyeonuidae ui Geurimja Gwandaehan Aein Pungrang gwa ui Ssaum Changsal e namun sitgu

Beonjjeogineun Mun Yeongye Yeosin gwa Siin Hwanggeum Unmyeong Arabia ui Cheonmak Yeongye Yeosin gwa Siin Daltt’eul Tt’ae Wolchul An Yong-sun

Chosun Ilbo. 4–10 Jul. 1936 Munjang 1.4 (1939): 92–109

Yim Hak-su

Chosun Ilbo. 21 Aug. – 22 Sept. 1931 Donggwang 35 (1932): 101–13 Yim Hak-su

Jang Gi-je

Jang Gi-Je

Unknown

Daejung Gongron 22 (1930): 208–19 Byeolgeongon 5.10 (1930): 160–68

Chosun Ilbo 6–9 Dec. 1934

Yi Ha-yun

Jang Gi-je

Munye Wolgan 1.1. (1931): 83–93 Donggwang 36 (1932): 107–17

Jang Gi-je

Gaebyeok 16 (1921): 124–33 Daejung Gongron 27 (1930): 192–200 Chosun Ilbo. 3–15 Oct. 1931 Donggwang 35 (1932): 114–19 Chosun Ilbo 8–14 Feb. 1933 Gaebyeok 25 (1922): 53–65

Sincheonji 2. Apr. 1924

Jo Yeong-dae

Bak Yong-cheol Choe Byeong-han Choe Jeong-u Choe Jeong-u Choe Jeong-u Bak Yong-cheol

Dongmyeong 2.16. Apr. 1923: 8–9

Gim U-jin

The Glittering Gate

Lord Dunsany

Source

Source Text Title

Author

Translator

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Table 2.1 Published Irish playwrights and works Target Text Title

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by and through the integration in their new settings as deeply as the reception medium is transformed … Translations as hybrid texts mix elements from both source and target cultures whether on syntactic, lexical, or stylistic levels. (Nouss 234) Therefore, translations as hybrid texts are located between the dichotomy of foreignisation versus domestication. They result from a compromise between two translation strategies, ‘foreignising’ versus ‘domesticating’. What motivations or factors, then, are involved in the degree of the hybridity of translations? Albrecht Neubert situates these motivations within the translator’s intention to prevent the target text’s textual integration into the prevalent discourse of the target culture: that is, the translator’s desire not to ‘violate’ the original (183). According to Zauberga, there may be other factors that enhance the degree of the target text’s hybridity: the ideological background, i.e. the prestige accorded to the source culture in relation to the target culture; translator’s competence, i.e., the translator’s ability to rationalise translation process and choose an adequate translation strategy; and the skopos of translation, i.e., hybrid features [that] may be deliberately imposed upon the translation to enable the text to serve a given function. (265) In the case of Irish translations in colonial Korea, the interference of Korean cultural nationalism enhanced the hybridity of the target text. In summary, the formation of Irish drama in colonial Korean theatre refects the competing systems involved: the colonisers’ censorship and the nationalism of the colonised. The intervention of the competing systems in formulating the strategies of representation or empowerment in the rival claims of the translation feld produced hybrid translated texts. 5.2 Staged Irish Playwrights and Works During the colonial period, young theatre groups played a part in disseminating information about the Irish playwrights and providing the experience of Irish plays to people other than those intellectuals who read them in journals or newspapers. The following section examines all the stage productions of Irish plays during the 1920s and 1930s. The plays are discussed in chronological order as they were staged in Korea. Neither the scripts of the Irish dramas used for the Korean stage under colonial rule nor recordings of staged productions are, however, available today; during the Korean War, a confict between Communist and non-Communist forces in Korea from June 1950 to July 1953, those materials were lost or burned. Thus, we can only conjecture as to what they would have been like on the stage by relying on secondary sources, such as reviews and newspaper articles.

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Irish drama was frst staged in Korea in 1921 when the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe produced Lord Dunsany’s The Glittering Gate. This play was translated and directed by Gim U-jin. Gim published his translation of this play later in 1923 in the monthly magazine Dongmyeong, but it is not certain whether this translation was the same as the script he used for the stage because the script is no longer available. Therefore, it is possible only to hypothesise which translation strategies were employed in the scripts through the criticism of or comments on the performances. Although Gim was considered to have selected The Glittering Gate for his frst production partly under the infuence of the Japanese theatrical world at that time (Seo 289), where more translated dramas than original ones were staged, the more notable reason was likely that he was impressed by the Irish National Theatre movement. This play gave Dunsany the reputation of ‘a new star’ of the movement (D. Yi 104–106). The Dong-A Ilbo daily introduced the play as follows: 던세니의 神學은『 The Gods of Pegāna 』 (1915) 中에 具體的으로 써 있 다. 이 戱曲에도 人間의 運命의 神 - 正體를 잘 모르는 運命의 嘲弄者와 現 實에 執着하되 亦是 아무것도 空이라는 作者의 思想이 두렵게도 巧妙한 劇的表現으로 提示되었나이다. Dunsany’s theology is expressed in The Gods of Pegāna (1915)14: through dramatic expressions, it deals with a mysterious Fortune who makes a fool of human beings’ fate and with the author’s philosophy that everything is but nought. (27 Jul. 1921, p. 4.) The above comment reveals the understanding of The Glittering Gate in Korean theatre as demonstrating a nihilistic approach. This approach can be understood to have been ascribed to the colonial situation of Korea, as Koreans felt they could not have any hope for the future. The performances of this play, together with two original Korean plays, received standing ovations from the Korean audience. After the performances, they received favourable comments: in an interview, Ma Hae-song, a Korean writer of juvenile stories, said its stage setting and lighting, particularly, had been received favourably (D. Yi 107). Dunsany’s The Gods of the Mountain was staged by the Towolhoe in July 1924. This three-act play premiered at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 1 June 1911 and ran for three months with a full house (Schweitzer 46). The play shows what a folly unthinking religious belief is (Joshi 60). Agmar, the leader of a band of beggars, devises a plan whereby seven of their members will pose as the seven green jade gods of the mountain so that they may receive all the food and shelter they need. He spreads a prophecy ‘which saith that the gods who are carven from green rock in the mountain shall one day arise in Marma and come here in the guise of men’ (Dunsany, Five Plays 10). The prophecy is believed, and the people accept the beggars as

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the gods. When the people begin to doubt if they are real, the true gods of the mountain come down to turn the seven beggars to stone. The people are then convinced that they are the real gods. This play was adapted and directed by Bak Seung-hui and performed by the Towolhoe Theatre Company from 3 to 5 July in 1924 to observe the frst anniversary of the opening of the Towolhoe (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 211). Bak Seung-hui, who later created, translated, and adapted about 200 works, was a student at that time (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 211). While studying in Japan, he was attracted to modern theatre and frequented the theatre districts for three years to learn about it. Although it is not possible to know what his adaptation of The Gods of the Mountain was like, the Korean scholar of drama Yi Du-hyeon presumes that he adapted the Japanese version of the play, which had been adapted and frst performed in 1919 in Japan (D. Yi 135). Interestingly, The Gods of the Mountain was also used in creating Italian theatre. Luigi Pirandello, who wanted to ‘create a specifcally Italian theatre that would have something unique to offer the rest of the world’, set up the Teatro d’Arte in the refurbished Teatro Odescalchi in Rome and staged this play under Mussolini in 1925 (Bassnett, ‘Pirandello’s Debut’ 349–51). In this production, Pirandello used light effectively: the fnal scene of this play, in which the seven actors were turned into statues made of green stone, was dependent on lighting effects (Bassnett, ‘Pirandello’s Debut’ 349–51). In fact, this scene was considered a mistake; according to Schweitzer, Dunsany made a serious technical blunder by bringing the gods on stage when he would have done better to have left the appearance of the gods to the audience’s imagination (47). Dunsany’s Fame and the Poet was also staged by the Towolhoe in April 1925 under the direction of Bak Seung-hui. In the same year, J.M. Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen was produced by the Towolhoe under the same director. In the Shadow of the Glen deals with the comic situation of a young woman unhappily married to a decrepit husband. When her cantankerous elderly husband dies, Nora Burke and a young farmer, Michael, plan their wedding, until her husband, who had only pretended to be dead, leaps up and shows her the door. As her timid lover will not go with her, Nora takes to the roads with a tramp who promises her a life of freedom on the roads.15 Much like other Irish plays, the choice of this play for the stage seems to be related to the representation of the Irish people in Korean theatre. The Irish were depicted as longing for vagabondism to escape the despotic rule of colonialism. In this sense, the play might have been interpreted as describing the realities of the Irish people under colonialism. There is no record of the audience’s response to the Korean productions of Fame and the Poet and In the Shadow of the Glen, but the critical comments on the performances of the Towolhoe’s translated drama by Sim Hun show that their performances did not appeal to the Korean audience: 特殊한 敎養이 없는 觀衆에게 꺽둑꺽둑한 西洋劇 飜案物을 보이느니보다 腸胃에 맞는 김치 깍둑이를 먹이되 그 속에 滋養物과 消化劑를 양념으로

102 Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre 곁들여주기에 全力을 傾注하자는 말이다. 그러한 題材는 檢閱網에 걸리 지 않는 範圍內에도 얼마든지 있을 것이 아닌가. 이것이 우리의 新劇運動 者가 밟고 나아가야 할 막다른 길이요 土月會舞臺가 移動될 方向이 또한 이곳에 있다고 보는 것이다. Let us concentrate our energies on presenting our own drama that is nourishing and understandable rather than presenting adaptations of Western drama to the uneducated audience. We could fnd many subject matters that could pass the [coloniser’s] censorship. This is the goal of our modern theatre movement, and this is the course that the Towolhoe Theatre Company should pursue. (‘Towolhoe-e Ileonham’) Sim Hun’s comments suggest that the adaptations performed by the Towolhoe did not gain very favourable responses because their subject matters were not related to the Korean audience’s real lives. As such, those adaptations were not a ‘cultural transplantation’ in terms of the defnition by Hervey and Higgins; cultural transplantation is, rather, ‘the wholesale transplanting of the entire setting of the ST, resulting in the text being completely rewritten in an indigenous target culture setting’ (30–31). Additionally, the use of the term ‘uneducated audience’ indicates that most of the audience were not educated intellectuals and that they were used to the sinpa style of acting and melodrama. They were not familiar with realistic contemporary theatre, and it was not easy for them to understand modern theatre and its subject matters and acting styles. College student theatre groups also staged Dunsany’s plays. The Gods of the Mountain was put on the stage by the Ewha Girls’ College theatre group in February 1929; its translator and director are unknown. In June 1933, The Tents of the Arabs was staged by the Yeonhui College theatre group under the director Yi Ha-yun. Before this production, the Yeonhui College theatre group had successfully presented Henrik Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea (written in 1888) on an open-air stage. The Tents of the Arabs was selected for the second production of the repertoire to be staged in the open-air theatre of the college (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 216). The performances by college student theatre groups were infuenced by the modern Korean theatre movement. After the March First Independence Movement, many students led activities such as lectures and public performances to educate the public (M. Yu, Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 244). Student theatre groups, including those at Ehwa Girls’ College, Yeonhui College, Boseong College, Hyehwa College, and Severance Medical College, were formed as part of these activities and staged plays during the 1920s and 1930s. The repertoire included translated plays, such as works by Dunsany, Gregory, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Galsworthy, Chekhov, and O’Neill (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 216). The activities of the student theatre groups constituted part of the modern Korean theatre movement, the goal of which was closely related to Korean cultural nationalism.

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Among the works of Lady Gregory published in colonial Korea, The Rising of the Moon and The Gaol Gate, which could be interpreted in relation to the Korean situation, were staged. The Rising of the Moon was directed by Yeon Hak-nyeon and performed by the Paskyula Theatre Company in July 1927. The audiences’ response to this production is not known. This play was staged only once in colonial Korea when it was translated and then published three times in the Korean theatre sphere. It could likely not be staged because of its political connotations. It is interesting that this play was popular in the early years of the anti-Japanese war (1937–1945) in China. The adaptation of the play, entitled San Jiang Hao, with its patriotic theme and its simple but effective dramaturgy, was one of the most popular plays during the period (Wang 70). The Gaol Gate was staged in June 1932, together with St. J. Ervine’s The Magnanimous Lover as the second production of the Silheom Mudae. Both plays were directed by Hong Hae-seong (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 213). Jang Gi-je, the translator of The Magnanimous Lover, comments on the selection criteria in his essay ‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe Siyeon Sangyeon Geukbon-e Daehayeo’ (‘Regarding the Scripts for the Second Production of the Silheom Mudae’; 1932). As mentioned earlier, Jang Gi-je explains the reasons behind the decision to stage several one-act plays rather than one full-length play, citing the weather conditions and how they would affect the audience’s ability to concentrate, and the fact that the Korean audiences were more accustomed to one-act plays. Jang also discusses the position of one-act plays in modern theatre more broadly. Citing Frank Vernon’s The Twentieth-Century Theatre, he states that the rise and decline of one-act plays were in keeping with those of the repertory theatre. Oneact plays, he notes, featured in the repertories of the Abbey Theatre and the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester; in particular, the latter theatre company produced a group of playwrights called the Manchester School of playwrights.16 Furthermore, he recommends taking note of Vernon’s remark that, in one sense, it is justifable to say that the form of the one-act play in Britain was perfected by this Manchester School (G. Jang, ‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe’). Jang’s emphasis on the Manchester School suggests that the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company also aimed to cultivate playwrights through staging one-act plays. Jang also introduces the authors and plots of and comments on The Magnanimous Lover and The Gaol Gate. He presents St. John Ervine as having been born in Northern Ireland and having started literary life as a drama critic for The London Daily Citizen, becoming a dramatist when his play Mixed Marriage (1911) was staged at the Abbey Theatre. He states that Ervine wrote his greatest plays, including The Magnanimous Lover, The Orangeman, and John Ferguson, while he was a stage manager of the Abbey Theatre and grasped reality in dealing with Irish subject matters, although not as imaginatively as Synge (‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe’).

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Regarding The Magnanimous Lover, he comments: 寬大한 愛人』은 一幕劇作家가 흔히 하듯이 어떤 事件을 보여주기 보다는 오히려 事件이란 衣裳 속에 어떤 理念을 보여주기 위하여 事件을 引用했 다 함이 可할 것이다. 그러나 비록 引用된 事件일지라도 事件을 取扱하는 以上 그는 어디까지든지 儼然한 現實을 無視치 않으며 날카로운 寫實的主 意 筆致를 選及한다. The Magnanimous Lover can be said to have adopted an event to show an ideology through the event rather than show the event itself as oneact playwrights commonly do. However, the writer did not disregard the strict reality and adopted an acute realistic style in describing the event. (G. Jang, ‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe’) Jang also published his comments on The Gaol Gate in the Dong-A Ilbo: ‘with the dramatic technique she had skilfully used in other plays, Lady Gregory showed the emotions of the main characters by focusing on a single situation’ (‘Silheom Mudae Gongyeon’). Jang continues to present the summary of the play as follows: 어느 村에 일어난 政治的 暴動으로 因하여 이 獄中에 갇힌 靑年의 늙은 어머니와 젊은 아내이다. 風聞은 그 靑年이 同志를 密告했다는 非難이 있 어 … [그들은] 靑年은 死刑을 當했다는 것을 알게 된다. 두 女人은 獄門을 向하여 無法과 不正, 政治의 無道를 絶叫하며 希望을 잃은 者의 心痛한 痛哭이 일어난다 … 그칠 줄 모르는 涕泣과 무거운 발자취가 舞臺에서 사 라지며 천천히 幕. They are the old mother and young wife of a young man who has been imprisoned because of a political riot in a village. Rumour has it that the young man informed against his comrades … Soon after, they come to know that their man has been hung, and, facing the gaol gate in despair, they wail and cry out against injustice, corruption, and cruel politics … Ceaseless crying and heavy steps gradually disappear until the curtain slowly falls. (‘Silheom Mudae Gongyeon’) Judging from the above summary and Choe Jeong-u’s published Korean version, we can surmise that the young man of the play, Denis Cahel, was interpreted in Korean theatre as having been directly involved in a political riot and imprisoned as a result. In the original text, Denis is described as a shepherd, and there is no hint that he was involved in a political struggle: MARY CAHEL. He that was used to the mountain to be closed up inside of that! What call had he to go moonlighting or to bring himself into danger at all? (Gregory, Seven Short Plays 175)

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Choe Jeong-u translates this line as: 카-엘. 山으로만 훨훨 돌아다니던 애가 저 속에 갇히다니 무슨 必要가 있어 서 夜間暴動을 하고 危險한 곳에를 갔더란 말이냐? MARY CAHEL. He that was used to the mountain only to be closed up inside of that! What need had he to go night rioting and to bring himself into danger at all? (Gregory, The Gaol Gate) By substituting ‘moonlighting’ with ‘night rioting’, Choe suggests that Denis had been involved in a political struggle. Thus, the play was politically appropriated on the Korean stage. Given Jang’s observation that ‘Ceaseless crying and heavy steps gradually disappear until the curtain slowly falls’, meanwhile, it seems the end of the play was altered. It also appears that the performance of this play focused on the tragic aspects resulting from a political battle rather than on the changes in two women’s emotions. Bak Yong-cheol’s remark indicates a similar view of the drama. Bak comments on the production of The Magnanimous Lover and The Gaol Gate after the opening night: 大體의 印象을 먼저 말하면 『寬大한 愛人』의 演出이 劇內容 情緖를 觀 衆에게 傳達시키는 데 가장 成功한 것 같고 『獄門』은 未來事件의 展 開가 없는 劇이나 不正한 法律을 表徵하는 높은 獄門 앞에서 아들이오 남 편인 男子를 死刑當한 두 女子가 끝없이 痛哭하는 것이 悲劇愛好者인 우 리 觀衆을 感動시킨 바 있었다. Roughly speaking, The Magnanimous Lover seems to be successful in its presentation: it succeeded in the communication of its theme and sentiment to the audience. The Gaol Gate, which had no development of events, was also successful: the scene of two women, who had lost their son and husband, wailing before the tall gaol gate, a symbol of unjust laws, moved the audience, who loved tragedies. (‘Silheom Mudae Je 2-hoe Siyeon [4]’) Bak Yong-cheol also made critical comments. Regarding The Magnanimous Lover, he comments that the delicate mental disturbance was portrayed properly, and the stage language and acting were rather direct. With regard to Choe Jeong-u’s translation of The Gaol Gate, he comments that ‘we request the Silheom Mudae to do a faithful translation’ and ‘we could not be deeply moved by this kind of play that had no ups and downs or no conficts’. He continues that ‘this play may be suitable to be performed before enthusiastic theatregoers in a little theatre but is not suitable to be staged where the audience ranges from layperson to expert’ (‘Silheom Mudae Je 2-hoe Siyeon [2; 4]’).

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Yi Heon-gu, a literary critic, makes favourable comments towards The Magnanimous Lover and The Gaol Gate in his review discussing the activities of theatre companies in 1932: ‘They showed the most serious and earnest acting with a full range of genuine play scripts and the advanced stage and lighting of modern theatre’ (‘Geukdan Ilnyeongan Donghyang’). However, Sim Hun was critical of the second production of the Silheom Mudae. He disagreed with the repertoires of the group. In his view, the plays had nothing to do with the reality of Korea; the level of the Korean audience was not considered, the plays were selected based on the repertoires of the Tsukiji Little Theatre in Japan without any consideration of the Korean reality, the director and members of the theatre company were infatuated with foreign literature while neglecting the reality of Korea and the tastes of the Korean audience, and the essence of the theatre movement was not in staging famous plays (‘Yeongeukgye Sanbo’ 12). This critical view might have resulted from the translation strategies of the Silheom Mudae. The following remarks by Yu Chi-jin, a dramatist and director of the Silheom Mudae, show that the translations leaned towards the original text in terms of ‘adequacy’: ‘Looking back on our past translation activities, the most important principle was to be faithful to the original playwrights’ (C. Yu, ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’). Yu Chi-jin states that such a faithful translation resulted in complaints and criticism from Korean audiences and the literary world. In December 1932, T.C. Murray’s Birthright was produced by the Myeongil Theatre Company as part of the opening programme of the Joseon Theatre in Seoul (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 215). Murray was a peasant playwright who dealt with the peasant and farming life of his native county of Cork. Birthright was frst produced at the Abbey Theatre in October 1910, and it established Murray as a writer of tragic realism. This two-act tragedy presents the conficts between two brothers over their birthright. The play was adapted by Bulmyeongwi for the stage at the Joseon Theatre with the title Brothers (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 215). It seems to have been an adaptation from the Japanese translation of the play (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 215). Yu Chi-jin attacked the performance because it was staged in a commercial theatre: therefore, the play was not in keeping with the ethos of the theatre. He was also critical that the Myeongil Theatre Company did not make it clear that it was an adaptation of Murray’s original play: 왜(무슨 心事로!) 原作者의 이름은 숨기는지? … 作者에 對한 體面上으로 도 그래야만 할 것이오 우리의 良心上으로도 그리 아니치 못할 일이다. 그 뿐만 아니다. 劇團의 權威上으로 보아도 甚至於 宣傳上으로도 너절하게 누구누구 案이라 해놓는 것보다야 몇갑절 나을지 모를 일이 아닐까! 그것 을 그저 어물어물하게 자기 이름 밑에다 『案』字만 붙여서 내는 것은 너 무나 鐵面皮的行事다.

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Why do they hide the original author? … We should announce the original author as a matter of courtesy for the playwright and of our conscience. It would be more benefcial to the theatre company’s authority and advertisement. It is shameful to hide the original author, announcing only the adapter. (C. Yu, ‘Geuk-gwa Yeonghwa’) This comment shows that some commercial theatres had different conventions from other nationalistic theatres that pursued legitimacy, which was likely a result of their commercial goals. Yu continues to comment on the acting and stage lighting of Birthright by the Myeongil Theatre Company: 第 一劇의 呼吸을 맞추지 못하기 때문에 클라이막스에까지 引導할 氣分을 조절시킬 아무런 用意를 사지 못한다. 이 劇이 가져야 할 愛蘭의 沈痛味를 조금도 느끼지 못하게 한다. 오히려 그 沈痛味를 느끼게 해야 할 場面을 正 反對의 喜劇으로 만들어버렸다 … 그리고 照明이다. 第 二幕에 와서는 寂 寞한 深夜를 나타내기 위하여 좀더 光線을 集中시킬 必要가 있지 않을까 … 演技로서는 아버지 (朴齊行)가 性格的이었다. 어머니 (南宮伷)는 좀더 自己役을 硏究하여 주었으면 한다. By failing to keep the pace of a one-act play, the performance failed in showing a climax or the mental agony of the Irish people. On the contrary, it turned the scene of mental agony into a comedy … The stage lighting was also unsuccessful. In Act 2, a calm night should have been conveyed with more converged lighting … The acting of Father (Bak Je-haeng) was characteristic, but that of Mother (Nam Gung-ju) should have been more analytic. (‘Geuk-gwa Yeonghwa’) Gim Gwang-seop also criticised the performance as being an example of the revue style (‘Munhwa Undong-ui Jeoncho’). The reviews of the critics show that the performance of Birthright was not successful. The details of Irish dramas staged in colonial Korea are as follows. Nine works by fve playwrights were staged, and six were also published. Among the others, three plays were introduced solely on the stage without being published in newspapers or magazines: Dunsany’s The Gods of the Mountain, Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen, and Murray’s Birthright. As shown in the published list, Dunsany occupied a central position on the Korean stage, with fve translations of his works being produced. Sean O’Casey, who is seen to be a peripheral playwright as regards published works, was not presented on the Korean stage at all. Although it is diffcult to know whether the stage productions of Irish drama in Korea appealed to Korean audiences due to the lack of records, some productions, such as The Gaol Gate, seem to have been successful. Concerning the translation strategies adopted in presenting works for the stage, it can be surmised from the reviews and the available scripts that adaptations or some lexical domestications and changes were used to appeal

Challanhan Mun

Gokganyeong or Sangokgan ui Geuneul

J.M. Synge

In the Shadow of the Glen

Hyeongje

T.C. Murray Birthright

Okmun

The Gaol Gate Gwandaehan Aein

Wolchul

The Rising of the Moon

Yeongye Yeosin gwa Siin The Gods of the Mountain Narma (misprint of Marma) ui Chilsin The Tents of the Arabs Arabia ui Cheonmak

Fame and the Poet

St. J. Ervine The Magnanimous Lover

Lady Gregory

The Glittering Gate

Lord Dunsany

Target Text Title

The Gods of the Mountain Jijanggyo ui Yurae

Source Text Title

Author

Table 2.2 Staged Irish playwrights and works

Bulmyeongwi (adaptation) Unknown

Jang Gi-je

Choe Jeong-u

Unknown

Yi Ha-yun

Unknown

Bak Seung-hui

Bak Seung-hui (adaptation) Unknown

Bak Seung-hui

Yeon Hak-nyeon Hong Hae-seong Hong Hae-seong Bulmyeongwi

Yi Ha-yun

Bak Seung-hui Unknown

Gim U-jin

Director

Gim U-jin

Translator

Silheom Mudae, Jun. 1932 Silheom Mudae, Jun. 1932 Myeong-Il Theatre Company, Dec. 1932 Towolhoe, Jun. 1924 Towolhoe, Apr. and Sept. 1925

Towolhoe, Apr. 1925 Ewha Girl’s College, Feb. 1929 Yeonhui College, Jun. 1933 Paskyula, Jul. 1927

Geukyesul Hyeophoe, Jul. 1921 Towolhoe, Jul. 1924

Theatre Company & Performance Time

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to the Korean audience, just like the published translated plays. One can argue that these translation strategies refected the translational norms in Korean theatre at that time. 5.3 Reception through Radio Drama Irish drama was also introduced through radio broadcasts. An article published in the drama journal Geukyesul indicates that radio broadcasting was also employed as a means of the modern Korean theatre movement under colonialism: 第二放送 (J.O.D.K.) 이 생긴 이후 「라디오 드라마」가 次次 늘어가는 便이다. 이것도 演劇啓蒙의 한 좋은 方法이라고 하겠다. Since the second channel of the J.O.D.K. radio broadcasting company was launched, the radio drama increased. This is also a good way of education through drama. (Geukyesul 2 54) The J.O.D.K. refers to the Gyeongseong radio broadcasting station, the frst Korean radio broadcasting company. It was established on 30 November 1926 by the Japanese Government-General and frst aired on 16 February 1927. The languages used in the frst channel were Korean and Japanese, which resulted in the company having fnancial diffculties, as it failed to gain a positive response from Korean listeners. The second channel, whose language was the Korean vernacular, was created in 1932 as part of the programme to overcome these diffculties (M. Kim 145–46). That the Korean vernacular was the medium of broadcasting seems to have encouraged Korean intellectuals to use radio drama as a theatre movement. Essays on radio drama were also presented: Yi Seok-hun published the essays ‘Radio-wa Radio Deurama-ui Punggyeong’ (‘The Landscape of Radio and Radio Drama’) in the Dong-A Ilbo (1933) and ‘Radio Deurama-e Daehaya’ (‘About Radio Drama’) in the drama journal Geukyesul (1934). The Geukyesul introduced seven radio drama companies working in Seoul at that time (Geukyesul 2 53). Given that translated drama assumed a signifcant role in the modern Korean theatre movement, it is no wonder that many translated dramas were broadcast on the radio. According to an article in the Geukyesul, translated drama constituted much of the radio drama repertoire: 그 放送內容은 다음과 같은 傾向을 보이고 있으니 放送劇 淨化運動도 今 後로 心要치 않을까! 放送劇本 八十五 中 (第二放送開始以後 十一月까지) 通俗的 又는 넌센스物 五五, 外國名劇 (飜譯 及 脚色) 二七, 創作物 三. The following tendency proves the need to remap the radio drama program. Among the 85 scripts broadcast between April and November

110 Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre 1932, there were 55 popular dramas or nonsense dramas, 27 translations or adaptations from foreign drama, and three original Korean dramas. (Geukyesul 2 54) It seems that ‘tongsokgeuk’ (‘popular drama’) here refers to the Japanese sinpa style of drama. The fact that the colonisers’ sinpa constituted the majority of the radio drama must have been a serious problem for Korean nationalistic intellectuals, who wanted to subvert sinpa through a new type of drama. The GeukYeon also participated in radio drama, producing Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (translated by Bak Yong-cheol and directed by Yu Chi-jin) in December 1933 and Tolstoy’s Resurrection (adapted by Ham Dae-hun and directed by Hong Hae-seong) in February 1934 (Geukyesul 2 52). The members of the GeukYeon, including Yu Chi-jin, Ham Dae-hun, Yi Ha-yun, Gim Gwang-seop, Seo Hang-seok, and Gim Chang-gi, also worked for radio drama individually as either writers or translators (Geukyesul 2 53). The Irish dramas in which they were involved were as follows. In April 1933, one of Synge’s works was adapted and directed by Yu Chi-jin with the Korean title of Yaksu (meaning ‘medicinal waters’) and broadcast by the Joseon Radio Drama Association. We cannot be sure of the plot because the script is no longer available, but, judging from the Korean title, it seems to have been an adaptation of Synge’s The Well of the Saints. The Well of the Saints is a three-act play, frst performed at the Abbey Theatre by the Irish National Theatre Society in February 1905. In July 1933, Dunsany’s The Tents of the Arabs was translated by Yi Ha-yun and produced by the Yeonhui College theatre group. Jeong In-seop directed the production. Ervine’s The Magnanimous Lover was adapted by Yu Chi-jin and broadcast in September 1935. There is no record of the response from listeners. During the colonial period, radio broadcasting was used as a means of educating the Korean public, and the record of translated plays broadcast on the radio shows that Irish drama was used to serve this purpose. The fact that Irish playwrights Synge, Dunsany, and Ervine, who were introduced on the Korean stage as part of the Korean theatre movement, were also broadcast, as well as the involvement of the members of the GeukYeon in promoting the playwrights, indicates that radio broadcasting was also a part of the modern Korean theatre movement. In other words, Irish drama was used to serve the purposes of the Korean theatre movement through a variety of media: print, stage, and radio.

6 Translators of Irish Drama The discussion above has shown that the position of the Irish dramatic movement in modern Korean theatre was political rather than aesthetic. Peter Fawcett argues that in order to investigate the ideological aspect of translation, the following questions should be asked: ‘What gets translated (what

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is valued and what is excluded)? Who does the translation (who controls the production of the translation)? Who is it translated for (who is given access to foreign materials and who denied)?’ (107). This section is concerned with the relationship between the translators of Irish drama and the feld of Korean theatre. As Pierre Bourdieu observes, ‘Any cultural producer is situated in a certain space of production and whether he wants it or not, his productions always owe something to his position in this space’ (106). Bourdieu introduces the concept of habitus to explain this phenomenon. The habitus is ‘a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways’ (Thompson 12). In this context, the relation of the Irish drama translators to modern Korean theatre can be seen to have infuenced their choice of Irish plays. This section examines the translators’ trajectories to determine whether their choice of Irish drama was made under the infuence of the Irish dramatic movement as it was represented in modern Korean theatre. At least 12 Korean translators participated in translating Irish drama for publication, stage performances, or broadcasting during the colonial period. They are as follows. Gim U-jin, who was the frst dramatist to translate and stage Irish drama in Korea, was born of a patriotic father, a government offcial. As a schoolboy, he read Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, and Gabriele D’Annunzio, and, at the age of 17, before becoming a professional dramatist, he wrote an unpublished short novel called Gongsang Munhak (Science Fiction). Table 2.3 Translators of Irish drama Name of Translator

Title of Irish Drama (Year Published, Staged, or Broadcasted in Korea)

Gim U-jin Bak Yong-cheol

The Glittering Gate (1921, 1923) The Rising of the Moon (1921) Riders to the Sea (1922) Fame and the Poet (1924) The Gods of the Mountain (1924) The Rising of the Moon (1927) Riders to the Sea (1930) The Shadow of a Gunman (1931) Golden Doom (1931) The Magnanimous Lover (1932, 1935) Birthright (1932) The Well of the Saints (1933) The Magnanimous Lover (1935) The Rising of the Moon (1931) The Gaol Gate (1932, 1933) The Workhouse Ward (1935) Fame and the Poet (1934) The Tents of the Arabs (1933, 1936) The Only Jealousy of Emer (1936) The Words upon the Window Pane (1939)

Jo Yeong-dae Bak Seung-hui Choe Byeong-han Jang Gi-je

Bulmyeongwi Yu Chi-jin Choe Jeong-u An Yong-sun Yi Ha-yun Yim Hak-su

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Later, he majored in English literature at Waseda University in Japan and became interested in theatre while he was studying there: he examined and emulated as models Shakespeare, Strindberg, Ibsen, and Shaw (M. Yu, Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 2 17–41). He also organised a modern drama research group called Geukyesul Hyeophoe together with other Korean students in Japan and studied classical and contemporary Western drama. When Geukyesul Hyeophoe organised the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe’s tour in Korea, he fnanced and directed the theatre performances produced by the Troupe. He recommended that Lord Dunsany’s The Glittering Gate form part of the repertoire, a play that he himself translated into Korean and directed. Just before the theatre tour, and while still a student at Waseda University, he published an article, ‘Sowi Geundaegeuk-e Daehayeo’ (‘About the So-Called Modern Drama’), which shows his interest in the Irish Literary Renaissance. He was very enthusiastic about theatre and persuaded Hong Hae-seong, who later became one of the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement, to abandon his studies as a law student and change his course to include theatre (Yeon-su Gim).17 Gim’s ambition was to develop a new theatre movement in Korea. He planned with Hong to establish a theatre devoted to staging plays in Gyeongseong (now Seoul), form a group with kindred spirits, and start a new theatre movement in Korea after they had fnished their studies in Japan (Yeon-su Gim). While studying drama at Waseda University, he wrote an essay titled ‘Aillandin-euroseoui Beonadeu Sho’ (‘Bernard Shaw as an Irishman’). As a graduate thesis, he wrote about Shaw’s play titled Ingan-gwa Choingan (Man and Superman) in 1924. Subsequently, he wrote many articles concerning the modern Korean theatre movement: ‘A Word to the Korean Literary World Where There is No Genuine Korean Language’, ‘Modern European and American Playwrights’, ‘The Story of Le Théâtre Libre’, and ‘The First Step toward the Modern Korean Theatre Movement’, to name a few. His play Yiyeongnyeo is considered to have been created under the infuence of Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Shin, ‘Yeongguk Yeongeuk’ 30). Bak Yong-cheol (M. Yu, Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 2 112–48; Kwon 361–62) was born into a wealthy farming family. In his childhood, he developed a liking for theatre and flm and later studied at the Aoyama Institute in Japan and entered the department of German Literature at Tokyo Kaikokuo University in 1923. While studying in Japan, he made friends with the painter Yi Seung-man, the poet Hong Sa-yong, and the critic Gim Gi-jin, all of whom, from 1923, participated in the Korean theatre movement in the Towolhoe Theatre Company. He also counted among his literary friends Yi Ha-yun, Yi Heon-gu, Ham Dae-hun, and Gim Jin-seop, who later became the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement. Therefore, it seems that he came to be interested in theatre under the infuence of his peer group. Later, he worked as a member of Haeoemunhakpa and Geukyesul Hyeophoe, translating The Merchant of Venice and A Doll’s House into Korean.

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Bak Seung-hui was an actor, director, playwright, and translator. While studying English literature in Tokyo, he dipped into theatrical art and modern theatre. In 1922, in Tokyo, together with other colleagues, he organised a literary circle called the Towolhoe. The Towolhoe organised theatre performances during the summer holidays to subvert low-quality sinpa and later became a leading permanent theatre company during the 1920s when it was led by Bak Seung-hui. According to Sim Hun, Bak Seung-hui had an extensive vocabulary of the Korean language and was the most experienced stage director during the 1920s (‘Towolhoe-e Ileonham’). Little biographical information is known about Choe Byeong-han. He is, however, known to have been a member of the Tokyo branch of the K.A.P.F. (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio), the New Tsukiji Little Theatre, the Tokyo Proletarian Theatre Company, the 3.1. Theatre Company, Dongjisa, the Goryeo Theatre Company, and the Tokyo New Theatre Research Association. His social trajectories show that he was interested in proletarian theatre and that he worked in Japan. His position as a member of the New Tsukiji Little Theatre implies his possible relationship with Hong Haeseong. The New Tsukiji Little Theatre’s predecessor was the Tsukiji Little Theatre, the leader of the shingeki (new drama) movement in Japan. The Tsukiji Little Theatre was founded in 1924 by Hijikata Yoshi, a member of a well-known aristocratic family, and Osanai Kaoru, a leading fgure in the shingeki movement. In 1929, following the death of Osanai Kaoru the previous year, the Theatre was divided into two companies according to their ideological directions: the Tsukiji Little Theatre and the proletarian New Tsukiji Little Theatre (J. Kim 287–88). The Tsukiji Little Theatre before the split was where Hong Hae-seong was trained as an actor. Hong was with the company from 1924 to 1929 (Seo and Yi 97–98) and was also a member of Geukyesul Hyeophoe, who organised the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe. He wrote articles concerning the modern Korean theatre movement and led Geukyesul Yeonguhoe from 1931 to 1935. Jang Gi-je was the translator who translated the greatest number of Irish plays into Korean with a total of four translations, although it would be fve if one includes O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, which Jang translated but could not be staged due to the colonisers’ censorship (I. Jeong, ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 2’ 141; C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). Jang majored in English literature and was a member of the GeukYeon and Haeoemunhakpa. The members of the GeukYeon and the Haeoemunhakpa, including Yu Chi-jin, Gim Gwan-seop, Yi Ha-yun, and Jeong In-seop, were keenly interested in Irish drama and wrote many articles about Irish drama and the Irish dramatic movement. Jang also wrote articles about his translations of Irish drama (‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe’, ‘Silheom Mudae Gongyeon’). Yu Chi-jin was a leader of the modern Korean theatre movement who contributed to modern Korean theatre as a dramatist, stage director, and drama critic. He organised and led the GeukYeon and wrote many articles

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and essays related to Irish drama and playwrights, including Lady Gregory (1932) and Sean O’Casey (1932 and 1935). Some of his plays, such as Tomak (The Mud Hut) and Dangnagwi (The Donkey), have been regarded as having been created under the infuence of Synge and O’Casey (Shin, ‘Yeongguk Yeongeuk’ 30). He devoted his whole life to the theatre. Choe Jeong-u studied English literature at Tokyo Imperial University. After his return to Korea, he worked as a professor of English literature at Boseong College. He was also a member of the GeukYeon. An Yong-sun’s biographical information is not available. Nevertheless, we do know that An wrote one theatre review and two essays about Irish playwrights that reveal An’s attitude toward theatre and Irish drama: ‘About the Fourth Theatre Production of Geukyesul Yeonguhoe’ (1933), ‘An Essay on Contemporary Irish Dramatist: Lord Dunsany’ (1933), and ‘A New Irish Comedy Writer: George Shiels’ (1934). Yi Ha-yun majored in English literature at Hosei University in Tokyo. While studying there, he joined Haeoemunhakpa and started his career as a writer. In 1927, he started the literary journal Haeoemunhak, an organ of Haeoemunhakpa, to translate and introduce foreign literature to the Korean public (B. Bak). He also joined in organising the GeukYeon in 1931. He mainly translated poems but also wrote critical essays about poetry, novels, and drama. He wrote articles about the modern Korean theatre movement, including ‘World Literature and the Translation Movement in Korea’ (1933) and ‘The Establishment of Dramatic Literature’ (1939), and later, in 1956, he wrote an essay about the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yim Hak-su majored in English Literature at Gyeongseong Imperial College in Seoul. He started publishing poems in the 1930s (Kwon 807). Given that he wrote for Simunhak (Poetic Literature) magazine, the members of which worked for the GeukYeon, it seems that he was infuenced by his peer group and thus acquired an interest in Irish drama. There are no biographical details regarding Bulmyeongwi and Jo Yeong-dae. Overall, these translators had very similar social trajectories that determined their literary tastes when they began to translate. Most of them had the experience of studying or residing in Japan. Considering the modern Korean theatre movement was established by and evolved around Korean students who studied in Japan, the peer group or social ambience may have provided contexts in which these translators acquired their taste for theatre and, more specifcally, Irish playwrights. Many of them were also involved in the modern Korean theatre movement directly or indirectly as a member of a theatre company or as a writer of articles on Irish playwrights or the Irish dramatic movement. Gim U-jin, Jang Gi-je, Choe Jeong-u, and Yi Ha-yun were the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement when they began to translate, and An Yong-sun indirectly participated in the theatre movement by writing theatre reviews and essays about Irish playwrights. Their involvement in the theatre movement reveals the infuence of the feld of modern Korean theatre.

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Moreover, their membership refects the infuence of their peer group on their tastes. Jang Gi-je, Choe Jeong-u, and Yi Ha-yun were all members of the Haeoemunhakpa and the GeukYeon. Among the members of these two organisations, Yu Chi-jin, Gim Gwang-seop, and Jeong In-seop were very interested in Irish drama and the Irish dramatic movement. They wrote numerous articles about Irish drama, and Jeong In-seop visited Ireland in 1936. Last, in the case of Bak Yong-cheol and Yim Hak-su, their literary association seems to have infuenced their tastes for the theatre and Irish drama. The translators’ direct or indirect relationships with modern Korean theatre illustrate that their choice of Irish drama was infuenced by their position in modern Korean theatre and by the representative image of Irish drama in Korean theatre, whether they were aware of it or not. They actively participated in fostering the need for Irish drama as a cultural repertoire and forming the feld of Irish drama translations as translators or authors of articles on Irish drama. They were inclined to use Irish drama for innovative and subversive purposes. Given that ‘norms are acquired by the individual during his/her socialization’ (Toury 55), it was natural that they were caught between the need to relate to the position of translated drama for innovation and the position of ideological purposes.

Notes 1 For more details, refer to ‘Writers in Kyoto’: https://www.writersinkyoto.com/. 2 During the 1920s and 1930s, scholars who studied English or German literature, including Gim U-jin, Jeong In-seop, Gim Jin-seop, and Gim Gwang-seop, introduced British playwrights and dramas in earnest. Of the British playwrights, Shaw was the most frequently discussed because he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (1925) and had visited the Orient at one time (Shin, Hanguk Singuek-gwa 205). 3 Korean intellectuals thought British colonial rule over Ireland started in 1171, when an English royal presence was established in Ireland. Henry II, the King of England, ‘could not tolerate the possibility of an independent Norman state on his western fank’, and, in 1171, ‘came to Ireland to accept the surrender of Waterford and established an English royal presence in Ireland’ (Boyce 29). 4 During the colonial period, six works by Oscar Wilde, including Salome, Vera, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Shaw’s How He Lied to Her Husband were published. Wilde’s Salome was translated six times by Bak Yeong-hui, Hyeon Cheol, C.S.Y., and Yang Jae-myeong, but was never performed in colonial Korea. It was published in magazines Baekjo in 1922, Wisaeng-gwa Hwajang in 1926, Gaecheok and Dongseong in 1927, and by publishers Dongmunsa and Bakmunseogwan in 1922 and 1923, respectively. Shaw’s How He Lied and Arms and the Man were both produced on the Korean stage. 5 It can, of course, be argued that Bernard Shaw was also a popular playwright at the Abbey Theatre. When Mr J. Augustus Keogh, who had a considerable reputation as an actor in Bernard Shaw’s plays, assumed management of the Abbey Theatre in 1916, the Shaw boom arose. In a single season, John Bull’s Other Island, Widowers’ Houses, Arms and the Man, The Inca of Perusalem,

116

6 7

8 9

10

11 12 13

14 15

16

17

Irish Drama in Modern Korean Theatre

Man and Superman, and The Doctor’s Dilemma were presented to a reasonably sized audience (Malone 119–20). However, this fact was not important to modern Korean theatre. Although many of his plays were produced at the Abbey Theatre with success, Shaw was not included in the category of Irish drama for Korean theatre practitioners. Li is a distance unit used in Korea. One li is around 0.393 km. An Yong-sun had translated and published Dunsany’s Fame and the Poet in Chosun Ilbo from 6 to 9 December 1934. An also wrote essays about Irish dramatists: ‘Aeran Hyeondae Geukjakga Dunsanyron’ (‘An Essay on Contemporary Irish Dramatist: Lord Dunsany’) in Chosun Ilbo from 13 to 25 May 1933 and ‘Aeran Sinjin Huigeuk Jakga George Shiels’ (‘A New Irish Comedy Writer: George Shiels’) in Chosun Ilbo from 12 to 28 December1934. Shinto is a ‘Japanese traditional religion, as opposed to foreign religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and so forth’ (Inoue 1). ‘Adequacy’ is the term used by Gideon Toury when he discusses translational norms. According to Toury, ‘whereas adherence to source norms determines a translation’s adequacy as compared to the source text, subscription to norms originating in the target culture determines its acceptability’ (56–61). The fve plays were his pre-war dramas, which brought him most of his theatrical reputation: The Glittering Gate, King Argimenes, The Gods of the Mountain, The Golden Doom, and The Lost Silk Hat. These were collected as Five Plays in 1914 (Schweitzer 56). Considering that Dunsany’s theatrical reputation in England was evaporating even as he wrote this play (he called the situation ‘black neglect’), this may be interpreted as sour grapes. (Schweitzer 48) The Tents of the Arabs was translated by the same translator, Yi Ha-yun, and published in 1956 in the magazine P.E.N, which featured Irish literature (P.E.N 2:4. May 1956). Between 1914 and 1919, four managers were successively in charge of the Abbey Theatre. The fourth, St. John Ervine, was an ‘imaginative and disastrous choice … He never desisted from passionate and derogatory comment on Irish affairs, political and dramatic’. The Abbey actors disagreed politically with their manager. Defed on his demand for extra rehearsals, Ervine fred the whole company and shortly afterwards, he resigned from the theatre (Maxwell 80). The Gods of Pegāna is Dunsany’s frst book, published in 1905. It is considered to have been a major infuence on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and many others. When this play was produced in Molesworth Hall in 1903, it was ‘greeted with hissing [and] all the Dublin newspapers had been similarly outraged by the play’ (Krause 60–61). Krause points out that ‘at the turn of the century zealous Irishmen were so serious about their national character they were in no mood to laugh at their own image in the dramatist’s satiric mirror’ (61). In 1907, Annie Horniman opened a repertory theatre in the refurbished Gaiety Theatre, the frst such theatre in mainland Britain and one that set in motion the burgeoning repertory theatre movement. The Gaiety also helped to foster an identifable ‘Manchester School’ of playwrights, consisting of writers such as Elizabeth Baker, Harold Brighouse, Stanley Houghton, and Allan Monkhouse, noted for their use of contemporary realism, industrial working-class settings, and Lancashire dialect. (The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance. Vol. 2. edited by Dennis Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. p. 796). After the tour of the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe, Hong transferred from the Department of Law at Chuo University to the Department of Arts at Nihon University.

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References An, Yong-sun. ‘Aeran Hyeondae Geukjakga Dunsanyron’ (‘An Essay on a Contemporary Irish Dramatist: Lord Dunsany’). Chosun Ilbo 13–25 May 1933, p. 3. Bak, Byeong-gyu, ed. Hanguk Inmul Daesajeon (The Encyclopedia of the Korean People). Seoul: Academy of Korean Studies, 1999. Bak, No-gap. ‘J.M. Syngejak: Seobu-ui Chonga Yeongu’ (‘A Study on The Playboy of the Western World’). Joseon JungAng Ilbo 20–26 July 1933, p. 3. Bak, Yong-cheol. ‘Silheom Mudae Je 2-hoe Siyeon Choil-eul Bogo’ (‘After Watching the Opening Night of the Silheom Mudae’s Second Production’). Dong-A Ilbo. 30 June; 1; 2; 5 July 1932, pp. 4–5. Baek Dae-jin. ‘Choegeun-ui Taeseo Mundan’ (‘The Recent Western Literary World’). Taeseo Munye Sinbo 9 (1918): 5–6. Bassnett, Susan. ‘Pirandello’s Debut as Director: The Opening of the Teatro d’Arte’. New Theatre Quarterly 3:12 (1987): 349–51. ———. Translation Studies. Revised ed. London: Routledge, 1991. Bentley, Eric. The Playwright as Thinker. 4th ed. Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota Press, 2010. Bourdieu, Pierre. In Other Words: Essays towards a Refexive Sociology. Trans. Matthew Adamson. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1990. Boyce, D. George. Nationalism in Ireland. London: Routledge, 1991. Brockett, Oscar G. and Robert R. Findlay. Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama since 1870. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Chen, Shu. ‘Irish Literature in China’. Exploring Ireland: Historical Legacy and Contemporary Experience. Ed. Wang Zhangpeng. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2009. 3–15. Cronin, Sean. Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology. New York: Continuum, 1980. Curtis, Edmund. A History of Ireland. London: Methuen, 1950. Dongmyeong. ‘Inmolhayaganeun Toeo-reul Bojeonkoja: Aeran-ui Munyebuheung Undong’ (‘Irish Renaissance: The Movement to Save a Declining Vernacular Language’). Dongmyeong 33 (1923): 6. Dorcey, Donal. ‘The Big Occasions’. The Story of the Abbey Theatre. Ed. Sean McCann. London: A Four Square Book, 1967. 126– 57. Duncan, Dawn. Postcolonial Theory in Irish Drama from 1800–2000. New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. ‘Romance and the Modern Stage’. National Review 341, July 1911: 827–35. ———. Five Plays: The Gods of The Mountain, The Golden Doom, King Argimenes and The Unknown Warrior, The Glittering Gate, The Lost Silk Hat. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1914. ———. The Glittering Gate. Trans. Gim U-jin. Dongmyeong 2.16 (1923): 8–9. ———. Fame and the Poet. Trans. Jo Yeong-dae. Sincheonji 2 (1924). ———. Fame and the Poet. Trans. An Yong-sun. Chosun Ilbo 6–9 Dec. 1934, p. 4, https://newslibrary.chosun.com/ Accessed 3 January 2022. ———. Golden Doom. Trans. Jang Gi-je. Munye Wolgan 1.1 (1931): 83–93. ———. The Tents of the Arabs. Trans. Yi Ha-yun. Donggwang 36 (1932): 107–17. Eber, Irene. Voices from Afar: Modern Chinese Writers on Oppressed Peoples and Their Literature. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1980.

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Ervine, St John. The Magnanimous Lover. Trans. Jang Gi-je. Donggwang 35 (1932): 101–13. Even-Zohar, Itamar. ‘Polysystem Studies’. Poetics Today 11.1 (1990), special issue. ———. ‘The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem’. The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2004. 199–204. Farahzad, F. ‘Hybrid Texts’. Translation Studies Quarterly 2.6 (2004), https://journal.translationstudies.ir/ts/article/view/32 Accessed 5 June 2021. Fawcett, Peter. ‘Ideology and Translation’. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Ed. Mona Baker. London: Routledge, 1998. 106–11. Fitz-Simon, Christopher. The Irish Theatre. London: Thames and Hudson, 1983. Flannery, James W. W.B. Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre: The Early Abbey Theatre in Theory and Practice. London: Yale UP, 1976. Gerstenberger, Donna. John Millington Synge. Revised ed. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990. Geukyesul. ‘Radio Deurama’ (‘Radio Drama’). Geukyesul 2 (1934): 53–54. Gim (Kim), Gwang-seop. ‘Munhwa Undong-ui Jeoncho GeukYeonghwain-ui Hamseong: Geukgye-ui Jeonmang-gwa Je-eon’ (‘The Cries of Theatrical Film Makers, the Forerunners of the Cultural Movement: The Prospects of and Suggestions to the Theatre World’). Chosun Ilbo 2; 4 January 1933, p. 4–5. ———. ‘Aeran Minjokmunhak Geonseolja: W.B. Yeats’ (‘W. B. Yeats - the Founder of the Irish National Literature’). Samcheolli. Nov. 1934: 225–29. ———. ‘Aeran Minjokgeuk-ui Surip: Abbeyjwa-reul Jungsimeuro-haya’ (‘The Establishment of Irish National Theatre: The Abbey Theatre’). Dong-A Ilbo 3 Jan. 1935, p. 9. ———. ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak: Abbeyjwa-ui Seongrip-gwa geu Minjokjeok Giyeo-e daehaya’ (‘The Establishment of the Abbey Theatre and its Contribution to the Nation’). Dong-A Ilbo 8–9 Mar. 1935, p. 3. ———. ‘Aeran Munhak-ui Yungwak’ (‘An Outline of Irish Literature’). Samcheolli. Nov. 1935: 246–48. ———. ‘Aeran Yeongeuk Undong Sogwan: Abbeyjwa-reul Jungsimsama’ (‘A Brief Introduction to the Modern Irish Dramatic Movement: The Abbey Theatre’). Samcheolli. Aug. 1936: 254–59. Gim (Kim), Jong. ‘Aeran Munhak Gaegwan: Aeran Munye Buheung’ (‘A Brief Review of Irish Literature: Irish Renaissance’). Sinsaeng Feb. 1930: 28–29. Gim (Kim), Yeon-su. ‘Geukdan Yahwa’ (‘Fireside Stories about the Korean Theatre World’). Maeil Sinbo 22–30 May 1931, p. 5. Gim (Kim), Yong-su. ‘Aeran-ui Singeuk Jakga Sean O’Casey’s Plays’ (‘Sean O’Casey, an Emerging Irish Playwright, and his Plays’). Chosun Ilbo 2–17 Feb. 1931, p. 4. Gregory, Lady A. Seven Short Plays by Lady Gregory. New York, NY: The Knickerbocker Press, 1909. ———. The Rising of the Moon. Trans. Bak Yong-cheol. Gaebyeok 16 (1921): 124–33. ———. The Rising of the Moon. Trans. Choe Byeong-han. Daejung Gongron 27 (1930): 192–200. ———. The Rising of the Moon. Trans. Choe Jeong-u. Chosun Ilbo 3–15 Oct. 1931, p. 4–5, https://newslibrary.chosun.com/ Accessed 3 January 2022. ———. The Workhouse Ward. Trans. Choe Jeong-u. Donggwang 35 (1932): 114–19. ———. The Gaol Gate. Trans. Choe Jeong-u. Chosun Ilbo 8–14 Feb. 1933, p. 4, https://newslibrary.chosun.com/ Accessed 3 January 2022.

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———. The Rising of the Moon. Trans. An Yong-sun. Saegyoyuk 1948: 138–51. ———. ‘The Rising of the Moon’. Ed. Harrington, Modern Irish Drama. 1991. 54–62. ———. ‘The Rising of the Moon (backgrounds and criticism)’. Ed. Harrington, Modern Irish Drama. 1991. 432–33. Grene, Nicholas. The Politics of Irish Drama. Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Harrington, John P., ed. Modern Irish Drama. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. Hervey, Sándor and Ian Higgins. Thinking Translation. A Course in Translation Method: French-English. London: Routledge, 1992. Hunt, Hugh. The Abbey: Ireland’s National Theatre 1904–1978. New York: Columbia UP, 1979. Hutchinson, John. The Dynamics of Cultural Nationalism: The Gaelic Revival and the Creation of the Irish Nation State. London: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1987. Inoue, Nobutaka. ‘Introduction: What is Shinto?’ Shinto – A History. Ed. Inoue Nobutaka. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 1–11. Jang, Gi-je. ‘Silheom Mudae 2-hoe Siyeon Sangyeon Geukbon-e Daehayeo: Yeokja -roseo-ui Ireon (1)’ (‘Regarding the Scripts for the Second Production of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company: A Word from the Translator 1’). Dong-A Ilbo 24–25 June 1932, p. 5. ———. ‘Silheom Mudae Gongyeon Geukbon Okmun-e Daehayeo: Yeokja-roseo-ui Ireon (2)’ (‘Regarding the Scripts for the Second Production of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company: A Word from the Translator 2’). Dong-A Ilbo 28 June 1932, p. 5. Jang, Won-Jae. Irish Infuences on Korean Theatre during the 1920s and 1930s. Diss. Royal Holloway U, 2000. Jeong, In-seop. ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 1’ (‘A Visit to the Irish Literary World 1’). Samcheolli Munhak 1 (1938): 155–70. ———. ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 2’ (‘A Visit to the Irish Literary World 2’). Samcheolli Munhak 4 (1938): 124–44. Jeong, Jin-seok. Iljesidae Minjokji Apsugisa Moeum II (The Collection of Confscated Articles in Nationalist Newspapers during the Japanese Colonial Rule II). Seoul: LG Sangnam Eollon Jaedan, 1998. Jo, Won-gyeong. ‘Gregory Buin-gwa Aeran-ui Yeongeuk Undong’ (‘Lady Gregory and the Modern Irish Dramatic Movement’). JungAng 2.4 (1934): 123–28. Joshi, S. T. Lord Dunsany: Master of the Anglo-Irish Imagination. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995. Kiberd, Declan. Synge and the Irish Language. London: Macmillan, 1979. Kim, Jaeseok. ‘A Study of Tsukiji Little Theatre’s Infuence on Korean Theatre’. Eomunhak 73 (2001): 287–316. Kim, Myong-ju. ‘Ilje Gangjeomgi Iwangjik Aakbu-ui Bangsong Hwaldong’ (‘The Musical Activities by the Royal Conservatory of the Yi Household between 1928~1945’). Hanguk Eumaksahakbo 30 (2003): 145–174. Kojima, Chiaki. ‘J.M. Synge and Kan Kikuchi: From Irish Drama to Japanese New Drama’. Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies. 10:1/2 (2004). 99–111. Krause, David. Sean O’Casey. The Man and His Work. Enlarged ed. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1975. Kwon, Youngmin. Hanguk Hyeondae Munhak Daesajeon (The Encyclopedia of Modern Korean Literature). Seoul: Seoul National U, 2004.

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Malone, A.E. The Irish Drama. London: Constable, 1929. Maxwell. D. E. S. A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama 1891–1980. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. McCormack, Jerusha. ‘Irish Studies in China: The Widening Gyre’. Studi Irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies 3 (2013). 157–80. Neubert, Albrecht. ‘Some Implications of Regarding Translations as Hybrid Texts’. Across Languages and Cultures 2:2 (2001): 181–93. Nida, E. A. Toward a Science of Translating. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964. Nouss, Alexis. ‘The Butterfy and The Translator: Refections on Hybrid Textuality’. Across Languages and Cultures 2:2 (2001): 227–35. O’Flaherty, Eamon. ‘The Abbey Theatre: The First Hundred Years’. History Ireland, 2021, https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-abbey-theatre- the-frst-hundred-years/ Accessed 3 June 2021. O’Malley-Sutton, Simone C. ‘Circulation in Comparative and World Literature: How the Irish Literary Revival was Received by the Chinese May Fourth Generation’. Comparative Literature Studies 57:3. Penn State UP, 2020. 485–96. Pethica, James. ‘Lady Gregory’s Abbey Theatre Drama: Ireland Real and Ideal’. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama. Ed. Shaun Richards. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 62–78. Poulton. M. Cody. A Beggar’s Art: Scripting Modernity in Japanese Drama, 1900–1930. Honolulu: U of Hawaii Press. 2010. Roche, Anthony. The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899–1939. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Rubin, Don. The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre: Europe Vol 1. London: Routledge, 1994. Rynne, Catherine. ‘The Playwrights’. The Story of the Abbey Theatre. Ed. Sean McCann. London: A Four Square Book, 1967. 69–100. Said, Edward. ‘Afterword – Refections on Ireland and Postcolonialism’. Ireland and Postcolonial Theory. Ed. Clare Carroll and Patricia King. Notre Dame, Paris: U of Notre Dame, 2003. 177–85. Schweitzer, Darrell. Pathways to Elfand: The Writings of Lord Dunsany. Philadelphia: Owlswick Press, 1989. Seo, Yeon-ho and Sang-u Yi. Uri Yeongeuk 100 nyeon (Korean Theatre, The History of One Hundred Years). Seoul: Hyeonamsa, 2000. Seo, Yeon-ho, ed. Gim U-jin Jeonjip 1. (The Complete Works of Gim U-jin 1). Seoul: Jeonyeweon, 1983. Shin, Jeong-ok. Hanguk Singuek-gwa Seoyang Yeonguek (Korean New Drama and Western Drama). Seoul: Saemunsa, 1994. ———. ‘Yeongguk Yeongeuk (British Theatre)’. Hanguk-eseoui Seoyang Yeongeuk 1900–1995 (Western Theatre in Korea from 1900 to 1995). Shin Jeong-ok, et al. Seoul: Sohwa, 1999. 29–155. Sim, Hun. ‘Towolhoe-e Ileonham’ (‘A Suggestion to the Towolhoe Theatre Company’). Chosun Ilbo 6 Nov. 1929, p. 5. ———. ‘Yeongeukgye Sanbo’ (‘A Promenade through the Theatre World’). Donggwang 38 (1932): 11–13. Suzuki, Akiyo. ‘Kan Kikuchi Reading J. M. Synge / W. B. Yeats Reading Kan Kikuchi: The Reciprocal Infuence of Japanese and Irish Literature’. Hikaku Bungaku Journal of Comparative Literature 53 (2011). 33–48. Synge, John M. The Complete Plays of John M. Synge. New York: Vintage Books, 1960.

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———. Riders to the Sea. Trans. Bak Yong-cheol. Gaebyeok 25 (1922): 53–65. ———. Riders to the Sea. Trans. Unknown. Byeolgeongon 5:10 (1930): 160–68. ———. Riders to the Sea. Trans. Jang Gi-je. Daejung Gongron 22 (1930): 208–19. Thompson, John B. Editor’s Introduction. Language and Symbolic Power. Pierre Bourdieu. trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. 1–31. Toury, Gideon. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995. Tymoczko, Maria. Translation in a Postcolonial Context. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999. Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge, 1998. Walsh, Ian R. Experimental Irish Theatre. After W.B. Yeats. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Wang, Zuoliang. Degrees of Affnity: Studies in Comparative Literature and Translation. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 2015. Welch, Robert. The Abbey Theatre 1899–1999: Form and Pressure. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. ———, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Wetmore, Kevin J. and Siyuan Liu. Ed. The Methuen Drama Anthology of Modern Asian Plays. London: Bloomsbury. 2014. Yeats, William B. The Only Jealousy of Emer. Trans. Yim Hak-su. Chosun Ilbo 4–10 July 1936, p. 5, https://newslibrary.chosun.com/ Accessed 3 January 2022. ———. The Words upon the Window Pane. Trans. Yim Hak-su. Munjang 1.4 (1939): 92–109. Yi, Du-hyeon. Hanguk Singeuksa Yeongu (A Study of the History of Modern Korean Theatre) Seoul: Seoul National UP, 1981. Yi, Heon-gu. ‘Geukdan Ilnyeongan Donghyang’ (‘The Theatre Companies This Year’). Jeilseon 2.11 (1932): 112–16. Yi, Hyo-seok. ‘John Millington Synge-ui Geuk Yeongu’ (‘A Study on John Millington Synge’s Drama’). Daejung Gongron 2.2 (1930): 140–45. Yi, Seok-hun. ‘Radio-wa Radio Deurama-ui Punggyeong’ (‘The Landscape of Radio and Radio Drama’). Dong-A Ilbo Oct. 1933, p. 3. ———. ‘Radio Deurama-e Daehaya’ (‘About Radio Drama’). Geukyesul 1 (1934): 31–34. ———. ‘Singeuk Surip-gwa Gwanjung Bonwi Munje’ (‘Establishing Modern Theatre and an Audience-oriented Policy’). Chosun Ilbo 10–14 Mar. 1936, p. 5. Yu, Chi-jin. ‘Segye Yeoryu Geukjangin Sulrye: Aeran-ui Eomeoni Gregory Buin’ (‘An Introduction to Female Figures in the World Theatre: Lady Gregory, Mother of Ireland’). Chosun Ilbo 16 Mar. 1932, p. 4. ———. ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga Sean O’Casey’ (‘Sean O’Casey, a Playwright from the Working Class’). Chosun Ilbo 3–27 Dec. 1932, p. 4. ———. ‘Geuk-gwa Yeonghwa: Myeongil Geukjang Il-hoe Gongyeon’ (‘Theatre and Film: The First Production of the Myeongil Theatre Company’). Dong-A Ilbo 6 Dec. 1932, p. 4. ———. ‘Huigokgye Jeonmang – Beonyeokgeuk-gwa Changjakgeuk’ (‘A View of the Korean Theatre World: Translated Drama and Original Drama’). Dong-A Ilbo. 29 Sept. 1933, p. 3.

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———. ‘Nongmingeuk Jechang-ui Bonjiljeok Uiui’ (‘The Essential Meaning of Advocating Peasant Drama’). Joseon Mundan 21 (1935): 18–19. ———. ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’ (‘An Opinion about the Performance of Translated Drama’). Chosun Ilbo 7–8 Aug. 1935, p. 4. Yu, Min-yeong. Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 1 (People in the Korean Theatre World 1). Seoul: Taehaksa, 2006. ———. Hanguk Inmul Yeongeuksa 2 (People in the Korean Theatre World 2). Seoul: Taehaksa, 2006. Zauberga, Ieva. ‘Discourse Interference in Translation’. Across Languages and Cultures 2:2 (2001): 265–76.

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The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey

Together with Yeats and Synge, O’Casey was one of the most important and infuential playwrights in the Irish dramatic movement. Nonetheless, the list of translated Irish dramas published and staged in Korea during the 1920s and 1930s does not refect such a position. On the contrary, he was merely a peripheral playwright in Korean theatre: only one of his plays was translated and then published, and none of his plays was staged in Korea under colonialism. Yeats’ peripheral position in Korean theatre can be explained in relation to his dramatic ideals, which were different from those of modern Korean theatre. His dramatic principles were closely related to the primary goals of the Irish Literary Theatre, which was formed in 1899 by Yeats himself, Lady Gregory, George Moore, and Edward Martyn as the frst step towards establishing a native Irish drama: ‘To bring upon the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland … to show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment … but the home of an ancient idealism … [and to place literature] outside all the political questions that divide us’ (Gregory, ‘Our Irish Theatre’ 378). In his plays, Yeats used the rural ‘foregrounded over the urban as the symbolic site of a national drama, the repository of national values as the least colonised and most uncorrupted location of “the people”’ (Roche 119). As Kilroy points out, the drama of the early Yeats depended upon the integrity and the survival of a peasant culture with folk roots stretching deep into a heroic past, and it was conceived as ‘an art consciously set apart from the social drama of modern urban middle-class society, the “problem” plays of Ibsen’ (2). Yeats was interested in ‘presenting a remote past through which he sought to suggest ideals for the present’ rather than presenting contemporary situations (Brockett and Findlay 165). As Brockett and Findlay observe: Yeats disliked Ibsenian and Shavian plays, for he did not consider the ordinary man a ft subject for drama. He ignored details of daily life and sought through ritualistic actions to arouse a sense of community among spectators and enlarge their capacities for exalted experience – to make of them “temporary aristocrats” through the power of great emotions. (162)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003163947-4

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Therefore, it can be said that the drama of Yeats did not directly meet the goals of Korean theatre under colonialism, which were to establish a modern national theatre and recover national independence by staging the daily lives of the ordinary people and the realities of their situations under colonialism. Furthermore, the poetic language that Yeats used in his plays seemed to be a diffcult obstacle for Korean translators and theatre practitioners to overcome to allow Korean readers and audiences to understand the plays: he ‘favored traditional verse forms so as to avoid over-personal expression’, and his plays were ‘written in blank verse for the most part’ (Brockett and Findlay 162–67). In any case, although he was one of the most infuential playwrights during the early years of the Abbey Theatre, Yeats was not the most successful playwright at the Abbey Theatre because his plays dealt with a world unfamiliar to Irish audiences, unlike Lady Gregory, who was more successful (Brockett and Findlay 165). The dramatic ideals Sean O’Casey pursued were different to those of Yeats. Unlike Yeats, O’Casey was interested in the present, not the past. He sought to improve Irish society and offer a vision by expressing severe criticism of Irish society, namely, by presenting contemporary social issues on the stage in an Ibsenian realistic style. O’Casey’s plays ‘arose from contemporary dynamic forces within Irish society, from a need to engage in the process of history’ (Kilroy 2). His plays were, ‘at least ostensibly, involved with social and political ideas, with how people live together, how individual fate is defned by position within the group, the class, the system’ (Kilroy 2). Comparing the dispositions of J.M. Synge and O’Casey, A.E. Malone states that O’Casey was a photographic artist who retouched his flms with an acid pencil to produce an effect of grotesque satire, while Synge was a poet with all the attributes of a poet (‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ 68). Among the Irish playwrights introduced into Korea, O’Casey’s dramatic aims were closest to those of the modern Korean theatre movement. The movement aimed at social change by depicting the realities of the Korean people under colonialism. Its goal was to provide an accurate representation of daily themes rather than to pursue arts or beauty. Since O’Casey had similar intentions with his work, his plays were the focus of interest among Korean theatre practitioners under colonialism. As Venuti argues that ideological manipulation occurs from ‘the very choice of a foreign text to translate’ (67), O’Casey’s plays were selected for ideological purposes in modern Korean theatre, much like other Irish plays. However, his plays were the least represented in the list of translated Irish dramas. If it is not that he was least represented because he was regarded as the least important, what was his real position in modern Korean theatre, and what caused such a minor representation? It is necessary to look at the reception and representation of O’Casey in Korean theatre to answer these questions by analysing critical essays and articles published in newspapers or magazines concerning Irish drama during the 1920s and 1930s and, subsequently, the censorship of O’Casey’s

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 125 works in colonial Korea. It is also crucial to examine the only translation of his play, The Shadow of a Gunman, to determine whether it follows the translational norms in Korean theatre at that time. Bassnett and Trivedi note that ‘the strategies employed by translators refect the context in which texts are produced’ (6). In Even-Zohar’s terms, specifc norms or behaviours adopted in translations reveal their relationships with the other home co-systems (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 199). With this in mind, the translation strategies of The Shadow of a Gunman will be investigated to identify how these strategies were related to Korean literary and ideological polysystems and how the colonisers’ censorship functioned in relation to the translation goals.

7 Representation of Sean O’Casey in Modern Korean Theatre under Colonialism During the 1920s and 1930s, Irish playwrights and dramas were introduced to modern Korean theatre via translations, stage performances, and radio broadcasting, and as the subject of critical essays in journals, magazines, or newspapers. Among these, stage performances were a primary focus of censorship because of their direct contact with the masses, while critical essays suffered relatively less censorship. Therefore, it can be argued that critical essays reveal more accurately the position that Irish playwrights and dramas occupied in Korean theatre under colonial rule. Although O’Casey was positioned on the periphery in the list of translated Irish dramas during the 1920s and 1930s, the briefest glance at the critical papers about him and his plays reveals the opposite. Indeed, O’Casey and his plays were frequently mentioned in articles and essays published in magazines and newspapers; meanwhile, three critical essays among these covered his life and works exclusively: ‘Aeran-ui Singeuk Jakga Sean O’Casey’s Plays’ (‘Sean O’Casey, an Emerging Irish Playwright, and his Plays’) by Gim Yong-su in 1931, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga Sean O’Casey’ (‘Sean O’Casey, a Playwright from the Working Class’) by Yu Chi-jin in 1932, and ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga: Sean O’Casey-wa Na’ (‘Sean O’Casey and I: The Playwright Who Guided My Way’) by Yu Chi-jin in 1935. These essays were serialised in major newspapers: Gim’s piece was serialised from 2 to 17 February 1931 in the Chosun Ilbo, while Yu’s former article was published from 3 to 27 December 1932 in the Chosun Ilbo, and the latter was published from 7 to 10 July 1935 in the Dong-A Ilbo. In fact, in the list of critical essays dedicated to Irish playwrights and their plays, Synge and O’Casey were the most popular playwrights.1 Three essays were published about each playwright, while the number of papers dedicated to Gregory and Dunsany, who were the most popular dramatists on the list of translated Irish drama, were two and one, respectively.2 Moreover, while critical essays about Synge were written by literary fgures outside the Korean dramatic circle, two essays about O’Casey were written by an infuential dramatic fgure, Yu

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Chi-jin. Since Yu was in a position to infuence modern Korean theatre, this shows that O’Casey was the focus of more attention than Synge in the Korean dramatic circle. As an intellectual, a realist, a nationalist dramatist, a stage director of the GeukYeon, and a leader of the modern Korean theatre movement, Yu was a central fgure in modern Korean theatre during the 1930s, and his plays provided a model for newly emerging Korean dramatists to follow. This ‘symbolic capital’3 was suffcient to grant him the cultural authority to mould a broad consensus on O’Casey. His representation of O’Casey must have provided a dominant image of the playwright that was accepted by the Korean theatre circle and Korean readers who had no contact with Irish culture. This section is concerned with the image and representation of O’Casey as portrayed in Yu’s and other critical essays related to Irish dramas and playwrights published during the modern Korean theatre movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Given the position of Yu in modern Korean theatre, his essays will be the predominant focus of the following discussion. The image and representation of O’Casey in Korean theatre reveal the ideological purposes of modern Korean theatre under colonialism, which were very similar to those of the Irish dramatic movement, as discussed earlier. First, just as Korean intellectuals considered the Irish people as victims of colonialism, so too was this perspective refected in the understanding of O’Casey’s background. O’Casey’s poverty – resulting from colonial rule – was accentuated considerably (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’; Sin). In the essay ‘A Playwright from the Working Class’ (1932), Yu Chi-jin reveals his sensitivity to the colonial history of Ireland in dealing with O’Casey’s background. Yu attributes O’Casey’s miserable environment, his eye disease, and his lack of schooling to colonial policies. According to Yu, O’Casey’s plays dealt with people like him: those from the slums who suffered under colonial rule. Yu emphasises that O’Casey belonged to the working class, who had ‘to work ceaselessly like a slave’; colonial policies produced slum people who suffered from economic unrest, and this poverty resulted in O’Casey’s eye disease and lack of education (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). This focus was different from that of O’Casey’s other critics and biographers. For instance, scholars have described Sean O’Casey as a weak child, with severe trachoma resulting in a lifetime of chronically poor eyesight and pain (Krause 2–3; Murray 31), while others have attributed his curtailed education to his eye disease. According to Welch, ‘Lack of money and a painful eye disease shortened his schooling’ (407), while Ayling claims that ‘O’Casey’s education was retarded by a disease which seriously afficted his eyes throughout his life; he had little schooling, and it was not until his early teens that he undertook his education seriously’ (‘Sean O’Casey’ 560). It was nonetheless true that O’Casey was raised in poverty. Eight of his brothers and sisters among 13 children died in infancy, mainly of the

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 127 croup, a type of diphtheria prevalent in the poorer families. When he was six years old, his father died, and his family was gradually reduced to the poverty and hardship of tenement life. Infectious disease and malnutrition were prevalent in Dublin slums at that time, causing a high infant mortality rate. Early in 1880, the year of O’Casey’s birth, the death rate in Dublin was 44.8 in every 1,000 of the population, compared to 27.1 in London (Krause 4). However, O’Casey’s family never lived in slum housing: they always lived in ‘rented accommodation’, and it was never ‘slum housing in the common understanding of that emotive word’ (Murray 17). With his father working as a clerk, his family belonged to the lower middle class (Murray 17). O’Casey was not, ‘technically, working class in origins; he did not grow up illiterate or uneducated; he did not come from the tenements’; rather, he ‘belonged to that commoner type, the writer from a middle-class family gone down in the world’ and ‘the exposed position of his family on the very margins of the lower middle class, and the physical proximity of the places they lived to the actual slums made of O’Casey’s social consciousness’ (Grene 112–13). Nevertheless, just as ‘O’Casey’s autobiographies took the impoverished tenements as a given for the Dickensian prose narrative of his upbringing’ (Roche 121), Korean authors also did so in describing O’Casey’s upbringing. Later, O’Casey wandered from job to job, having experienced long periods of unemployment by the time he was 30. As David Krause, the author of O’Casey’s biography, points out, these tragic years were largely a part of the tragedy of Irish history. Indeed, Ireland at the turn of the century was an impoverished agrarian country, reduced to economic and political impotence. The impoverishment resulted not only from ‘seven hundred years of British misrule’ but also from ‘the accident of geography which gave her a rough island climate of heavy mists and rains’ (3). Notwithstanding this reality, Yu and other Korean critics interpreted this impoverishment as the result of colonial policies. Their experience of Japanese colonial rule in Korea was likely refected in this understanding of O’Casey’s life. They wanted to represent poverty as the result of colonialism, as had been their experience: for example, the land survey by the Japanese colonial government produced many Korean people deprived of their land illegally, and rice importation into Japan made Korean peasants slash-and-burn farmers or beggars. Many Korean farmers had to emigrate to Manchuria, the Maritime Province, or to Japan. Yu Chi-jin portrayed these rural people in his plays. Yu highlights O’Casey’s patriotism when he describes O’Casey’s motive in turning his interests to education. According to Yu, O’Casey was once asked about the history of his country, and his ignorance shamed him into self-education (‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). In contrast, however, Krause argues that O’Casey’s decision to start self-education stemmed from his dramatic ardour. As a boy of ten, O’Casey had discovered the new world of drama in the plays of Shakespeare and Dion Boucicault. He knew the works

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of those playwrights only from the lines he had picked up and memorised as an actor, as he was not yet able to read because of his weak eyes. Thus, by the time he was 14, he began an ambitious programme of self-education in order to learn to read and write (Krause 18–20).4 In addition, it seems that he began to identify himself with ‘Irish’ Ireland in his 20s when he learned the Irish language: ‘He was christened John and his surname was Casey, but in his twenties when he learned the Irish language and turned his interests to the cause of Irish freedom he gaelicized his name to Sean O’Cathasaigh, later anglicizing the surname to O’Casey when the Abbey Theatre accepted his frst play’ (Krause 1). Yu pays attention to the fact that O’Casey became well versed in the Irish Gaelic language that even such a great man of letters as Yeats did not understand. He adds that the Irish people had forgotten their language under the British Empire’s rule from 600 to 700 B.C.(‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’).5 In fact, O’Casey could speak, read, and write Gaelic fuently; he later joined the Gaelic League and taught the language in the evenings at one of the League schools in the slums (Krause 21–22).6 Another image of O’Casey represented in modern Korean theatre was that of an independence and a labour activist. In his essay on Irish theatre published in 1929, Sin Seok-yeon, a literary critic, states that O’Casey took part in the Lock-Out Strike in 1913 and was a member of Connolly’s Citizen Army when the Easter Rising broke out; he was arrested by the British army and rescued in a volley by the Irish revolution army just before he was shot to death (3). Yu Chi-jin explores O’Casey’s activities as a labour and independence activist in more detail. Yu describes how O’Casey joined the trade union formed by syndicalists such as James Larkin, took part in the Dublin Lock-Out Strike of 1913 and joined the Citizen Army, and had a narrow escape from being killed: 一九一六年 復活祭 xx에서 市民軍은 제스 코우놀리의 指揮 아래 더블린에 서 市街戰을 쳤다 … 그러나 그는 이 急報를 듣고 누워있을 수는 없었다 … X隊는 그를 壁에다 세웠다. 그리고 銃을 겨누었다 … 바로 그때! 난데없 이 xx軍의 一齊射擊이 猛火같이 쏟아졌다. 그 덕으로 오케이시는 生命을 救하였다. The Citizen Army became involved in street fghting under James Connolly in Dublin during the Easter xx7 [Rising] in 1916 … However, he could not remain in his hospital bed at the news of the fghting … The X8 [British] army forced him to stand against the wall and pointed a gun … At that moment, xx9 [the revolutionary] army suddenly fred a volley, and he had a narrow escape. (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) Yu continues that O’Casey was soon arrested again by the British army and, this time, imprisoned in a four mill; The Story of the Irish Citizen Army was the record of this experience. Because of this background, Yu called

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 129 O’Casey a playwright of ‘deprivation and resistance’ (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 120). It is well known that O’Casey involved himself in various political activities, joining the IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood), the Orange Order, James Larkin’s Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (becoming Secretary of its political wing), and the Irish Citizen Army (Welch 407). He also participated in the Lock-Out Strike of 1913. Although he was still to write his plays in defence of Liberty, he played his part by becoming an active member of Larkin’s union and serving as one of the Chief’s assistants during the 1913 strike (Krause 8). While it is true that he wrote The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (1919),10 it cannot be said that he sympathised with the 1916 Easter Rising as a member of the Citizen Army. Even before the Rising, he left ‘the Citizen Army in 1914 when James Connolly moved it closer to the revolutionary position of Patrick Pearse and when it refused to support the Allied position in the First World War’ (Welch 407). During the Rising, he was ‘a critical spectator … Although he continued to support national independence, the cause of international socialism and the need to improve Irish working conditions became his primary concerns’ (Ayling, ‘Sean O’Casey’ 560). He spent ‘most of his life as a staunch communist and unwavering supporter of the Soviet Union’ (McDonald 138). As Ronan McDonald points out, O’Casey may have left his beloved Irish Citizen Army because of its lurch towards nationalism (138): indeed, ‘O’Casey’s loyalties belonged to labour’s Plough and the Stars, the fag with the seven stars of the symbolic heavenly Plough on the background of bright St Patrick’s blue, … not the orange, green and white Tri-Colour of the nationalists’ (Krause 31). Although it is true that O’Casey was very nearly shot in the Rising, the situation was different from the above descriptions by Korean authors: according to Gregory, ‘He had taken no part in it [the Rising], but a shot had been fred from some house he was in or near, and the soldiers had dragged him out and were actually raising their rifes to fre at him’ (‘Journals’ 21). O’Casey described the moment as follows: ‘I felt in a daze, just from instinct I said a prayer, was certain death was there. But someone fred a shot that just missed their captain, and they ran to see where it came from, and I ran for my life through the felds and escaped’ (Gregory, ‘Journals’ 21). It is impossible to know with any certainty whether Sin and Yu’s distortion and exaggeration of the facts about O’Casey’s career as an independence activist were due to specifc intentions or misunderstandings. In any case, this distortion can be interpreted in the light of the representation of the Irish dramatic movement in Korean theatre, whereby the political rather than the literary aspects of the movement were highlighted. In this respect, O’Casey’s patriotic aspects might have been treated as the most important in modern Korean theatre: they needed to represent O’Casey as a patriotic and nationalistic playwright who could be a model for the Korean theatre movement.

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Yu also described O’Casey as motivated to study drama by his nationalistic impulse. It seems, then, that in so doing, Yu translated O’Casey into a model for Korean drama: 그가 處女作을 發表하기 十年前 하루의 일이다 … 아베이劇場의 存在를 알 고 하룻저녁 구경을 갔었다. 그때 비로소 오케이시는 아베이劇場이란 것이 愛蘭의 國民劇 樹立을 위해서 努力하고 있는 唯一의 文化機關인 줄을 안 것이다. 그 후로 오케이시는 演劇의 意義를 알고 演劇工夫에 뜻하게 된 것 이다. 그는 每夜 한 번도 빠지는 법 없이 아베이劇場의 三等席券을 샀다. 실 로 오케이시의 劇作術에 대한 實際는 이 三等席에서 배운 것이다. Ten years before he wrote his frst play, O’Casey … came to know the existence of the Abbey Theatre. Only then did he realise that the Theatre was the only organ that strove to establish an Irish national theatre. After that, he knew the meaning of drama and began to study drama. He never missed any performance. He learned his dramatic techniques from the third-class seat at the Theatre. (‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’) Yu’s statement shows his intention to emphasise the nationalistic aspect of O’Casey by linking him to the Abbey Theatre. According to Krause, O’Casey discovered drama at the age of ten; he acted in and helped organise the Townsend Dramatic Group, and he was fascinated by the plays of Shakespeare and Dion Boucicault (18–21). Therefore, his study of drama can be said to have begun much earlier than Yu described. Furthermore, although he started his career as a dramatist at the Abbey Theatre, it was not the writers of the Abbey Theatre but Shakespeare and Dion Boucicault who really gave him his sense of structure and style. As Roger McHugh observes, O’Casey gained ‘his sense of the drama’s being larger than life, of the necessity for bold action and brave speech’ through his reading of and acting in Shakespeare, and he learned ‘structure of his early plays, the sudden turn from pathos or tragedy to comedy or to farce’ from Dion Boucicault (36). Moreover, it was only after the production of The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and Juno and the Paycock (1924) that O’Casey frequented the Abbey. In a letter to David Krause, O’Casey states: ‘I never had the money to spare to go to the Abbey. I went twice before I wrote plays – once paying for myself in the shilling place; and once thro’ the kindness of a friend to see Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion’ (Krause 36). According to Krause’s record, although the production of The Shadow of a Gunman was so successful that the fnal night was a complete sell-out and the ‘House Full’ sign was hung out – the frst time this had happened in the history of the Abbey – O’Casey’s reward came to only four pounds (37). Krause continues that even during the run of his next play, Juno and the Paycock, which drew such large crowds that it had to be extended for

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 131 a second week (the frst time in Abbey history that a play had run longer than a week), O’Casey was still working as a labourer, and he was none too solvent. When the two-week run ended, however, he received the grand sum of 25 pounds and, at the age of 44, decided to live by his pen alone (Krause 37). As noted previously, the Korean theatre movement’s emphasis on the Abbey Theatre’s infuence on O’Casey seems to be related to the nationalistic representation of the Irish dramatic movement and the Abbey Theatre as its centre. By accentuating the relationship to the Abbey Theatre, Yu Chijin likely intended to stress O’Casey’s nationalistic aspects. Additionally, in Korean theatre, O’Casey was portrayed as a major dramatist, one of the most important and brilliant playwrights of the Abbey Theatre (Sin; Jong Gim; Y Gim; C. Yu, ‘Huigokgye Jeonmang’). He was also portrayed as a dramatist who saved the Irish dramatic movement: 愛蘭이 일찌기 낳은 唯一한 劇詩人 싱그가 죽은 이후 愛蘭의 新劇運動은 沈滯되기 시작했다 … 愛蘭 新劇의 아버지로서 尊敬받는 W.B.예이츠는 그 때를 回想하여 오케이시에게 이런 便紙를 썼다 ‘…만일 그 때 貴下의 新作 (편의대의 그림자를 말함)을 얻지 못했더라면 우리(아베이극장)는 解體되 었을지 모릅니다.’라고 … 실로 愛蘭의 劇運動을 구한 사람은 오케이시였 던 것이다. After the death of Synge, the only Irish poetic dramatist, the Irish dramatic movement began to decline … Recollecting that time, W.B. Yeats, a father of the Irish modern drama, wrote a letter to O’Casey, saying: ‘Without your new play (The Shadow of a Gunman), we [the Abbey Theatre] might have been dissolved’ … It was O’Casey that saved the Irish dramatic movement. (C. Yu, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’) Given the representation of the Irish dramatic movement in modern Korean theatre, such a contribution to the Irish dramatic movement itself was enough to make O’Casey deserve the position of the most prominent playwright in Korean theatre. It is true that the Abbey Theatre was undergoing a crisis in both its fnances and its dramatic ideals when O’Casey frst submitted his play to the theatre in around 1919. With the death of Synge, the original idea of the Irish dramatic movement founded by Lady Gregory, Synge, and Yeats – drama as an art consciously set apart from the social drama of modern urban middle-class society – had been exhausted; Yeats seemed to be interested in ‘a private drama that has a striking relevance to the modern drama of ritual and its use of an autonomous stage-space’ (Kilroy 2). Lady Gregory was still writing plays, but she had evidently passed her zenith, and Padraic Colum, who lived in America for many years, seemed to have become part of the literary life of that country (Malone, The Irish Drama 121). During this troubled period, from 1916 to 1923, the tendency of the

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Abbey Theatre was quite defnitely moving towards melodrama and farce; neither the plays nor the acting was of the quality usually associated with the name of the Abbey Theatre, and the theatre was in serious fnancial diffculties (Malone, The Irish Drama 121–22). The emergence of Sean O’Casey brought fnancial and dramatic resuscitation to the Abbey Theatre. As W.B. Yeats, an Abbey director, publicly acknowledged, the Abbey’s productions of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy – The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926) – sustained the theatre in its early years (Fearon). Moreover, ‘it was primarily these plays that accounted for the world-wide reputation of the Abbey and its magnifcent company of actors’ (Fearon). With this commercial success, O’Casey’s emergence also brought about a dramatic revolution to the Abbey. Commenting on this revolution, Kilroy describes how, unlike Synge, Yeats, and Lady Gregory, O’Casey’s plays were urban, anti-heroic, and concerned with social and political ideas, arising from a need to engage in the process of history (2). Kilroy continues that this ‘in itself is important inasmuch as Irish drama is notoriously shy of ideas in action, and is even less concerned with the idea as socially and politically circumscribed … The one characteristic, however, that most of all sets O’Casey apart from Irish drama is his restless experimentation with dramatic form’ (2). It can be said that he carried on and completed the revolution in the theatre that his countryman Synge had begun 20 years before O’Casey started to write his plays. As Krause points out, ‘It was of course Yeats and Lady Gregory who established and guided the Abbey Theatre, but it was Synge and O’Casey who shaped it to their own genius, and it is their plays which represent the highest achievements of the Irish Dramatic Renaissance’ (65). Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World and O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock constitute examples of such an achievement. The reason O’Casey was treated as one of the most prominent playwrights of the Abbey writers in Korean theatre was that his plays, especially his Dublin trilogy, dealt with contemporary political events, such as the Irish independence wars or revolutionary wars and the sufferings of slum people under political turmoil (G. Gim, ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak’; G. Jang; C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’; Sin). According to Sin Seok-yeon, unlike preceding plays, O’Casey’s plays showed the desire for revolution and drama from inside Irish life by dealing with contemporary national and political issues, thereby making the Abbey Theatre a vital part of the world proletarian movement (3). It was especially emphasised that O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy presented slum people who suffered politically and economically as the lower classes, and the production of these sufferings on the stage brought to the Irish audience a new sense of the spirit and signifcance of their lives (G. Jang; C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’).

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 133 Korean critics considered O’Casey the frst dramatist to stage contemporary, urban, working-class life. Gim Yong-su introduces O’Casey as such, and Yu Chi-jin also provides a description to that effect: 그는 貧民窟을 舞臺化한 愛蘭最初의 作家는 아니다. 그 前에도 AP氏의 『 泥寧 Slough 』및 알파 오메가라 稱하는 이의 『주위 Blight 』의 二作이 있 었다. 그러나 이 作品들은 何等의 注目도 주지 못하고 忘却되어 버렸다. 그 럼으로 싱그 以來의 아베이座의 傳統이든 土民劇을 破棄한 것은 오케이시 의 손에 의한 것이라고 볼 수 있다. He is not the frst Irish dramatist who staged the slums. Before him, there were The Slough by A.P. Wilson and Blight by one who named himself ‘Alpha and Omega’. However, these plays were buried in oblivion without attracting any attention. Therefore, it can be said that it was O’Casey who broke away from rural drama, which had been the tradition of the Abbey Theatre since Synge. (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) Before O’Casey, there were, of course, plays that portrayed the hardy vivacious race that inhabited the slums of Dublin: Malone identifes these as The Slough by A.P. Wilson and a blistering social satire by one who named himself ‘Alpha and Omega’ called Blight (‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ 69). There was also The Labour Leader by the Cork novelist and dramatist Daniel Corkery, which, perhaps incidentally, used the same material (Malone, ‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ 69). However, as Malone observes, O’Casey’s depiction was thought to be the best: ‘Where O’Casey scores over those dramatists is in the use he makes of the period of war and bloodshed through which Dublin has so recently passed, and with which his audiences are all familiar’ (‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ 69). Korean critics also seemed to have this in mind when they introduced O’Casey as the frst dramatist of the slums. To Korean critics, the portrayal of the present that was familiar to the audience – that is, the war and bloodshed through which Dublin had so recently passed – was considered important. Furthermore, a major focus of Korean critics’ interests was on political issues rather than on the problems of urban working-class life. These problems of the working class had signifcance for Korean critics as far as those problems were related to political issues, such as independence wars or colonial policies. As Anthony Roche observes, ‘if the external world is never far away in an O’Casey play, that external space is relentlessly historicised in a manner remote from the practices of Yeats, Synge, or Gregory. A primary effect of this is to transform comedy into tragedy’ (124). This aspect of O’Casey’s plays was the focus of interest for Korean critics. That Korean critics valued and foregrounded the fact that O’Casey treated contemporary political issues, and the slum life of Dublin was related to the purpose of the modern Korean

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theatre movement, which was to stimulate the national will and a national awakening by staging the realities of the Korean people under colonialism: a miserable tragedy of ‘no freedom, no money, and no life’ (Jeong-jin Gim 19). Of course, as Anthony Butler observes, ‘O’Casey’s pseudo-slums do not fester; they do not smell – they are genteel; they are middle-class concepts of what such places might be’ (23). Although, in his plays, ‘there is the direct and detailed representation of the appalling social conditions his family witnessed’, there is also ‘the distance and detachment of the outsider come into the midst of his working-class characters’ (Roche 121). However, the Korean critics’ understanding of Dublin slums went beyond this. One example is Yu Chi-jin’s interpretation of the scene in which Jack Boyle pretends to have pains in his legs in Juno and the Paycock. Yu considered Boyle’s reluctance to work the product of the current Irish system, an instinctive reaction that could be seen in the working-class labourers who lived in the specifc circumstances of Ireland (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). As Yu’s interpretation suggested, working conditions in Ireland at the turn of the century were terrible: In the ‘Unskilled labour class’ there were 45,159 people, or about one-seventh of the population. The average wage for men was 14 shillings for a week of 70 hours; and women worked in some cases as many as 90 hours for anywhere between 5 and 10 shillings a week. Steady employment in the city was to be found in prostitution, a thriving and wideopen tourist industry that was in evidence on most of the main streets. (Krause 6–7) These miserable conditions of the unskilled labour class can be found in O’Casey’s work. In The Plough and the Stars, the consumptive child of Mrs. Gogan, a charwoman, dies of consumption, never getting any care because of the family’s poverty. After the child dies, The Covey says, ‘Sure she never got any care. How could she get it, an’ th’ mother out day an’ night looking’ for work’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Collected Plays 241). It seemed that Korean critics were well aware of the working conditions in Ireland, likely through their personal research as well as through Irish plays: most of them studied in Japan, where they could access higher education than in colonial Korea. In their essays, many Korean critics describe the miserable conditions of Ireland under colonial rule in more detail than the Irish playwrights had depicted in their plays that had been imported into Korea at that time. The critics ascribe these conditions to colonialism. In this context, O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, which dealt with the Dublin slums, was one of the most valued Irish plays in and for Korean theatre. While the Dublin trilogy exposed the realities of the Dublin slums under colonialism, what O’Casey tried to achieve through his trilogy was pacifsm. He repudiated ‘war and the illusion that the soldiers alone are the chief sufferers, the illusion that the soldiers die bravely and beautifully for

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 135 their country’ (Krause 70). The people who are left behind are also the chief sufferers of war: Nora in The Plough and the Stars goes insane after her husband goes to the war, and Mrs. Tancred and Mrs. Boyle in Juno and the Paycock must suffer more excruciating pains carrying their children out of the world to bring them to their grave than they suffered bringing them into the world to carry them to their cradle. Meanwhile, Jack Clitheroe, Nora’s husband, in The Plough and the Stars goes to the war because of his vanity: he gives up the Citizen Army because he sulks when he is not made a Captain and goes to war only when he is appointed Commandant. As McDonald points out, O’Casey tried to reveal the dangers of political idealism by demonstrating the terrible destruction these ideals cause to the hearthand-home humanity, as represented by the women (137). The political idealism destroyed the home and the sweet dream of Nora in The Plough and the Stars. Therefore, O’Casey ‘viewed the national character with irony instead of idealism’ (Krause 61), just as, in The Shadow of a Gunman, Shields describes Irish people as ‘treating a joke as a serious thing and a serious thing as a joke’ and never being ft for self-government (O’Casey, Seven Plays 7). O’Casey’s trilogy is full of ‘the hostility to nationalist rhetoric’ (McDonald 138) and reveals his critical attitude towards Irish nationalism and the glorifcation of freedom-fghters, as well as the civilians who suffer as a result of both (Welch 407). These elements in his plays angered the Irish conservative nationalists. There were riots in the Abbey Theatre when The Plough and the Stars was produced in 1926. It was ‘greeted with shouts of blasphemy and obscenity, fying objects and fsts, and fnally the arrival of the police in the Abbey Theatre’ (Krause 37). Even Juno and the Paycock was received with some grievances in Dublin. When the Abbey players performed the play at Cork, the manager of the Cork theatre refused to allow it to be performed: Except in a badly bowdlerized version, with all references to religion eliminated and all reference to sex cleaned up. Even the beautiful and poignant prayer spoken by Mrs. Tancred and Juno Boyle, one of the most important speeches in the play, was cut out; and to avoid the undesirable fact that an Irish girl had been seduced, albeit by an Englishman, some dialogue was added to indicate that Bentham had married Mary Boyle before he deserted her. (Krause 38–39) Nonetheless, it seems that O’Casey’s goal was achieved among the Irish audience, and the public grasped O’Casey’s message. Although The Shadow of a Gunman was presented in 1923 while the Civil War was at its height, it was a success, probably due to popular disillusionment with the gunmen (Dorcey 148). In contrast, from a Korean perspective, O’Casey’s plays were received as a means to stimulate resistance against the colonisers. Korean critics approached his plays from the point of view of nationalistic ideology. One example of this can be found in Sin Seok-yeon’s critical essay. Sin introduces

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The Plough and the Stars, which dealt with the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish independence movement, as being representative of O’Casey’s plays, and presents the plot of the play, focusing on a revolutionary’s speech: 愛蘭의 손에 武器를 봄은 榮光이다 … 犧牲 … 流血 그보다도 더 무서운 것은 ‘奴隸’ 그것이다… 至今까지 神에게 이같이 莊嚴한 禮拜를 받든 일 이 있었는가. 몇 百萬 生命의 服從이 歡喜 사이에 「祖國의 사랑」을 爲하 여 바친 일이 … 우리는 이 光榮 있는 犧牲에 何時든지 붉은 술을 부을 準 備를 하지 않으면 안 된다. It is glorious to see arms in the hands of the Irish people … ‘Slavery’ is more horrible than sacrifce or bloodshed … Such august homage was never offered to God as this: the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country … We must be ready to pour the red alcohol anytime for the same glorious sacrifce. (Sin 3) The author’s intention in introducing this infammatory speech in the Korean newspaper is evident: he wanted to use O’Casey’s writing to rouse the Korean people to action. Sin also changes the plot by introducing Nora as being shot and killed by the British army. In the original play, Nora becomes mad, and Bessie, trying to protect the unstable Nora, is shot and killed. This play was originally written not to constitute propaganda for the independence war but rather to expose the poverty and ignorance of the Irish people and their suffering. O’Casey tried to show the worthlessness of the Rising through this play. By depicting and focusing on the miserable victims rather than the glories and honours of the Rising, he makes us question what war is for when it causes so many deaths and victims. This is likely why the war itself is not portrayed on the stage. As argued in the Irish Times, ‘Great events are outlined only in so far as they had reactions on the lives of the men and women Mr O’Casey recreates’ (qtd. in Dorcey 148–49). However, as Sin’s essay shows, Korean critics intended to appropriate O’Casey’s plays to serve their nationalistic purpose: they wanted to use his plays to stir a nationalistic awakening among the Korean audience and ultimately revolt against the colonisers. Another aspect of O’Casey’s plays the Korean critics considered critical was their popularity among the lower classes, especially the working class (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’; Y. Gim). According to Korean critics, this was due to the presentation of the realities of the Dublin slums and working-class life on the stage: 오케이시가 取한 題材란 것은 그가 어릴 때부터 體驗한 더블린 貧民 窟의 實生活의 한토막에 不過한 것이었다 … 이 作品으로 마련해서 아베 이座에서 未組織 勞動者의 새로운 觀客層이 動員되기 시작하였다 … A.E. Malone 氏는 말하였다. ‘아베이 座의 新觀衆의 到來는 숀 오케이시의 出 現과 一致하였다’라고.

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 137 The subject matters of O’Casey’s plays were just a slice of the realities of the Dublin slums he had experienced when he was young … These plays began to attract new theatregoers from the working class … A.E. Malone states: ‘The advent of this newer audience coincides with the emergence of Sean O’Casey’. (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) Korean intellectuals sought to provoke a national awakening among the Korean people through theatre. For this purpose, it was essential for theatre to attract people, especially the lower classes, which is why they thought this aspect of O’Casey’s plays would help the Korean cause. They also focused on the farcical and comic elements in O’Casey’s plays as one of the factors that appealed to the lower classes (Y. Gim; C. Yu, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’): 누구나 아는 바로 演劇藝術에서 笑劇의 存在는 그 歷史가 깊다 … 그리 하여 笑劇은 野卑하다는 意味에서 한동안 이를 排擊해왔다. 그러나 近代 劇 이후 演劇은 너무 文學的인 까닭으로 一般演劇大衆의 嗜好에서 멀어 져 가버렸다 … 오케이시는 한동안 업신여김 받은 笑劇의 復活을 꾀하였 던 것이다. 그리하여 演劇과 발이 멀어진 演劇大衆을 劇場으로 끌어들이 려 한 것이다. As is well known, farce has a long tradition in the history of the theatre … However, modern theatre has rejected it on the grounds that it was vulgar, and, by pursuing a too literary tendency, made it estranged from the theatregoers … O’Casey sought to revive a long-neglected farce tradition in order to attract the alienated masses. (C. Yu, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’) According to Gim Yong-su, the comic elements in O’Casey’s plays were based on Irish humour, a tradition that enabled the Irish people to endure their harsh life under colonialism, while tragic elements represented the tragedy the Irish people experienced under colonial rule. O’Casey expressed this Irish national character effectively by what he called the mixture of tears and laughter (‘Aeran-ui Singeuk Jakga’). It is true that a new audience, likely including members of the working class, emerged with the advent of Sean O’Casey: The typical audience of the [Abbey] Theatre is radically different from the audiences which gave a frst welcome to the plays of Synge, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, and others of the older school. To some extent the advent of this newer audience coincides with the emergence of Sean O’Casey, and the grant of a subsidy by the State, and that it is a less discriminating and less critical audience than those of the past there can be no doubt. (Malone, The Irish Drama 126)

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Indeed, O’Casey’s comic elements attracted this ‘less discriminating and less critical audience’. O’Casey used ‘the disillusionment of the post-war period in such a way as to attract the kindly attention of all the anti-Irish elements in the country, and to attract at the same time an audience which sees only humour in his grim irony’ (Malone, The Irish Drama 126). The reason Korean critics focused on the popularity of O’Casey’s plays among the lower classes is also related to the purpose of the modern Korean theatre movement: that is, to educate and stimulate the masses through the theatre. It was impossible to achieve this purpose without the support of most of the Korean people. The leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement considered the urban working classes potential supporters of the movement because they had easy access to the theatre and were already accustomed to theatre culture (W. Jang 138). It is no wonder that O’Casey was considered a model playwright for creative writing in Korean theatre, as he was a patriotic playwright who wrote patriotic plays that most suited the purpose of the modern Korean theatre movement. In fact, Korean critics described him as a model to study and follow as ‘teaching materials’ in modern Korean theatre (Y. Gim; G. Gim, ‘Hyeondae Yeongmundan-e’; C. Yu, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). In addition, O’Casey was considered a playwright who infuenced the creation of original Korean plays: 土幕」, 「버드나무선 洞里의 風景」은 이 오-케시의 硏究에서 그 手法이 洗鍊되고 影響되었다. 이것은 우리의 文壇에 있어서 極히 最近의 現象이나 農民作家方面에 意圖하는 作家에게 있어서는 오-케시는 硏究의 對象으 로 意義가 클 것이다. The dramatic techniques of [Yu Chi-jin’s] Tomak and Beodnamu seon Dongri ui Punggyeong were refned under the infuence of O’Casey’s plays. This is a new phenomenon of recent years, but O’Casey will continue to be an important playwright whom would-be Korean peasant playwrights should study. (G. Gim, ‘Hyeondae Yeongmundan-e’ 112) The allusion to peasant playwrights has the following background. As noted previously, one of the purposes of the modern Korean theatre movement was to stage the miserable realities of the Korean people under colonialism so that they could refect on these realities. The site that could reveal these real situations most vividly was rural farming villages and peasants’ lives: due to the colonial policies, rural areas were the most severely afficted. Thus, at that time, rural areas were quite frequently used as settings of novels to stimulate a national awakening. The modern Korean theatre movement also sought to employ peasant drama as a means of bringing about a national awakening, and O’Casey was considered a good model. In his critical essay on Sean O’Casey, Yu admits that he was infuenced by O’Casey and describes in detail what he adopted from O’Casey’s plays (‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’).

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 139 As discussed above, the representation of O’Casey and his plays in Korean theatre shows similarities to that of the Irish dramatic movement in Korean theatre. Just as the Irish dramatic movement was, so also his representation can be construed as a repositioned product by the political factors under colonialism. Korean critics approached his career and his plays from a nationalistic perspective. O’Casey was described as a patriot, an independence activist, one of the most infuential dramatists of the Abbey Theatre, the most popular playwright among the working class, and a playwright of deprivation and resistance, and his Dublin trilogy was treated as the most signifcant plays to be used as a model in Korean theatre. Notwithstanding his representation in the list of translated Irish dramas, O’Casey and his plays were the focus of modern Korean theatre.

8 Censorship of Sean O’Casey’s Works in Colonial Korea While the modern Korean theatre movement, bolstered by a nationalistic ideology, positioned O’Casey as a central nationalistic playwright in the feld, his plays were never produced on the stage in colonial Korea. In order to explain this difference in O’Casey’s representation on the stage and in critical essays, it is necessary to consider the socio-political situations of the era. Discussing the relationship between ideology and translation, Fawcett argues that to investigate the ideological aspect of translation, the following question should be asked: ‘What gets translated (what is valued and what is excluded)? Who does the translation (who controls the production of the translation)? Who is it translated for (who is given access to foreign materials and who denied)?’ (107). However, as in the case of Korea, there may be socio-political conditions that control translation activities. Therefore, to each of the above questions should be added, ‘Under what conditions?’: that is, ‘What gets translated, who does the translation, and who is it translated for, under what conditions?’ The subjects who control the production of the translation may be two communities with different interests; they may constitute, as in Korea, the colonisers and the colonised, in which case, the colonisers’ interference may affect translation activities. This section is concerned with this question. It examines how the colonisers’ censorship interfered with the list of Irish drama translations and made Sean O’Casey a minor playwright in this list. In developing this section, since the scripts translated for the stage are no longer available, secondary materials had to be used to support the notion that O’Casey’s plays could not be staged because of the colonisers’ censorship. All cultural activities in Korea under Japanese colonial rule were closely watched by the colonisers and were restricted by the colonisers’ censorship. Korean theatre was no exception. In fact, Japan began to intervene in Korean theatre even before it occupied Korea. The colonisers’ censorship of modern Korean theatre was carried out in two ways: censorship of plays published in magazines and newspapers and censorship of stage

140 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey performances (Kim 23–24). Both translated plays and critical essays about playwrights or plays published in literary magazines or newspapers were also the subjects of censorship. According to Robinson, the reason ‘colonial bureaucrats were especially concerned with controlling publications in the colonies [was] because of the serious nationalist challenge to their rule [so] control of the written word, an important aspect of Japanese colonial policy, was used to limit the spread of radical ideas … and to curb criticism of Japanese colonial administration’ (312). The Japanese colonial government believed that even literary magazines spread radical ideas (Chosun Ilbo 1 to 2 Jul. 1920). The traces of censorship in Korean translations of O’Casey’s plays and articles and critical essays about O’Casey reveal this intention of the colonisers. Among Irish playwrights, O’Casey-related publications show the most traces of censorship. Censorship is also rife in The Shadow of a Gunman, the only Korean translation of any of his plays, where censored parts were marked as ‘xx’ in the target text. The colonial government seemed to try to control the overall message by censoring words such as ‘nation’, ‘race’, ‘(Ireland fghting to be) free’, ‘government (of the people)’, and ‘(up) the Republic’, all of which might have awakened a national consciousness and strengthened the national unity: … But they met him face to face with the spirit of their race … (O’Casey, Seven Plays 15) 토미. … 마주보는 그 얼굴에는 xx 혼이 끓으며 TOMMY. … But they met him face to face with the surging spirit of their xx … (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) TOMMY. Oh, damn the dinner; who’d think o’ dinner an’ Ireland fghtin’ to be free. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 16) 토미. 아 저녁이고 뭐고 귀찮아요. 愛蘭의 xx 를 위한 鬪爭을 生覺하면 어떤 놈이 저녁 같은 것을 生覺하겠어요. TOMMY. Oh, damn the dinner; who would think of dinner when they think of Ireland fghting to be xx! (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) MRS HENDERSON. … Mr Davoren is wan ov ourselves that stands for govermint ov the people with the people by the people. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 16) 핸더슨 夫人. … 데이버린氏야 民衆의 xx 民衆과 같이 民衆의 힘으로 된 xx 를 代表하는 우리들 親近한 사람의 한 분이신걸요. MRS. HENDERSON. … Mr. Davoren is one of ourselves that stands for xx of the people’s xx with the people by the people’s power. (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) MRS. GRIGSON. She’s shoutin’ ‘Up the Republic’ at the top of her voice. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 42) 그릭슨 夫人. 제 목청 있는데까지 높여 「 xxx 을 세워라」라고 고함을 쳐 요. TOMMY.

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 141 MRS. GRIGSON. She’s shoutin’ ‘Up xxx’ at the top of her voice. (O’Casey, The

Shadow of a Gunman) Any expressions that could have been interpreted as disparaging or insulting or as an attempt to subvert the British Empire were also censored: DAVOREN. The British Government killed him to save the British nation. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 13) 데이버린. 영국정부가 영 xx 을 救할려고 죽인 것이지요. DAVOREN. The British Government killed him to save the British xx. (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) The censored part in the above example seems to be an expression that defamed the British Empire, as in other translations of Irish plays. The following are further examples of censorship of subversive expressions: AUXILIARY. … you’re a Selt [he means a Celt], one of the Seltic race that speaks a lingo of its ahn,11 and that’s going to overthrow the British Empire. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 38–39) 副官. 쎌트 (Celt) (켈트 Selt 를 意味한다) 사람이로군. 固有의 말을 쓰는 쎌 트 族이 되어 xxx 을 뒤집어 엎을려고 하는 것이란 말이지. AUXILIARY. You’re a Celt, one of the Celtic race that speaks a language of its own, and that’s going to overthrow xxx. (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) SEUMAS. Is the whole damn country goin’ mad? They’ll open fre in a minute an’ innocent people’ll be shot! (O’Casey, Seven Plays 42) 슈머즈. 이 망할 놈의 OO12가 全部 미쳐버렸다. 이제 OO을 始作해가지고 아무 罪도 없는 사람들만 다 xxx네. SEUMAS. Is the whole damn xx going mad? They’ll open xx and innocent people’ll be xxx! (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) As shown in the above examples, expressions that depicted the colonisers as attackers and as committing harm were censored. In colonial Korea, before a play that had already passed the censorship in this way could be staged, the script had to be examined again by the police (Han 73). Critical essays about O’Casey and his plays also show traces of censorship by the Japanese colonial government. Words that alluded to the

142 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey independence movement and activities, the exploitation of a colony, or colonialism were censored: 一九一六年 復活祭 xx에는 市民軍은 … 더블린의 市街戰을 했다 … 覺悟하 였다. 銃殺은 이미 當하고 말 것이었다. 그 瞬間이었다. 바로 그 때! 난데없 이 xx 軍의 一齊射擊이 猛火같이 쏟아졌다. 그 덕으로 오케이시는 生命을 救하였다 … 歐洲大戰이 일어나고 愛蘭 xx의 xx 運動은 폭발하였다 … 以 上의 諸作品은 모두 愛蘭 xxxx 時代를 取題하여 가지고 … 이 民族은 英 x 國의 x정 아래에서 七百餘年間의 xx 生活을 벗어나지 못하였다. The Citizen Army were street fghting… during the Easter xx [Rising] in 1916 … He [O’Casey] was prepared to be shot dead. At that moment, xx army suddenly fred a volley, and he had a narrow escape … World War I broke out, and the xx movement of Irish xx arose … The above plays [O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy] dealt with the Irish xx period as their subject matter … This nation could not escape from xx life of 700 years under the x British x. (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) These traces of censorship reveal the intentions of the colonised people and the colonisers: naturally, the colonised people appeared to try and stimulate resistance against the colonial government through lexical choices, while the colonisers tried to keep them in check. We can infer from this censorship of publications how strict the censorship of the stage would have been. The Japanese colonial government enforced repressive policies with respect to modern Korean theatre, just as they did to traditional Korean theatre. Even if a play had already been approved by the censorship board, there was still a possibility the play script would not pass censorship. Thus, it was quite normal for the performance repertoire to change. Moreover, even when play scripts had been approved by the police, the police censors monitored every production in the theatre. As Han states, in the theatre, when a curtain went up, the police offcers sitting in the audience scrutinised every single word of the actors’ dialogues with eagle eyes (73). The police also had the authority to stop a performance or arrest actors or theatre practitioners on the spot if there were a hint of resistance to the colonial government or anti-Japanese ideologies. For example, the Gim Yeong-il ui Sa (The Death of Gim Yeong-il) was stopped by the police in the middle of a performance in Pyeongyang because of its anti-Japanese message.13 The Joseon Yeongeuksa Theatre Company also had its performance stopped and its members arrested in 1927 because of a scene in which the patriots, who had been in hiding, appeared with spears and swords, shouting, ‘Repulse the enemy and save the people from distress!’ when the company produced Silla ui Dal (The Moon of Silla; Byeon 54–55). The arrest of Yu Chi-jin by the police is the most famous event in the history of modern Korean theatre. He was arrested in 1935, together with members of the Haksaeng Yesuljwa Theatre Company, because the

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 143 colonial government interpreted his play The Ox as socialist agitprop (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 135). The Haksaeng Yesuljwa Theatre Company had produced The Ox in Tokyo. According to Yu Chi-jin himself, this event made him change his course from writing nationalistic realist plays to writing historical plays. The colonial government even forced some theatre companies to disband. This suppression and censorship were carried out on translated drama as well as on original Korean drama. We can infer that the Irish dramas suffered stricter censorship given the position and representation they had in modern Korean theatre. Therefore, there is little wonder that theatre practitioners were very cautious regarding the selection of a repertoire that would pass the censors. In fact, one could argue that they practised self-censorship from the choice to the production of the plays. For example, Yu Chi-jin notes that they selected Gogol’s The Inspector-General for the frst production of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company due to their awareness of the colonisers’ censorship (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 105). Since his twenties, Yu Chi-jin had been an enthusiastic admirer of Sean O’Casey, and he had likely recommended O’Casey’s plays for the production of the Silheom Mudae. Nonetheless, it is possible that they would have been excluded from consideration through self-censorship. The GeukYeon tried to stage O’Casey’s plays after they staged other Irish plays: they succeeded in producing St. J. Ervine’s one-act play The Magnanimous Lover and Augusta Gregory’s The Gaol Gate in 1932 without any interference from the colonial government, and it was after these productions that O’Casey’s plays were considered for the stage: 이 作家의 最大傑作으로 손꼽는 「쥬노와 孔雀」三幕은 이미 劇團 實驗舞 臺의 레퍼토리 中에 編入되어 張起悌 兄의 健實한 飜譯이 完成된 지 오래 이다. 이 作品을 通하여 머지 않은 將來에는 오케이시의 面目을 舞臺上에 까지 躍動시켜볼 機會가 있을 듯하다. His best play Juno and the Paycock (three acts) had already been translated into Korean by Jang Gi-je and included in the potential repertories for the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company. We will soon have an opportunity to reveal O’Casey’s true character on the stage through this play. (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) The Korean theatre practitioners’ intention to use O’Casey for their theatre movement is evident: they tried to introduce O’Casey through critical essays, publications, and stage productions. However, the colonisers’ censorship thwarted this ambition. Articles and essays show, for instance, that Juno and the Paycock could not be produced on the Korean stage because of censorship. Yu Chi-jin contends in his autobiography that neither his play, The Ox, nor Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock passed censorship and could be staged (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 133), while in an interview with

144 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey Robinson, the dramatist Jeong In-seop also argues that Jang Gi-je’s translation of Juno could not be staged because of the censorship (‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 2’ 141). O’Casey’s play scripts for the stage never passed censorship during the colonial period because the colonial government believed his plays to be rife with nationalism (W. Jang 93–94). Although many Korean theatre companies had translated his plays and tried to pass the censorship protocol, it was unrealistic to expect O’Casey’s plays to be performed on the Korean stage during this period (W. Jang 142). Only one translation of his play The Shadow of a Gunman survived. Notably, meanwhile, during the early years of the anti-Japanese war (1937–1945) in China, Juno and the Paycock was adapted for the Chinese stage by Zhang Min, a director of repute, and played to packed houses in Shanghai in 1937 (Wang 70). Consequently, Korean critics allocated a lot of space to introducing O’Casey’s plays in their essays instead of on the stage. In his essay titled ‘Sean O’Casey, an Emerging Irish Playwright, and his Plays’ (1931), Gim Yong-su reserved ten instalments out of 12 to introduce the plots of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman, and The Plough and the Stars. While he did not use the dialogues as they appeared in the original texts, the explanation of the trilogy’s plot, which frequently quoted the lines of those characters he deemed important, went into such considerable detail that they were close to translations of whole texts. He did not include an interpretive commentary while presenting the plots so that the readers could concentrate on the fow of the stories. Before and after explaining the plots, he introduced the performance record and dramatic techniques of the trilogy together with the creation of the Abbey and O’Casey’s involvement in the Abbey. Sin Seok-yeon, who considered The Plough and the Stars the most significant play in the trilogy, set aside a lot of space to introduce the play. He focused particularly on a revolutionary’s speech to the effect that slavery is more horrible than bloodshed and it is glorious to bleed for the country and translated the speech, as discussed earlier. According to Fearon, The Plough and the Stars was ‘the most controversial and arguably the best’ of the Dublin trilogy ‘as it questioned the canonical heroism of some Irish patriots and satirized the love of war and bloodshed celebrated in the fulminations of’ the Easter Rising hero ‘Patrick Pearse’. Nonetheless, Sin was selective in his introduction of the instigating, rousing parts of the play for his purpose. As we can see, then, the minor position of Sean O’Casey in the list of translated Irish drama did not refect his importance in Korean theatre.

9 Korean Translation of Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman The Shadow of a Gunman was the only one of O’Casey’s plays to be translated into Korean during the colonial period and survive: the play prevailed over censorship and is still available today. The Shadow of a Gunman was ‘the frst of several dramas on the Irish “Troubles” in which O’Casey

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 145 concentrated on the comic and pathetic aspects of war rather than on its patriotic glories’ (Ayling, ‘Sean O’Casey’ 561). O’Casey’s emphasis on the ‘comic and pathetic aspects of war’ might have appealed to Irish audiences because their struggle for independence had already been won. However, it was not because of war’s comic and pathetic aspects that The Shadow of a Gunman was transferred to Korea. As Even-Zohar indicates, acceptance of a particular item from an external source is not necessarily linked to its origin but rather to the position it has managed to acquire within the target (‘Polysystem Studies’ 58). The Shadow of a Gunman was accepted in Korea because of its acquired position in Korean theatre through appropriation and the emphasis on patriotic glories. First produced in April 1923, The Shadow of a Gunman made O’Casey’s reputation in a single night: ‘The play packed the theatre for weeks with enthusiastic audiences and made the name of Sean O’Casey the best known in Dublin’ (Malone, ‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ 69). Set in a Dublin tenement amid civil war in 1920, the play centres on a romantic poet, Donal Davoren, who pretends to be a freedom fghter, and an innocent girl, Minnie Powell, who dies due to Davoren’s pretence. Davoren lives in a Dublin tenement during the Black-and-Tan War, sharing a room with a peddler, Shields. The slum dwellers think that Davoren is an IRA gunman ‘on the run’,14 and Davoren encourages this belief in order to impress a pretty girl, Minnie Powell. When the Black and Tans storm the tenement, both Davoren and Shields reveal themselves as cowards: they discover that Shields’ friend has left a bag of bombs in their room, but it is Minnie Powell who hides the bag in her room to save Davoren because she loves him and is deceived by his falsity. Minnie is shot dead as a result. The Shadow of a Gunman was translated into Korean by Jang Gi-je and serialised in the Chosun Ilbo from 21 August to 22 September 1931. This section aims to identify whether it was received as one of several vital plays that could serve the purpose of modern Korean theatre under colonial rule by reading this translation against the dominant translational norms in modern Korean theatre. Given that O’Casey was considered a major dramatist of the Abbey Theatre by practitioners of the modern Korean theatre movement, it is evident that the selection of his play, like that of other Irish works, was related to their purposes. The remaining question is whether the Korean translation of his play is related to the translations of other Irish plays. If it adopted the translational norms that were dominant in modern Korean theatre at that time, as other Irish drama translations did, it could be theorised that his play was also received for the same purpose as other Irish plays. The Korean version of The Shadow of a Gunman reveals the intentions of both the colonisers and the colonised: traces of the colonial government’s censorship can be regarded as demonstrating the aim of the colonisers to control the message for their own purposes, while the translation strategies employed by the translator can be said to disclose the intentions of the colonised people.

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As discussed earlier, the colonial government tried to control the message by censoring any words that they thought might awaken a national consciousness and strengthen the national unity or that could be interpreted as subverting the colonisers. Amid this censorship, the translator of The Shadow of a Gunman uses various translation strategies to take back control and serve the purpose of Korean theatre. This intention of the translator can be seen, frstly, in the translation of the play’s title.15 In the translated title, ‘a gunman’ is substituted by pyeonuidae (plain-clothes soldiers). This was likely because its Korean equivalent, chongjabi, lacked the patriotic association in Korea that it might have had in Ireland at that time. The setting of this play is May 1920. At this time, the bitter struggle between the Crown and the Irish separatist movement known as Sinn Féin (‘We Ourselves’) reached a critical stage as the British government intended to partition Ireland into two self-governing polities: Northern Ireland of six northeastern counties and Southern Ireland, constituting the larger part of the country. Before the end of 1919, Sinn Féin and its legislative assembly, Dáil Éireann, had been declared illegal, and Lloyd George had devised his ‘Bill for the Better Government of Ireland’, which recommended separate parliaments for the six northeastern counties and for the other twenty-six counties of Ireland. This scheme for partition at once intensifed the struggle between Sinn Féin and the British Executive in Ireland. (Armstrong 54) To combat the Black and Tans, ‘the Irish Republican Army split into small groups of ffteen to thirty men who used guerrilla tactics to keep their foes under constant strain. Many of its fghters lived on the run, moving continuously from place to place, and seldom sleeping at home’ (Armstrong 54). It is presumed, in this context, that the phrase ‘a gunman’ brought Sinn Féiners fghting against the British fghting force to the minds of the Irish readers. The translator seems to have substituted ‘a gunman’ with ‘a plain-clothes soldier’ to bring a similar associative meaning to the Korean readers’ minds. During the colonial period, Korean plain-clothes soldiers took part in the independence movement in Japan and Manchuria by using guerrilla tactics, including assassination and kidnapping. The translator maintains this associated meaning throughout the whole text by translating Davoren’s identity into that of a plain-clothes soldier. Another discrepancy between the Korean version and the English original is in the expression ‘Black and Tans’. The name ‘Black and Tans’ referred to ‘British ex-servicemen recruited to augment the troops already in Ireland’ (Ferriter 227). They were ‘a special police force recruited from the toughest ex-servicemen of the First World War. These detachments wore khaki coats with black trousers and black caps and were promptly christened “the Black and Tans” after a well-known Tipperary pack of foxhounds’ (Armstrong 54).

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 147 One example of this discrepancy is when Davoren attacks Seumas Shields’ superfcial and shallow religion by saying: DAVOREN. … Your religion is simply the state of being afraid that God will torture your soul in the next world as you are afraid the Black and Tans will torture your body in this. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 5) This line is translated into Korean as: 데이버린. … 자네 宗敎란 單純히 이 世上에서 英國在鄕 軍人들이 자네 肉 身을 괴롭힐 것을 무서워하는 것과 같이 저 世上에서 하느님께서 자네 靈 魂을 괴롭힐 것을 무서워하는 것이 아닌가. DAVOREN. … Your religion is simply the state of being afraid that God will torture your soul in the next world as you are afraid British ex-soldiers will torture your body in this. (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) The translator makes the meaning of ‘the Black and Tans’ explicit to the Korean readers by substituting it with ‘Yeongguk Jaehyang Gunin (British ex-soldiers)’. Later, ‘the Black and Tans’ is substituted with ‘Heonbyeong (military policemen)’, which had a more terrifying associative meaning for the Korean people. When there is a Black-and-Tans raid on the tenement house, Davoren looks in the bag that Maguire has left in his room and fnds bombs: DAVOREN. My God, it’s full of bombs, Mills bombs! SEUMAS. Holy Mother of God, you’re jokin’! DAVOREN. If the Tans come you’ll fnd whether I’m jokin’

or no. (O’Casey,

Seven Plays 36) These lines are translated into Korean as: 데이버린. 아이구머니 爆彈이 가득하네 手榴爆彈이!! 슈머즈. 원 世上에 그게 무슨 실없는 말인가. 데이버린. 英國憲兵이 오면 실없는 말인지 아닌지 잘 알걸세. DAVOREN. Oh my! It’s full of bombs, grenades!! SEUMAS. Oh, you’re talking nonsense! DAVOREN. If the military policemen come, you’ll

fnd whether I’m talking nonsense or no. (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman)

The Black and Tans are all around the house, causing Davoren and Shields to panic, when Minnie Powell takes care of the situation: I’ll take them to my room; maybe they won’t search it; if they do aself, they won’t harm a girl …

MINNIE.

148

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey If we come through this, I’ll never miss a Mass again! If it’s the Tommies it won’t be so bad, but if it’s the Tans, we’re goin’ to have a terrible time. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 38)

SEUMAS.

‘The Tans’ in Shields’ line is translated as ‘the military policemen’ in the Korean version. Later, the Black and Tans search Minnie’s room, and Mrs. Grigson runs in to report what is happening: MRS GRIGSON. [running in] They’re after getting a whole lot of stuff in Minnie’s room! Enough to blow up the whole street, a Tan says! (O’Casey, Seven Plays 42) ‘A Tan’ in this line is also translated into Korean as ‘a military policeman’. As seen above, the phrase ‘the Tans’ is translated as ‘military policemen’ except during the frst dialogue about Shields’ religion. While ‘British ex-soldiers’ had no frightening associative meaning for Korean readers, ‘military policemen’ would have had a direct and threatening association for Korean readers during the colonial period. A military police system was a key element of the Japanese Military Dictatorship Government during the colonial period in Korea. The Japanese government introduced this system in June 1910 in anticipation of resistance from the Korean people, as activities of ‘righteous armies’ were being expanded to the provinces at that time. The commander of the Japanese military police was appointed to the concurrent post of superintendent for police administration and was granted enormous powers to intrude into every aspect of colonial life: [The military police controlled] agency of politics, education, religion, morals, health and public welfare, and tax collection; even the slaughtering of animals came under their scrutiny. The military police also had summary powers with regard to misdemeanours, and this allowed them to adjudicate, pass sentences, and execute punishment for minor offences. (Eckert et al. 259) With these absolute powers, the military police assumed a key role in the colonial policy to suppress the Korean people during the frst phase of Japanese rule, and their presence itself became threatening to the common Korean people. They always wore a military uniform replete with swords as symbols of authority.16 It was said that when a child was crying, if you said a military policeman was coming, the child would stop crying. It seems that the translator chose ‘British ex-soldiers’ rather than ‘military policemen’ in the frst dialogue to emphasise the shallowness of Shields’ religion, while he chose ‘military policemen’ in the other cases to highlight the threatening associative meaning of the expression. Although the discrepancies of these two terms – ‘a gunman’ and ‘the Black and Tans’ – between the Korean version and the English original

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 149 must have been calculated choices designed to make the original meaning plainer than it would otherwise have been, they seemed to have had enough effect that the Korean readers could resituate the place of action in the play within colonial Korea. Korean readers under colonialism must have associated plain-clothes soldiers with Korean independence fghters and military police offcers with the Japanese colonial government. Another prominent translation strategy adopted in the Korean version is omission. Shields makes a cynical remark about the Irish people when Davoren takes his words seriously: SEUMAS… That’s the Irish People all over – they treat a joke as a serious thing and a serious thing as a joke. Upon me soul, I’m beginning to believe that the Irish People aren’t, never were, an’ never will be ft for self-government. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 7) In the Korean version, ‘I’m beginning to believe that the Irish People aren’t, never were, an’ never will be ft for self-government’ is omitted. Given that Irish drama was considered a model in modern Korean theatre because of its political connotations, it can be inferred that such a negative political expression or image of the Irish could not be allowed in a Korean text, especially when there was a possibility of Korean readers interpreting the Irish situation as theirs; thus, no doubt could be cast on the Korean capacity for self-government. The image of Minnie Powell is also altered by omission in the Korean version. O’Casey describes one of the characteristics of Minnie Powell as having no fear. She has lost the sense of fear (she does not know this), and, consequently, she is at ease in all places and before all persons, even those of a superior education, so long as she meets them in the atmosphere that surrounds the members of her own class. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 10) In the Korean version, ‘so long as she meets them in the atmosphere that surrounds the members of her own class’ is omitted. With this omission, Minnie Powell is described as brave under any circumstances. The strategy was likely employed because Korea needed this image of a girl who could give up her life for an independence fghter under any circumstances. In fact, Minnie Powell’s actions ‘appear no less ideologically determined’: Minnie Powell is attracted to Donal Davoren because she projects on him her romantic fervour for Irish republicanism. As she says when viewing his poems, which stylistically mimic Shelley while repudiating the Romantic poet’s political radicalism: ‘I’d love to be able to write a poem – a lovely poem on Ireland an’ the men o’98’. By taking the bombs and hiding them in her room, Minnie enters more authentically into the role of a gun-wielding republican than Davoren ever does. (Roche 126–27)

150 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey This role of a gun-wielding republican is more strongly supported by the Korean description of Minnie as being brave under any circumstances than in the original play. Korea needed another Yu Gwan-Sun, a woman who, as a college student, participated in the March First Independence Movement against the Japanese colonial government and died in prison. There is also an alteration of the original meaning in the Korean version. In O’Casey’s play, Davoren’s last line is as follows: DAVOREN. Ah me, alas! Pain, pain, pain ever, for ever! It’s terrible to think that little Minnie is dead, but it’s still more terrible to think that Davoren and Shields are alive! Oh, Donal Davoren, shame is your portion now till the silver cord is loosened and the golden bowl be broken. Oh, Davoren, Donal Davoren, poet and poltroon, poltroon and poet! (O’Casey, Seven Plays 44) Davoren ‘bitterly comes to realise the great danger in being the shadow of a gunman’, although his self-knowledge is ultimately fraudulent (McDonald 142). Even when he recognises his own guilt in sending Minnie to her death, he speaks in a high-fown style, which indicates that he tries to avoid confronting his own culpable self: he hides in the ornate rhetoric because he has no courage to face his own guilt. Thus, the recognition of guilt, couched in this over-rich idiom, becomes a mockery of itself (McDonald 142). In the Korean version, ‘poltroon’ in Davoren’s line is replaced with ‘Siryeon -ui Adeul’ (‘the son of an ordeal, meaning a man who is suffering an ordeal’): 데이버린. 아이고 죽겠다. 苦痛, 苦痛, 영원한 苦痛 – 미미가 죽었다니 무서 운 일이다. 그러나 그보다 더 무서운 것은 데이버린이가 쉴즈가 살아 있다 는 것이다. 아-도-널 데이버린 白銀壽命이 끊어지고 黃金寶盒이 깨어질 때 까지 네 몸은 恥辱에 젖어서 있겠구나. 아-데이버린 도-널 데이버린 詩人이 요 시련의 아들놈 시련의 아들 詩人 DAVOREN. Oh, my! I feel terrible. Pain, pain, pain for ever! It’s terrible that Mimi is dead, but what is more terrible is that Davoren and Shields are alive! Oh, Donal Davoren, your body will be soaked in shame till the white silver life runs out and the golden box be broken. Oh, Davoren, Donal Davoren, poet and the son of an ordeal, the son of an ordeal and poet! (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) While the Korean version maintains the same high-fown rhetoric as is found in the original text, the replacement of ‘poltroon’ by ‘the son of an ordeal’ alters the overall message. When Davoren calls himself a ‘poltroon’, he is positioned as a harmer who causes Minnie Powell to die, and his guilty conscience can be said to be a personal experience. Conversely, when he calls himself ‘the son of an ordeal’, he is positioned as a victim who must endure pain. Of course, the pain is caused by himself, but in a broader sense, it is caused by

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 151 the period in which he lives. His pretence of being an independence fghter caused Minnie Powell’s death, but what made it possible for him to pretend to be such a hero is the situation in which the characters are placed. Therefore, both Minnie Powell’s death and Davoren’s pain are a product of the period. Whether the translator intended this or not, the Korean version can also be interpreted as conveying the message that both Minnie Powell and Davoren are victims of the period in which they live. As Ian Mason points out in his essay ‘Discourse, Ideology and Translation’, we do not need to attribute a deliberate intention to the translator to perceive the skewed representation in the translation (33). Colonised Korean readers might have interpreted this message as all of them being victims of colonial rule. The above-mentioned alterations of the two phrases ‘a gunman’ and ‘the Black and Tans’ in the Korean version provide the context for this interpretation. The translator also tries to reduce the cultural differences between Ireland and Korea in translating religious or culture-specifc terms. Korean people were only beginning to be exposed to Protestant missionaries just before they were colonised, and Catholic-related words were not familiar to the Korean people. As such, the translator replaced Catholic terms with terms from the feld of Buddhism. In the original play, for instance, Davoren contrasts the common people with the poet to highlight the latter’s superiority: DAVOREN. … The People! Damn the people! They live in the abyss, the poet lives on the mountaintop; to the people there is no mystery of colour: it is simply the scarlet coat of the soldier; the purple vestments of a priest; the green banner of a party; the brown or blue overalls of industry. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 25) In the Korean version, while the original message is retained, ‘a priest’ is substituted with ‘seungnyeo’ (‘a Buddhist monk’), a fgure more familiar to the Korean people. Another substitution of a Catholic-related term in the Korean version occurs when a British auxiliary, searching the tenement room that Davoren and Shields share for a gun, fnds a statue of Christ and a crucifx and says: AUXILIARY. You’ll want a barrel of watah before you’re done with us. [the Auxiliary goes about the room examining places] ‘Ello, what’s ‘ere? A statue o’ Christ! An’ a Crucifx! You’d think you was in a bloomin’ monastery. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 39) In the Korean translation, the word ‘monastery’ in the above line was cleverly substituted with seungweon, a term encompassing both a Catholic monastery and a Buddhist temple.17 Although some culture-specifc terms or names, such as Kathleen ni Houlihan, Cuchullian, or Banba, were transliterated into Korean, a generalising

152 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey translation strategy was adopted for some words to improve the Korean readers’ understanding: that is, some source text expressions were translated using target-language hyperonyms. For example, the actions of the play take place in a tenement house in Dublin, but there was no Korean term that could convey the connotative meanings of a tenement house. The tenement house in Ireland during the early 20th century had associative meanings, such as poverty, flth, and the lower classes. According to a report published in 1914 by the Government Housing Commission, almost one-third of the population of Dublin lived in 5,322 tenement houses, the majority of which were declared to be unft for human habitation: Many tenements with seven or eight rooms, which when the houses were built in the eighteenth century had accommodated a single family, now had a large family in each room with an average of over 50 people in a house; there were also instances of houses bulging with as many as 73, 74, and 98 people. … Generally, the only water supply for a house was furnished by a single water tap in the yard. The water closet, usually in a state of disrepair, was also in the yard, or where there was no yard, in a dark and rat-infested basement. (Krause 5) Although the tenement house in O’Casey’s play is not as dire as those in the above description, it would still have had the associative meanings present in the term ‘tenement house’. It might have been impossible to fnd a suitable concept to convey these meanings in Korean, so the translator renders this word as ‘貧民借家’ (‘rented house of poor people’), thereby keeping the original associative meanings as much as possible. Other culture-specifc words were also translated as hyperonymic words: SEUMAS. … Now, after all me work for Dark Rosaleen, the only answer you can get from a roaring Republican to a simple question is ‘Goodbye… ee.’ (O’Casey, Seven Plays 7) This line is translated into Korean as: 슈머즈. 愛蘭을 爲해 죽도록 일을 했대야 큰소리치고 다니는 共和主義者에 게 簡單한 質問에 對하여 얻을 수 있는 對答은 … 「잘있게 -」뿐이야. SEUMAS. … Now, after all my work for Ireland to death, the only answer you can get from a roaring Republican to a simple question is ‘Goodbye… ee!’ (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman) ‘Dark Rosaleen’ is a ‘poetic name for Ireland (used when patriotic references in literature were forbidden by the authorities) and the title of one of James Clarence Mangan’s best known poems, a translation of one of Ireland’s most

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 153 famous political songs “Roisin Dubh”’ (Ayling, Seven Plays by Sean O’Casey 499). The translator substitutes this word with ‘Aeran’ (‘Ireland’) to facilitate a more profound understanding in the Korean readers; nonetheless, all the associative meanings of Dark Rosaleen disappear with this substitution. The hyperonymic translation strategy can also be found in other cases: SEUMAS. … An’ what ecstasy it ud give her if after a bit you were shot or hanged; she’d be able to go about then – like a good many more – singin’, ‘I do not mourn me darlin’ lost, for he fell in his Jacket Green.’ (O’Casey, Seven Plays 27) Here, ‘Jacket Green’ refers to the Irish military uniform and is also a sardonic reference to a nationalist ballad, ‘The Jackets Green’, by the Limerick poet Michael Scanlan. In the Korean version, this term is translated into the more generic term, ‘gunbok’ (‘military uniform’). The name for a common British soldier, ‘Tommy’, and the plural, ‘Tommies’, is also substituted with more explicit terms. In O’Casey’s original, for instance, the following lines are used. SEUMAS. … You’re not goin’ to beat the British Empire – the British Empire, by shootin’ an occasional Tommy at the corner of an occasional street. Besides, when the Tommies have the wind up – when the Tommies have the wind up they let bang at everything they see – they don’t give a God’s curse who they plug. (O’Casey, Seven Plays 28) In the Korean version, ‘Tommy’ or ‘Tommies’ is substituted with ‘Yeongguk Byeongjeong nom’ (‘a British soldier guy’) or ‘Yeongguk Byeongjeong nom deul’ (‘the British soldier guys’) to deepen the understanding of Korean readers, although there are some losses in associative meanings. Footnotes are also included within the text to facilitate the readers’ understanding by giving additional information. For example, when Shields, who wakes up late, asks Davoren what time it is, Davoren replies, ‘The Angelus went some time ago’ (O’Casey, Seven Plays 4). The Angelus is the ‘Roman Catholic devotion in honour of the Annunciation, beginning with the words “Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae”. It is recited thrice daily, usually at 6 a.m., noon, and at 6 p.m. to the sound of the Angelus bell’ (Ayling, Seven Plays by Sean O’Casey 498). In the Korean version, the Angelus is transliterated with a brief footnote explaining that ‘it refers to the bell for prayer’ (O’Casey, The Shadow of a Gunman). O’Casey adopts Dublin Hiberno-English in his play to depict Dublin slum people realistically, but this dialect is translated into the standard Korean language; as such, there is nothing to indicate that the play had originally been written in non-standard English. As one of the leaders of the modern Korean theatre movement, Jang Gi-je, the translator of this play, might have had an interest in the development of the standard Korean language, as did

154

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey

other leaders. This was perhaps why O’Casey’s use of Dublin Hibero-English was not taken into account in the Korean version. The translator of The Shadow of a Gunman considered the acceptability of the drama through lexical choices or omissions while maintaining the original characters and the entire setting of the source text, resulting in deepening understanding and likely making it possible for some Korean readers to resituate the location of the original play within a Korean context. Considering that translation is a critical form of rewriting (Lefevere 13) and is also a decision process that does not take place in a vacuum (Bassnett and Lefevere, Constructing Cultures 14) but rather is infuenced by certain linguistic, ideological, and poetic factors (Lefevere 13), these translation strategies adopted by the translator can be said to be concerned with dominant linguistic, ideological, and poetic aspects in Korea at that time. Having been a leader of the modern Korean theatre movement, the translator of The Shadow of a Gunman might have acquired prevalent norms while working in the feld of modern Korean theatre, and the translation strategies adopted in The Shadow of a Gunman reveal the need to meet these norms. While trying to maintain foreign elements in the source text with an eye on the dramatist, the translator adopted translation strategies, such as omissions, substitutions, generalising translation, and additions, with an eye on the Korean readers. These translation strategies were adopted under the infuence of the norms that conditioned the translation methodology circulating in the dramatic feld in colonial Korea. Therefore, one could argue that The Shadow of a Gunman was received as a major work that could serve the purpose of the modern Korean theatre movement. In conclusion, the above analysis of the reception of Sean O’Casey in Korean theatre has indicated that his minor position in the translated list of Irish drama was the product of the colonisers’ censorship. He was selected and introduced to Korean theatre because of his involvement in the Irish dramatic movement, so his selection was correlated with that of other Irish playwrights in Korean theatre. Thus, his representation in Korean theatre showed exaggeration or distortion of some facts, just as the depiction of the Irish dramatic movement did. The authors of the articles on Sean O’Casey manipulated his image to serve their purpose: Korean theatre needed a patriotic model playwright to follow. There is, therefore, no wonder that the only Korean translation of his play, The Shadow of a Gunman, followed the translational norms of the era. The translation strategies in the play followed both the adequacy norm to serve the purpose of making a Korean cultural repertoire and the acceptability norm to serve the ideological purpose in Korean theatre at that time.

Notes 1 Critical essays about Synge and his plays are ‘John Millington Synge-ui Geuk Yeongu’ (‘A Study on John Millington Synge’s Drama’; 1930) by Yi Hyo-seok,

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 155

2

3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15

16

‘Aeran Hyangto Jakga John Millington Synge’ (‘John Millington Synge – An Irish Folk Dramatist’; 1932) by Jang Hyeon-jik, and ‘J.M. Syngejak: “Seobu-ui Chonga” Yeongu’ (‘A Study on The Playboy of the Western World’; 1933) by Bak No-gap. Critical essays about Lady A. Gregory include ‘Segye Yeoryu Geukjangin Sulrye: Aeran-ui Eomeoni Gregory Buin’ (‘An Introduction of Female Figures in the World Theatre: Lady Gregory, Mother of Ireland’; 1932) by Yu Chi-jin and ‘Gregory Buin-gwa Aeran-ui Yeongeuk Undong’ (‘Lady Gregory and the Modern Irish Theatre Movement’; 1934) by Jo Won-gyeong, and one critical essay about Dunsany is ‘Aeran Hyeondae Geukjakga Dunsanyron’ (‘An Essay on Contemporary Irish Dramatist: Lord Dunsany’; 1933) by An Yong-sun. This is a concept introduced by Pierre Bourdieu, which refers to prestige, social honour, reputation, or recognition (Bourdieu 229–31). According to Gregory’s journals, O’Casey said ‘I was sixteen before I learned to read or write’ (‘Journals’ 17). As mentioned earlier, Korean intellectuals thought British colonial rule over Ireland started in 1171, when an English royal presence was established in Ireland. This view is shared by Krause (3). While O’Casey was learning the Gaelic language and beginning to identify himself with ‘Irish’ Ireland, the turn of the century had already witnessed a renaissance of Irish culture. However, it was mainly the middle and upper classes or intellectual Dublin that had become the revitalised centre of the awakened national culture. Although O’Casey taught the Gaelic language as a member of the Gaelic League, this was the only extent to which he was a part of the great Gaelic Revival. His roots were in the working class, and his path was essentially that of labour. The Gaelic Revival had given Yeats the impetus to create the Irish Literary Theatre, which in 1904 came to be known as the Abbey Theatre, but at this time, O’Casey was still 20 years away from his frst association with it (Krause 21–22). This part was censored by the Japanese colonial government. This part was censored by the Japanese colonial government. This part was censored by the Japanese colonial government. In 1919, he wrote this 72-page short history of the Citizen Army as ‘P. Ó Cathasaigh’ (the ‘p’ was a misprint), a name he used from 1907 onwards in contributing essays, songs, and poems to papers like The Irish Worker. This was a frst-hand account of the organisation and activities of the Citizen Army during the 1913–1914 strike and lock-out, and it also covered the events leading up to and including the 1916 Rising (Welch 407; Krause 31). This means ‘language of its own’. The texts translated as OO seem to be self-censored by the translator to pass the colonisers’ censorship. ‘Pyeongyang-ui Dongu Yeongeuk Gwangjung-eun Cheonyeomyeong’ (‘About 1,000 Audiences for the Performance of Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe in Pyeongyang’), Dong-A Ilbo 7 Aug. 1921, p. 3. On the Run was O’Casey’s original title for this play, and he abandoned it only because a drama of that name already existed (Armstrong 55). Many Korean critics introduced The Shadow of a Gunman in their essays during the colonial period. Their translations of the title of the play were The Shadow of a Patriot Gunman (Sin), The Shadow of a Gunman (a transliteration of the original title; Jeong, ‘Yeongmundan-ui Hyeonsang’), The Shadow of Plain-Clothes Soldiers (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’, ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’), and The Shadow of a Revolutionary Soldier (Y. Gim). All government offcials, including teachers, were also required to wear swords.

156 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 17 In the Korean translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (translated by Hyeon Cheol and then published in 1921), ‘a nunnery’ is also translated into seungweon.

References Armstrong, William A. ‘History, Autobiography and The Shadow of a Gunman’ (1960). O’Casey: The Dublin Trilogy: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars. Ed. Ronald Ayling. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1985. 54–62. Ayling, Ronald, ed. Seven Plays by Sean O'Casey: Selected with an Introduction and Notes by Ronald Ayling. London: Macmillan, 1985. Ayling, Ronald. ‘Sean O’Casey’. The Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre. Ed. Colin Chambers. London: Continuum, 2002. 560–61. Bassnett, Susan, and Harishi Trivedi. Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 1999. Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere, eds. Translation, History and Culture. London: Pinter Publishers, 1990. Bassnett, Susan, and André Lefevere. Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Brockett, Oscar G. and Robert R. Findlay. Century of Innovation: A History of European and American Theatre and Drama since 1870. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973. Butler, Anthony. ‘The Early Background’. The World of Sean O’Casey. Ed. Sean McCann. London: Four Square, 1966. 12–29. Byeon, Gi-jong. ‘Yeongeuk Osimnyeon-eul Malhanda’ (‘A Fifty-year History of Modern Korean Theatre’). Yesulweonbo 8 (1962): 48–56. Dorcey, Donal. ‘The Big Occasions’. The Story of the Abbey Theatre. Ed. Sean McCann. London: A Four Square Book, 1967. 126–57. Eckert, Carter J., et al. Korea. Old and New: A History. Seoul: Ilchokak Publishers, 1990. Even-Zohar, Itamar. ‘Polysystem Studies’. Poetics Today 11.1 (1990), Special Issue, https://www.tau.ac.il/~itamarez/works/books/Even-Zohar_1990--Polysystem%20 studies.pdf. Accessed 30 June 2021. ———. ‘The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem’. The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2004. 199–204. Fawcett, Peter. ‘Ideology and Translation’. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Ed. Mona Baker. London: Routledge, 1998. 106–11. Fearon, Stephen. ‘On This Day: Sean O’Casey, author of The Plough and the Stars, was born’. Irish Central. September 18, 2020, https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/ history/sean-ocasey-abbey-theatre. Accessed 7 January 2021. Ferriter, Diarmaid. The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000. London: Profle Books Ltd, 2005. Gim (Kim), Gwang-seop. ‘Hyeondae Yeongmundan-e daehan Joseon-jeok Gwansim’ (‘The Korean Concern with Contemporary English Literature’). Joseon Munhak 2.1 (1934): 108–14.

The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey 157 ———. ‘Geonseolgi-ui Minjok Munhak: Abbeyjwa-ui Seongrip-gwa geu Minjokjeok Giyeo-e daehaya’ (‘The Establishment of the Abbey Theatre and its Contribution to the Nation’). Dong-A Ilbo 8–9 Mar. 1935, p. 3. Gim (Kim), Jeong-jin. ‘Sasang Undong-gwa Yeongeuk’ (‘An Ideological Movement and Theatre’). Dongmyeong 18 (1923): 19–20. Gim (Kim), Jong. ‘Aeran Munhak Gaegwan: Aeran Munye Buheung’ (‘A Brief Review of Irish Literature: Irish Renaissance’). Sinsaeng Feb. 1930: 28–29. Gim (Kim), Yong-su. ‘Aeran-ui Singeuk Jakga Sean O’Casey’s Plays’ (‘Sean O’Casey, an Emerging Irish Playwright, and his Plays’). Chosun Ilbo 2–17 Feb. 1931, p. 4. Gregory, Lady A. ‘Journals’. Sean O’Casey: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Thomas Kilroy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 17–33. ———. ‘Our Irish Theatre’. Modern Irish Drama. Ed. John P. Harrington. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991. 377–86. Grene, Nicholas. The Politics of Irish Drama. Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Han, Hyo. ‘Joseon Huigok-ui Hyeonsang-gwa Geumhu Banghyang’ (‘The State of Korean Drama and its Future’). Geonseolgi ui Joseon Munhak (Korean Literature in the Period of Construction). Ed. Korean Writers Alliance. Seoul: Onnuri, 1988. 71–80. Jang, Gi-je. ‘Silheom Mudae Gongyeon Geukbon Okmun-e Daehayeo: Yeokja-roseo-ui Ireon (2)’ (‘Regarding the Scripts for the Second Production of the Silheom Mudae Theatre Company: A Word from the Translator 2’). Dong-A Ilbo 28 June 1932, p. 5. Jang, Won-Jae. Irish Infuences on Korean Theatre during the 1920s and 1930s. Diss. Royal Holloway U, 2000. Jeong, In-seop. ‘Yeongmundan-ui Hyeonsang’ (‘The Present State of British Literary World’). Jung-Oe Ilbo 3 and 5 Jan. 1930. ———. ‘Aeran Mundan Bangmungi 2’ (‘A Visit to the Irish Literary World 2’). Samcheolli Munhak 4 (1938): 124–44. Kilroy, Thomas. Introduction. Sean O’Casey: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Thomas Kilroy. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 1–15. Kim, Jaeseok. Ilje Gangjeomgi Sahoegeuk Yeongu (A Study on Korean Social Dramas under Japanese Colonial Rule). Seoul: Taehaksa, 1995. Krause, David. Sean O’Casey. The Man and His Work. Enlarged ed. New York: Macmillan, 1975. Lefevere, André. Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge, 1992. Malone, A.E. The Irish Drama. London: Constable, 1929. ———. ‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ (1929). Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements. Ed. Ronald Ayling. Nashville: Aurora Publishers, 1970. 68–75. Mason, Ian. ‘Discourse, Ideology and Translation’. Language, Discourse and Translation in the West and Middle East. Eds. R. de Beaugrande, A. Shunnaq, and M. Helmy Heliel. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1994. McDonald, Ronan. ‘Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy: Disillusionment to Delusion’. The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama. Ed. Shaun Richards. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. 136–50. McHugh, Roger. ‘The Legacy of Sean O’Casey’. Sean O’Casey: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Thomas Kilroy. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 35–51.

158 The Strange Case of Sean O’Casey Murray, Christopher. Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work, A Biography. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2004. O’Casey, Sean. The Shadow of a Gunman. Trans. Jang Gi-je. Chosun Ilbo 21 Aug. – 22 Sept. 1931, p. 4, https://newslibrary.chosun.com/ Accessed 3 January 2022. ———. Sean O’Casey. Collected Plays. Vol. 1. London: Macmillan, 1957. ———. Seven Plays by Sean O'Casey: Selected with an Introduction and Notes by Ronald Ayling. London: Macmillan, 1985. Robinson, Michael. ‘Colonial Publication Policy and the Korean Nationalist Movement’. The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945. Eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. 312–45. Roche, Anthony. The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899-1939. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Sim, Hun. ‘Towolhoe-e Ileonham’ (‘A Suggestion to the Towolhoe Theatre Company’). Chosun Ilbo 6 Nov. 1929, p. 5. Sin, Seok-yeon. ‘Daejeon Ihu Gakgukgeukdan Baljeon Gwajeong: Aeran Geukdan’ (‘The Theatre of the World after World War I: The Irish Theatre’). Dong-A Ilbo 23–24 Jan. 1929, p. 3. Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge, 1998. Wang, Zuoliang. Degrees of Affnity: Studies in Comparative Literature and Translation. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer, 2015. Welch, Robert, ed. The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Yu, Chi-jin. ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga Sean O’Casey’ (‘Sean O’Casey, a Playwright from the Working Class’). Chosun Ilbo 3–27 Dec. 1932, p. 4. ———. “Huigokgye Jeonmang – Beonyeokgeuk-gwa Changjakgeuk (A View of the Korean Theatre World: Translated Drama and Original Drama).” Dong-A Ilbo. 29 Sept. 1933, p. 3. ———. Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 (The Complete Works of Yu Chi-jin 9). Seoul: Seoul Yedae Chulpanbu, 1993. ———. ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga: Sean O’Casey-wa Na’ (‘Sean O'Casey and I: The Playwright Who Guided My Way’). Dong-A Ilbo 7; 9; 10 July 1935, p. 3. ———. ‘Beonyeokgeuk Sangyeon-e daehan Sago’ (‘An Opinion about the Performance of Translated Drama’). Chosun Ilbo 7–8 Aug. 1935, p. 4.

4

Appropriation of Irish Plays and the Early Korean Realistic Plays

Yu Chi-jin and Ham Se-deok are canonical playwrights in Korean theatres who established and evolved Korean realistic dramas during the 1930s. Yu frst started writing realistic plays, and then Ham, under Yu’s tutelage, succeeded him. This part is concerned with the appropriation of Irish plays and the emergence of realistic plays in the modern Korean theatre. It explores the utilisation of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy and Synge’s Riders to the Sea by Korean playwrights Yu Chi-jin and Ham Se-deok. The word ‘appropriation’ may refer to cultural appropriation, which is largely discussed with negative connotations regarding the exploitation of elements of a minority culture by members of a dominant culture against their original purposes. However, in a literary sense, appropriation may not necessarily have a negative meaning. Appropriation in literature involves creative techniques of writing that adopt and transform existing materials. A process of appropriation can be an element of adaptation, ‘taking possession of another’s story, and fltering it, in a sense, through one’s own sensibility, interest, and talents’ (Hutcheon 18). In many ways, both the practice and the effects of adaptation and appropriation intersect and interrelate (Sanders 26), although there are still clear distinctions between them: An adaptation signals a relationship with an informing source text or original … On the other hand, appropriation frequently affects a more decisive journey away from the informing source into a wholly new cultural product and domain … the appropriated text or texts are not always as clearly signalled or acknowledged as in the adaptive process. (Sanders 26) Thus, appropriation moves far beyond intertextuality. Sometimes, appropriation causes controversies over its originality, as the case of Graham Swift shows. When Swift won the Booker Prize in 1996 for his novel Last Orders, he was accused of having appropriated William Faulkner’s 1930 American classic As I Lay Dying (Sanders 32). John Flow of the University

DOI: 10.4324/9781003163947-5

160 Appropriation of Irish Plays of Queensland considered Swift’s book a ‘substandard derivation of As I Lay Dying and therefore unworthy of a prize for which the judges’ commendation had drawn attention to the book’s originality’, citing infuences from Faulkner such as ‘close similarities in structure and subject-matter, including a monologue given to the dead person, a monologue consisting of numbered points, and a monologue made up of a single sentence’ (Sanders 33). As Sanders points out, ‘there are notable structural overlaps between Faulkner’s tale of a Mississippi family group transporting the corpse of their dead wife/mother to the town of Jefferson for burial and Swift’s story of four male friends transporting the ashes of their late friend, the butcher Jack Dodds, to scatter off the end of Margate Pier’ (33). Julian Barnes, however, defended Swift on the grounds that adopting and appropriating were a standard feature of the artistic process (Sanders 33): that is, borrowing and appropriation are simply among creative techniques. While appropriation is indebted to exiting materials, it should not be considered derivative: ‘To be second is not to be secondary or inferior; likewise, to be frst is not to be originary or authoritative’ (Hutcheon xv). An appropriated work, therefore, should be considered entirely as another autonomous text, just as Shakespeare’s plays stand alone as autonomous and independent works despite the fact that Shakespeare ‘derived most of his comic plots from the Roman playwrights Terence and Plautus, who in their turn had “contaminated” (combined) a series of sources from Greek New Comedy’ (Hale and Upton 2). The Caribbean writer Derek Walcott similarly suggests that appropriation is not an imitation but a creative process. In an interview about the creative process of his play The Sea at Dauphin, which is modelled on Synge’s Riders to the Sea, he argues: If you know very clearly that you are imitating such and such a work, it isn’t that you’re adopting another man’s genius; it is that he has done an experiment that has worked and will be useful to all writers afterwards. When I tried to translate the speech of the St. Lucian fshermen into an English Creole, all I was doing was taking that kind of speech and translating it, or retranslating it, into an English-infected Creole, and that was a totally new experience for me, even if it did come out of Synge. (Aboelazm 295) The appropriative process is thus an entirely new creative process. The term ‘appropriation’ is used in this section to refer to a creative process to produce an autonomous text, not as a derivative. This section examines the appropriation of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, comprising The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926), by Yu Chi-jin and the appropriation of Synge’s Rider to the Sea by Ham Se-deok. Both writers introduced realistic plays to the history of Korean drama.

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10 Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy and Yu Chi-jin’s Peasant Trilogy When Sean O’Casey was frst introduced to Korea as part of the modern Korean theatre movement during the 1920s, the modern theatre was just beginning to be formed, and the Korean theatre needed a new model to establish its own modern national theatre. Korean intellectuals believed they required a new form of theatre that was different from the colonisers’ sinpa theatre and sought a model in Western drama. In such a case wherein new literary models are emerging, translation is likely to become one of the means of elaborating the new repertoire, as Even-Zohar argues: Through the foreign works, features (both principles and elements) are introduced into the home literature which did not exist there before. These include possibly not only new models of reality to replace the old and established ones that are no longer effective, but a whole range of other features as well, such as a new (poetic) language, or compositional patterns and techniques. (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 200) As older models, such as the traditional Korean theatre and sinpa theatre, were no longer effective, foreign dramas, including O’Casey’s plays, provided the modern Korean theatre with models for a new style of theatre. Yu Chi-jin, for example, wrote his peasant trilogy under the infuence of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy. Yu Chi-jin is a central Korean playwright who contributed to establishing realistic dramas in Korea as a stage director, drama critic, and drama educator. He developed modern plays as a form of a literary genre in Korea (M. Yu 303). During the colonial period, he wrote three realist peasant plays – The Mud Hut (1931), The Scene from the Willow Tree Village (1933), and The Ox (1934) – to form the so-called peasant trilogy, which depicted the impoverishment of the rural communities under colonialism. This trilogy constituted a milestone for realistic drama and marked the emergence of peasant plays in the history of modern Korean drama (Kwon 80; Gim, ‘Geukyeon Je Samhoe Gongyeon-eul Apdugo’; C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 111). The three plays have since been studied in universities, played in national theatres, and analysed by Korean drama scholars. There are several existing studies by contemporary Korean scholars regarding the infuence of Sean O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy on Yu Chi-jin’s peasant trilogy, including ‘Yu Chi-jin-gwa Aeran Yeongeuk’ (‘Yu Chi-jin and Irish Theatre’) by Yoh Suk-kee (1974), ‘Yu Chi-jin-ege Michin Aerangeuk-ui Yeonghyang: Hanguk Geundaegeuk-e Michin Gumigeuk-ui Yeonghyang-e gwanhan Yeongu’ (‘Infuence of Irish Theatre on Yu Chi-jin: A Study of Euro-American Theatre’s Infuence on Modern Korean Theatre’) by Shin Jeong-ok (1976), ‘Aeran Yeongeuk Undong-gwa Geukyesul Yeonguhoe: Yu Chi-jin-e Michin Synge, O’Casey-ui Yeonghyang-eul Jungsim-euro’

162 Appropriation of Irish Plays (‘Irish Dramatic Movement and the Theatre Arts Research Association: The Infuence of J.M. Synge and Sean O’Casey on Yu Chi-jin’) by Kwon Oh-man (1982), and ‘Sean O’Casey-wa Yu Chi-jin Bigyo Yeongu’ (‘A Comparative Study of Sean O’Casey and Yu Chi-jin’) by Kim In-pyo (1998). Yoh and Shin focus on characterisation, pointing out that Yu Chi-jin was unsuccessful in creating realistic characters. Kwon, meanwhile, focuses on the historical background of O’Casey’s infuence on Yu, and Kim addresses O’Casey’s impact on Yu’s peasant plays in terms of characters, dramatic techniques, and nihilism. Much like Yoh and Shin, Kim also argues that Yu was unsuccessful in creating realistic characters. My concern here is not whether the result of the infuence was artistically successful but rather how newness entered the Korean theatre via Yu’s appropriations, resulting in the emergence of a new dramatic genre in the modern Korean dramatic polysystem. What follows will frst discuss Yu’s ideological motives and theatrical view of a popular theatre. Second, after a brief examination of Yu’s peasant trilogy, its settings, characters, and dramatic techniques are analysed in relation to O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy. 10.1 Yu Chi-jin’s Literary Connection with Sean O’Casey and His Peasant Trilogy Yu Chi-jin had a literary connection with Sean O’Casey when the modern Korean theatre movement was evolving under colonialism. During the movement, modern Irish drama was the focus of interest among Korean theatre practitioners and dramatists, and the feld of Irish drama was considered a means of developing the modern Korean theatre movement. Yu both contributed to the formation of and was infuenced by the feld. Just as the world of Irish drama in modern Korean theatre was formed as a result of ideological motives, Yu’s literary connection with O’Casey reveals a similar intention. Yu was born into a poor farming family in Geojedo Island in the southern part of Korea in 1905, the year of the Japan–Korea Protectorate Treaty, which deprived Korea of its diplomatic sovereignty. According to his autobiography, Yu was born weak because he could not be fed well due to his family’s poverty (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 54). Just as he emphasised Sean O’Casey’s poverty as resulting from the colonial rule when describing O’Casey’s background in his essays (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’), he similarly accentuates his own poverty in his autobiography, likely to position himself as a victim of colonial rule. However, after his father opened a dispensary of oriental medicine, Yu grew up in a wealthier environment and was educated while still young. It was the March First Independence Movement that frst made him conscious of his nation at the age of 14. The independence movement was sparked by an event in Tongyeong village, where he lived: a student in Masan city

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was arrested by the Japanese police under suspicion of conspiracy for the independence movement and came back dead in a boat, thereby causing the independence movement to develop throughout the entire city (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 71–72). Yu claims that this event made him think of his nation. Following his father’s advice, he went to Japan to study at the age of 16, right after the independence movement had started: ‘At that time, whoever awakened was obsessed with the idea that people should learn more’ (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 74). Yu read philosophical and literary books while studying in Japan, and it was through the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake that Yu became aware of his nation realistically. The earthquake, which struck the Kanto plain on the Japanese island of Honshu on 1 September 1923, devastated Tokyo and other cities. As an outlet for the tumultuous public sentiment due to the earthquake, the Japanese government aroused animosity against the Korean people by spreading rumours that the Provisional Government of Korea in Shanghai had sent people to Tokyo to poison wells to murder the Japanese people. They massacred the Korean people on this pretext. Approximately 6,000 Koreans were killed during the ten days from 1 to 10 September 1923 (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 83–84). At that time, most Korean people who lived in Japan were low-class labourers: they had lost their farming land due to the colonial agricultural policy in Korea and had gone to Japan and degenerated into low-class labourers. Seeing his fellow citizens suffering doubly, Yu thought he should do something for his own country (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 88). This thought, combined with his reading of the French dramatist Romain Rolland’s Le Théâtre du Peuple (1903) in his frst year in college and his resentment of the Japanese people, led him to consider the theatre.1 Romain Rolland, a 1915 Nobel Laureate of Literature, asserted that ‘art must take part in the collective struggle to bring enlightenment to the people’ (qtd. in Jinhee Kim 22). Yu believed that Rolland’s approach was something he could emulate to contend with the Japanese colonialists (C. Yu, Dongrang Jaseojeon 101). As seen above, Yu’s interest in the theatre was initiated by his environment: he was led to consider the theatre by his social responsibility as an intellectual under the colonial situation rather than by his own artistic instinct or aspirations. He deemed the theatre as being able to educate the people. Later, back in Korea, he planned to create a ‘haengjang geukjang’ (‘mobile theatre’) to travel around fshing and farming villages and present plays free of charge (C. Yu, ‘Na-ui Geukyesul Yeonguhoe’ 60–61), although this vision could not be realised because of a sanction by the Japanese colonial government. In order to realise his ambition to use theatre to stimulate the illiterate Korean people to confront colonialism, Yu studied dramatic theories and frequented the Tsukiji Little Theatre, the centre of the shingeki (new drama) movement in Japan, to study theatre. It was there that he met Hong Haeseong, the only Korean actor in the Theatre at that time (C. Yu, Dongrang

164 Appropriation of Irish Plays Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 90–92). Before becoming an actor of the Tsukiji Little Theatre, Hong had directed Jo Myeong-hui’s play Gim Yeong-il ui Sa in 1921 as a member of the Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe when the Troupe made a tour of Korea. The encounter with Hong is likely to have encouraged Yu’s interest in the modern Korean theatre movement. Yu also worked as an actor for the Haebang Geukjang (Liberation Theatre), a modern anarchist theatre organised by college students in Tokyo, and through these activities, he began to lean towards the Irish theatre (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 92). Yu frst encountered Sean O’Casey’s plays while he was a student at Rikkyo University in Japan. It seems that his interest in Irish drama stemmed from his sympathy for the Irish political situation: 싱그라든가 그레고리 부인, 오케이시와 같은 막연히 이름만 들었던 작가에 관해 공부를 하게 되었다. 내가 이들에게 갑자기 관심을 기울이게 된 것은 뭐니뭐니해도 민족적 처지의 유사성 때문이 아니었던가 싶다. 애란도 매우 오랫동안 영국의 지배를 받으면서 민족적 수치와 고통을 그 어느 민족보다 도 많이 겪은 바 있었다. I came to study Synge, Lady Gregory, and O’Casey whom I knew just by name. After all, it seems to be the similar situations between Korea and Ireland that attracted me to these playwrights. Like Korea, Ireland has had a long history of suffering and disgrace under the British colonial rule. (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 92) Yu’s affnity with Ireland as a victim of colonialism and his interest in Irish drama as the product of colonialism refect the representation of Irish drama in the modern Korean theatre. Given that the modern Korean theatre movement was initiated by Korean students in Japan, it can be said that Yu’s understanding of the Irish people and Irish dramas was partly infuenced by his peer group and the representation of Irish dramas in the Korean theatre. Yu was fascinated by O’Casey, among others, mainly because of his nationalism rather than his aesthetic or literary achievements. Yu states in his autobiography that he was especially impressed by O’Casey’s profound love for his poor countrymen and his nationalistic indignation against the British Empire (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 93). The notion that Yu’s interest in O’Casey stemmed from the latter’s nationalistic aspects is also suggested in Yu’s essay about O’Casey. As a bachelor’s degree essay for the English literature course at Rikkyo University, he wrote ‘Research on Sean O’Casey’, which was published serially in the Journal of English-American Literature, Ei-Bei Bungaku (Henthorn 146) and considered to be his frst academic study on Irish drama (Kwon 71–72). Yu published a concise version of this essay in the Chosun Ilbo in 1932 with the title ‘Sean O’Casey, A Playwright from the Working Class’. In this essay, Yu discusses O’Casey’s life, his career at the Abbey Theatre, and the characteristics of his plays.

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In understanding O’Casey’s life, Yu reveals his ideological orientation: in his description, he focuses on the patriotic and nationalistic aspects of his activities. He attributes O’Casey’s poverty, his eye disease, and his delayed schooling to the policies of the colonisers and emphasises his career as an independence and labour activist (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). In describing O’Casey’s patriotic aspects, Yu nonetheless sometimes exaggerates or distorts facts. For example, during the 1916 Easter Rising, O’Casey was ‘a critical spectator’ (Ayling 560), but Yu (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) describes it as though O’Casey were an enthusiastic supporter of the Rising. It seems that this was creative manipulation on Yu’s part to convince his peers of O’Casey’s value as a model. Naturally, O’Casey was described as a nationalistic playwright who depicted the lives of slum people who suffered under political and economic oppression (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). Therefore, Yu felt an affnity for his characters. He notes that while reading O’Casey’s plays, he thought of the people in his hometown and felt as if the characters in O’Casey’s plays were his neighbours (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 93). Yu also created his characters as O’Casey did, based on the people he met in his hometown, who suffered political and economic oppression under colonialism (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 115). Yu admits that, through this reading experience, he learned what and how to write and how to create characters and came to consider O’Casey as a model for his creative writing. Given that Yu’s motive behind devoting himself to the theatre was to educate the Korean people to confront colonialism, it likely follows that he was attracted by O’Casey’s plays and characters and regarded O’Casey as a model because his characters encountered similar social and political problems. As Kilroy points out, O’Casey’s plays are, ‘at least ostensibly, involved with social and political ideas, with how people live together, how individual fate is defned by position within the group, the class, the system’ (2). Moreover, Yu was interested in the dramatic structure of O’Casey’s plays and how they revealed the slices of realities as they were. In two essays, entitled ‘Sean O’Casey, A Playwright from the Working Class’ (1932) and ‘Sean O’Casey and I: The Playwright Who Guided My Way’ (1935), Yu describes the characteristics of O’Casey’s plays as ‘tragic-comic’, ‘centrifugal’, ‘proletarian’, and ‘nihilistic’. Here, centrifugal is the opposite concept of the traditional pyramid dramatic structure where subordinate events revolve around the protagonist to reach a climax. Yu claims that the traditional dramatic structure is ‘centripetal’ and argues that O’Casey’s plays adopted a ‘centrifugal’ structure: 오케이시의 戱曲은 어느 戱曲을 보아도 꽉 조이는 데를 가지지 아니한다. 무슨 필름이나 編輯해둔 것같이 現實의 한토막 한토막이 外延的으로 羅 列되어 있다. 在來의 것 모양으로 한 人物을 中心으로 하여 위로 쌓지 않 고 옆으로 竝立한다. 그러니까 거기에 含有되는 現實이란 조금도 歪曲되지 않고 從屬되는 事件 하나하나는 제대로 각각 한 ‘人生의 斷片’을 그린다.

166 Appropriation of Irish Plays O’Casey’s plays have no tight joints: ‘slices of realities’ scatter around one by one as in the edited flm. Unlike traditional plays, the subordinate events run ‘parallel’ in his plays, not ‘evolving around the protagonist’. Therefore, realities are shown as they are without any distortion. Each subordinate event depicts ‘a slice of life’. (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’) What Yu means by ‘subordinate events that run parallel’ is a subplot. He thought O’Casey’s plays had subplots that ran parallel to the main plot: for instance, in The Plough and the Stars, Nora’s story constitutes the main plot, while Mollser’s story is a subplot. This structure is refected in Yu’s own plays. In The Mud Hut, the main plot is the story of Myongso’s family, but the story of tenant Kyongson’s family is paralleled as a subplot.2 In addition, in The Scene from the Willow Tree Village, the stories of two farming families are paralleled. Among the various characteristics of O’Casey’s plays, Yu seemed to be most attracted by the tragic-comic elements because of their appeal to the masses. Yu thought the modern theatre’s rejection of farce was due to its vulgarity, which had led to it becoming unpopular with theatregoers. One of O’Casey’s contributions was that he revived the long-neglected farce tradition in order to attract the alienated masses (C. Yu, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). Yu also believed that farcical and comic elements suited the disposition of the Korean people, and he found a model of such dramatic techniques in O’Casey’s plays: 한국 민족은 옛부터 대륙적 기질을 지니고 있어서 호방, 낙천적이다. 그래 서 질질 짜는 것을 좋아하지 않으며 어떠한 난관도 웃음으로 극복해내는 기질이 있어왔다. 오케이시의 소극성(笑劇性)이 그래서 우리에게는 딱 들 어맞는 것이었다. The Korean people are open-hearted and optimistic since they have inherited continental dispositions. They don’t like whimpers or complaints and have survived any diffculties with laughter. Therefore, O’Casey’s farcical and comic elements suit us. (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chijin Jeonjip 9 94) Yu adopted both comical and farcical elements in creating his characters, as noted in his essay, ‘Sean O’Casey and I’. He positions his works as merely a rough imitation of O’Casey’s plays and details the ways in which his plays were infuenced by O’Casey’s works by focusing on the characters. For example, he relates his own characters of Kyongson in The Mud Hut, Seongchil in The Scene from the Willow Tree Village, Hongmae’s father in The Slum, Mr. Gang in The Donkey, and Malttongi, Munjin, and Usam in The Ox to O’Casey’s characters of Shields in The Shadow of a Gunman and Boyle and Joxer in Juno and the Paycock. He explains that he used them like

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O’Casey did: ‘to introduce comic elements while depicting the gloomy life of the poorer people’ (C. Yu, ‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). Yu’s study of O’Casey had an immense infuence on his view of the theatre. As mentioned previously, Yu thought of the theatre as a means of educating the masses and, therefore, he valued the popularity of the theatre most. In June 1932, he published an essay entitled ‘Yeongeuk-ui Daejungseong’ (‘The Popularity of the Theatre’) in a flm magazine, Sinheung Yeonghwa, in which he argues that those arts that are not built on the people are rootless. He also describes entertainment and education as the cardinal elements of popularity: 演劇이 가지는 娛樂性은 이 藝術을 民衆에게 親交시키는 絶對的 魅力을 가지고 있다 … 그러나 참된 演劇은 결코 娛樂性에만 그치지 않는다. 즉, 人生 生活의 微妙한 斷片을 끌어서 舞臺 위에 再現시켜 그 再現的 美로서 우리를 ‘微笑시키면서도’ 한편으로 그 美속에서 우리의 나아갈 한줄기의 ‘ 敎訓’을 暗示하는 것이다. The entertainment in the theatre creates an intimacy between the people and the arts … However, the true theatre will never end in entertainment only. It presents a delicate slice of our life on the stage, making us ‘smile’ while ‘guiding’ us through our lives. (‘Yeongeuk-ui Daejungseong’ 12) This view of the theatre has something in common with O’Casey’s view in that both emphasised entertainment and amusement. O’Casey tried to achieve this purpose through low comedy. According to Krause, for O’Casey, ‘the drama had to tell an exciting story about people whose conficts were colourful as well as meaningful; it had to amuse as well as amaze an audience confronted by the mundane and profound crises of their fellow men’ (56). Yu Chi-jin not only made use of O’Casey’s plays in his creative writing but also had the ambition to develop the modern Korean theatre movement through O’Casey’s plays, starting with Juno and the Paycock (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). However, it was not possible to stage O’Casey’s plays due to the colonisers’ censorship. Aside from Yu’s admission, given that modern Korean theatre was highly dependent, it is most probable that Yu’s literary connection with O’Casey might have been a signifcant factor in his creative writing because ‘when a target literature is highly dependent, literary contacts might be a major factor for its development’ (Even-Zohar, ‘Universals of Literary Contacts’ 44). Yu borrowed multiple elements from O’Casey’s plays in creating his early works, The Mud Hut (1931), The Scene from the Willow Tree Village (1933), and The Ox (1934). These three realistic plays ‘attempted to incorporate social issues of the 1930s into the new dramatic form, portraying the suffering of the Korean people, especially the farmers, during the Japanese occupation … all attempting to raise Korean national consciousness’ (Nichols 5).

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First published in 1931 and staged by the GeukYeon in 1933, The Mud Hut is Yu’s frst play, set in a farming village in the 1920s. This two-act tragedy concentrates on two farming families, both of whom suffer loss and destruction under colonialism. Myongso’s family lives in poverty, and their only hope is Myongsu, Myongso’s son, who is in Japan. They depend on Myongsu for their livelihood, but he dies in an anti-Japanese struggle, and only his ashes come back. Tenant Kyongson’s family, meanwhile, is also harassed with debts; they lose their house and must leave their hometown. When this play was frst staged in Korea, it created a considerable sensation among Korean audiences. Yu recalls in his autobiography how there was pandemonium when the curtain fell and how some passionate audiences ran into the dressing room, while Yi Gwang-su,3 a friend and novelist, excitedly announced that a new genre had been born (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 111). What Yi Gwang-su meant by ‘a new genre’ was a realistic peasant play that depicted contemporary Korean farmers’ lives. The successful production of Yu’s frst play can be compared with that of O’Casey’s frst play, The Shadow of a Gunman, which was met with great success in its description of people from the Dublin slums. Gregory describes the play as ‘beautifully acted, all the political points taken up with delight by a big audience’ (497), and Joseph Holloway wrote in his journal that it was so successful that ‘crowds had to be turned away each performance’ (Holloway 496). The Mud Hut marked the advent of a new realistic peasant drama in Korea, as Gim Gwang-seop also notes: ‘I wonder how fair an evaluation had been given of the play at that time, but I consider that this play marked the emergence of a peasant play in Korea’ (‘Geukyeon Je Samhoe Gongyeoneul Apdugo’). Indeed, the dawn of the realistic play started with The Mud Hut in colonial Korea. The Scene from the Willow Tree Village (one act), the second play of the trilogy, was staged at the Joseon Theatre in November 1933. This play also depicts the tragedy that two farming families must suffer because of poverty: one family must sell their daughter to a brothel at a price cheaper than that of a calf, and the other must lose their only son, who falls over a precipice and dies. The story of this play is based on the author’s experience in his hometown during his childhood: Yu intended to describe the severe life of the farmers he knew, who were innocent and honest, but deprived, defeated, and hopeless because they were helpless (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 115). Just as O’Casey was raised near actual slums and thus came to have social consciousness (Grene 112–13), Yu developed his own social consciousness through his environment. The stage production of The Scene from the Willow Tree Village was successful in illustrating the miserable circumstances of farming villages in Korea under colonialism. According to Gim Gwang-seop (‘Beodeunamu seon Dongri-ui Punggyeong’), the production showed a high quality of stage craft, and the tragedies of the peasants were more strongly highlighted by being shown in contrast to the idyllic and peaceful landscape of the farming village. Much like Yu’s second play, the second play of O’Casey’s

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trilogy – Juno and the Paycock – was also successful. It was one of the most popular plays ever seen at the Abbey (Holloway 496), and it drew such large crowds that it broke Abbey’s record (Krause 37). The Ox (three acts), the last play of Yu’s trilogy, is similar to the former two peasant plays in that it deals with the poverty and sufferings of farming villagers, but the actions of the play centre on an ox, which is considered the symbol of Korea. The main characters are the tenant farmer Kukso and his family, and the ox has a different meaning to each family member. Kukso, the man of the family, values the ox more than he does his family members, considering it the ploughman’s pride, even if it is useless for ploughing because machines have replaced its usefulness. To Malttong’i, his eldest son, the ox is his only chance to get married. He can get married to a girl, Kwich’an, whom he loves, only when his family pays back the advance paid by the agent who sells girls to Japan. Kwich’an is supposed to be sold to Japan by her parents to support her family, and the repayment of the advance can be arranged by selling the ox. The ox is also considered a means of paying the travel expenses to Manchuria. Finding no hope in his hometown, where he will never have enough to eat even if he works hard, Kaettong’i, Kukso’s second son, wants to go to Manchuria to make money and intends to sell the ox to provide money for the journey. However, we soon learn that the estate agent has already sold the ox in lieu of the overdue rent owed by Kukso’s family. With this news, all members of the family lose their hopes and dreams. Enraged, Malttong’i sets fre to his family’s landowner’s shed and is taken to the police station. Just as the production of the fnal piece of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, The Plough and the Stars, did not take off smoothly, neither did the fnal play of Yu’s peasant trilogy. Indeed, the production of The Plough and the Stars at the Abbey led to rioting because the opening-night audience considered the play an insult to Irish patriotism; meanwhile, the production of The Ox led to the arrest of its author and the theatre members who staged it because the colonisers considered the play subversive. Consequently, Yu had to stop writing realistic plays: The colonial authorities took exception … to The Ox, as it depicts the suffering of a farmer deprived of his land and his son killed by Japanese police. Yu had to stop writing plays about the reality of Korean life under Japanese rule. Moreover, by the mid-1930s, if they wished to write for the theatre at all, playwrights were forced to write histories or romances in a Japanese style, with a pro-Japanese viewpoint and at least one-third of all dialogue in Japanese. (Nichols 5) First serialised in the Dong-A Ilbo in January and February 1935, The Ox was completed during Yu Chi-jin’s stay in Japan and was frst produced in June 1935 at the Tsukiji Little Theatre in Tokyo by the Tokyo Student Arts Theatre Company. The Tokyo Student Arts Theatre Company was an amateur

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theatre company organised by Korean students in Japan in June 1934, when Yu Chi-jin was in Japan, and intended to revive the Korean spirit through the theatre (D. Lee et al., Britannica World Encyclopedia [vol. 5] 210).4 The company selected The Ox as part of its repertoire for its frst production (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 129). It seems that it was possible to stage this play in Tokyo because censorship was less strict than in colonial Korea, although Yu and members of the Theatre Company were later arrested because of the production.5 After the performance in Tokyo, the GeukYeon added this play to their repertoire in July 1935, but it could not be staged in Korea. The Japanese colonial government did not allow the play to be performed on the Korean stage on the grounds that the play might have an adverse infuence on the colonisers’ agricultural policies in Korea by depicting the tragic realities of Korean farming villages (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 318). Therefore, this play could never be produced in its original form on the Korean stage under colonialism. It was in February 1937 that this play was frst staged in Korea, only after it had been transformed into a comedy in accordance with the colonisers’ taste and with its title changed to The Pungnyeongi (Good Harvests; Park 113–14; A. Shin 168). The Tokyo production of The Ox caused the author’s change of course in his creative writing from realist drama to historical romantic drama. After the production, Yu and all members of the Tokyo Student Arts Theatre Company were arrested by the Japanese police on a charge of producing socialist agitprop that could motivate the masses to stage an anti-government revolution (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 135). Yu was imprisoned for three months without a trial. This event made him change his artistic direction to avoid the colonisers’ censorship: he turned to romance instead of contemporary social issues for his creative inspiration (‘Geukjakga Sueop Samsipnyeon’ 88). Although with The Ox, Yu’s realist period came to an end, he is nonetheless best remembered for his realistic drama. His peasant trilogy is his most famous and enduring work in the history of Korean theatre. Interestingly, the course that Yu followed is very similar to that of Sean O’Casey, who also broke away from realism after writing his Dublin trilogy, which is also considered his most enduring contribution to drama (McDonald 136). The Silver Tassie (1929), which followed the Dublin trilogy, marked O’Casey’s break with his earlier realist style, as well as with the Abbey Theatre, which refused the work. With The Silver Tassie, O’Casey began to move towards more experimental forms of expressionism, although in this play, the new approach was only partially adopted (Brockett and Findlay 481; Welch 407). Nevertheless, the two dramatists’ motives behind breaking away from realism were different: while Yu was forced to do so to avoid the colonisers’ censorship, O’Casey did so due to his artistic pursuits. Yu’s peasant trilogy was used as a means of national awakening during the colonial period. Gim Gwang-seop’s remark about one work of the trilogy, The Scene from the Willow Tree Village, supports this argument.

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He asserts that this play, describing the sorrows of farming villages aesthetically, conveyed the gloomy reality of farming villages and had the duty of awakening people to this reality (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 135). With his peasant trilogy, which depicted the severe conditions of life under colonial rule, ‘Yu became one of the frst Korean playwrights to voice anti-Japanese sentiments through literature’ (Jinhee Kim 23). 10.2 The Setting of the Plays Yu Chi-jin’s peasant trilogy is set entirely in destitute Korean farming villages during the 1920s and 1930s under colonialism: The Mud Hut is set in an impoverished old farmer’s clay house in the 1920s, The Ox is set in a tenant farmer’s house in the countryside during the 1930s, and The Scene from the Willow Tree Village is set in a farming village during the 1930s. Yu’s choice of farming villages as the settings for his plays was mainly due to O’Casey’s infuence, as he himself reveals in his autobiography. Yu was inspired by O’Casey’s understanding of his age and came to be persistent in depicting the troubles and bitterness of his environment by staging the ruin of farming families, much as O’Casey presented the realities of his age by portraying the lives of the Dublin slum people (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 120). According to Yu’s interpretation (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’), O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy had two different themes: anti-war and anti-colonialism. It not only showcased how wars caused miserable bloodshed, fghting, and innocent victims but also presented the miserable and destitute lives of the Irish people as products of colonialism. This understanding of the Dublin slums as the product of colonialism refects the Korean situation under colonialism. Indeed, city slums in colonial Korea were closely related to colonial policies: due to the land survey and exportation of rice into Japan, Korean farming villages collapsed, and many farmers went to the cities to become low-class labourers, forming city slums (Jaeseok Kim 15). Just as O’Casey, from his profound love for his poor countrymen, realistically portrayed the Irish as suffering under colonialism, Yu also wanted to depict the lives of the Korean people under colonialism (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 93). For Yu, it was Korean farming villages that could reveal the most severe damages inficted by the colonial policies: the most prominent phenomenon that the colonial policies brought about in Korea was the collapse and ruin of farming villages and the subsequent downfall of farmers (M. Yu 326). Between 1910 and 1918, the Japanese colonial government conducted a land survey to rationalise and codify the land system and, in turn, expand land tax revenue, and seize any free land – including state-owned land, forest, and uncultivated land – and obtain a source for rice after Japanese industrialisation.6 The problem with the land survey was the reporting system. Landowners were obligated to report their address, name, and

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the location of their land. However, the complex reporting procedure, the ambiguity between ownership and possessory title, and pressure from the authorities prevented small owners from reporting. Furthermore, the land survey was conducted by the Japanese authorities and the ‘Landowner Committee’ under the protection of the Japanese authorities. Thus, many Korean people were deprived of their land illegally. As a result of the land survey, the Government-General came to be the largest landowner in Korea, occupying 50.4% of the country’s total land. Japanese land companies, such as the Oriental Development Company, also participated in robbing the Korean people of their land, as the Government-General sold off land at bargain prices. Chartered in 1907, the Oriental Development Company had acquired 269,500 acres of agricultural land by 1930 (Eckert et al. 266). The victims of the land survey who suffered the most brutal damage were the Korean farmers. These farmers were deprived of their customary right of cultivation, as the Government-General reduced the length of tenancy from limitless to one year. They were also stripped of the title to share crop land, the right to clear uncultivated land, and the common right of pasturage and quarrying on public land. As such, the farmers fell into a status of feudal tenancy, and most were in debt. The peasants who lost their livelihood became slash-and-burn farmers or emigrated to Manchuria, the Maritime Province, or Japan to become labourers or beggars. More than 150,000 people left their hometown in 1925 alone (M. Kang 99–100). In addition, the exportation of rice to Japan led to a deterioration in the lives of Korean farmers. Yu Chi-jin wanted to portray this situation in his plays, depicting farming villagers who were forced to leave or had miserable lives in their hometowns. The description of Myongso’s house in The Mud Hut shows the life of farming villagers at that time: 외양간처럼 음습한 토막집의 내부, 온돌방과 그에 접한 부엌, 방과 부엌 사 이에는 벽도 없이 통했다. 천장과 벽이 시커멓게 그을은 것은 부엌 연기 때 문이다 … 우편 방에 꾸부려 앉은 60 노인은 금녀의 아버지. 명서, 편지를 쓰고 있다. 오랫동안의 병으로 정신이 매우 흐릿한 듯하다. 그가 가진 침울 한 성질은 선천적이라기보다 그의 생애의 궁핍과 다년의 병고가, 그에 영 향함. The inside of a mud hut that is dark and damp like a stable. A kitchen is attached to a room, and there is no wall between the kitchen and the room. The ceiling and the walls are smoke stained … Kumnyo’s father Myongso, in his sixties, is writing a letter crouching in the room. His consciousness is blurry due to his chronic illness. His gloomy personality is caused by his poverty and illness, not being innate. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 347)

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The comparison of Myongso’s house to a stable indicates that the living environment of Myongso’s family does not differ much from that of the animals. His house is so poorly ventilated that the ceiling and walls are smokestained, and the dual combination of poverty and Myongso’s chronic illness makes his life harder. The setting of The Scene from the Willow Tree Village presents a similar life of poverty the Korean farmers endured at that time. Kyesun’s house – the stage setting – is described as partly collapsed: more than half of the wall has collapsed, and only a trace of the entrance gate remains. Kyesun’s poverty is more vividly illustrated through the dialogues between characters: 학삼. 그런데 계순이 몸값으로 이번에 얼마나? 할머니. 십원짜리가 두 장하고. 오원짜리가 한 장이라나. 학삼. (눈이 둥그래지며) 그러믄 이십 오원이게유? 어이구

바로 송아지 값이로 구나. 할머니. (일하는 손을 멈추고 날카롭게) 어느 미친 년이 열 여섯해 동안이나 키운 송아지를 이십 오원에 판담? 건너 마을 봉선이네 집에서도 작년 정월에 난 송아지를 삼십원에 팔았다는데. 학삼. 사람을 송아지에다가 비할라구유? 당찮아유. 지금 세상에는 그 중 천한 게 사람이래유. 보십시유. 군에서는 해마다 종자소가 어떠니. 돼지 병 보는 의 사가 왔느니 갔느니 하지 않아유? 허지만 우리네 사람들 위해선 무엇 하나 해줍디까? HAKSAM. How much will you get paid if you sell Kyesun? KYESUN’S GRANDMA. I heard it’ll be two ten-won7 bills and

one fve-won bill. HAKSAM. [with his eyes wide open] That’s twenty-fve won, then. Oh, my! It’s just as much as a calf’s price. KYESUN’S GRANDMA. [stops what she was doing and in a sharp voice] Who the hell would sell her calf that she raised for sixteen years at the price of twenty-fve won? Bongsun’s family in the neighboring village sold their one-year-old calf at the price of thirty won. HAKSAM. We must not compare human beings to a calf. That’s improper. However, people are least valued these days. Every year, the military government offce sends doctors to take care of breeding cows or swine diseases. What do they do for us, though? (C. Yu, Hanguk Huigok Daegye 2 126–27) This conversation between Haksam and Kyesun’s grandmother reveals the miserable situation in which these farmers lived: the farmers must sell their children at a lower price than a calf to make a living. In The Ox, Yu describes the experiences of Korean farming villagers under colonialism by presenting the reality of their life against the background of a festive mood brought about by a bountiful harvest. The play opens with the sound of celebrations: the shouting and singing of the threshers are very

174 Appropriation of Irish Plays lively and cheerful. The dialogue between the characters indicates the reason behind this festive mood: 우삼. 국서, 어때? 타작 잘들 하나? 국서. 그저 그러이. 저 타작마당으로 가세. 술이나 한 잔 나눠 먹게. 우삼. 너남즉 할 것 없니 농사는 잘됐어. 참 금년이야말로 풍년이야.

가다 드문

풍년이거든. WUSAM. Kukso, how’s the threshing going? KUKSO. Not bad. Let’s go to the threshing foor and have a drink. WUSAM. Everybody is having a good harvest. This is really a good year. The

best harvest we’ve had for years! (C. Yu, Hanguk Hyeondai Huigok 2 2) This good harvest, however, is bad news for the farmers, who will be harassed by the landowners: 처. 농사가 잘되면 어디 논임자 밭임자가 가만 둡니까? 이 몇해 동안 밀려 내려오

든 콩도지, 쌀도지를 이번에 들어서 죄다 받아 낼려구 덤비는 걸요. 되려 흉 년이 드는 것만 같이 못할까 봅니다. 귀찬이 부. (소리를 낮추어서) 그런데 저, 댁에서도 이런 소문을 들었어요? 어찌되 는 건지 내년부터서는 무슨 농지령이란 법령이 새로 내린다나요. 그래서 입 때까지 밀린 도지는 이번 추수까지다 해 들여놔야 한대요. 그렇잖으면 논 을 데고 막 집행을 헌대요… 허는 수 없어서 우리는 우리 집 귀찬이란 년 을 팔아먹게 했지요. 처. 귀찬이를? 그 얌전한 애를? 귀찬이부. 도지를 갚지 않으면 논을 뗀다는데야 해볼 장수가 있나요. 자식이라도 팔어서 갖다 갚어야지. 그렇게라도 하지 않으면 꿩 잃고 매 잃는다는 셈으 로 논은 논대로 떨어지구 자식은 자식대로 굶겨 죽일걸. If you have a good harvest, the landowner will not leave you alone. He will try to collect all the overdue debts and rent. A bad harvest is rather preferable. GUICHAN’S FATHER. [in a low voice] By the way, did you hear the rumour? People say that a new law called the Farmland Law will be introduced next year. So, all the overdue rents we owe should be paid off by this harvest season. If not, we will be dispossessed of our ground rent … So, we could not but decide to sell our daughter, Guichan. WIFE. Guichan? Such a good girl? GUICHAN’S FATHER. That’s the only solution. If we don’t pay our debts, they will dispossess our ground rent. So, we don’t have any other choice but to sell our child. Otherwise, we will be deprived of our means of living and our family will starve to death. (C. Yu, Hanguk Hyeondai Huigok 2 18–19) WIFE.

This dialogue shows the reality of the farmers: even if the family were to have a good harvest, there would not be a single grain of rice left for their food, and so they must sell their children for a living.

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Just as O’Casey brought ‘new spirit and signifcance’ to Irish audiences by portraying the bloodshed, bitterness, misery, and tragedy that the Irish people experienced, so too did Yu intend to foster a new spirit within the Korean audience by presenting the realities of their misery and tragedy on the stage (C. Yu, ‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). Yu could achieve this purpose by drawing his subjects from the farming villages that were being destroyed. By replacing the Dublin slums that O’Casey depicted in an antiwar sentiment with Korean farming villages, Yu could deliver the message of anti-colonialism. 10.3 Characters The vividness of characterisation in the Dublin trilogy is recognised as one of O’Casey’s achievements and is one element that ‘gives his work universality’, as Ayling puts it: ‘Though he [O’Casey] remained true to his working-class and national origins throughout a long and prolifc life, the depth of his compassion for suffering humanity, breadth of characterization and pervasive sense of humour combine to give his work universality’ (560). The characters in O’Casey’s trilogy can be divided into two groups: heroic or realistic women and mock-heroic or unrealistic men. Most female characters are presented heroically: that is, as having the qualities of a heroine. They are depicted as having the courage to face reality and risk their lives to save other people when necessary. For instance, Minnie Powell in The Shadow of a Gunman risks her life to save the man she loves; Juno in Juno and the Paycock never gives up, even in hopeless situations; and Bessie Burgess in The Plough and the Stars is shot and killed while taking care of Nora, who gives birth to a dead child and goes mad from her anxiety about her husband. The courageous, heroic behaviours of O’Casey’s women are rooted in their awareness and acceptance of their reality. They seek practical solutions to the problems they face. In Minnie Powell’s view, it was the best, most appropriate choice to hide the bag of bombs in her room because she thought the Black and Tans would not search there. Juno’s brave behaviour also comes from her acceptance of her reality. Her daughter is abandoned in her pregnancy, and her husband is hopeless. A realistic choice, therefore, is for her and her pregnant daughter to leave her husband. Bessie Burgess’ courageous behaviour is likewise realistic: she ceases her quarrelling with Mrs. Gogan and concentrates instead on taking care of Nora when necessary. In contrast, O’Casey’s men are presented as idealists or cowards who are unable to face the reality of their lives: Davoren in The Shadow of a Gunman is a ‘poltroon’ who is not able to cope with a dangerous situation and makes Minnie Powell an innocent victim by pretending to be ‘a gunman on the run’; Jack Boyle in Juno and the Paycock is a coward and a braggart who is unwilling to act and lacks the courage to do so; fnally, Jack Clitheroe in The Plough and the Stars is a mock-heroic chauvinist who destroys his own family. All three are presented as mock-heroic: indeed, they pretend to be heroic

176 Appropriation of Irish Plays when, in reality, they are not. Davoren pretends to be a gunman on the run, Jack Boyle wants to be called a Captain, and Jack Clitheroe pretends to go to war bravely for the nation. The ultimate nature of their reality is based on their minds, and they cannot see the problems they face. Through this mock-heroic mode, their idealism is conveyed. As Brockett and Findlay point out, O’Casey’s characters, ‘strongly contrasted individuals who are brought into close contact by living conditions, [are] the social unit … which is most important, for not only does it provide the immediate and human context, it serves as a microcosm of contemporary Irish attitudes’ (480). O’Casey created ‘the texture of life’ rather than ‘structured stories’ through the juxtaposition of these contrasted individuals: His men usually talk about (and sometimes die for) ideals, whereas his women cope with the realities of daily life. The conficts that result from the juxtaposition of contrasting individuals, ideals, and priorities lead to humor and violence … Overall, the works are more concerned with creating the texture of life than with telling clearly structured stories. (Brockett and Findlay 480) Yu Chi-jin’s characters in his peasant trilogy exhibit similarities to O’Casey’s characters. Most of Yu’s men lack the courage needed to face their realities and cannot support their families. For example, in The Mud Hut, Myongso, an elderly man who is in extremely poor health, is unable to support his family, and Kyongson shows no sign of being aware of the responsibility to take care of his family, being instead incessantly drunk to forget and avoid the reality of his situation. Kukso in The Ox is also unrealistic: he insists on keeping the ox that is not useful for farming anymore because machines have replaced oxen, and he loses his mind when he fnds that the ox has been sold by the land agency. In The Scene from the Willow Tree Village, meanwhile, the men of the families are non-existent: they all died long ago. Conversely, the women in Yu’s trilogy are presented as being realistic and as taking responsibility for supporting their families. In The Mud Hut, it is Myongso’s wife and Kyongson’s wife that take care of their families; in The Ox, Kukso’s wife is described as more ready than her husband to face reality, and in The Scene from the Willow Tree Village, it is the women who play the role of the man of the family. Yu’s women are also innocent victims of their environment, much like O’Casey’s women, Minnie Powell and Nora Clitheroe: Yu’s women go mad or are sold off because of poverty. This resemblance between O’Casey’s and Yu’s characters seems to be the result of either conscious or unconscious appropriations of O’Casey’s characters by Yu. A glance at Yu’s characters, in The Mud Hut especially, reveals the similarity to those in Juno and the Paycock. In particular, the members of Myongso’s family resemble those of the Boyle family. Myongso, the man of the family, is in his 60s and is unable to support his family; Jack, the man of the Boyle family, is also in his 60s and is likewise unable to provide for

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his family. Both Myongso’s wife and Jack’s wife assume the responsibility of supporting their families. Moreover, both families have one daughter and one son; both of these sons are killed by being involved in independence activities. Nevertheless, in The Mud Hut, Yu juxtaposes the story of another family, Kyongson’s family, with that of Myongso’s family, in order to present various facets of the tragic realities of the Korean people under colonialism. Among the characters, it is Kumnyo, Myongso’s daughter, and Kyongson, the man of the Kang family, that show traces of the appropriation of O’Casey’s characters. Unlike Mary in Juno and the Paycock, an unrealistic idealist who stands up for her principles, Kumnyo is closely connected to the realities of her situation. Mary is not down to earth. She wears a ribbon around her head and silk stockings on her legs even when she goes on strike and does not realise what outcomes her behaviour will bring. When her mother warns her, ‘When the employers sacrifce wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan better be sacrifcin’ a hundred’, she retorts, simply, ‘It doesn’t matter what you say, ma – a principle’s a principle’ (O’Casey, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ 207). The nature of her reality is based on her idealistic principles, and she is not willing to take any responsibility in real life. She even refuses to bring a drink of water to her brother Johnny, who is not well. By contrast, Kumnyo is both realistic and responsible. It is in Kumnyo rather than in her mother that we can perceive the role and characteristics of Juno Boyle. Much as Juno ‘always remains close to the realities of life’ and, ‘when there is a call for responsible action’, she puts aside her self-gratifcation and acts (Krause 79), Kumnyo performs the same role in Yu’s play. Each act of The Mud Hut starts with Kumnyo’s sounds: Act I opens with the sound of the loom that Kumnyo makes, and Act II begins with a song that Kumnyo teaches Sundol. These are the sounds of life in dark and gloomy circumstances. In addition, both Juno and Kumnyo work to support their families. While on the surface, it is Kumnyo’s mother that assumes responsibility for supporting her family, it is, in fact, Kumnyo who does so. Kumnyo weaves the straw mats and makes the straw head pads that are the means of making a living; Kumnyo’s mother merely sells them. Finally, just as Juno assumes the responsibility for taking care of ‘her obsessive wounded son Johnny’ along with her worthless husband, it is Kumnyo’s responsibility to take care of her father, an old man in poor health who cannot take care of himself. Both Juno and Kumnyo have the sense to acknowledge reality and show a careful concern for others. When they fnd that Mary has been seduced, Johnny and Captain Boyle think of their honour frst and try to avoid reality. However, Juno thinks of her daughter frst and tries to fnd a realistic solution. When he hears about Mary’s pregnancy, Jack exclaims, ‘Oh, isn’t this a nice thing to come on top o’ me, an’ the state I’m in! A pretty show I’ll be to Joxer an’ to that oul’ wan, Madigan! Amn’t I afther goin’ through enough without havin’ to go through this!’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin

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Plays 134), while Johnny argues, ‘She should be dhriven out o’ th’ house she’s brought disgrace on!’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 135). However, Juno shows a different attitude. She says to her husband: What you an’ I’ll have to go through’ll be nothin’ to what poor Mary’ll have to go through; for you an’ me is middin’ old, an’ most of our years is spent; but Mary’ll have maybe forty years to face an’ handle, an’ every wan of them’ll be tainted with a bitter memory. (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 134) Indeed, whereas to Johnny and the Captain, Mary’s pregnancy is a disgrace that they want to avoid, to Juno, it is a suffering to be shared. When Mary grieves about ‘My poor little child that’ll have no father!’, Juno encourages her by saying, ‘It’ll have what’s far better – it’ll have two mothers’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 145–46). As a realistic solution, Juno takes decisive action to leave Boyle so that she can make a decent life for her daughter and the unborn child. Kumnyo in The Mud Hut also embodies these realistic and benevolent characteristics. When the district chief brings the family a newspaper that carries a picture of a young man who has the same name as Kumnyo’s brother, citing that it is likely her brother staged an independence movement in Japan and was arrested and imprisoned by the police, her mother tries to deny the reality without knowing what her son did: 거짓말이야. 그 사람은 우리 명수가 아니야. 우리 명수가 그까짓 훔치기교 를 해? 그럴 리는 없어. 원, 이 세상에 이름 같은 사람이 없구, 화상 같은 사 람이 없을 거라구. That’s a lie. That person in the paper is not my son. My son wouldn’t do anything like stealing. You can’t mean that! That man looks like my son and has the same name, but he isn’t my son. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 354) Kumnyo’s father’s attitude is the same. He is driven to despair: 아아, 뭐가 뭔지 꿈 같군 그래. 금녀야, 난 아찔아찔헌 비탈 위에서 별안간 깊은 구렁 속으로 떨어진 것 같다. 아무리 손을 쳐두 구할 이 없는 구렁 속 으로 … I don’t know what’s going on. It must be a nightmare. Kumnyo, I feel like I fell into a bottomless pit that I can never escape from. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 355) However, Kumnyo’s response is different. She is calm and tries to fnd out the truth. She asks the district chief, ‘그 청년이 갇혔다문 징역은 몇 해나 갈까유?’

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(‘If the young man is imprisoned, how long will he be in prison?’; C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 355) and asks her father to write a letter to her brother so that they may discover the truth. While she soothes her mother, who is gradually having a nervous breakdown, and takes care of her father, who is becoming exhausted, she fnds out what her brother did by asking her brother’s friends. After fnding that what her brother committed was a patriotic act and knowing what the probable fate of a nationalist will prove to be, she comforts and encourages her parents to be proud of her brother instead of being driven into despair. This is quite different from the attitudes of O’Casey’s women towards patriotic activism. For instance, regarding Johnny’s patriotic activism in Juno and the Paycock, Mrs. Boyle’s response is sceptical: The bullet he got in the hip in Easter Week was bad enough; but the bomb that shattered his arm in the fght in O’Connell Street put the fnishin’ touch on him. I knew he was makin’ a fool of himself. God knows I went down on me bended knees to him not to go agen the Free State. (O’Casey, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ 207) While in Mrs. Boyle’s view, it is a stupid thing to go against the government, Mary’s response is very neutral. She argues that ‘He stuck to his principles, an’, no matter how you may argue, ma, a principle’s a principle’ (O’Casey, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ 208). She neither praises nor criticises Johnny’s patriotic act. In her view, Johnny did what he had to do. These different attitudes from Kumnyo may be related to the theme of the plays. Juno and the Paycock conveys an anti-war message, while The Mud Hut delivers the message of resistance against colonialism. Kumnyo never gives up hope and refuses to capitulate, even in hopeless circumstances. When Kyongson’s family are deprived of their mud hut and forced to leave their hometown, Kumnyo says to Sundol, the son of Kyongson’s family: ‘순돌아, 이 집이나 잘 봐 두어라. 크거든 다시 찾아오게’ (‘Sundol, have a good look at this house and keep it in mind so that you can come back when you grow up’; C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 363). With this remark, she convinces them that, although they are forced to leave their hometown now, they surely will be able to take it back later. The Korean readers and audiences at that time might have interpreted their hometown as their home country, which they would, one day, be able to take back from the colonisers. Giving the lantern to Sundol, Kumnyo implores him: ‘순돌 아, 이렇게 높직하게 쳐들고 가거라. 말 탄 신랑같이’ (‘Sundol, lead the way, raising the lantern up high just like a bridegroom who enters the village riding on horseback’; C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 363). Here, the words ‘lantern’ and ‘bridegroom’ can be interpreted as hope for a brighter future. Kumnyo wants Sundol’s family to have hope for their future, despite the bitter situation. In fact, this imagery may even apply to Kumnyo herself: even if her brother is found to be dead, life should go on, and she should confront and survive the adversity.

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Neither Juno nor Kumnyo ever give way to despair or give up their life even in the worst situations. They know whining will not do any good, as Juno comments in Juno and the Paycock (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 138). When she fnds out about her daughter Mary’s seduction, Juno knows that she alone will ‘have to bear th’ biggest part o’ this trouble’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 138) as she has kept the home together for the past few years, but she stands, assuming the burden. Even when her son is found dead, she tries to seek a positive force to make life move forward when Mary denies God. Upon hearing the news of Johnny’s death, Mary cries, ‘it’s thrue what Jerry Devine says – there isn’t a God, there isn’t a God; if there was He wouldn’t let these things happen!’ (O’Casey, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ 252). However, while she laments the death of her son as Mrs. Tancred did, Mrs. Boyle prays for love instead of hatred: What was the pain I suffered, Johnny, bringin’ you into the world to carry you to your cradle, to the pains I’ll suffer carryin’ you out o’ the world to bring you to your grave! Mother o’ God, Mother o’ God, have pity on us all! Blessed Virgin, where were you when me darlin’ son was riddled with bullets, when me darlin’ son was riddled with bullets? Sacred heart o’ Jesus, take away our hearts o’ stone, and give us hearts o’ fesh! Take away this murdherin’ hate an’ give us Thine own eternal love! (O’Casey, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ 146) The same will to overcome adversity can be found in Kumnyo’s attitude in The Mud Hut. After her brother’s remains are delivered from Japan, the only thing left to Kumnyo is to assume the burden of her parents: her mother, who has gone mad, and her sick father, who cannot take care of himself. Only gloomy realities await her, but Kumnyo never yields to despair or gives up: 아버지, 서러 마세유. 서러워 마시구 이대루 꾹 참구 살아가세유. 네, 아버 지! 결코 오빠는 우릴 저버리진 않을 거예유. 죽은 혼이라두 살아 있어, 우 릴 꼭 돌봐 줄 거예유. 그 때까지 우린 꾹 참구 살아가유. 예, 아버지! (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 370) Father, don’t be sad. Don’t be sad and be brave and let us go on with our lives. Father, Myongsu will never forget about us. Even though his body is gone, his spirit will live on and take good care of us. Let us persevere and keep on living our lives. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 59) Only the positive attitudes of people like Juno and Kumnyo can make life go on and compel history to move forward. The reason Yu Chi-jin endowed Kumnyo, and not her mother, with Juno’s characteristics is arguably related to the message he tried to deliver in The Mud Hut: it

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seems that he tried to present the vision of Korea’s future through the second generation. That is, if the frst generation in The Mud Hut represents the hopeless present, the second generation represents a hopeful future. In Samjo’s words, ‘죽자꾸나 농살 지어두 입엔 거미줄을 면치 못하 는 세상인데’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 348): ‘The reality is that they cannot even feed themselves even if they work their butts off’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 33). The frst generation does not try to fnd a way out of reality. Even when they cannot make a living in their village, they think they should live together, as Kumnyo’s mother proposes: ‘남의 집을 살아 두 내 고장에서 살구, 흙을 파먹어두 같이 파먹지’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 348): ‘Even if we can’t live in our own house, we can still live in the same village. Even if we have to dig the dirt, we should do it together’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 32). These frst-generation characters are afraid of leaving their hometown and lack the courage to overcome the problems of their daily lives. However, the second generation differs. They understand and recognise the reality of their situations clearly, as Samjo’s words show. When Kumnyo’s father asks Samjo to tell his son Myongsu ‘남의 밥 그만 벌어먹 구 인젠 그만 나오래라’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 348), ‘To come home now, and quit working for other people’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 32), Samjo says, ‘명수가 나오문 뭘 시킬려구 그러슈? 이 고장에서 살아나갈 방도 가 있겠수?’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 348): ‘What is Myongsu going to do here? How is he going to make a living in a village like this?’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 32). Thus, to overcome their current diffcult situation, Myongsu leaves for Japan to make money, and Myongsu’s friend Samjo is also going to leave their hometown for Japan to get a job. Even if they ‘won’t know [their] future until it happens’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 32), and more painful situations are ahead of them, they cannot stay home and starve. The frst generation has no understanding of the younger generation, as represented in the following statements from the district chief: 외지에 갔다 온 눔들의 행사만 봐두 알 일 아녀? 쥐뿔두 없는 놈들이 괜히 오금에 신물만 들어서 제 집 구석에선 넨장 나무 껍질 뜯어먹는다 풀뿌릴 파먹는다는 난리 판에 착실히 일할 줄은 모르고 떼를 지어 쏘다니면서 사 람은 먹어야 산다! 이렇게 떠들어대지 않던가? (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 354) Look at the things that they do, those young ones overseas. They’ve got nothing under their belts, nothing, not so much as a rat’s ass. But they get soaked with foreign infuence, top to bottom. At home their families can barely feed themselves … But instead of working diligently like they’re supposed to, they raise their voices to claim, ‘Men must eat to live!’ They run around like wild horses. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 40)

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There is, therefore, little wonder that Kumnyo’s parents do not understand what their son did in Japan: 구장. 그래, 그 철없는 명수란 자가 노가다패에서 몇몇 동무 눔들허구 남 몰래 해

방 운동인가 뭘 했다가… 명서처. 해방이라니 그 무슨 말이유? 명서. 오오, 남의 일허는 데 훼방을 놀았단

말이겠지, 그렇쥬. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin

Huigok Jeonjip 1 353) Myongsu, the childish one, staged an independence movement with a few fellows in the quarry. WIFE [KUMNYO’S MOTHER]. What do you mean by independence movement? HUSBAND [KUMNYO’S FATHER]. Oh, you mean, he interfered with someone else’s work. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 39) DISTRICT CHIEF.

The Korean pronunciation of ‘independence’ is ‘haebang’ and is a homonym for ‘hwebang’ (‘interference’). Thus, Kumnyo’s father rushes to conclude that his son’s action was a trifing discordance at work rather than a patriotic act by a nationalist (Jinhee Kim 176). The frst generation cannot even imagine their children doing patriotic work in Japan. This lack of understanding towards the second generation is like that of Captain Boyle, who also shows his ignorance towards his daughter. He thinks that the books his daughter Mary reads are nothing but trash: ‘Aw, one o’ Mary’s; she’s always readin’ lately – nothin’ but thrash, too. There’s one I was lookin’ at dh’other day: three stories, The Doll’s House, Ghosts, an’ The Wild Duck – buks only ft for chiselurs!’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 85). After all, it is the burden of the second generation to overcome current diffculties and lead the ignorant and helpless frst generation to a brighter future, as Kumnyo’s above request to Sundol suggests: they should raise the lantern high and carry it with pride, and with these attitudes, a new life will begin. Yu’s appropriation of Juno in creating Kumnyo carries this same meaning. Kyongson, another character in The Mud Hut, shows similar characteristics to those of Captain Jack Boyle and plays a similar role. Together with Juno, Captain Boyle is the central fgure in Juno and the Paycock. His mock-heroic condition, contrasted with Juno’s heroic condition, produces the comic element in the play. As Krause puts it, Juno and the Captain ‘represent the tragi-comic cycle of O’Casey’s world; together they reveal the ironic cross-purposes of life’ (79). The reason Yu Chi-jin created a comic fgure like Boyle in his play was related to his theatrical purpose. Yu sought to use theatre to educate people, and it was necessary to appeal to people to achieve this purpose. Yu believed that comic or farcical elements accounted for the popularity of the theatre, although, as mentioned previously, he thought that modern theatre avoided farce because theatregoers considered it vulgar. According

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to him (‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’), O’Casey sought to revive a long-neglected farce tradition, especially in Juno and the Paycock, to attract the alienated masses. As such, Yu also tried to adopt these farcical or comic elements in his plays. Another reason Yu showed a great interest in farcical or comic elements was related to his aesthetic and political purpose. He thought that laughter among tears could enhance the pathos and tried to stimulate a feeling of pathos among the Korean people through his plays so that they could refect upon their realities under colonialism. From his perspective, O’Casey’s plays were good examples of drama that evoked pathos by suitably mixing laughter and tears. Yu cites as an example the scene in Juno and the Paycock in which Jerry brings Captain Boyle a message that will get him a job, and Captain Boyle, on hearing the news, immediately pretends to have a twinge in his leg (‘Nodongja Chulsin-ui Geukjakga’). Yu notes that if people knew that Boyle’s attitude is a gut reaction of the lower classes in that specifc society of Ireland, they would not just laugh. This interpretation of Boyle’s attitude seems to be part of Yu’s appropriation: presenting the Irish people as suffering under colonialism. What he wanted to depict in his plays was the lower classes in colonial Korea and needed a model from O’Casey’s works. According to Yu, O’Casey’s plays inspire pathos by inducing tears through laughter. It is true O’Casey tried to ‘penetrate the dilemma of suffering mankind with the compassionate shock of rich laughter’ (Krause 56). As Krause observes, ‘O’Casey’s world is chaotic and tragic but his vision of it is ironically comic. It is in this war-torn world of horrors and potential tragedy that he fnds the rowdy humour which paradoxically satirizes and sustains his earthy characters’ (71). Yu also tried to incite strong pathos by punctuating the suffering of the Korean people with laughter. He ultimately intended to motivate the Korean people to look at themselves and their position. For this purpose, in creating his comic characters, he sometimes tried to appropriate O’Casey’s characters. In his essay, he cites the comic characters whom he created under the infuence of O’Casey’s plays, explaining that Kyongson in The Mud Hut, Seongchil in The Scene from the Willow Tree Village, and Malttongi, Munjin, and Usam in The Ox are variations of O’Casey’s characters (‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’). In fact, Kyongson resembles Captain Boyle in many respects. Kyongson has a runny nose all the time, which is how he earned his nickname, ‘ppangbo’ (‘booger’). Like Boyle, he is a braggart who spends his days carousing and who is unable to support his family. As his wife says, ‘동네 방내 쏘다니면서 술이나 쳐먹구 엄벙뗑한 소리나 허라문 잘했지, 남의 앞에 나서라문 그만 주 먹 맞은 감투가 돼 버린단 말여’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 351): ‘He hops from bar to bar on a drinking binge and talks nonsense all day. That’s all he’s good for’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 36). His empty boasting and mock majesty also bear a similarity to that of Boyle, who likewise exhibits bluffng and exaggeration. According to his wife, he was ‘only wanst on the wather,

184 Appropriation of Irish Plays in an oul collier from here to Liverpool’, and he pretends to be a seaman and likes to be called Captain (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 77). Nevertheless, in reality, ‘a row on a river ud make him sea-sick!’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 96). This bluffng also can be seen in Boyle’s attitude towards his wife. As we can see in Joxer’s remark ‘It’s a good job she has to be so often away, for when the cat’s away, the mice can play!’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 74), Boyle is like a mouse before a cat when his wife is around, yet he blusters when she is not. When, knowing that Boyle’s wife Juno does not like their mingling, Joxer says, ‘That’s afther puttin’ the heart across me – I could ha’ sworn it was Juno. I’d better be goin’, Captain; you couldn’t tell the minute Juno’d hop in on us’, Boyle makes a show of power: Let her hop in; we may as well have it out frst as at last. I’ve made up me mind – I’m not goin’ to do only what she damn well likes … Today, Joxer, there’s goin’ to be issued a proclamation be me, establishin’ an independent Republic, an’ Juno’ll have to take an oath of allegiance. (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 89–90) As soon as Juno appears, however, his words prove to be purely an empty threat, and this arouses laughter. This aspect of the blustering Boyle is also seen in Kyongson. Yu Chi-jin adopts the image of a cat and mouse straight from O’Casey to describe Kyongson. Everybody around him knows that he is henpecked by his wife, and he can fool nobody into believing that he keeps his wife under his thumb. In the play, ‘괭이 앞에 쥐’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 349): ‘He’s a mouse in front of a cat’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 34), and he is ‘like a chicken imagining himself fying when all he’s doing is fapping his wings’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 34–35). In contrast, when his wife is not around, he brags: 그 모르는 소리유. 내가 눈을 부릅뜨구, 한 번 이년! 허문 꼼짝달싹 못허구 파리 손을 살살 부비지. 허지만 양반의 체면으로 내가 어찌 그럴 수야 있나. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 349–50) You don’t know a thing. If I were to roll my eyes and let out a yell at her, her body would start trembling and she’d beg for forgiveness. But as a gentleman, how can I do that to my own wife? (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 34) This bluff is turned into comedy by his wife’s appearance. Just as Boyle shows an indifferent and irresponsible attitude towards his neighbours and his family, so too does Kyongson. For instance, when Mrs. Tancred’s only son is killed, Mrs. Boyle says: Hasn’t the whole house, nearly, been massacreed? There’s young Dougherty’s husband with his leg off; Mrs Travers that had her son blew

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up be a mine in Inchegeela, in Co. Cork; Mrs Mannin’ that lost wan of her sons in ambush a few weeks ago, an’ now, poor Mrs Tancred’s only child gone west with his body made a collandher of. Sure, if it’s not our business, I don’t know whose business it is. (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 177) This response of Mrs. Boyle’s is contrasted with Boyle’s heartlessness: Here, there, that’s enough about them things; they don’t affect us, an’ we needn’t give a damn. If they want a wake, well, let them have a wake. When I was a sailor, I was always resigned to meet with a wathery grave; an’ if they want to be soldiers, well, there’s no use o’ them squealin’ when they meet a soldier’s fate. (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 177) Boyle is pitiless even to his family. When Mary is found to have been seduced and betrayed by an Englishman, he thinks only of saving face. He refuses to share the burden and prefers to abandon his daughter: I’m goin’ out now to have a few dhrinks with th’ last few makes I have, an’ tell that lassie o’ yours not to be here when I come back; for if I lay me eyes on her, I’ll lay me hans on her, an’ if I lay me hans on her, I won’t be accountable for me actions! (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 137) Kyongson is not unlike Boyle in this regard. He borrows a few bags of rice to make a living, and his house is foreclosed, causing his family to be forced out of their home. However, even in this situation, he brags and says it is ‘as if it were someone else’s misfortune’: 우리 집 겉은 걸랑 제 멋대루 떠 가지구 가래. 난 사내답게 다 내줄 테야. 내 가 그까짓 걸 두구 떨어? 그런 걸 가지구 울었다문 난 말라서 벌써 북어 신 세가 됐을 걸. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 351) Tell them to take it all. I will yield to like a man. Am I afraid of things of that sort? If my constitution had been weak enough to shed tears over such a small matter, I would have already shrivelled up into a dried cod. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 36–37) Kyongson then leaves his family, who must beg for a living. A year later, when he comes back, he says that he was so furious that he just had to leave; nonetheless, to his family, it was not ‘a small matter’ but ‘a matter of life and death’, as Myongso says: 자네두 못났지. 그때야말로 집행인가 뭔가를 만나서, 죽는다 산다는 살얼음 판에, 그래 처잘 버리구 종적을 감춰 버렸다가 인제야 다람쥐 모양으로 코 빼기만 살짝 내민담. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 361)

186 Appropriation of Irish Plays You fool. Even if your house was taken away, how could you disappear like that, leaving your wife and children behind? It was a matter of life and death, and everyone was walking on ice. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 49) It can be argued that the lying and irresponsible attitudes of Boyle and Kyongson stem from their perception of the world. To Boyle, the world is in a terrible state of chaos (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 148). Similarly, according to Kyongson, ‘뭐가 뭔지 뒤죽박죽이다! … 점점 가경으로 몰아치는구나’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 351): ‘Everything is turned upside down, inside out! … The world is going mad’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 37). Indeed, there is nothing that either character can do in this world. Therefore, they have disrespect for the truth. As Krause argues, Boyle’s ‘disrespect for the truth stems not only from an instinctive love of licence, but from an empirical conviction that a virtuous life invariably leads to dullness and a heroic life often leads to death’ (76). Likewise, Kyongson’s disrespect for the truth stems from the same combination. 이왕 그렇게 돼서 방금 경맬 헌다는 마당에 내가 나서문 뭣해? 속만 상허지 … 우리 핼 가져가는 게 뭐 이번이 처음이구, 또 마지막인가, 어디? (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 350–51) What good is it even if I do something at this point? Things have already gone their way, and the auction is about to begin. Watching the whole thing would only hurt my feelings … It’s not the frst time they have taken what is ours and it won’t be the last, either. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 36) Therefore, they bury their heads in the sand and turn everything into a joke. They ‘insulate themselves from the world of terrible realities by living in an illusory world of drunken bravado’ (Krause 78). In this shattered world, humour becomes a means of survival: O’Casey would have it [comic spirit] so precisely because the humour in his plays reveals a native vigour and shrewdness in his characters which ironically becomes a means of survival in a shattered world. It is this attitude which keeps his plays from becoming melancholy or pessimistic. His humour saves him and his characters from despair. (Krause 72) This remark can also be applied to Kyongson, who shows his sense of humour even when he is forced to leave his home country with his family in the face of an uncertain future. There is, however, a difference between Boyle and Kyongson. While Boyle remains a comic fgure to the end, Kyongson turns into a tragic fgure. Boyle will be ‘gallivanting about all the day like a paycock’ and will be ‘hopeless till the end of his days’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 77, 145). As Krause

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notes, ‘As Juno and Mary leave to start a new life, the Captain and Joxer stagger drunkenly into the barren room, roaring patriotic slogans as they collapse in a state of semi-coherent bravado. It is a fnal scene of horrible humour. The Captain remains the “struttin’ paycock” in his glorious deterioration’ (79). In contrast, after he leaves his house, Kyongson wanders about from place to place peddling and, when he comes back, has become a different person from what he used to be. He is now able and willing to see his own image and decides to leave his hometown with his family: 경선처. 하론들 더 있으문 뭘 헙니까? 경선. 암, 창피만 더할 뿐이지. 명서. 자네두 창피스런 줄 알았으니,

장관일쎄그려. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok

Jeonjip 1 362) BOOGER’S WIFE. [KYONGSON’S WIFE].

[while packing] What’s the use of staying here any longer? BOOGER. [KYONGSON]. That would only add to our shame. HUSBAND. [KUMNYO’S FATHER]. [laughs heartily] If you know your own shame, then you’ve turned yourself into a philosopher. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 49) Kyongson says, ‘제 고장이란 밥술이나 얻어먹을 땐 따뜻한 양지쪽이지만, 우리같이 잠자리조차 걱정허게 되구 보면 외려 감옥이데’ (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 362): ‘This village was a comfort when we had a roof over our heads. But now we have to worry about where to spend each night, it feels like a prison’ (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 50). With this clear view of his world, he becomes a tragic fgure because ‘the tragic fgure becomes truly tragic when he is able to see his own image; the comic fgure becomes absurdly comic when he is unable, or pretends to be unable, to see his own image’ (Krause 76). Thus, Kyongson’s laughter can no longer be just simple laughter; it becomes, instead, bitter laughter: 경선.

어딜 가두 웃고 지내지. 누가 술을 받아 놓구 제발 울어 달래두 난 안 울어 주네. 암 막무가내지. 정말일쎄.

…………………………… 경선. 저걸 만났을 때 젖멕이를

등에 차구, 바가지를 들구 다니는 그 꼬락서니란 과연 가슴에서 이런 돌덩어리가 목구멍까지 치밀데. 그래두 난 참았어. 이 를 악물구 참았지. 명서. 알겠네. 자네 웃음이 얼마나 쓴 줄을. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 363) Wherever I go, I have good laughs. To see me cry, someone has to pay me. I won’t cry any more. That’s the truth.

BOOGER.

……………………………

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BOOGER. …

Earlier I saw my wife, baby on her back, carrying a gourd bowl in her hand. That sight was so pitiful that I felt my stomach churning. But I kept it under control. I kept it under control, with all my might. HUSBAND. I know, bitter is the word to describe your laughter. (C. Yu, ‘The Shack’ 51–52) Unlike Boyle, Kyongson shares the burden of reality by leaving with his family. We can infer, then, that the reason Yu Chi-jin turned Kyongson into a tragic fgure is related to his theatrical purpose. Yu tried to depict the fatalism of Korean people under colonialism in his plays with a realistic touch (‘Yeoksageuk-gwa Pungjageuk’). In accordance with his defnition of realism, plays should deal with facts to look probable (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 59). Kyongson’s leaving with his family rather than remaining a comic fgure might have been more likely in his view because it was common for Korean rural people who suffered the loss of their home and land under colonialism to leave their hometown. As the English literary scholar Yoh Suk-kee points out, the fatalism became a barrier for him to unfold his exuberant imagination to create a comic fgure like Boyle (12). Meanwhile, the tragic-comic fgure Kyongson could also be the result of the consideration of the audience at that time. With regard to performances of Juno and the Paycock, Roger McHugh states in his essay: There are few more masterly touches in O’Casey’s dramatic writing than that by which Juno, in her moment of terrible suffering at Johnny’s death and her daughter’s plight, repeats this prayer, and so becomes by extension Mrs. Tancred and all bereaved mothers, including the Blessed Mother. … We may thus be reasonably sure that in O’Casey’s conception of the play the tragic element dominated or at least equalled the comic. But in seeing various performances over the years, both inside and outside Ireland, it is quite noticeable that the reverse is what happens and that audiences come away remembering the Paycock’s comic aspect. (41–42) This notion could have been pertinent to the Korean audience at that time. Whereas laughter and humour were elements that could commonly be found in traditional Korean drama, the modern drama was a new style of genre to the Korean audience at that time, while the tragic-comic genre was entirely new. Although sinpa theatre was enjoyed as a form of modern theatre by the Korean audience, it was mostly tragedy that the Korean audience was used to seeing. Korean audiences might have come away remembering Kyongson’s comic aspect if Kyongson had remained a comic fgure to the end. However, with Kyongson remaining a tragic fgure, the Korean audience could have sympathised with him and refected on their situations under colonialism, thereby meeting the very intentions of the play’s author.

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Yu likely considered this point and concluded that he had to turn Kyongson into a tragic fgure. Interestingly, the flm based on O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock produced by Alfred Hitchcock in 1930 focuses on the tragic element of the play by ending with Juno’s line. Although Yu Chi-jin was infuenced by O’Casey, we can say that he appropriated O’Casey’s characters to suit the Korean situation at that time. 10.4 Offstage Dramatic Effect One of the dramatic techniques that Yu Chi-jin adopted from O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy was what he called the ‘mudaeri ui hyogwa (offstage dramatic effect)’. According to Yu, the offstage dramatic effect involves concentrating the tension of the play offstage and constantly making the audience conscious of those events that are taking place off the stage (Dongrang Yu Chijin Jeonjip 7 124). Yu asserts that O’Casey used these dramatic techniques to deliver his message effectively. Set in the Dublin slum tenements during the period of ‘the Troubles’, the plays of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy are ‘bound together by war, its violence and tragic disruptiveness’, yet war is not seen on the stage (Murray xiii). As a direct action, as Raymond Williams points out, war is on the streets, and ‘the people crowded in the houses react to it, in essential ways, as if it were an action beyond and outside them’ (53). However, it is the offstage war that creates tension on the stage, continually seizes the attention of the audience, and ultimately changes the life of the dwellers of the tenements. According to Yu, O’Casey succeeded in revealing the brutality of war simply by describing the responses of the characters to the wars off the stage without directly dealing with the wars on the stage (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 124). The frst play of the trilogy, The Shadow of a Gunman, is set in 1920 during the Black-and-Tan War. The focus of this play is not the love story of Davoren and Minnie but rather the offstage terror that affects the characters’ fate, as Yu Chi-jin correctly points out (Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 124). O’Casey effectively creates tension on the stage via various sounds offstage, including orders, the tramping of heavy feet, Minnie’s shouting voice, and shooting, and, in so doing, he delivers the terror and fear of the war by retaining the attention of the audience (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 124). Juno and the Paycock is also set in the period of ‘the Troubles’. The civil war that broke out in 1922 forms the background to the play and, as Murray notes, ‘[t]he invasion of the tenements by the civil war is a far more insidious invasion of the private by the public than the raid by the British army in The Shadow of a Gunman, for now the enemy is within’ (xii). Nevertheless, the play focuses primarily on the daily life of the Boyle family and their neighbours, which seems to have nothing to do with the civil war. As Williams puts it, ‘the dominant action is the talk of Boyle and Joxer: idle talk, with a

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continual play at importance: the false colours of poverty, which has gone beyond being faced and which is now the endless, stumbling, engaging spin of fantasy’ (54). Our directed focus on the family, however, allows us to witness ‘how deeply into the daily lives of the people the bloodshed has seeped’ (Murray xii). The war is their business, as Juno articulates in Act II: in fact, nearly the entire household has been massacred, but the war is not dealt with on the stage. The audience can feel the war only through Johnny, who lost his arm in the Irish War of Independence, and through the conversations among the characters: MRS. BOYLE.

I don’t know what’s goin’ to be done with him. The bullet he got in the hip in Easter Week was bad enough, but the bomb that shattered his arm in the fght in O’Connell Street put the fnishin’ touch on him. I knew he was makin’ a fool of himself. God knows I went down on me bended knees to him not to go agen the Free State. MARY. He stuck to his principles, an’, no matter how you may argue, ma, a principle’s principle. (O’Casey, ‘Juno and the Paycock’ 207) According to Yu Chi-jin, the offstage dramatic effect is most prominent in The Plough and the Stars, the play of the Easter Rising and of the Citizen Army. 제1막에서 창밖으로 보이는 … 창백한 가솔린 광선, 해머 소리, 혹은 궁행 (躬行)하여 가는 x 대의 티페라리의 노래 소리, 제2막에서는 주점 밖에서 부르짖는 아이들의 연설, 그에 따른 절규, 제3막에는 약탈 소동으로 오는 불안, 거리의 시끄러움, 제4막에서는 유리창을 물들이는 화염 등등이 그 것이다. The offstage dramatic effect is produced by the faring fame of a gasoline lamp seen outside the window, the clang of crowbars striking the sets, the voices of the soldiers singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ in Act I; the sound of speeches outside the public-house and cries in Act II; and looting and noises on the streets in Act III and rife and machinegun fre that paints the sky a fuller and deeper red. (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 125) For example, the nationalist is not seen on the stage; only his speeches urging the Irish people to fght together are heard outside the public-house window: Voice of the Man. Comrades soldiers of the Irish Volunteers and of the Citizen Army, we rejoice in this terrible war. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefelds…. Such august homage was never offered to God as this: the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country. And we must be ready to pour out the same red wine in the same glorious sacrifce, for without shedding of blood there is no redemption! (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 184)

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With these dramatic devices, the audience recognises that ‘war is the catalytic agent which sets them [the people on the stage] in motion and reveals their values: idealism, unselfshness, the family, security, loot’ (McHugh 43). Yu Chi-jin observes that although O’Casey dealt with political concerns, he avoided being accused of writing ideological agitprop by using the offstage dramatic technique: 숀 오케이시의 작품은 정치성을 배경으로 하여 그 간에 움직이는 빈민생활 의 참담한 처지를 취제하였다. 그러나 이 작가는 그의 작품으로서 하나의 이데올로기를 아지 프로하려고 조급하지는 않았다. 그러기 전에 그는 이중 삼중으로 지(地)의 하층계급에서는 얼마나 많은 곤궁과 무지와 환멸과 희 원이 있는가를 있는 그대로 시례(示例)하려 하였다. 그 시례는 모두 일상생 활의 평범한 사건에서 인거(引擧)하였는데. Sean O’Casey’s plays dealt with the politically derived sufferings and tragedies of slum dwellers. He depended on indirect means rather than direct propaganda to further his ideological purpose. Thus, he tried to portray objectively the poverty, ignorance, disillusion, and desire of the lower classes who suffered in the turmoil. He made the characters show the true picture of themselves by situating them in their ordinary daily life. (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 7 125) It is true that keeping key events offstage allows for a more objective view. When you maintain distance from an event, you can see the bigger picture and judge that event objectively. Indeed, through his use of the offstage technique, O’Casey delivered his message by presenting the facts objectively rather than by preaching. Yu thought this dramatic technique would be effective for his theatrical purpose: to reveal the problems of colonialism. Set in Korean farming villages during the 1920s and 1930s, his peasant trilogy deals with the rural dwellers who suffer the loss of their land, houses, children, and even their minds. However, the destructive external force causing such loss does not appear on the stage. Yu sought to reveal the brutality of the colonisers solely by objectively presenting these tragic events that rural dwellers experienced in their daily lives. The frst play of his trilogy, The Mud Hut, depicts the ordinary daily experiences of two peasant families whose lives are destroyed by events offstage: the death of an independence activist and the seizure of property. The everyday lives of Myongso’s family on the stage is affected by Myongsu, who is never seen on the stage, as he has been working in Japan for seven years to support his family. Myongso’s family lost contact with him for two years, and they try to contact him through Samjo, who is going to Japan. A picture and an article in the newspaper brought by the district chief one day disturb Myongso’s family. The article is about the arrest of an independence activist, and the picture is of Myongsu. The description of Myongso’s house illustrates how the news has affected the daily lives of Myongso’s family.

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His house becomes much more desolate and devasted, and the family’s only production tool, a straw bag maker, is long gone (‘전보다 일층 더 쓸쓸하 여 풍차파벽은 더욱 심하다. 그들의 유일한 생산기관이던 가마니기는 없어진 지 오래다’; C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 355). The family must have sold the straw bag maker to make a living because they could not receive money from Myongsu. Finally, Myongsu’s remains, delivered by the postman, engender the climax of his family’s tragedy. Similarly, the seizure of Kyongson’s house is not seen on the stage but is revealed through the characters’ dialogues: 경선. 장리 쌀 몇 가마니 꾸어다 먹은 게 있는데 그걸래 무슨 집행이 나왔다나. 경선 처. 어서 가서 말 좀 해유. 저 놈들이 우리 누더기 쪼각꺼정 마구 가져가나봐.

I borrowed a few bags of rice on interest, and they came to seize our house because of that. KYONGSON’S WIFE. Please go talk to them. I’m afraid they would take away everything. (C. Yu, Yu Chi-jin Huigok Jeonjip 1 351) KYONGSON.

Although these two events do not appear on the stage, they control the fates of the characters. With the death of Myongsu, Myongso’s family loses their only hope, and his wife goes mad. With the seizure of their property, Kyongson’s family loses their home and are forced to leave their hometown to become wandering labourers. While Yu does not directly reveal the cause of these tragedies, the colonisers are behind these catastrophic events: Myongsu’s death is due to the colonisers, and the seizure of Kyongson’s property is a consequence of the colonisers’ agricultural policy. Yu also employs events that contrast with the ones on stage, heightening the tragedy the audience can see. The Scene from the Willow Tree Village depicts the cruel life that rural villagers suffered due to the colonisers’ policies. This play tells the story of Kyesun’s and Deokjo’s families, who live in the same village, and focuses on the villagers’ responses to the two events related to Kyesun and Deokjo. Kyesun is forced to be sold to a brothel to support her family, and Deokjo is missing after going to gather arrowroot for food. The young girls in the village – who do not know the truth – envy Kyesun her good luck in going to Seoul, while the adults are much grieved about it, and the villagers are extremely anxious that Deokjo may have fallen over a precipice. In the end, Kyesun is sold to Seoul, and it transpires that Deokjo had, indeed, fallen over a cliff. The external force that controls the life of the villagers and sparks these tragic events is not seen on the stage; instead, it is alluded to through the characters’ dialogues. Without explicit onstage descriptions of colonial policies, the Korean audience can nonetheless receive the message: they can easily link the situations on the stage to colonial policies. The story, then, is about them. Nevertheless, the characters have the willingness to overcome their

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sufferings and diffculties. For instance, Kyesun’s mother tells Kyesun, who leaves their village to be sold: 계순아, 제발 부탁이다. 어디서 무슨 일에 몸이 팔리든지 부디 우리가 사는 버드나무 선 동네를 잊지 말리. 이 동네엔 얼마나 기막힌 사연이 많은가를. Kyesun, please never forget our village in any situation you’re forced to sell your body. Never forget how many miserable events we’ve gone through. (C. Yu, Hanguk Huigok Daegye 2 132) This line encourages Kyesun’s willingness to overcome her adversities. The next line from Seongchil also refects the will to overcome their tragic situation: 맘을 단단히 해서 우리네 손자 놈들에겐 이런 꼴을 다시 안 뵈게 해야지. We must gird our loins so that our grandchildren may not suffer these tragedies. (C. Yu, Hanguk Huigok Daegye 2 132) The Ox adopts similar dramatic devices. This play deals with the conficts between tenants and landowners, focusing on the story of a tenant farmer, Kukso, and his family. The whole village is in a festive mood, with a bountiful harvest on the horizon at long last, and Kukso’s house is no exception. However, the estate agent appears and dashes their optimism. The agent asks Kukso to pay all the overdue farm rent that Kukso’s family owes due to the many consecutive years of famine, but if Kukso pays that off, not a single grain will be left for his family. The estate agent fnally sells the ox owned by Kukso’s family in lieu of the overdue rent. The hopes and dreams that each member of Kukso’s family had in relation to the ox are thus shattered: Kukso loses something that he values even more than the members of his family, Malttong’i loses his only chance to get married, and Kaettong’i loses his dream to go to Manchuria to make money. The sound of rice threshing, the voices of farmers singing about a good harvest, and the sound of a folk band celebrating the harvest are heard offstage throughout the whole play. These dramatic devices are effectively used to achieve the tragic effect. As in the previous play, the external force that causes this tragedy is not seen on the stage, and the landowner, who can be interpreted as symbolising the Japanese colonisers, is present only offstage. By modelling his dramatic work on O’Casey’s plays, Yu achieved his political and aesthetic purpose. By depicting the realities of Korean farming villages under colonialism objectively without dealing with the colonisers on the stage, he succeeds not only in describing the real lives of the Korean people but also in avoiding the risk of his plays becoming propaganda dramas, as Kim In-pyo observes (172). Most importantly, however, we can argue that this dramatic technique might have been the most effective way to avoid

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the colonisers’ censorship. Given the strict censorship of the theatre under colonialism, it would have been impossible to present the colonisers as the exploiters of the Korean people. Yu Chi-jin might have been aware of this fact as a theatre practitioner and as a dramatist and, in turn, utilised this dramatic technique after careful consideration. Yu Chi-jin adopted the settings, characters, and dramatic techniques from O’Casey’s plays and appropriated them in creating his own plays. Although Yu (‘Naega Sasukhaneun Naeoe Jakga’) notes that he felt as if he were copying or imitating Sean O’Casey’s plays, the following remarks show that Yu’s plays were essentially ‘born in his soil’: 우리집 한약방을 찾아오는 병들고 초췌한 농어민들을 통해서 나는 통영에 많이 살고 있었던 지주를 대단히 미워한 것이다. 이러한 미움은 곧 가난하 고 고통받는 사람들에 대한 연민으로 나타났다 … 내 처녀작 「토막」도 그 래서 탄생된 것이었다 … 순박하고 착하지만 무력해서 빼앗기고 패배하고 절망하는 고향의 농민들의 극한적 삶을 묘사해 보자고 마음먹었다. 그래서 탄생된 것이 두번째 작품 「버드나무 선 동리의 풍경」이었다. Whenever I saw the illness and haggardness of farmers and fshermen who frequented my father’s Oriental medicine clinic, my hatred grew toward the landlords, and I felt compassion for those poor and suffering people … Thus, my frst play The Mud Hut came into being … I wanted to describe my village people whom I saw – the severe life that honest and innocent, but powerless, deprived, and hopeless people had to suffer. Thus, my second play The Scene from the Willow Tree Village was created. (C. Yu, Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 107–15) This remark suggests that, frstly, Yu’s social origin and environment had a major infuence on his creative life. Although he was infuenced by O’Casey, his plays were not just imitations of O’Casey’s plays; they were also the product of his innovative use of O’Casey’s plays to serve his view of the theatre. Both O’Casey and Yu Chi-jin sought the power to bring about a revolution in society through each of their trilogies but in a different sense. While their plays were similarly created under colonialism and depicted destitute and suffering people, O’Casey’s trilogy aimed to convey the message that wars for a great cause or independence are meaningless if they result in innocent victims by depicting families and communities destroyed by political violence. As Seumas Shields cynically comments in The Shadow of a Gunman, ‘It’s the civilians that suffer; when there’s an ambush they don’t know where to run. Shot in the back to save the British Empire, an’ shot in the breast to save the soul of Ireland’ (O’Casey, Seven Plays 28). In The Plough and the Stars, Mollser, a consumptive child, asks, ‘Is there anybody, Mrs Clitheroe, with a titther o’sense?’ (O’Casey, Sean O’Casey: Three Dublin Plays 180). This can be considered the question that O’Casey is asking the world. According to O’Casey, the lives of people are of the utmost importance and

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should be put before any great cause. Of course, this does not mean that he did not love his country: as Krause comments, ‘Only a man who loved his country so deeply could have hated so fercely the conditions under which his countrymen lived. His life and his work represented a rebellion against human suffering, and exile was the heart-breaking price he had to pay for that rebellion’ (45). His Dublin trilogy did not focus on criticising British colonialism but on depicting the tragedy of Dublin tenement denizens who were involved in the independence war (I. Kim 172). In contrast, Yu Chi-jin’s interest was in revealing the harsh reality of colonial policies by depicting the tragedies of Korean farming communities. He tried to awaken the Korean people by staging the realities of Korean farmers under colonialism. For this purpose, he adopted and appropriated the elements and dramatic techniques of O’Casey’s drama. While O’Casey was self-consciously concerned with the representation of Ireland as his primary subject to convey the message of pacifsm, Yu focused on the portrayal of the Korean people under colonialism to promote the message of anti-colonialism. Yu created his own literary world based on O’Casey’s plays, and, with his trilogy, he succeeded in opening a new feld of realist peasant drama and in forming a resistance theatre in the modern Korean theatre world during the colonial period.

11 J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea and Ham Se-deok’s Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island As George Watson posits, ‘the last ten years of the nineteenth century and the frst thirty or so years of the twentieth saw the shaping and making of modern Ireland’, and the theme of Irish writing at the beginning of the 20th century was ‘Irish identity, each writer’s identity, and the meaning of Irishness’ (13–14). The Irish Literary Revival, which emerged as a new movement in Irish literature, sought to carve a new Irish identity out of the old Celtic traditions. J.M. Synge was one of the most prominent writers of the period and wrote works that ‘represent the whole complex spectrum of political, social and religious pressures moulding Ireland during the most dramatic years of her transition from an inert to a new and frequently violent nation’ (Watson 13–14). Unlike other Revival writers, such as W.B. Yeats or Lady Gregory, who sought to create Irishness by reviving Cuchulanoid Irishness, Synge wanted to forge a new Irish identity out of the Celtic traditions. Riders to the Sea is the product of these efforts. In writing this play, Synge incorporated his experiences during his visit to the Aran Islands: While Synge was on Inishmaan the story came to him of a man whose body had been washed up on the far coast of Donegal, and who, by reason of certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island. In due course, he was recognised as a native of Inishmaan, in exactly the manner described in the play, and perhaps one of the most

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The setting of Riders to the Sea is Inishmaan, the place Synge visited. By depicting the life of people in Inishmaan, uncontaminated by colonialism, he tried to describe authentic Irishness. Inishmaan was ‘perhaps the most primitive’ area ‘left in Europe’ at that time (Casey 90). In depicting the life of the island, Synge focuses not only on ‘local culture as yet unspoiled by the infuence of foreign colonialism’ (Harrington xi) but also on a place where people are ‘engaged in the most elemental struggle – the struggle for survival in nature’ (Casey 93). He interweaves the story with the religion, superstition, folklore, and nature the Aran islanders have lived with throughout the centuries. Synge likely wanted to portray the Aran islanders as their own masters, just as ‘Tiger’ King says in Man of Aran, Robert Flaherty’s fctional documentary flm: ‘You say we are primitive. We are. Just primitive men and women left behind by what you call progress. But we are happy. It is not the happiness of ignorance, for we are our own masters’. Although Synge focused on creating a new Irish identity in Riders to the Sea, this play has been adapted or appropriated for many purposes for stage, cinema, opera, and dance since it was frst performed on 25 February 1904 at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theatre Society. In 1925, for example, the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams adapted this play into an opera, which, in many respects, he tried to transform into an apolitical work of art (Kataoka 65). Inspired by the play, Bertolt Brecht wrote a one-act play, Señora Carrar’s Rifes, in 1937. Brecht re-located the setting to Spain during the height of the Civil War and depicted Teresa Carrar, the wife of a fsherman, who wants to keep her two sons from going off to war but ends up fghting on the side of the oppressed. Meanwhile, the Japanese playwright Kan Kikuchi resituated Riders to the Sea within a Japanese context and wrote Umi no Yuusha (Heroes of the Sea) in 1914 (Wetmore and Liu 3; Kojima 109; Poulton 86). Caribbean writer Derek Walcott wrote The Sea at Dauphin in 1954, modelled after Riders to the Sea. Walcott employs ‘local registers throughout, blending Francophone patois elements with Anglophone Creole, and this immersion in everyday St. Lucian speech is complemented by a similar commitment to the local world in the use of a beach setting, which allows the sea to function as a major protagonist in the action’ (Aboelazm 295). Interestingly, the reason Walcott became interested in Irish literature is very similar to that of Korean intellectuals under colonial rule, as expressed in his 1980 interview: I’ve always felt some kind of intimacy with the Irish poets because one felt that they were also colonials with the same kind of problems that existed in the Caribbean. They were the niggers of Britain. Now with all that, to have those outstanding achievements of genius whether by Joyce or Beckett or Yeats illustrated that one could come out of a depressed,

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depraved oppressed situation and be defant and creative at the same time. (Aboelazm 216) Walcott showed a particular interest in Synge’s Riders to the Sea as a model for his play. He notes when he read the play, he realised what Synge had ‘attempted to do with the language of the Irish. He had taken a fshing port kind of language and gotten beauty out of it, a beat, something lyrical. Now that was inspiring, and the obvious model for The Sea at Dauphin’ (Aboelazm 216). Korean playwright Ham Se-deok was also interested in the language of the Irish in Riders to the Sea when he wrote his plays modelled after Synge’s play. In his plays, Ham employed the language he had heard spoken since his childhood, much as Walcott did in writing The Sea at Dauphin. Inspired by Riders to the Sea, Ham wrote Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island, but, unlike Synge, he sought to describe the Korean fshing villages that were contaminated by colonialism. 11.1 Ham Se-deok’s Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island Together with Yu Chi-jin, Ham Se-deok was one of the leading Korean dramatists in the 1930s and 1940s. Ham was born in Incheon, a port city west of Seoul, in 1915. He spent most of his youth in Incheon and wrote many works set in the islands there. He discovered an interest in theatre as a student of Incheon Commercial School and, after graduating, he found a job at a bookstore, where he read many plays from other countries and got to know Yu Chi-jin through the poet Kim Soun. He learned dramaturgy from Yu Chi-jin and later worked as a member of the Geukyeonjwa Theatre Company (formerly GeukYeon) and the Hyeondai Theatre Company, which Yu Chi-jin was leading. Hyeondai Theatre was a pro-Japanese theatre troupe organised by the Government-General and the leading fgures of the theatre industry in colonial Korea on 16 March 1941 to develop the theory and practice of national theatre. Before writing pro-Japanese and leftist plays, Ham Se-deok wrote realistic plays that depicted poverty-stricken fshing villages or farming villages under colonial rule, including Sanheoguri, A Trip to Muui Island, and Potatoes, Weasels and A Schoolmistress. He defected to North Korea in 1947 and was bombed to death at the age of 35 in the Korean War. He was classifed as a pro-communist writer, and his works were banned in South Korea until 1988 (M. Lee 1116). Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island are both realistic plays that Ham wrote in his early years. Sanheoguri is a one-act tragedy that was published in the literary magazine Joseon Munhak in 1936. It was Ham’s frst play. Set in a cottage in a small fshing village on the west coast of Korea, the play portrays the poverty-stricken life of a fsherman’s family under Japanese colonial rule. When the curtain opens, a shabby cottage comes into view; the audience sees the fsherman’s wife cooking rice porridge early in the morning while her eyes turn to the sea, seen through the back door of the kitchen. She is waiting for a boat: eight

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days ago, her second son Bokjo went to sea and has not yet returned. She had already lost her eldest son and her son-in-law to the sea, and her husband lost his leg to a shark while out sailing for fsh. The fsherman’s wife is afraid of the further loss of her son. However, the fshermen, returning alive from the storm, tell her that Bokjo sadly died at sea. When the body of her son is carried to the cottage, she denies his death and goes mad. A Trip to Muui Island, which was published in the literary magazine Inmun Pyeongron in 1941, is a two-act tragedy set in an impoverished fshing village. The play centres around the conficts between Cheon-myeong and his family members over whether he should be sent to sea or not. Cheon-myeong is Nakgyeong’s only living son. Nakgyeong has already lost two sons to the sea and had to sell his daughter to make a living. He is too old to work as a sailor and is dependent on his wife’s brother, a shipowner of an old fshing boat, to support his family. Now, the only way to make a living is to send his only living son to the sea. His wife’s brother wants Cheon-myeong to work as part of his crew. After witnessing the death of his two elder brothers to the sea, however, Cheon-myeong is afraid of the sea and does not want to go. He wants to become a truck driver instead. He tries to escape from home and, upon being caught, threatens to kill himself rather than go to sea. He is nonetheless forced to go to sea and tragically dies in a storm. There are, of course, some similarities in dramatic structures and characters between Synge’s Riders to the Sea and Ham’s plays, and Ham is thought to have appropriated Synge’s play, although he did not express that he did. The following section comprises an investigation of this appropriation. 11.2 The Setting of the Plays The setting of Riders to the Sea is primitive and geographically isolated from the modern world. The primitivity of the lives of the characters is symbolically represented by natural elements and supernatural forces they cannot control and against which they cannot fght. Maurya’s family are devout Catholics, but their life is permeated with Irish folklore and superstitions – ‘colors, clothing, horses, the sea, certain actions and utterances, the hearth, all [of which] have superstitious meanings’ (Hull 246) – and folkloristic elements. For example, in Irish folklore, ‘it was unlucky for a traveller to return for something he had forgotten, as Bartley returns for the rope. It was even more dangerous not to return a blessing; and on Aran even compliments to another person were considered harmful unless they were rounded off by the precautionary words “God bless you”’ (Kiberd 163)8. Thus, when Maurya fails to return Bartley’s blessing as he leaves the house, she later tries to do so. The grey pony with Michael upon it is the púca, which appears in the form of a horse to lure people to death (Danaher 95 qtd. in Kiberd 163). Nora consults the young priest for his opinion as to whether Michael was drowned while fshing; however, in Irish folklore, it was considered unlucky to mention a priest in the context of fshing (Kiberd 164). Maurya rakes

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the fre aimlessly until it is almost extinguished, but in Irish folklore, the fre symbolises human life and must not be allowed to die down (Kiberd 166). These folkloristic elements play a crucial role in creating suspense and evolving the narrative of the play. These folkloristic aspects, together with natural elements that foreshadow the tragic ending of the play, symbolise the supernatural forces human beings are unable to control. As Skelton points out, ‘while he was concerned to present accurately the life and dignity of the Aran peasant’, Synge was also ‘interested in creating a more universal picture of a man surrounded by natural elements and supernatural forces – or beliefs about those supernatural forces – which he is unable to control’ (447). Maurya’s family is impoverished, so they must sell their horses to make a living. In fact, as Pat Mullen was told by his dying mother, ‘Keep the horse … and you will always have a chance to earn a shilling’ (53 qtd. in Kiberd 164): such was the value of a single horse on Aran (Kiberd 164). Nevertheless, Synge focuses on the elemental environment in which the family lives rather than accentuating their poverty. The sea is closely related to the life of the Aran islanders: ‘They must fsh to live, and their livestock must go to mainland markets; thus, two mainstays of their small economy involve seafaring’ (Hull 249). The sea is a signifcant elemental environment for the Aran islanders, as ‘Tiger’ King says in Man of Aran: ‘The only master we have ever known is the sea’ (Flaherty). The following introduction of Man of Aran shows what the sea is like in the life of the Aran Islands: The Aran Islands lie off Western Ireland. All three are small – wastes of rock – without trees – without soil. In winter storms they are almost smothered by the sea, which, because of the peculiar shelving of the coastline, piles up into one of the most gigantic seas in the world. In this desperate environment the Man of Aran, because his independence is the most precious privilege he can win from life, fghts for his existence, bare through it may be. It is a fght from which he will have no respite until the end of his indomitable days or until he meets his master – the sea. (Flaherty) The sea in Riders to the Sea resembles the sea described in Man of Aran. It is portrayed as a powerful element to be feared and dreaded. At the beginning of the play, Maurya is overwhelmed with ominous premonition and foreboding. When Bartley is determined to make a sea-crossing, she is worried about losing her son, exclaiming that ‘It’s hard set we’ll be surely the day you’re drown’d with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I an old woman looking for the grave?’ (Synge 65). Having already lost her husband, her husband’s father, and four of her sons to the sea, Maurya knows how powerful and cruel the sea is. As such, when Nora tries to comfort her with the priest’s words (‘Didn’t the young priest say the Almighty God wouldn’t leave her destitute with no son living?’), Maurya returns, ‘It’s little the like of him knows of the sea … Bartley will be lost now’ (Synge 69). As Robin Skelton argues, ‘the sea is, indeed, the

200 Appropriation of Irish Plays “Almighty God” of the play, an older and more formidable spiritual power than that represented by the priest who, it is emphasized, is “young”’ (449). Having known and experienced the sea longer than the young priest, Maurya knows the sea better and believes that her only living son, Bartley, is doomed to death. As she predicts, Bartley returns dead. Once all the men are dead, there is nothing left for the sea to wield its power over, as Maurya laments: ‘They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me’ (Synge 71). As noted by Skelton, ‘there is an arbitrary quality about the fates of the characters that reminds one of the world of Oedipus. Even here, however, one can fnd some historical justifcation for the cruelty of the fates. In Riders to the Sea, however, there is no justifcation. This is not a place in which there is any kind of justice, or mercy’ (449), so relentless and merciless is the sea. Therefore, the tragedy Synge describes in Riders to the Sea is specifc to the Irish culture rather than being political or historical (Innes 145–46). By appropriating Riders to the Sea, however, Ham Se-deok portrays the political and historical tragedies the Korean people suffer. Ham Se-deok relocates the setting of the play to fshing villages in colonial Korea. Sanheoguri is set in a cottage on the west coast of Korea: 코를 찌르는 듯한 악취가 배인 습한 누추한 어부의 토막. 중앙에 개흙이 무 너져가는 방이 있고, 우편으로 비스듬히 부엌. 방머리에 옹배기를 엎어놓 은 굴뚝. 부엌 뒤로부터 굴뚝같이 얕은 토담이 둘려 싸였고, 빨래, 그물, 생 선, 엉겅퀴 등이 널려 있다… 멀리 캄캄한 어둠 속에 늠실늠실 물결치는 거 츨은 바다가 보인다. A fsherman’s shabby cottage that is damp and stinky. In the centre of the stage is seen a room with its earthen wall partly fallen apart and a kitchen on the right side of it. At the upper side of the room there is a chimney with the pottery bowl on top. The low earthen wall at the back of the kitchen is surrounding the cottage, and laundry, fshnets, fsh, and thistles are scattered upon the wall … the wild rolling sea is seen far in the darkness. (Ham, Sanheoguri 1) The description of the fsherman’s cottage as ‘stinky’ and ‘damp’ and the emphasis on the ‘fallen’ wall shows the fsherman’s meagre living, and ‘the wild rolling sea’ in the darkness alludes to even greater adversities to come. The setting of A Trip to Muui Island also refects the poverty of the fshermen. The play takes place on Muui Island, off the western sea of Korea: 서해안에 면한 무의도라는 조고만 섬. 섬에 흔히 볼 수 있는 퇴락한 어부의 집… 지붕에는 풍어를 빌든 봉죽이 낡은 채 펄럭인다. 그물말에 걸린 건어 꾸레미와 어촌색을 낼 만한 어구들 상당히. 도민들이 가장 기피하는 황량 한 겨울이 접어들려는 10월 상순.

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A small island facing the west coast of Korea. A fsherman’s cottage in decay that is commonly found on the island … An old fag that wishes a good haul of fsh is futtering on the roof. There are dry fshes hanging on the mesh and fshing gears. The time is early October, the beginning of bleak winter, when fshermen avoid most. (Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 2) As in Sanheoguri, the cottage where the play takes place reveals the poverty of its residents. We can see that most of the village is not well-off from the description: ‘A fsherman’s cottage in decay that is commonly found in the island’. The time of the play, ‘the beginning of bleak winter’, also signifes the ordeal to come. Unlike the Aran Island in Riders to the Sea, which is uncontaminated by colonial rule, the fshing villages of Ham’s plays show the infuence of colonialism. Ham depicts the villages as stricken by poverty and, throughout his plays, suggests that this poverty is caused by colonial rule. Japanese inroads into Korean fsheries left Korean traditional fshing villages impoverished and ruined. As part of its invasion of Korea, Japan continuously expanded its inroads after the Korea–Japan fsheries agreement of 1889. In 1903, under the guise of protecting their national fshermen, Japan developed a plan to build fshing bases in Korea and constructed Japanese migrant fshing villages in major Korean fshing bases. In 1908, it forced the Korean government to sign a fsheries law to grant equal legal rights to Japanese fshermen in Korea as Korean fshermen (Y. Kim 125). After the colonisation of Korea, Japan passed a law to enact a license or approval to fsh in 1911, permitting Japanese fshermen to use modern fshing equipment while limiting Koreans to traditional poor equipment (An and Moon 85). For example, only one of 107 cases was approved for Koreans to use diving apparatus, while the remainder were for Japanese fshermen, and anchovy boat seines and purse nets were monopolised by Japanese fshermen in 1912 (An and Moon 86). Furthermore, Japan controlled Korean fshermen through the Japanese fshermen by forcing Koreans to join the Korean Fisheries Association (An and Moon 86). In so doing, Japan seized the fshery rights, including distribution in Korean coasts, and most Korean fshermen degenerated into poverty. The location in which Sanheoguri takes place is such a poor Korean fshing village. The cottage is stinky (‘코를 찌르는 듯한 악취’), and the earthen wall of the room has partly fallen apart (‘개흙인 무너져 가는 방’; Ham, Sanheoguri 1). The Old Fisherman in the play lost his leg to a shark but must work in the fshing ground, relying on crutches (Ham, Sanheoguri 9). Meanwhile, all the boats but one have been lost in the stormy seas, and only two fshermen return alive. Nonetheless, poverty is more dreadful than death, as one of the fshermen, who came to the fshing village from another province to make money, asserts: ‘How can I go back home with empty hands. I’d rather die … I had to sell my daughter to pay a long journey to here’

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(‘빈손들고 어떻게 간단 말이야. 죽은 것만 못해… 딸 팔어서 노자 해왔는데 몸 값에다 길미 곱부쳐서 갚겠다고’; Ham, Sanheoguri 21). The fshing villagers are always starved, as Boksil’s remark shows: ‘Smoke has never risen from our chimney’ (‘굴뚝에 연기 한번 무럭무럭 피어오른 적도 없었지’; Ham, Sanheoguri 10). Unlike Riders to the Sea, the poverty in Sanheoguri is not caused solely by the harsh environment. The playwright hints that the characters’ poverty has more to do with colonial rule. Indeed, the opening scene of the play indicates that colonial infuence is present in the life of the fshing village: for instance, ‘the noise that fshermen make is heard mixed with the sound of motor boats’ (‘거츨은 어부들의 소래가 발동기 소래에 섞어 파 도를 건너 떠들썩이 들려온다’; Ham, Sanheoguri 2). The Old Fisherman in Sanheoguri, who had owned a few boats and many fshing nets, now works on the motorboats. Motorboat fshing, which was adopted in the late 1910s in Japan, was introduced to colonial Korea. However, Korean fshermen could not use the modern method of fshing due to restrictions of the colonial government and fnancial burden (Dong-A Ilbo 5 Dec. 1925). Most of the motorboats were owned by Japanese people: ten boats in 1919 and as many as 387 boats in 1926 were owned by Japanese people, while the number owned by Koreans was one in 1921 and 50 in 1926 (J. Kang 89). This accelerated the decline of Korean fshing villages because Koreans had to rely on conventional fshing methods, which could not compete with the modernised approach. In the play, the fshermen sometimes receive a large catch, yet even then, they cannot eat even a piece of fsh because the brokers force them to sell their wares for a few pennies: 어물거관들 멧푼 던져뜨리고 죽기살기해서 잡은 고기 모조리 휩쓸어 갈 걸 생각하고? 석이. 고깃배 가란도록 가뜩 잡어 들왔댔자 조기토막 한번 쩌먹고 읍에 간 쩍 있냐? 복실.

You are thinking that fsh brokers would pay a few pennies and force them to sell all the fsh they caught for their lives? SEOK-YI. Have we ever had a piece of yellow croaker even when the boat returned with a full load of fsh? (Ham, Sanheoguri 10) BOKSIL.

Given that the Japanese colonial government controlled the distribution of marine products in Korea, the fsh brokers can, in this context, be interpreted as representing the colonial policies. Seok-yi’s dialogue further insinuates that there is another cause of their poverty than the harsh environment. Facing his brother’s death, he says: ‘Why should we always live in tears and cry? … I will think over the reason all through the day and night digging out shellfsh and walking on the roads’ (‘왜 우리는 밤낮 울고 불고 살 아야 한다든? ‘왜 그런지를 난 생각해볼 테야. 긴긴 밤 개에서 조개 잡으며, 긴 긴 낮 신작로 오가는 길에 생각해볼 테야’; Ham, Sanheoguri 29). This remark alludes to colonial rule as the cause of their poverty.

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A Trip to Muui Island makes more explicit references to the situation of a fshing village as penetrated by the colonisers’ fshing industry. The conversation between Gujubu and his daughter shows that Nagasaki boats and motorboats are commonly seen sailing on the sea near the village: ‘Isn’t it the boat that belongs to Motor Boat Association, emitting smoke passing the Nagasaki boat?’ (‘나가사끼 중선 옆으루, 연기 뿜구 오는 게 통운조합 똑대 기가 아니고 뭐야?’; Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 2). The decline of Nakgyeong’s family begins when he encounters a Japanese Nagasaki boat, which symbolises Korea’s encounter with colonial rule. Nakgyeong was once the best fsherman, and his family fourished as a result, but his misfortune begins when he damages the dragnets cast by the Nagasaki boat and must compensate for the loss. The family’s poverty ultimately means that Nakgyeong must lose his only living son to the sea. The colonial infuence on the fshing village is also highlighted in the conversations amongst the characters. Juhak, Nakgyeong’s brother-in-law, wants to buy a motorboat: ‘The world is changing. How could you compete with the motorboat while you stick to a two-masted boat? (‘세상은 자꾸 변 해가는데, 중선을 부렸댔자 그 눔의 발동길 따라가는 재간이 있습디까?’; Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 10). Juhak believes he must buy a motorboat to compete with the Japanese. His remarks also reveal the colonial government’s systematic acquisition of the fshing industry in Korea through education and distribution: 주학: 그럼 어째서 총독부선 돈을 몇십만원씩 내서 어항마다 수산학굘 짓겠 어요? … 지금은 잡는 게 문제가 아니라, 파는 게 문제에요. 벌어서 어듸 매 매를 합디까? 어업조합연합회에다 입찰을 해서 경매들을 하지 않아요? 하 루에두 시세가 미두처럼 올라갔다 내려갔다 하는데 잡기만 하문 뭘 해요? JUHAK: Why do you think the Government-General invest a lot of money in building fsheries schools? … Now, what matters is not how to fsh but how to sell. Where should we sell fsh? We must sell by auction through the Federation of Fishery Associations, don’t we? (Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 10) Juhak alludes to the dual hardships that Korean fshermen had to suffer: they had to not only compete with Japanese motorboats but also survive the fshery distribution system controlled by the colonial government. Therefore, the fshing villages in Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island are both spaces where people must suffer doubly from hostile natural forces and colonial rule. Despite being absent on stage, the colonisers’ power affects the life and fate of the characters who live within the sphere of their infuence, and the people who suffer most are the young. As Maurya remarks, ‘In the big world the old people do be leaving things after them for their sons and children, but in this place, it is the young men do be leaving things behind for them that do be old’ (Synge 67). Both Synge’s play and Ham’s

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plays portray places where young men are sacrifced: in Synge’s play, these men are sacrifced in the fght against nature, while in Ham’s plays, they must fght against poverty. 11.3 Dramatic Structure There are notable structural overlaps between Synge’s Riders to the Sea and Ham’s Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island. All three plays centre on the sea. Riders to the Sea focuses on whether the sea would return the body of Michael; the main interest in Sanheoguri is whether the sea would send back Bokjo; and in A Trip to Muui Island, the question posed is whether Cheon-myeong would be forced to go to sea in a reverse situation of the two other plays. In all three plays, the sea is depicted as both a provider and taker of life. Nets and fshing gears in the opening scenes show the characters’ means of living is fshing. However, the sea is portrayed as a powerful destroyer, engendering catastrophes for villagers in the past rather than a peaceful provider. In Riders to the Sea, for instance, Maurya has lost four sons, her husband, and her husband’s father to the sea, and another son, Michael, is still yet to return from sailing. In Sanheoguri, the Old Fisherman has lost his eldest son and his son-in-law to the sea and lost his leg to a shark, while in A Trip to Muui Island, Nakgyeong loses his two sons to the sea. Such traumatic experiences have left their mark on all of the characters, and the destructive power of the sea enforces the suspense of the plays. Thus, the sea symbolises the space of death, while the land is the space of life in the three plays. Riders to the Sea is about Michael’s return to the space of life from that of death; Sanheoguri concerns Bokjo’s return to the space of life from the space of death, and A Trip to Muui Island is about Cheon-myeong’s journey from the space of life to that of death. Riders to the Sea begins with a scene in which Nora enters with a bundle given to her by the young priest. It comprises a shirt and a plain stocking that were taken from the body of an unidentifed drowned man in Donegal. Cathleen and Nora decide to examine them later to see if they are Michael’s. Confict arises when Maurya tries to persuade her only living son, Bartley, against crossing the sea, while Bartley insists he must go. The play reaches its climax when Bartley leaves the house without his mother’s blessing, while Cathleen and Nora examine the bundle, only to fnd that the clothes do, indeed, belong to Michael. The play’s resolution is met when men and women come to Maurya’s house, bringing Bartley’s dead body. Synge builds suspense throughout the play by questioning whether the sea will return Michael’s dead body and whether Bartley will go to sea and fnish his sea-crossing safely. This suspense is reinforced by folkloristic elements and Maurya’s ominous premonitions scattered throughout the play. As the story develops, these ominous hints and symbols accumulate one by one, ultimately preparing the audience for Bartley’s tragic death. For

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example, Bartley wants a piece of the new rope meant for use in Michael’s funeral as a halter for the mare he will ride. It is the rope that a pig with black feet was eating, which is suggestive of disaster. Moreover, while dissuading Bartley from going to sea, Maurya says, ‘If it wasn’t found itself, that wind is raising the sea, and there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the night’ (Synge 65). A star up against the moon is traditionally considered an evil omen. The most striking example of a foreboding hint is when Maurya sees Michael’s ghost riding on a grey pony behind Bartley on horseback. The vision of the dead man following a living man alludes to an imminent disaster and intensifes the suspense in the play. Maurya does not give her blessing for Bartley to go sea-crossing because of this unlucky vision. Therefore, when the audience learns that Michael’s grey pony has knocked Bartley into the sea, they are not at all surprised: indeed, they have already been forewarned of the ultimate tragedy via the accumulation of ominous suggestions. Throughout the play, there is no hint of hope for the return of Michael’s body or Bartley’s safe voyage. By contrast, the plots of Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island unfold with repeated hopes and frustrations: those concerning Bokjo’s return in Sanheoguri and those about Cheon-myeong’s going to sea in A Trip to Muui Island. Sanheoguri opens with a scene where the Old Fisherman’s wife is waiting for her son Bokjo, who has not returned for several days after going to sea. Just as, in Riders to the Sea, the story of Michael’s return and Bartley’s going to sea evolve in parallel, thereby increasing tension, so too does the story of Bokjo’s return parallel with the story of the Old Fisherman’s eldest daughter, thus enforcing suspense in Sanheoguri. Tension builds up over whether the sea will return Bokjo dead or alive, and hopes and frustrations concerning Bokjo’s return are repeated throughout the play. The suspense rises when Yun Cheomji comes to report that 12 boats are missing and their pieces are foating in: 포구마다 파선 안 한 데가 없고 서른 척 마흔 척씩 행방불명 없는 곳이 없 다드라. There is no port that has not suffered shipwrecks and tens of missing boats. (Ham, Sanheoguri 8) While hope arises when Yun Cheomji exclaims that Bokjo would be the only one who survives the shipwreck, tension increases again when Boksil talks about the damages of the storm suffered by the villagers overnight, and Yun Cheomji appears carrying a piece of board from a shipwreck: 처. 복조 배 부서진 거에요? 윤첨지. 복실네, 들어보란 말이야. 처. (불안과 초조에 싸여 돌려가며

자세히 보고) 아니에요. 피가 없는 것이. 석 이 아버지 상어 이빨에 다리 끊어질 때 시뻘겋게 묻은 피가 없에요. (안심 의 한숨을 쉰다)

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WIFE. Is that from Bokjo’s boat? YUN CHEOMJI. Listen, Boksil’s mother! WIFE. [examining the piece of board in anxiety]

No, there’s no blood. I cannot see any crimson blood, like the one that I saw when my husband lost his leg to the shark teeth. [gives a sigh of relief ] (Ham, Sanheoguri 17)

Hope begins to surface again when a ship approaches the village: 처. 누구네 밸까요? 윤첨지. 복조 배겠지.

배다리에다가 댈랴고 하다가 또 밀려갔군 옳지. 댔다, 댔다. 줄을 던졌어. 내리는군. (동리 사람들 한떼가 ‘배 들왔다’ 떠들고 어장으로 달려간다. 어장이 또 벅적히 떠들썩하다.) 처. 어서 선창으로 가봅시다. 윤첨지. 지금 이리로 오는군 … 처. (허둥지둥하며) 집안을 좀 칠걸. 복실이년이 어서 와야지 고구마를 찔 텐데. 석이 조개 판돈으로는 복조가 평시 좋아하는 콩자반을 만들어야지. WIFE. Whose boat is it? YUN CHEOMJI. Probably

Bokjo’s, I think. They are trying to anchor that shaking boat. They fnally did it. They threw the rope. They’re leaving the boat now. [A group of villagers are running toward the fshing ground, shouting ‘A boat!’. The fshing ground is in a bustle and an uproar.]

WIFE. Let’s go to the dock. YUN CHEOMJI. They are coming here. WIFE. I should have cleaned the house. Hope Boksil come soon to boil sweet

potatoes. I will cook some beans for Bokjo with money Seok-yi made by selling clams. (Ham, Sanheoguri 18) Bokjo’s mother is already flled with anticipation and excitement at the prospect of seeing her son. However, only two fshermen arrive, and there is no sign of Bokjo. Suspense is enforced when the house of the Old Fisherman’s eldest daughter is discovered to have been ruined by the storm. Finally, village people appear, carrying the dead body of Bokjo. A Trip to Muui Island focuses on changes in the situation and conficts among characters regarding Cheon-myeong’s going to sea. Much like how the return of Michael or Bokjo is determined by the sea, the decision over Cheon-myeong’s going to sea has nothing to do with his own will. His fate is established by the situation and people around him. In the exposition of the play, the situation is developed as being unfavourable for Cheon-myeong: for instance, one of Juhak’s sailors unexpectedly quits when short-handed, and Juhak wants Cheon-myeong to work for him. In the face of Juhak’s insistence for Cheon-myeong to accompany him to sea, Cheon-myeong’s

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family cannot resist since they are indebted to him. When Juhak wants to take Cheon-myeong to sea, Nakgyeong hesitates because he wants his son to marry Gujubu’s daughter and become a doctor of oriental medicine. Gujubu, the doctor of oriental medicine, also wants his daughter to marry Cheon-myeong. Juhak, in turn, persuades Nakgyeong, promising he will make Cheon-myeong a Captain, and Cheon-myeong’s father agrees to send his son to sea; thus, the situation tilts towards this inevitability. Having lost his two brothers to the sea, however, Cheon-myeong does not want to go, but he fnally agrees to go in the face of his father’s threats: 네가 안 나간다믄, 네 삼춘두 그저 대줄랴구 하진 않을께다. 오래잖아 성해 가 끼믄 민어낚시하든 것두 못 해먹게 될 테니까, 한겨울 굶구 들앉었을 수 밖에 없지 뭐. If you don’t go to sea, your uncle will stop supporting us. If the ground frosts before long, we could not fsh in the freshwater and will be starving throughout the winter. (Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 19) At this remark, Cheon-myeong thinks he has no choice but to go to sea. This situation changes when Gujubo appears, saying the boat owned by Juhak is so old that the keel of the boat is decayed: 첨 살 때, 그게 새 물건이였어야 말이지? 용우 면장이 3년이나 부리든 퇴 물이였어. 도합 6연이 넘은 셈이야. 공씨. 중선 한 척 장만하믄, 남들은 10년씩두 부려는데? 구주부. 그럭개 칠산서 여에 얹었을 때, 부자리가 철석 한번 갈라졌든 건 생각지 않나? 공씨. 허지만 그 후 항구서 가서 한 달이나 걸려 말갛게 고쳐왔어요. 구주부. 장목 값이 비싸서, 다 고치지 못했어 … 과린산으루 선체를 하얗게 닦으 구, 대깔루 구멍을 며놨으니까, 겉으루 보긴 말짱하지만, 밑창엔 고태꿀이 아가릴 떡 벌리구 있네. 구주부.

It was a used one that he bought. The head of the neighbouring village had used it for three years. That means that the boat is more than six years old. CHEON-MYEONG’S MOTHER. They say the life of some boat is ten years. GUJUBU. Don’t you remember that the keel of the boat was broken while it was being moved in Chilsan? CHEON-MYEONG’S MOTHER. They brought it to the port and repaired it for one month, though? GUJUBU. The price of boards was so expensive that they could not complete the repair … They applied superphosphate to its surface and caulked it. On the outside it looks perfect, but the bottom is the hell. (Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 26) GUJUBU.

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This news makes the situation favourable for Cheon-myeong, who does not want to go to sea. He believes his parents would not force him to go if they thought it to be dangerous. Nevertheless, Juhak gets angry at Cheon-myeong’s parents, who believe the fake rumours about his boat, and threatens to stop supporting their family. At this, Cheon-myeong’s parents decide to send Cheon-myeong to sea. Cheon-myeong tries to escape from his house as if he knows his imminent fate. He refuses to take the boat: 천명. (쥐어짜는 듯한 소래로 규환을 친다) 죽으믄 죽었지 그 밴 안타요, 그 밴 부

자리가 헐었어요. 낙경. 헐긴 그 배가 웨 헐어? 이눔아, 나가긴 싫든 참에 핑계 하나 잘 잡었구나? 천명. 성서방이 거짓말했을 리가 없어요. 그 밴 대깔루 구멍을 며놔서, 겨우 물이

안 들어오지만, 대깔만 빠지문, 배 밑창으루 고태꿀이 빌꺼에요. 더군다가 골관에서 노대나 한 번 만나문, 부자리가 철석 갈라질 꺼에요. 공씨. 이눔아, 그건 구주부가 널 배에 못 타게 하느라고, 꾸며서 한 소리야. 천명. 내가 배에 가서, 대깔을 빼봤어요. 나무가 썩어서, 욱이적 욱이적 해요. [shouts in a heart-wrenching voice] I’d rather die in a ditch than take the boat. Its keel is damaged. NAKGYEONG. What do you mean by ‘damaged’? You’re just fnding an excuse not to take the boat. CHEON-MYEONG. Mr. Seong could not have told a falsehood. They caulked the boat to stop water leaking, but once the oakum falls out, the bottom will become the hell. Furthermore, if it meets a strong wind, its keel will be broken. CHEON-MYEONG’S MOTHER. Say! Gujubu made it all up to stop you from taking the boat. CHEON-MYEONG. I went to the boat and tried to take the oakum out. The oakum itself was decayed and fragile. (Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 31–32) CHEON-MYEONG.

Having checked the condition of the boat, Cheon-myeong recognises its imminent fate, as well as that of the people who will take the boat. He threatens his parents that he would rather kill himself with a kitchen knife than take the boat. However, he fnally decides to take the boat for his family and is later killed in the storm. Through the repeated hopes and frustrations over Bokjo’s return in Sanheoguri and Cheon-myeong’s going to sea in A Trip to Muui Island, Ham suggests that the tragedy could have been avoided if their situations were favourable. This is in direct contrast with Synge’s Riders to the Sea: Synge depicts the inevitable course of nature the Aran fshermen must take through the incremental accumulation of tragic hints. Ham Se-deok, meanwhile, suggests that the bleak realities described in his plays would have been avoidable if not for the colonial situation.

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11.4 Characters By appropriating Riders to the Sea, Ham Se-deok’s characters deliver the themes of his plays differently from those of Riders to the Sea: Ham foregrounds the tragic situation of fshing villages under colonial rule. In Riders to the Sea, all the men are absent, having been lost to the sea, except Bartley, while Michael has not come back from the sea. Being the only living man in the family, Bartley must take care of his family. The loss of the men symbolises the defeat of human beings in the fght against nature. While being absent in Riders to the Sea, the head of the household is present in both Sanheoguri and A Trip to Muui Island. Ham portrays the head of the household as a fgure who has suffered a downfall and is now helpless. The Old Fisherman in Sanheoguri once owned a few fshing boats and many fshing nets, but he had to sell them. What is more, he lost his leg to a shark and his eldest son and son-in-law to the sea. Now he is ill, constantly soaking his clothes with blood, but he must depend on folk remedies because he cannot afford to see a doctor. Nakgyeong in A Trip to Muui Island was also once well-off, but he came to ruin after damaging fshing nets cast by a Japanese boat. He is now too old to make a living, so he must depend on his brotherin-law for his family’s keep. He is forced to send his only living son to sea to make a living. The Old Fisherman and Nakgyeong are symbolic fgures who represent the tragic situation of fshing villages in colonial Korea. They also represent Korea as suffering under colonial rule. The mother fgures in Riders to the Sea and Sanheoguri show similar characteristics. They each worry ftfully about their sons and go through many restless nights: Bokjo’s mother spends nights pacing around the dock (Ham, Sanheoguri 4), and Maurya has been crying and keening for nine days. Neither has a positive mentality: they are easily frustrated and sometimes stricken with catastrophic premonitions. Recalling the day when the marine policeman brought the frozen pants and jacket belonging to her eldest son, the Old Fisherman’s wife is stricken with an ominous foreboding: 큰아이 죽든 날도 꼭 가을 꼭두새벽 이맘때야. 그날도 청성맞게 황둥개가 짖었지 아마 … 하나님도 설마 복조마저야 안 잡어가시겠지. 그러나 같이 나갔든 배들 한 척 두 척 벌써 다 들왔는디 아즉도 열두 척만 꿩궈먹은 소 식이니 벌써 물귀신 다 됐을꺼야. 지금쯤은 몸뚱이 벌써 죄다 파먹히고 바 지조고리만 어느 바윗틈에 꼈을거다. It was around this time of the day in autumn, wee hours, that he died. The dog barked plaintively that day too, I think … God would not take Bokjo away as well. Anyway, all the other boats that went to the sea that day already came back except the twelve boats. We’ve heard nothing from those boats. They must be already drowned. Their bodies must be

210 Appropriation of Irish Plays eaten away now and only their pants and jackets must be stuck among rocks somewhere. (Ham, Sanheoguri 4–5) Maurya in Riders to the Sea also expresses similar anxiety when she thinks she sees Bartley riding on the red mare, behind which is Michael’s grey pony: ‘Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffn out of the white boards, for I won’t live after them’ (Synge 69). Nonetheless, when Bokjo’s mother and Maurya face the death of their sons, they exhibit different responses. Bokjo’s mother denies the reality that her son has returned dead, preferring instead to recall illusory images: 내가 맑은 물 떠놓고 수신께 빌었거던. 이것은 우리 복조 아니야. 내 정성을 봐서라도 이렇게 전신을 파먹히게 안 했을꺼야. 지금쯤은 너구리섬 동녘에 있는 시퍼런 깊은 물속에. 참 거기는 미역냄새가 향기롭지. 그리고 백옥 같은 모래가 깔렸지. 거기서 팔다리 쭉 뻗고 눈감었을꺼야. I’ve prayed to the Sea God. This isn’t my Bokjo. If he heard my prayer, God would not let his body be eaten away like this. He may lie down in the deep blue sea, east of the Raccoon Island, that is covered with the pearlywhite sand. There the sea weeds smell sweet. He must be lying there with his eyes closed, stretching out comfortably. (Ham, Sanheoguri 27) Indeed, Bokjo’s mother cannot accept or endure the painful reality of Bokjo’s death. While Bokjo’s mother goes mad, conversely, Maurya acknowledges the truth of her son’s death: Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fne coffn out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfed. (Synge 72) Furthermore, Maurya now accepts man’s inevitable defeat in the war against the power of nature and prays for all people – dead or alive – who have had to and will have to confront this power: May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley’s soul, and on Michael’s soul, and on the souls of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and Shawn [bending her head]; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of every one is left living in the world. (Synge 72) In this way, Maurya’s sadness over the death of her son is sublimated into the love of humankind. Ham Se-deok creates different roles for the daughters and sons in his plays from those in Riders to the Sea. In Synge’s play, Maurya has three children: one son and two daughters. Just like Maurya, the Old Fisherman’s

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wife in Sanheoguri has three children, also one son and two daughters. The children have similar roles in each play, undertaking chores and comforting their mothers, who are waiting for their sons’ return. However, in Sanheoguri, the eldest daughter functions to maximise the tragic situation of the family. She lost her husband to the sea and now cannot make a living. To feed her baby and make a living, she often steals clams from other fshermen. On top of everything else, her house collapses in the storm. By weaving her story into the plot of the play, Ham reinforces the tragedy of the Old Fisherman’s family. A character who seems to have been created based on Bartley in Riders to the Sea is Seok-yi in Sanheoguri. As the only living man in the house, Bartley feels responsible for supporting his family. He is the only person who earns money in his family and can offer support, as Maurya’s remark reveals: ‘It’s hard set we’ll be surely the day you’re drown’d with the rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I an old woman looking for the grave?’ (Synge 65). Thus, despite his mother’s worries – as Nora says, ‘there’s a great roaring in the west, and it’s worse it’ll be getting when the tide’s turned to the wind’ (Synge 64) – Bartley thinks he must go sea-crossing because ‘this is the one boat going for two weeks or beyond it, and the fair will be a good fair for horses’ (Synge 65). As the head of the household, he instructs Cathleen on what to do while he is absent: Let you go down each day, and see the sheep aren’t jumping in on the rye, and if the jobber comes you can sell the pig with the black feet if there is a good price going … If the west wind holds with the last bit of the moon let you and Nora get up weed enough for another cock for the kelp (Synge 65). One might infer from his attitude that he recognises his imminent fate: when, for example, he comes to the house looking for a rope, he expresses no expectations about his travel. Instead, he ‘comes in and looks round the room. Speaking sadly and quietly,’ he asks about the rope (Synge 65). It seems that he has reconciled himself with his fate since ‘it’s the life of a young man to be going on the sea’, as Cathleen says (Synge 66). He seems to have internalised the experience of witnessing his family members’ deaths, believing that, as Maurya says, ‘no man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfed’ (Synge 72). Seok-yi in Sanheoguri is like Bartley in that he is the only living and youngest son and earns money for his family. However, unlike Bartley, Seok-yi appears on stage more frequently; he is concerned about his family as if he were the head of the household. Although the Old Fisherman is the head of the household, he is not a tower of strength mentally and physically: he is disabled, sick, and always under the infuence of alcohol. He is always in a bad temper and sometimes aggressive and violent. Seok-yi, in contrast, is very mature for his age. He is not old enough to go to sea, so he works in

212 Appropriation of Irish Plays the mud fats digging clams until his legs are stiff with cold (‘정갱이가 그대 로 빳빳치 굳겠지’); nevertheless, his concerns lie with his family members rather than himself (Ham, Sanheoguri 3). He is worried about his mother, asking if she got any sleep last night (‘어머니 어젯밤은 좀 주무셨수?’), and he feels heartbroken about the miserable situation of his elder sister (Ham, Sanheoguri 4). He claims ‘I don’t care about how cold I am. It was heartbreaking to see my elder sister almost naked and muddy and shivering with cold in the mud fat’ (‘난 춥지 않다 장사래 큰누나 벌거벗은 몸에 개펄칠하 고 덜덜 떠는 것은 차마 두 눈 뜨고는 못보겠드라’; Ham, Sanheoguri 6). He is also sympathetic towards his father – he says, for example, ‘I don’t know why, but I feel pity for our father though’ (‘왜 그런지 난 그래도 아버지가 불 쌍해’) – because he knows what his father has suffered and understands his perpetual bad temper and propensity for violence (Ham, Sanheoguri 14). He seems to think that his father cannot face up to his painful reality. Seok-yi, meanwhile, is reasonable and understands what their reality is. He tries to learn offcial information about the possibility his brother Bokjo will return alive by asking, ‘is there any news about shipwrecks in the newspaper?’ (‘신 문에 물 건너서 파선했다는 말은 없어요?’; Ham, Sanheoguri 7). In addition, he clearly understands the reality that even if boats return with a full load of fsh, there will be no fsh for them to eat because of the fsh brokers (Ham, Sanheoguri 10). Unlike Bartley, then, Seok-yi shows development as he suffers hardship. In the beginning, he considers the death of his eldest brother a fsherman’s fate and thinks there is nothing that can be done. He agrees with Boksil, saying ‘Nobody could’ (‘남이라 살라고’) when Boksil asks her mother, who laments every day over the death of her eldest son, ‘Are we the only ones who suffer this accident? Who could be a fsherman if you have to lament every day over what happened?’ (‘이것이 어디 우리만 당하는 일이 에요? 지난 일을 끄집어 내서 우시곤 우시고 하시면 산허구리에 고기잡어먹고 살 사람 있겠어요?’; Ham, Sanheoguri 4). Finally, when Bokjo returns dead, Seok-yi is determined to fnd out the causes of their tragic reality: ‘Why should we always live in tears and cry? … I will think over the reason all through the day and night digging out shellfsh and walking on the roads’ (Ham, Sanheoguri 29). This change in his attitude can be interpreted as his will to tackle the causes of his tragedy; he will not merely accept and surrender to his fate. Cheon-myeong in A Trip to Muui Island is an entirely different character from Bartley or Seok-yi in that he tries to resist the fate of a fsherman from the beginning. Like Bartley, he is the only living son in the house and the only man in the house who can earn money for his family. He is a seventeen-year-old youth who was the frst to graduate from his elementary school with honours. He is considered intelligent by the other villagers. Having been born and raised in the fshing village, his two brothers lived their lives as fshermen, yet Cheon-myeong has a different dream and wants to be a truck driver. After witnessing the death of his two brothers, he knows how hostile the sea can be against humans. The sea is a space of death for him. Thus, he is

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afraid of going to sea, especially when he knows that the boat he will embark on is damaged. He argues, ‘I’d rather die in a ditch than take the boat’ (‘죽으믄 죽었지 그 밴 안타요’; Ham, A Trip to Muui Island 31). Unfortunately, however, he lacks the power to decide his fate: the people around him decide whether he will go to sea and disregard his dream or will. The plot of the play focuses on the conficts among people over Cheon-myeong’s embarkation. Juhak wants to make Cheon-myeong his sailor, while Gujubu wants Cheon-myeong to marry his daughter, so he tries to persuade Cheon-myeong’s father not to force Cheon-myeong to go to sea. Cheon-myeong’s parents do not wish to send their son to the sea at frst, but they are obliged to force their son to do so to make a living. As such, Cheon-myeong meets his death. As seen above, while Synge portrayed the tragic reality that is specifc to the Irish culture in Riders to the Sea, Ham Se-deok presented the historical and political reality of Korean fshing villagers by appropriating Synge’s play. By relocating the setting of Riders to the Sea to Korean fshing villages and by twisting the dramatic structure and characters of the play, Ham successfully portrayed the life of Korean fshermen under colonialism.

Notes 1 Yu Chi-jin published a part of Roman Rolland’s Le Théâtre du Peuple in the Chosun Ilbo on 24 January 1933. 2 Throughout the book, I have followed the revised Korean Romanisation rules, but, when quoting The Mud Hut and The Ox, I have kept the characters’ names as they appeared in the texts I quoted from to avoid confusion. 3 Yi Gwang-su (1892–1950) was a pioneer of a new modern Korean literature. During the colonial period in Korea, he worked as an independence activist but later turned to being a pro-Japanese writer. 4 Yu had visited Japan in March 1934 to study the theatre further. 5 We can tell from Hwang Sun-won’s example that censorship was less strict in Japan: Hwang, a member of the Tokyo Student Arts Theatre Company, published an anthology of poems in Tokyo, avoiding censorship from the Japanese colonial government, although he was later sentenced to 29 days’ detention (D. Lee et al., Britannica World Encyclopedia [vol. 25] 495). 6 For more about the land survey, refer to Bak 63–98. 7 Won is the national currency of South Korea. 8 The sources Kiberd used for this information are Seán Ó Súilleabháin’s Irish Folk Custom and Belief (Dublin, n.d.), Pat Mullen’s Man of Aran (Massachusetts, 1970), and John Messenger’s Inis Beag (New York, 1969).

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Conclusion

This investigation of colonial Korean theatre has shown how translation was utilised for dual functions by both the coloniser and the colonised. While the colonisers permitted the importation and translation of foreign texts to replace the native Korean culture, they tried, at the same time, to suppress the spread of radical ideas and materials through censorship. In contrast, Korean intellectuals sought to use foreign texts as a means of ‘blood transfusion’ to nourish Korean culture and to awaken the Korean people. Given that ‘translatorship amounts frst and foremost to being able to play a social role, i.e. to fulfl a function allotted by a community’ (Toury 53), it is not surprising that the translation activities undertaken by the colonised Korean people were related to their nationalistic purpose. The nationalistic orientation of Korean theatre played a vital role in defning the pattern of imported foreign drama. Korean intellectuals and theatre practitioners believed that realist drama could ft their purposes of establishing their own modern national theatre and arousing the Korean people. Venuti argues that ideological manipulation occurs from the very choice of a foreign text to translate (67); indeed, the Korean people imported Irish playwrights not so much because of their literary or artistic talents but because they corresponded to a political and colonial niche. Thus, they appropriated the Irish dramatic movement and its texts to serve their purposes. The reason they looked at Ireland rather than the imperial centre was that they identifed with Irish people as fellow members of the colonised periphery. Korean intellectuals were interested in Irish drama as a product of colonialism and as a tool for political struggle. They paid attention to the fact that the Abbey Theatre was a patriotic Irish national theatre and utilised the Irish dramatic movement for their own political intentions. Above all, the Irish dramatic movement was considered a patriotic and nationalistic movement that led to the emergence of the Irish Free State in 1922, which resonated with the Korean people. For Korean intellectuals, a cultural movement was the only means of presenting any form of resistance to the colonisers, particularly given that no political activities were allowed under Japanese colonial rule. In this way, the Irish dramatic movement became a model for the modern Korean theatre movement to follow, and Irish

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playwrights who were involved in the Abbey Theatre – the centre of the movement – were adopted in the process of forming a Korean dramatic repertoire. Nevertheless, the selection and translations of Irish texts in colonial Korea did not take place without the colonisers’ intervention. The Japanese colonial government suppressed translation activities that were against their colonial policies by wielding their power of censorship. As such, Irish drama in colonial Korea was formed in accordance with two conficting systems: Korean nationalism and the colonisers’ censorship. Self-censorship on the side of the colonised played an additional role in the process. Therefore, the translated repertoire of Irish drama in colonial Korea did not fully represent the interests and intentions of Korean intellectuals, as exemplifed by the case of Sean O’Casey. Although the Korean dramatic circle considered O’Casey’s plays the most desirable model to serve the political purposes of Korean theatre, only one of his plays was translated and then published, and none could be staged under Japanese imperial rule. The colonisers’ censorship allowed for no further translation and staging of O’Casey’s plays because the colonial government deemed his work to be replete with nationalism (Jang 93–94). Consequently, O’Casey was positioned on the periphery of the list of translated Irish drama authors under colonialism. However, closer examination has shown that O’Casey did not, in fact, remain a minor playwright on the colonial scene. Korean intellectuals adeptly used his plays to serve their purposes of resistance and innovation by appropriating his works in their creation of original Korean plays. Meanwhile, in order to pass the colonisers’ censorship, Korean scholars used critical essays to introduce O’Casey’s plays. Censorship of critical essays was less strict than that of translated texts because the former was considered less of a public threat than translated works or the theatre. In their essays, Korean intellectuals introduced the plot of O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy in detail and sometimes translated those parts of the texts that they thought served nationalist political purposes. In a sense, writing critical essays was a kind of indirect act of translation. These essays were published in daily newspapers that were used as a means of cultural resistance under colonial rule. The traces of censorship shown in the articles reveal once more the struggle between the colonisers and the colonised to make the meaning serve their respective purposes. The colonisers exercised their power of censorship to suppress the allusion to resistance in the critical essays, while Korean intellectuals tried to stimulate resistance against the colonisers via their lexical choices. The Korean translation of Irish texts also refects the translators’ perception of the Korean audience. They defned and addressed the target audience as being uninformed towards foreign culture and as lacking awareness of their colonial experience, and they mediated the source texts by inscribing domestic realities within the foreign texts to engage the audience. That traces of censorship are witnessed the most in O’Casey-related publications compared to other Irish playwrights suggests that O’Casey was

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perceived as the most political playwright by both the colonisers and the colonised. The translation strategy adopted in The Shadow of a Gunman particularly indicates the ideological purpose of the colonised. While Even-Zohar states that the chances that a translation will be close to the original in terms of adequacy are greater when translated literature maintains a central position in the literary polysystem (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 203), this argument does not precisely refect the situation of Irish drama translation in colonial Korea. Even-Zohar also points out that ‘translated works [are] correlated in the way they adopt specifc norms, which results from their relations with the other home co-systems’ (‘The Position of Translated Literature’ 199). Indeed, the translational norms and strategies in Korean theatre reveal relationships with other home co-systems. Translational principles in Korean theatre were defned by the position of translated drama, which was correlated not only with the Korean dramatic polysystem but also with the Korean ideological polysystem. Translated drama in Korean theatre had to serve both aesthetic and ideological purposes, and these functions defned translational norms. For the aesthetic purpose, translation had to be close to the original in terms of adequacy; for the ideological purpose, translation had to be faithful to the target readers and audiences in terms of acceptability. As in other Irish plays, the translation strategies adopted in The Shadow of a Gunman refect these conficting norms of foreignisation and domestication. Just as translations of other Irish plays were produced as hybrid texts with inscribed domestic realities to engage the Korean masses, so too was The Shadow of a Gunman translated as such. Therefore, rather than having a peripheral position in the list of translated Irish authors, O’Casey was received as one of the major playwrights in Korean theatre to serve the purposes of the Korean theatre movement under colonialism. Furthermore, O’Casey’s central position in Korean theatre is signifed by the debt owed by a central Korean dramatist, Yu Chi-jin, in creating his own plays. By appropriating O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, Yu created his own dramatic themes, characters, and techniques in his realist peasant trilogy, thereby marking the advent of realistic peasant drama in the history of Korean drama. This peasant trilogy was used to spread consciousness of resistance to colonialism. Under the tutelage of Yu Chi-jin, Ham Se-deok also created realistic plays that depicted Korean fshing villages under colonialism by appropriating Synge’s Riders to the Sea. Yu and Ham took O’Casey’s and Synge’s plays and adapted them on two levels. On one level, they dealt with the element of nationalism that gave Korean theatre the political energy necessary under colonial rule. The second level was a more personal search for a way of drawing characters. They had, therefore, a wider educational motive as well as a more personal one, but the former motive was stronger. The result was the emergence of a new genre and a resistance drama in the Korean dramatic polysystem. Bassnett argues that ‘periods of intense translation activity in a culture are followed by a great fowering of local writing talent’, citing, as an example,

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‘the English Renaissance of the sixteenth century after the vast amount of translation undertaken during the diffcult years of civil war in the ffteenth’ (179). However, the Korean situation differs from Bassnett’s example in that the dramatists started being productive during and not after the period of translation activity. Many talented young dramatists started producing their works during the period of intense translation activity in the 1920s and 1930s, as exemplifed by Yu Chi-jin and Ham Se-deok. The difference between the English Renaissance and Korea lies in the cultural and political situations in which the translation activities took place in Korea; the position of translated drama was infuenced by such conditions and was one of the factors affecting the emergence of native Korean playwrights. Since sinpa and traditional theatres were ineffective in educating the masses to recover independence, Korean intellectuals urgently needed to establish their own modern theatre to produce new dramatists. Translation activities were developed as a means of achieving this purpose, and during the 1920s and 1930s, Korean dramatists began to emerge in the context of these translation activities. Thus, the works of Yu Chi-jin and Ham Se-deok were primarily the product of myriad complex social, cultural, and political factors that combined under the pressure of colonial and national imperatives. The process in which Yu devoted himself to the theatre and appropriated O’Casey’s plays supports this view. Unlike O’Casey, Yu’s creativity through the use of O’Casey’s works was to do with nationalism rather than his personal growth as a dramatist. In fact, before leaving for Japan in 1920, Yu worked as a post-offce clerk and had no relation to theatre. His interest in the theatre was initiated not by his artistic interests but rather by his sense of social responsibility as an intellectual under the colonial situation. Due to his nationalistic orientation, he appropriated images of O’Casey and his plays as patriotic and nationalistic. His peasant trilogy was the result of the repositioned product of O’Casey’s plays. Ham Se-deok was infuenced by this approach to Irish drama. In creating his realistic plays, he similarly resituated Synge’s play to function as a representation of colonial outcomes. Rather than using translation, Yu Chi-jin undertook what Even-Zohar refers to as a ‘peripheral activity’ by directly using O’Casey’s plays as a model to enrich and establish his own work (‘Polysystem Studies’ 71). In this context, I would argue that what I call ‘constructive reading’ played a more prominent role than Yu’s translation activity. Indeed, Yu translated only two Irish plays before and during the creation of his peasant trilogy: in 1933, he adapted and directed one of Synge’s works – presumably (given the Korean title, Yaksu, meaning ‘medicinal waters) The Well of the Saints – for radio broadcasting, and in 1935, he adapted Ervine’s The Magnanimous Lover for radio. I defne ‘constructive reading’ as productive reading; it is a process whereby the way you read and the things you read about become the original works that you produce. To inspire his own creative works, Yu read O’Casey’s plays repeatedly and was nourished by the reading experience (Yu 93). His colleague Kim

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Gwang-seop asserts that Tomak was the best harvest yielded by their experience of staging translated drama; indeed, Yu also learned dramaturgy from staging translated drama. For the Korean playwrights, the translation feld in colonial Korea was a place of education and experience where hybrid texts were produced. As Bassnett observes, ‘frequently writers translate other people’s works because those are the works they would have written themselves had they not already have been created by someone else’ (175). Alternatively, writers may translate other people’s works because those are the kind of works they will someday write themselves. In both cases, translation is not simply an exercise: it is part of the continuum of a writer’s life. This argument can also be applied to reading. In the case of Yu Chi-jin, reading was used for the latter case: Yu read O’Casey’s works repeatedly because those were the works he would, one day, write himself. Just as O’Casey acquired his sense of structure and style of drama through his readings of Shakespeare and Dion Boucicault (McHugh 36), so too did Yu cultivate his understanding of themes, structure, and style of drama through his readings of O’Casey. In her essay entitled ‘Writing and Translating’, Bassnett notes that ‘translation was a means not only of acquiring more information about other writers and their work, but also of discovering new ways of writing’ (174). To Yu Chi-jin, this purpose was served by constructive reading. What made this possible was predominately his direct literary connection with O’Casey’s plays. With the exception of The Shadow of a Gunman, O’Casey’s plays could not be translated and published in Korea under Japanese colonial rule. However, as a student and scholar of English literature, Yu read and understood O’Casey’s plays in their original language and could thus appropriate them directly. According to Even-Zohar, ‘In a great number of transfer cases, acceptance or rejection of a certain item from an external source is not necessarily linked to its origin, but rather to the position it has managed to acquire within the target’ (‘Polysystem Studies’ 58). This statement alludes to possible appropriations that may be made in the process of transfer. The acceptance of O’Casey’s plays in Korean theatre under colonial rule was linked to their acquired position in Korean theatre through appropriation, and their acceptance by Yu Chi-jin was also concerned with their position as appropriated by him. Through this appropriative act, Yu produced his own plays that had anti-colonialism as their central theme. While Yu’s plays did not lead to direct political actions and physical confrontation, they contributed to a national awakening of the Korean people under colonialism. His plays also contributed to the emergence of a new drama genre – a realist peasant drama – in the ‘young’ Korean dramatic polysystem. Robinson argues that ‘the fexibility of Japanese censorship control enabled them to shape the content of Korean publication to their satisfaction’ (312), although this does not apply to O’Casey’s case. While on the surface, the Japanese colonisers’ censorship succeeded in infuencing the content of

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Korean publications to serve their purpose, a more in-depth examination shows the opposite. O’Casey’s plays were used as a more effective way to resist colonial power by being appropriated in the creation of original Korean plays. As summarised above, the process of literary interference and appropriations in colonial Korea in many ways refects the laws of literary interference that Even-Zohar alludes to (‘Polysystem Studies’ 53–72), albeit with some variations or deviations. Most of these variations or deviations are due to the colonial context in which the interference and appropriation occurred. Regarding the conditions of emergence and the occurrence of interference, Even-Zohar posits that a source literature is selected according to prestige or dominance. However, in the selection of Irish drama in Korean theatre under colonialism, ideology functioned as a more infuential factor than prestige or dominance. In cases of partially developed systems and minority cultures, a prestigious literature may serve as a literary superstratum for a target literature, much like the case of the status of Greek and Latin literature for all European literature (Even-Zohar, ‘Polysystem Studies’ 66). In colonial Korea, the prestige of Irish drama was a factor in the selection process, but it was a negligible factor. If prestige had acted as the main factor, British drama, including Shakespeare, might have been more dominant than Irish drama, but when the nationalistic modern Korean theatre movement reached its climax during the 1930s, Irish drama became more prevalent in Korean theatre than its British counterpart. Even-Zohar contends that a ‘literature may be selected as a source literature when it is dominant due to extra-cultural conditions’, for example, when a literature is made ‘unavoidable’ by a colonial power that imposes its language and texts on a subjugated community (‘Polysystem Studies’ 68). Conversely, however, Irish drama in Korea was not selected by dominance. The choice was made on the Korean intellectuals’ own initiative rather than because it was ‘unavoidable’. Korean intellectuals sought their tools of resistance to colonial power within another literature of the colonised – Irish drama – rather than in the colonisers’ literature. According to Even-Zohar, ‘interference occurs when a system is in need of items unavailable within itself’; such a ‘need may arise when a new generation feels that the norms governing the system are no longer effective and therefore must be replaced’ and ‘it might be asked whether such a need can indeed emerge not as a consequence of some internal development in a literature, but rather as a result of the existence of certain options in an accessibly adjacent literature’ (‘Polysystem Studies’ 69). While it is true that literary interference occurred in colonial Korea because the Korean drama system required items unavailable within itself, the need arose from two perspectives: aesthetic and ideological. Korean theatre needed both a modernised form of theatre to enrich its ‘young’ modern dramatic system and a form of resistance theatre to confront colonial power. Thus, the needs in the case of colonial Korea were not correlated merely with the internal

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development of the Korean dramatic system; they were also related to the development of Korean political situations. In addition, the need can be said to have arisen as a result of the existence of certain options in an accessibly adjacent literature. With the modernisation movement, Korean intellectuals could have contact with other adjacent literature, and they might have felt the need for a modern form of literature through this contact. Nevertheless, as Even-Zohar argues, it seems that we cannot simply say that need emerges not as a consequence of some internal development in literature but rather as a result of the existence of certain options: this remark seems to neglect the creative ability of human beings. I presume, then, that the need may arise when a new trend of thought arises, and new items may be created if they are needed in a literary system. There is a requirement for future case studies to assess this view. Regarding the process and procedures of interference, Even-Zohar notes that ‘appropriation tends to be simplifed, regularised, and schematised’. He claims that a complex text in the source literature may have a simpler function in the target literature: It is relatively established that peripheral activities using a secondary repertoire tend to regularize patterns that are relatively variegated in a given source.1 By implication, ‘regularized’ entities are also schematized and simplifed. This may mean that while a certain item may have an intricate or plurivocal function within the source literature, its function within the target literature may be more univocal or restricted. (‘Polysystem Studies’ 71) Even-Zohar continues that, equally, the opposite could happen: the source could be straightforward and uncomplicated but could be ‘read’ by the adapter in a different way and used for a different purpose (‘Polysystem Studies’ 72). O’Casey’s and Synge’s plays may have had various purposes in the host literature but were adapted because of a single issue that they contained: that of the struggle for a national identity.

Note 1 This is what Venuti complains about in The Scandals of Translation (1998); by being translated into English, most translated literary works are appropriated and made to look like productions of the host culture. He argues that they should retain some markers of their origins.

References Bassnett, Susan. ‘Writing and Translating’. The Translator as Writer. Eds. Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush. London: Continuum, 2006. 173–83. Even-Zohar, Itamar. ‘Polysystem Studies’. Poetics Today 11.1 (1990), Special Issue.

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———. ‘The Position of Translated Literature within the Literary Polysystem’. The Translation Studies Reader. 2nd ed. Ed. Lawrence Venuti. London: Routledge, 2004. 199–204. Gim (Kim), Gwang-seop. ‘Joseon Geukdan-e Je-eon’ (‘Some Suggestions to the Korean Theatrical World’). Chosun Ilbo 15 Jan. 1933. Jang, Won-Jae. Irish Infuences on Korean Theatre during the 1920s and 1930s. Diss. Royal Holloway U, 2000. McHugh, Roger. ‘The Legacy of Sean O’Casey’. Sean O’Casey. A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Thomas Kilroy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975. 35–51. Robinson, Michael. ‘Colonial Publication Policy and the Korean Nationalist Movement’. The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945. Eds. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984. 312–45. Toury, Gideon. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995. Yu, Chi-jin. Dongrang Yu Chi-jin Jeonjip 9 (The Complete Works of Yu Chi-jin 9). Seoul: Seoul Yedae Chulpanbu, 1993. Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference. London: Routledge, 1998.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abbey Theatre: and Dunsany 92–3; emergence of Irish Free State 72–3; and Ervine 94–5; establishment of 72, 79; frst Irish national theatre 68; and Gregory 79–80, 87; international prestige of 76; in Ireland 53, 67; as national awakening 72; and O’Casey 128, 130–3, 139, 145, 164, 170; plays in Korean theatre and their translations 8; playwrights involved in 7–8, 66, 74–6, 79, 103, 106, 110, 218–19; produced nationalist plays under colonial rule 31; riots in 135; and Synge 88; and Yeats 96, 124 acceptability 40, 43, 44, 79, 97, 154, 220 adequacy 40, 42–4, 79, 91, 97, 106, 116n9, 154, 220 the age of translation 26 American Harlem Renaissance 64 Andrade, Oswald de 6 Anglo-Irish literature 77 Annual Statistical Bulletin 14 anti-colonialism 171, 175, 195, 222 Antoine, André: Théâtre-Libre in Paris (1887) 33 appropriation 223–4; creative process 160; cultural 159; description 6, 159; by Ham Se-deok 8, 197–8; investigation of 198–204; of Irish plays and early Korean realistic plays 159; of O’Casey 8, 9, 160, 177, 222 (see also Dublin Trilogy (O’Casey)); strategy of blood transfusion 6, 218; of Synge 8, 9, 160, 177 (see also Riders to the Sea (Synge)); by Yu Chi-jin 8, 162–71, 182–3

Arms and the Man (Shaw) 53, 115n4, 115n5 Arts Academy 23 audience-oriented translation 40, 43 Ayling, R. 126, 175 Bak, Seung-hui 49, 50, 101, 113; Gilsik (one act) 49 Bak, Y-C. 80, 88, 89, 105, 110, 112, 115 Bassnett, S. 8, 125, 220–2 Bhabha, H.K. 3, 4 Book Department 20 Boucicault, Dion 127, 130, 222 Bourdieu, P.: concept of habitus 111 Brahm, Otto: Freie Bühne in Berlin (1889) 33 Brockett, Oscar G. 32, 33, 80, 123, 176 Bulgaemi Theatre Company (1927) 46 Byeolgeongon (magazine) 88 Cabral, A. 2 Campos, Haroldo de: cannibalist theory of translation 6; concept of blood transfusion 6, 41–2 cannibalism 6–7, 41–2 censorship: Book Department 20; colonisers’ control 2, 8, 20, 51–2, 55, 57, 81, 88, 97, 99, 102, 113, 124–5, 139, 142–3, 154, 167, 170, 194, 219; Intelligence Agency in the Military Police Bureau 20; Japanese colonial government 2, 20, 52, 54, 82, 141, 222–3; Korean 20; magazines 20, 21, 46, 139; of O’Casey’s works in Colonial Korea 139–44; selfcensorship 52, 81, 82, 86, 143, 219;

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Index

of stage performances 139–40, 142; state 39; of subversive expressions 141; Superior Police Department 20; supervision 20 Chae, Man-sik 57 Changjo (Creation) (magazine) 19 Chekhov, A. 7, 34, 46, 49, 51, 53, 55, 102; The Bear 49, 53; The Cherry Orchard 53, 55; The Festivities 53, 55; A Marriage Proposal 53 Choe Byeong-han 80–1, 83, 86, 113 Choe, Jeong-u 80–2, 86–8, 104, 105, 114, 115; as member of GeukYeon 114, 115 Choe Nam-seon 19 Chosun Ilbo (Chosun Daily) (newspaper) 19, 36, 56, 87, 125 colonialism: audiences under 94, 188; British 195; foreign dramas 34; French 1; Irish under 67, 94, 96, 101, 137, 164, 165, 168, 171, 183, 196, 218, 219; Japanese 1–2, 5, 15; Korean farming under 171, 173, 193, 195, 197; Korean fshing under 197, 209, 213, 220; Korean people under 7, 12, 48, 56, 57, 88–9, 93, 97, 124, 134, 138, 168, 171, 177, 188, 195, 222; Korean scholars under 23, 77, 149, 196; Korean theatre under 9, 13, 23, 39, 66, 79, 99, 109, 123–6, 145, 162, 170, 220, 222, 223; modifcations of language status 34; nationalist plays, Abbey Theatre 31; problems of 191; rural communities under 161; Spanish colonisers 5; traces of censorship 142, 194 The Countess Cathleen (Yeats) 73–4 Cronin, Sean: Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology 72 cultural nationalism 4, 7, 12–13, 15, 17–19, 45, 71–3, 99, 102 Cultural Policy 3–4, 16, 19, 45, 57n1 cultural renaissance 19 Daehan Maeil Sinbo (newspaper) 14, 20 Daehan Minbo (newspaper) 9n2 Daejung Gongron (magazine) 88 D’Annunzio, Gabriele 111 Danseongsa Theatre, Seoul 48 Dark Period 13, 57n1 domestication 39–40, 44, 83, 85–7, 97, 99, 107, 220 Dong-A Ilbo (Dong-A Daily) (newspaper) 19, 21, 36, 47–8, 67, 94, 100, 104, 109, 125 Dongguk Cultural Association 23

Donggwang (magazine) 87 Dongjisa 113 Dongmyeong (Eastern Light) (magazine) 19 Donguhoe Theatrical Troupe 22, 26–7, 47–9, 100, 112–13, 164 Dorcey, Donal 74 Dublin Trilogy (O’Casey) 161–2; characters 175–89; Juno and the Paycock 65, 113, 130, 132, 134–5, 143–4, 160, 166, 167, 169, 175–7, 179–80, 182–3, 188–90; offstage dramatic effect 189–95; The Plough and the Stars 132, 134–6, 144, 160, 166, 169, 175, 190, 194; setting of plays 171–5; The Shadow of a Gunman 125, 130, 135, 140, 144–54, 160, 166 Duncan, D. 77 Dunsany, Lord 7, 37, 46, 51, 66, 97, 107, 110, 114, 125; career 74–5; Fame and the Poet 50, 57n5, 93, 101; The Glittering Gate (one-act play) 47, 65, 70, 92, 100, 112; The Gods of the Mountain 50, 57n5, 100–2, 107; Golden Doom 93; The Tents of the Arabs 93, 94, 102 Eckert, Carter J. 18, 20 Elan Vital Shogekijo 65 English Independent Theatre 33 Enlightenment Literature 19 Ervine, St J. 7, 46, 52, 74, 99, 110, 143, 221; John Ferguson 95, 103; The Magnanimous Lover 52, 53, 93–6, 103–6, 143, 221; Mixed Marriage 95; The Orangeman 103 Even-Zohar, Itamar 12, 28, 29, 31, 40, 66, 78, 89, 125, 145, 161, 220–4 Fanon, F. 1, 2, 7 Farmland Law 174 Faulkner, William 159, 160 Fawcett, P. 110, 139 Federation of Fishery Associations 203 Findlay, Robert R. 32, 33, 80, 123, 176 Flannery, J.W. 96 foreignisation 39–40, 44, 86, 97, 99, 220 free translation 41, 43–4, 97 French colonialism 1 French Théâtre-Libre 33 Gaebyeok (Creation of the World) (magazine) 19, 21, 45, 88 Gaelic Revival 73

Index Gaiety Theatre in Manchester 103 Galsworthy, John 30, 51, 54, 78, 102; The First and the Last 54 Gandhi, L. 5 Gentzler, E. 6 George, Lloyd 146 German expressionist theatre (Changjak-eul Gwonhamneda) 33–4 German Freie Bühne 33 GeukYeon: audience-centred policy 54; Choe Jeong-u, as member 114, 115; dependence on modern Western plays 53; during frst period 52–3; Gim Chang-gi, as member 110; Gim Gwang-seop, as member 28, 110, 113; Ham Dae-hun, as member 110; infuential organisation throughout 1930s 51; Jang Gi-je, as member 115; Jeong In-seop, as member 113; in radio drama 110; research and operations divisions 51–2; during second period 54; Seo Hang-seok, as member and playwright 25, 110; Silheom Mudae (the Experimental Stage) Theatre Company 25, 52; Yi Ha-yun, as member 110, 113, 114, 115; Yi Heon-gu, as founding member 25; Yim Hak-su, as member 114; Yu Chi-jin as director 25, 110, 113–14, 126, 168 Geukyeong Donghohoe (Theatre and Film Club) 51 Geukyeonjwa Theatre Company 52, 54, 197 Geukyesul (Theatre Arts) 52, 109 Geukyesul Hyeophoe (Theatre Arts Association) 47, 112–13 Geukyesul Yeonguhoe (Theatre Arts Research Association) see GeukYeon Geumseong 45 Gim, Chang-gi 110; as member of GeukYeon 110 Gim, Gi-jin 49, 112 Gim, Gwang-seop 26, 29, 30, 41, 42, 66, 67, 73–4, 77, 81, 88, 89, 107, 115, 168, 170, 222; as member of GeukYeon 28, 110, 113 Gim, Jeong-jin 21, 23, 24, 32, 33 Gim, Jin-su 57 Gim, Jong 68 Gim U-jin 13, 23, 24, 26, 27, 32, 33, 36, 38, 47, 57, 77, 92, 100, 111 Gim, Yeong-su 57

229

Goering, Reinhard 46, 53, 55; Seeschlacht 53 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 45 Gogol, Nikolai 34, 46; The InspectorGeneral (fve acts) 52, 53, 143 Goldsmith, Oliver 69 Gongsang Munhak (Science Fiction) 111 Goryeo Theatre Company 113 Gouanvic, J-M. 22 Gregory, Lady A. 7, 30, 46, 51, 52, 55, 65, 66, 68, 74–88, 114, 123–5, 129, 131–3, 137, 143, 164, 168, 195; Abbey Theatre 79–80, 87; Cathleen ni Houlihan 70; The Gaol Gate 52, 53, 65, 66, 87, 103–6; The Rising of the Moon 65, 66, 79–87, 103; The Travelling Man 65; The Workhouse Ward 87 Grein, Jacob: Independent Theatre in London (1891) 33 Grene, Nicholas 69 Guo, Moruo 64 Haebang Geukjang (Liberation Theatre) 164 Haeoe Munhak (Foreign Literature) 28 Haksaeng Yesuljwa Theatre Company 142–3 Hale, T. 8, 39 Ham, Dae-hun 52, 110, 112; as member of GeukYeon 110 Ham, Se-deok 8, 9, 57, 159, 160, 195–7, 200, 208, 209, 210, 213, 220, 221; Potatoes, Weasels and A Schoolmistress 197; Sanheoguri 197–8, 201–6, 208–12; A Trip to Muui Island 197–8, 200, 203–9, 212–13 Haymarket Theatre in London 100 Heyward, Dorothy 54; Porgy 54 Heyward, DuBose 54; Porgy 54 Hitchcock, A. 189 Hong Hae-seong 13, 22–4, 26, 32, 47, 51, 53, 103, 112, 113 Hong Nan-pa: Choehu ui Aksu (The Last Handshake) (two-act piece) 47 Horniman, Annie 68 How He Lied to Her Husband (one act) (Shaw) 49, 115n4 Hugo, Victor 45, 111 Hwangseong Sinmun (newspaper) 14 hybrid text 97, 99, 220, 222 Hyde, Douglas 37, 77, 87; Casadh an tSúgáin/The Twisting of the Rope 77 Hyeon, Cheol 22, 23, 26, 27, 33 Hyeondai Theatre Company 197

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Ibsen, H. 7, 23, 24, 32–4, 46, 47, 51, 53, 55, 102, 112, 123; A Doll’s House 47, 53, 55; Ghosts 55; The Lady from the Sea 55, 102; Little Eyolf 55; The Vikings at Helgeland 55 Intelligence Agency in the Military Police Bureau 20 Irish drama: reception of 78–9; translators of 110–15, 111 Irish dramatic movement 9, 28, 53, 94, 97, 110–11, 113–15, 131, 139, 154, 162, 218: representation of 66–78 Irish Literary Theatre 68, 123 Irish Nationalism: A History of its Roots and Ideology (Cronin) 72 Irish National Theatre 68, 88, 100, 110, 196 Irish playwright: J.M. Synge 88–92; Lady Gregory 79–88; Lord Dunsany 92–4; published Irish playwrights and works 98; radio drama 109–10; reception of 78–9; staged Irish Playwrights and Works 99–107, 108, 109; St. J. Ervine and W.B. Yeats 94–7, 99; and works, translations of 79 Irish Renaissance 37 Jang Gi-je 76, 77, 89, 93, 94, 103, 113–15, 143–5, 153; as member of GeukYeon 115 Japanese colonialism 1–2, 5 Japan–Korea Protectorate Treaty 162 Jeguk Sinmun (newspaper) 14 Jeong, In-seop 37, 77, 110, 113, 115, 144; as member of GeukYeon 113 Jiyu Gekijo (Free Theatre) 27 John Bull’s Other Island (Shaw) 69, 115n5 John Ferguson (Ervine) 95, 103 Jo, Myeong-hui 47, 164; Gim Yeong-il ui Sa (The Death of Gim Yeong-il) (three-act play) 47, 48 Joseon Actors School 23 Joseon Educational Ordinance (1911) 15 Joseonjigwang (Light of Korea) (magazine) 19 Joseon Munhak (magazine) 197 Joseon Radio Drama Association 110 Joseon Theatre 49, 95, 106, 168 Joseon Yeongeuk Hyeophoe (Korean Theatre Association) 55 Joseon Yeongeuk Munhwa Hyeophoe (Korean Theatre and Culture Association) 55

Joseon Yeongeuksa Theatre Company 142 Jo, Yeong-dae 93, 114 Juno and the Paycock (O’Casey) 65, 113, 130, 132, 134–5, 143–4, 160, 166, 167, 169, 175–7, 179–80, 182–3, 188–90 Kaiser, G. 46, 55; Gilles und Jeanne 55 Kan, Kikuchi 65, 196; Kayano Yane (Thatched Cottage) 65; Umi no Yuusha (Heroes of the Sea) 65 K.A.P.F. (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio) 113 Kei, Hara 16 Kilroy, T. 123, 132, 165 Kim, In-pyo 162, 193 Kim, Soun 197 kkokdu gaksi (puppet theatre) 1 Kloss, Heinz 34, 35 Korean Fisheries Association 201 Korean language use movement 36 Korean nationalism 5 Korean Production Movement 18 Korean theatre: Abbey Theatre plays in 8, 131–2, 145; content of translation 5, 8; creative writing in 138; cultural movement of 21; decline of sinpa 3; Irish playwrights in 8, 162, 218 (see also Irish drama; Irish dramatic movement); modern (see modern Korean theatre movement); nationalistic orientation of 218, 223; traditional 1–2, 21, 26, 50, 56, 142, 161; translational principles in 220 Krause, D. 127, 130, 132, 167, 182, 183, 186, 195 Kwon, Oh-man 162 Kyoto Renaissance 65 language status: collection of legends, folksongs, and ballads 37; colonialism 34–5; development of a national language 38; discouraged language 34, 35; establishment of Korean grammar system 37; Gaelic language 37; infuence of translation 37–8; joint offcial language 34, 35; literary language 37; popularisation of magazines and newspapers 37; production of Korean dictionaries 37; promoted language 34; regional offcial language 34; sole offcial language 34; survival and reform of 34–9; survival of 36; tolerated

Index language 34, 35; translation of foreign literary works 37; usage of 38 Liberal Party 2 literal translation 31, 41, 43, 58n16 literary interference 223 Lu, Xun 64 The Magnanimous Lover (Ervine) 52, 53, 93–6, 103–6, 143, 221 Ma, Hae-song 100 Malone, A.E. 78, 95, 124, 133, 137 Manchester School of playwrights 103 Mao, Dun 64 March First Independence Movement 3, 7, 12–13, 15–21, 45, 56, 67, 72, 102, 150, 162 Martyn, Edward 68, 123 Masatake, Terauchi 14, 15 Mason, I. 151 May Fourth Movement (1919) 64 McDonald, R. 129, 135 McHugh, R. 130, 188 Meiji Restoration 2 The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare) 53, 110 Meyer-Förster, Wilhelm: Alt-Heidelburg (fve acts) 49 Min, Byeong-hwi 29 Minjung Theatre Company (People’s Theatre Company) 51 Mixed Marriage (Ervine) 95 moderate nationalist movement 17 Modern Drama 26 modern Korean theatre movement: arrest of Yu Chi-jin 142; characteristics of 22–5; colonisers’ censorship of 139; development of 46–55; education system 15; emergence of realistic plays 159; evolved on 7–8; infuence of Western Drama 55–7; Irish drama under colonialism (see Irish drama); leaders of 138; as March First Independence Movement 3, 12–13, 15–21; middle class 50; model for modern national drama and theatre 26–31; national awakening and resistance 32–4; position of translated drama 26–44; purpose of 146, 154, 219, 220; rise of 3, 7; socio-political background 12–21; survival and reform of Korean language 34–9; translational norms in 39–44; Western drama in 44–6; see also Korean theatre

231

Moore, George 68, 123 Moscow Art Theatre (1897) 33 Motor Boat Association 203 mudaeri ui hyogwa (offstage dramatic effect) 189 The Mud Hut (Yu) 52, 57, 114, 161, 166–8, 171–2, 176–83, 191, 194 munhwapa (cultural group) 17 Munhwa undong (cultural movement) 17 Munjang (magazine) 96 Munye Wolgan (Monthly Literary Art) 57n6 Murray, T.C. 7, 74, 137, 189; Birthright 106–7 Myeongil Theatre Company 106–7 National Theatre in England 69 New Culture Movement, China 64 Newspaper and Publication Laws 21 Newspaper Publication Law (1907) 14 New Tsukiji Little Theatre 113 Ngugi wa Thiong 7 Niranjana, Tejaswini: Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context 5 O’Casey, Sean 8; career 129; censorship of works 124–5, 139–44, 219; characteristics of plays 165; comic elements 137–8; critical essays 125–6, 141–2, 155n2; dramatic aims 124; Dublin trilogy 134–5; 1916 Easter Rising 129, 136, 165, 190; emergence of 132; image and representation 126; to improve Irish society 124; independent and labour activist 128, 129; IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) 129; Irish dramatic movement 131, 139; in Irish Gaelic language 128; on Irish humour 137; Juno and the Paycock 65, 113, 130, 132, 134–5, 143–4, 160, 166, 167, 169, 175–7, 179–80, 182–3, 188–90; Korean critics 133–6, 138; in Korean theatre 124; in modern Korean Theatre under Colonialism 125–39; nationalistic aspects 131; Orange Order 129; patriotism 127; The Plough and the Stars 132, 134–6, 144, 160, 166, 169, 175, 190, 194; poverty 126–7, 165; resistance against colonisers 135–6; The Shadow of a Gunman 125, 130, 135, 140, 144–54, 160, 166; The Silver Tassie 170; The Story of the Irish Citizen Army 128–9

232

Index

O’Grady, Standish 72; 1916 Easter Rising 72 O’Malley-Sutton, Simone C. 64 O’Neill, Eugene 46, 53, 102 The Only Jealousy of Emer (Yeats) 96 The Orangeman (Ervine) 103 Oriental Development Company 172 Osanai, Kaoru 26, 27, 113 The Ox (Yu) 57, 143, 161, 166–7, 169–71, 173, 176, 183, 193 pansori (musical storytelling) 1 Park Eun-sik: Hanguk Dongnipundongjihyeolsa (The Bloody History of the Korean Independence Movement) 16 Parnell, Charles S. 71, 72 Paskyula Theatre Company 103 Patriotic Enlightenment Movement in Korea (1905–1910) 18 Peace Preservation Law (1907) 14 peasant trilogy 161, 176, 191, 220–1; Yu Chi-jin literary connection with Sean O’Casey and 162–71 Pethica, J. 81, 85, 87 Pillot, Eugene: The Famine (one act) 49 Pirandello, Luigi: The Imbecile 53 The Plough and the Stars (O’Casey) 132, 134–6, 144, 160, 166, 169, 175, 190, 194 polysystem: literary 31, 89, 125, 220; modern Korean dramatic polysystem 29, 31, 89, 97, 162; young Korean dramatic 31, 89, 96–7, 222 primary activity 13, 29 Private School Regulations of 1911 and 1915 15 private schools or Seodang 15 Proletarian Theatre Association (1925) 46 proletarian theatre movement 46 Publication Law (1909) 14 Pushkin, Alexander 46 Pyeheo (Ruins) (magazine) 19, 45 radical nationalist movement 17 Rafael, V. 4, 5 realistic play 7–8, 159–60, 167–9, 197, 220–1 Revised Organic Regulations of the Government-General of Korea 16 Riders to the Sea (Synge) 195–7; characters 209–13; dramatic structure 204–8; setting of plays 198–204

Robinson, Lennox 74, 137 Robinson, Michael 15, 140, 144 Roche, A. 74, 133 Russian Revolution 17 Said, E. 5, 64 Sanheoguri (Ham) 197–8, 201–6, 208–12 Scanlan, Michael 153 The Scene from the Willow Tree Village (Yu) 161, 166–8, 170, 171, 173, 176, 183, 192, 194 Schiller, Friedrich 45 Schönherr, Karl: Glaube und Heimat (Faith and Homeland) 54 Schweitzer, D. 92, 93, 101 secondary activity 13 Seo, Hang-seok 25, 26, 51, 54, 110; as member of GeukYeon 25, 110 The Shadow of a Gunman (O’Casey) 66, 125, 130–1, 135, 140–1, 144, 160, 166, 168, 175, 189, 194, 220, 222; alteration of original meaning 150; the Black and Tans 146–8, 151, 189; censorship 144–5, 154; Dark Rosaleen 152–3; footnotes 153; a gunman 146, 148–9, 151; Jacket Green 153; Korean translation of 144–54; omission 149; to reduce cultural differences 151; tenement house in 152 Shakespeare, William 38, 45, 51, 102, 111–12, 127, 130, 156, 160, 222, 223; The Merchant of Venice 53, 110 Shaw, George Bernard 7, 30, 34, 49, 53, 69, 78, 91, 112, 130, 210; Arms and the Man 53, 115n5; The Doctor’s Dilemma 116n5; How He Lied to Her Husband (one act) 49, 115n4; The Inca of Perusalem 115n5; John Bull’s Other Island 69, 115n5; Man and Superman 116n5; Widowers’ Houses 115n4 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 69 Shiels, George 114 shingeki (Japanese modern theatre) movement 22 Shin, Jeong-ok 161 Silheom Mudae (the Experimental Stage) Theatre Company 25, 52, 94, 103, 143 Sim, Hun 41, 101, 102, 106, 113 Simunhak (Poetic Literature) 57n6 Sincheonji (New World) (magazine) 19, 93 singeuk (a new drama) movement 21, 49, 51, 53–6

Index Sinheung Yeonghwa (magazine) 167 Sinmungye 78 Sinmunhak (New Literature) Movement 19 Sinn Féin (We Ourselves) 146 Sino–Japanese war 2 sinpa: colonisers’ 4, 21, 26, 68, 161; decline of 3; existence of 21; imported 3; Korean audiences 3, 41; melodramatic 3, 56; negative infuence of 3; new wave drama 2; political themes 2; promotion of 2; sosisibai or shoseisibai 2; style 48, 50, 56, 102, 110; and Western theatre, distinction between 13; Yi Gi-se, leader of theatre 9n3; Yun Baek-nam, leader of theatre 9n3 Sinsaenghwal (New Life) (magazine) 19 Sisa Sinmun (Sisa Daily) (newspaper) 19 Siting Translation: History, PostStructuralism, and the Colonial Context (Niranjana) 5 Skelton, R. 199, 200 Skopos theory 40 sly civility 3–4 sly generosity 4, 16 social revolutionaries 18 Sonyeon (Boy) (magazine) 14 Strindberg, August 34, 46, 49, 112; Creditors (one act) 49 Strindberg, J.A. Superior Police Department 20 Synge, J.M. 7, 8, 9, 36, 37, 46, 50, 53, 55, 64, 70, 76–8, 97, 101, 103, 114, 123–6, 131–3, 137, 159–62, 164, 195–200, 203–5, 208, 210, 213, 220, 221, 224; Deirdre of the Sorrows 65; The Playboy of the Western World 74, 132; Riders to the Sea (see Riders to the Sea (Synge)); In the Shadow of a Glen 50, 57n5, 66, 74, 107; The Well of the Saints 74, 110 Taeseo Munyesinbo (magazine) 58n18 talchum (mask-dance drama) 1 3.1. Theatre Company 113 Tokyo New Theatre Research Association 113 Tokyo Proletarian Theatre Company 113 Tokyo Student Arts Theatre Company 169–70 Tolstoy, Leo 33, 34, 45, 46, 51; The Power of Darkness 54; Resurrection (four acts) 49, 54, 110

233

tongsokgeuk (popular drama) 110 Total Arts Association (1927) 46 Toury, G. 44, 79, 91 Towolhoe (Earth-Moon Association) 22, 41, 49–52, 100–2, 112–13 translated drama: for dramatists 42–3; formation of national consciousness and identity 19; function of 28, 34, 39–41, 79, 97; innovatory and subversive functions 40–1; Katusha (frst translated drama) 45; and Korean drama, relationship between 28–30; in Korean theatre 12; position of 9, 25–7, 44, 115, 220–1; purposes of innovation, subversion, and national identity 39–40; staging 27, 42, 43, 222 translational norms 39–44, 79, 109, 125, 145, 154, 220 translation strategy 40, 43, 83, 99, 149, 152, 153, 220; adequacy and acceptability, relationship between 42–4; conficting attitudes towards 42; controversies over literal vs. free translation 41, 44; foreignising vs. domesticating 44, 99; in translation of Irish plays 97 Treaty of Annexation 13 Treaty of Versailles 64 A Trip to Muui Island (Ham) 197–8, 200, 203–9, 212–13 Trivedi, H. 8, 125 Tsukiji Little Theatre 22–3, 27, 53, 106, 113, 163–4 Turgenev, Ivan 46 Tymoczko, M. 5 Upton, C-A. 8, 39 Venuti, L. 8, 77, 124, 218 Walcott, D. 7, 160, 196, 197; The Sea at Dauphin 160, 196–7 Watson, G. 195 Wells, H.G. 30 Western drama: Annexation of 1910 45; company staged literal translations of 41; Cultural Policy 45; Katusha, Korean version of Tolstoy’s Resurrection 45; on Korean theatre feld, infuence of 55–7; Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare 45; in modern Korean theatre movement 44–6; national awakening 46; second Sino–Japanese War 46; translated into

234

Index

Korean and published 44–5; wake of March First Independence Movement in 1919 45 Wilde, Oscar 34, 55, 78; The Importance of Being Earnest 69, 115n4; Salome 115n4; Vera 115n4 Williams, R. 189 Williams, Ralph Vaughan 196 Wilson, A.P. 133 Wilson, Woodrow 16 The Words upon the Window Pane (Yeats) 96 World Literature and the Translation Movement in Korea 114 World War I 33 Yeats, W.B. 7, 30, 37, 46, 47, 65, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 76–8, 80, 92, 94–9, 128, 131–3, 137, 195, 196; Cathleen Ni Houlihan 65; under colonialism 124; The Countess Cathleen 73–4; dramatic principles 123; The Only Jealousy of Emer 96; position in Korean theatre 123; The Words upon the Window Pane 96 Yeomgun (1923) 46 Yeongeuk-gwa Sahoe (Theatre and Society) 21, 23 Yesul Hyeophoe (Arts Association) 51 Yi, Du-hyeon 101 Yi, Gi-se 21, 51 Yi, Gwang-rae 54, 57; Chonseonsaeng (The Country Teacher) 54 Yi Gwang-su 19, 168 Yi, Ha-yun 93, 102, 110, 112–15; as member of GeukYeon 110, 113, 114, 115

Yi, Heon-gu 25, 51, 106, 112; as member of GeukYeon 25 Yim, Hak-su: Fighting the Waves 96; as member of GeukYeon 114 Yim, Seong-gu 21 Yi Mu-yeong: Sujeonno (The Miser) 54 Yi Seo-hyang: Eomeoni (Mother) 54 Yi, Seok-hun 41, 109 Yi, Seung-man 49, 112 Yi Yeong-nyeo (1925) 37 Yoh, Suk-kee 161, 188 Yu, Chi-jin 57, 77, 113, 131; actor for Haebang Geukjang (Liberation Theatre) 164; autobiography 162–4; Beodeunamu seon Dongri-ui Punggyeong (The Scene from the Willow Tree Village) 52–3; Dangnagwi (The Donkey) 114, 166; haengjang geukjang (mobile theatre) 163; independence movement 162–3; Jamae (Sisters) 54; land survey 171–2; literary connection with O’Casey 162–71; as member of GeukYeon 25, 110, 113–14, 126, 168; The Ox 57, 143, 161, 166–7, 169–71, 173, 176, 183, 193; and peasant trilogy 162–71; The Scene from the Willow Tree Village 161, 166–8, 170–1, 173, 176, 183, 192, 194; The Slum 166; Tomak (The Mud Hut) 52, 57, 114, 161, 166–8, 171–2, 176–83, 191, 194, 213n2; Tsukiji Little Theatre 163–4 Yu, Gwan-Sun 150 Yun, Baek-nam 21, 23, 51 Zauberga, I. 99