Lady Gregory’s The Rising of the Moon was first produced by the Irish National Theatre on March 9, 1907. At the time, the National Theatre was still reeling from the public reaction to John Millington Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. When Playboy opened in January of that year, it was roundly condemned by Irish nationalists but received a generally favorable reception from the politically conservative Anglo-Irish community. Rising received almost the opposite reaction. The Anglo-Irish press criticized Gregory’s play for presenting Irish police officers as bumbling and easily corrupted, while nationalist papers complimented the play’s patriotic spirit. The reception of Synge’s and Gregory’s plays hig

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Published 26 November 2004

Citation: Cusack, George. "The Rising of the Moon". The Literary Encyclopedia. 26 November 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16619, accessed 20 November 2009.]