Abie's Irish Rose

Abie's Irish Rose

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Subject (Literary Work): Abie's Irish Rose Entry #:

Immediate Response

A one-word (or phrase) response to this piece:

Why?

CLICHES.

Seriously, that is the only appropriate short response to Abie's Irish Rose. As Pauline Kael said in her review of Song of Norway, the script brings back cliches you never even knew you knew.

Dion Boucicault managed to squeeze every last ounce of shamrock juice out of various "Stage Oirish" Paddy stereotypes in the 19th century. Nonetheless Anne Nichols manages to take it one step further by combining the Irish stereotypes with Jewish stereotypes. This script is clearly the evolutionary progenitor of a host of second-rate TV sitcoms.

A personal linkage the piece engendered:

I cannot understand how this tripe became the longest-running play in Broadway history. Then again, I don't know how the 2002 rom-com My Big Fat Greek Wedding ended up becoming (when compared to its budget) the most profitable Hollywood movie of all time either. Gentle stereotypes are presumably both flattering and a sort of frisson to a melting pot audience, I suppose.

Any questions or random thoughts provoked:

What is the overall literary connection between the Irishman and the Jew? Surely a piece of ephemeral pop-culture schlock like Abie's Irish Rose cannot be influenced by Joyce's Ulysses, but in that case what prompts the insistent connection between Irish and Jewish ethnic populations? This would not seem so weird or random to me if it were not that, while considering the text of Abie's Irish Rose, I noticed that not only is it widely touted as the longest-running play in Broaway history -- but that it also opened on Broadway in May of 1922. This is the same year when Joyce's Ulysses was published, but it strikes me that a question of outright literary influence would be impossible. But in that case it's worth asking: was the linkage of Irish and Jewish identity (or stereotype) just a result of urbanization? Also: is Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby a kind of perverse rewrite of this script, tapping into the scarier elements of ethnic stereotyping and intermarriage?

Part II: Structural Analysis

1. How many plots are there? Identify each by citing the main conflicting forces in each

specified as:

Abie's father (Solomon) / Judaism vs. _Rosemary's father (Patrick) / Catholicism

There really only is a single plot here -- Abie and Rosemary get married in secret, then have to figure out a way to break it to Abe's stereotype Jew father and Rosemary's stereotype Mick father, the first accompanied by a Rabbi and the second accompanied by a Catholic Priest. Hilarity ensues.