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‘I Am Going to America’: James Sheridan Knowles's Virginius and the Politics of ‘Liberty’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Gerald. D. Parker
Affiliation:
Professor of English, University of Western Ontario, London.

Extract

My dear Mackenzie, the fact is—my plays are too liberal for the aristocratic illiberals of Ireland.… My plays breathe the noble sentiments of the influential classes of Ireland.… But I am going to a place where the feelings and the reality of liberty exist in their most glowing form—and not the form alone, but the embodied spirit. I am going to America.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1992

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References

Notes

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