Mick Greer Terrible Beauties Born: Portugal 1817, Ireland 1916

This paper is based on two historic events separated by almost exactly 100 years – one in 19th century Portugal and the other in 20th century Ireland. These moments not only brought significant change to those countries’ paths towards freedom but were also examples of British colonialism’s refusal to change in its reaction to rebellion or, it could also be said, inability to learn from its previous mistakes. 

The story of Easter 1916, with the extreme British reaction leading to the execution of sixteen of the Rising’s leaders, 15 in the two weeks after their surrender and another, Roger Casement, in August, can be paralleled with an event in Portugal. In the autumn of 1817, 60 year old Field Marshal Gomes Freire de Andrade, who had distinguished himself in the Portuguese army was arrested, along with 11 companions, on suspicion of conspiracy against the British military government under Marshal William Carr Beresford.  Gomes Freire was sentenced to death and hanged on 18th October. His and the bodies of some of the others were decapitated, burnt, and their ashes thrown into the sea. This led to public protests and intensified anti-British sentiment throughout Portugal, ultimately leading to the Liberal Revolution and the fall of Beresford in 1820. Yeats famously reacted to the Dublin rising, of course, and, after a somewhat longer interval, the execution of Gomes Freire and the other mártires da patria inspired one of the major works in 20th century Portuguese drama: Felizmente Há Luar!  Written by Luís de Sttau Monteiro in 1961, during Salazar’s dictatorship, it was only performed in Portugal in 1978. After a brief description of the historical events that caused them to be written, this paper goes on to discuss how each of these significant colonial moments is treated by the literary works they inspired.

Mick Greer. Studied English Literature at Cambridge University and has taught at the School of Arts and Humanities at Lisbon University (FLUL) since 1992, where he is an Assistant Professor. He holds a PhD on James Joyce and theatre and is a researcher at FLUL’s Centre for Theatre Studies. He works on James Joyce, Contemporary British and Irish Theatre, Translation, Theatre in Education and Shakespeare in Performance. Besides being an active member of the Lisbon Players, a group performing theatre in English, Mick has translated various plays and texts concerned with performance and the arts. He has also published on theatre, translation and literature.