Event

The White Headed Boy

The White-Headed Boy, Robinsons masterpiece, was first presented at the Abbey on December 13, 1916. A gentle satire of his compatriots with a plot and characters that are wholly complementary, it may have autobiographical origins because Robinsons own frail health as a youth caused his mother to be overprotective and to treat him as her pet, or whiteheaded boy. Though Robinson later lamented that everyone had overlooked his political intent in The White-Headed Boy, his humorous asides to the reader and stage directions in Irish idiom demonstrate that laughter, not allegory, was his primary goal. The action begins with the Geoghegansa widowed mother, two sons, three daughters, and a visiting auntawaiting the return of Denis, the third and youngest son, from Dublin, where he has been studying medicine. Robinsons satiric portrayal of ineffectual Irishmen trapped by their environment and sense of inadequacy is softened by his whimsical handling of their conflicts and problems, and given the tense political situation in Dublin in 1916, perhaps it is just as well that almost everyone missed the subtle allegory and serious intent of The White-Headed Boy.