Portrayal in Fiction
In Knut Hamsun's 1892 novel Mysteries, the characters, on a couple of occasions, briefly discuss Charles Stewart Parnell, particularly in relation to Gladstone: "Dr. Stenerson had a high opinion of Parnell, but if Gladstone was so opposed to him, he must know what he was about—with apologies to the host, Mr. Nagel, who couldn't forgive Gladstone for being an honourable man". Parnell's death shocks the character Eleanor in Virginia Woolf's novel The Years, published in 1937: "...how could he be dead? It was like something fading in the sky."
Parnell is toasted in the famous 1938 poem of William Butler Yeats, "Come Gather Round Me, Parnellites", while he is also referred to in "To a Shade".
In W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, published in 1944, the author mentions Parnell and O'Shea: "Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea."
Parnell is the subject of a discussion in Irish author James Joyce's first chapter of the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, first serialized in The Egoist magazine in 1914-15. Parnell appears in several stories in Dubliners, notably in "Ivy Day in the Committee Room". He is also discussed in Ulysses, as is his brother. The main character in Finnegans Wake, HCE, is partially based on Parnell; among other resemblances, both are accused of transgressions in Phoenix Park.
Parnell was played by a clean-shaven Clark Gable in Parnell, the 1937 MGM production about the Irish leader. The film is notable as being Gable's biggest flop and occurred at the height of his career, when almost every Gable film was a smash hit. Parnell was portrayed by Robert Donat in the 1947 film Captain Boycott. In 1954, Patrick McGoohan played Parnell in "The Fall of Parnell (December 6, 1890)", an episode of the historical television series You Are There.
In 1991, Trevor Eve played Parnell in the television mini-series "Parnell and the Englishwoman."
Read more about this topic: Charles Stewart Parnell
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