Challenging Englishness from the racial margins: William Macready's Irishman in London; Or; The Happy African

William Charles Macready's farce The Irishman in London; Or; The Happy African (1792) can be read as an exploration of Englishness in its relationship to Irishness as presented on the London stage in the period following the French Revolution. This article examines Macready's play as a critique of the common identification of Irishness with blackness that uses stock characters and attitudes to examine English identity. Through a marriage plot displaced from the traditional romantic heroes onto their Irish and black servants, we see English as a commercial identity rather than a cultural one. Linking race to culture and culture to nationality, Macready's play presents Irishness and blackness as culturally rich while calling into question the content of Englishness.