ABSTRACT
In Mutabilitie, Irish playwright Frank McGuinness alludes to and cites specific works by William Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser. Incorporating and departing from the facts of Spenser’s years as colonial administrator in Ireland in the 1580s and 1590s, McGuinness dramatizes the two writers as the staged characters Edmund and William. Spenser’s years as a permanent resident in Ireland witnessed continued escalation of English efforts at recolonization, as well as mounting resistance to English crown authority from Gaelic Irish lords and some of the “Old English,” descendants of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman settlers and colonists. In addition to Shakespeare and the Spensers, Mutabilitie offers creative renderings of Ben Jonson and Richard Burbage, surnameless characters called William, Edmund, Elizabeth Rivlin, Ben Jonson, and Richard Burbage. William and Edmund are by no means the only characters in Mutabilitie who defy easy categorization.
