Although sectarian violence characterized life in Belfast for hundreds of years, 1864 marked a shift in how violence played out in the city. Unlike previous conflicts that occurred in open spaces and reflected long-held rural rituals, the riots of August 1864 took place in the city's rapidly developing urban streets. The violence broke out in response to celebrations around the foundation laying for a new statue of Daniel O'Connell, the late Catholic politician, in Dublin. Thousands of Belfast Catholics traveled to Dublin for the celebration. Upon their return to Belfast, ten thousand Protestant loyalists greeted them by burning an effigy of O'Connell on Boyne Bridge and staging a mock funeral and procession that attempted to enter a Catholic burial ground. The resulting violence and rioting continued for ten days on the city streets, where homes and businesses faced destruction on a scale previously unseen.Footnote 2 Expelling residents of opposing views, rioters reinforced older ideas of “communal conflict” expressed through “disagreements over each group's place—literally and imaginatively—in the city” and strengthened notions of neighborhood geography based on religious beliefs.Footnote 3 As historian Mark Doyle argues, the shifting patterns of violence resulted from “[t]he steady advance of working-class alienation from the state, the growing hegemony of violent extremists in working-class neighbourhoods, the sectarian alliance between Protestant workers and elites, the insecurity of the Catholics and, above all, the polarising effects of earlier outbreaks of violence.”Footnote 4 Lasting reminders of conflict lingered as the city recovered, reminding anyone walking the streets of the city's violent past and the likely potential of future clashes.
Several months later, a popular performance took a different approach to imagining sectarianism's mark on the city. After a vacation to Canada and the United States inspired him to enter the theatre business, T. C. S. Corry, a Protestant unionist medical doctor who helped victims injured during the August riots, premiered his Diorama of Ireland in December. Unlike previous moving panoramas and variety shows of Ireland that toured the United States and British Empire, Corry's spectacle incorporated more imagery and songs from Belfast and Ulster that implicitly spoke back to the city's sectarian violence. In the 1860s, his show became the city's most popular moving panorama.Footnote 5
This article's analysis of the Diorama of Ireland complicates previous histories of the Belfast riot and its aftermath. As theatre historian Mark Phelan has discussed, in the nineteenth century the theatre was “virtually the singular, secular meeting place in the whole of Belfast” where Catholics and Protestants “mixed freely together.”Footnote 6 Still, the theatre has remained absent from the histories of the city's increasing political polarization in the nineteenth century.Footnote 7 This absence is not surprising considering nineteenth-century theatre, Belfast, and Ulster's place in Irish theatre history. Some historians have omitted any discussion of Irish nineteenth-century theatre or argue that “all drama in Ireland until the beginning of the twentieth century was English drama.”Footnote 8 Much of Irish theatre history is dominated by ideas of modernity and nation that situate W. B. Yeats and the Irish Literary Theatre as the “beginning” of Irish theatre. These narratives of Irish theatre often exclude theatre in the north and non-text-based performance that did not serve primarily respectable, middle-class audiences. Over the past several decades, theatre historians Phelan, Christopher Morash, Mary Trotter, and others have challenged these dominant narratives and illustrated Ireland's vibrant, diverse theatrical culture before and during the years of the Irish Literary Theatre.Footnote 9
Still, common characterizations of nineteenth-century Belfast theatre represent it as collapsed or virtually absent. Referencing the rowdy crowds at the beginning of the century that drove the middle and upper classes away, strong moral opposition from the clergy, the cholera epidemic of 1849, and economic challenges, scholar Ophelia Byrne writes a history that mainly pertains to the upper and middle classes and define theatre and performance primarily through notions of “serious” or “literary” drama and “fashionable audiences.”Footnote 10 These categories erase traditional and nontraditional performance spaces that produced popular, often non-text-based theatre for the working and middle classes and reinforce the notion that entertainments were mostly segregated by class. In contrast to this account, Mark Phelan's research draws attention to the plethora of archival materials that suggest a thriving Belfast performance culture and demonstrates theatre's importance in the development of regional and political identities. Focusing primarily on melodrama and “Irish Nights” in his essays, Phelan highlights how sectarian conflict shaped theatrical reception and fostered Belfast's “notorious reputation as a tough audience for touring theatre.”Footnote 11
Speaking to Phelan's call to further explore nineteenth-century Belfast performance, this article's analysis of Corry's Diorama of Ireland and its subsequent revised productions illustrate how Belfast's performance past negotiated the intensifying sectarian conflict through its imagining of Ireland's history and future.Footnote 12 Considering the unique public space of Belfast theatre, I examine how theatre and performance intervened and created a space for debates about Belfast's present and future—as a city, as part of Ireland, and as a commercial jewel in the British Empire. Corry's Diorama of Ireland and his subsequent panorama-of-Ireland entertainments highlight the thriving performance culture that intersected with everyday life in Belfast. They also suggest a messy, ambiguous negotiation of identities and allegiances that do not fall neatly into simple, progressive narratives of increasing sectarian division along religious lines. Corry's Diorama of Ireland illustrates not only the ways that performance acted as a site of historical and utopian imagining, but also how performance aspired to an increasingly unpopular liberal unionist conception of Ireland's past and future.Footnote 13 Corry envisioned his city as the “Northern Athens,” a nickname it acquired in the eighteenth century as a city of “civic liberalism and religious tolerance.”Footnote 14 In part, the title was seen as aspirational and reflective of Belfast's potential to become an economic and cultural capital of Europe, a destiny that, for some, it seemed close to achieving in the late nineteenth century.
This essay speaks to scholar Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh's call to explore “the impact of the Union framework on the imaginative horizons of the nineteenth-century Irish.”Footnote 15 At a time when the Orange Order continued to gain popularity among the Protestant lower classes that rioted in 1864, Corry packaged liberal unionist politics in a popular entertainment form for Belfast's working and middle classes. Corry's Diorama imagined a peaceful nation where Protestants and Catholics lived side by side as a result of the prosperity enabled by Belfast's commercial ascendance under British rule. The Diorama celebrated the nationalist rebellion of 1798 and used this common Protestant and Catholic past as a foundation for a unified future.
Through Corry's depiction of the transformation of Belfast, I argue that the entertainment held the potential to create a “utopian performative” in the midst of the recovery from the 1864 riots primarily through its use of spectacle and wonder. Performance scholar Jill Dolan suggests how utopian performatives can be realized through their “affective potential of a future” that unites spectators “to hope for the possibility of realizing improved social relations.”Footnote 16 These possibilities, she claims, point to the potential of their existence within as well as outside of the theatre.Footnote 17 Moving panoramas and their diorama effects held a potential, heretofore unrecognized by scholars, to generate this affective experience through their use of spectacle, which, as cultural historian Amy Hughes notes, “is effective because it is affective.”Footnote 18
I suggest the Diorama of Ireland’s spectacle operated through the aesthetic experience and potential of wonder. Scholars have analyzed wonder in theatre and performance from the early modern period through the Enlightenment. Laura Anne Kalba extends these conversations into the nineteenth century and the emergence of modern visual culture. According to Kalba, spectacle creates wonder through “[n]ovelty, variety, visual metamorphoses, and technical virtuosity.”Footnote 19 Through its depictions of Belfast and especially its spectacular visual transformations, the Diorama of Ireland had the potential to upset audience's visual expectations, and “rather than reinforcing the ordinary's ordinariness might [have shaken] people from their automatized state, thereby enabling them to experience the ordinary as marvelous.”Footnote 20 By tapping into wonder and presenting the possibility of viewing Belfast as more than ordinary, or even marvelous, through the show's visual spectacles and use of dioramic effects, Corry strengthened his show's argument for a unified future and Irish citizenry by highlighting “what if.” Where would the success of Belfast lead its citizens? What if a unified Belfast could emerge from the sectarian violence?
Theatre and Performance in the Northern Athens during the 1860s
In the months following the 1864 riot, the Belfast city government attempted to heal the sectarian conflict through the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the riots and their aftermath.Footnote 21 As the city recovered, a new theatre season opened in Belfast. When Corry decided to create his Diorama of Ireland, he joined a vibrant performance culture that operated alongside and within the increasingly divided neighborhoods of the city. Before analyzing Corry's entertainment within the context of the riot of 1864 and its ramifications, it is important to understand Belfast's theatrical landscape in the 1860s and how Corry and his production interacted with international and local theatrical culture. As Belfast increasingly participated in international theatrical touring circuits, Corry's Diorama of Ireland illustrates the political tensions surrounding his entertainment's adaptation of the panorama-of-Ireland form, and the impact of regional theatre culture on imagining Ireland and its future. In order to understand the variety of entertainments in nineteenth-century Belfast, the intersection of politics and performance, and their interaction with audiences, it is important to consider the nuances of unionism and performance before the Home Rule movement in more depth. Although liberal unionism ultimately declined during the decades of the Diorama of Ireland’s performances, the productions provide a glimpse into how Corry mobilized theatrical performance in support of a political ideology that claimed to offer a more peaceful alternative to sectarian conflict.
Corry's performances emerged during fruitful years for local theatre. Although the city did not have a professional theatre scene comparable to London or Dublin, newspapers and archival records illustrate how Belfast citizens had a range of entertainment options in the 1860s, including “local commercial theatres, stock companies, national touring circuits, or the virtually unexplored world of music halls, ‘free and easies,’ singing saloons, variety theatres and vaudeville.”Footnote 22 Not counting singing saloons as well as pubs and taverns that offered musical entertainment, performance venues in the 1860s included the Music Hall, the Shakespeare, the National Theatre, the Corn Exchange, the Star Concert Rooms and Alhambra Concert Rooms, Victoria Hall, McCormick's Theatre, The Theatre, Ulster Hall, the Imperial Colosseum, and the Theatre Royal. Many of these venues showcased music hall and variety entertainment and catered to working-class audiences, especially the increasing numbers of the skilled working class supported by the city's growing industry. Aside from existing as one of the few secular spaces in the city, Belfast theatre provided an opportunity for other typically segregated groups to enjoy performances together. For example, starting in the 1840s and still flourishing in the 1860s, entertainments such as singing saloons and moving panoramas purposefully catered to cross-class audiences by advertising the respectability of their performances compared to the city's pub culture.Footnote 23
The moving panorama form demonstrates the problem with strict definitions of “serious” and “popular” entertainment. Originating around 1810 in Europe, a traditional moving panorama company included a lecturer, mechanist, and musician. Moving panoramas’ scrolled, flat canvas traveled easily and enabled companies to perform in a variety of performance spaces. The lecturer described the paintings and told amusing stories while the mechanist turned the crank that unrolled the painted canvas across the stage. The musician provided piano accompaniment. Panorama paintings took a varied approach to the performance of time and space. Some portrayed a continuous view of a journey or landscape; others jumped through time and space across scenes connected by a common theme.Footnote 24 Panoramas, the upper and middle classes presumed, allowed for the improvement of the lower classes through educational scenes and lecture material. As Richard Kirkland argues, Corry viewed the panorama as an opportunity for self-improvement, which this function of panoramas further supports.Footnote 25 “With the incorporation of modern versions of the old fairground entertainments into ‘rational amusement,’ a cyclical pattern emerges, …” scholar Mimi Colligan writes; “a two-way traffic can be seen between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture. The crude peepshows were magnified into well-painted panoramas for fashionable viewers and in turn became suitable entertainment for the masses.”Footnote 26 Moving panorama's origins in lower-class popular entertainment forms and the lecturer's transformation into more of a comic entertainer than an authority figure troubled the upper- and middle-class moral view of moving panoramas as educational. In spite of their moral rhetoric, panoramas still relied heavily on spectacle and increasingly incorporated elements of variety entertainment. As a result, moving panoramas emerged as an entertainment with cross-class appeal.Footnote 27
During the 1860s, sixteen moving panoramas performed in Belfast. Two other panoramas of Ireland toured through Belfast the year before Corry's entertainment premiered, the Panorama of Irish Scenery and Professor F. A. Gosnold's Optical Diorama of Ireland and America, but both had limited runs. Moving panoramas tended to lease Victoria Hall, a performance hall on the northeastern side of the city known for its variety entertainment, concerts, lectures, and moving panoramas. Displaying a variety of scenes from the Continent, the Holy Land, the US Civil War, Canada, and Ireland, as well as others, the other companies did not originate in Belfast, and they participated in a touring circuit through England, Scotland, and Ireland that started in the 1730s and continued to expand rapidly at the end of the nineteenth century. The comparable ease of traveling with moving panoramas made them well suited for this expanding touring circuit. Although the circuit was not consolidated until the 1890s, with improvements in transportation and the opening of Belfast's Grand Opera House, most of the touring companies arrived in Belfast from Glasgow or Liverpool, then traveled to Dublin, Cork, and possibly a few towns in between before traveling back to England.Footnote 28
When he launched his Diorama of Ireland at Victoria Hall in 1864, Corry became one of the few local moving panorama proprietors. Although its Belfast origins made it unique, its local origins typified the city's general performance culture in the 1860s. Belfast entertainers, managers, and owners dominated the stage until the 1870s, when the improved touring circuit allowed music and variety halls with foreign performers and touring companies to cut significantly into local entrepreneurs’ market. As was the case for other local entertainments, Corry collaborated with Belfast artists to build his production. For example, Corry hired celebrated Belfast artist J. H. Connop to paint the moving panorama of Ireland and purchased at least one four foot by eight foot painting, A View of Londonderry, which Connop previously exhibited in Belfast and throughout Ireland. It is possible Connop used or adapted other paintings from his exhibitions, including the 1863 painting A Bird's Eye View of Belfast (Fig. 1).Footnote 29
Figure 1. A Bird's Eye View of Belfast (1863) by J. H. Connop. Courtesy of the Linen Hall Library.
From the beginning, Corry's production remained dedicated to its home city and local audience at the same time it aspired to international success. Although several other moving panoramas of Ireland visited Belfast before 1864, Corry claimed his trip abroad, as opposed to any previous production, inspired him to enter the theatre business. A few years after its debut, Corry described his show's origins in a letter to the Liverpool Mercury. Around 1863, he “visited Canada and the United States of America, and whilst there was greatly struck by the desire evinced by settlers from Ireland to know all about what they designated the ‘Old Country.’”Footnote 30 The trip inspired him to create his Diorama of Ireland, which he concluded would be “a safe mercantile speculation” and appeal to audiences at home and abroad.Footnote 31
Regardless of whether or not Corry made statements to the Liverpool Mercury that altered the show's origin story after the fact, he accurately described his company's success in the 1860s. His Diorama of Ireland became the most popular moving panorama in Belfast and later toured Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. After its opening in 1864, the Northern Whig (Belfast) remarked, “This beautiful series of paintings … is now being exhibited for the sixth week in Belfast—a longer period of time than within our recollections the proprietors of any other exhibition of the kind could successfully cater in this town.”Footnote 32 This success led Corry to bring the show back to Belfast in 1865, 1867, and 1868 under variations of the names Diorama of Ireland and Ireland: Its Scenery, Music, and Antiquities; he then substantially revised the production in 1869, renaming it Ireland in Shade and Sunshine, which appeared in Belfast throughout the 1870s.Footnote 33 Creating a panorama of Ireland with the intention to appeal to local, national, and international audiences presented several challenges to Corry as he developed, revised, and expanded his production. Understanding how the production transformed highlights how Corry adapted previous entertainments for his 1864 entertainment, envisioned an Irish moving panorama for Belfast audiences, and continued to negotiate the ongoing sectarian tensions after the riot of 1864. It also illustrates the impact of international touring on the development of productions that originated in and repeatedly returned to Belfast.
In most respects, the Diorama of Ireland reflected the traditional moving panorama structure with paintings of Irish landscape, historical, and mythic sites, a fact-based, historical, and occasionally comic lecture, and music played by respected Irish musicians. Corry's show also included dancers and occasional comic monologues, which were not necessarily standard, but not unusual, in moving panorama performances of Ireland. Like most panoramas, Corry added new paintings and changed the show's songs often in an attempt to appeal to audiences’ desire for novelty. As time passed, Corry's entertainment acquired more characteristics of the hibernicon, an Irish American moving panorama and variety show, that the Irish migrant MacEvoy family had created in the United States by adding stock characters, variety sketches with comic love plots, and a general story of an Irish, Irish American, or American tourist's return to Ireland.Footnote 34 With Corry visiting North America when the hibernicon became a hit on New York stages in 1863, it is possible Corry saw or heard about it while on the trip he claimed inspired his entertainment, or when Corry's Diorama of Ireland embarked on its first international tour. Although Corry seems never to have added a tourist character, he did add a male stage-Irish tour guide and a female Irish peasant girl, who reflected hibernicon types during the 1860s, and for his 1869 production he also wrote variety sketches to include in the performance, which depicted standard hibernicon comic plots.Footnote 35
As he created his show, Corry, a unionist, had to negotiate the sensitive politics of an audience comprising both the middle and working classes, Catholics as well as Protestants, nationalists as well as unionists, in the aftermath of the 1864 Belfast riots. In this environment, the politics of earlier panoramas of Ireland presented a challenge in adaptation. Some of those previous moving panoramas, such as Philip Phillips's Grand Moving Diorama (1850) of Queen Victoria's tour of Ireland, celebrated the British monarchy and explicitly supported the colonization of Ireland and its union with Britain. For hibernicon productions developed in the United States, loyalty to Ireland, nostalgia, and fading memories, among other factors, contributed to the success of romanticized and nationalistic Irish images and narratives in performance.Footnote 36
In Belfast, Corry was aware that leaning strongly on a unionist or nationalist view reflective of contemporary Belfast politics would alienate part of the audience, if not spark violence. Belfast citizens had only to walk outside to see the remnants of the continued conflict, and poverty that contrasted with the idealized views that dominated most Irish panoramas. As Kirkland has discussed, Corry was a unionist, and his political leanings would not necessarily be secret to the audience.Footnote 37 However, by relying on a liberal unionist ideology (with one careful omission), Corry managed to craft a production that suggested a possible, peaceful nation with Catholics and Protestants living side by side. Corry praised the Queen, and so the production could not escape an imperialist perspective, but he also created a space for celebrating nationalism, as long as it occurred in the distant past. At least in Belfast, his vision received the enthusiastic support of audiences.
Corry's Diorama of Ireland used visual spectacle and song to package a mostly liberal unionist vision for the working and middle classes. Although sectarian violence started to increase following the riots of 1857, religious and political identity did not fully align in local Belfast politics, as the riots of 1864 demonstrated. Before the Home Rule crisis in the mid-1880s that organized unionists as a political, mostly Protestant electoral force against the growing nationalist movement led by (Protestant) Charles Parnell, several factions of unionism vied for ascendancy in Belfast and held “diametrically opposed views on what ‘the British connection’ constituted.”Footnote 38 These opposed views included critiques of Britain and its policies in Ireland, even though the groups agreed the Union offered the best route to transcending division and achieving prosperity. According to historian John Bew, liberal unionism held to “three shared assumptions: that the Union guaranteed financial prosperity; that the logic of history entailed the triumph of liberal values; and that British institutions were superior to any of the alternative systems of government on offer in Europe.”Footnote 39 Tory-aligned unionists, who held more sectarian views, wielded electoral power in Belfast during the 1860s, but, from 1868 to 1870, liberal unionists attained more political power than before, bolstered by William Gladstone's rise to prime minister in 1868. They continued to advocate for religious equality and land reform, which aligned them with some nationalist politicians.Footnote 40
However, the gap between liberal unionism's high ideals and the reality of life in Ireland, especially the harsh, negative ramifications of British rule, prevented liberal unionists from gaining substantial popular support. They remained in denial about the growing strength of the nationalist movement. The Orange Order revived during these years, primarily through popular support among the Protestant lower classes. They held an alternative view of Irish history, one where Protestants remained under constant threat from Catholic butchery. They celebrated Protestant martyrs and victories, and viewed the success of the Union as closely tied to Protestant prosperity. This political view would dominate unionist politics later in the century. Corry's politics is less a forbear of Gladstone's later “union of hearts” than a last hurrah for liberal unionism before its swift decline. In the 1860s, however, the liberal unionists’ later failure and the hardened alignment of religious and political parties was not preordained. In spite of escalating sectarian conflict, there still remained hope a liberal Ireland would triumph.Footnote 41
In his attempt to walk the line among different religious, political, and class factions as well as negotiate the often harsh realities of living in Ireland, Corry framed his Diorama of Ireland to create a narrative that looked to the rural landscape and rebellion of 1798 as a common past that laid a foundation for an urban, industrialized, unified future. Corry's performance may have supported a liberal unionist ideology, but it omitted a crucial component of liberal unionism: the explicit celebration of the Act of Union in 1800. By replacing overt praise of the Union with the celebration of Belfast's financial prosperity (implicitly enabled by British rule), Corry negotiated the conflicting politics of his audience. Although some audience members might disagree with his vision of Ireland, his narrative imagined a peaceful, unified way forward for Ireland that was reliant on, not troubled by, the city of Belfast, the Northern Athens.
“The Demon of Discord Should Fly from Thy Shore”: Conflict and Unity in the Aftermath of the 1864 Riots
The lingering recovery, destruction, and memories of the 1864 riot created a challenging environment in which to argue for unity, a common, if distant, nationalist heritage, and a future tied to financial prosperity under the Union. Months later, the city continued to rebuild from the devastation and look “sacked by a horde of banditti.”Footnote 42 Although it might not be immediately apparent to an outsider walking the city, the riot strengthened the division between Catholic and Protestant working-class neighborhoods. Belfast citizens already associated working-class neighborhoods like the Pound and Sandy Row with Catholics and Protestants, but the violence intensified each group's sense of belonging, the ties between religious communities and neighborhood geography, the desire to leave mixed neighborhoods to seek the safety of neighborhoods with similar beliefs, and hostility towards religious minorities in Protestant and Catholic-dominated neighborhoods.Footnote 43 In the aftermath, Catholic and Protestant workers faced increased workplace intimidation that attempted to expel the opposing group and create a homogeneous workforce. As a result of these efforts, as Doyle notes, “[t]he mixed workplace, it seemed, was now going the way of the mixed working-class neighbourhood, largely at the behest of Protestant workers.”Footnote 44
During December 1864, the month of the Diorama of Ireland’s premiere, the government's Commission of Inquiry continued to investigate the riots. Daily, newspapers recounted the events of the riot told to the Commission, detailing the fear and devastation for policemen and community members. These accounts kept the recent sectarian violence and the ways it continued to reshape the city present in the everyday lives of Belfast citizens.Footnote 45 According to a letter published in the Protestant-leaning Belfast News-Letter, the Commission contributed to continuing heightened tensions in factories and neighborhoods months after the riot. A Belfast resident writing under the name “Ulster Scot” complained:
The Government pretend that one great object of the Court of Inquiry is to help them to fix on such measures as will secure the peace of Belfast in the future. What a sham! … But the truth is, this inquiry has disturbed and shattered the peace of the town … it is settling one class of religionists against another class in bitter hostility; it is breeding incalculable mischief in our mills, workshops, and at our other public works.Footnote 46
At the end of the riots, “Peace Meetings” led by Protestant and Catholic middle-class men tried to arrange for the expelled workers, mostly Catholics, to return to work in exchange for not turning in Protestant rioters. These negotiations led to an uneasy peace.Footnote 47
The views expressed by “Ulster Scot” also likely resulted from Protestant suspicions that the Commission would decrease the power of the Protestants and implement changes that would give more equal rights to Catholics. The letter repeats the fear that the government was going out of its way to appease the Catholic community while they unfairly prosecuted the Protestants for the riot and their processions.Footnote 48 These fears of bias and the growing Catholic community existed before the riot and would not be unfamiliar to Corry. The Commission's report singles out the governing structure of the city and its unequal representation of Protestants and Catholics as a contributing factor to discrimination against Catholics and violence in the city. The report stated:
[I]t is, we think, clear that the present constitution of the police as regards religion is decidedly calculated to create, and does create, suspicion on the part of the Roman Catholic population … and to weaken their confidence that there exist in Belfast that unbiassed [sic] assertion of authority and impartial vindication of the law which alone can insure respect for the one and obedience to the other.Footnote 49
Although the Commission made several recommendations for improving conditions in the city, including creating a new police force with equal representation for Catholics and Protestants, their suggestions stirred up strong opposition from Protestants.Footnote 50
Amid the reports of violence, stories of the riots emerged championing heroes on both sides who risked their own safety to defend neighbors with different religious affiliations. A Protestant family sheltered a Catholic mill girl running from a Protestant mob. Catholics protected two Protestant homes and families in their neighborhood from Catholic violence.Footnote 51 In spite of the palpable and hardening sectarian tensions, these incidents demonstrated how Belfast citizens risked community retaliation in order to uphold ideas of a common humanity. The Diorama of Ireland magnified the ideas of common humanity and hope conveyed by these types of actions into a public, popular performance that conceived of this generosity as a foundation for a possible future. Although the notion of a Belfast unified across religious and community lines might not have predominated the press or public images, Corry's Diorama of Ireland conceived of a city where people were bound by their shared dedication to Ireland's successful future that superseded any political, religious, or local divisions.
“Success to the Trade and Town of Belfast”: The Northern Athens in Performance
In the wake of the 1864 riots, Corry's Diorama of Ireland argued for Irish unity by suggesting a shared, prosperous future grounded in the increasingly bustling industry and economic potential of Belfast. This approach aligned with the liberal unionist belief in the financial prosperity enabled by the Union. In the midst of Belfast's simmering violence and disorder, I propose that Corry's show had the potential to evoke feelings of unity and hope for Belfast's future. In its championing of industrial Belfast in the present and its careful nonattribution of Belfast's prosperity to the British Empire, Corry's entertainment took advantage of the unique secular space of Belfast theatre in an attempt to inspire temporary bonds of unity across religious and political lines through local Belfast pride. Through its enactment of utopian performatives, the show presented the possibility of persuading Belfast audiences “that beyond this ‘now’ of material oppression and unequal power relations lives a future that might be different, one whose potential we can feel as we're seared by the promise of a present that gestures toward a better later.”Footnote 52 Erasing the still recovering streets, homes, and businesses from his representations and drawing on narrative and dioramic effects, Corry focused on Belfast's transformation from a small northern town to a bustling metropolis and economic capital of Ireland to suggest options beyond the continued turmoil of sectarian violence.
Through the use of spectacle and wonder, the entertainment's transformations of Belfast held the potential to create a utopian performative in the midst of the recovery from the 1864 riots. As previously mentioned, Kalba argues that the “[n]ovelty, variety, visual metamorphoses, and technical virtuosity” of spectacle creates wonder.Footnote 53 By destabilizing the ordinary and shaking the audience's expectations, the Diorama of Ireland marked its scenes of Belfast as marvelous.
Scholar Sarah Tindal Kareem suggests that wonder is not tied to an “aesthetics of fear” or an “aesthetics of delight,” but involves “an aesthetics of suspense.”Footnote 54 She argues, “Suspense creates the conditions for the aesthetic experience of ‘as ifness’; to be suspended in a space in which recognition (of the familiar) and disbelief (of the untrue) is deferred is to temporarily receive those impressions as if they were new or true.”Footnote 55 Kareem's notion of the process of wonder parallels Dolan's idea of the “utopia as processual, as an index to the possible, to the ‘what if’ rather than a more restrictive, finite image of the ‘what should be.’”Footnote 56 Through wonder and transforming Belfast from ordinary into marvelous, Corry's show highlighted the “what ifs” surrounding the impact of Belfast's expanding industry and its potential to inspire a unified Belfast.
For Corry, Belfast's potential was rooted in its burgeoning industry. In the late nineteenth century, the city's industry rapidly expanded with prosperous factories, mills, and shipyards, among other industries benefiting from the steady labor supply provided by the thousands who moved to Belfast from the rural, blighted areas of Ireland. With a rapidly growing population of around 121,000 in 1861, Belfast became “the fastest growing city” in Britain and the largest city in late nineteenth-century Ireland.Footnote 57 As a result of the city's commercial development and population, historians also have referred to Belfast as the most British city in Ireland.Footnote 58 Although there are various demographic, economic, and cultural reasons for this comparison and many Protestant residents would have identified as British, Corry imagined himself and his city as Irish.
Unlike many previous moving panoramas of Ireland that toured the United States and British Empire, a third of the Diorama depicted northern Ireland. This choice implies Corry's belief that a show highlighting familiar sites might attract Belfast audiences, as well as his genuine affection for the north. The panorama's depiction of Belfast shifted as the entertainment transformed from 1864 to 1869, but its December 1864 premiere led with Corry's championing of the city. Although the show frequently rotated its songs, the Belfast Morning News described Corry's Belfast song, “Success to Belfast,” as one of the opening numbers.Footnote 59 Starting his show with this song, at least on some occasions, set up a clear framing of the following Belfast paintings. After stating that England and Scotland cannot compare to Ireland, the songs’ chorus declares, “Then here's to ‘Old Ireland,’ the land we love best, / And dear Northern Athens, the pride of the West, / Prosperity beams on her, long may it last— / Success to the Town and the Trade of Belfast!”Footnote 60 In these lines, Corry rather explicitly stated Belfast's success and how it provides a foundation for a brighter future. Invoking the older nickname “Northern Athens,” its symbolism of tolerance, and its hope for Belfast's success from the start, Corry indicated to his audience how he viewed Belfast's potential and resilience in the wake of the recent riots. The second verse focuses on Belfast's trade, shipping, and intellectual prowess:
His song demonstrates faith in the city, primarily for its industry, its capacity to influence people and places beyond its shores, and the recognition of its greatness by others. He also coupled his call for success with a wish for Ireland's freedom—which is ambiguous, but arguably not a nationalist rallying cry; it most likely served as a call for equality and tolerance rooted in liberal principles. By starting the show with this song, Corry framed his entertainment with the idea of Belfast's current prosperity and its possible future impact on the city and its residents. Never indicating that this success is tied to sectarian views, and ignoring the challenging and oppressive realities for the working class, especially Catholics, he implied the opportunities presented by a thriving Belfast were open to all citizens of the city.
The entertainment reinforces Corry's image of Belfast through the show's first paintings and the lecture. The 1864 show opens with Belfast. Titling the series of paintings “Belfast, the Northern Athens,” the scrolling panorama displays the “Port and Harbour of Belfast. New Custom House—Government Offices—Harbour Office—St. Anne's Church—Queen's Bridge— Cave Hill—Shipping for all parts of the World.”Footnote 62 As these images pass, the lecturer describes how “Few cities have progressed in size and importance with so much rapidity … public buildings, shops, and warehouses, are not exceeded in magnificence, wealth, and variety, by any town of equal magnitude in the world.”Footnote 63 Much of Belfast's growth and prosperity resulted from its shipbuilding and trade, so it is unsurprising that the show emphasizes these industries. The lecturer explains:
Great improvements have been effected by the Harbour Commissioners of late, and where prior to 1840 all vessels of any magnitude had to lie at Garmoyle, about four miles from the town, ships of large tonnage can now come up to the quays with ease and safety. … The town possesses a large fleet of steamers, and holds direct intercourse with the principal ports of the united kingdom [sic].Footnote 64
Although the city's industrial power continued to grow for decades, advances in ship construction by Belfast firms, investment by the German-born Liverpool merchant G. C. Schwabe, changes made by the Harbour Commission, the ready supply of labor, and the rapid expansion of world trade all contributed to a financially successful and growing port by 1864.
These opening scenes end with a diorama of “Belfast Lough by sunset,” depicting a transformation from day to night.Footnote 65 By highlighting the sea inlet containing major port docks, the production utilized its most affective spectacular method to create wonder among its audience. Moving panorama proprietors had long incorporated dioramic effects into their shows, which involved using cut-outs and transparent areas in the panorama canvas along with lighting and smoke to create spectacular effects.Footnote 66 Although he also used dioramic effects in other parts of the show, during his performances of Belfast he used dioramas to highlight the city's commercial and political centers at pivotal moments in the narrative, such as the opening and closing scenes of act I. Showing Belfast Lough at sunset not only illustrated spectacular lighting effects, but may also have depicted the daily cycle of industry in the port.
Moving panorama paintings held the potential to impact the Diorama’s audiences affectively and inspire a utopian future based in Belfast industry, but it was the dioramic spectacle that triggered the most discussion and impact as recorded in the Belfast press. Its potential for inspiring wonder rested on its success in creating suspense and transforming the ordinary. One reviewer in the Belfast News-Letter actively questioned whether Belfast audiences would feel the same wonder about the Belfast scenes as people from out of town. Writing about a rehearsal he viewed before the show's official opening, the writer remarks, “Scenes with which we have been familiar from childhood in our eyes possess no beauty or interest save that derived from association, while the same scenes are the admiration of strangers.”Footnote 67 In everyday life, “Residents in Belfast, sailing down the lough almost daily, cease to look with delight on its picturesque shores, and with wonder, if not with incredulity, listen to the rhapsodies of others, who expatiate on its extreme loveliness.”Footnote 68 The writer then explains how Corry managed to surmount the challenges of such an entertainment through the excellent paintings he commissioned or bought from artists traveling throughout the country.Footnote 69 In this case, the writer attributes the possibility to inspire wonder through the familiar scenes to the artistic success of the performance. Corry's subsequent additions to the show suggest he viewed his Belfast spectacles as successful.
Although the December 1864 premiere only started with opening scenes in Belfast, it seems they proved popular enough with audiences that, three weeks later, Corry incorporated additional Belfast paintings. By January 1865, the first act of Corry's production also ended in Belfast, with a spectacular dioramic transformation of Donegall Place, the heart of Belfast's governing and commercial district, from day to night. Referring to the closing scene as “Magnificent,” the program describes it as containing “all the Illuminations as they appeared on 10th March, 1863, in honour of the Marriage of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.”Footnote 70 Newspapers commented on the success of the scenes with audiences. The Northern Whig (Belfast), the liberal unionist–leaning paper, described how “The two new scenes of Donegall Place—one as it appears by day, and the other representing the torch-light procession of the students on the night of the marriage of the Prince of Wales—which have been added to the diorama of Ireland during the past two evenings are very truthful.”Footnote 71 It then observed that the scenes added in January 1865 “draw forth the warm approbation of the audience.”Footnote 72
Each revision after the Diorama of Ireland’s premiere further applied dioramic spectacle to scenes of industrial Belfast. With Gladstone's 1868 victory and the subsequent growing confidence of Belfast liberal unionists, the dioramic transformations in the 1868 and 1869 versions supported an ideological purpose. They demonstrated a liberal unionist belief in a progressive “logic of history” leading to the success of liberal values, a path seemingly affirmed by their recent electoral and legislative victories.Footnote 73 By the 1868 version of the show, Corry had replaced the 1863 image of Donegall Place with a contemporary image of that street transforming during a busy workday, which the Belfast Morning News described thus:
The new picture of Donegall Place is one of the best scenes of the series—every building coming out as distinctly as if one stood in the street. We see carriages and cabs, the three horse ’bus, music-vans, and crowds of pedestrians. The jewellery and other goods in the shop windows are vividly seen as if one was beside them in broad daylight. The Linen Hall in the distance shows admirably.Footnote 74
Like the images from the 1864 and 1865 versions, these erase any evidence of sectarian division and offer images of Belfast's financial prosperity as if it were equally accessible to all classes and groups.
The 1869 version, retitled Ireland in Shade and Sunshine, reorganizes the narrative journey of the show. Now starting in Dublin, the show progresses to Belfast and ends with a diorama of Belfast's development. A playbill from the 1869 production details how the diorama depicts “High Street as it Appeared in the year 1786,” including “The Old Market House—Scene of the Executions in 1798—Quaint Appearance of the Shops, Buildings.”Footnote 75 Then it transforms through “Striking Dioramic Change” into “High Street, Belfast, 1869” with the “Albert Memorial—Magnificent Appearance of the Mercantile Establishments—The Street crowded with Vehicles.”Footnote 76 Through the spectacular emergence of the mercantile presence and vehicles indicating not only the growing population but also increased trade, the diorama highlights Belfast's commercial success. In case the transformation is not clear enough, the playbill states point blank, “The whole picture giving a correct idea of the Wealth and Importance of the Commercial Capital of Ireland.”Footnote 77 Reading like a puff, one newspaper article singles out the High Street scene as one of the highlights of the new 1869 production: “One interesting part of the exhibition will be a view of Belfast in 1786—then little more than a village —with its unpretentious houses and shops, and ill-formed streets while, by a striking dioramic transformation, the expanded Belfast of the present day will be shown with vivid fidelity.”Footnote 78 The Belfast views proved so popular that Corry added another, a view of Sydenham in eastern Belfast, several weeks into the new production.Footnote 79
Starting with the original production, the narrative and paintings of Belfast's commercial success depicting the city as a jewel of Ireland starkly contrast with the panorama's depiction of Dublin's industry, illustrating the competitive tone of the panorama and its touting of Belfast's superiority. As a painting of Dublin's Custom House appears before the audience, the lecturer comments, “The commercial business of the port might now be done in a corner of this spacious building.”Footnote 80 He then draws a contrast between what the building represents and the reality of Dublin's trade, stating, “while [the Custom House] stands in all its grandeur, with its allegorical statues of Navigation, Wealth, Commerce, and Industry” it is “a cenotaph to the memory of a trade that is all but gone.”Footnote 81 These comments reinforce the narrative of Belfast on the rise and other cities in comparative decline.
Corry and his entertainment championed the positive outcomes of Belfast's industry and the potentially prosperous future it could bring to the city. The show ignored any negative impact on the city's working classes or continued Catholic discrimination. As the reports of the 1864 riot detail, many of the rioters worked at the port as shipbuilders and navvies, and would intimately know the positive and negative ramifications of this growing industry's impact on the city.Footnote 82 The show erased the cost of the city's rapid ascent, including the poverty and labor issues that accompanied its industrial prosperity and the continuing discrimination against Catholics. These erasures complicated for its audience members the performed spectacular images of Belfast as a place of nonsectarian economic opportunity. They reflected the absence of contemporary strife in most other moving panoramas of Ireland, as well as a liberal unionist detachment from the harsh realities facing many in the city.
Yet, at least for some, the Diorama of Ireland and its spectacular paintings and dioramic transformations of Belfast might have presented a tantalizing option. The audience may have observed a parallel between the transformations onstage and those surrounding them as Belfast recovered from the 1864 riot. Seeing Belfast's past transformations reenacted may have highlighted the potential of their newly recovering city to rebuild stronger. Audiences may or may not have believed the past, present, and future of Ireland that Corry's images offered, but these may have illustrated versions of Ireland that many aspired to create, as well as fostered local pride across the sectarian divide.
The explicit calls for unity and peace throughout the show's songs may have amplified the diorama's affect. The 1864 production starts with a profession of faith in the end of sectarian violence and the potential in Ireland for peace. It begins with a song written by Corry entitled “Ireland” that frames the production and its images before the curtain even opens. After praising the nation's ruins and past heroes, the song then addresses the present and future: “But joy like a sunbeam shall burst o'er the west; / The sad cease to mourn, and the weary find rest; / The demon of discord shall fly from thy shore, / And feuds that disgrace thee awaken no more.”Footnote 83 Kirkland notes that this song indicated a “progression of Ireland … from romantic premodern myth, through the fallen discordant period of sectarian division, to a bright future as part of a renewed union.”Footnote 84 Corry's dedication to this theme is highlighted by the subsequent songs he wrote for the show. As sectarian tensions continued in the city, he renewed and extended his production's calls against sectarianism. The 1866 program includes multiple new songs by Corry, speaking to the current sectarian discord, the hope of reconciliation, and how peace will restore Ireland's glory. As “The Irish Sutler Girl” notes, “Too long has faction wild, our fondest hopes beguiled, / And discord filled our Shamrock Isle with shame; / But deadly feuds shall cease, and all unite in peace, / To blazen to the world old Ireland's fame.”Footnote 85 Corry's song “Derry” declares, “Thy citizens flourish, thy commerce increase; / Where blood flowed like water, ’mid ravage and slaughter, / May freedom's brave band plant the olive of peace.”Footnote 86 More than simply wishful thinking, Corry used his production to offer a vision for why and how this peaceful unification might occur. In order to inspire a unified future, Corry attempted in his show to create a common past across religious and political divides by invoking the rebellion of 1798.
Imagining the Rebellion of 1798
Corry's Diorama of Ireland made its case for a foundational, unified, if troubled, Irish past through its representation of the rebellion of 1798. Corry's attraction to the symbolism of 1798 followed the tendencies of liberal unionists to place themselves in a liberal lineage with the United Irish. Yet his public remembering of the event and its Presbyterian leaders made him a rarity among public, Protestant figures in 1860s Belfast. According to historian Guy Beiner, “the compulsion to discuss [1798] and to emphatically argue that it should be forgotten marked an obsessive preoccupation with the rebellion and an attempt to iron out its embarrassing legacies.”Footnote 87 Despite the denials of Protestant leaders and their histories, the rebellion of 1798 had its origin in Belfast and Ulster. The Diorama of Ireland reminded the Protestants and Catholics in its audience of their common history of Irish loyalty and patriotism. However, the Diorama offered an ambiguous message about this celebration for present-day Belfast: it seemingly approved of nationalist calls for independence, but only as part of a pre-Union, distant past.
In October 1791, the first United Irishmen society formed in Belfast before the movement spread to Dublin. Fighting for parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation, the core group of radicals who formed the United Irishmen met at Cave Hill above Belfast, where they pledged a “solemn obligation … never to desist in our efforts, until we had subverted the authority of England over our country, and asserted her independence.”Footnote 88 Some fifty thousand Irishmen, Protestant and Catholic, in Ulster had joined the organization by 1797. Although the nonsectarian United Irishmen stated political goals, including independence from Ireland and legal reform, as scholars have discussed, many Irish also joined for social and economic reasons.Footnote 89 With the military occupying Belfast, few incidents occurred within the city when the rebellion broke out across Ireland in May 1798. Although the rebellion's traditional end date is late June, rebels continued to fight until July, and a range of resistance actions continued through 1803. The British killed thousands, with many more executed shortly after. Costing an estimated one million pounds in damages, the rebellion would be “the most lethal outburst of violence in modern Irish history.”Footnote 90 In reaction to the rebellion, the Parliament of Ireland passed the Act of Union, dissolving itself and placing the British Parliament in charge of Ireland's governance.Footnote 91
Almost immediately thereafter, Protestant leaders began denying the central leadership role in the rebellion of many Irish Presbyterians of Scottish descent. Protestants, especially in Belfast, denied their involvement. Preachers and Ulster historiography rewrote the conflict as Catholics versus Protestants. This tendency reflected the increasing alignment of political and religious identity in the 1860s and 1870s. As Beiner notes, “the directive to forget was therefore a conscious attempt to exorcise the ghosts of a discomfiting communal past, which ill suited the polarized politics of the present and was incongruous with what had become the dominant Irish Protestant collective memory.”Footnote 92 In erasing Presbyterian participation, historians created an image of the rebellion as primarily southern and Catholic.
Memories and allegiances to the United Irishmen, among Protestants as well as Catholics, lingered longer in rural areas. Catholic and Protestants passed on stories of the rebellion and Protestant participation through oral histories and stories. Liberal unionists continued to recognize 1798 as an important event in Irish liberal history. Writers also remembered the rebellion in fictional portrayals that courted controversy in Belfast. James McHenry, under the name Solomon Secondsight, in 1824 wrote a novel entitled The Insurgent Chief; or, The Pikemen of ’98. First published in the United States after McHenry emigrated, it was reprinted in London soon after, and then in Dublin in 1838 and Belfast in 1844, where the magistrate canceled efforts to perform a dramatic adaptation.Footnote 93 In his Irish Lyrics, Songs, and Poems (1879), Corry includes “Awake! A Song of 1798,” which he wrote “at the request of a friend, to be introduced into his National drama, ‘The Insurgent Chief.’”Footnote 94 No evidence suggests this version of the Insurgent Chief, if it was a different one, succeeded. The difficulties surrounding dramatized versions of 1798 and the intervention of the government in the workings of the theatre illustrates the perceived threat presented by live performance and remembering the rebellion. These circumstances make it even more curious that Corry decided to take the risk to include 1798 as a central piece of his Diorama of Ireland.
Mentioning Corry's 1875 publication of “The Battle of Antrim,” a long poem about one of the key battles that occurred in Ulster during the 1798 rebellion, Beiner remarks that Corry chose “to ignore the risk that dwelling on this touchy subject might alienate loyalists and harm his many successful commercial initiatives.”Footnote 95 Corry later republished this poem in his collection of songs and poems, including many performed in his Diorama.Footnote 96 Yet his Diorama of Ireland, which premiered a decade before the poem was published, has not been recognized and discussed for participating in the commemoration and reimagining of 1798.Footnote 97 In spite of Protestant preachers’ encouragement to forget, Corry produced a popular public reminder that captivated mixed Belfast audiences for years and pushed against Protestant historical narratives of division. Through each iteration of the entertainment, Corry not only maintained his references to the rebellion of 1798, but also expanded how he incorporated the rebellion visually and musically into the performance. These changes indicate his dedication to the rebellion as part of his entertainment and suggest that the popular moving panorama received less pushback than the more serious melodramas depicting 1798. Arguably, the Diorama of Ireland also uniquely suited Corry's political preoccupations with his entertainment's focus on Ireland, its antiquities, history, music, and culture aligning with the United Irish's similar celebrations of Irish culture in support of its rhetoric.Footnote 98 His reclaiming of 1798 illustrates how calling for freedom and justice for Ireland was not antithetical to unionist identity, even if Corry and Irish nationalists might disagree about the meaning of freedom and how to achieve it.
Through its juxtaposition of paintings, songs, and lecture, the Diorama of Ireland claims the rebellion of 1798 as common history and slyly critiques Britain's past actions while still celebrating the queen and Empire. Through his approach to other conflicts between Ireland and Britain, Corry created a framework for understanding his references to 1798. Soon after his opening remarks, the lecturer acknowledges the past tyranny and disorganization of the British: “It is to be regretted that Ireland, that bright and valuable gem in the British crown, should have been so long a victim to misrule and neglect.”Footnote 99 If Corry had faith in Britain guiding Ireland into a prosperous future, he did not hesitate to critique the Empire's past actions in Ireland. The production presents rebellions and battles with the British from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries, highlights the negative ramifications of British rule, and omits strong critique of rebelling Irish in previous conflicts.
For example, during multiple scenes, he references the events surrounding the rebellion sparked by James II's arrival in Ireland and the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. This battle held continuing significance for Belfast, with conflicts over processions in the streets tied closely to current residents’ attempts to celebrate or protest the battle's anniversary. The Orange Order envisioned its history through this battle, which it viewed as the successful overthrowing of a Catholic tyrant bent on destroying Protestantism. Sectarian violence surrounding these processions ultimately led to the Party Processions Act (1850–70), which banned marches from the city's streets. One of the Orange Order's main political goals during these years was the repeal of the Act and the reinstatement of processions to celebrate the battle's anniversary.Footnote 100
Although the production includes a critique of James II's supporters, it uses the moment to criticize James II instead of critiquing the Irish's favoring of Catholic leadership. Throughout the scene, the lecturer praises the people and cities that opposed James II and his uprising. The lecturer refers to Derry's resistance as “valiant and successful” and claims that the people of Enniskillen have “fame” for supporting William III, the Protestant British ruler, during the conflict.Footnote 101 Yet, after critiquing James II, he states, “James’ Irish adherents appear to have been greatly dissatisfied with his conduct, and exclaimed, ‘Change leaders, and we'll fight the battle over again.’”Footnote 102 The entertainment's depiction conveys a common ground between Catholic and Protestant Irish and suggests they collectively viewed James II as a poor leader. The lecturer does not explicitly invalidate the Irish's reasons for opposing the British, and foreshadows the rebellion of 1798 by highlighting the need for better leaders, not necessarily a more justified rationale for revolt. In the cultural context of 1860s Belfast, this ambiguous approach to the Battle of the Boyne demonstrates the existence of alternative unionist histories and resistance to the stark sectarian narratives currently gaining support in the city.
When displaying images of Drogheda in County Louth and Devil's Glen in County Wicklow, the lecturer again condemns British actions and draws an implicit parallel between past horrors and British treatment of the Irish during 1798. The lecturer discusses how local “[t]radition still points out the spot, on the south-east side of the river, behind the Poorhouse [in Drogheda], on which he [Cromwell] encamped.”Footnote 103 He compliments the Irish for their “gallant” resistance and details how
an indiscriminate massacre took place, by an express order of Cromwell, when two thousand men, women, and children, were butchered in cold blood. The principal inhabitants fled to the steeple of St. Peter's Church, which was fired by Cromwell's order, and all perished except for one man, who leaped from the top of the tower, and escaped with only a broken leg.Footnote 104
Since the Parliamentarian Cromwell ordered this atrocious behavior during the Commonwealth, it is possible that the audience interpreted this commentary, and that Corry intended it, as promonarchy and anti-Parliamentarian. Some early leaders of Orange Order's resurgence in the mid-nineteenth century, such as William Johnston, celebrated Cromwell over William III, viewing the former as a figurehead who demonstrated the “need for vigilance and struggle” against the papacy and Catholicism.Footnote 105 As a result, Corry's negative depiction of Cromwell also might have reflected a critique of other unionist positions in the 1860s.
The entertainment draws a parallel between the Parliamentarians’ atrocities and the horrors at Devil's Glen in County Wicklow, where the Irish rebels, led by United Irishman General Joseph Holt, faced British troops in 1798. Several scenes after Drogheda, the lecturer explains, “In this glen the redoubtable Holt remained for some days, making preparation for the outbreak of 1798, and here was perpetrated one of the bloodiest deeds that disgraced our country in the close of the last century.”Footnote 106 He describes how the audience sees where “[s]hortly after the rebellion, several of the defeated insurgents having taken shelter in its beautiful woods, fire was applied to various places, driving out the unfortunate fugitives, only to fall on the bayonets, or to be shot down by the musketry of the soldiery. … The number so sacrificed was never accurately known.”Footnote 107 In referring to the massacre as a sacrifice, the show reinforces the notion that the rebels gave up their lives for a noble cause: Irish independence. By mentioning Holt, originally a Protestant loyalist, by name, Corry reinscribes the presence of Protestants in the rebellion. The show does not call out the British cavalry by name, but it depicts their violence on defeated rebels, no longer on the attack, as an unwarranted horror. The similar narrative construction of the historical stories involving the British massacring disarmed and defeated Irish offers a complicated and ambiguous portrait of the Irish past, one in which there is a standard of behavior and proper rule that the British repeatedly violated throughout Irish history before the Union.
The common cause of 1798, the continued violations of the British, and lingering memory of the rebellion explicitly and implicitly carry throughout the rest of the performance. In its opening remarks, the Diorama makes clear its consideration of 1798 as a pivotal point in Irish history and the role the British played in Ireland's oppression. The lecturer singles out the “Insurrection of 1798, the Union enacted in 1799, the Catholic Emancipation in 1829, and the futile rising of 1848 under [Protestant] Smith O'Brien and others” as the most important moments in Irish history since 1690.Footnote 108 By placing these events alongside each other, without other editorial commentary (at least at this point in the production), the lecturer places the rebellion of 1798 on equally formative ground as other major political events that reshaped the rights of Irish citizens. After opening with scenes of “Belfast, the Northern Athens,” the panorama travels to Cave Hill “three miles north of Belfast,” where the rebels of 1798 swore their oath.Footnote 109
The entertainment gives credence to previous attempts at independence and reform through the juxtaposition of the lecturer's first remarks with the lyrics of the opening song, Corry's “Ireland”: “The harp so long silent again shall be strung; … / Past wrongs shall be righted, and all nations see / Our own dearest island the home of the free.”Footnote 110 The verb tense in Corry's lyrics implies that the righting of wrongs is coming, indicating that there are valid concerns for past rebels as well as current critics of the British government. When he claims Ireland as “our dearest island,” he accepts common ownership of the nation across divisions. The harp was a prominent symbol of the United Irish, and how Corry refers to the harp being restrung echoed United Irish rhetoric: its motto stated, “It is new strung and shall be heard.”Footnote 111 As scholar Katie Brown discusses, with the United Irish's motto, “Suddenly, music and politics were linked in what was intended as a national image, and the retuning of the Irish harp and the salvaging of Irish music from oblivion coincided with the retuning of the political harp and the forging of a nation.”Footnote 112 By linking his calls for justice in Ireland with explicit United Irish references, Corry grounds his calls for future prosperity within the nonsectarian, common past of 1798.
Other references to the 1798 uprising place the rebels in the lineage of Irish kings and heroes, incorporating them into a revered past. When the panorama visits the Hill of Tara, not far outside of Dublin, the lecturer points out “the stone on which the Irish monarchs were crowned,” which remained there until 1823, “when it was removed to the neighbouring rath, to mark the grave where are interred 400 of the insurgents of 1798, who fell in the battle of Tara.”Footnote 113 Even though most of the rebel leaders identified as Protestant, the lecturer ties them to the long history of native Irish rule and implies the fighters for Irish freedom inherited Ireland. The show's program mentions that the lecturer speaks further about 1798 at Tara, referring to a “Reminiscence of 1798,” but it is unclear what else the lecturer or performers performed.Footnote 114
Corry's dedication to depicting 1798 remained as his entertainment's popularity grew after its 1864 debut. However, remaining evidence suggests that no major shift occurred in how the show approached 1798, unlike his depiction of Belfast. In the 1869 version, Corry added the “Scene of the Executions in 1798” to the paintings of Belfast.Footnote 115 Although reviews recognize the addition, it is unclear what the panorama depicted. Presbyterian leaders and ministers, including Henry Joy McCracken, William Orr, and Rev. William Porter, comprised some of the most notorious executions, so it seems likely the scene's addition played a role in further reinforcing and memorializing the rebellion of 1798 and its Protestant leaders.Footnote 116
By immediately following any critical comment with praise of the queen, Corry negotiated his production's calls for freedom and its criticism of the British military and government, but qualified that his support for a nationalist past did not indicate support for nationalism and independence in the present. For example, in one song he'd written for the performance, he mentions the centuries of misdeeds done to Ireland before looking to Ireland's future: “the purest gem / In Britain's diadem, / Of brightest green, / Sparkle with lustre rare; / While youths and maidens fair / Echo the fervent prayer—God save the Queen!”Footnote 117 He ends act I with a grand dioramic spectacle in honor of the Prince of Wales's marriage, a display that seemingly represented support and respect for the British monarchy, and directly follows the “Reminiscence of 1798.”Footnote 118 Corry uses the same tactic in a song he wrote the following year for the production, entitled “Derry,” which echoes his previous calls for peace and unity in Ulster: “Past feuds long since ended, all faiths in love blended, / Thy sons, like thy walls, firm united shall stand.”Footnote 119 He then explains that Ireland still remains ready to fight—before adding they will “fight for their Queen and their prized native land.”Footnote 120
Corry's juxtaposition of words and images yields an ambiguous production that speaks to the multiple audiences in Belfast's secular theatre spaces. This juxtaposition demonstrates how calls for justice and the celebration of 1798 do not necessarily work against unionist arguments. There is no indication Corry was calling for independence with his references to freedom and justice. Most likely, through these terms, he was referring to the continued inequality that liberal unionists recognized, and to a freedom offered by financial prosperity enabled by remaining part of the British Empire. However, as these terms were not specifically defined in performance, they remained open to interpretation by his Belfast audience. Corry carefully recognized some horrors of colonization and avoided depicting contemporary conflict while calling for reform and pledging his loyalty to the Crown. Irish nationalists would disagree with Corry's seeming belief that wrongs can and shall be righted by the British. Yet his entertainment's lecture and songs claimed that the collaboration of Irishmen in the rebellion, even though it failed, made the nation a better place. His negotiation then positioned the insurrection of 1798 as part of a foundational past that would allow for future unity.
Years later, Corry explicitly stated this position on 1798 in the introduction and lyrics to “Awake! A Song of 1798,” written for the never produced drama, Insurgent Chief. In the song's introduction, Corry explains that “Irishmen must ever venerate the memory of those noble-minded men who, upon that sad occasion, forfeited their lives for the love of their country, and who, doubtless, by their efforts in the cause of freedom, then sowed the seed from which their descendants now reap an abundant harvest.”Footnote 121 This quote seems to position 1798 as a necessary moment for Ireland's current, supposed prosperity under British rule. Corry asks audiences to “Think of your martyr'd patriots, their orphans’ sighs and tears; / Think of that wronged but noble host, your gallant Volunteers; / Think of your country, once the seat of glory and of might, / Whose sun of Nationality has set in darkest night— / Unite in love and harmony; let feuds for ever cease, / And blend in holy brotherhood of unity and peace.”Footnote 122
As sectarian divisions hardened and liberal unionism declined, the compatibility of a celebrated nationalist past with a belief in a unionist future would fade. It is not surprising that Corry's productions declined at the same time the Home Rule crisis created allegiances between the Orange Order and other unionists in opposition to the nationalist threat of Home Rule. Albeit a hope that denied contemporary inequalities and colonial oppression across Ireland, by the 1880s, Corry's utopian hope for Ireland's peaceful future appeared nothing more than a dream.
