Using close readings of Shaw's plays and letters, as well as archival research, David Clare illustrates that Shaw regularly placed Irish, Irish Diasporic, and surrogate Irish characters into his plays in order to comment on Anglo-Irish relations and to explore the nature of Irishness.

David Clare is an Irish Research Council-funded postdoctoral research fellow at the Moore Institute at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His work has been published in the Irish Studies Review, the New Hibernia Review, the Irish University Review, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, and Emerging Perspectives. He holds an MA and a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin, Ireland.