• Publication Date: 25 May 1918
• Premiere: Munich, 7 August 1919 (in German, under the title Verbannte)

by Rozerin Asmin Saripinar

RICHARD: Did my going make you suffer?

BEATRICE: I always knew you would go someday. I did not suffer, only I was changed. (Act 1, p. 34)

Exiles is unique, and not only because it is James Joyce’s only surviving play. Written between 1914 and 1915, in Trieste, the play is set in Merrion and Ranelagh, suburbs of Dublin. It takes place over two days in the summer of the year 1912, as writer Richard Rowan and his common-law wife Bertha – who have recently returned from exile – are confronted by two old friends with whom their lives have been entangled for many years. (The only other characters are Bertha and Richard’s son Archie, their servant Brigid, and a fisherwoman.)

After W. B. Yeats refused to stage the play at the Abbey Theatre, Joyce agreed to publish Exiles in print first, despite his belief that an “unperformed play […] is really a dead shoot” (qtd. in Bulson 63). The play was not especially popular at the time and is commonly regarded as one of Joyce’s weaker works. However, much of the initial criticism may have had to do with the play’s provocative themes: unconventional relationships, jealousy, weakened national ties to Ireland, and exile. All of these topics resonate with Joyce’s personal life, making Exiles a partly autobiographical work. (An obvious parallel is that both Richard Rowan and Joyce himself are writers who left Ireland with a woman – Bertha and Nora Barnacle, respectively – whom they chose not to marry, defying the conventions of their day).

As opposed to the relationship triangles that feature so prominently in countless other plays, there is a ‘love rectangle’ at the center of Exiles. In the course of the play, the central quartet – Richard, Bertha, Beatrice Justice, and Robert Hand – is forced to reckon with their feelings for one another; old flames light up while feelings of jealousy and doubt arise. While it may be difficult to stage Exiles successfully, it makes for much more interesting reading than some of the criticism would lead one to believe.

^{Works Cited: Bulson, Eric. The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce. Cambridge University Press, 2006.｜Joyce, James. Exiles: A Critical Edition, edited by A Nicholas Fargnoli and Michael Patrick Gillespie, University Press of Florida, 2016.}