An Triail ("The Trial") is a play written by the Irish playwright Máiréad Ní Ghráda which starred well known poet and Sean-nós singer Caitlín Maude in its first performance in 1964. The play was first broadcast on RTÉ radio in 1965.[1]
The play is written entirely in the Irish language and is on the curriculum for the Leaving Certificate examinations for the period 2006 - 2011.
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The play is set in the West of Ireland during the 1960s and deals with the pregnancy, and subsequent single motherhood, of a young woman. She is shunned by her family after becoming impregnated by the local primary school teacher, a married man, and must leave her parish and move to the city. Here she is once again marginalised, first as a pregnant woman and then as a single mother. An encounter with the child's father, where he further rejects her and his child, only serves to make matters worse and the girl takes her own life in a similar way to poet Sylvia Plath, as well as that of her child. Notes for the Leaving Certificate can accessed at http://skoool.ie/skoool/senior.asp?id=691 It often goes back and forth between "flashbacks" (memories of Maire, the heroine) and the trial. At the beginning, Maire's mother is introduced, and proceeds to state she is a god-fearing woman who has done nothing wrong. Throughout the play, this is typical of most characters.
Maire She is the heroine of the play. Her key flaw is her loyalty. She is very sheltered and naive due to her upbringing. At the young age of 14-15, she falls in love with Pàdraig, a school teacher, at a dance. Maire was raised with no knowledge of men and the like, as her mother raised her to be only a nun. She was only allowed to enter dances due to the priest being there. During the play, Maires love for Padraig never falters. Proof of this is seen how, even after his betrayal throughout the flashbacks, she never breaks her promises to "Never to mention [his] name", "Never to write to [him]" and to "Never tell anyone about [him]", save in one of the final flashbacks, where she is writing to him. When she becomes pregnant, she is thrown out by her mother, and goes to Dublin, where she lives with Mailì, a prostitute. Throughout the flashbacks in which she and Pàdraig meet, she is constantly told that he loves her, and would marry her, if he was not married. Hence, when she finds out from a friend, a year later, that his wife died a month after she was thrown out, Maire has an emotional breakdown, and writes her letter to him, thinking it alright, since Pàdraigs wife is dead.
Pàdraig The school teacher to be held responsible for Maire`s pregnancy. During their meetings and even when they met at the dance, he is constantly teasing and testing her, manipulating her, making her feel pity for her while enticing her all the more. He declares her his wife at the end of a certain scene, although stating beforehand he could not marry her because his own wife, Mura, is ill but alive.
When it was first acted out on stage, many did not stay throughout the entirity of the play due to many reasons, one being people feeling all too familiar with the scenario and characters, as being thrown out of the family for being a pregnant woman before marriage was normal in said times, as was shunning said woman. Another reason was because the only good character who assisted the heroine, Maire, was a prostitute, Mailì. Again, in said times, people did not want to face the truth of such things, that there were prostitutes and unlawful men.