An Giall [is] the restrained and almost forgotten tragi-comedy in Irish by Behan on which The Hostage is based….

An Giall (The Hostage) had its première in … Dublin. At the end of a successful run, [Joan] Littlewood offered to stage the play in London if Behan would translate it into English. Behan accepted the offer and The Hostage was presented to the English-speaking world…. However, a comparison of the Irish and English texts reveals that The Hostage is not a translation; it is a drastically modified version of the original play.

The fact that The Hostage is more than a translation begins to emerge as soon as one examines the characters in the two versions of the play. There are ten characters in An Giall; there are fifteen in The Hostage. (p. 165)

The added characters contribute nothing to the plot of The Hostage, but they contribute a...