SOURCE: Clark, Earl John. “James Joyce's Exiles.” James Joyce Quarterly 6, no. 1 (fall 1968): 69–78.

In the following essay, Clark outlines the critical reception of Exiles.

The golden anniversary of the appearance of James Joyce's only surviving play,¹ Exiles, is an occasion to note the relative and odd neglect accorded to this play in its first half century. An examination of the best Joyce bibliography² shows that only twenty-three of nearly 1500 entries are concerned with the work. Of these nearly half are limited to fewer than three pages of review of performances and the most elementary analysis of theme and character. Several others debate the rather insignificant question of whether the play is an “Ibsenite” drama or not. No more than six are significant contributions to Joyce scholarship.

One is initially puzzled by this neglect of a drama Francis Fergusson has called the “most terrible and beautiful of modern plays.”³ It...