While Irish theatre history and criticism has closely linked performance, nationalism, and identity politics throughout the twentieth century, far less attention has been paid to the Irish theatre's profound role in nation building in previous centuries. Cheryl Herr, John Harrington, and others have reminded us of the nineteenth-century popular theatre's role in subverting British opinions of Irish history and identity. But the eighteenth century, the century of Thomas Sheridan, John O'Keeffe, and Smock Alley, as well as Jonathan Swift, the United Irishmen, and Grattan's Parliament, has received surprisingly little attention from the point of view of theatre history.