The quare fellow ; and The hostage : two plays

B. Behan

The first play is set in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin. Unusually, the anti-hero of the play, The Quare Fellow, himself is never seen or heard. However, he is the pivot around whom Brendan Behan's play is constructed. He is a man condemned to death the following day, for an unmentioned crime. Whatever it is, it revolts his fellow inmates far less than that of The Other Fellow, a very camp, almost Wildean, gay man, referred to as The Other Fellow. The play is a grimly realistic portrait of prison life in Ireland in the 1950s, and a reminder of the days in which homosexuality was illegal and the death penalty common. The play is based on Behan's own prison experiences, and highlights the barbarity of capital punishment, then in use in both the UK and Ireland.