This book discusses Irish Passion plays (plays that rewrite or parody the story of the Passion of Christ) in modern Irish drama from the Irish Literary Revival to the present day. It offers innovative readings of such canonical plays as J. M. Synge¿s The Playboy of the Western World, W. B. Yeats¿s Calvary, Brendan Behan¿s The Hostage, Samuel Beckett¿s Endgame, Brian Friel¿s Faith Healer and Tom Murphy¿s Bailegangaire, as well as of less well-known plays by Padraic Pearse, Lady Gregory, G. B. Shaw, Seán O¿Casey, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett and David Lloyd. Challenging revisionist readings of the rhetoric of ¿blood sacrifice¿ and martyrdom in the Irish