The Rising of the Moon premiered at the Abbey Theatre in 1907. The play opens with three Irish
policemen, obviously working
for the British authorities, who are on a man hunt for an escaped political prisoner. The
policemen discuss the large reward money they will receive for the criminal’s capture and as two of the policemen go off, the
Sergeant stays to guard the harbor where he thinks a ship is bound to take the rebel to freedom. The Sergeant meets a poor peasant man who passes the time singing songs of Ireland. The singer engages the Sergeant in conversation which drifts towards the past. The Sergeant begins to think of the fate of the fugitive in comparison to his own. He thinks about the friends of his youth, and the circumstances which could have placed him in the position of hiding from the police in the dark. The Sergeant undergoes a change of heart with the disguised rebel begins to sing the song of the Fenian Movement, composed around 1865, of The Rising of the Moon. So moved is the sergeant by memories of his own patriotic youth that he allows the criminal to escape and gives up his chance of the reward and his duty towards the British government.
This play shows mistaken identity through disguise; in this case a wig and a hat. The Sergeant does not recognize his quarry because of Walsh’s costume. Also, the wearing of the disguise enables Walsh to get close to his enemy so that the Sergeant can unveil his own identity with the removal of Walsh’s wig. Eventually, when the Sergeant discovers that Walsh is indeed the criminal he has been seeking, he performs his complicity with the nationalist movement by hiding Walsh’s wig and hat from the other policeman. After the policemen leave, the Sergeant again performs his own collusion by giving Walsh back his disguise so the rebel can continue to delude others. In this way, the disguise performs the entire journey towards the discovery of the Sergeant’s “true” identity underneath his mask of law and duty; the use and exchange of the disguise are similar to the exchanges of identity between the Irish man representing British rule and the Irish man representing the rebellion.