For the last two decades, scholars have debated the influence of Irish politics on English Renaissance literature. In these studies, Ireland has been equated with the New World as the object of colonialism. But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us challenges this notion, arguing that the attitude of the English toward Ireland differed significantly from their vision of the New World.

But the Irish Sea Betwixt Us examines the English view of the "imperfect" other by looking at Ireland through works by Gerald of Wales, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Jonson. Grounding his work in colonial and postcolonial theory, Murphy uses Renaissance-era journals, pamphlets, histories, and state papers to challenge the strictly colonial representation of Ireland, revealing a much more complex portrait of the relationship between the two islands.