"Buffoonery and Easy Sentiment" Popular Irish Plays in the Decade Prior to the Opening of The Abbey Theatre

by Fitz-Simon, Christopher

• ISBN13: 9781904505495
• ISBN10: 190450549X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-10
• Publisher: Carysfort Press Limited

Summary

In this fascinating reappraisal of the non-literary drama of the late 19th and early 20th century, Christopher Fitz-Simon discloses a unique world of plays, players, and producers in metropolitan theatres in Ireland and other countries, where Ireland was viewed as a source of extraordinary topics such as revolution, eviction, famine, agrarian agitation, and political assassination. Plays of the time were diverse, including those such as Murray & Shine's An Irish Gentleman, Hubert O'Grady's The Priest Hunter, J.W. Whitbread's The Victoria Cross, and Edward Selden's McKenna's Flirtation.

Author Biography

Christopher Fitz-Simon is a former Artistic Director of the Lyric Theatre, Belfast, the Irish Theatre Company and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. Among his books are THE BOYS, a biography of the Dublin Gate Theatre's Hilton Edwards and Michel MacLammir - 'A really wonderful book' (Bruce Arnold, Irish Independent); 'Beautifully written, diligently researched, sometimes sad, often hilarious' (Keith Baxter, Daily Telegraph); 'By far the most wide-ranging and atmospheric description of Dublin's wartime theatre' (Clair Wills in That Neutral Island); and ELEVEN HOUSES, a memoir of the 1940s -'Christopher Fitz-Simon's wry and dispassionate approach keeps the narrative bracing' (Patricia Craig, Times Literary Supplement); 'The sense of total recall is astonishingit is painfully funny' (Roy Foster, Irish Times).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. xii
List of Illustrations	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Table of professional productions of Irish plays in Dublin, Belfast and Cork, 1895-1904	p. 4
The Background to Performance	p. 19
Theatregoing: what was on offer
Managements, Companies and Tours
The Players
The Playwriting Tradition	p. 31
Ireland on the English language stage
The Importance of Being Boucicault
Melodrama - and Melodrama, Irish style
A Patriotic (or Subversive) Theatre	p. 43
Public and press reaction: to applaud, question or ignore
Irish topics: choice material for Irish, English and American playwrights
Irish heroes and scoundrels
Dramatic entertainment and dramatic literature
Language: the defining gleam
Hubert O'Grady: Reformer Disguised as a Gommoch	p. 71
O'Grady's early career
The Gommoch
The Eviction
Emigration
The Famine
The Fenian
The Priest Hunter
O'Grady's later career
J.W. Whitbread: Entrepreneur in John Bull's Other Island	p. 111
Whitbread's early career
Shoulder to Shoulder
The Irishman
The Nationalist
The Victoria Cross
True Green: Whitbread's Irish Heroes	p. 139
Lord Edward
Theobald Wolfe Tone
The Insurgent Chief
The Ulster Hero
The Sham Squire
Sarsfield
Whitbread's later career
Truly Irish: A Cornucopia of Plays and Playwrights	p. 185
Born to Good Luck by Tyrone Power
The Irish Tutor by the Earl of Glengall
Peep o' Day by Edmund Falconer
The Rebels by J.B. Fagan
The Rose of Rathboy by Dan Fitzgerald
Caitheamh an Ghlais by Walter Howard & Chalmers Mackey
Quasi Irish: A Gallery of Plays by English and American Authors	p. 211
Plays of English Provenance	p. 212
The Green Bushes by John Buckstone
Kathleen Mavourneen by William Travers
Bally Vogan by Arthur Lloyd
The Boys of Wexford by E.C. Matthews
An Irish Gentleman by David C. Murray and John L. Shine
On Shannon's Shore by Frederick Cooke
The Shamrock and the Rose Walter Reynolds
Plays of American Provenance	p. 239
Dear Hearts of Ireland by William Manning
McKenna's Flirtation by Edgar Selden
Our Irish Visitors by Thomas E. Murray
Muldoon's Pic Nic by Harry Pleon
My Native Land by Myles McCarthy
Envoi	p. 255
Information on First Productions	p. 259
Bibliography and Acknowledgements	p. 264
Notes	p. 269
Index	p. 280
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