Life
1775?-1808; fled prosecution in 1796, and emigrated to US and launched The Polar Star and Boston Daily Advertiser; attempted to manage
theatres in Boston and in New York (Time Peace); wrote a play in New York, Time Piece. History of the Late War in Ireland (1799) and History of Virginia (1804-16); settled in Petersburgh, Virginia;
killed in a duel with a Frenchman, Coquebert, allegedly on account of
his offensive comments on Napoleon; dramatic works incl. Death of General
Montgomery in Storming ... Quebec (1797), and Female Patriotism,
or the Death of Joan D’Arc (1798). DIW DIB RAF OCAL OCIL
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Works
Dramatic works, Bunker Hill, or the Death of General Warren
(NY: Greenleaf 1797), 55pp, verse; The Death of General Montgomery
in Storming the City of Quebec (1797); Female patriotism, or the
Death of Joan d’Arc (NY: Hurtin 1798), 40pp. [verse]; Bethlen
Gabor, Lord of Transylvania, or the Man-Hating Palatine (Petersburgh:
Somervell & Conrad, 1807), 49pp.; other plays with unknown dates are The Fortunes of Nigel; The Innkeeper of Abbeyville; Which
Do you Like Best, the Poor Man or the Lord? Prose, History
of the Late War in Ireland (Philadelphia: Bailey 1799), 140 [1] 40pp; An Oration delivered on 4 March 1803 (Petersburgh: Field 1803),
18pp; The History of Virginia, 4 vols. (Petersburgh: Dickson &
Pescud), vol. I, 1804; II, III, 1805; IV, 1816); ‘An Essay on the
Character and Antiquity of Irish Songs’, in Richmond Enquirer,
27 May 1808.
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Commentary
Charles Campbell, Some materials to Serve for a Brief Memoir of John
Daly Burk, author of a ‘History of Virginia’, with a sketch
of the life and character of his only child, Judge John Julius Burk (NY:
Joel Munsel 1868), vi, 123pp; Dictionary of American Biography
incl. references to the following, W. W. Clapp, Jnr., A Record of the
Boston Stage (1853); Oscar Wegelin, Early American Plays (1900);
Pr. Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginnings to the
Civil War (1923). [WORKS & COMM. from RAF.]
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References
James D. Hart, The Oxford Companion to American Literature [5th
edn.] (Oxford: OUP 1983), gives dates as above; Burk wrote a History
of Virginia (1804-16); his Bunker Hill or the Death of General
Warren (1797), bombastic blank-verse drama, popular for spectacular
battle scene; Female Patriotism, or the Death of Joan d’Arc (1798), blank-verse trag., characterising Joan as a simple human being,
untouched by inflated rhetoric of his other plays. In Ox.Comp. American
Theatre, details are added; adopted Daly from lady who assisted his
escape; shot for insulting Napoleon.
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre: Being a History of the Drama in Ireland from the Earlieest Period up to the Present Day (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), lists Bunker Hill or The Death of General Warren (Haymarket, Boston, 17 Jan. 1797); Female Patriotism or the Death of Joan d’Arc (Park Theatre, 1798); The Death of General Montgomery in Storming the City of Quebec (1797); Bethlen Gabor, Lord of Transylvania or The Man-hating Palatine (Petersburg, V[irginia], c.1807); Which Do you Like Best, the Poor Man or the Lord. Also Fortunes of Nigel, cited in O’Donoghue.
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Notes
In Bethlam Gabor the title-char. goes mad when Count Wallestein
slaughters his family; St. Leon is ‘immensely rich ... by ventriloquism
endeavours to restore the mind of Bethlam to resignation and content,,
previously married to Wallestein’s daughter’, from which ensues
much devilment and dungeonry. In Bunker Hill, the dying Warren ‘look[s]
into the womb of time’ and sees his country’s destiny - to become
‘a proud democracy founded on equal laws and stripted entire of those
unnatural titles and those name of King and Count.’ (See Wells Microcards
of English and American Drama, inconjuntion with William Bergquist, Checklist of English and American Plays, 1963)
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