Life
fl.1678 [prob. Duffy]; b. Ireland; worked as milliner in London; his burlesques
incl. Empress of Morocco (1674), a burlesque of Settle’s farce; The Spanish Rogue (1674), a comedy reputed indecent and dedicated
to Nell Gwynn; The Mock Tempest (Drury Lane, 1675), performed in
opposition to Dryden and Davenant’s adaption of Shakespeare’s Tempest (1974); also Psyche Debauch’d (1678), a travesty
of a play by Shadwell; castigated as beneath contempt in Biographia
Dramatica; his New Poems, Songs, Prologues and Epilogues (1676)
contains lovers’ plaints, some to Irish airs; other works incl. Beauties’
Triumph, a mask. CAB ODNB JMC OCIL
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References
Peter Kavanagh, Irish Theatre (Tralee: 1946), Chp. VIII, ‘Thomas
Duffett’, [sic], The Spanish Rogue, dedicated to Nell Gwyn,
‘contains 3 lines which one would hardly have expected from the mouth
of a woman’ (Genest). The Empress of Morocco was a burlesque
of Settle’s play of that title; instead of Settle’s nobles we
are given lowly characters, Epistemon tells Pantgruel that he saw Cleopatra
hawking onions in Hades. [168]. The Amorous Old Woman is set in
Pisa. The Mock Tempest, of which Langbaine said, ‘writ on
purpose to draw company from the other theatre, where there was great
resort about that time to see that reviv’d Comedy call’d the Tempest, then much in vogue.’ He also relates that when acted
in Dublin ‘several ladies and persons of the best quaity left the
house, such ribaldry pleasing none but the rabble.’ Duffett evidently
had an amazing capacity to find a double-entendre, but is finally dismissed
by Langbaine as a ‘wit of the third rate.’ He was probably born
Duffy. (pp.168-69.)
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