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Life
1882-1952; Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan; briefly ed. at Clongowes, and removed due to ill-health; Carrickmacross Grammar School; TCD; bar, 1907; wrote for papers; Abbey plays include Fraternity (1916); The Coiner (1916); The Counter Charm (1916), all Abbey; The Piper of Tavran (1921), adapted from Hyde; Cupboard Love (1930) , and The Plot (1941); also novels, Oriel (Dublin 1918); The Rocky Road to Dublin (1929). DIL DIW IF OCIL
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Works
Four Comedies [‘The Counter Charm’; ‘The Coiner’; ‘Special Pleading’; ‘The Old Lady’] (Dublin: Talbot
1916); Cupboard Love (Dublin: Duffy 1930), play; The Plot (Dublin: Duffy 1941), play. Fiction, Oriel (Talbot 1918), novel; The Rocky Road (Dublin: Talbot 1929), novel. [DIL]
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References
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fictio (Dublin: Maunsel 1919); b. 1882, Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan; brief stay at Clongowes Wood interrupted
by ill-health; ed. Grammar School, Carrickmacross, and TCD (BA 1905); Bar 1907; much journalism; five plays; Oriel, a novel (Talbot, 1918), set in ‘Farney’ (Carrickmacross), episodic with glimpses of life among folk of the roads, dairs, with a quack doctor, iterinerant players, and a delightful old Dean; ‘thoroughly Irish and Catholic,
without any controversy’ (Brown).
Robert Hogan, ed., A Dictionary of Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1979): modern knockabout comedy; cheaters (The Coiner and The Plot), and farcical matchmakings (Counter Charm and Cupboard Love; blundering burglars, in Special Pleading; clever little fellow (Fraternity); sweet Irish mother rescues son from predatory chorus girl (The Old Lady). Only The Pier of Tavran (1921) rises above ‘pleasantly sub-literary’ sitcom level [William J. Feeney]. Four Comedies which contains 1, 3, 5 and 7 of the above (1916).
Margaret Drabble, ed., Oxford Companion of English Literature, ed. (OUP: 1985); In 1916 four of his plays were staged Fraternity, a satire on the A.O.H.; The Coiner - a variation on The Pot of Broth theme; The Old Lady in which a sweet old Irish mother out-monouevres a chorus girl who has entrapped her son; and Special Pleading in which two inept sub-Shavian burglars settle the quarrels of the family they are burgling. He later wrote two other one-act comedies - The Spell (1922) and The Plot (1941) - along with a one-act folk drama called The Piper of Tavran (1921), based on a story of Hyde’s and a three-act comedy called Cupboard Love (1931).
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