Life
?1690-1767; thought born at Birr, King's Country (now Co. Offaly); ed.
TCD, and fellow; student Gray's Inn; entered Middle Temple; practised
law in London and wrote for papers; wrote three successful comedies, The
Perplexed Couple (Lincoln's Inn 1715); The Coquet (Lincoln's
Inn 1718); The Half-Pay Officers (Lincoln's Inn 1720); ed., Fog’s
Journal, the Whig organ, from Oct. 1728; prop.-ed., Common Sense:
or the Englishman's Journal (1737), with contrib. from Lord Lyttleton
et. al.; married an heiress, d. London, 16 July. DIW PI ODNB RR CAB
OCIL DIL2
Works
Molloy , et. al., Common Sense: or the Englishman's Journal, 2 vols. (London: [n.pub.]1737) [reprinted from the periodical].
Commentary
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam
1986), remarks that Charles Molloy’s The Half-Pay Officers
(1720), borrows characters Fluellen and Macmorris (Mackmorrice) from Shakespeare’s Henry V. (Leerssen, p.127.)
References
Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols.,
1876-78) reports that both his parents were descendents of ‘good
families’; contributed to Fog’s Journal [see Swift, Sheridan],
after his three dramatic successes [as above], The Perplexed Couple
(London 1715); The Coquette (1718) [in which Mademoiselle Fanast
is the coquette, and La Jupe her maid]; The Half-Pay Officers (1720).
Selections from The Perplexed Couple, and The Coquette.
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), also, ed. Fog’s Journal (1728), and Common Sense (1737); he became proprietor-editor of Common Sense, which published Lord Chesterfield, Lord Lyttleton, and Dr. King; refuse inducements to write in defence of Walpole, but not rewarded by his opponents. Note that details of the other Charles Molloy (b.1646) are given here.
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.432-33. See also Crone (Compendium of Irish Biography).
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Quotations
Leon in The Perplexed Couple (1715): ‘Sincere! O hideous -
What a thing you have named; no, no, sir, well-bred people are never sincere;
’tis modish to flatter, lie, and deceive. I hate you out-of-fashion
good qualities. Sincerity’s altogether of vulgar extraction.’
(Quoted in Charles Read, ed., A Cabinet of Irish Literature, 3
vols., 1876-78).
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