Freeman Crofts Wills

Life
?1849-[?]; b. Kilkenny; cleric and dramatist; numerous plays of which The Only Way (n.d.) was a success; biography of his brother W. G. Wills [q.v.], and revised edition of father’s Illustrious Irishmen as The Irish Nation (see infra); d. Eastbourne 1913. PI OCIL.

Criticism
Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660-1900 [2nd edn.] (Cambridge UP 1959), Vol. 5, p.210; see also Irish Book Lover, Vol. 8.

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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912), gives bio-dates: b. about 1840.

Allardyce Nicoll, A History of English Drama 1660-1900 [2nd edn.] (Cambridge UP 1959), Vol. 5, cites The Only Way as being successfully produced by Martin Harvey (Lyceum, Feb. 1899).

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Notes
Momento
: a theatrical programme of The Only Way by Freeman Wills, a dramatisation of [Charles] Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities (Royal Theatre Dublin, 14 Nov. 1906), printed on white silk by Martin Harvey & Co., and encased with others of the same kind, is framed at at Mulligans [public house], Poolbeg St., Dublin.

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