Nick Maxwell Dublin in the 1740s was a Protestant city, and one that was alive to the hair-splitting controversies that stirred up the non-conformist world. Arminians, Baptists, Bradilonians, Muggletonians, Quakers, Socinians and Unitarians all found a ready audience. Into this cacophony came John Cennick, a young evangelical preacher of magnetic power, who brought with him the practices of … Read more
The Recruiting Officer George Farqhuar Abbey Theatre, Dublin, Dec. 207–Jan. 2008 by Eamon O’Flaherty Lynn Parker’s revival of The Recruiting Officer at the Abbey follows a string of brilliant productions of eighteenth-century Irish plays with the Rough Magic theatre company. Parker and Rough Magic have a wide repertoire ranging across the centuries—including the brilliant Improbable … Read more
In the newly independent Irish Free State the Catholic Church was deeply insecure about its role in the new state, which had been born out of violence—a violence, moreover, that had revealed how unstable and volatile its flock could be. The ruthlessness and cruelty of the Civil War had appalled churchmen, and the Catholic Church’s … Read more
Over the course of the eighteenth century there was an increasing focus on spectacular forms of entertainment, ranging from peep-shows and waxworks to magic lantern shows and theatrical effects, which prefigure the idea of ‘going to the pictures’. While many of these entertainment techniques remained experimental or confined to the élite, once the Irish-born Robert … Read more
On 15 June 1843, huge crowds congregated on a racecourse outside Ennis at a ‘monster meeting’ in support of the repeal of the Act of Union. Adhering to a template, the mass rally of rousing speeches was followed by a magnificent evening banquet in the town’s old chapel, where Daniel O’Connell compared the momentum of … Read more