1914] The Stage Irishman 



WEEKLY EYENINa MEETIXO, 



Friday, March 6, 1914. 



J. H. Balfour Browxe, Esq., K.C. D.L. J.P. LL.D., Manager 

 and Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The Rev. Caxox J, 0. Hannay, M.A. 



("G-EORGE A. BlR3IIXGHA3l"). 



The stage Irishman. 



[Abstract.] 



The reception of Bernard Shaw's " John Bull " in Dublin was for a 

 while doubtful. The audience was inclined to demonstrate against 

 Tim Haffigan, supposing him to be Shaw's presentation of an Irish- 

 man. Popular demonstrations, the expressions of the feelings of a 

 democracy in literature and art, are as a rule, singularly foolish. 

 Haffigan is in reality intended as a caricature of the stage Irishman. 

 His language, drunkenness, and so forth, are what we expect from 

 the stage Irishman. We Irish object strongly to the stage Irishman. 

 He is a caricature of our countrymen. The English, Scottish and 

 French, apparently do not object to being caricatured. The Irish, 

 and perhaps the Americans, do. The reason of this. 



In order that a caricature should have any vitality it must corre- 

 spond to something real. Where are we to find the reality from 

 which this caricature is drawn ? Nothing like it is to be found in 

 the ancient Irish literature. The Jacobite Irishman does not belong 

 to the type. It is in the eighteenth century that we first find the 

 prototype of the stage Irisbman. It is in the eighteenth century 

 also that he first appears in literature. The rapid development of 

 the prototype of the stage Irishman in the early nineteenth century, 

 and reasons for this. 



Charles Lever is the literary godfather of the stage Irish type. 

 Leyer exaggerated existing realities. The influence of the gentry 

 upon their dependents, and the development of the comic Irish 

 peasant. The disappearance of this kind of Irishman after the 

 famine. The new purposeful seriousness of Irish life in our time. 

 The disappearance of fun in Ireland. The coming into being of a 

 new kind of stage Irishman, quite different and hardly so pleasant as 

 the old type that Shaw satirised. 



[J. 0. H.] 



F 2 



