Knowing as we do how thorough Davis was in everything he took up, the reason he did not deal with it was, probably, that he had not had the same opportunities of getting information on this as upon the other wonderfully varied subjects in his Essays.

I have in my mind at this moment one Irish dramatist, Edmond O’Rourke, who would have appreciated anything Davis would have written on the subject, and would certainly have profited by it.

O’Rourke, better known by his stage name of Falconer, was an actor as well as a dramatist.  He was “leading man” when I first saw him in the stock company of the Adelphi Theatre, Liverpool, and used to play the whole round of Shakespearean characters, his favourite parts being the popular ones of Macbeth, Hamlet, and Richard the Third.  He was a dark-complexioned man of average height, somewhat spare in form and features.  Though his performances were intellectual creations, we boys used to make somewhat unfavourable comparisons between him and Barry Sullivan, another of our fellow-countrymen.  Barry was by no means superior to Falconer in his conception of the various parts, but he greatly surpassed him in voice, physique, and general bearing on the stage, in which respects I think he had no equal in our times.

After Falconer went to London he became manager of the Lyceum Theatre, where several of his pieces were performed, including the well-known Irish drama, “Peep o’ Day,” which had an enormously successful run.  With this he also produced a magnificent panorama of Killarney, to illustrate which he wrote the well-known song of “Killarney” which, with the music of Balfe, our Irish composer, at once became very popular, as it ever since has been.  Madame Anna Whitty, the distinguished vocalist, who first sang “Killarney,” was a daughter of Michael James Whitty, of whom I have spoken elsewhere.  In going through my papers I have just come across a letter from O’Rourke, dated from the Princess’s Theatre, Manchester, August 19th, 1872, in which he tells me of the great success in Manchester of another play of his, “Eileen Oge.”  This also he produced at the Lyceum Theatre, London, where it had a long and successful run.  Edmund O’Rourke was a patriotic Irishman, and in this respect I could never have made the same comparison between the patriotism of the two men, Barry Sullivan and him, as I did between them as actors. Both were patriotic Irishmen.  It will be remembered that in an early chapter of this book I have mentioned that Barry Sullivan once offered himself to our committee as an Irish Nationalist candidate for the parliamentary representation of Liverpool.

Dion Boucicault, too, is one, I am sure, who would have profited by anything Thomas Davis might have written on the subject of the drama.  I am quite satisfied that though he was severely criticised for the wake scene in his play of “The Shaughraun” at the time it was first produced, the objectionable features in this were more the fault of the actors than of the dramatist; but the subject was an exceedingly risky one, even for a man like Boucicault, and would have been better avoided altogether.