Michael Clancy

Life
?-1760; b. Clare; went blind in 1737; his first play, The Sharpers, was based on exploits of Col. Chartres which appeared at Smock Alley (Jan 1737/8) was noticed by Swift, who wrote, ‘I read it carefully with much pleasure, on account of the characters and the moral. I have no interest with the people of the playhouse, else I should be glad to recommend it to them’ (Memoirs of Dr. Michael Clancy, MD ,1750); his next, Tamar: Prince of Nublia (1739), also at Smock Alley, met with limited success and remained printed; he also wrote Hermon Prince of Chorea, or the Extravagant Zealot, a heroic play set in Pekin [Beijing] was advertised in General Advertiser‘as acted in Ireland’ (14 April 1746); Clancy acted the role of Tiresius in Dryden and Nat. Lee’s Oedipus for his own benefit at Drury Lane. RR

See notice by Helen Andrews in Dictionary of Irish Biography (RIA 2009) - here paraphrased:

(c.1704–1776); born in Co. Clare, son of Daniel Clancy, soldier or possibly doctor and a man of letters; Memoirs ded. to Earl of Kildare; ed. Paris (1712–16); taught Greek by Dr Michael Moore; played truant to see his hero the Duke of Ormond then visiting Paris and feared to return home; travelled to Ireland aged 12 to seek his relations; helped by a friend of his father and attended Kilkenny College for three years; discovered relations in Co. Clare who placed him in Trinity College, Dublin, 1721–4; studied studied anatomy; sent a poem commemorating the death of Richard Helsham to Jonathan Swift; expelled from TCD for drunkenness - not cited in Memoirs [TCD Muniments]; returned to France (1724); guest of Montesquieu; poss. studied medicine at Bordeaux and practised medicine in Dublin; lost his sight following a cold, 1737; turned to drama; his play The sharper performed at Smock Alley (1738) and published with his Memoirs (1750); received appreciative letter on the play from Swift (dated Christmas 1737); playbill for his benefit performance, January 1737/8) considered the earliest surviving Dublin playbill; his Tamar, prince of Nubia (1740) remained unpublished; The fair penitent (1745) given as benefit performance by Thomas Sheridan, 1746; Hermon, prince of Choræa: or, the extravagant zealot (1746), a tragedy, also staged - all unsuccessfully and prob. out of sympathy; played Tiresias in a benefit performance of Oedipus, king of Thebes by Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, Theatre Royal, London, 1744; published poems in Gentleman's Magazine and Finn's Leinster Journal, two being included in Brookiana, ed C. H. Wilson (1804) collected by C. H. Wilson); he Templum veneris, sive amorum rhapsodiae (1745, 1774), printed with congratulatory letter by bishop of Cerati, chancellor-provost of the Academy of Pisa; trans. The wanderings of the heart and mind: or memoirs of Mr de Meilcour, by Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crébillon (1751); granted government pension by kindness of Lord Chesterfield, the Lord Lieutenant, 1745; opened grammar school in Church St., Dublin, 1752, and taught classics and modern languaages privately at his home in Bolton St.; became master of the Diocesan School, Kilkenny (1758–76); visited by John O'Keeffe in 1767 (‘polite and communicative; yet melancholy; a large, well-looking man, with a great wig’; d. 7 April 1776, Kilkenny.

Bibl. sources: rep. Michael Clancy, The Memoirs of Michael Clancy, M.D. containing his observations on many countries in Europe (1750); John O'Keeffe, Recollections of the life of John O'Keeffe, i (1826), 212; Alumni Dubl.; T. C. P. Kirkpatrick, ‘Michael Clancy, M. D.’ Ir. Jn. Med. Sc., no. 154 (Oct. 1938), 645–63; Richard Hayes, ‘Biographical dictionary of Irishmen in France’, Studies, xxxi (1942), 247; E. K. Sheldon, Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley (1967)
Available online; accessed 01.12.2023

 

References
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), vol. I, p.469-71 [as attached.]; also cited in Peter Kavanagh, Irish Theatre (1946) with drama details [as above].

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