Life
1849-1919; author of Turko the Terrible, and named ‘most versatile of Dublin literary men’ in Fitzpatrick, Dublin (1907); Dublin Doggerels (1877); his panto character Turko is ‘the boy that can enjoy/ Invisibility’ in Ulysses. MKA
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Commentary
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature (1978), cites Ariadne, a Metrical Drama (1872); Rhampsinitus, An Opera Bouffe (Dublin 1873); The Moderate Man and Other Verse (1888); Atalanta (1900); also prose, Ballymuckbeg, a political satire (1892); Waggish Tales (Dublin 1897).
See also Obituary, Irish Book Lover, Vol. 11 (1919) and Cheryl Herr, Joyce’s Anatomy of Culture Urbana Press, Illinois 1986).
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References
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), cites his Ariadne, a natural drama in four scenes, 1872, [which] won the TCD Vice-Chancellor’s Prize; also Rhampsinitus, opera bouffe in 3 acts, mus. by A. Cellini; and Turco the Terrible with which according to Cabinet, he raised pantomime to a fine art.
Donald Gifford, Ulysses Annotated (Cal. UP 1988), under ‘Turko the Terrible’, viz., Ulysses 1.258; 1.260-62; 4.89; 15.4612; remarks that the pantomime, adapted from a London panto of the same title by William Brough, one by Brougham, was an instant success at the Gaiety in 1873, and pdated and revived throughout the closing decades of the century. Its frame as essentialy a world of fairy-tale metamorphioses and transformations - as King Turko (Royce) and his court enjoyed the magic potential of the Fairy Rose ([Gifford, p.18).
Hyland Books (Oct. 1995) lists Dublin Doggerels, 1st edn. (1877).
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Notes
Gaiety Theatre (Dublin): A tradition, which became an essential part of Gaiety life, began in December 1873 when the first pantomime Turko the Terrible was staged and two years later the ever-popular Cinderella made her debut.
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