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Life
?1732-?; [fl.1795 ODNB]; prob. b. Dublin, son of clerk in Lord Mayor’s office, Dublin; ed. TCD; became attorney; plays include All the World’s A Stage (1777 April) at Drury Lane, and frequently revived, following the less successful [comic opera] Milesian (1777), The Divorce, farce (1781); Hero and Leander, a popular burletta (1787) and and The Man of Parts (1795); as one of two Irishmen editing the Morning Post between 1786 and 1795, he involved his printer in several libel cases. ODNB PI GBI DIW OCIL
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Commentary
G. C. Duggan, Stage Irishman (1957), Isaac Jackman, The Milesian (1777), and comic opera written in a rather serious vein; Irish attorney and journalist; b. Dublin 1732[?]; short time as ed. of Morning Post; Captain Cornelius O’Gallagher is The Milesian; for plot, Captain O’Gallagher visits the home of his brave lieutenant George Belfield; he is a blustering Irishman, with a heart of gold; on finding that the other son Valentine has run off with a school-girl whom he is supposed to be keeping as his mistress, he follows him to a tavern where he overhears him discussing the amours of the Gods (‘I know nothing of Mr Jove ... but if he laughs at the ruin of innocence, he’s a dirty fellow’), and finds that the girl is in fact his own daughter, Caroline O’Gallagher; Valentine establishes that he has not touched her, and the lovers marry.
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam 1986): In Isaac Jackman’s comic opera The Milesian, Captain Cornelius O’Gollagher is described as ‘certainly an indifferent orator, and yet his expressions come so truly from the heart that he makes his auditors feel, altho’ they smile at him.’ Mr Belfield is heard to remark, ‘I long to see this worthy Hibernian; your account of him has charmed me’, to which George replies, ‘Indeed, Sir, he is the most deserving officer, and if any thing exceeds his conduct and resolution, it is his humanity; but ... you must endeavour to pronounce it [his name] as they do in Ireland [to keep him in humour]. [Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael, 1986, p.144]. Further: ‘In Isaac Jackman’s The Divorce, there is a scene in which an amiable Irish wooer of rich and elderly ladies is taken for a Frenchman, and teaches his sweetheart Irish as if it were French.’ (p.23). (ftn.114 [465]
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References
D. J. O’Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical Dictionary (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co 1912); raises query about Irishman of that name who lived as cleryman in England; b. Dublin c.1752, d. Lambeth 1831, Vicar of Kirtling, Cambridgeshire; same or relative? Also cites Almirina, mock trag., and The Man of Parts, a farce (1795).
COPAC lists The Milesian, a comic opera in two acts and in prose, by I[saac] Jackman. Second edition (London: Printed for C. &. S. Thompson 1777; 2nd edn. 1777).
Burton, British Theatre (1930), pp.241, [App.] lists All the World’s a Stage., farce; in [Dictionary of National Biography, Bell’s British Theatre ...&c] Brit. Drama II; also Hero and Leander [1787], oper. burl., Brit. Drama I.
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Notes
Classical: Irish classical plays listed by W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), include I[saac] Jackman, Hero and Leander (1787) [110].
Variants: DIW, b. c.1750; ODNB, ‘about mid century’; OCIL has err. 1752-1831. DIW has a source other than ODNB.
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