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Life
?-1939; [Andrew E. Malone; pseud. of Laurence P. Byrne]; American-born critic of Irish literary drama, author of the first history of Irish theatre during the period of the literary revival, and semi-official historian of the Abbey in his day; published The Irish Drama 1896-1928 (1914; rev. edn. 1929); also drama critic for The Irish Times up to his death; contrib. The Bookman, et al.
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Works
Monographs, The Irish Drama 1896-1928 [London 1914] (London: Constable 1929); Party Government in the Irish Free State (NY: Academy of Political Science 1929), 16pp. [8vo.; 1s. 6d.]
Articles & Chapters, ‘The Late Development of the Irish Drama’, in the Dublin Magazine (July-September 1928), q.pp.; ‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’ [1929], printed in Ron Ayling, Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements (Macmillan 1969), pp.68-75; ‘The Rise of the Realistic Movement', in Lennox Robinson, ed., The Irish Theatre (NY: Macmillan & Co. 1939), pp.89-105.
See also a lengthy review of Silver Tassie (Macmillan) to The Irish Book Lover ((July-Dec. 1928) [infra].
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Quotations
The Irish Drama 1896-1928 (1929 Edn.): ‘[A] perfection of dialogue which is quite distinctively Irish; and they have all the wit which is no less a distinguishing mark of the Irishman. They are all satirists, viewing English life with a somewhat disapproving smile ... Comedies by English writers tend to be humorous and sentimental, while comedies by Irishmen tend to be witty and ironic.’ (op. cit., pp.14-15). Further, on Wilde and Shaw, ‘there is nothing of Ireland in them but the pert dialogue and the ironic wit which is characteristic of their countrymen at large.’ (ibid., p.15). [Both cited in Loreto Todd, The Language of Irish Literature, 1989, pp.66, 68.]
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Sean O’Casey, The Silver Tassie (Macmillan), reviewed in The Irish Book Lover ((July-Dec. 1928), p.190f.: ‘[...] I do not share Mr. O’Casey’s belief that The Silver Tassie is his best work to date, and I am quite certain that it is not the worst as its rejection would seem to imply. It might be a very powerful thing on the stage, although I doubt that it would, but in reading it lacks that reality which can make it convincing. The first act in a Dublin tenement is the O’Casey now so well known; the inconsequence of Tchechov combin-ed with the vivacity of the Dublin slums. The second act is a different matter; here the ‘expressionism’ of the Toller school takes command and the effort to fit the European War into a single act is hardly a success. The act reads more like a nightmare than anything I have read in contemporary drama; the chants are merely absurd, and the symbolism is strained beyond endurance. In the third and fourth acts events happen without cohesion, and quite inconsequentially so that people who moved in one social sphere in the first act are moving in quite another in the third. The war may have done much to level classes but it did not do so much as to bring Surgeon Forby Maxwell to the rooms of the Avondale Football Club. But even the Football Club itself changes its social tone between the first and the fourth act. In the first act it seems to be what Dubliners call a “Phoenix Park” Club, but in the fourth act it resembles a first-class professional organisation.’ [Cont.]
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Sean O’Casey, The Silver Tassie (Macmillan), reviewed in The Irish Book Lover ((July-Dec. 1928) - cont.: ‘But when all this has been said, and when all the technical faults have been emphasised; when it has been seen how untrue to themselves are the characters; and how unreal the chanting of the second act; it still remains to be repeated that the play should have been staged in the Abbey Theatre. Quite plainly Sean O’Casey is now endeavouring to make his appeal to the world in terms which he believes the world will understand more readily than it understands Juno or The Plough and The Stars. I believe that he is wrong in attempting such a feat, but he is as much entitled to experiment as other dramatists. The Silver Tassie is not calculated to inspire one with hope that he will succeed in the terms which Huntly Carter prescribed but, such as it is it is, an interesting play, infinitely greater than any other play by an Irish dramatist since his own Plough and The Stars was produced. That it should have been rejected by the Abbey Theatre is a calamity which will not be easily rectified. Sometime we may see it staged in Dublin by one of the several companies now producing plays.’ ( A.E.M.)
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Notes
Reviewed: see Irish Book Lover (May-June 1929) For a review of Malone’s Irish Drama (p.70).
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