'Rip'ning buds in freedom's field': Staging Irish improvement in the 1780s

This article offers John O'Keeffe as a case study representing a network of Irish playwrights in 1780s London. The literary achievement of these writers, significantly underwritten in London theatre history, might be better understood against the backdrop of Irish patriotism of that period. This achievement was partly facilitated by the establishment of the Benevolent Society of St Patrick in 1783, ostensibly a charitable organisation but also a forum for Irish networking across professional and class boundaries. This article reads two of O'Keeffe's plays against this backdrop and argues that theatre is a crucial site of intersection for Irish patriotism and cosmopolitan ambition.