Note 42 — PREFACE.

Even so far back as the reign of James the First, Ireland began to furnish her quota to the English drama. But from the middle of the seventeenth century to something more than the middle of the eighteenth, she produced almost all the best dramatic writers on the British stage: Congreve, Howard, Southerne, Steele, Farquhar, Phillips, Kelly, Jones, Orrery, (Earl of,) Tate, Concanen, Dobbs, Bickerstaff, Brook, Centlivre, Griffiths, Jephson, Murphy, Macklin, O’Hara, West, Goldsmith, Sheridan, &c. &c. And among the actors, Wilks, Quin, Sheridan, Barry, Mossop, Macklin, Havard, O’Brien, Brown, Woffington, Clive, Fitzhenry, &c.