The Sweeps of Ninety Eight

Examiner of Plays' Summary:

A vigorously-written comedietta of the Irish rebellion of ’98. The fine old rebel, Tiger Roche, waiting in an inn at Dun Leary to make his escape to France and bewailing the loss of his friends in their ‘lost cause’, suddenly finds himself in the presence of a couple of English majors and a local J. P. all glorying in the brutal measures which they have successfully taken for the suppression of the revolt. Upon them Tiger Roche revenges himself by a final coup before he sails. pretending that a body of British soldiers, who are heard advancing, are rebel troops, he induces the trio of cowardly braggarts to hide themselves up the chimney; and when the soldiers - at his instigation - drag them down, as black as ‘sweeps’, denounces them as rebels in disguise, pointing one of them out as himself, another as Napper Tandy and another as Wolfe Tone. Thus the laugh ends with their arrest, by being on the side of the crafty old Roche after all. A forenote states that the play was written in 1908; and I do not think that the present is a very happy moment for a production glorifying Irish disaffection and ridiculing British officers. Since however the action and spirit of the little drama are both more or less historical I suppose it may be recommended for license. Ernest A. Bendall.