After reading a trenchant criticism of a new play, I took up a volume of "The Dramatic Argus," a pamphlet published daily in Dublin just after the opening of the old Theatre Royal, to "deliver opinions on any individual who might appear in that national theatre."
The critic certainly was candid, and, doubtless, sometimes impartial. He dismissed the tragedy of "Jane Shore" with the information that it "went off" with wonderful celerity, being concluded by nine o'clock. "There was no particular interest in the performance, however, to cause any great wish for protraction."
Of another production he wrote: "We felt it quite useless to visit the theatre last night . . . as we would have been as little amused by the performance as our readers would be by our unavoidably tedious remarks on it."
Mr McKeon, who had appeared in "The Marriage of Figaro," was informed that he must not fancy that the audience preferred seeing him in the part of Mr McKeon to that in which he was announced to appear. I think that the critic must have been anxious for all the proprieties to be conserved. "The Poor Gentleman," he pointed out that it was not decorous of Mr Farren to place his arm across the shoulder of "Miss Lucretia."
The Irish Times, January 29th, 1931.