The Catholic Question, Print Media, and John O’Keeffe’s The Poor Soldier (1783)

Abstract

John O’Keeffe’s play The Poor Soldier (1783) should be read against the backdrop of Irish Catholic loyalist productions in the second half of the eighteenth century, a period when Irish Catholic leaders began organizing to press for greater political, religious, and economic rights. To recover this political subtext, this article reconstructs a media landscape that encompasses Irish, as well as English print productions, street performances, and military displays. I focus attention, in particular, on the debate in the press and print media during the period of the American Revolutionary War when the British army began accepting Irish Catholic recruits. O’Keeffe intervened in this debate through his dramatic representation of Patrick, the poor soldier; this Irish Catholic war veteran’s story is this playwright’s attempt to answer the character question behind the broader Catholic question.