Stage Irish

The stage Irishman was generally "garrulous, boastful, unreliable, hard-drinking, belligerent (though cowardly) and chronically impecunious".

The early stage Irish persona arose in England in the context of the war between the Jacobites and Whig supporters of William of Orange at the end of the 17th century.

The character of Teg in Robert Howard's play Committee (1662) has been said to be the first example of the type,[1] where an Irish servant outwits the enemies of his master with a show of false naïvety.

James Farewell's poem The Irish Hudibras (1689) was published in the wake of William's invasion of Ireland to suppress the Jacobite uprising.

In the poem, this is replaced by Fingal in County Dublin, in which Irish costume, behaviour, and speech-patterns are parodied as if they were denizens of Hades.

Thomas Sheridan's play Captain O'Blunder is about a naive Irishman who in the end triumphs over his English rival.

Dion Boucicault's successful plays The Colleen Bawn (1860) and The Shaughraun (1874) included several Stage Irish characters.

These depictions portrayed the Irish as "ignorant but harmless drudges, given to drink and emotional excesses, loving a fight, and not above a lie or a bit of minor thievery".