The King of Friday's Men

[1] The story is set in 1787, in Ireland, where a young woman, Una Brehony, is rescued by an aged man, Bartley Dowd, from an Anglo-Irish landlord, Caesar French, who sought her "for the first night" before she was marry her future husband, which was disturbing and frightful.

[3] The play brings up the issue of claims that feudal lords had Droit du seigneur or lus primae noctis (right to the first night) from serfs in medieval Europe.

[8] Maggie McNamara: Una Brehony Sean McClory: Rory Commons Walter Macken: Bartley Dowd.

In one production of the show, a cast member described the play as follow:“My character is a ‘tallywoman', she’s a lower class, single woman who is forced by her landlord to be his lover.

The fact that the situation is so repulsive to a modern audience shows how far we’ve come with women’s rights, but with all of the abuse and misconduct from high profile men that has come to light this year, it’s easy to see how far we have yet to go.”[13]