Ireland's "Proclaimed" Dramatist: Frank J. Hugh O'Donnell (1894-1976)

Dramatist, businessman, and senator, Frank J. Hugh O'Donnell (1894-1976) made noteworthy contributions, largely unrecognized today, to Irish arts, industry and politics during the Irish Literary Revival and the following two decades.¹ He is not to be confused with Frank Hugh O'Donnell (1846-1916), the Home Rule member of parliament, who penned the notorious pamphlet Souls for Gold attacking Yeats's The Countess Cathleen in 1899.² An exploration of O'Donnell's life and work reveals his formative impact on Irish amateur drama. His nationalistic play The Dawn Mist (1919) earned the distinction of "Ireland's most proclaimed [banned] play," during the Anglo-Irish War (1919-1921). In the fertile climate of the Irish Literary Revival, even a minor writer like O'Donnell could, and did, contribute to cultural nationalism and help to promote the cause of Irish independence. Furthermore, from 1926 through 1946, local amateur dramatic competitions absorbed much of his energy. In a major two-part radio address, "The Drama and Ourselves" (1926), O'Donnell argued for the creation of a centralized, national amateur dramatic federation and competition.

O'Donnell's legacy to Irish arts is well worth uncovering. He worked strenuously in the mid-1940s to promote Irish industrial design and to establish a Ministry of Arts and Crafts. It might be advanced that after the Treaty, he was, de facto, a minister of arts in the Irish Free State before such a post existed in the "New Ireland." Horace Plunkett had been the first and only minister of arts in Ireland's provisional government during the Anglo-Irish War. The post was abolished shortly after the creation of the Free State.³