Life
1621-1679 [Baron Broghill; 1st Earl of Orrery]; created Lord Broghill
1627; ed. TCD, 1636 (aetat. 15); toured France and Italy; m. Margaret
Howard, sis. of Earl of Suffolk; reached Ireland 1641; deserted Parliament
at execution of Charles I; private interview with Oliver Cromwell resulting
in military office in Ireland during the campaign of 1649; visited Charles
II in France during Interregnum and received coldly by the king on his
visit to England in 1660; persuaded Wilson, Gov. of Limerick, and Sir
Charles Coote, commander in the North, to take the King’s side against
Richard Cromwell; and created Earl of Orrery 1660; appt. President of
Munster; early works incl. Parthenissa (1654-65), a romance in
the style of in the style of de Scudéry, was printed in Waterford;
A Poem ... on the Restoration; Poem on the Death of Cowley;
History of Henry V (1668); author of verse drama circulated at court
in London, incl. Mustapha (1668), The Black Prince (1669),
Henry V (1672); Triphon (1672), Mark Anthony (1690),
Guzman (1693); Herod the Great (1694), mostly tragedies;
Altemera (registered in London as The Generall, 1663), was
performed at Thomas Court [Smock Alley], Dublin, 18 Oct. 1662, and called
‘our first heroic playwright’ by Bentley; written in the spirit; regarded as the first ever English ‘heroic play’,
issued in a version revised by Charles Boyle, 1702; ante-dating Dryden
and Howard plays in the same vein; Mr Anthony (1692), a comedy,
published posthumously. RR DNB CAB OCEL OCIL
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Works
Irish Colours displayed in a reply of an English Protestant to a letter
of an Irish Roman Catholic (London 1662); Answer to the scandalous
letter ... by Peter Walsh (1662), ded. to James Butler, Duke of Ormonde;
A Dream ... bold advice to the King; A Treatise on the Art of
War; Poems on the Fasts and Festivals of the Church [q.d.];
Treatise on the Art of War (1677); Collection of the State Letters
of the Rt. Hon. Roger Boyle, the 1st Earl of Orrery Lord President of
Munster in Ireland, containing a series of correspondence between the
Duke of Ormonde and his Lordship from the Restoration to the Year 1668
together with some letters (1742). William Smith Clark, ed.,
The Dramatic Works of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, 2 vols. (Harvard
UP 1937).
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- William Smith Clark, Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery and his Successors in the English Heroic Play (Harvard 1926) [dissertation];
- Irish Book Lover, Vols. 2, 4 & 13; 13 (Lord Orrery);
- Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), vol. I, p.179.
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William Smith Clark, Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery and his Successors in the English Heroic Play (Harvard 1926) [dissertation] shows that Altemera was first played in Dublin, and that it was registered in London as The Generall in 1663.
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and
the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), the first Anglo-Irish dramatist
to use a tragic theme ... Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl
of Orrery ... His Tryphon (1668) enacted the story of the pretender
to the throne of Syria in the 2nd century BC as related by Josephus in
History of the Jews and in the First Book of Maccabees;
the production failed; his play Herod not staged. (p.91.) Further,
Roger Boyle, Lord Baron Broghill, 1st Earl of Ossory, a professional Anglo-Irish
soldier under Charles I, Cromwell, and Charles II, dramatist, poet of
sorts, and elder brother of Robert Boyle, produced a Treatise on the
Art of War (1677), involving an ostensibly scientific approach but
extensive material from Greek and Roman history. He affirmed, ‘the
Ultimate and Onely Legitimate end of war is, or at least ought to be,
among Christians, the Obtaining of a Good and Lasting Peace.’ (p.188.)
Libraries: University of Ulster Library, Morris Collection, holds Collection of the State Letters of the Rt. Hon. Roger Boyle, the 1st Earl of Orrery Lord President of Munster in Ireland, containing a series of correspondence between the Duke of Ormonde and his Lordship from the Restoration to the Year 1668 together with some letters. Belfast Linen Hall Library holds Answer to the scandalous letter ... by Peter Walsh (1662).
Charles Boyle revised Altemira in 1702 [supra];
Henry Bradshaw identified Parthenissa as a Waterford printing of
1654; there is an memoir, deeemed unreliable, by Chaplain Connelly.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)