Joseph Stirling Coyne was a humorist and satirist in the tradition of Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

 and Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

. One of the most prolific British playwrights of the mid-nineteenth century, he wrote more than sixty plays; his twenty-seven farces are surpassed in number only by John Maddison Morton

John Maddison Morton

John Maddison Morton was an English playwright who specialized in one-act farces. His most famous farce was Box and Cox . He also wrote comic dramas, pantomimes and other theatrical pieces.-Biography:...

's ninety-one and T. J. Williams

T. J. Williams

T. J. Williams is an American football tight end. He played high school football at Tarboro High School and Hargrave Military Academy and played college football for North Carolina State University where he was the leading receiver in 2004 and in 2005...

's thirty. Coyne brought to the stage accomplished comedic interchanges, puns, irony, exaggerated character traits, ludicrous plot situations, and surprising outcomes. His plays reveal a deft ear for dialogue and an ability to create characters suited to the talents of specific actors. As a journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 Coyne contributed humorous pieces to many widely circulated journals

Magazine

Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...

 and newspapers.

Childhood

Coyne was born in 1803 to Denis Coyne, a port worker, and Bridget Coyne, née Cosgrave, in Birr

Birr

Birr is a town in County Offaly, Ireland. Once called Parsonstown, after the Parsons family who were local landowners and hereditary Earls of Rosse. It is also a parish in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Killaloe....

, County Offaly, Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

. After attending the Dungannon School, he began studying law but decided to pursue a literary career after some of his articles appeared in local publications. His first farce, The Phrenologist, appeared at the Irish Royal Theatre in Dublin in June 1835 and was revived two years later at the abbey theatre.

Remembrance

Joseph Stirling Coyne's everyday characters and realistic situations and language appealed to working-class theatergoers, and his plays enjoyed long runs during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, when stage. Coyne is remembered for his humor and puns

Puns

Puns may refer to:*Partido de Unión Nacional Saharaui, the Sahrawi political party* Pun, figure of speech* Phoenicians...

 and for his satire

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 of Victorian

Victorianism

Victorianism is the name given to the attitudes, art, and culture of the later two-thirds of the 19th century. This usage is strong within social history and the study of literature, less so in philosophy. Many disciplines do not use the term, but instead prefer Victorian Era, or simply "Late 19th...

 social and artistic conventions. His work is a significant link between the stylized French and English comedies of the eighteenth century and the witty, intellectual plays of Wilde

Wilde

-In academia:* Henry Wilde , British engineer and inventor of the self-energizing dynamo* Winston Wilde, American sexologist-In the arts:* Andrew Wilde , English classical pianist* Andrew Wilde , English actor...

 and George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

.