Spreading the News
Postcard featuring a scene from Spreading the News
Dublin, December 1904
This promotional postcard, sold as part of the "Irish National Theatre Series" in support of the Abbey, was designed to showcase the "Irishness" featured in Gregory's 1904 comedy Spreading the News. In the play, as gossip is passed from person to person in a country fair, mishearings and misunderstandings farcically result in them thinking the good-natured Bartley Fallon has murdered his neighbor Jack Smith. The first card showcases leading Abbey actors Sara Allgood and William Fay as Mrs. and Mr. Fallon. In the second, Prionnsias MacShiubhlaigh (Frank Walker) features as Jack Smith holding the hayfork with which Fallon is alleged to have killed him, and Maire Ni Gharbhaigh (Mary Garvey) as the hard-of-hearing Mrs. Tarpey, whose deafness is the initial source of the proliferating misunderstandings.
: Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
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