... to whom this earthiness and wildness are repulsive, to whom old Martin Doul's love pleading to Molly Byrne is unendurable. A dirty "shabby stump of a man," a beggar, blind and middle-aged, is asking a fine white girl, young, and as teasing as an ox-eyed and ox-minded colleen may be, to go away with him. Not an exalting situation, exactly, as you read of it or see it on the stage, but once you see it on the stage, where its animality you would expect would be heightened, you realize—and it is strange to you that you do ... — Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
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