Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/424

 of Dunboy, ‘Cia so caoinéas crioch Banba’ (‘Who is this that Banba's land laments?’). 

O'DALY, MUIREDHACH (fl. 1213), Irish poet, was of the family of Maelisa O'Daly (in Irish Ua Dalaigh), ‘ollamh Ereann agus Alban’ (literary professor of Ireland and Scotland), who died in 1185. His home was on the shore of Lough Derryvarra, co. Westmeath, and he calls himself O'Daly of Meath, to distinguish him from O'Daly of Finnyvarra, co. Clare, also a poet in the thirteenth century. He was living at Drumcliff, co. Sligo, in 1213, when Fionn O'Brolchain, steward or maor of O'Donnell, came to Connaught to collect tribute. The steward visited his house, and began to talk discourteously to the poet, who took up an axe and killed him on the spot. Domhnall O'Donnell pursued him. He fled to Clanricarde, co. Galway, and Burke at first protected him, and afterwards enabled O'Daly to flee into Thomond. Thither O'Donnell pursued him and ravaged the country. Donough Cairbreach O'Brien [q. v.] sent the poet on to Limerick, and O'Donnell laid siege to the city, and O'Daly had to fly from place to place till he reached Dublin, being everywhere protected as a man of learning. O'Donnell later in the year marched on Dublin, and the citizens banished O'Daly, who fled to Scotland. When in Clanricarde he composed an explanation of his misfortune in verse, and mentioned that he loved the English and drank wine with them. In Scotland, however, he wrote three poems in praise of O'Donnell, which led that chief to forgive him, and in the end to grant him lands and cattle.

He is to be distinguished from Muirhedhach O'Daly, who was also a poet, who lived in 1600, and wrote the poem of 396 verses, ‘Cainfuighear liom lorg na bhfear’ (‘The race of men shall be sung by me’), which tells of all the branches of the house of FitzGerald. 

ODDA. [See .]

ODELL, THOMAS (1691–1749), playwright, born in 1691, the son of a Buckinghamshire squire, came up to London about 1714 with good introductions to some of the whig leaders, and a strong desire to try his hand at lampooning. He obtained a pension of 200l. through the influence of Lord Wharton and the Earl of Sunderland, and put his pen at Walpole's disposal. It is not possible to trace any of his political writings, but he is stated by Oldys to have written a number of satires upon Pope, and to have been deterred from printing them only by Walpole's fear lest such a step might estrange Lord Chesterfield and others of Pope's admirers among his adherents. In 1721 Odell's first comedy, ‘The Chimera,’ a satirical piece aimed at the speculators in Change Alley, was produced at the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields, but met with small success on the boards, though when printed it ran to a second edition before the close of the year. In October 1729 Odell himself erected a theatre in Leman Street, Goodman's Fields, and engaged a company, with Henry Giffard as its leading actor. He produced there in the course of his first season ‘The Recruiting Officer,’ ‘The Orphan,’ and two successful original comedies, Fielding's ‘Temple Beau’ and Mottley's ‘Widow Bewitched.’ In 1730, however, the lord mayor and aldermen petitioned the king to suppress the superfluous playhouse in Goodman's Fields. Odell tried to avert hostile criticism by shutting up the house for a time, but this so impaired its prospects that he had to dispose of it early in 1731 to his friend Giffard. In 1737 the London playhouses were restricted by statute to Covent Garden and Drury Lane, but this did not prevent the occasional presentation of plays at the unlicensed houses, and it was at the ‘late theatre in Goodman's Fields,’ in a ‘gratuitous’ performance of ‘Richard III’ between two parts of a concert, that David Garrick made his first appearance in London in 1741. This historic performance, however, was probably not given at Odell's theatre, but at another small playhouse built by Giffard in the adjoining Ayliffe Street. Odell's old theatre was nevertheless utilised as late as 1745, when Ford's ‘Perkin Warbeck’ was produced à propos of the '45 rebellion.

Chetwood attributes Odell's failure to his ignorance of the way to manage a company. He had lost his pension upon the death of the fourth Earl of Sunderland, his plays met with no success, and he seems to have been for some years reduced to great straits for a living. In February 1738, however, when William Chetwynd was sworn in as first licenser of the stage, with a salary of 400l., Odell retained enough influence to obtain the office of deputy licenser, with a salary of 200l. He retained this post until his death,