The Worked-Out Ward. A Sinn Fein Allegory in One Act. Dublin: Talbot Press, 1918. Pp19. Publisher’s green wrappers lettered in black. A very good copy.

Lady Gregory’s copy, with her signature to the title page.

Earnest Boyd was a writer, journalist, and literary critic. He contributor to the Irish Review, Irish Monthly, and Revue de Paris, he was also a literary adviser to the Talbot Press. He turned his hand to drama with his satires ‘The Glittering Fake’ and ‘The Worked-out Ward’ (both 1918), and in that year also, as ‘Gnathaí Gan Iarraidh’, published a political tract, ‘The Sacred Egotism of Sinn Féin.’

Interesting association as Lady Gregory wrote a one act play titled ‘The Workhouse Ward’ which was performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1908. Like Boyd’s play it too has three characters, two men & a woman. Boyd’s title is perhaps a pun on Gregory’s original.