George Farquhar's Military Career

Abstract

IN 1704 George Farquhar, with his playwriting career at something of an ebb, secured a lieutenancy in earl of Orrery's newly formed Regiment of Foot, an appointment which was to provide background for one of his most famous plays, The Recruiting Officer. The impression given by his modern biographers, however, is that having secured lieutenancy Farquhar almost immediately went off to Dublin about his own affairs, among them a benefit appearance as an actor and an unsuccessful effort to publish an edition of his own plays.' In this picture lieutenancy appears merely as a convenient source of income which made no calls upon his time apart from famous recruiting drives through Lichfield and Shrewsbury, and those are thought to have taken place some time later. But situation changes somewhat when it is realized that Orrery's regiment was raised specifically for service in Ireland and was sent there as soon as it was recruited. Farquhar's trip to his home country, then, begins to appear not simply as a private jaunt but as a necessity of office. Thus his involvement with regiment may have been rather greater than has been hitherto suggested and certainly seems to warrant some inquiry. What follows is result of such an inquiry, which produced new facts and inferences about Farquhar's military career and world with which it brought him into contact. The first question that arises is through what agency Farquhar managed to obtain his appointment to regiment. On this early biographers are quite firm. As Thomas Wilkes puts it, echoing several earlier commentators, the Earl of Orrery, patron of arts and sciences, who saw that our author's great merit was unrewarded, made him a present of a lieutenant's commission in his own regiment.2 There are complications, however. In a testimonial letter written several years later for Farquhar's widow and first published by Professor Sutherland, it is duke of Ormonde who speaks of having given Farquhar his lieutenancy.3 Since Ormonde was lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1704 and was thus technically responsible for every commission in regiments on Irish establishment, reference in testimonial may be to nothing more than this technicality. There is one other reference to