Rutherford Mayne, pseudonym of Samuel Waddell Biography

Northern Irish playwright and actor, born in Japan, brother of Helen Waddell. Mayne became as important to the Ulster Literary Theatre, which he joined in 1904, as Lennox Robinson was to the Abbey. His first play, The Turn of the Road (1906), is a serious satire whose target is the Protestant fanaticism which Mayne found so distasteful. This was followed by his best-known play, The Drone (1907), a comedy which attacks the puritanical beliefs of Protestants in rural Country Down. Having written nine plays for the Ulster Literary Theatre, Mayne turned his attentions to the Abbey in Dublin, where Peter (1930) and Bridgehead (1934) were produced. More adventurous than his earlier work, these plays show signs of the influence of Lennox Robinson.