Paul Vincent Carroll

Writer

  • Born: July 10, 1900
  • Birthplace: Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland
  • Died: October 20, 1968
  • Place of death: Bromley, Kent, England

Biography

Paul Vincent Carroll was born in Blackrock, County Louth, Ireland, on July 10, 1900, to Kitty Sandys and Michael Carroll. His father, a schoolmaster, taught his son until age thirteen, then sent him to Saint Mary’s College in Dundalk, and from there to Saint Patrick’s Training College in Dublin. While at Saint Patrick’s, Carroll published poetry and short fiction in the Irish Weekly Independent and Ireland’s Own. In 1921, he moved to Glasgow, where for 16 years he taught English and mathematics in the poorest districts. He married Helena Reilly, a dressmaker, in 1923, and fathered three daughters—Kathleen, Helena, and Theresa. He also had a son, Brian, at some later period. Details of his married life are vague and contradictory, but Helena apparently died. He remarried in 1944; his second wife also died.

While teaching in Glasgow, Carroll wrote plays, stories, and reviews, and cofounded the Curtain Theatre in Glasgow. His first play, The Watched Pot, was produced in 1930 in Dublin; in 1932, Things That Are Caesar’s, a tragedy about a couple at odds over their daughter’s marriage—the father sensitive and intellectual, the mother materialistic and ruthless—was produced to high acclaim at the Abbey Theatre in Glasgow.

Carroll quit teaching in 1937 to focus on playwriting. His most frequently produced play to date, Shadow and Substance, premiered at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre that same year, then moved to New York. In this carefully wrought play, a serving girl modeled after St. Brigid has a mystical revelation about the need for love and kindness in the lives of two men she warily reveres—a monstrous and bigoted canon (inspired by Jonathan Swift, a lifelong interest of Carroll’s), and a cynical, bitter schoolmaster. Brigid tries to convince them to change their ways, but she is killed trying to protect the schoolmaster from rioters. Carroll’s 1938 play, The White Steed, focuses on a conflict between an elderly, kindly canon and a bigoted, power-crazed young priest. Refused production at the Abbey Theatre because of its “anticlerical” views, the play went to the John Golden Theater on Broadway, where it starred Jessica Tandy and Barry Fitzgerald.

In 1943, along with James Birdie, Carroll helped found the Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre. In 1945, he and his family moved to Kent, home of the British film industry, where he worked on screenplays for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), including a television drama about Jonathan Swift. Carroll continued to write and produce plays during this period, including Wayward Saint, a comic satire featuring a mythic battle between Satan and the soul of a nature-loving priest. Carroll’s daughter Helena revived Shadow and Substance in New York in 1959; the production ran for 137 performances.

Carroll received the 1932 Abbey Theatre Prize for Things That Are Caesar’s, and Shadow and Substance won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best foreign play of 1937-1938 and the Casement Award of the Irish Academy of Letters in 1939. The White Steed won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best foreign play of 1938-1939.

Carroll, though considered a minor playwright, wrote several fine plays that offer realistic glimpses into the lives of rural priests, canons, schoolmasters, and working people. He often employed Irish myths and legends as thematic backdrops in his work. His portrayals of Irish clergy are considered by critics among the most brilliant in theatre history.