HIS hopeless rhymes earned him the title of the world’s worst poet. Now William McGonagall is poised to earn another, equally dubious, honour.

A lost play penned by the Dundonian poet, which will be published for the first time next month, reveals that he was also, quite possibly, the world’s worst playwright.

His 1886 melodrama Jack o’ the Cudgel (or the Hero of a Hundred Fights) had lain gathering dust in the Dundee city archives for decades.

According to leading literary historians, it might have been better for his already tarnished reputation if it had stayed there.

The pseudo-Shakespearean melodrama, set in the court of England’s King Edward III, chronicles the rise from pauper to royal knight of the eponymous hero, who dispatches his foes by bashing them over the head with an oversized club.

In one scene, which wouldn’t look out of place in a modern pantomime, Jack confronts an oversized oaf with the challenge: “Pig-headed giant begone or I’ll make you repent, for my name is Jack and I hail from Kent.”

Despite being a prolific poet, until now McGonagall’s only known dalliance with the theatre was a characteristically shambolic performance as Macbeth, in which he refused to die and had to be hauled off stage by the audience.

“McGonagall tried his hand at acting before turning to poetry and thought he could write a play with a brilliant part for himself,” said Chris Hunt, editor of a new collection, William McGonagall Collected Poems. “I would very much imagine that McGonagall saw himself playing the role of Jack, but as usual he didn’t get anywhere with it.”

Hunt believes that Jack o’ the Cudgel was inspired by Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays.

“McGonagall had a great love of the Bard and this play was a tribute to him,” he said. “It is no great surprise that he never lived to see the play published or performed.

“It is funny, but not in the way McGonagall intended, and the best I can say about it is that it adds to the gaiety of nations.”

While Hunt dismisses revisionist claims that McGonagall’s poetry was tongue-in-cheek, he claims McGonagall ultimately got the upper hand over his detractors.

“In the late 19th century there were mischievous suggestions in the press that McGonagall could become poet laureate,” he said. “But Alfred Austin, the man who actually got the position, has vanished into obscurity, while McGonagall’s fame and popularity grew by the year. McGonagall got the last laugh and the joke is certainly on his critics.”

Times Recommends

• Milk: do we need a dairy godmother?
• DIY: the women doing it for themselves
• First double portrait of Princes unveiled