Owing to extrinsic, as well as intrinsic, causes, the most widely known feature of the Irish Literary Revival is undoubtedly its drama. In its initial stages, the dramatic movement was not of entirely Irish origin. It owed much to the influence of Ibsen, and still more to the fact that plays of a certain type had no chance of being produced on the so-called
stage of London. One of the sufferers from this policy of exclusion was Edward Martyn. Being a man of independent means and anxious to secure the presentation of his plays, 'The Heather Field' and 'Maeve,) he joined forces with Yeats, George Moore, Lady Gregory, 1E, '
In the meantime William G. Fay and his brother, Frank J. Fay, actors of considerable experience, had been training a company of Irish amateur players, known as the Ormond Dramatic Society; and on the conclusion of the third season of the Irish Literary Theatre, Martyn and Moore withdrew, and the Fays, Yeats, and Lady Gregory formed the Irish Na tional Dramatic Company out of the Ormond Dramatic Society. The' first performance of the new company was given at Saint Teresa's Hall, Clarendon street, Dublin, on 2 April 1902, the bill consisting of Yeats's 'Cathleen-ni Houlihan) and dE's 'Deirdre.' Later in the same year they moved to the Antient Concert Rooms, and there produced again the same two plays, as well as four new ones, namely, 'The Sleep of the King' and 'The Racing Lug,' by James H. Cousins, 'A Pot of Broth,' by Yeats and Lady Gregory, and 'The Laying of the Foundations,' by Frederick Ryan. In 1903 con trol classed from the Fays, who still, however, remained with the company, and The Irish National Theatre Society, with Yeats as oresi dent, was formed, and gave performances in 1903 and 1904 in Molesworth Hall. There they produced, among other pieces, Yeats's 'The Hour Glass,' 'The King's Threshold,' and 'The Shadowy Waters,' Lady Gregory's 'Twenty five,' Synge's 'In the Shadow of the Glen' and 'Riders to the Sea,' and Colum's 'Broken Soil.' A flying one-day visit of the company to the Royalty Theatre, London, in March 1904, on the invitation of the Irish Literary Society of that city, brought them under the notice of Miss A. E. F. Horniman, a lady deeply inter
ested in things theatrical. Forcibly struck by the acting of those amateurs and its possibilities, she purchased the Mechanics' Institute in Abbey street, Dublin, remodeled it into that building which afterward became famous under the name of the Abbey Theatre, endowed the com pany with an annual subsidy, leased the theatre to them free of rent for six years, and thus gave it a favorable and propitious start. The Abbey Theatre was formally opened on 27 Dec. 1904, with the first performance of Yeats's play 'On Baile's Strand.' In 1905 the name of the company was finally changed into The Na tional Theatre Society, Limited. The players, to whom a large share of the credit of the suc cess of the Abbey Theatre is due, had not re ceived any salary until the intervention of Miss Horniman, but from that time onward they were regularly paid, so that they might be able to devote their whole time to their art. The Fays, whose acting in Yeats' and Synge's plays had been an artistic triumph, retired in 1908. In 1910, when Miss Horniman's subsidy ceased, the Abbey Theatre was purchased from her by public subscription, and was thenceforward thrown on its own resources, but managed to survive, and even, for a time, to make head way, despite occasional riots on the part of the audiences, and occasional threats from the au thorities of Dublin Castle.
The soft, carefully trained, and beautifully modulated voices of the players, the use of the minimum amount of gesture, and the absence of elaborate scenery were all startling innovations, which thoroughly justified themselves. Many of the plays, too, were couched in the Hiberno English idiom of the peasants, especially those of the west, and this, being a language full of life and reality, proved an added charm. The success of the Abbey players and their various predecessors gave a strong impetus to dramatic production, and dramatic societies sprang up all over the country, putting on home-made plays, to the output of which there seemed to be no end. There were the Ulster Literary Theatre at Belfast, the Cork Dramatic Society at Cork, the Theatre of Ireland and at least half a dozen similar societies at Dublin, and others at Galway and Waterford. In fact, practically every town of any size in Ireland had its own dramatic class, its own players, and its own playwrights. Many Gaelic societies produced plays in Irish by Douglas Hyde, Pierce Beasley, Thomas Haynes, Canon Peter O'Leary, and others, and at the Oireachtas held each year at Dublin prizes were offered for new plays. Under such conditions a plethora of playwrights arose. Many of them have, for convenience been al ready treated in the course of this article, when their names occurred in some other connection; some few, who fall more strikingly under the category of novelists, will, for the same reason, be dealt with later; the remainder, who may be regarded as dramatists more than anything else, will now be considered.