Abstract
When the idea of giving expression on the stage to the dramatic literature of Ireland was about to be carried out in 1899 it was found that no Irish actors were to be had. So we brought an English company to Dublin and Irish plays were presented by them for a short period. This method, however, did not produce the results we had hoped for; the English actors lacked the proper feeling for the Irish spirit. In 1902 there was a nearer approach to a realization of a truly national Irish theater, for a company of amateurs produced Irish plays in small halls in Dublin. The players received nothing, nor did they ask remuneration. Since they had to gain a living by another work to carry on the work they were interested in the double burden told heavily on them.
Sunday Record-Herald (Chicago) 4 Feb 1912, pt. 7, p. 1.
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Notes
Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman (1860–1937), wealthy English theatre manager and patron, one of the first to organise and encourage the modern repertory theatre movement, and a seminal influence in the Irish and English theatres at the beginning of the twentieth century. She was interested in the Irish theatre movement and acted for some time as unpaid secretary to Yeats. In 1903 she went to Dublin and there built and equipped the Abbey Theatre, with which she remained connected until 1910, when she disposed of it to a board of trustees. In the meantime she had bought and refurbished the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, where from 1908 to 1917 she maintained an excellent repertory company. See James W. Flannery, Miss Annie F. Horniman and the Abbey Theatre (Dublin: The Dolmen Press, 1970).
See John Hofstad Kelson, ‘Nationalism in the Theater: The Ole Bull Theater in Norway and the Abbey Theater in Ireland: A Comparative Study’, Ph.D. dissertation (University of Kansas, 1964).
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© 1977 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Yeats, W.B. (1977). What We Try To Do. In: Mikhail, E.H. (eds) W. B. Yeats. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02992-1_32
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02992-1_32
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