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This chapter concludes, starting with looking at how vital it is to consider scholarly work on the history of the Abbey Theatre for getting a full, accurate representation of the multivalent pressures that impacted upon the theatre's productions and the institution's relationship with the state. The profit-incentive driving the directors, the objections of actors and managers, the sensibilities of conservative social pressure groups, and the ideological sensitivities of the state constituted internal and external forces of censorship that were not unique to the Abbey Theatre nor particular to Ireland.

This chapter examines the fracture of the theatre movement and cultural nationalist alliances in the post-Boer period. Yeats, with financial backing from Annie Horniman, was able to set up the INTS in the Abbey Theatre and establish the organisation as a professional company. Cultural nationalists, particularly Griffith and Moran, attacked the theatre for rejecting propagandist imperatives; however, their attack on Synge reveals a conservative nationalist agenda also evident in their anti-Semitic support for the Limerick Pogrom of 1903. Beyond the apparent oppositions, however, a ‘union of Sceptics’, often in left-literati combinations, operated to suggest alternatives. Journals such as Dana, the Nationist, and the National Democrat; theatre groups such as the Theatre of Ireland and the Ulster Literary Theatre; and the range of material available at the Abbey from Colum, Boyle and Lady Gregory demonstrate a broad spectrum of opinion.

Theatre is a business. Managing it requires planning in every step, and budget. All actions are monitored and projects that needed money are reviewed by a board of directors and by people who supply funds before getting approval. A theatre, like a business, is an incorporation of interests needing a balance between visionary expansiveness and steely management. The directors of the Abbey Theatre have shown such a depth of commitment that made the company strong — from Yeats and Lady Gregory to Blythe; Macken to Mason. In this chapter, the objectives of the men and women who led the Abbey Theatre are discussed. Each director has proved to be adaptive to the times, and had objectives corresponding to what Ireland as a nation was going through at that particular time: for instance, Yeats and Lady Gregory had objectives that were national and nationalistic, given the political turmoil apparent in their era. Robinson, meanwhile, was influenced by his experiences in the Dublin Drama League, making his visions more European or Internationalist than Yeats' or Lady Gregory's, although he too had elements from the past that moved the theatre to create a cultural movement. Other directors were also sympathetic to what was happening around the theatre.

IThe Abbey Theatre faced many difficulties between 1966 and the 1980s. The new Abbey Theatre opened on 18 July 1966, but not without difficulty. Its patent had run out about the time of the 1951 fire, and its renewal had been overlooked. The company could only work under a temporary license for selling drinks at the theatre, after the authorities relented. On opening night, the theatre experienced onstage technical problems which were only resolved half an hour before the curtain went up. The opening went with a great celebration: trumpets heralded the inauguration, and important people like President Eamon de Valera taking part in the event. This chapter finally recounts the new features of the Abbey Theatre, and the events that took place after its inauguration.

This chapter gives a summary of the book and looks at the foundation of the Abbey Theatre, the Irish National Theatre, and how it all started from that afternoon at the Duras House. The first play of the Irish Literary Theatre carried a theme concerning politics: who should lead Ireland and how should it be lead. While Yeats did not suggest exact answers, he succeeded in showing how theatre could become a public laboratory for issues of governance, identity, and responsibility. Yeats, together with Synge and Lady Gregory, wanted to create a national theatre. The Abbey Theatre, under the control of her artistic directors, who drew out inspiration from the times, continued to be an arena that reflected the joys and sorrows of Ireland as a people.

While the plays of J. M. Synge are normally seen in the context of the ‘Irish dramatic revival,’ or the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, this chapter relates them to a wider spectrum of theatrical entertainments in Paris and particularly London. It follows a recent trend in theatre history to consider plays in their original performance contexts, rather than as dramas on the page, or primarily in relation to other writings by the same author. ‘Thick descriptions’ are provided of the activities of the writers and founders of the Irish dramatic revival in London in April 1897 and in February 1900, and their efforts to create an alternative ‘business model’ for a literary theatre to the large London entertainment factories. Attention is also given to how Synge’s plays were subsequently received as items in a menu of entertainments by London audiences and critics.

This chapter examines the political history of Ireland during the period from 1903 to 1907. It suggests that the full significance and complexity of the watershed in Irish history can be best understood by analysis of this period. Some of the major political developments during this time include the introduction and withdrawal of the Irish council bill, the Abbey Theatre riots, the resignation from the Irish parliamentary party of C.J. Dolan, and his decision to contest his old seat as a Sinn Féin candidate.

St John Ervine and Thomas Carnduff were born in working-class Protestant parts of Belfast in the 1880s, though Ervine would escape to an eventually prosperous existence in England. Orangeism, the politics of early twentieth-century Ireland, the militancy of the age—and the involvement of these writers in it—along with Ervine’s journey from ardent Fabian to reactionary Unionist, via his pivotal experiences managing the Abbey Theatre and losing a leg in the First World War, are all discussed. Carnduff’s own tumultuous life is reflected through his complicated Orange affiliation, gut class-consciousness, poetry, unpublished work, contempt for the local (and gentrified) Ulster artistic scene, and veneration of socially conscious United Irishman James Hope. It concludes with an assessment of their respective legacies and continuing import.

This chapter focuses on Lady Gregory’s historical drama The White Cockade within the context of the fin-de-siècle revival of Jacobitism. With its historical focus on the Battle of the Boyne and its social, political and economic implications for both Catholic and Protestant Irish society, the play’s topic was a daring one for the Abbey’s theatre audience. In The White Cockade, Gregory brought to light the power of self-sacrificial rhetoric and, at the same time, challenged the popular concept of nationalist martyrology by presenting her audience with what is effectively a double ending that allowed for a flexibility in responses. Despite the potential divisiveness of the historical subject matter, the play’s engagement with fin-de-siècle Irish Jacobite thought chimed well with its audiences. The contemporary acceptance of Gregory’s criticism, in particular, pays tribute to her dramatic craft and complicates our understanding of the politics of representation in early twentieth-century Ireland.

The Epilogue follows Sara Allgood’s history of performance and contributions to theatrical texts from her early days in Inghinidhe through her film work until her death in Hollywood in1950. What appears again and again in her American film work is an aging actress from Ireland translating stillness in the face of extremity in ways that strengthen even the smallest, sometimes nameless characters against the stereotype of the emotive Irish immigrant. From her earliest days in Inghinidhe, Allgood was part of a project to provide steadying images of Ireland against British melodrama and cartoons; her film work in America continued this work in nearly one hundred film roles. From her unpublished “Memories” and her surviving films, Sara Allgood emerges as a woman focused on creating theater and film, not simply taking direction. Her contribution to both mediums, a refusal to overact, and a gravity and stillness, educates the audience about what to expect of an Irish woman. Tracing the afterlife of her street theater and Abbey career into her later film work may restore some attention to a performer who developed the Abbey Stare for particular ends, revising established readings of both gender and nation in Ireland and America.