Abbey Theatre, Dublin

Abbey Theatre, Dublin, opened on 27 Dec. 1904 with a double bill of one-act plays, W. B. Yeats's On Baile's Strand and a comedy, Spreading the News by Lady Gregory. The theatre rapidly became a focus of the Irish Revival. In 1903 Miss A. E. Horniman decided to provide a permanent home in Dublin for the Irish National Theatre Society, an amateur company led by F. J. and W. G. Fay (which had Yeats for its president). They took over the disused theatre of the Mechanics' Institute in Abbey Street, together with the old city morgue next door, and converted them into the Abbey Theatre. The company, led by the Fays, with Sarah Allgood as principal actress, turned professional in 1906, with Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J. M. Synge as directors, and in 1907 successfully survived the riots provoked by Synge's The Playboy of the Western World. The Fays left in 1908. In 1909 Lady Gregory, as patentee, withstood strong pressure from the lord lieutenant to withdraw The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet by G. B. Shaw. In 1910 Miss Horniman offered to sell the theatre, and Yeats and Lady Gregory became principal shareholders and managers. The early poetic dramas were gradually replaced by more naturalistic prose works, written by Colum, Ervine, L. Robinson, O'Casey, and others. Robinson took over the management from Yeats in 1910 and became director in 1923. After the First World War the Abbey's finances became perilous, although O'Casey's Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926) brought some respite. In 1925 the Abbey received a grant from the new government of Eire, thus becoming the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world.

The theatre was burned down in 1951, and the company played in the Queen's Theatre until the new Abbey opened in 1966, where the tradition of new writing by B. Friel, T. Murphy, and others continues to flourish.