Although the reputation of William Butler Yeats rests primarily on his poetry, the drama remained one of the central concerns throughout his long career. As he explained in 1917, "I need a theatre; I believe myself to be a dramatist; I desire to show events and not merely tell of them." His interest in the drama can be traced in part to the influence of his father, John Butler Yeats , a painter of some distinction. Yeats recalled in his Autobiographies (1926) that his father "exalted dramatic poetry above all other kinds." The elder Yeats , in fact, often read and dreamed when he should have been pursuing his painting career.

The Yeats family, biographer Richard Ellmann has written, "moved impecuniously between London, Dublin, and Sligo, with Sligo as the principal residence during the first ten years of Yeats 's life." Until he was ten Yeats was schooled at home. In his...