A revolt against Boucicault’s Irish boys, all fun and frolic, and charming colleens, who could do no wrong, has made our modern playwrights go to the other extreme; so that now we find our stage peopled with peasants, cruel, hard, and forbidding for the most part, and with colleens who are the reverse of lovable in thought or act.  Neither picture is quite true of our people.  What is really wanted is the happy medium, which few, if any, of our new playwrights have yet given us.

If our great popular Irish drama has yet to come, I think the Fays have made it possible to say that a distinct and really fine dramatic school has arisen in Ireland, evolved out of their wonderful skill in teaching, producing, and acting; and if we are not always really delighted with what our playwrights give us, the almost perfect way in which the plays are served up by the actors invariably wholly satisfies.  It is the actors who have made the Abbey Theatre famous, and not the plays.  Such acting as theirs cast a spell over all who see them.  What pleasing memories do the names of W.G.  Fay, Frank J. Fay, Dudley Digges, Sara Allgood, Arthur Sinclair, Maire O’Neill, Maire ni Shuiblaigh, J.M.  Kerrigan, Fred O’Donovan, Eileen O’Doherty, Una O’Connor, Eithne Magee, Nora Desmond, and John Connolly recall!

With the production of W.B.  Yeats’s poetic one-act play, The Land of Heart’s Desire, at the Avenue Theatre, London, on March 29, 1894, began the modern Irish dramatic movement.  When the poet had tasted the joys of the footlights, he longed to see an Irish Literary Theatre realized in Ireland.  Five years later, in the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin, on May 9, 1899, his play, The Countess Cathleen, was produced, and his desire gratified.  The experiment was tried for three years and then dropped; plays by Yeats, Edward Martyn, George Moore, and Alice Milligan were staged with English-trained actors in the casts; and a Gaelic play—­the first ever presented in a theatre in Ireland—­was also given during the third season.  It was The Twisting of the Rope, by Dr. Douglas Hyde, and was played at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin, on October 21, 1901, by a Gaelic Amateur Dramatic Society coached by W.G.  Fay.  The author filled the principal part with distinction.

It was while rehearsing this play that the thought came to Fay:  “Why not have my little company of Irish-born actors—­the Ormond Dramatic Society—­appear in plays by Irish writers instead of in the ones they have been giving for years?” And the thought soon ripened into realization.  His brother, Frank, had dreamed of such a company since he read of the small beginnings out of which the Norwegian Theatre had grown; and just then, seeing some of “AE’s” (George Russell’s) play, Deirdre, in the All Ireland Review, he asked the author if he would allow them to produce it, and, consent being given, the company put it into rehearsal at once.  “AE” got for them from Yeats Kathleen-Ni-Houlihan, to make up the programme.  Thus it was that this company of amateurs and poets, now known as the Abbey Players, came into existence, and at St. Teresa’s Hall, Clarendon Street, Dublin, gave their first performance on April 2, 1902.