Shortly afterwards they took a hall at the back of a shop in Camden Street, where they rehearsed and gave a few public performances.  On “AE” declining to be their president, Frank Fay suggested the name of W.B.  Yeats, and he was elected, and in that way came again into the movement in which he has figured so largely ever since.

The company played occasionally in the Molesworth Hall, and produced there, among other pieces, Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen (October 8, 1903) and Riders to the Sea (February 25, 1904); Yeats’s The Hour Glass (March 14, 1903) and The King’s Threshold (October 8, 1903); Lady Gregory’s Twenty-five (March 14,1903); and Padraic Colum’s Broken Soil (December 3, 1903).

On March 26, 1904, the company paid a flying one-day visit to the Royalty, London, and Miss A.E.F.  Horniman, who had given Shaw, Yeats, and Dr. John Todhunter their first real start as playwrights at the Avenue, London, in March-April, 1894 (Shaw had had his first play, Widowers’ Houses, played by the Independent Theatre in 1892), saw the performance, and was so impressed that she thought she would like to find a suitable home for such talent in Dublin, and fixed upon the old Mechanics’ Institute and its surrounding buildings, and there the Abbey Theatre soon afterwards—­on December 27, 1904—­came into existence.

In writing of this Irish dramatic movement, one must always bear in mind that it was Yeats who first conceived the idea of such a movement; the Fays who founded the school of Irish acting; and Miss Horniman who, like a fairy godmother, waved the wand, and gave it a habitation and a name—­the Abbey Theatre—­and endowed it for six years.

Play followed play with great rapidity, and dramatic societies sprang up all over the country, playing home-made productions in Gaelic and English.  All Ireland seemed to be play-acting and play-writing; so much so that Frank Fay was heard to say that “he thought everyone had a play in his pocket, and that anyone in the street could be picked up and shaped into an actor or actress with a little training, Ireland was so teeming with talent!”

Dramatic Ireland had slumbered for a long while, and awoke with tremendous vigor for work.  New dramatists sprang up in all parts of Ireland; The Ulster Literary Theatre started in Belfast; The Cork Dramatic Society, in Cork; The Theatre of Ireland, in Dublin; and others in Galway and Waterford soon followed.  In Dublin at present more than half a dozen dramatic societies are continually producing new plays and discovering new acting talent.  There are also two Gaelic dramatic societies.  And nearly every town in Ireland now has its own dramatic class and its own dramatists.  All this activity has come about within the last ten or twelve years, where, before, in many places, drama and acting were almost unknown.

Many Gaelic societies throughout the country put on Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, Pierce Beasley, Thomas Haynes, Canon Peter O’Leary, and others; and the Oireachtas (the Gaelic musical and literary festival) held each year in Dublin usually presents several Irish plays and offers prizes for new ones at each festival.