The Abbey Theatre, 1899-1999 Form and Pressure [Hardcover]

A century ago this year, productions of W.B. Yeats'sThe Countess Cathleenand Edward Martyn'sThe Heather Fieldlaunched what was to become Ireland's National Theatre, named after its home on Abbey Street, Dublin. This is the first history of the Abbey Theatre to set the plays and the personalities in their historical and political context and to describe the theatre's artistic development.

Prologue 1.
1. 1899-1902, 'Four Green Fields'
2. 1902-1910, 'Screeching in a Straightened Waistcoat'
3. 1911-1925, 'O Absalom, my son'
4. 1926-1951, 'The birth of a nation is no immaculate conception'
5. 1951-1966, 'I remember everything'
6. 1966-1985, 'History is personal'
7. 1985-1999, 'The dead are not the past, the dead are the future'
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

[Offers] exhaustive synopsis and appraisal of hundreds of plays, by scores of playwrights.... [An] unflaggingly thorough and enthusiastic history. --English Literature in Transition 1880-1920