Eglantina Remport, Lady Gregory and Irish National Theatre: Art, Drama, Politics

The impact of the Irish Literary Revival on the development of English and Irish language literature in Ireland and on modern literary criticism cannot be overestimated. Albeit challenging to quantify in its totality, critical appraisal of the Revival and its key figures are wide-ranging. They take the form of biographies on the life and work of individual artists and thinkers: Roy Foster’s tome on W. B. Yeats (W. B. Yeats, A Life, vol. II, The Arch-Poet, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003); to critical studies by Philip O’Leary (The Prose Literature of the Gaelic Revival, 1881-1921, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994); to edited collections of the short Irish language plays of the early part of the 20th century (Drámaí Thús na hAthbheochana, edited by Éadaoin Ní Mhuircheartaigh and Nollaig Mac Congáil, Gaillimh, Arlen House, 2008). The intertwining of literature and politics is evident in the lives of many of those key figures. For example, writer, educator and revolutionary Pádraig Mac Piarais (Patrick Pearse) played an important part in the development of Irish language prose writing, while poet and senator W. B. Yeats was one of the founding members of the Abbey Theatre as was the subject of this study, Lady Augusta Gregory (née Persse) (1852-1932).