Definition
The Dublin home of the Irish National Theatre Company, where some of the most celebrated plays of the 20th century first appeared. On its opening night, December 26, 1904, the Abbey presented four short plays: William Butler Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan and On Baile's Strand, Lady Augusta Gregory's Spreading the News, and John Millington Synge's In the Shadow of the Glen. This premiere set a standard that the company was to maintain for the next two decades. The company presented Synge's The Playboy of the Western World (greeted by rioters protesting the play as "a libel of the Irish character") in 1907 and his powerful tragedy Deirdre of the Sorrows in 1910. The twenties saw the presentation of Sean O'Casey's great tragicomic achievements: The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924), and The Plough and the Stars (1926), the latter causing another riot at the theater.
Although never matching the great achievements of its early years, the Abbey, which burned down in 1951 and reopened in 1966, continues to produce plays and players of unusually high quality, maintaining its status as one of the premier theaters in Europe.
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