SOURCE: Gooddie, Sheila. “The Abbey Theatre.” In Annie Horniman: A Pioneer in the Theatre, pp. 59-68. London: Methuen, 1990.

In the following essay, Gooddie examines the complicated and thorny relationship between Yeats and Annie Horniman, the first financial backer of the Abbey Theatre.

In 1904 local authorities started to tighten up their fire regulations in theatres, following a serious fire in a theatre in England and an even worse one in Chicago where people lost their lives. Some small back-street theatres were forced to close, among them the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties in Abbey Street in Dublin, which had been unable to make the alterations required by the Corporation's Fire Department. It had once been the National Theatre but had become commonly known as ‘The Mechanics’ because it was attached to the Mechanics Institute which had been built on the razed site of the old Theatre Royal Opera House. Just...