1924: Although Ireland has won a measure of freedom, it is still considered to be under the dominion of Great Britain. It will be another twenty-five years before Ireland declares itself a republic.

1990s: Ireland is still partitioned, with British troops stationed in the six counties of Northern Ireland. Irish Catholics in those six counties still do not enjoy the same civil rights as the Protestants of English descent.

1924: William Butler Yeats is still writing poetry, perhaps at his peak, (he won the Nobel Prize for poetry in 1923) but the Irish Literary Renaissance has dwindled to a virtual end. Many of its most prominent writers, including John Millington Synge, are dead. But other, younger writers, including O'Flaherty and Sean O'Casey (whose Juno and the Paycock appeared that year), will be producing works for decades. James Joyce has already published Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist...