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The Arts Council Playography Na Gaeilge

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William Butler Yeats

1865 - 1939

W. B. Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, and one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival. His first play, The Land of Heart's Desire, was produced at the Avenue Theatre, London in 1894. Other plays produced before 1904 include The Countess Kathleen (1899); Diarmuid and Grainne (1901); Kathleen Ni Houlihan & The Pot of Broth (1902); and The Hour-Glass & The King’s Threshold (1903). Yeats co-founded the Abbey Theatre in 1904, and his play On Baile's Strand was staged on the opening night. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923, chiefly for his dramatic works. He was also a statesman, and was appointed to Seanad Éireann in 1922 where he served until retiring due to ill health in 1928. His poetry, especially the volumes The Wild Swans at Coole (1919), Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921), The Tower (1928), The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), and Last Poems and Plays (1940), made him one of the outstanding and most influential twentieth-century poets writing in English.

Playwriting Credits

Play Title Playwright
Cat and the Moon William Butler Yeats
Deirdre William Butler Yeats
Fighting the Waves William Butler Yeats
On Baile's Strand William Butler Yeats
Purgatory William Butler Yeats
The Cat and The Moon William Butler Yeats
The Dreaming of the Bones William Butler Yeats
The Golden Helmet William Butler Yeats
The King of the Great Clock Tower William Butler Yeats
The Player Queen William Butler Yeats
The Resurrection William Butler Yeats
The Shadowy Waters William Butler Yeats
The Unicorn from The Stars William Butler Yeats Lady Gregory
The Words Upon The Window Pane William Butler Yeats

Adaptations

Play Title Playwright
Oedipus at Colonus William Butler Yeats Sophocles
Oedipus the King William Butler Yeats Sophocles
The Post Office William Butler Yeats Rabindranath Tagore