An Interpreter of Ireland
The death of Lady Gregory has removed from Ireland one of her most characteristic and important figures. Galway born, she spent her childhood in the midst of the country whose peasants she later brought so vividly to life in her books and plays, learning from them the legends and tales which formed the background to her earliest work. Together with W. B. Yeats she founded the Abbey Theatre, when the Literary Theatre was in its last convulsions, thus providing a stage for the National movement which was to replace the stereotyped dramas of the school of Dion Boucicault by plays which had their roots in the life and legend of the country. At the Abbey Theatre were produced the plays of J. M. Synge, of Lennox Robinson, of Sean O'Casey, of W. B. Yeats, of Lady Gregory herself, and of many others whose names are now known and honoured far be- yond Ireland. In her later years in Dublin, and at her home, Coole Park, in Galway, she continued, as the many writers and poets who have been her guests can bear witness, to foster the cause of the Anglo-Irish literature of which she herself had been one of the pioneers.
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