Abstract

This essay explores Shaw’s relationship with Dublin amateur theater from 1907 to 1914, moving from hostile clashes to a mutual partnership that benefitted all principals. Beginning with a request for a Shaw week by Dublin’s Players’ Club, under Anthony Evelyn Ashley, Shaw moved to protect his plays from amateur companies attempting to stage weeklong performance runs under amateur terms. Yet by 1912, when Ashley and his wife, former professional actor Flora MacDonnell, staged John Bull’s Other Island, the production dovetailed nicely with Shaw’s inexpensive publication of the play aimed toward the new Home Rule Bill for Ireland then being debated. In the following year, Ashley and MacDonnell teamed with Casmir Markievicz to establish the Dublin Repertory Theatre. In that year, Markievicz staged The Devil’s Disciple in a production that reflected Dublin’s growing labor unrest on the eve of the infamous Dublin Lockout. In November 1914, Ashley and MacDonnell staged Mrs Warren’s Profession in a much-publicized production, which Shaw followed days later with a call in the Dublin press for Irish enlistment in the Great War. The 1907–14 period also saw numerous professional companies touring Dublin with Shaw plays, which Evelyn Ashley’s productions complemented in bringing Shaw, or his plays, home to Dublin, and which Shaw used to enhance his developing interest in Dublin and Irish affairs.

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