The Abbey- it’s the posh one. If you were going to take your granny to a show, it would be at The Abbey (unless she’s one of those grannies, like mine, that shouts at the actors). More importantly however, The Abbey is our national theatre, representing us as a nation on stage, though that has always been debatable.
Ireland, still under the control of Great Britain at the turn of the twentieth century, was a country left disillusioned by the effects of colonization. The loss of their political and economic power and especially the loss of their language to the hands of the dominant colonizer left the country without an identity independent of English influence. At this time, The Irish people required a means to express, if not their political independence, then at least their cultural individuality.
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