Life
1871-1931; b. Dublin; elder br. of W. G. Fay; ed. Belvedere College; brought
his brother Willie to first performance of Cathleen Ni Houlihan;
fndr. of Dublin Dramatic School and Ormonde Dramatic Society, 1898; directed
Yeats’s Cathleen Ni Houlihan and AE’s Deirdre, St. Teresa’s
Hall, Clarendon St., Dublin, 2-4 April 1902; co-fnd. National Dramatic
Society, later Irish National Theatre Society, 1902 (est. Feb. 1903);
conducted speech-training at the Abbey; created parts of Christy in Synge’s
Playboy of the Western World, Bartley in his Riders to the Sea,
and Martin in his The Well of the Saints; also Naisi in Deirdre,
Cuchulain in On Baile’s Strand, and Shawn Keogh in The
Playboy of the Western World (1907); Hyacinth in Hyacinth Halvey;
left Abbey in 1908 after disagreement, complaining that Yeats have brought
‘effeminate artistry’ to the theatre, going to America with
his brother; later worked in London and Birmingham Repertory theatres
from 1914 [var. produced Irish plays in America while Willie pursued a
successful career in London]; returned to Abbey, and worked as elocution
teacher; wrote reviews in United Irishman, July 1899-Nov. 1902,
criticising the theatre of of J. W. Whitbread, and unnecessary stage movement;
expressed the Fays difference of opinion with Yeats over literary plays
against ‘plays which will act’; there is a portrait by John
Butler Yeats, 1904 [Abbey Theatre]. BREF DIH OCIL FDA
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Works
W. G. Fay with Catherine Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey Theatre: An
Autobiographical Record (London: Rich & Cowan; NY: Harcourt &
Brace 1935); Towards A National Theatre, ed. Robt. Hogan (Dolmen
1970) [sel. reviews from United Irishman]; Robert Hogan, ed., and
intro., Towards a National Theatre, Dramatic Criticism of Frank Fay
(Dolmen 1970); reviews include Wolfe Tone; The Irishman
[Whitebread]; The Green Bushes [Buckstone]; Caitheamh an Ghlais,
or the Wearing of the Green; The Father’s Oath;
Cyrano de Bergerac; Rory O’More; The Shaugraun;
Shoulder to Shoulder; Pelléas and Mélisande;
Peep o’ Day; The Boys of Wexford; Land of
Heart’s Desire; also comments on Samhain, Sarah Bernhardt
in Dublin, and an account of the Early Years of the Irish Literary Theatre,
Irish Actors, &c.
Brenna Katz Clarke, The Emergence of the Irish Peasant Play at the Abbey Theatre (Epping: Bowker 1982); cites correspondence between Frank Fay and W. J. Lawrence [on formation of Irish actors].
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Criticism
Joseph Holloway’s Irish Theatre, 3 vols. ed. Robert Hogan & Michael J. O’Neill (Delaware UP 1968-70).
Cheryl Herr, For The Land They Loved (1991), pp 22-23. See also remarks on Whitbread’s Wolfe Tone in ‘Irish Drama and Modern Dublin’, in Irish Playgoer, 12 and 19 Apr. 1900. Holloway became an enthusiastic supporter of the Abbey Theatre. [ftn. 39, p.244]
Stephen Watts, Joyce, O’Casey, and the Irish Popular Theater (1991), p. 23
James W. Flannery, ‘The Fays and the Early Abbey Theatre’, in Yeats and the Idea of a Theatre (1976).
Richard Allen Cave, ed., W., B. Yeats: Selected Plays (Penguin 1997), Introduction.
Lennox Robinson, Ireland’s Abbey Theatre (1951), p.27 for account of the Fays part in the Irish National Theatre.
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Notes
Under Fred Ryan, RX, Fay’s Ormonde Dramatic Society, of which Ryan
was secretary in 1902.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)