Life
1872-1947, actor and producer; b. Dublin; ed. Belvedere College to age
of 16; ran away to join touring ‘fit-up’ theatre, experiencing
all aspects of theatrical work; spent six years on the road to 1897 as
fit-up theatre manager before setting up in Dublin; Fays production of
Alice Milligan’s Red Hugh seen in Aug. 1901 by Yeats; produced
Hyde’s Casadh an tSúgain (1901); staged Yeats’s
Cathleen ni Houlihan, April. 1902; Yeats joined Fay’s Irish
National Dramatic Society with Lady Gregory in 1903, the society becoming
Irish National Theatre Society, with W. G. Fay as stage-manager; produced
plays for the nascent Abbey from Dec. 1904; became National Theatre Society,
1905, forming nucleus of actors at the Abbey Co.; under the Abbey‘
’s policy of distinguishing between ‘poetic plays’ and
‘peasant drama’, he undertook the direction of the latter; played
Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World (1907), having
previously appeared in Yeats’s The Hour Glass (1903), and
played Martin Dhoul in The Well of the Saints (1905); actors’
group splits from authors’ group in 1908; Fay resigned, failing to
secure authority of Manager-Producer; travelled to America with his brother
in 1908, returning to London in 1914, rather than to Dublin (as his brother
did); published with Catherine Carswelll The Fays of the Abbey (1935);
his is one of the signatures on Lady Gregory’s ‘Autograph Tree’
at Coole Park. DIB BREF DNB DIH MAX OCIL FDA
Works
W. G. Fay and Catherine Carswell, The Fays of the Abbey (London
1935); Abbey Theatre: The Cradle of Genius ( NY: Macmillan 1958),
ills. COMM: [see contested versions of Irish theatrical history by Lady
Gregory, Lennox Robinson, Hugh Hunt, et al].
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Criticism
Máire Ní Shuibhlaigh, The Splendid Years (1955), p. 82.
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Notes
Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London:
Thames & Hudson), Frank, 1871-1931; bros., b. Dublin, own company
till joining Irish Lit. Theatre in 1902; Willie created economic style
of Abbey Theatre productions, as well as parts of Christy, Bartley, and
Martin in Well of the Saints. Frank noted for verse-speaking, created
Naisi in Deirdre, Cuchulain in On Baile’s Strand, and
Sean Keogh in The Playboy, and Hycacinth in Hyacinth Halvey.
The Fays left the Abbey in 1908 and produced Irish plays in USA, Willie
going on to a London stage career after 1914. AND NOTE portrait by John
Butler Yeats, Municipal Gallery, Dublin.
Portrait by John Butler Yeats, inscribed ‘Irish National Theatre,
A [Pot] of Broth’ [Abbey Theatre]; another, pencil drawing, 7 aug.
1904, purchased in Lady Gregory collection sale., 1932 [NGI]. NOTE, Yeats
wrote, ‘We owe ou National Theatre Society to him and his brother,
and we have always owed to his playing our chief successes.’ (Samhain,
No. 3, p.8; rep. in ‘The Play, the Palyer and the Scene’, Explorations,
pp.173-74).
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)