The Silver Tassie (play) play's study of Harry’s loss of many of his life’s hopes during and after the war, marks it as unusual. In 1928, W. B. Yeats rejected the play for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It premièred at the Apollo Theatre in the West End of London on 11 October 1929. It was directed by Raymond Massey and starred Charles Laughton and Barry Fitzgerald. The set design for act two was by Augustus John. It ran for twenty-six performances. George Bernard Shaw and Lady Gregory were both great admirers of the production. Its Irish première was on 12 August 1935 at
George Bernard Shaw ten years before achieving comparable success in Britain. Among many American writers professing a direct debt to Shaw, Eugene O'Neill became an admirer at the age of seventeen, after reading "The Quintessence of Ibsenism". Other Shaw-influenced American playwrights mentioned by Dukore are Elmer Rice, for whom Shaw "opened doors, turned on lights, and expanded horizons"; William Saroyan, who empathised with Shaw as "the embattled individualist against the philistines"; and S. N. Behrman, who was inspired to write for the theatre after attending a performance of "Caesar and Cleopatra": "I thought it would be agreeable to write plays like that". Assessing