Irish theatre playwright now stands outside the gallery entrance. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. A sea change in the history of the Irish theatre came with the establishment in Dublin in 1899 of the Irish Literary Theatre by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, George Moore and Edward Martyn. This was followed by the Irish National Theatre Society, later to become the Abbey Theatre. The history of this theatre is well documented, and its importance can be seen from the list of writers whose plays were first performed here in the early days of the 20th century. These included
Cuala Press established classics. In addition to Yeats, Cuala published works by Ezra Pound, Jack B. Yeats, Padraic Colum, Robin Flower, Elizabeth Bowen, Oliver St John Gogarty, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, Lionel Johnson, Patrick Kavanagh, Louis MacNeice, John Masefield, Frank O'Connor, John Millington Synge, John Butler Yeats, Rabindranath Tagore and others. After Elizabeth Yeats died in 1940, the work of the press was carried on by two of her long-time assistants, Esther Ryan and Mollie Gill under the management of Mrs. W. B. Yeats. The final Cuala title was "Stranger in Aran" by Elizabeth Rivers, which was published on 31 July 1946.