Exiles (play) Exiles (play) Exiles is James Joyce's only extant play and draws on the story of "The Dead", the final short story in Joyce's story collection "Dubliners". The play was rejected by W. B. Yeats for production by the Abbey Theatre. Its first major London performance was in 1970, when Harold Pinter directed it at the Mermaid Theatre. In terms of both its critical and popular reception, "Exiles" has proven the least successful of all of Joyce's published works. In making his case for the defence of the play, Padraic Colum conceded: "...critics have recorded their feeling that ["Exiles"] has not
Dublin lock-out in the way that Murphy attempted to with the ITGWU. The lock-out had damaged commercial businesses in Dublin, with many forced to declare bankruptcy. "September 1913", one of the most famous of W. B. Yeats' poems, was published in the Irish Times during the lock-out. Although the occasion of the poem was the decision of Dublin Corporation not to build a gallery to house the Hugh Lane collection of paintings (William Martin Murphy being one of the most vocal opponents of the plan), it has sometimes been viewed by scholars as a commentary on the lock-out. In the poem, Yeats