George Bernard Shaw at Whitehall Court. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw secured a firm reputation as a playwright. In 1904 J. E. Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker established a company at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square, Chelsea to present modern drama. Over the next five years they staged fourteen of Shaw's plays. The first, "John Bull's Other Island", a comedy about an Englishman in Ireland, attracted leading politicians and was seen by Edward VII, who laughed so much that he broke his chair. The play was withheld from Dublin's Abbey Theatre, for fear of the affront it might
Mary Colum visitor amongst the salons, readings and debates there. After graduation in 1909 she taught with Louise Gavan Duffy at St Ita's - a companion school to Patrick Pearse's St. Enda's School. She was active with Thomas MacDonagh and others in national and cultural causes. She co-founded "The Irish Review" (1911–14) with David Houston, Thomas MacDonagh et al. and she and her husband Padraic edited the magazine for some months of its four-year career. She was encouraged by Yeats to specialise in French literary criticism and to translate Paul Claudel. She married Padraic Colum in July 1912, and they moved to