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
Padraic Fiacc the late 1920s and he grew up in New York City. He returned to Belfast in 1946 where he lived for four years before returning to New York in 1950; he grew up in Hell's Kitchen. The multicultural influences, coupled with the poverty and violence of the neighbourhood impacted Fiacc's outlook and his writing, especially his early writing. He attended Commerce High School and later changed to Haaren High School to learn Latin. While at school, he produced several original plays and his first collection of poetry titled "Innisfail Lost". The poems were reviewed by Padraic Colum who became a