Abbey Theatre works by Seumas O'Cuisin, Fred Ryan and Yeats. The third base was the financial support and experience of Annie Horniman, a middle-class Englishwoman with previous experience of theatre production, having been involved in the presentation of George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" in London in 1894. An acquaintance of Yeats from London circles, including the Order of the Golden Dawn, she came to Dublin in 1903 to act as Yeats' unpaid secretary and to make costumes for a production of his play "The King's Threshold". Her money helped found the Abbey Theatre and, according to the critic Adrian Frazier,
George Bernard Shaw or vivid characterisation. Shaw wrote seven short plays during the decade; they are all comedies, ranging from the deliberately absurd "Passion, Poison, and Petrifaction" (1905) to the satirical "Press Cuttings" (1909). In the decade from 1910 to the aftermath of the First World War Shaw wrote four full-length plays, the third and fourth of which are among his most frequently staged works. "Fanny's First Play" (1911) continues his earlier examinations of middle-class British society from a Fabian viewpoint, with additional touches of melodrama and an epilogue in which theatre critics discuss the play. "Androcles and the Lion" (1912), which Shaw