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
Royal National Theatre War I. In 1910, George Bernard Shaw wrote a short comedy, "The Dark Lady of the Sonnets", in which Shakespeare himself attempts to persuade Elizabeth I of the necessity of building a National Theatre to stage his plays. The play was part of the long-term campaign to build a National Theatre. Finally, in 1948, the London County Council presented a site close to the Royal Festival Hall for the purpose, and a "National Theatre Act", offering financial support, was passed by Parliament in 1949. Ten years after the foundation stone had been laid in 1951, the Government declared that the