Theater, an insistently public form of expression, demands rigorous social and historical treatment. And as Lauren Arrington points out in the introduction to this accomplished book, this is particularly true in Ireland, where the Irish National Theatre—at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin—had a central role to play in the cultural politics that produced independent Ireland in 1922. It was partly in recognition of this role that the Abbey became the first (partially) subsidized national theater in the English-speaking world, in 1925. Fielding a wide range of fresh evidence, from private correspondences to state papers, minutes, play texts, and newspaper controversies, Arrington ably sets about examining the causes and consequences of that state orientation, charting the delicacies of negotiation from the Easter Rising of 1916 to the death of W. B. Yeats in 1939.

Such negotiation and second-guessing constitutes a central element of Arrington’s thesis, which seeks to question the supposedly exceptional freedom of the theater in independent Ireland. The new state, as is readily acceded, did indeed retain the exemption from an official censor that had operated under British rule (Ireland was always outside the domain of the Lord Chamberlain). But as her subtitle suggests, artistic license came at a cost, and finance was a deciding factor. Before the subsidy, Arrington argues, the Abbey’s independence of choice was circumscribed by commercial decisions, afterward, by the need to retain government support. There would be, she quips, “no such thing as a free lunch in the Free State” (112). When it came to the crunch, artistic principle was shed to ensure the Abbey did not upset the sugar daddies at the Department of Finance. The case is particularly persuasive in those instances in which Arrington shows the suppression of material that was inopportune in its provocations of Catholic taste: Lennox Robinson’s Give A Dog (1927), Cormac O’Daly’s The Silver Jubilee (1936)—which sounds marvelous—Yeats’s The Herne’s Egg (1936), and Paul Vincent Carroll’s The White Steed (1938). Carroll’s play, which went on to a glorious U.S. debut, is shown as a particularly unfortunate victim, sacrificed to the false god of a never-delivered State Theatre complex.

Carroll’s fate was rightly understood by him to be a symptom of decline, bound in with the end of Yeats’s life: “the hand of death has certainly ushered the celebrated Abbey into paltry days,” he mourned (190). Of course, that complaint also acts as a eulogy, and if this book sets out to expose the hypocrisies of the Abbey directors, it also records, no less assiduously, the force of conviction in their maneuvers. These pages are full of wily operations, in which Yeats and the gang more often than not come out ahead, having raided the greasy tills relatively unscathed. Placemen on the board of directors are seen to cause trouble occasionally; more often they are ably subordinated. (My favorite ruse: faced with the Brinsley MacNamara’s refusal to resign over a boast that he had forced cuts in Sean O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie in 1935, the directorate delegated all business to a subcommittee that included everyone but him. MacNamara resigned.) O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (1926), like Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World (1907) before it, was trimmed by Yeats and Lady Gregory to minimize angry protest, but it is still remarkable that it found any space at all.

In this sense, Arrington’s work reveals the strings that were attached to government subsidy but also shows that they were fairly loosely held. Government, particularly in the form of Ernest Blythe, seems conspicuous by its reluctance to interfere. The dreaded face-off between Yeats and Eamonn de Valera in 1934 became a quick acknowledgment of useful distance. Periodic demands by provincial deputies (TDs) in the Dáil Éireann for a state censor fell on stony ground. Over all, the Abbey really did have exceptional license—certainly more than other media in Ireland and, often, more than theaters elsewhere, state or otherwise. This was of course despite continuous pressure from the Catholic right, which looked longingly overseas to the Lord Chamberlain and often beyond. As Arrington records, one outraged critic remarked of The Plough: “such a play would not be permitted … under Mussolini at the present time” (90).

Ironically, perhaps the greatest failure of management examined here is laid squarely at the door of purely aesthetic judgment: the infamous decisions, in 1928, to reject The Silver Tassie and Denis Johnston’s Shadowlands (which became The Old Lady Says No!). Arrington rightly puts these catastrophic decisions down to Yeats’s taste, but she also offers the insight that, at least financially, the rejections were justified because they were “neither controversial enough to provoke a riot nor formulaic enough to guarantee success” (122). However, the book goes on to put this in doubt, with a fascinating account of the belated but very profitable production of The Silver Tassie seven years later. Yeats had been wrong on both artistic and business grounds. Johnson’s play, too, became a landmark production, establishing the early reputation of the Gate Theatre in 1929. This is worth pondering: the Gate was a much sexier place in the 1930s than the Abbey. A wider look than Arrington’s might usefully consider the flak the Abbey took, while others benefited from the absence of a state censor.

But Arrington’s study is necessarily focused on the peculiar relationship between the National Theatre and the Irish state, and that close attention brings a wealth of fascinating material to light. The emphasis on finance might have dried out another account; here it gives a much needed sharpness and urgency to theater politics. Arrington guides us through the machinations with aplomb, writes with wit and sure-footed poise, and has an avid eye for detail. Altogether, this is a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating book, one that makes an important contribution to the field.