Irish Poet William B. Yeats Visits Boston to Promote the Abbey Theatre

Irish poet William Butler Yeats visited Boston in fall 1911 to promote the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s new national theatre. The Boston visit included presentations of J.M. Synge’s plays, including the controversial Playboy of the Western World.

On October 6, 1911 he attended a luncheon in his honor at the Exchange Club, hosted by the John Boyle O’Reilly Club and covered by The Boston Daily Globe. During Yeats’ remarks, he paid special tribute to O’Reilly, saying in part:

“I never met Boyle O’Reilly, but, as far as I can remember, the first poem of mine that was ever paid for appeared in the Boston Pilot under his editorship. I don’t remember how I came to send my poems to him, but rumor used to come back to Ireland of his romantic and gallant personality and we all knew of his adventurous life. Probably it was old John O’Leary, the Fenian, who got me to send them, for he had told me much of O’Reilly.”

Regarding Ireland’s cultural and political movements, Yeats said “the present intellectual movement in Ireland came immediately after the death of Parnell. When Parnell died there came political discouragement. For nine years the disputes of the Irish part took the romance from public life. Everything became individual. There were no longer any generals; everybody had to do the best he could.”

Yeats said that now, “we are beginning to see the true lineaments of the national character again. How harsh it can be, how gracious it can be. The spirit of Goldsmith, the spirit of Swift has come back to us.”

Here is information about the W.B. Yeats collection at John J. Burns Library at Boston College.

For details on cultural activities in greater Boston, visit IrishBoston.org.

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