Plays
Yeats wrote for the stage all his life, and founded a theatre to do it. Here are the plays he published up to 1930, complete, in the texts of their early editions.
- 1892The Countess CathleenA verse play first published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1892 and first staged in Dublin on 8 May 1899, opening the Irish Literary Theatre. Yeats revised it for years; this is the 1912 text, with two new opening scenes.
- 1894The Land of Heart's DesireFirst performed at the Avenue Theatre, London, on 29 March 1894 and published by T. Fisher Unwin that April with a frontispiece by Aubrey Beardsley. This is the revised text of 1912.
- 1902Cathleen ni HoulihanFirst performed in Dublin on 2 April 1902, with Maud Gonne in the title role, and printed in Samhain that October. Written with Lady Gregory, though credited to Yeats alone in his lifetime.
- 1902Where There Is NothingA play in five acts, first printed as a supplement to The United Irishman in November 1902 and published by A. H. Bullen in 1903. Yeats and Lady Gregory later reworked it as The Unicorn from the Stars.
- 1903On Baile's StrandFirst published in In the Seven Woods by the Dun Emer Press in 1903. This is the text of the following year, printed with The King's Threshold by A. H. Bullen; Yeats revised the play again in 1906.
- 1903The Hour-GlassA MoralityA morality in prose, first printed in the North American Review in September 1903. Yeats later rewrote it in verse; this is the earlier prose version, as printed by Macmillan, New York, in 1908.
- 1904The King's ThresholdPublished with On Baile's Strand by A. H. Bullen, London, in 1904, and privately printed in New York the same year. This is the 1904 text; Yeats wrote a new ending for the play in 1922.
- 1908The Unicorn from the StarsBy Lady Gregory and W. B. YeatsWritten with Lady Gregory as a reworking of Where There Is Nothing, and published in The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays by Macmillan, New York, in 1908. This text includes Yeats's preface to that volume.
- 1919The Dreaming of the BonesA play for dancers, first published with The Only Jealousy of Emer in Two Plays for Dancers by the Cuala Press, Dundrum, in January 1919. The text here follows that printing.
- 1919The Only Jealousy of EmerThe second of the Two Plays for Dancers, printed by the Cuala Press, Dundrum, in January 1919 alongside The Dreaming of the Bones. The text here follows that first printing.