ABSTRACT
The availability and the style of the theatres in which plays are performed, as George Moore's plea implied, affect not just the reception but the very existence of the drama and, throughout this period, a close interconnection is evident between new writing and the existence of particular theatrical ventures. For all it had relaxed in some areas, then, stage censorship continued to represent conservative ideas of public decorum against the will to expose and analyse of the avant-garde. Reinhardt's subsidy was maintained throughout the First World War when he did some of his most powerful work and one of the first acts of the Irish Free State was the establishment of the Abbey Company as the Irish National Theatre with an annual subsidy. Although Shaw seems to have delighted in the fight, the frustrations of fighting for serious commitment to the arts and against censorship as well as the repeated shelving of his National Theatre scheme.
