The Losing Game: A Play in One Act

Lady Gregory

The Losing Game: A Play in One Act

In The Gael

December 1902

Lady Gregory’s first play was published when she was nearly fifty years old and collaborating with W. B. Yeats on his search for folklore. Owing to her superior ability at folk dialect, she occasionally helped with his plays, in fact writing the famous nationalist ending of Cathleen ni Houlihan. She also understood the need for new Irish comedies. Beginning with The Losing Game in 1902, she wrote nearly three dozen plays in twenty-five years, including many of the Abbey Theatre’s most revived works.