William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin in 1865, and was encouraged from a young age to pursue a life in the arts. He attended art school for a short while, but soon found that his talents and interest lay in poetry rather than painting. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, Yeats produced a vast collection of stories, songs, and poetry of Ireland's historical and legendary past. These writings helped secure for Yeats recognition as a leading proponent of Irish nationalism and Irish cultural independence. One of several dramas based on the legend of the Irish hero Cuchulain, «Dierdre» is one of Yeats' most popular one-act plays. It tells the story of Deirdre, the imaginative and otherworldly young heroine, and King Conchubar, the faithless and selfish monarch. Yeats explores themes of love, honor, deceit and self-sacrifice in this tragic but artful drama.
