Theatre of Wales
[1] The development of Renaissance theatre in England did not have great influence in Wales, as the gentry found different forms of artistic patronage.
One surviving example of Welsh literary drama is Troelus a Chresyd, an anonymous adaptation from poems by Henrysoun and Chaucer dating to around 1600.
With no urban centres to compare to England to support regular stages, morality plays and interludes continued to circulate in inn-yard theatres and fairs, supplemented by visiting troupes performing English repertoire.
Interludes came to be replaced as expressions of public drama by a high-flown and imagistic preaching style and dialogues on moral issues such as temperance.
Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden, used his patronage to attempt the foundation of a national theatre for Wales.
He also exercised his patronage in favour of playwrights including John Oswald Francis and Robert Griffith Berry.
[1] The inter-war period has been described as a golden age of amateur dramatics, with five hundred companies active all over Wales providing a second occupation for large numbers of quarrymen and miners.
Emlyn Williams (1905–1987) became an overnight star with his thriller Night Must Fall (1935), in which he also played the lead role of a psychopathic murderer.
[5] The BBC first broadcast Under Milk Wood, a new 'Play for Voices', on the Third Programme on 25 January 1954 (two months after Dylan's death), although several sections were omitted.
The play was recorded with a distinguished, all-Welsh cast including Richard Burton as 'First Voice', with production by Douglas Cleverdon.
He was commissioned to write an exemplary play for the National Eisteddfod in 1957; his offering Absolom Fy Mab was accepted to great critical acclaim in Welsh dramatic circles, as were his translations of two English language plays: John Masefield's Good Friday and Norman Nicholson's The Old Man of the Mountain.
In 1931 he was appointed reader of Welsh plays on behalf of the Lord Chamberlain, a post which he held till the abolition of censorship in 1968.
Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru attempts to shape a distinctive identity for drama in Welsh while also opening it up to outside linguistic and dramatic influences.
