The Irish Literary Theatre was founded in 1899 by W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory to encourage Irish poetic drama. In 1902 it was taken over by the Irish National Dramatic Society, led by Frank and W.G. Fay, and its goal was broadened to presenting Irish plays with Irish actors. Between 1902 and 1903 the Society was restructured, the name was changed to the Irish National Theatre Society, it was given a board, and Yeats was named the inaugural president of the board. Leading figures of the Irish literary renaissance including J.M. Synge, Edward Martyn, A.E. (George Russell), and Maud Gonne contributed their talents as directors and dramatists. In 1904, Yeats's friend Annie Horniman gave the Society a subsidy and the free use of the newly-created Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and J.M. Synge were the Abbey's first co-directors. The theater was purchased for the Society by public subscription in 1910. Among the many dramatists whose works the Abbey Theatre first presented are Padraic Colum, Lennox Robinson, Sean O'Casey, and Paul Vincent Carroll. In 1951, a fire destroyed the theatre and the company spent fifteen years at the Queen's Theatre until the new building opened in 1966. The Society and the Theatre remained in association until 2006, when the Abbey Theatre's Advisory Council dissolved the National Theatre Society and replaced it with the Abbey Theatre Limited.

Sources:

"Abbey Theatre." Encyclopedia Britannica, October 10, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Abbey-Theatre.

Frazier, Adrian. “The Ideology of the Abbey Theatre.” The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, edited by Shaun Richards, 33–46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521804000.003.