Longford, Edward Arthur Henry Pakenham, 6th earl of, Baron Silchester of Silchester

▪ British dramatist

born Dec. 29, 1902, London

died Feb. 4, 1961, Dublin

      theatre patron and playwright who is best-remembered as the director of the Gate Theatre in Dublin.

      Longford succeeded to the earldom in 1915 and was educated at the University of Oxford (B.A., 1925; M.A., 1928). In 1931 he bought up the outstanding shares of the financially unstable Gate Theatre and also became a codirector. Five years later he formed Longford Productions Ltd., an acting company that alternated with that of Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir at the Gate. Longford subsidized the theatre from his own resources, and when a public fund was opened in 1957, he took up collections in the Dublin streets. He wished to keep it a people's theatre and maintained startlingly low admission prices.

      Longford's own plays performed at the Gate Theatre included The Melians (1931), The Yahoo (1935), and Ascendancy (1935); the company also staged Longford's Gaelic versions of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Molière.

Additional Reading

John Cowell, No Profit but the Name: The Longfords and the Gate Theatre (1988).

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