Lord Longford

Longford, Lord (Edward Arthur Henry Pakenham; 6th Earl) (1902-1961), playwright and director of the Gate Theatre from 1931, and founder of Longford Productions in 1936. His first play, The Melians (1931), reflected Irish politics in an ancient Greek setting. He dramatized Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1932) and, in 1933, translated two plays from Aeschylus' Oresteian Trilogy (Agamemnon and Drink Offering). Yahoo (1933) is about Jonathan Swift, and Ascendancy (1935) a melodrama of the decline of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. His own company produced Armlet of Jade (1936), a translation of Molière's Tartuffe (1938), and The Vineyard (1943).