I find an amazing resonance in his female characters, ... I marvel that he was capable of writing women's characters of such individuality. Take The Shadow of the Glen: in a short half-hour play, the woman makes the decision to walk out on the roads rather than be imprisoned in a loveless marriage. And she made that choice not just because she was married to an older man but because she saw marriage to a younger man as having the same repressive effect on her. That's a powerful statement, as potent now as it was a hundred years ago.

Garry Hynes