Yeats’ difficulty in becoming a successful playwright is not surprising or unexpected. His own views on the public theatre precluded success, and it would have surprised Yeats as much as anyone if at any time in his career he had achieved much widespread popularity. His growth as a playwright was always away from the “pit” and the appearance of Four Plays for Dancers, The Only Jealousy of Emer, At the Hawk's Well, The Dreaming of the Bones, and Calvary (the first of which was produced in 1916), is in many ways a predictable outcome of much of his opinion of what drama should be. In a note to At the Hawk's Well in 1916 he had written: