On April 14, 1920, William Butler Yeats spoke in San Antonio in the auditorium of the old Main Avenue High School (subsequently enlarged and modernized as Fox Tech High School). His San Antonio visit was part of a larger tour that took the eminent Irish poet from San Antonio through Austin (The University of Texas), Georgetown (Southwestern University), Waco (Baylor University), and finally to Dallas and Sherman in North Texas. He gave six lectures in 72 hours. These lectures were part of a much larger visit that took him from New Haven, Connecticut, to Hollywood, California. He was apparently raising funds to put a new roof on his famous tower, Thor Ballylee, the Norman castle that he had acquired some years earlier (Hennessy n.p.).

The local populace was prepared for Yeats' arrival by an extensive article in the Sunday edition of the San Antonio Express (4 April 1920: 20B) with a headline which read, "FAMOUS IRISH POET AND DREAMER WILL LECTURE HERE NIGHT OF APRIL 14." The article itself described Yeats as a unique character:

He is a poet and a dreamer, but along with his vision he has had the courage of his convictions. He has done much toward the creation of a true Irish literature, creating plays by means of which the traditions and aspirations of the country can be kept alive. He is an international figure of high importance.

This article was followed up by another, which appeared in the Express (14 April 1920: 6), on the day of his speech. It emphasized not only his importance as a poet but his interest in drama as well:

Mr. Yeats believes that the play which gives a natural pleasure to the people should tell them of their own life or of that life of poetry where every man can see his own image, because there alone human nature escapes from arbitrary conditions. He places great stress upon the music of the speaking voice in the giving of the poetic dramas. It is this "theatre of the people" of which he will tell in his lecture this evening.

True to the article's prediction, Yeats spoke that night, not on the subject of poetry, but rather on the "Theater of the People." According to an article in the San Antonio Express (15 April 1920: 4), Yeats asserted that

Sincerity, the supreme test of a play, a novel, or a story, can only be attained and life depicted truly by getting away from the domination of the 'highly educated, wealthy class' and picturing the life of all, and in the theater only by drawing actors and actresses from every strata [sic] of life. (San Antonio Express 4 April 1920: B20.)

Perhaps Yeats felt that this broader appeal to a middle-class audience would be more appropriate in a Southwestern American setting than esoteric comments on the nature of poetry would have been.