Sean O'Casey stormed the citadel of English cultural imperialism in his native Ireland with powerhouse plays promoting Irish nationalism. Born and bred in the Dublin slums, illiterate until the age of 14, and a self-taught reader, writer, and theater-goer, O'Casey maintained...
[more]Sean O'Casey stormed the citadel of English cultural imperialism in his native Ireland with powerhouse plays promoting Irish nationalism. Born and bred in the Dublin slums, illiterate until the age of 14, and a self-taught reader, writer, and theater-goer, O'Casey maintained a strong bias towards the lower classes in his work. Deeply embroiled in the civil conflicts and strikes that eventually led to the formation of the Irish Free State in 1921, O'Casey fused fierce social conscience and lyrical dialogue in the creation of some of the most powerful plays of this century.
His first drama, "The Shadow of a Gunman" (1923) was produced by Yeat's famed Abbey Theater. It dealt with the revolutionary fervor festering in Dublin's slums and explored sympathetically and honestly the mixed motives of the slums' foolish, desperate inhabitants. O'Casey's masterpieces "Juno and the Paycock" (1924) and "The Plough and the Stars" (1926), are both realistic, tragicomic portraits of the frailties and pathos of poor Dublin families struggling through the hardships of civil warfare. Initially, the dramatic satire "The Plough and the Stars" was completely misunderstood; believing its antiwar theme somehow also antinationalist, the opening-night audience rioted through the streets of Dublin.
Disgusted by this violent reception of his work, and by the Abbey Theater's refusal to stage his next play, "The Silver Tassie" (1929), O'Casey packed up shop and moved to England, distancing himself from the Irish Renaissance literary revival he had helped define. In his later plays, including "Within the Gates" (1934), "Purple Dust" (1940), and "Red Roses for Me" (1943), O'Casey abandoned his trademark tragic satire for vividly expressionistic, if sometimes disjointed and heavily symbolic, socialist dramas.
In the latter years of his life, O'Casey forsook writing plays and produced a spectacular, six-volume autobiography. These florid, wildly entertaining volumes chronicle the Irish struggle for freedom along with O'Casey's determination to wrest meaning and order from such challenging, idealistic times.
[show less]
