Modern Judgements SEAN O'CASEY MODERN JUDGEMENTS

General Editor: P. N. FURBANK Dickens A. E. Dyson Henry James Tony Tanner Milton Alan Rudrum Sean O'Casey Ronald Ayling Pasternak Donald David and Angela Livingstone Walter Scott D. D. Devlin Shelley R. B. Woodings Swift A. NormanJeffares

IN PREPARATION Matthew Arnold P. A. W. Collins Ford Madox Ford Richard A. Cassell Freud F. Cioffi Marvell M. Wilding Pope Graham Martin Racine R. C. Knight Sean 0' Casey MODERN JUDGEMENTS edited by RONALD AYLING

Macmillan Education Selection and editorial material© Ronald Ayling 1969 Softcover reprint of the hardcover rst edition 1969 978-0-333-03330-2 ISBN 978-o-333-07049-9 ISBN 978-1-349-15301-5 (eBook) DO I 10.1007I 978-1-349-15301-5 First published 1969

MACMILLAN AND CO LTD Little Essex Street London WC2 and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras Macmillan South Africa (Publishers) Pty LtdJohannesburg The Macmillan Company ofAustralia Pty Ltd Melbourne The Macmillan Company ofCanada Ltd Toronto

For Elsie and Charles Osborn to whom I owe so much Contents

Acknowledgements 7 General Editor's Preface 9 Introduction II Chronology 42

Drama

HERBERT COSTON Prelude to Playwriting 47 P. s. o'HEGARTY A Dramatist ofNew-born Ireland 6o A. E. MALONE O'Casey's Photographic Realism 68 JAMES AGATE Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars 76 DENIS JOHNSTON Sean O'Casey: An Appreciation 82 w. B. YEATS TheSilverTassie:ALetter 86 CHARLES MORGAN The Silver Tassie 88 GEORGE BERNARD SHAW LettertotheProducerofThe Silver Tassie 91 BONAMY DOBREE SeanO'CaseyandthelrishDrama 92 UNA ELLIS-FERMOR PoetryinRevolt 106 JOHN GASSNER TheProdigalityofSeanO'Casey IIO JACQUES BARZUN O'Casey at Your Bedside 120 A. G. sTocK The Heroiclmage: Red Roses for Me 126 WILLIAM A. ARMSTRONG Sean O'Casey, W. B. Yeats and the Dance ofLife 13 I 6 Contents

JOHN JORDAN Illusion and Actuality in the Later O'Casey 143 ROBERT HOGAN InSeanO'Casey'sGoldenDays r62 G. WILSON KNIGHT Ever a Fighter: The Drums of Father Ned 177 KATHARINE WORTH O'Casey's Dramatic Symbolism 183 JACK LINDSAY SeanO'CaseyasaSocialistArtist 192

Autobiographies

HUBERT NICHOLSON O'Casey'sHornofPlenty 207 PADRAIC COLUM Sean O'Casey's Narratives 220 MARVIN MAGALANER O'Casey'sAutobiography 228

The Letters and a Toast

DAVID KRAUSE ASelf-PortraitoftheArtistasaMan 235 HUGH MACDIARMID Slainte Churamach, Sean 252

Select Bibliography 26! Notes on Contributors 270 Index 273 Acknowledgements

Professor Herbert H. Coston and the Tulane Drama Review for 'Sean O'Casey: Prelude to Playwriting' from the Tulane Drama Review, v no. I (Sept 1960); Mr Sean S.6 hEigeartaigh for 'A Dramatist of New-born Ireland', by P. S. O'Hegarty, from the North American Review, CCXXIV (1927); Curtis Brown Ltd for 'O'Casey's Photographic Realism' from The Irish Drama, by A. E. Malone; the Sunday Times for James Agate's reviews of Juno and the Paycock, 16 Nov 1925, and The Plough and the Stars, 16 May 1926; the Daily Telegraph for 'Sean O'Casey: An Appreciation', by Denis Johnston, from the issue of 11 March 1926; Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd for 'The Silver Tassie: A Letter' from The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (pp. 74o-2); The Times for Charles Morgan's review of The Silver Tassie from the issue of 12 Oct 1929; the Public Trustee and the Society of Authors for George Bernard Shaw's 'Letter to the Producer of The Silver Tassie', which originally appeared in The Times, 26 Nov 1929; Professor Bonamy Dobree for 'Sean O'Casey and the Irish Drama'; Methuen & Co. Ltd for 'Poetry in Revolt' from The Irish Dramatic Movement, by Una Ellis-Fermor; the late Professor John Gassner for 'The Prodigality of Sean O'Casey' from The Theatre in Our Times: A Survey ofthe Men, Materials and Movements in the Modern Theatre; Mr Jacques Barzun for 'O'Casey at Your Bedside' from the Tulane Drama Review, rr no. 2 (Feb 1958); Professor A. G. Stock for 'The Heroic Image: Red Roses for Me'; Professor W. A. Armstrong for 'Sean O'Casey, W. B. Yeats and the Dance ofLife'; Professor John Jordan for 'Illusion and Actuality in the Later O'Casey'; Professor Robert Hogan for 'In Sean O'Casey's Golden Days' from Dublin Magazine, v nos. 3-4 (Autumn/Winter, 1966); Methuen & Co. Ltd and W. W. Norton & Co. Inc. for 'Ever a Fighter: The Drums of Father Ned' from The Christian Renaissance, by G. Wilson Knight, © 1962 by G. Wilson Knight; Mrs Katharine 8 Acknowledgements J. Worth for 'O'Casey's Dramatic Symbolism' from Modern Drama, IV no. 3 (Kansas, 1961); Mr Jack Lindsay for 'Sean O'Casey as a Socialist Artist'; William Heinemann Ltd for '0' Casey's Horn of Plenty' from A Voyage to Wonderland and Other Essays, by Hubert Nicholson; Mr Padraic Colum for 'Sean O'Casey's Narratives'; Pro­ fessor Marvin Magalaner for 'O'Casey's Autobiography'; Professor David Krause for' A Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Man: Sean 0'Casey's Letters' (a fuller version of this essay is published by the Dolmen Press Ltd as no. 6 in The New Dolmen Chapbooks); Mr Hugh MacDiarmid for 'Slainte Churamach, Sean'. The contributions by W. A. Armstrong, Padraic Colum, C. M. Grieve ('Hugh MacDiarmid'), David Krause, Jack Lindsay, and A. G. Stock were specially written for this volume. The lectures by Bonamy Dobree and John Jordan are here published for the first time. All articles, including those reprinted from books or periodicals, are published without alteration or revision, with the exception of the contributions by David Krause and John Jordan, where excessive length made cuts necessary. In Professor Krause's article the cuts were primarily letters to O'Casey and not the playwright's letters; in Professor Jordan's essay the main omission is a detailed analysis of Red Roses for Me, which was deleted because two other articles in the anthology are specifically devoted to this play. Because there is still much doubtful and conflicting information in print about O'Casey's life, a fuller chronological account than is usually provided in the Modern Judgements series is given in the present volume. Similarly, the checklist of O'Casey criticism (though it excludes unimportant reviews and journalism) is more comprehensive than usual. I am especially grateful to Mrs Eileen O'Casey for her friendly encouragement and advice, and for the kind understanding of Professor Vivian de Sola Pinto and Professor D. S. R. Weiland when I most needed it. I am also pleased to acknowledge information and help generously given by G. W. Brandt, David Cheshire, and Miss Hannah D. French, and the co-operation of Rivers Carew, Editor of the Dublin Magazine. The expert assistance of Mr P. Henchy, Director of the National Library of Ireland, and his staff, and the facilities provided by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the library of the University of Bristol are also most gratefully recorded. R.A. General Editor's Preface

LITERARY criticism has only recently come of age as an academic discipline, and the intellectual activity that, a hundred years ago, went into theological discussion, now fmds its most natural outlet in the critical essay. Amid a good deal that is dull or silly or pretentious, every year now produces a crop of critical essays that are brilliant and profound, not only as contributions to the understanding ofa particular author, but as statements of an original way oflooking at literature and the world. Hence, it often seems that the most useful undertaking for an academic publisher might be, not so much to commission new books of literary criticism or scholarship, as to make the best of what exists easily available. This at least is the purpose of the present series of anthologies, each ofwhich is devoted to a single major writer. The guiding principle of selection is to assemble the best modern criticism - broadly speaking, that of the last twenty or thirty years - and to include historic and classic essays, however famous, only when they are still influential and represent the best statements of their particular point of view. It will, however, be one of the functions of the editor's Introduction to sketch in the earlier history of criticism in regard to the author concerned. Each volume will attempt to strike a balance between general essays and ones on specialised aspects, or particular works, of the writer in question. And though in many instances the bulk of the articles will come from British and American sources, certain of the volumes will draw heavily on material in other European languages - most of it being translated for the first time. P. N. FURBANK Introduction

I

A GREAT deal has been written about Sean O'Casey's life and work, but only a fraction of it has any real critical substance, and there are, indeed, considerable difficulties in getting to grips with the subject. Confusion is as common as controversy, and both have been intensified by the myths and malice circulated by the writer's enemies. Reviewing O'Casey criticism up to the present, one is immediately struck by the irrelevance of much of it and by the number of false or misleading approaches to be encountered. At the same time, many important aspects of his writings remain unexplored or only partially explored - notably, practical consideration of stagecraft in his drama and objective literary evaluation of the autobiographies. Critical contradictions obscure certain significant issues. It is amazing how many reputable critics argue that the dramatist in his early Dublin plays had no didactic purpose whatsoever, while others contend that these same plays are, for good or ill, full of propaganda. Another substantial body of polemical writing - containing views favourable as well as hostile to O'Casey - masquerades as literary or dramatic criticism when it is, in reality, motivated by political, nationalist, and/or religious beliefs. For this reason the majority oflrish writing on 0'Casey is invalidated as literary criticism, though contributions by John Jordan and Roger McHugh are honourable exceptions. Naturally, critics and biographers have taken great interest in the controversies which have accompanied the staging and sometimes the publication of works by O'Casey. The result has often been, unfortunately, a distortion of critical emphasis. Because several plays have provoked public demon­ strations and official (and sometimes unofficial) censorship, they have been accorded disproportionate attention- and, moreover, the wrong 12 Introduction kind of attention. This is of course unfair to the particular works themselves as well as to others by the playwright, for much more has been written about the disputes concerning The Silver Tassie and The Bishop's Bonfire than of the intrinsic merits, which are considerable, of either of them. Each of the three major studies of O'Casey- by Krause, Hogan, and Cowasjee - gives more space to commentary on the 1958 Dublin Theatre Festival fracas over The Drums of Father Ned than to critical discussion of the play itself. Indeed, Saros Cowasjee has unintentionally betrayed the danger for critics studying the many extra-literary altercations in which the playwright's work has been embroiled. Writing of the Drums of Father Ned controversy, he states that 'it is not only as interesting as the O'Casey play itself, but equally it exposes the order that O'Casey is attacking'.1 The phrase which I have italicised exposes the serious fallacy, as it seems to me, in this kind of approach to any work of art. It is an attitude too frequently encountered in O'Casey criticism. For a start, however, we should perhaps review the more substantial (or influential) writings on the subject and draw conclusions from particular examples. As we might expect, very many articles and reviews had been published about O'Casey and his work before the first book appeared in 1950. This was in fact a relatively short essay, severely limited in critical scope and depth: The Green and the Red: Sean 0' Casey, the Man and his Plays by Jules Koslow. It was concerned almost entirely with 'the political and social aspects of his plays' (up to and including Cock-a-Doodle Dandy) and hardly considered their dramatic or literary qualities. John Gassner's essay in the present anthology makes manifest the inadequacy and wrong-headedness of approaching O'Casey merely in sociological terms. Moreover, Koslow's biographical details- few as they are - are occasionally inaccurate, and useful as was this book in 1950 for gathering together a diverse collection of critical opinions on O'Casey's work, it has been completely superseded by subsequent studies. 2 However, it was not until 1960 - in which year the playwright celebrated his eightieth birthday - that any substantial full-length study was published, when, as so often happens, two books appeared at the same time, both by American scholars. Of the two, David Krause's

1 Sean O'Casey: The Man Behind the Plays (1963) p. 231. z A revised edition of Koslow's book, entitled Sean O'Casey, the Man and his Plays (Citadel Press, New York), was published in 1966. Introduction 13 Sean O'Casey, the Man and his Work is a more solid and comprehensive contribution than is The Experiments of Sean 0' Casey by Robert Hogan. Though Dr Krause states that he has not attempted to write a biography, he closely examines O'Casey's Dublin and 'its economic, political, and religious tensions', as background to a full discussion of the dramatist's ideas and writings. The study embodies the virtues and some of the drawbacks of its academic origins, being a piece of thorough and scholarly research, though occasionally too discursive. Krause's general exploration of what he calls 'the bastard genre of tragi-comedy', under­ taken with particular reference to 0' Casey's first three full-length plays, affords a valuable contribution to criticism of the subject, though it has been overshadowed perhaps by J. L. Styan's subsequent book-length analysis, The Dark Comedy: The Development of Modern Comic Tragedy (1962). In his book David Krause includes a chapter on the Abbey Theatre's rejection of The Silver Tassie and the function of'ideas' in the drama, generally, while two further chapters examine O'Casey's later plays up to The Drums of Father Ned, though the latter play and The Bishop's Bonfire are accorded somewhat perfunctory analysis. The study concludes with a chapter on the dramatist's stage poetry - a useful complement to Hogan's discussion of 0' Casey's language-and another on his autobiographical writings. The book is soundly reasoned and well balanced, for the critic does not allow his evident admiration for his subject to cloud his critical faculties. It remains to date the most accurate and reliable account we have of 0'Casey's life and writings. Robert Hogan's The Experiments of Sean O'Casey is a stimulating book, with many provocative (if occasionally perverse) judgements. As the title indicates, it is primarily concerned with O'Casey's experi­ mental techniques, being an extended analysis of the structure and form of the plays up to and including The Drums of Father Ned, with additional chapters on the playwright's prose style and his dramatic theory. The strength of this study lies in its seminal chapters on the later dramas in the line from Purple Dust to Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, The Bishop's Bonfire and The Drums ofFather Ned, where the critic's practical knowledge of the theatre and experience in directing several of O'Casey's later works is put to creative critical use. In this respect the book acts as a valuable complement to Krause's, which is weakest on the later period of O'Casey's work and in any case shows little practical regard for O'Casey's stagecraft. Hogan's critique of The Plough and the Stars is also valuable, and there is some excellent good sense in the 14 Introduction chapter on O'Casey's style and language. His criticism as a whole, however, suffers from being too inhibited by general theories about dramatic form and by an inexplicable fear of lyricism and ritual in drama: in particular, this leads to insensitive analyses of The Silver Tassie and Red Roses for Me. Hogan's contribution to O'Casey studies is, fortunately, not conftned to this book: by promoting productions of neglected late plays and by polemical articles and editorial work he has stimulated further discussion and revaluation of the dramatist's writings. He has continually argued that

what critics call O'Casey's formlessness is not the aimless sprawling of a talented amateur, but experiments with form and, in the last plays, experi­ ments in synthesis, in the juxtaposition of techniques from different genres. O'Casey's later plays have not lack of form, but ••• tremendous formal complexity1 and the gradual acceptance of this viewpoint by O'Casey students is in no small way due to Hogan's advocacy. Saros Cowasjee has published two books on the Irish playwright. Of the two, the ftrst, published in 1963, is longer and more compre­ hensive. As its title - Sean 0'Casey: the Man Behind the Plays- suggests, it is a biographical study primarily interested in the real people and experiences that, so far as the biographer could ascertain, afforded the raw material for O'Casey's writings. Literary detection is fascinating work, and there is a place in criticism for this kind of research, of course, but it cannot be too ftrmly emphasised that it has literary validity in itself only when used as a tool in the formation of value judgements. The point is illustrated by the vacuity of a great deal of the recent controversy about the real-life characters whom Joseph Conrad used in his novels. The identity parades have arisen because so much of his work was autobiographical and Qike O'Casey) he even retained in his ftction, occasionally, the actual names ofmen and women upon whom certain ofhis characters were based. We are now beginning to witness a similarly unprofitable process of identiftcation in O'Casey criticism. The dangers inherent in trying to trace the author 'behind' (or in) the work he has created are obvious: too often the artist's creative vision is narrowed to the compass of only those aspects which the

1 The Experiments of Sean O'Casey (1960) p. 7. Introduction 15 biographer discovers are based on recognisable biographical experience. This often results in a lack of critical proportion, and in the unjustifiable isolation for analysis of relatively trivial characters and incidents - such as Boyle's 'poem' in Act II of juno and the Paycock, which Cowasjee inexplicably, ifhilariously, relates to O'Casey's personal life!' Another danger in tracking down actuality in, say, characterisation lies in the critic carrying on from the identification as if the real-life figures retained some kind of continuing relationship to the imaginative ones. But perhaps the gravest disservice that undiscriminating literary detec­ tion can render the serious imaginative writer is the implication that his role in the process of writing a play or novel is no more creative than transcribing a tape recording. The following account of the 'genesis' of juno and the Paycock is, unfortunately, representative of Cowasjee' s approach (it should be noted that the gossip so solemnly reported by the critic is not even first-hand):

I did not fully comprehend how directly these two characters were drawn from life till I met Jimmy Boyle, son of Jack Boyle, and James Boyle, brother of Jack Boyle, in April 1958. Joxer and Captain Boyle have not passed from 'literature into reality' as Walter Starkie says, but from reality to immortality. James Boyle told me that O'Casey was once a great friend of theirs, and used to visit their two-room apartment in Gloucester Street, Dublin. It was here that he came across Jack Daly, the inseparable snug­ mate ofJack Boyle. Jack Daly ... visited the Boyles' daily for a 'cup o' tay'. The two friends would sit and gossip for hours. O'Casey, if he happened to be there, would sit near the fire listening to their talk, or writing some­ thing on bits of paper. Neither Boyle nor Daly suspected that O'Casey was fast jotting down their conversation to give it to the world at a later date. This was 0'Casey's technique of success.z

There is no hint in Cowasjee' s approach that what is important from an artistic viewpoint is not how or from whom the writer gained information or even scraps of dialogue for his plays (though, in fact, O'Casey denied the substance of the Boyles's gossip quoted by

1 See Sean O'Casey: the Man Behind the Plays (1963) p. 45: 'Could this be one of Jack Boyle's poems that O'Casey, with slight changes, has incorporated into the play? Very likely, for O'Casey told me that this poem was written by a friend of his and published in a local Dublin paper. Shawn in this poem appears to be O'Casey himself. We have already seen that his wages were very small and work heavy, and that he was employed for a time as a docker. The phrase "he lies in jail", may refer to his internment during the Easter Week Rising .. .' 2 Cowasjee (1963) pp. 43-4: my italics. 16 Introduction Cowasjee), but that it is the playwright's shaping of this material, his adaptation of it to suit his own purpose, which realises any aesthetic and moral values that it may possess. Conrad's retort to a researcher is apposite here: 'After all, I am a writer of fiction; and it is not what actually happened but the manner of presenting it that settles the literary and even the moral value of my work.' At one point, indeed, Cowasjee virtually denies the existence of any informing control by O'Casey1 (though elsewhere he contradicts himself by showing the dramatist's deliberate manipulation of theme and subject-matter); his summing up of The Plough and the Stars concludes: 'We may end our study of the play by reiterating that O'Casey remains a realist of the most uncompromising kind ... a dramatist who places life before us just as he sees it,' without any preconceived notions or ideas.' 2 This strange opinion echoes the judgement of A. E. Malone, who had said over thirty years previously that O'Casey was 'a realist of the most un­ compromising kind, and a traditionalist' who had 'accepted the realist tradition of the Abbey Theatre'.J Yet O'Casey, like Conrad, was no mere reporter or documentary writer. He was a fmely sensitive artist and responded to experience with what F. R. Leavis, in a different context, calls the 'fullness r£ imaginative responsibility'. Several other deficiencies seriously vitiate Cowasjee's work. He declares in his Preface: 'mine is a biographical approach: to show the author's life, purpose and convictions in relation to his work as a dramatist.' There is no doubt that this could be a profitable exercise: O'Casey's life is interwoven with his writings to an extraordinary degree, and increased knowledge of it might well throw valuable light on the workings of his creative imagination. In my opinion, however, Cowasjee' s book cannot be relied upon for the accuracy ofits biographi­ cal information;4 for this reason alone, though there are others as well, it is inferior to Krause's study. Furthermore the critic's literary judge­ ments appear confused and arbitrary at times. He quotes liberally from a curious assortment of good, bad, and indifferent critics and reviewers. As there is a failure, biographically, in discriminating between dubious

1 His attitude is reminiscent of that ofJ. W. Krutch, who said of the early plays that they 'lack form, lack movement, and in the final analysis lack any informing purpose' (Nation, New York, 21 Dec 1927: my italics). 2 Cowasjee (1963) p. 84: my italics. 3 The Irish Drama (1929) p. 218. 4 Some of what seem to me to be the major inaccuracies are examined in Drama Survey (Minnesota, Fall 1964) pp. 582-91. Introduction 17 second-hand gossip and illuminating renuruscence, so there is an apparent inability to make a meaningful distinction between journalism and literary criticism. Sean 0' Casey: the Man Behind the Plays discusses the plays up to and including The Drums of Father Ned, with a chapter on the one-act plays; though published in 1963 (a slightly amended paperbound edition was printed in 1965) the study does not look at O'Casey's last volume of plays, which appeared in 1961. Cowasjee's second book, O'Casey (1966), briefly reviews all the major dramas and substitutes a short chapter on the autobiographies for the appendix on them in the earlier book: the work is the most recent full-length critique of the subject,' and as it is included in the 'Writers and Critics' series of paperback studies, widely read by British students, it is likely to be for some time the most influential book on the dramatist. Although it contains fewer errors, biographically, than Cowasjee's first book, it continues to misrepresent the playwright's political and religious views and his attitudes to various subjects, including signi­ ficant matters like the influence of the 1916 Rising upon his thought.2 It is unfortunate to have to revive here a controversy between the present author and Mr Cowasjee about the value of the latter's two books on O'Casey, but I hope the reader and Mr Cowasjee himself will accept that no personal antagonism is involved.

II Critical obstacles to an understanding of O'Casey's intentions and accomplishments are not confmed to the books wholly concerned with the playwright. Two significant and not wholly unrelated issues, raised by several critics, concern the criticisms to which O'Casey's language has been subjected and the critical habit of comparing and contrasting his writings with Synge's. Both attitudes are typified in the trenchant comments of Raymond Williams. Although they appear in a relatively brief discussion of 0'Casey's drama they are worth considering at some length because of their pervasiveness and because Raymond Williams is (rightly) an influential critic. In a 'Note' on O'Caseyin his Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952; revised edition, 1964) Williams recognised the playwright as 'the best Irish dramatist of the generation that followed

1 W. A. Armstrong's British Council pamphlet, Sean O'Casey (1967), is a shorter, but better balanced, introduction to the subject. 2 CfO'Casey (1966) pp. 7-8. 18 Introduction Synge' and spoke of his 'achievement' working 'within the normal naturalist tradition'. He added: 'O'Casey has recorded, both consciously and unconsciously, the inadequacies of naturalism, while retaining what is vigorous of its limited authenticity.'1 His short analysis, however, is concerned only with the limitations and inadequacies, placing particular emphasis on O'Casey's language, which, being 'the speech of towns­ men', can (according to the critic) 'rarely carry any literary weight'. Mr Williams is one of several academic-minded critics who have objected to the playwright's exploitation of popular songs, catch­ phrases, biblical idioms and hymns. What is surprising in so dis­ tinguished a critic, however, is that he evaluates the literary and dramatic quality of such diverse infusions merely at their face value. While he would never approach the verbal texture of a poem like The Waste Land only in terms of its apparent surface meaning, he fails to appreciate that O'Casey, like Eliot, deliberately chose familiar and even hackneyed material for his own or1ginal purposes. The immediate emotive associations are banal and sentimental, but their adaptation is often subtle and unconventional, working at several levels of meaning and intensity according to varying contexts and circumstances within the plays. The critic specifically attacks the use of 'Keep the Home Fires Burning' - presumably because of its sentimentality - in the last scene of The Plough and the Stars, yet the song in fact realises a horrifying irony precisely because its comfortable sentimentality is at odds with what is actually happening in the full dramatic situation at this point. Elsewhere, banal stage-Irish lyrics like, for instance, 'If You're Irish, Come Into the Parlour' and 'When Irish Eyes are Smilin'' are exploited for obviously satiric purposes, reflecting as they do an essential falsity beneath the jovial exterior of the characters associated with these songs in juno and the Paycock and The Bishop's Bonfire, respectively. And there are many other examples of familiar quotations, music-hall songs, and cliches being used by O'Casey for unusual and challenging purposes. Biblical echoes in Bessie Burgess's speech and catch-phrases in Fluther' s are interpreted by Williams as superficial tricks by which the dramatist, in the first case, heightens the language and, in the second instance, attempts a slick method of delineating character in what the critic calls the 'degenerate' manner of 'naturalist caricature'. In The Plough and the Stars, however, the use of biblical imagery is complex and strictly functional: it gives an extra dimension to Mrs Burgess's 1 Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952) p. 174. Introduction 19 character and it points the growth in her moral stature in the course of the action. O'Casey's employment of catch-phrases deserves an essay to itself: it may merely be noted here that the method is rarely used for 'establishing character' in any superficial manner (as Williams implies is usually the case), but, instead; to realise, by reiteration, the innate shallowness of the emotional and mental responses of many of his characters. The placing of well-known quotations in the mouths of men like Shields, Davoren, and Joxer, for example, invariably throws ironic reflections upon the attitudes and behaviour of those involved in the action on stage, including the speakers themselves. At times a catch-phrase functions as a leitmotif, being used to extend and point significant or universal implications of the action. Stock expressions like 'Kathleen ni Houlihan, your way's a thorny way' (taken from a sentimental poem popular among nationalists in Ireland) and 'Th' whole worl' s in a state o' chassis' by their very nature embody statements of more than individual significance: it is absurd to equate them, as Williams does, with a comment like 'Barkis is willin' ', which is strictly limited to one particular aspect of one man's nature. Whereas 'Barkis is willin'' remains constant in meaning and value throughout Dickens's novel, a phrase like 'Th' whole worl' s in a state o' chassis' works on more than one level of comic and serious meaning. Quite apart from illustrating 'Captain' Boyle's ignorant presumption, the refrain takes on social, political, and moral implications according to the various contexts in which it appears. It has a cumulative effect: when first heard it is merely a comic line of personal interest, restricted to Boyle, and audiences may well respond to it, as it is reiterated in the course of the action, in an automatic manner as to any comic gag line. The playwright's shock tactics depend, to some extent, upon lulling spec­ tators into accepting the line on a superficial level only, so that, subsequently, its deadly relevance may be brought home with even greater effect. The phrase's true significance expands as the play progresses, proceeding from the personal to the national until, in the fmal scene of Act m, it bears universal connotations commensurate with the tragic chaos ofcivil war and ofslum poverty. That the line, by the end of the play, works on a grotesque level inconceivable at the beginning is in itself a refutation ofWilliams' s criticisms of the technique. It may be argued that Williams's criticisms of the method are expressly directed at its use in the case of Fluther Good and not Jack Boyle, but his objections are clearly meant to have general relevance 20 Introduction within his attack on naturalist characterisation, and he certainly gives the erroneous impression that key-phrases are grossly over-used by O'Casey throughout his work. They are in fact utilised far less by O'Casey than by, say, Chekhov. 'Chassis' is used five times altogether injuno and the Paycock; and if it is true that 'derogatory' and 'vice versa' are reiterated a little too often, perhaps, in the first half of The Plough and the Stars, it is also true that neither phrase is spoken more than three times in the last two acts. Moreover, the use of the technique is largely confmed to O'Casey's first three full-length dramas and is progressively discarded in the plays written after The Plough and the Stars. The major weakness of Williams's 'Note' arises from this habit of making generalisations about O'Casey's work as a whole on the basis of examining a few speeches and devices drawn from only two of his plays. All Williams's quotations are taken from The Plough and the Stars and Red Roses for Me. He has documented the major criticisms that may, legitimately, be made of O'Casey's language (criticisms which are to be found, in various forms, in the present anthology), but he has exaggerated the extent and significance of these limitations. Moreover, he dwells overlong on the negative aspects and disregards the creative ones. As an example, one might cite Dr K. J. Worth's article on O'Casey's colour symbolism, which convincingly shows that it is facile to interpret (as Williams does) the playwright's use of 'fancy dress' merely as a device to 'relieve the drabness ofcontemporary clothes'. Instead, the method is integrally related to recurring themes and symbolism in O'Casey's work. In the revised edition of his book Williams speaks of Behan's The Hostage as being

interesting not so much as a continuation of the Irish drama which in Synge and O'Casey has been so important in this century, but as a contrast with it. The Hostage is not so much an Irish scene as a microcosm of disorganiza­ tion and restlessness; more like Wesker's The Kitchen than like O'Casey.1

A 'microcosm of disorganization and restlessness' is in fact an admirable description of a persistent strand running through O'Casey's drama, and there are good grounds for thinking O'Casey's formal (if not thematic) influence is perceptible in both W esker and Behan.2 Williams's

1 R. Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (rev. ed. 1964) p. 305. 2 Both Behan and Wesker have, in fact, acknowledged their admiration for O'Casey's dramatic work, and his influence may be discerned in their writings. Introduction 2I unwillingness to acknowledge the Irishman's influence is almost certainly the result of having initially labelled O'Casey as an artist working 'within the normal naturalist tradition'. Yet this is to ignore the evidence of his later experiments (and of strong non-realistic hints in the Abbey plays too), for while his exploitation of actuality is everywhere apparent in his writings, it is no more valid to describe the writer of Cock-a-Doodle Dandy or Within the Gates or (strictly speaking) Red Roses for Me as a naturalist than it is to so designate Brecht or Arden, both of whom are admired by Williams as rebels against naturalism. Drama from Ibsen to Eliot contains many penetrating insights into the limitations of naturalism and the achievements and failures of those writers who, in the last one hundred and ten years, have striven to circumvent these restrictions. It is a pity, though, that the book fails to appreciate O'Casey's considerable contribution to the revolt against stage naturalism. Raymond Williams's 'Note' on O'Casey is relegated, typically, to an appendix of a chapter on J. M. Synge. It is a common critical practice to review O'Casey's work as though he was, primarily, an Abbey dramatist following in Synge's footsteps. T. R. Henn, Rene Frechet, F. L. Lucas, and J. W. Krutch are other critics who, on this basis, have found O'Casey's drama inferior to Synge's. It is a misleading method, of course, for though there are parallels in the work of both writers, there are also important differences. Approaching O'Casey by such means is almost certainly to his disadvantage: it would be fair only if O'Casey had deliberately attempted to achieve the same dramatic ends as Synge by similar dramatic means - and neither premise is in fact true. While it may be helpful to stress similarities in the serious use of farcical elements (though this does not seem to have been noticed by these particular critics) and in the exploitation of colourful idiomatic language by both playwrights, no useful critical purpose is served by making false analogies between dissimilar plays. One fairly representa­ tive example is Rene Frechet' s comparison of Maurya' s dirge from Riders to the Sea (beginning 'They're all gone now') with Juno Boyle's final threnody in juno and the Paycock. 1 In his analysis the French critic finds Synge's language genuinely tragic and 0' Casey's artificial:

1 The very same comparison is made by T. R. Henn, who, in The Harvest of Tragedy, says that in Mrs Boyle's 'prayer' there is 'a shadow of Synge's rhythms, the West of Ireland vulgarized by the East' (p. 213). 22 Introduction Evidemment la superiorite de Synge est ici incontestable..•. Notons d'abord que la beaute des paroles de Maurya, fruit de 1' art de son createur, tient ala fois a la simplicite de sa vocation artistique, et ala simplicite de la population elementaire qui I'a inspiree .••. L'imperfection des paroles de Mrs Boyle, elle, revele en son createur un artiste imparfait •..I

Synge's linguistic superiority here is indeed incontrovertible, but the consequent assumption- made by both T. R. Henn and Rene Frechet­ that this particular distinction is also the measure of an ultimate differentiation in sensibility and artistry does not follow at all. For one thing, Juno and the Paycock - unlike Riders to the Sea - is not adequately evaluated in terms of pure tragedy alone; and, for another, the tragic effect in the play is not confmed to the sufferings of the women, nor is its realisation wholly dependent on the rhetoric of either Mrs Tancred or even Mrs Boyle. Through their poignant laments, it is true, the playwright does attempt to convey part of the drama's pathos. It is significant, though, that whereas Synge closes his tragedy on the old woman's caoine, O'Casey follows his equivalent device (Juno's 'prayer') with a fmal scene whose grotesque comedy realises even more agonisingly the tragic dilemma of a whole nation at a particular time of anarchy, of self-destruction. The dramatist regarded the epilogue with the two drunken wastrels as not only 'the comic highlight' of the play, but its 'tragic highlight too'.2 It is only the total dramatic impact of O'Casey's writing which communicates the tragic experience. Riders to the Sea and juno and the Paycock are not really comparable, for all that they both portray the strongly matriarchal nature of Irish society. Of Synge's plays, indeed, it is The Playboy qfthe Western World to which juno and the Paycock is more properly akin, albeit in a more sombre mood. Criticism today usually takes for granted the originality of 0'Casey's early dramatic writings first staged at the Abbey Theatre, and (under­ standably) uses the word 'revolutionary' only with regard to his later experiments. The comparisons still being made with Synge, however, remind one that it remains necessary sometimes to stress the distinctive individuality of even the earlier plays. O'Casey's realisation of the grotesque is unequalled in modem drama in English, though more recently Samuel Beckett has developed his own form of drama, which,

I 'Sean O'Casey: un episode de la vie du theatre irlandais'' in Le Theatre moderne, hommes et tendances, ed.JeanJacquot, pp. 330-1. 2 From a letter ofO'Casey to Cyril Cusack, dated 25 May 1956. Introduction 23 though quite distinctive, owes a great deal to O'Casey's practice in this respect. The nature of this experience is perhaps best understood in terms of Thomas Mann's description (written with specific reference to Conrad's novel The Secret Agent): I feel that, broadly and essentially, the striking feature of modern art is that it has ceased to recognize the categories of tragic and comic, or the dramatic classifications, tragedy and comedy. It sees life as tragicomedy, with the result that the grotesque is its most genuine style - to the extent, indeed, that today that is the only guise in which the sublime may appear.1 For O'Casey the grotesque was a means of expressing tragedy and horror on a large scale, without toppling the drama into complete bathos or melodrama, though often skirting the edge of both. By resolutely entitling each of his early major plays 'a tragedy', though critics preferred to call them tragicomedies, he stressed the fact that, despite the preponderance of farcical elements in each work, the overall effect was tragic: moreover, the very 'fooling' of the menfolk is in itself tragic- for their families and for their country. It is clear that he did not mean 'tragedy' as he used the term to be narrowly interpreted: his description of the last scene of juno and the Paycock, as quoted earlier, is proof of this. The plays are conceived as social or national tragedies in the widest possible sense, realising the fearful situation of a whole class, an entire society as much as of individuals like Minnie Powell, Juno Boyle, or Nora Clitheroe. Even as early as The Shadow of a Gunman the largely farcical realisation of Shields's cowardice is the fore-stage accompani­ ment to Minnie Powell's arrest and death (which take place off-stage); while the fmal curtain-line of that play is not Davoren' s formal lament, but the pedlar's solemn inanity: 'I knew something ud come of th' tappin' on th' wall!' juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars similarly end in an off-beat manner; and The Silver Tassie concludes with Mrs Foran's absurd regret: 'It's a terrible pity Harry was too weak to stay an' sing his song, for there's nothing I love more than the ukelele' s tinkle, tinkle in the night-time' - a line which (in its full context) epitomises the appalling human blindness that is a major cause of the moral and physical disintegration of society. The comic elements are not there for light relief, though they naturally perform that function. However enjoyable or hilarious the alcoholic fantasies ' Thomas Mann, Past Masters and Other Papers, translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter (1933) pp. 24o-1. 24 Introduction and mock-heroic gestures may be, the moral irresponsibility of the menfolk in each of these early plays is equal in tragic depth to the formal expression of a nation's grief represented in the sufferings of the womenfolk. This masterly realisation of the grotesque in itself entitles O'Casey to be considered an original dramatist in his own right, and not merely a footnote or appendix to J. M. Synge and the Abbey Theatre movement.

III O'Casey's achievement, for all the unevenness and occasional down­ right badness of writing, can be fully comprehended only by approach­ ing his work as the product of a sensitive and well-read artist, to be evaluated within the broad context of the English literary tradition and not merely that of Dublin or even Anglo-Irish life and culture. His profound identification with the consciousness of Dublin, and of the Dublin proletariat in particular, is a characteristic that cannot be ignored, of course; but, at best- and this is more often than is usually recognised - his plays and prose works project a deeply realised experience of Irish life on to a universal plane. If it is wrong to view James Joyce merely in parochial or regional terms, then it is equally absurd to approach O'Casey as a provincial writer in any narrow sense, or, because of the proletarian background to his writings, to label him, even appreciatively, as a wild, untutored primitive. The class aspect is, unfortunately, not irrelevant to criticism con­ cerning O'Casey's artistry. It is not always realised that the Irish people are as susceptible to class consciousness and social snobbery as are the English. (It is a recurrent theme in O'Casey's work, of course, among working-class characters like 'Captain' Boyle - who as soon as he inherits a legacy tells his children to keep themselves to themselves - as well as small-town business men like Reiligan, Binnington, and McGilligan.) Social attitudes- some possibly unconscious - as much as nationalist feelings have been largely responsible for the reiterated criticism that O'Casey mislaid, if not lost, his genius when he left Dublin for England in 1926.1 With the success of his first play (as early ' This is not only an Irish point of view of course, but has been repeated by critics in the U.S. and England: Richard Findlater, in The Unholy Trade (1952), sums up this critical position as follows: 'With his departure [from Ireland] the holy fire abated in 0' Casey's work, and his subsequent plays - whatever their streaks of genius - are ultimately unsuccessful. For he was trying to create a new drama in an alien country out of his own head, and he had the imagination but not the intellect to do it' (pp. 174-5). Introduction 25 as 1923), O'Casey was immediately acclaimed as a 'slum genius' by Irish critics and audiences, who tended to regard him, perhaps naturally if condescendingly, as a photographic realist. His strength was thought to lie solely in reproducing the life and idiom of the people among whom he lived (an aspect of his work which is, of course, socially and aesthetically significant), and the grotesque artistry and careful selection of dramatic material was largely ignored. It was assumed that a man with little formal education and supposedly without a creative cultural background would lose all touch with reality in his writings once he left his native habitat. Some critics prophesied that O'Casey would never write another play,r while apprehension as to the value of any work by him away from Dublin was freely expressed by other Irish critics long before he had had time to produce any. Holloway's diaries, 2 which carefully and copiously docu­ ment (among many other things) Dublin literary and theatrical gossip, indicate how prevalent were these beliefs about O'Casey immediately the playwright left his native land. Irish criticism ofO'Casey's writings in exile gives the impression, today, that adverse conclusions were made on the evidence of examining the later works as they appeared, but, in reality, it can be shown that the Irish critics had already made up their minds as to O'Casey's future in advance- and used later writings as evidence to support preconceived conclusions. The conclusion to P. S. O'Hegarty's article in the present anthology, written before any of O'Casey's writings in exile appeared either on stage or in print, reveals the dangerous critical assumptions that were to affect future receptions of his experimental works. (Dangerous in that there was, consequently, inherent suspicion of everything that O'Casey wrote outside Ireland, regardless of subject-matter, objective, or viewpoint: no allowance is made, even, for writings based on sharply envisaged 'Abbey Theatre directors like W. B. Yeats and Lennox Robinson were clearly influenced by this view. Both men visited O'Casey in London to see him about his projected new play, The Silver Tassie, and, when it was fmally submitted to the board, criticism was directed at the last two acts which Robinson (wrongly) thought to have been hurriedly completed because the playwright wanted to refute Dublin rumours that he would never fmish another play. Yeats's criticism of the play as having been written out of opinions rather than actual experience was not only a hostile reaction to the opinions themselves, but the product of his belief that a Dublin slum author, in tackling the subject of the Great War and imagining scenes in France, wa~ writing beyond his social range and knowledge. Thus personal and social considerations influenced a critical decision that was of great importance to the future of the playwright and of the Abbey Theatre itsel£ z Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre: A Selection from His Unpublished Journal, ed. Robert Hogan and M. J. O'Neill (Carbondale, U.S.A., 1967}. 26 Introduction memories of Dublin experience recollected in tranquillity abroad - so that to write his autobiographies, presumably, he ought to have returned to Dublin!) O'Hegarty concluded his article:

He must cut loose from London and go back where he belongs. The cosmopolitan Irishman often makes literature in England and in America. But not the Irishman ofhis sort. Ireland is not alone his mother, but his life, and his future depends upon his making due contact with her. I

A. E. Malone echoed these sentiments in 1929: 'His success is attribut­ able entirely to his intimate knowledge of his native city, and it is there that his future must be decided.' 2 The unfavourable contrast with the 'cosmopolitan' artist is typical. It is assumed by certain bourgeois critics that there is a difference in kind between the proletarian mind, however talented, and that of men who have been subjected to some kind of formal training. T. R. Henn writes of O'Casey, for instance, as being 'condemned to work [as a writer] without having had any literary training, or aware of any steadying tradition'.J The same prejudice governed critical attitudes toward D. H. Lawrence's work, until F. R. Leavis exposed the hollow­ ness of this response, as exemplified in T. S. Eliot's criticisms of the novelist. Yet no sane critic would think of saying that D. H. Lawrence, for all his magnificent evocation of the Midland social scene, would inevitably have been a better writer had he stayed there all his life. O'Casey, like Lawrence, in fact possessed a rich and wide-based culture. True, he did not attend college or university, and his schooling was drastically curtailed by bad eyesight; but he was widely read in English and Gaelic literature, and for many years he was an active member (as pupil and teacher) of the Gaelic League, which he himself designated as his 'university'. This is not as loose a description as it may seem, for there was disciplined study and dedication to learning in the League - particularly in the early years of its existence - and the informal extra-mural discussions among members must often have been of a high intellectual standard. In many ways the League offered a better and certainly more comprehensive education than was (or is) provided by many university courses. Teachers and class-members,

I 'A Dramatist ofNew Born Ireland', in North American Review, CCXXIV (1927) 322. • The Irish Drama (1929) p. 218. 3 The Harvest of Tragedy (1956) p. 212: my italics. Introduction 27 drawn from a wider cross-section of society than would have been encountered in most university classes at the turn of the century, did not regard learning or culture as means to a vocational end. Nor did they study literature, politics, economics, and folklore in an academic vacuum, or as compartmentalised studies; instead, they were seen as complementary activities in the search for national ideals and identity, and in building a new and ultimately independent Ireland. Throughout his life O'Casey devoted much of his spare time- given him as a young man, ironically, by enforced unemployment- to deep and self-disciplined study. Whereas Brendan Behan, for instance, seemed constitutionally incapable of sustained intellectual effort, O'Casey possessed an ascetic nature and an aptitude for hard wcirk and self-criticism' which is revealed in the successive manuscript drafts for each of his works and in the extensive revisions of certain writings after publication. He also revealed considerable insight into the workings of his own creative instinct and deliberately restricted the range of subject matter and characterisation in his work. Speaking of Purple Dust, for instance, he wrote: 'I have never tried to write about the "upper classes", for I know too little about them' ;2 while on another occasion, describing the locale of one of his later plays, he said: 'Like Joyce, it is only through an Irish scene that my imagination can weave a way.'J Regarding the latter point, it might perhaps be more accurately said that it is only in a native setting that his creative powers could operate in a sustained manner. He has, after all, provided memorable impres­ sions of Devon, London, Buckinghamshire, and Cambridge, as well as the County Down and parts of the U.S.A., in his autobiographies; but in that vast work, as in his drama, he seldom strays far from Irish themes and characters, even when outside Ireland. Of the seventeen plays (ten of them full-length) written in exile, only two are set outside his native country, and of these two Within the Gates probably owes as much to public meetings and crowd arguments in Beresford Place and Stephen's Green, Dublin, as to London's Hyde Park (though he did take extensive notes of what he overheard in the latter), while the

' Some of O'Casey's writings and opinions betray a stubborn and arrogant wilfulness seemingly at variance with this judgement. Most creative artists, however, reveal a similar contradiction in their life and art: genuine humility in recognising the relative smallness of their achievements (in comparison with the magnitude of life's challenge) co-existing with an egotistical belief in their own creative powers even in the face of criticism. z Under a Colored Cap (1963) p. 268. 3 Blasts and Benedictions (1967) p. 144. 28 Introduction dominant character in Oak Leaves and Lavender, set in Cornwall, is the Irishman, Feelim O'Morrigun. Thus, in practice as in theory, O'Casey was aware of the truth embodied in the judgement that his art needed a living contact with Ireland. Much critical controversy has centred on the question whether O'Casey did in truth maintain an umbilical link with his native land. To many, the very fact that he lived away from Ireland and made only three visits there in thirty-eight years was sufficient proof of his remoteness from contemporary Ireland. Yet it can be argued that one who has lived such a full and intense life, so close to the people, for the first forty-six years of his life could hardly lose touch with the inner­ most thoughts and feelings of his countrymen. He himself put forward a similar argument in 1947 when answering a series of charges by Irish critics that he had completely lost touch with Eire. One journalist, Seamus Kelly (who wrote under the pseudonym 'K'), had repeated A. E. Malone's 1929 opinions as support for his own verdict on the later plays. Malone had said: 'It may be suggested that his [O'Casey's] basis is definitely localized, and that except his talent be greater than it at present appears to be his future will be as much a part of Dublin as was his past' ;1 to which O'Casey replied:

Every man is localized insofar as he can only be himsel£ I can tell 'K' definitely, without the slightest reservation [Malone had said that 'no very decided opinion' could be given on the subject at that time], that however 'great' O'Casey's talent may be or may become his 'future' will be as much a part of Dublin as was his past;just as Joyce carried the city to the end of his life in his heart and in his soul. In the last play written [Oak Leaves and Lavender] the identity is as clear and unmistakable as it is in the first one. 2

Whatever aesthetic reservations may be made about some of the later writings (or parts of them), the dramatist's contention here can hardly be denied: a distinct and original personality is realised in his drama and in his prose writings throughout his career. Hostile critics in Eire have claimed that the themes and social criticism realised in plays like Cock-a-Doodle Dandy and The Bishop's Bonfire are false and unreal, to which charge the dramatist retorted w1th chapter and verse from contemporary Irish newspapers and journals: his 'Bonfire Under a Black Sun', in particular, is a brilliant and

1 The source of Kelly's quotation is The Irish Drama (1929) p. 307. 2 The Green Crow (1957) p. 162. Introduction 29 convincing essay in defence of the actuality of his picture oflreland in the 1940s and 1950s. 1 Among many examples, gathered together after the plays were written, he quotes an Agricultural Correspondent in the Irish Press:

'The amount of food matter produced by the average Irish pasture is very much lower than it should be. There is too high a proportion of our grazing land on what are called permanent pastures. Many of these are so old that they have not been ploughed within living memory.' Listen to the Codger [in The Bishop's Bonfire] talking about Reiligan' s grass and Reiligan' s hay!2

O'Casey's wish to refute stupid cnttctsm by concrete examples is understandable, but the danger of such arguments is that the plays might thereby be approached in future only in terms of social realism. When the Codger speaks of the dusty aridity of Reiligan' s fields, his observations extend beyond physical reality to apprehend the spiritual condition of the country. The theme of sterility pervades the play: Foorawn and Canon Burren bear symbolic names, for example, the former being a transcription of the Gaelic for 'cold one' (frigid one), and the latter derived from that bare and desolate part of Clare-Galway called the Burren. For all the firm bedrock of facts and figures that support the playwright's criticisms oflife in modern Ireland, therefore, it is wrong to look upon these later dramas as realistic. For one thing, he is most interested in them in realising the spiritual and moral dilemmas which lie beneath the surface of present-day Ireland, and in projecting a vision (muted though this may be in more sombre works like The Bishop's Bonfire and Behind the Green Curtains) of hope and redemption for the future. And for another, the elements of satire and of the morality play structure to be found in these plays naturally entail an exaggeration and over-simplification in theme and characteris­ ation that are foreign to naturalism. The question that is most relevant to O'Casey's portrayal of modern Ireland is not, did he know exactly what was going on there, but, rather, whether or not the country had fundamentally changed since the writer's departure. Outwardly there had been changes, of course, but it is extremely doubtful whether Irish society had been transformed, spiritually or morally, since he had left. The understanding of religious

I See The Green Crow (1957) pp. 122-45. 2 Ibid. p. 137. 30 Introduction contradictions and pressures within Catholic society that O'Casey had gained during his life in Ireland was thus of continuing relevance in his later writings. While using many facts and incidents taken from Irish life in recent years- the priest killing the workman in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy was based on an actual case, and so was the funeral of the Protestant author (in Behind the Green Curtains) which was unattended by his Catholic friends and colleagues because of their fear of clerical disapproval- O'Casey juxtaposed actuality with non-realistic material, and contemporary experience with that recollected from his early years in Dublin. In fact, a striking feature of Cock-a-Doodle Dandy and The Bishop's Bonfire - quite apart from their superbly varied stagecraft - is the similarity in su~ject matter and even mood and atmosphere to the world evoked by W. P. Ryan in The Pope's Green Island of 1912. This book embodied trenchant criticism of social evils and clerical authoritarianism, together with idealistic aspirations for Ireland's future. Tribute was paid to the men and women who had stood up to clerical interference in national and cultural affairs, particularly within the Gaelic League, and to the young liberal-minded priests who had aided them in the struggle. It is no accident that The Drums of Father Ned is dedicated to the memory of several of these same priests, since Father Boheroe and Father Ned (the latter through the words and actions of his young 'disciples') embody positive ideals that may be associated with this actual line of exiled 'rebel' priests- a line that has its literary ancestry, incidentally, in Fr Peter Keegan of Shaw's John Bull' s Other Island and in Father John ofYeats's The Unicorn from the Stars. It may be contended that there had been few if any essential changes in the religious and moral climate oflreland from 1926, when O'Casey left Dublin, until the last few years of the writer's life, when some beneficial effects of Pope John XXIII's influence and example, and of the Vatican Council that he set in motion, were felt in that country. Even these enlightened developments had been in some ways anticipated in the plays in the views of Father Boheroe and Father Ned, which look back to the early years of the present century when Ireland seemed on the threshold ofa new age, as well as forward to a new ecumenical spirit. The late plays, in fact, realise many of the significant conflicts and issues that were the background to O'Casey's early manhood, while at the same time they project an Arcadian vision for the future which owes as much to Gaelic ideals of equality and community-living as to modem socialist ideals. This is not to deny the importance and the consistency Introduction 3I of his socialism, which, as Jack Lindsay shows in the present collection, underlies the dramatist's writings. Instead, it reinforces the strength of these convictions, for his socialism was drawn from a rich variety of sources - including John Ruskin, William Morris, Tom Paine, and the teachings of Christ, as well as Marxists such as James Connolly and Lenin. Another significant influence allies him with Synge. The dramatic clash between pagan vitality and clerical puritanism, which is found in both writers-compare The Tinker's Wedding and Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, for instance- is paralleled in the Oisin-St Patrick dialogues in ancient Gaelic literature, and David Krause has argued that Oisin, son of Finn, is the 'patron-hero' of both writers. It is certainly true that 0' Casey's use of imagery and illustrations drawn from Gaelic mythology in his later work is not extraneous but functional, a referential scale of values by which modern Ireland is judged and found wanting. When the heroine of The Bishop's Bonfire tells the Codger how her lover has failed to stand up for their love against her father and the Parish Priest, for instance, he replies: 'An' they tell me there's a statue of Ireland's hero, Cuchullain, somewhere up in Dublin. Oh, Keelin, Keelin, me darling I'm Irish an' ashamed of it.' The reference to Cuchulain works on two levels here: not only does it compare the timidity and cowardice of the present generation of young men (or, rather, some of them) with a legendary pre-Christian past, but - because the Dublin statue was erected in honour of the Easter Week Rising - it also serves to remind Irish audiences that the independence won for them by the sacrifices of 1916 is also betrayed at the same time. 1 (Of course, this is only one aspect of the theme: in Cock-a-Doodle Dandy and The Drums cf Father Ned the playwright salutes those young people in Eire who possess both courage and vision.) The writer's own positive vision for future progress is a synthesis of ideals drawn from modern socialism, the New Testament, and ancient Gaelic literature. His later dramas, set in the present, are timeless morality plays that have affmities with plays like The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. The deceptively simple surface appearance of these O'Casey works disguises a richness of texture and technique whose complexity is demonstrated in the various interpreta­ tions and evaluations by W. A. Armstrong, Robert Hogan, John

1 The ancient hero actively inspired Patrick Pearse, as is well known, and, clearly, the latter had Cuchulain as well as later fighting men in mind when he told the British court martial that the 1916 'rebels' had 'kept faith with the past, and handed a tradition to the future'. 32 Introduction Jordan, G. Wilson Knight, Jack Lindsay, A. G. Stock, and Katharine Worth in the present volume. In dramatic form and technique, if not in ideas, O'Casey was ahead of his time. Criticism is only just beginning to come to terms with his work, and theatrical recognition as usual lags far behind critical understanding. If the adverse judgement of Raymond Williams could have been regarded until quite recently as the prevalent academic opinion on O'Casey's reputation, it may now be contended that a revaluation is currently proceeding in the United Kingdom as well as in the U.S.A.; this is largely the result of sympathetic writings by G. Wilson Knight (for all his dubious interpretations of the play­ wright's religious and 'mystical' views), W. A. Armstrong, K. J. Worth, and G. W. Brandt, among others. Of drama critics, J. C. Trewin has always championed O'Casey's writings and Alan Brien's obituary notice showed a keen awareness of the value of his drama for the future: their views, however, are balanced by the hostility of, among others, Richard Findlater and Irving Wardle. In Ireland, scholars like Roger McHugh and John Jordan have contributed appreciative reassessments at variance in significant ways from the common critical consensus in that country. In the U.S.A., drama critics like George Jean Nathan and Brooks Atkinson were staunch advocates for many years before university teachers and critics began to take an active interest in the Irishman's plays. In recent years, however, the late John Gassner, David H. Greene, Robert Hogan, and David Krause have helped redress the balance by means of their writings and teaching. Even so, academic suspicion persists and is, indeed, found in Robert Brustein' s recent pronouncement that O'Casey 'has always struck me as an extremely over-rated writer with two or three competent Naturalist plays to his credit, followed by a lot of ideological bloat and embarrassing bombast'. 1 Several leading European theatres, including the Berliner Ensemble and the Theatre National Populaire, have recently shown an interest in O'Casey's plays, particularly the later ones rarely performed in the English-speaking theatre.2 Revaluation is thus taking place in

1 The Theatre of Revolt (1965) p. viii. 2 The Berliner Ensemble and the T.N.P. have both staged Purple Dust with considerable success. The latter theatre had earlier performed Red Roses for Me. The Silver Tassie has been presented in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and France. Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Behind the Green Curtains, Time to Go, and several other late one-act plays by O'Casey have also been staged in Germany. Red Roses for Me has been produced in Estonia and The Bishop's Bonfire (on television) in the U.S.S.R. Introduction 33 theatrical as well as intellectual terms: it is hoped that the present collection of essays will contribute further stimulus to this process.

IV O'Casey's autobiographical sequence was written over a period of more than two decades. Beginning in the late 1920s with a few sketches of his early childhood, written in the first person, the playwright had no thought of it assuming its eventual epic proportions. In October 1930, in an entry in one of his notebooks, O'Casey planned a volume of seventeen short stories, the ideas for some of them being clearly autobiographical. From 1930 onwards, indeed, he was engaged in writing what he called 'biographical sketches', or, in the words in which he described the first book of autobiography, writing 'stories' about 'what I saw and heard and felt during the first eleven or twelve years of my life'. These stories or events appear in one continuous narrative in several exercise books, undivided by chapter or title. Sometimes there is no break at what is, in the published version, the end of a volume: in one exercise book, for instance, the unbroken narrative sequence contains the fmal chapters of I Knock at the Door and the opening ones of Pictures in the Hallway; another contains a long draft which eventually became nine chapters in Rose and Crown and ten chapters in the following book, Sunset and Evening Star. Gradually the work took on a life of its own, demanding expression on a scale much larger than the one volume originally envisaged. Perhaps, if the writer's avowedly experimental dramas from The Silver Tassie (1928) onwards had been welcomed by the commercial theatre, or even if he had been encouraged by the availability of good theatre­ workshop facilities such as have been more recently provided in London by the Royal Court and Stratford East theatres, he would have devoted most of his time and energy to writing plays. But conjecture of this kind is fruitless. The fact is that the general lack of interest in O'Casey's dramas after Within the Gates (1933) by theatre managements, and the onset of the Second World War, which further hampered oppor­ tunities for stage presentation of serious new plays, meant that the dramatist was forced at this time to earn a living by writing works other than plays. Yet it should be made clear from the outset that the autobiography was written for its own sake and engendered its own B A.s.o. 34 Introduction aesthetic momentum from an early stage in its composition. It was never conceived as a pot-boiler, though in fact it did largely help to maintain O'Casey and his family during the lean years of the war and its aftermath. Nor was it the random recollections of a dramatist put down in leisure moments. Critically, it should be approached as a work designed and executed in accordance with the demands and the pressures of imaginative literature, the product of a creative artist in prose. The first volume, I Knock at the Door, was published in 1939, to be followed by five further instalments between 1942 and 1954. In these books considerable liberties are taken with form and subject-matter. O'Casey writes in the third person, exhibiting both originality and virtuosity in style and formal presentation in order to realise a wide range of public and private experience and many different states of mind and feeling. As one might expect, a skilful dramatic sense is observed in the evocation of mood and atmosphere, the juxtaposition of scenes, and the large-scale creation of character. An even more impressive quality, however, emerges from the cumulative power of the narrative as a whole: a sense of historical occasion and continuity, which, aided by considerable powers of observation and psychological insight, gives a series ofindividual events the compass ofan epic. Critical reaction has been fiercely divided, not only regarding the relative merits of individual volumes, but about the literary (and even historical) qualities of the narrative as a whole. Several prominent critics - including Denis Johnston, the playwright, and Brooks Atkinson, one of O'Casey's consistent supporters among American critics- think that O'Casey's reputation may ultimately rest more on the autobiographies than on the plays. Several others, among them George Orwell, Gabriel Fallon, and Ulick O'Connor, have been extremely scathing about the work as literature and personal revelation. While the dramatist's most loyal defenders have never denied the unevenness of the narrative and its occasional glaring faults, it is clear that the majority of its detractors, though they condeinn it on literary grounds, are not in fact primarily concerned with literary values. Two dangerous critical approaches are common. The first is to regard the autobiographies primarily as background source material. Cowasjee, for instance, complains that the narrative is unhelpful for research purposes: 'A student who uses the autobiographies for a critical study of the man faces one serious difficulty. O'Casey rarely Introduction 35 gives dates and seldom tells us his age or gives the time of a particular incident. Thus it becomes hard to relate events to their surroundings.'1 Nevertheless, he concludes, the autobiographical narrative is 'in­ dispensable for the study of the man and his works'; which is a fair estimate, so long as the student is warned not to regard it as a reader's guide to 0'Casey, but as a work ofart in its own right. The second is to consider the narrative sequence as being no more than a personal memoir. This entails ignoring the aesthetic reasons for writing in the third person and for introducing a variety of styles and formal devices, including fantasy, in order to distance and mould the material in the manner of a novelist. It is as though A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was to be assessed only in terms of how well it reflected Joyce's early life. Naturally, personal elements are important in any autobiography: but O'Casey's intentions in his are clearly not limited to projecting his own personality or the circumstances of his life. The critical limitations of an approach in such terms is illustrated by Gabriel Fallon's judgement:

My basic dislike of the autobiographies was to be found mainly in three directions; first of all, the narcissism of the style which the use of the third person gave the writing as well as the attempts to out-sing Synge or to out-jump Joyce in the manufacture of'portmanteau' words- 'playing Jeff to Joyce's Mutt' was how Padraic Colum put it. Then the unreliability of the content, the total absence of dates; indeed, the absence of what even the common reader would describe as material evidence. Finally, his un­ accountable bitterness.z

To describe such an attitude as being critically absurd is not to say that there are no problems in approaching autobiography written in the third person. Clearly, there are difficulties, for, as Professor Roy Pascal has pointed out, the technique involves an inherent 'contradiction between form and viewpoint'.J At the same time, such a contradiction can be a strength as well as a weakness, for it can itself contribute a meaningful structural tension within the writing. Starting from the basis that the autobiography did not faithfully reflect the man that he knew for a short period in the 1920s, Gabriel

' S. Cowasjee, Sean O'Casey: The Man Behind the Plays (1963) p. 252. 2 G. Fallon, Sean O'Casey: The Man I Knew, p. 160. a Design and Truth in Autobiography (I96o) p. 165. Introduction Fallon resorts to amateur psychiatry and manufactures a schizophrenic personality for O'Casey, split into the man he knew and the one who wrote the autobiography. In his book, Sean O'Casey: The Man I Knew, he dwells at length on his theory that the playwright's head was turned by 'the pride of international reputation' which he achieved on his arrival in London in 1926, and that he 'lost the run of himself as a result of fortune, fame and the friendship of the great'. The critic continually harps on this theme until it appears that O'Casey's alleged failure as an artist in exile is attributable to it: the autobiographical writings are adduced as evidence both of the literary 'decline' and the psychological reasons for it.I The invalidity of this assumption is illustrated by Fallon's particular criticisms of the autobiography. His comments on the first volume - which only goes up to writer's eleventh year - are typical: 'I liked the book quite well but it was obvious to me that Sean's mature imagina­ tion had gone heavily into the making of it, with the strange result that it seemed to create a distance between the man [sic] portrayed and the man I knew, or thought I knew.'2 Now what on earth does this mean? Are we to take it that the writer's immature, and not his mature, imagination should have gone into the book? Or that his mature imagination, instead of going 'heavily' into it, should really have gone lightly and trippingly into it? The more intently one reads the passage the less sense it makes. The fault appears to lie in the fact that the critic approaches O'Casey's work with preconceived ideas of what the writer's intentions were or should have been. I Knock at the Door is an attempt to recreate the author's early childhood in the Dublin of I88o to 1891 or thereabouts. Fallon seems to expect that the portrait that emerges should be like that of the man in his forties whom he knew in the Dublin of the 1920s. He complains of the distance between the young boy of eleven and the playwright of forty-three: we might reasonably expect considerable differences if the writer was to evoke imaginatively the world ofhis childhood. It would hardly be necessary to consider the falsity of Fallon's approach and reasoning any further, but for the fact that his arguments have, subsequently, been extended by other Dublin critics in articles

' The dubious nature of this criticism (and others in the same book) is examined at length in articles in Dublin Magazine (Autumn/Winter 1965) and in Massachusetts Review (Summer 1966). 2 G. Fallon, Sean O'Casey: The Man I Knew, p. 147· Introduction 37 in The World of Sean O'Casey, published in 1966. 1 In 'The Auto­ biographies of Sean O'Casey' Ulick O'Connor speaks of the six volumes as being 'quite unexceptional' and 'on the whole second-rate'. Like the majority oflrish critics on the subject, however, his criticisms, though couched in literary terms, are seldom based on literary criteria. 2 Instead, they resolve themselves mostly into complaints about the author's personal animus towards individuals characterised in the narrative and, especially, the dramatist's hostile portraits of particular writers and critics and nationalist politicians: 'his treatment of Griffith for instance is indefensible', writes O'Connor, seemingly unaware of the politician's attitude to Labour and Irish working-class politics, the basic reason for O'Casey's antagonism. It is not necessary to agree with the playwright's judgement on this matter (or on the others raised by O'Connor) to see that his 'treatment' is perfectly defensible. As one might expect from the nature of O'Connor's approach, the critic ultimately attributes the supposed failure of the narrative writings to an alleged 'guilt complex' of O'Casey's with regard to nationalist politics, to the psychological scars of 'early poverty and illness', the 'frustration of exile', and 'his wounded ego'. O'Connor adds: 'Outside Ireland, O'Casey doesn't seem to have been a complete person. He didn't possess the massive portmanteau of notes and freak, blotting­ paper memory for dialogue that Joyce carried with him into exile, virtually bringing Dublin with him.'3 Echoing Fallon, he concludes: 'Perhaps this is a reason for the mediocre quality of the autobiographies . . . . He may have used them as a means of getting rid of what another man might have got offhis chest on the psychologist's couch.' 4

1 Edited by Sean McCann. The book is a collection of articles - most of them written by Irish journalists and critics- in which unreliable gossip and reminiscence predominate. There are notable exceptions, however, in the contributions of Kevin Casey, T. P. Coogan, and John O'Donovan. 2 1Iish critics are not the only offenders in this respect. George Orwell's virulent review of Drums under the Windows (in the Observer, 28 Oct 1945) reflected an English nationalist's reaction to the story of an Irish nationalist's life and opinions. Orwell's criticisms were in no way related to literary values. Crudely expressed, his attitude was: 'If O'Casey loves Ireland and hates her oppressors, why does he live in England?' Yet this is to distort the playwright's views by looking at Drums under the Windows out of its historical context: the book depicts the IIishman's views (and his countrymen's) during the years from 1906 up to Easter Week 1916, and is thus naturally critical ofEngland. The subsequent volume­ Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well- portrays Ireland's Independence, Civil War, and the author's disillusionment with nationalist politics. 3 The World ofSean O'Casey (1966) pp. 238-9. 4 Ibid. p. 239; see also Sean O'Casey: The Man I Knew, p. 164, for a similar viewpoint. Introduction Another contributor to the same anthology, Anthony Butler, also resorts to journalist psychiatry, claiming that the autobiographies and O'Casey's aggressive defence of his writings against critics and re­ viewers reveal 'an almost text-book paranoid attitude'. 1 The style as well as the content of the autobiographies apparently supplies evidence of psychosis. The element offantasy, for instance, suggests that 0' Casey 'could withdraw into a dream world', which (to Butler) is 'yet another symptom' of paranoia. Significantly, no attempt is made by any of these critics to analyse the purposes to which fantasy is put in the course of the narrative - if they did, it would be found that the uses include serious as well as lighthearted satire, together with visionary flights of fancy. Several 'dream' episodes may legitimately be criticised as clumsy examples of parody or overdone burlesque, but they are at no point escapist or paranoid writings; and many other examples of fantasy in the autobiographies, as in the plays, are both hilariously funny and sharply satiric. Professor Pascal rightly includes fantasy among the elements used by the writer to assert positive social attitudes, referring to 'the extravagance of fantasy with which the simplest of people in the autobiographies react against the weight of poverty and humilia­ tion'.2 By such means in style as well as subject-matter O'Casey realises his own spiritual resilience in the face of adversity and hardship, and his creative use of fantasy and dream-processes may be compared with Dickens's practice. Anthony Butler declares that O'Casey's stress on poverty 'is another expression of his persecution complex', 3 but this view completely ignores the artistic as well as humane uses to which the author puts the sufferings of his family and himself. Through them he projects on to a universal plane the frustrations and torments of a whole class, an entire subject nation at a cataclysmic period in its history. Critically, it is necessary to recognise that the narrative serves a wider purpose than the discovery of the self or the evolution of a writer. Like Gorki's autobiographical trilogy, O'Casey's work is seriously misrepresented ifevaluated only in terms of one man's or even a family's life story. The essential point, therefore, is that O'Casey realises the central character in the work with fluctuating degrees of personal involvement and artistic detachment. The shifting perspectives can be traced through

I Jbid. p. 28. 2 Design and Truth in Autobiography (1960) p. 153. 3 The World ofSean O'Casey, p. 29. Introduction 39 the six volumes as young 'Johnny Casside' becomes, first, 'Irish Jack', the nationalist-minded labourer, then 'Sean O'Cathasaigh', the labour agitator, and, finally, 'Sean O'Casey', the playwright, 'a voluntary and settled exile from every creed, from every party, and from every literary clique'. 1 But as well as the various shifts in viewpoint and vision in the course of the six books, there is a more important change of emphasis - as has been noted by several critics. Once the central figure becomes O'Casey the writer-as happens during the fourth book, InisVallen, Fare Thee Well- there is a change in perspective which is somewhat different from earlier ones. As Roy Pascal says: the character of the autobiography involuntarily begins to change, the story loses in concrete substantiality; convictions which had the massive­ ness of experience now thin out into opinions and opinionativeness; and when O'Casey leaves Dublin, inconsequent reminiscences, tender or hilarious, take the place of autobiography. The four earlier books are not reminiscence, but life regained, relived passionately with all the intensity of a man still fiercely engaged.z The difference lies in the fact that O'Casey wrote about two worlds of personal experience. In the first four books he created the one in which he grew up. There is a natural progression in self-awareness (national as well as individual) throughout the narrative, which is firmly rooted in a particular locale, with recurrent and unifying themes and characters. Writing from a considerable distance in time and circum­ stance, the playwright recreated his early life with the balanced detachment of a novelist, while yet communicating the enthusiasms and commitments of his protagonist with a vivid immediacy. In the fmal two books, however, he wrote of more recent events from a relatively static viewpoint - for, as a mature man, his outlook on life was understandably settled and constant- so that the narrative becomes more recognisably reminiscence in an orthodox sense. Of course there are experience as accurately observed and as finely realised in Rose and Crown and Sunset and Evening Star as in the earlier books; likewise, there is a considerable range of thought and feeling, with compassion, comedy, and polemic in good measure. But, for all the passages of fme writing in them, there is not the progression, the concrete homogeneity of setting and subject-matter that gives aesthetic unity to the first four books.

1 Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well (1949) p. 287. 2 Design and Truth in Autobiography, p. I$I. 40 Introduction The lack of a balanced critical analysis of this apparent change of emphasis in the narrative sequence and its artistic consequences is one of the big gaps still remaining in O'Casey criticism. There is also need for detailed evaluation of the various formal and linguistic elements in the work. Criticism is forced to recognise polarities within the narrative: extremes of verbosity and strained literary artifice in close conjunction with subtle and complex writings. Sentimentality and melodrama jostle with satire, tragedy, and various comic elements. Of course, neither sentimentality nor melodrama in themselves are necessarily to be condemned, if artistically controlled in appropriate circumstances; it is the function of the critic to make the distinction. It has taken a long time for critics to come to terms with Charles Dickens as an artist because of similar extremes of vulgarity and fme sensibility in his work. And as with Dickens, it will be found, I think, that O'Casey had to fail badly occasionally in order to succeed audaciously at other times. The emotional and intellectual turbulence that characterises his best as well as his worst work is an area of experi­ ence that is infmitely worth exploring, but the inherent dangers for an artist are obvious. Although there is at present only a small body of good criticism on the subject of O'Casey's narrative writings, there is every indication that the deficiencies will be remedied fairly soon. The essays by Marvin Magalaner, Hubert Nicholson, and Padraic Colum in the present collection make a diverse beginning in themselves. Roy Pascal's critical survey, Design and Truth in Autobiography, provides not only an invaluable background to the subject, generally, but also an excellent short account of O'Casey's contributions to it.1 In addition, chapter seven of David Krause's Sean O'Casey, the Man and his Work furnishes a good if brief introduction to the autobiographies as a whole, viewing it as 'a work of art' and as 'a revelation of the artist'. Of the self-portrait that emerges, he writes that it 'is presented with such remarkable integrity and vitality that the man continually rises above the tragic conditions of his life'. 2 Krause is by no means uncritical of either man or writer; yet the ultimate judgement is that 'the autobiography is finally controlled by the compassion of the tragi-comic artist' .3 His study is primarily concerned with the dramatic writings, however, and he has

1 See pp. 151-5, in particular. 2 D. Krause, Sean O'Casey, the Man and his Work, p. 255. 3 Ibid. p. 256. Introduction 4I but scant opportunity to examine this artistry in the prose writings in any detail. 'Definitions Needed' by Robert B. Heilman is a stimulating essay on some important critical issues brought to his mind by a reading of the first three autobiographical books. 1 'The Indignation of Sean O'Casey' by John Jordan is another good study of the autobio­ graphies, and David H. Greene's review of Mirror in My House in Commonweal, LXV (1957) is a further useful contribution. A really comprehensive survey has yet to be undertaken, however, and for this a substantial book is required.

1 Quarterly Review of Literature, IV (1947). Chronology

(Dates ofpublication are given in parentheses after the title.) r88o 30 March Born John Casey in Dublin, the youngest of a large family ofwhom five survived childhood. c. 1891 Introduced to the theatre at the age ofeleven by accompany­ ing his brother Archie to the Queen's Theatre, Dublin (mostly Boucicault and Shakespeare). c. I 894 Started work at fourteen in the stockroom of a hardware store. Had various clerical jobs until became manual labourer in his late teens, an occupation he kept until 1925, when he became a full-time writer. Longest job was ten-year period as labourer on G.N.R.I. (Irish railways}, I90I-II. 1907 25 May First published work an article on Irish educational system in The Peasant and Irish Ireland. 1909 4 January Irish Transport and General Workers' Union founded. I9II Jim Larkin founded union newspaper, the Irish Worker, to which O'Casey subsequently contributed. Irish railways strike - the background to Red Roses for Me (1942 ). About this time O'Casey wrote his first play for an amateur group, but satire of their members prevented its production. 1913 15 August Large-scale lock-out of union men by Dublin employers, with its appalling consequences for the working people during the seven months it lasted, profoundly influenced the playwright's political and social thinking. 1913 October Irish Citizen Army formed by trade unions to protect their members from police brutality. 1913 25 November Irish Volunteers founded: a nationalist organisation with several prominent anti-labour men in its ranks. 1914 Irish Citizen Army reorganised early in the year, with O'Casey as its secretary. He drew up its Constitution, which Chronology 43 was endorsed in March. Although this document stressed the nationalist as well as socialist basis of the I.C.A., O'Casey opposed too close ties with the Volunteers because of anti­ union elements in the latter. He resigned from the I.C.A. on 17 July 1914 when his motion to make the Countess Markievicz choose between the two bodies (she belonged to both) was defeated by the executive committee. 1916 24--9 April The Volunteers and I.C.A. rose in armed rebellion against the British authorities - the background to The Plough and the Stars (1926). 1917-21 Guerrilla warfare in Ireland between the Irish Republican Army (successor to the banned nationalist bodies) and the British forces: counter terrorism by the Black and Tans­ background to The Shadow ofa Gunman (1925). 1918 Death of sister Isabella in January and of mother in November. 1919 Publication of The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, much censored by the military authorities. 1919-22 The Frost in the Flower, The Harvest Festival, and The Crimson in the Tri-Colour submitted to and rejected by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 1921 6 December Peace Treaty signed, partitioning country into an in­ dependent Irish Free State and a Northern Six Counties within the United Kingdom. 1922-3 Civil War in the south over the terms of the Treaty - back­ ground to Juno and the Pay cock (1925 ). 1923 12 April Abbey Theatre staged The Shadow of a Gunman for three performances at end ofseason. 1924 3 March Juno and the Paycock became most popular play in Abbey's twenty-year history. Its long London run began in Nov­ ember 1925. 1926 8 February Riots during first week of Abbey production of The Plough and the Stars. Visited London to receive Hawthornden Prize (for Juno); lived in England for the rest ofhis life. 1927 23 September Married Eileen Carey Reynolds. 1928 Son Breon born. Abbey Theatre rejected The Silver Tassie (1928). 1929 II October C. B. Cochran presented The Silver Tassie at Apollo Theatre, London. 44 Chronology 1932 Refused invitation by Yeats and Shaw to be a founder member oflrish Academy ofLetters. 1934 Autumn Visited U.S.A. for New York production of Within the Gates (193 3). 1935 12 August Abbey Theatre production of The Silver Tassie provoked vociferous clerical opposition. 1939 Autumn Publication of first volume of autobiography, I Knock at the Door (banned in Eire); five further volumes completed sequence, the last appearing in 1954. 1940 12 March Unity Theatre, London, presented The Star Turns Red (1940). 1943 15 March Red Roses for Me (1942) was first O'Casey premiere in his native city for seventeen years (Olympia Theatre). Play had a modest success in London in 1946. 1955 28 February The Bishop's Bonfire (1955) produced in Dublin by Tyrone Guthrie. In December Red Roses for Me opened in New York, the first O'Casey play on Broadway for twenty-two years. 1958 Playwright forced to withdraw The Drums cif Father Ned (1960) from Dublin Theatre Festival after Archbishop of Dublin had objected to works by James Joyce and O'Casey in the programme. 1959 September Presented by George Devine's English Stage Company, Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (1949) proved success of year's Edinburgh Festival. 1960 Dramatist's eightieth birthday celebrated by publication of two critical studies. Refused several honours, including a C.B.E. and at least three honorary degrees. 1961 Last three plays published. 1962 Autumn O'Casey Festival (three plays) at Mermaid Theatre, London. 1964 18 September Died in Torquay ofa heart attack. 1966 Increased theatrical interest over several years (particularly on continent ofEurope) culminated in 1966 with productions of Purple Dust (1940) by the Berliner Ensemble and the Theatre National Populaire, Paris, and of Juno by the National Theatre Company in London. Dublin eventually saw The Drums cifFather Ned at the Olympia Theatre in June 1966.