|
|
|
|
Sean O'Casey was one of the greatest Irish playwrights of all time. A Protestant, he grew up in the slum district of Dublin and was active in various socialist movements and in the rebellions for Irish independence. He later became a pacifist and relocated to England where he wrote some of his most famous works. As
a result of the deplorable living conditions of the tenements, O’Casey was
sickly as child and suffered from chronically diseased eyes. When he was a young
boy his life was shaken by the death of his father, and his mother then assumed
an important role in Sean’s development.
This maybe considered as the rationale for his strong female characters. Largely self-educated, O’Casey gained fame when Dublin's Abbey Theatre staged three of his plays--The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. These were shocking plays that dealt with the violence in Ireland from the Easter Rising 1916 to 1924, during and after its struggle for independence. In these plays O'Casey portrays egotism, slogans, and abstract ideals such as patriotism as the enemies of life and happiness. O'Casey
left Ireland for England in 1926, after The Plough and the Stars provoked
rioting during its opening week.
Some of the audience thought the play slandered Ireland's patriots and
womanhood. O'Casey,
known to be temperamental left the Abbey Theatre in 1928 after it refused to
stage his play, The Silver Tassie.
Like his earlier work, this play was antiwar in tone, and depicts war as
the destroyer of individuality and heroism.
The play also developed expressionistic tendencies found in O'Casey's
earlier work. Symbolism
and expressionism became more important in O'Casey's later plays.
Most
of the plays O'Casey wrote during the 1930's and early 1940's have revolutionary
heroes and call for a radical transformation of society.
These works include Purple Dust and Red Roses for Me.
Later in his career O'Casey returned to Irish themes, presenting an Ireland that had exchanged British domination for domination by the Catholic Church and a new commercial class.
|
