Seán O'Casey
Encyclopedia
Seán O'Casey was an Irish
dramatist and memoir
ist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
, as John Casey or John Cassidy to Michael and Susan Archer Casey in a house at 85 Upper Dorset Street
, in the northern inner-city area of Dublin. It is commonly thought that he grew up in the working class
society in which many of his plays are set. In fact, his family were considered as "shabby genteel". He was a member of the Church of Ireland
, baptised on July 28, 1880 in St. Mary's parish, confirmed at St John the Baptist Church
in Clontarf
, and an active member of Saint Barnabas until his mid-twenties, when he drifted away from the church.
O'Casey's father died when Seán was just six years of age, leaving a family of thirteen. The family lived a peripatetic life thereafter, moving from house to house around north Dublin. As a child, he suffered from poor eyesight, which interfered somewhat with his early education, but O'Casey taught himself to read and write by the age of thirteen.
He left school at fourteen and worked at a variety of jobs, including a nine-year period as a railwayman. O'Casey worked in Easons
for a short while, in the newspaper distribution business, but was sacked for not taking off his cap when collecting his wage packet.
From the early 1890s, O'Casey and his older brother, Archie, put on performances of plays by Dion Boucicault
and William Shakespeare
in the family home. He also got a small part in Boucicault's The Shaughraun in the Mechanics' Theatre
, which stood on what was to be the site of the Abbey Theatre
.
. At this time, he Gaelicized his name from John Casey to Seán Ó Cathasaigh. He also learned to play the Uilleann pipes
and was a founder and secretary of the St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood
, and became involved in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, which had been established by Jim Larkin to represent the interests of the unskilled labourers who inhabited the Dublin tenements. He participated in the Dublin Lock-out, but was blackballed and could not find steady work for some time.
In March 1914 he became General Secretary of Larkin's Irish Citizen Army
, which would soon be run by James Connolly
. On 24 July 1914 he resigned from the ICA, after his proposal to deny dual membership to both the ICA and the Irish Volunteers
was rejected.
died in a hunger strike and it inspired him to write. He wrote two laments:one in verse and a longer one in prose.
He would spend the next five years writing plays. One of them, The Frost in the Flower, was commissioned by the Saint Laurence O'Toole National Club in 1918. Both his sister and mother died in this year (January and September, respectively). He had been in the St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
and played on the hurling team. The club had to decline putting it on because they were afraid the satirical treatment of several parishioners would be resented if it was staged locally. This eventually led him to submit it to the Abbey Theatre; it was rejected though it was well-received. This led him to re-write it, eventually having it be re-titled (and expanded to three-acts) as the The Harvest Festival.
O'Casey's first accepted play, The Shadow of a Gunman
, was performed at the Abbey Theatre
in 1923. This was the beginning of a relationship that was to be fruitful for both theatre and dramatist but which ended in some bitterness.
The play deals with the impact of revolutionary politics on Dublin's slums and their inhabitants, and is understood to be set in Mountjoy Square, where he lived during the 1916 Easter Rising
. It was followed by Juno and the Paycock
(1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926). The former deals with the effect of the Irish Civil War
on the working class poor of the city, while the latter is set in Dublin in 1916 around the Easter Rising
. Juno and the Paycock became a film
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
.
The Plough and the Stars was not well received by the Abbey audience and resulted in scenes reminiscent of the riots that greeted J. M. Synge
's The Playboy of the Western World
in 1907. There was a riot reported on the fourth night of the show. His depiction of sex and religion even offended some of the actors, who refused to speak their lines. The full-scale riot occurred partly because the play was thought to be an attack on the men in the rising and partly in protest in opposition to the animated appearance of a prostitute in Act 2. W. B. Yeats
intervened and described the audience as "shaming themselves". The takings of the play were substantial compared with the previous week. O'Casey gave up his job and became a full-time writer.
After the incident, even though the play was well liked by most of the Abbey goers, Liam O'Flaherty
, Austin Clarke
, and F. R. Higgins
launched an attack against it in the press. O'Casey believed it was an attack on Yeats, that they were using O'Casey's play to berate Yeats.
In 1928, W. B. Yeats rejected O'Casey's fourth play, The Silver Tassie
for the Abbey. It was an attack on imperialist wars and the suffering they cause. The Abbey refused to perform it. The premier production was funded by Charles B. Cochran
, who took only eighteen months to put it on stage. It was put up at the Apollo Theatre
but lasted for only twenty-six performances. It was directed by Raymond Massey
, starred Charles Laughton
, and with an Act II set design by Augustus John
. George Bernard Shaw
and Lady Gregory
had a favourable opinion of the show.
The plays he wrote after this included the darkly allegorical Within the Gates (1934), which is set within the gates of a busy city park based on London's Hyde Park. Although it was highly controversial, Eugene O'Neill
responded positively to it. The play was originally going to be a film script for Alfred Hitchcock
. His widow described it in her memoirs, Sean (1971):
In the fall of 1934, O'Casey went to the United States to visit the New York production of Within the Gates, which he admired greatly. It was directed by actor Melvyn Douglas
and starred Lillian Gish
. This is when he befriended Eugene O'Neill
, Sherwood Anderson
, and George Jean Nathan
.
The Star Turns Red (1940) is a four-act political allegory in which the Star of Bethlehem
turns red. The story follows Big Red (who was based on O'Casey's friend, James Larkin
) who is a trade-union leader. The union takes over the unnamed country despite the ruthless efforts of the Saffron Shirts, a fascist organization openly supported by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the country. It was staged by Unity Theatre
in London during 1940 (later, in 1978 by The Abbey in Dublin).
Purple Dust (1943) follows two wealthy, materialistic English stockbrokers who buy an ancient Irish mansion and attempt to restore it with their wrong notions of Tudor
customs and taste. They try to impose upon a community with vastly different customs and life-styles that are much closer to ancient Gaelic ways and are against such false values. The Englishmen set their opposing standards against those represented by the men employed to renovate the house. In the resulting confrontation the English are satirized and in the end disappointed when a symbolic storm destroys their dream of resettling the old into the present. The hint that is enforced by the conclusion is that the little heap of purple dust that remains will be swept away by the rising winds of change, like the residue of pompous imperialism that abides in Ireland. The show has been compared to Shaw's John Bull's Other Island
, which was one of O'Casey's favorites, but aside from a few similarities, there is no real grounds for comparison.
He also penned Red Roses for Me
(1943), which saw him move away from his early style in favor of more expressionistic
means and overtly socialist content to his writing. It went up at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin
(which was the first one produced in Ireland in seventeen years). It would move on to London in 1946, where O'Casey himself was able to see it. This was the first show of his own he saw since Within The Gates in 1934.
Oak Leaves and Lavender (1945) is a propaganda play commemorating the Battle of Britain
and England's heroics in the anti-Nazi crusade and it takes place in a manor with shadowy eighteenth-century figures commenting on the present.
These plays have never had the same critical or popular success as the early trilogy. After World War II
he wrote Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
(1949), which is perhaps his most beautiful and exciting work. From The Bishop's Bonfire (1955) O'Casey's late plays are studies on the common life in Ireland, "Irish microcosmos", like The Drums of Father Ned (1958).
His play The Drums of Father Ned was supposed to go up at the 1958 Dublin Theatre Festival
, but the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin
, John Charles McQuaid
, refused to give his blessing (it has been assumed because works of both James Joyce
and O'Casey were in the Festival). After Joyce's play was quietly dropped, there was massive changes required for The Drums of Father Ned, a devious way to get O'Casey to drop. After this, Samuel Beckett
withdrew his mime
piece in protest.
. The musical, retitled Juno
, was a commercial failure, closing after only 16 Broadway performances. It was also panned by some critics as being too "dark" to be an appropriate musical, a genre then almost invariably associated with light comedy. However, the music, which survives in a cast album made before the show opened, has since been regarded as some of Blitzstein's best work. Although endorsed by the now 79 year old O'Casey, he did not contribute to the production or even see it during the brief run. Despite general agreement on the brilliance of the underlying material, the musical has defied all efforts to mount any successful revival
.
Also in 1959, George Devine
produced Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
with at the Royal Court Theatre
and it was also successful at the Edinburgh International Festival
and had a West End run.
In 1960 was his eightieth birthday, and to celebrate, David Krause and Robert Hogan wrote full-length studies. The Mermaid Theatre
in London launched the "O'Casey Festival" in 1962, which in turn made more theatre establishments put on his works, mostly in England and Germany. It is in these late years that O'Casey put his creative energy into his six-volume Autobiography.
In September 1964 at the age of 84, O'Casey died of a heart attack, in Torquay
, England. He was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium
.
In 1965, his autobiography Mirror in my House (the umbrella title under which the six autobiographies he published from 1939 to 1956 were republished, in two large volumes, in 1956) was turned into a film based on his life called Young Cassidy
. The film was directed by Jack Cardiff
(and John Ford
) featuring Rod Taylor (as O'Casey), Flora Robson
, Maggie Smith
, Julie Christie
, Edith Evans
and Michael Redgrave
.
and Niall (who died in 1957 of leukemia
), and a daughter, Siobhan.
donated a collection of letters he received from O'Casey from 1944 to 1962 to the Fales Library
at New York University
. Also in the collection are two letters written by Eileen O'Casey and one letter addressed to Catherine Greene, David Greene's spouse.
O'Casey's papers are held in the New York Public Library
, the Cornell University Library
, the University of California, Los Angeles Library System
, the University of London Library, the National Library of Ireland
and the Fales Library
.
Online
Irish theatre
The history of Irish theatre begins with the Gaelic Irish tradition. Much of the literature in that Celtic language was destroyed by conquest, except for a few manuscripts and fragments, such as the Book of Fermoy...
dramatist and memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
ist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
Early life
O'Casey was born in Dublin, IrelandIreland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, as John Casey or John Cassidy to Michael and Susan Archer Casey in a house at 85 Upper Dorset Street
Dorset Street
For the former London street of the same name, see Dorset Street Dorset Street is an important thoroughfare on the northside of Dublin, Ireland, and was originally part of the Slighe Midh-Luchra, Dublin's ancient road to the north that begins where the original bridging point at Church Street is...
, in the northern inner-city area of Dublin. It is commonly thought that he grew up in the working class
Working class
Working class is a term used in the social sciences and in ordinary conversation to describe those employed in lower tier jobs , often extending to those in unemployment or otherwise possessing below-average incomes...
society in which many of his plays are set. In fact, his family were considered as "shabby genteel". He was a member of the Church of Ireland
Church of Ireland
The Church of Ireland is an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. The church operates in all parts of Ireland and is the second largest religious body on the island after the Roman Catholic Church...
, baptised on July 28, 1880 in St. Mary's parish, confirmed at St John the Baptist Church
Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf
The Parish of St. John the Baptist, the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf, Dublin is a religious community located on the north shore of Dublin Bay, bounded by the Parishes of North Strand to the west, Coolock to the north and Raheny to the east .The Parish Church is situated on , approximately...
in Clontarf
Clontarf, Dublin
Clontarf is a coastal suburb on the northside of Dublin, in Ireland. It is most famous for giving the name to the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, in which Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, defeated the Vikings of Dublin and their allies, the Irish of Leinster. This battle, which extended to districts...
, and an active member of Saint Barnabas until his mid-twenties, when he drifted away from the church.
O'Casey's father died when Seán was just six years of age, leaving a family of thirteen. The family lived a peripatetic life thereafter, moving from house to house around north Dublin. As a child, he suffered from poor eyesight, which interfered somewhat with his early education, but O'Casey taught himself to read and write by the age of thirteen.
He left school at fourteen and worked at a variety of jobs, including a nine-year period as a railwayman. O'Casey worked in Easons
Eason & Son
Eason & Son is a group involved in the wholesale, distribution and retail of books, newspapers, magazines, stationery and cards on the island of Ireland ....
for a short while, in the newspaper distribution business, but was sacked for not taking off his cap when collecting his wage packet.
From the early 1890s, O'Casey and his older brother, Archie, put on performances of plays by Dion Boucicault
Dion Boucicault
Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
in the family home. He also got a small part in Boucicault's The Shaughraun in the Mechanics' Theatre
Mechanics' Theatre
The Mechanics' Hall, also known as the Hibernian Theatre of Varieties was a theatre and music hall in Lower Abbey Street, Dublin. It stood at the site of the current Abbey Theatre at 26 Lower Abbey Street....
, which stood on what was to be the site of the Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
.
Politics
As his interest in the Irish nationalist cause grew, O'Casey joined the Gaelic League in 1906 and learned the Irish languageIrish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
. At this time, he Gaelicized his name from John Casey to Seán Ó Cathasaigh. He also learned to play the Uilleann pipes
Uilleann pipes
The uilleann pipes or //; ) are the characteristic national bagpipe of Ireland, their current name, earlier known in English as "union pipes", is a part translation of the Irish-language term píobaí uilleann , from their method of inflation.The bag of the uilleann pipes is inflated by means of a...
and was a founder and secretary of the St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
The St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band is a Grade One pipe band based in Dublin, Ireland. The band was established in 1910. They are the current RSPBA World Pipe Band Champions....
. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood
Irish Republican Brotherhood
The Irish Republican Brotherhood was a secret oath-bound fraternal organisation dedicated to the establishment of an "independent democratic republic" in Ireland during the second half of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century...
, and became involved in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, which had been established by Jim Larkin to represent the interests of the unskilled labourers who inhabited the Dublin tenements. He participated in the Dublin Lock-out, but was blackballed and could not find steady work for some time.
In March 1914 he became General Secretary of Larkin's Irish Citizen Army
Irish Citizen Army
The Irish Citizen Army , or ICA, was a small group of trained trade union volunteers established in Dublin for the defence of worker’s demonstrations from the police. It was formed by James Larkin and Jack White. Other prominent members included James Connolly, Seán O'Casey, Constance Markievicz,...
, which would soon be run by James Connolly
James Connolly
James Connolly was an Irish republican and socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents and spoke with a Scottish accent throughout his life. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but became one of the leading Marxist theorists of...
. On 24 July 1914 he resigned from the ICA, after his proposal to deny dual membership to both the ICA and the Irish Volunteers
Irish Volunteers
The Irish Volunteers was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. It was ostensibly formed in response to the formation of the Ulster Volunteers in 1912, and its declared primary aim was "to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland"...
was rejected.
Post Easter Rising
In 1917, his friend Thomas AsheThomas Ashe
Thomas Patrick Ashe born in Lispole, County Kerry, Ireland, was a member of the Gaelic League, the Irish Republican Brotherhood and a founding member of the Irish Volunteers...
died in a hunger strike and it inspired him to write. He wrote two laments:one in verse and a longer one in prose.
He would spend the next five years writing plays. One of them, The Frost in the Flower, was commissioned by the Saint Laurence O'Toole National Club in 1918. Both his sister and mother died in this year (January and September, respectively). He had been in the St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band
The St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band is a Grade One pipe band based in Dublin, Ireland. The band was established in 1910. They are the current RSPBA World Pipe Band Champions....
and played on the hurling team. The club had to decline putting it on because they were afraid the satirical treatment of several parishioners would be resented if it was staged locally. This eventually led him to submit it to the Abbey Theatre; it was rejected though it was well-received. This led him to re-write it, eventually having it be re-titled (and expanded to three-acts) as the The Harvest Festival.
Abbey Theatre
The Shadow of a Gunman
The Shadow of a Gunman is a 1923 play by Seán O'Casey. It centers on the mistaken identity of a building tenant who is thought to be an IRA assassin....
, was performed at the Abbey Theatre
Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre , also known as the National Theatre of Ireland , is a theatre located in Dublin, Ireland. The Abbey first opened its doors to the public on 27 December 1904. Despite losing its original building to a fire in 1951, it has remained active to the present day...
in 1923. This was the beginning of a relationship that was to be fruitful for both theatre and dramatist but which ended in some bitterness.
The play deals with the impact of revolutionary politics on Dublin's slums and their inhabitants, and is understood to be set in Mountjoy Square, where he lived during the 1916 Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
. It was followed by Juno and the Paycock
Juno and the Paycock
Juno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and one of the most highly regarded and oft-performed plays in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924...
(1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926). The former deals with the effect of the Irish Civil War
Irish Civil War
The Irish Civil War was a conflict that accompanied the establishment of the Irish Free State as an entity independent from the United Kingdom within the British Empire....
on the working class poor of the city, while the latter is set in Dublin in 1916 around the Easter Rising
Easter Rising
The Easter Rising was an insurrection staged in Ireland during Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was mounted by Irish republicans with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing the Irish Republic at a time when the British Empire was heavily engaged in the First World War...
. Juno and the Paycock became a film
Juno and the Paycock (film)
Juno and the Paycock is a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Barry Fitzgerald, Maire O'Neill, Edward Chapman and Sara Allgood.The film was based on a successful play by Sean O'Casey.-Plot:...
directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
.
The Plough and the Stars was not well received by the Abbey audience and resulted in scenes reminiscent of the riots that greeted J. M. Synge
John Millington Synge
Edmund John Millington Synge was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre...
's The Playboy of the Western World
The Playboy of the Western World
The Playboy of the Western World is a three-act play written by Irish playwright John Millington Synge and first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, on January 26, 1907. It is set in Michael James Flaherty's public house in County Mayo during the early 1900s...
in 1907. There was a riot reported on the fourth night of the show. His depiction of sex and religion even offended some of the actors, who refused to speak their lines. The full-scale riot occurred partly because the play was thought to be an attack on the men in the rising and partly in protest in opposition to the animated appearance of a prostitute in Act 2. W. B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and playwright, and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms...
intervened and described the audience as "shaming themselves". The takings of the play were substantial compared with the previous week. O'Casey gave up his job and became a full-time writer.
After the incident, even though the play was well liked by most of the Abbey goers, Liam O'Flaherty
Liam O'Flaherty
Liam O'Flaherty was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer and a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance, born August 28, 1896, died September 7, 1984.-Biography:...
, Austin Clarke
Austin Clarke (poet)
thumb|300px|Austin Clarke Bridge in [[Templeogue]]Austin Clarke was one of the leading Irish poets of the generation after W. B. Yeats. He also wrote plays, novels and memoirs...
, and F. R. Higgins
F. R. Higgins
Frederick Robert Higgins was an Irish poet and theatre director.-Early years:Higgins was born on the west coast of Ireland in Foxford, which is located in County Mayo...
launched an attack against it in the press. O'Casey believed it was an attack on Yeats, that they were using O'Casey's play to berate Yeats.
England
While in London to receive the Hawthornden Prize and supervise the West End production of Juno and the Paycock, O'Casey fell in love with Eileen Carey. The couple were married in 1927 and remained in London.In 1928, W. B. Yeats rejected O'Casey's fourth play, The Silver Tassie
The Silver Tassie (play)
The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones,...
for the Abbey. It was an attack on imperialist wars and the suffering they cause. The Abbey refused to perform it. The premier production was funded by Charles B. Cochran
Charles B. Cochran
Sir Charles Blake Cochran , generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noel Coward and his works.-Biography:Cochran was born in Sussex and educated...
, who took only eighteen months to put it on stage. It was put up at the Apollo Theatre
Apollo Theatre
The Apollo Theatre is a Grade II listed West End theatre, on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster. Designed by architect Lewin Sharp for owner Henry Lowenfield, and the fourth legitimate theatre to be constructed on the street, its doors opened on 21 February 1901 with the American...
but lasted for only twenty-six performances. It was directed by Raymond Massey
Raymond Massey
Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...
, starred Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
, and with an Act II set design by Augustus John
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....
. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and Lady Gregory
Augusta, Lady Gregory
Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory , born Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and Edward Martyn, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of...
had a favourable opinion of the show.
The plays he wrote after this included the darkly allegorical Within the Gates (1934), which is set within the gates of a busy city park based on London's Hyde Park. Although it was highly controversial, Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
responded positively to it. The play was originally going to be a film script for Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
. His widow described it in her memoirs, Sean (1971):
"Originally he had imagined it as a film in which everything, from flower-beds to uniforms, would be stylised. Beginning at dawn and ending at midnight, to the soft chime of Big Ben in the distance, it would be 'geometrical and emotional, the emotions of the living characters to be shown against their own patterns and the patterns of the Park.' Having got so far, he wrote to Alfred Hitchcock, and when Hitchcock and his wife dined with us Sean explained his ideas to an apparently responsive hearer. Hitchcock and he talked excitedly. They parted on the same terms, with the prospect of another immediate meeting, and Sean never heard again."It closed not long after opening and was another box office failure.
In the fall of 1934, O'Casey went to the United States to visit the New York production of Within the Gates, which he admired greatly. It was directed by actor Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Douglas
Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg , better known as Melvyn Douglas, was an American actor.Coming to prominence in the 1930s as a suave leading man , Douglas later transitioned into more mature and fatherly roles as in his Academy Award-winning performances in Hud...
and starred Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
. This is when he befriended Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
, Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson
Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer. His most enduring work is the short story sequence Winesburg, Ohio. Writers he has influenced include Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, J. D. Salinger, and Amos Oz.-Early life:Anderson was born in Clyde, Ohio,...
, and George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and editor.-Early life:Nathan was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana...
.
The Star Turns Red (1940) is a four-act political allegory in which the Star of Bethlehem
Star of Bethlehem
In Christian tradition, the Star of Bethlehem, also called the Christmas Star, revealed the birth of Jesus to the magi, or "wise men", and later led them to Bethlehem. The star appears in the nativity story of the Gospel of Matthew, where magi "from the east" are inspired by the star to travel to...
turns red. The story follows Big Red (who was based on O'Casey's friend, James Larkin
James Larkin
James Larkin was an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist, born to Irish parents in Liverpool, England. He and his family later moved to a small cottage in Burren, southern County Down. Growing up in poverty, he received little formal education and began working in a variety of jobs...
) who is a trade-union leader. The union takes over the unnamed country despite the ruthless efforts of the Saffron Shirts, a fascist organization openly supported by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of the country. It was staged by Unity Theatre
Unity Theatre, London
The Unity Theatre was a theatre club formed in 1936, and initially based in St Judes Hall, Britannia Street, Kings Cross, in 1937 they moved to a former chapel in Goldington Street, near St Pancras, in the London Borough of Camden. Although the theatre was destroyed by fire in 1975 productions...
in London during 1940 (later, in 1978 by The Abbey in Dublin).
Purple Dust (1943) follows two wealthy, materialistic English stockbrokers who buy an ancient Irish mansion and attempt to restore it with their wrong notions of Tudor
Tudor style architecture
The Tudor architectural style is the final development of medieval architecture during the Tudor period and even beyond, for conservative college patrons...
customs and taste. They try to impose upon a community with vastly different customs and life-styles that are much closer to ancient Gaelic ways and are against such false values. The Englishmen set their opposing standards against those represented by the men employed to renovate the house. In the resulting confrontation the English are satirized and in the end disappointed when a symbolic storm destroys their dream of resettling the old into the present. The hint that is enforced by the conclusion is that the little heap of purple dust that remains will be swept away by the rising winds of change, like the residue of pompous imperialism that abides in Ireland. The show has been compared to Shaw's John Bull's Other Island
John Bull's Other Island
John Bull's Other Island is a comedy about Ireland, written by G. Bernard Shaw in 1904. Shaw himself was born in Dublin, yet this is the only play of his where he thematically returned to his homeland....
, which was one of O'Casey's favorites, but aside from a few similarities, there is no real grounds for comparison.
He also penned Red Roses for Me
Red Roses for Me (play)
Red Roses for Me is a four-act play written by Irish playwright Seán O'Casey which premiered at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in 1943. The story is set against the backdrop of the Dublin Lockout of 1913, events in which O'Casey himself had participated....
(1943), which saw him move away from his early style in favor of more expressionistic
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
means and overtly socialist content to his writing. It went up at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin
Olympia Theatre, Dublin
The Olympia Theatre is a concert hall/theatre venue in Dublin, Ireland, located in Dame Street.-History:Built in 1879, it was originally called the "Star of Erin Music Hall". Two years later in 1881, it was renamed "Dan Lowrey's Music Hall" and was renamed again in 1889 to "Dan Lowrey's Palace of...
(which was the first one produced in Ireland in seventeen years). It would move on to London in 1946, where O'Casey himself was able to see it. This was the first show of his own he saw since Within The Gates in 1934.
Oak Leaves and Lavender (1945) is a propaganda play commemorating the Battle of Britain
Battle of Britain
The Battle of Britain is the name given to the World War II air campaign waged by the German Air Force against the United Kingdom during the summer and autumn of 1940...
and England's heroics in the anti-Nazi crusade and it takes place in a manor with shadowy eighteenth-century figures commenting on the present.
These plays have never had the same critical or popular success as the early trilogy. After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he wrote Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
Cock-a-Doodle Dandy is a 1949 play by Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey.Regarded by O'Casey as his best play, this is a darkly comic fantasy in which a magic cockerel appears in the parish of Nyadnanave and forces the characters to make choices about the way they live their lives. It is a parable of...
(1949), which is perhaps his most beautiful and exciting work. From The Bishop's Bonfire (1955) O'Casey's late plays are studies on the common life in Ireland, "Irish microcosmos", like The Drums of Father Ned (1958).
His play The Drums of Father Ned was supposed to go up at the 1958 Dublin Theatre Festival
Dublin Theatre Festival
The Dublin Theatre Festival is Europe's oldest specialized theatre festival. It was founded by theatre impresario Brendan Smith in 1957 and has, with the exception of two years, produced a season of international and Irish theatre each autumn. It is one of a number of key post-World War II events...
, but the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin
Archbishop of Dublin
The Archbishop of Dublin may refer to:* Archbishop of Dublin – an article which lists of pre- and post-Reformation archbishops.* Archbishop of Dublin – the title of the senior cleric who presides over the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin....
, John Charles McQuaid
John Charles McQuaid
John Charles McQuaid, C.S.Sp. was the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland between December 1940 and February 1972.- Early life 1895-1914:...
, refused to give his blessing (it has been assumed because works of both James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
and O'Casey were in the Festival). After Joyce's play was quietly dropped, there was massive changes required for The Drums of Father Ned, a devious way to get O'Casey to drop. After this, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
withdrew his mime
Mime
The word mime is used to refer to a mime artist who uses a theatrical medium or performance art involving the acting out of a story through body motions without use of speech.Mime may also refer to:* Mime, an alternative word for lip sync...
piece in protest.
Later life
In 1959 O'Casey gave his blessing to a musical adaptation of Juno and the Paycock by American composer Marc BlitzsteinMarc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, better known as Marc Blitzstein , was an American composer. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration...
. The musical, retitled Juno
Juno (musical)
Juno is a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein and book by Joseph Stein, based closely on the 1924 play Juno and the Paycock by Sean O'Casey. The original Broadway production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York, on March 9, 1959.Despite light moments, the musical,...
, was a commercial failure, closing after only 16 Broadway performances. It was also panned by some critics as being too "dark" to be an appropriate musical, a genre then almost invariably associated with light comedy. However, the music, which survives in a cast album made before the show opened, has since been regarded as some of Blitzstein's best work. Although endorsed by the now 79 year old O'Casey, he did not contribute to the production or even see it during the brief run. Despite general agreement on the brilliance of the underlying material, the musical has defied all efforts to mount any successful revival
Revival (play)
A revival is a restaging of a stage production after its original run has closed. New material may be added. A filmed version is said to be an adaptation and requires writing of a screenplay....
.
Also in 1959, George Devine
George Devine
George Alexander Cassady Devine CBE was an extremely influential theatrical manager, director, teacher and actor in London from the late 1940s until his death. He also worked in the media of TV and film.-Biography:...
produced Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
Cock-a-Doodle Dandy is a 1949 play by Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey.Regarded by O'Casey as his best play, this is a darkly comic fantasy in which a magic cockerel appears in the parish of Nyadnanave and forces the characters to make choices about the way they live their lives. It is a parable of...
with at the Royal Court Theatre
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre is a non-commercial theatre on Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It is noted for its contributions to modern theatre...
and it was also successful at the Edinburgh International Festival
Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...
and had a West End run.
In 1960 was his eightieth birthday, and to celebrate, David Krause and Robert Hogan wrote full-length studies. The Mermaid Theatre
Mermaid Theatre
The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre at Puddle Dock, in Blackfriars, in the City of London and the first built there since the time of Shakespeare...
in London launched the "O'Casey Festival" in 1962, which in turn made more theatre establishments put on his works, mostly in England and Germany. It is in these late years that O'Casey put his creative energy into his six-volume Autobiography.
In September 1964 at the age of 84, O'Casey died of a heart attack, in Torquay
Torquay
Torquay is a town in the unitary authority area of Torbay and ceremonial county of Devon, England. It lies south of Exeter along the A380 on the north of Torbay, north-east of Plymouth and adjoins the neighbouring town of Paignton on the west of the bay. Torquay’s population of 63,998 during the...
, England. He was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium
Golders Green Crematorium and Mausoleum was the first crematorium to be opened in London, and one of the oldest crematoria in Britain. The land for the crematorium was purchased in 1900, costing £6,000, and was opened in 1902 by Sir Henry Thompson....
.
In 1965, his autobiography Mirror in my House (the umbrella title under which the six autobiographies he published from 1939 to 1956 were republished, in two large volumes, in 1956) was turned into a film based on his life called Young Cassidy
Young Cassidy
Young Cassidy is a 1965 film directed by Jack Cardiff and John Ford, and starring Rod Taylor. The film is a biographical drama based upon the life of the playwright Sean O'Casey.-Plot:...
. The film was directed by Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff
Jack Cardiff, OBE, BSC was a British cinematographer, director and photographer.His career spanned the development of cinema, from silent film, through early experiments in Technicolor to filmmaking in the 21st century...
(and John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
) featuring Rod Taylor (as O'Casey), Flora Robson
Flora Robson
Dame Flora McKenzie Robson DBE was an English actress, renowned as a character actress, who played roles ranging from queens to villainesses.-Early life:...
, Maggie Smith
Maggie Smith
Dame Margaret Natalie Smith, DBE , better known as Maggie Smith, is an English film, stage, and television actress who made her stage debut in 1952 and is still performing after 59 years...
, Julie Christie
Julie Christie
Julie Frances Christie is a British actress. Born in British India to English parents, at the age of six Christie moved to England, where she attended boarding school....
, Edith Evans
Edith Evans
Dame Edith Mary Evans, DBE was a British actress. She was known for her work on the British stage. She also appeared in a number of films, for which she received three Academy Award nominations, plus a BAFTA and a Golden Globe award.Evans was particularly effective at portraying haughty...
and Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
.
Personal life
He was married to Irish actress Eileen Carey Reynolds (1903–1995) from 1927 to his death. The couple had three children: two sons, BreonBreon O'Casey
Breon O'Casey , the son of playwright Sean O´Casey, was a London-born and raised artist and craftsman closely associated with the St Ives School of painters and sculptors....
and Niall (who died in 1957 of leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
), and a daughter, Siobhan.
Archival collection
In 2005, David H. GreeneDavid H. Greene
David Herbert Greene was an author and professor at Harvard University, Boston University, The College of New Rochelle, the U.S. Naval Academy and New York University, where he was chairman of the English Department. He was the official biographer of the Irish playwright J.M...
donated a collection of letters he received from O'Casey from 1944 to 1962 to the Fales Library
Fales Library
New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections is located on the third floor of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardia Place and the Schwartz Plaza, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It houses nearly 200,000...
at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. Also in the collection are two letters written by Eileen O'Casey and one letter addressed to Catherine Greene, David Greene's spouse.
O'Casey's papers are held in the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
, the Cornell University Library
Cornell University Library
The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. In 2010 it held 8 million printed volumes in open stacks, 8.5 million microfilms and microfiches, more than of manuscripts, and close to 500,000 other materials, including motion pictures, DVDs, sound recordings, and...
, the University of California, Los Angeles Library System
University of California, Los Angeles Library System
The library system of the University of California, Los Angeles is among the top 10 academic research libraries in North America and has in its collection over eight million books and 70,000 serials...
, the University of London Library, the National Library of Ireland
National Library of Ireland
The National Library of Ireland is Ireland's national library located in Dublin, in a building designed by Thomas Newenham Deane. The Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism is the member of the Irish Government responsible for the library....
and the Fales Library
Fales Library
New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections is located on the third floor of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardia Place and the Schwartz Plaza, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It houses nearly 200,000...
.
Works
- Lament for Thomas Ashe (1917), as Sean O'Cathasaigh
- The Story of Thomas Ashe (1917), as Sean O'Cathasaigh
- Songs of the Wren (1918), as Sean O'Cathasaigh
- More Wren Songs (1918), as Sean O'Cathasaigh
- The Harvest Festival (1918)
- The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (1919), as Sean O'Cathasaigh
- The Shadow of a GunmanThe Shadow of a GunmanThe Shadow of a Gunman is a 1923 play by Seán O'Casey. It centers on the mistaken identity of a building tenant who is thought to be an IRA assassin....
(1923) - Kathleen Listens In (1923)
- Juno and the PaycockJuno and the PaycockJuno and the Paycock is a play by Sean O'Casey, and one of the most highly regarded and oft-performed plays in Ireland. It was first staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1924...
(1924) - Nannie's Night Out (1924)
- The Plough and the Stars (1926)
- The Silver TassieThe Silver Tassie (play)The Silver Tassie is a four-act Expressionist play about the First World War, written between 1927 and 1928 by the Irish playwright Seán O'Casey. It was O'Casey's fourth play and attacks imperialist wars and the suffering that they cause. O'Casey described the play as "A generous handful of stones,...
(1927) - Within the Gates (1934)
- The End of the BeginningThe End of the Beginning (play)The End of the Beginning is a one-act play by Sean O'Casey.It is a comedy set in rural Ireland. A couple argue about whether men's or women's work is more difficult, and swap places....
(1937) - A Pound on Demand (1939)
- The Star Turns Red (1940)
- Red Roses for MeRed Roses for Me (play)Red Roses for Me is a four-act play written by Irish playwright Seán O'Casey which premiered at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin in 1943. The story is set against the backdrop of the Dublin Lockout of 1913, events in which O'Casey himself had participated....
(1942) - Purple Dust (1940/1945)
- Oak Leaves and Lavender (1946)
- Cock-a-Doodle DandyCock-a-Doodle DandyCock-a-Doodle Dandy is a 1949 play by Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey.Regarded by O'Casey as his best play, this is a darkly comic fantasy in which a magic cockerel appears in the parish of Nyadnanave and forces the characters to make choices about the way they live their lives. It is a parable of...
(1949) - Hall of Healing (1951)
- Bedtime Story (1951)
- Time to Go (1951)
- The Bishop's Bonfire (1955)
- A Sad Play within the Tune of a Polka (1955)
- The Drums of Father Ned (1959)
- Behind the Green Curtains (1961)
- Figuro in the Night (1961)
- The Moon Shines on Kylenamoe (1961)
- Niall: A Lament (1991)
- AutobiographyAutobiographyAn autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
(6 volumes):- I Knock at the Door
- Pictures in the Hallway
- Drums Under the Window
- Inishfallen Fare Thee Well
- Rose and Crown
- Sunset and Evening Star
Awards and recognition
- (1926) - Hawthornden PrizeHawthornden PrizeThe Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award that was established in 1919 by Alice Warrender. Authors are awarded on the quality of their "imaginative literature" which can be written in either poetry or prose...
for Juno and the Paycock - (1949) - Newspaper GuildNewspaper GuildThe Newspaper Guild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933 who noticed that unionized printers and truck drivers were making more money than they did...
of New York's "Page One Award" for I Knock at the Door, Pictures in the Hallway, Drums under the Windows, and Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well - Order of the British EmpireOrder of the British EmpireThe Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(declined) - (1960) - Durham UniversityDurham UniversityThe University of Durham, commonly known as Durham University, is a university in Durham, England. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1832 and granted a Royal Charter in 1837...
Honorary Degree (declined) - (1960) - University of ExeterUniversity of ExeterThe University of Exeter is a public university in South West England. It belongs to the 1994 Group, an association of 19 of the United Kingdom's smaller research-intensive universities....
Honorary Degree (declined) - (1961) - Trinity College, DublinTrinity College, DublinTrinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
Honorary Degree (declined)
Further reading
- Irish Writers on Writing featuring Seán O'Casey. Edited by Eavan BolandEavan Boland-Biography:Boland's father, Frederick Boland, was a career diplomat and her mother, Frances Kelly, was a noted post-expressionist painter. She was born in Dublin in 1944. At the age of six, Boland's father was appointed Irish Ambassador to the United Kingdom; the family followed him to London,...
(Trinity University Press, 2007).
Sources
Print- Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. Methuen, 1994. ISBN 0-4136912-0-9
- Krause, David. Seán O'Casey and his World. New York: C. Scribner's, 1976. ISBN 0-5001305-5-8
- Murray, Christopher. Seán O'Casey, Writer at Work". Gill and MacMillan, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-7735-2889-X
- Ryan, Philip B. The Lost Theatres of Dublin. The Badger Press, 1998. ISBN 0-9526076-1-1
- Schrank, Bernice. Sean O'Casey: A Research and Production Sourcebook. Greenwood Press, 1996. ISBN 0-313-27844-X
Online
- website devoted to Seán O'Casey with an extensive iconography of programmes
- link to the Fales library guide to the David H. Greene Collection of Sean O'Casey Letters
- Seán O’Casey and the 1916 Easter Rising
- O'Casey at Today in Literature
- O'Casey on the Faber and Faber website - link to 'About O'Casey' by Victoria Stewart
- O'Casey at Art and Culture
- Bibliography
- Seán O'Casey - Portrait of the artist as an outsider
- David J. Marcou's sequel to 'Juno and Paycock' ('Song of Joy--Or the Old Reliables'), first performed in 2008 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Marcou's sequel was revised for publication on the La Crosse History Unbound website in 2009, then further revised in 2010, based on a critique by the National Theatre of Ireland, the Abbey.