Brendan Behan

Life
1923-1964; [bapt. Francis, called Brendan; Breandán Ó Beacháin]; b. 9 Feb. Holles St. Hospital, Dublin; son Stephen Behan, a highly literate house-painter, and Kathleen Behan (‘mother of the Behans’), once housemaid to Maud Gonne; also nephew of Peadar Kearney and P. J. (‘Paddy’) Bourke, and hence cousin to Seamus de Burca; raised 13 Russell St.; ed. Sisters of Charity NS, and Brunswick St. Christian Bros.; Mrs Furlong, his mother’s mother-in-law by her first marriage, possessed a ‘ferocious revolutionary outlook’; Behan joined the Fianna youth organisation of the IRA in his teens, 1937, but was discharged for disorderly conduct under influence of drink; contributed patriotic prose and verse to Fianna, The Voice of Ireland, Wolfe Tone Weekly and The United Irishman; joined IRA, 1939, and served as IRA courier, having gone to England in Nov. on his own initiative (acc. Ulick O’Connor); arrested Liverpool, 1939, within ten hours of his arrival in Britain, when IRA declared ‘war’ on Britain, with private bomb-making kit; held on remand in Walton Prison, where he was treated brutally; tried 7 Feb., 1940; sentence contemporaneous with execution of Barnes and McCormack for Coventry bombing; spent two years in Borstal detention centre at Hollesley Bay under one Mr Joyce, and in contact with an inspiring priest, one Fr. Behan [sic], and was then deported to Ireland, Nov. 1941 [var. Dec.]; treated with special leniency by British authorities, diminishing his original anti-British sentiment; arrested Dublin for attempting to shoot Detective Kirwan after Glasnevin Easter Commemoration at Glasnevin, 5 April 1942; arrested 10 April; sentenced to fourteen years, 25 April [err. May] and served five, up to the general IRA Amnesty of 1946; visited by Sean O’Faolain on arrival at Mountjoy, who printed ‘I Became a Borstal Boy’ (The Bell, June 1942); transferred to Arbour Hill, then Curragh after sentencing; learned Irish from native-speaker Republicans and read voraciously; wrote lost play, The Landlady; drafted The Quare Fellow as “Casadh Sugain Eile” [orig. as “The Twisting of Another Rope”] (in a reference to Douglas Hyde’s Irish-language play Casadh an tSúgain), Curragh 1945, released under general amnesty, Dec. 1946; wrote “Filleadh Mhic Eachaidh”, elegy for hunger-striker Sean McCaughey; visited Irish speaking regions, Blaskets, Dingle, and Connemara; began to frequent the Catacombs (Fitzwilliam Pl., off Merrion Sq.); wrote Gretna Green (Queen’s Th., Feb. 1947), as part of republican commemoration; served one month sentence for breach of the peace, May 1948; visited Paris, 1948-50, purported addressing Sartre and Beckett in La Cupole with, ‘I’m a writer, too’; trips to Dublin and Belfast; further period of prison in Strangeways for part in escape of IRA member; poetry appeared in Seán Ó Tuama, ed., Nuabhéarsaíocht (1950); radio plays, Moving Out (1952) and A Garden Party (1952), both for Radio Éireann; contributed to Irish Press, 1954-56, producing pieces later published as Hold Your Hour and Have Another (1963); The Scarperer (1966), a crime story, serialised in The Irish Times in 1953 (publ. posthum. 1966); submitted The Quare Fellow (dealing with prison execution of Bernard Kirwan) to the Abbey, then Sally Travers at the Gate, who rejected it but recommended to Alan Simpson and Carolyn Swift of Pike Theatre, Dublin [fnd. 1953], premier 19 Nov. 1954, six month run; m. Beatrice ffrench-Salkeld, then working as a clerk in the Board of Works, 1955; The Quare Fellow produced by Joan Littlewood and Gerry Raffles at Theatre Royal, Stratford East, 24 May 1956; transferred to Comedy Theatre, West End, after three months; notorious BBC drunken television interview, 1956; diagnosed diabetic by Rory Childers on the smell of his breath in Davy Byrne’s, 1956; writes radio play, The Big House (1957), for BBC, later adapted for stage by Alan Simpson ‘with his blessing’; the autobiography Borstal Boy (1958), publ. 20 Oct.; commissioned by Riobard Mac Goráin to write Irish play for Gael-Linn and produced An Giall (Damer 16 June 1958) in twelve days, a sparely-wrought tragedy concerning the IRA abduction of the English soldier Leslie who is hidden in a brothel, formerly an Anglo-Irish ‘big house’, run by Monsewer, and ultimately killed by a stray bullet; final revisions arriving (acc. Frank Dermody) scrawled on the back of cornflakes boxes; produced in English by Joan Littlewood as The Hostage (Theatre Royal, 14 Oct 1958), with elaborate overlay of contemporary reference adapted to taste of English audience; Behan horrified by changes when sober enough to appreciate them; tried for drunken disorder in Irish small town, and insisted on the hearing in Irish, March 1959; The Hostage opens in Paris, 3 April, 1959; French trans. of The Quare Fellow (Theatre D’Oeuvre[s], 7 April 1959); travelled with Beatrice to Carraroe, but was immersed in convivial alcoholism; The Quare Fellow slated in Berlin and New York; The Hostage produced in West End (Wyndham’s Th., 11 July 1959); hospitalised in Dublin with epileptiform fit, and discharged himself, 14 July; drinking binges at success of his play in London, interrupting performances himself; wrote article in The People admitting to his alcoholism; world wide publicity from his drunkenness; met Peter Arthurs, from Dundalk at a swimming pool in Hollywood, Arthurs becoming companion and bodyguard whenever Behan was in America; Rae Jeffs of Hutchinson records Brendan Behan’s Island (1962), containing recorded text and stories, selected as Book of the Month, 1962 and serialised in The Observer; also Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1963), more recorded than written, and transcribed by Jeffs; an affair with young woman in New York, and an alleged child; Beatrice visits New York in May to tell him she is pregnant, but finds him in a stupor; expressed desires for Spanish boy dancers in Chelsea Hotel, New York; advocates laws to protect young from sexual abused in Brendan Behan’s New York (1964); quit America in July 1963, having outworn his welcome in bars; platonic relationship with Edith, a Dublin prostitute; lodged with Eddie Whelan at Drimnagh; birth of his dg. Blánaid [Orla Maighread] with Beatrice; collapsed at Harbour Lights Bar, March 1964; underwent tracheotomy, 20 March 1964; received last rites; d. 20 March from sclerosis of the liver; bur. 22 March, Glasnevin, with attendance of thousands; IRA ceremony after funeral; Flann O’Brien wrote his obituary in the Irish Times (‘more of a player than a playwright’); Richard Cork’s Leg (Peacock 1972), rejected in 1960[?], and produced posthumously by Alan Simpson; The Bells of Hell, a celebration of Behan’s wit and wisdom, performed by Niall Toibin and Ronnie Drew (Gaiety 1974); also scripted as a film by the Sheridan brothers and in production up to the departure of Sean Penn from the lead role (1996); Behan is a character in the last chapter of Aidan Higgins’s Balcony of Europe (1972); there is a full a biography by Michael O’Sullivan (1997); The Borstal Boy was revived at the Abbey under the direction of Tomás Mac Anna in 1967. DIW DIB DIL OCEL OXTH FDA OCIL WJM

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Works
Plays, The Quare Fellow: A Comedy-Drama (Dublin: Progress House; London: Methuen 1956), 86pp.; Do., French trans. as Le Client du matin (Paris: Gallimard 1959); An Giall (Baile Atha Cliath [Dublin]: An Chomairle Náisiúnta Dramaíochta. [n.d.]); “The Big House”, in Irish Writing, 37 (Autumn 1957), pp.17-33; The Hostage (London: Methuen 1958), 92pp.; Do., rev. edn. (London: Methuen 1959), also French trans. as Deux Otages (Paris: Gallimard 1961); Richard Cork’s Leg (London: Eyre, Methuen 1974); Richard Wall, ed. and trans., An Giall/The Hostage (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe; Washington: Catholic UP 1987) [incls. Behan’s English vers. of An Giall]. Also translated The Landlady into Irish; Casadh Súgáin Eile, the original of The Quare Fella [sic];

Fiction, The Scarperer (New York: Doubleday 1964) [prev. serialised in Irish Times, 1953], and do. trans.into French as L’Escarpeur (Paris: Gallimard 1968); King of Ireland’s Son (Dublin: Poolbeg; UK: Andersen Press 1996), 32pp.

Miscellaneous, ‘I Become a Borstal Boy’ in The Bell, ed. Seán O’Faolain (1942); ‘Bridewell Revisited’, in Le Point (Paris 1951) [q.pp.], and ‘Do.’ [ser. extracts], in Sunday Dispatch [Irish edn.] (1956); also extracts in The People (UK 1956); Borstal Boy (London: Hutchinson 1958), 343pp., front. port.; Do. [rep. edn.] (London: Arrow 1990), trans. in French as Un peuple partisan (Paris: Gallimard 1960); ‘When We All Came to Town’, Evergreen Review, 18 (1961), [q.p.; impressions of New York]; Brendan Behan’s Island: An Irish Sketch Book (London: Hutchinson 1962), ill. by Paul Hogarth [infra]; Hold your Hour and Have Another (London: Hutchinson 1963; rep. 1985), ill. Beatrice Behan, and Do., trans. in French as Encore un verre avant de paartir (Paris: Gallimard 1970); Brendan Behan’s New York, with drawings by Paul Hogarth (London: Hutchinson 1964), 159pp. [taken from tape], and The Confessions of an Irish Rebel (London: Hutchinson 1965), 160pp. [taken from tape].

Editions (Collected & selected), The Complete Plays of Brendan Behan, intro. by Alan Simpson, (London: Eyre Methuen 1978; rep. 1990, 1993), with bibliography by E H Mikhail, 384pp.; Denis Cotter, ed., Poems and Stories by Brendan Behan (Dublin: Liffey Press 1978), 32pp. [English & Irish; ltd. edn. 500]; Poems and a Play in Irish, ed. Prionsias Ní Dhorchaí, with intro. by Declan Kiberd (Dublin: Gallery 1981); Prionsias Ní Dhorchaí, ed., Poems and a Play [An Giall] (Oldcastle: Gallery Press 1981); Peter Fallon, ed., After the Wake (Dublin: O’Brien [1981]; also poems in Seán Ó Tuama, ed., Nuabhéarsaíocht (1950) [incl. “Guí an Rannaire”]; Anthony Cronin, intro., The Dubbalin Man [Behan’s Irish Press column from the 1950s] (Dublin: A & A Farmar 1998), 167pp., ill. Beatrice Behan.

Correspondence, E. H. Mikhail, ed., Letters of Brendan Behan (London: Macmillan; Toronto: McGill-Queen’s UP 1992), 245pp. [chapters divided 1932-39; 1942-48; 1951-56; 1957; 1958; 1959; 1960; 1961; 1962-63 incl. two last letters, also index of recipients, selected bibliography of works, and a subject index.; Aubrey Dillon-Malone, ed., The Sayings of Brendan Behan (London: Duckworth 1997), 64pp.

Bibliographical details
Brendan Behan’s Island (London: Hutchinson 1962; rep. 1984), 191pp., ill. Paul Hogarth; Dublin’s Fair City [11]; A Rossner, A Woman of No Standing [57]; The Warm South [67]; The Bleak West [115]; One for the Road, ‘The Confirmation Suit’ (story); The Bleak North [157]; A Couple of Quick Ones [poems in Irish and English versions, Buíochas do James Joyce/Thanks to James Joyce; Oscar Wilde, [ded.,] Do Seán Ó Suilleabháin; Epilogue, Appointed to be Read in Churches [185-91].

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Criticism
  • Kenneth Tynan, [on The Hostage in 1956], cited in Thomas Kilroy, ‘Anglo-Irish Playwrights and the Comic Tradition’, The Crane Bag, 3 (1979), pp.19-27, rep. in The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 1982, pp.439-47, p.441 [infra].
  • Alan Simpson, Beckett and Behan and a Theatre in Dublin (London 1962) [pamphl.; narrates the production of The Quare Fellow].
  • Raymond Williams, Drama from Ibsen to Eliot, rev. edn. London: Penguin 1964, p.305 [infra].
  • Dominic Behan, My Brother Brendan (London: Frewin; NY: Simon & Schuster 1965).
  • Sean McCann, ed., The World of Brendan Behan (London: New English Library 1965; NY: Twayne Pub.1966), ill. Liam C. Martin.
  • Augustine Martin, ‘Brendan Behan’, Threshold, 18 [n.d.], pp.22-28.
  • Rae Jeffs, Brendan Behan: Man and Showman (London: Hutchinson 1966; rep. Corgi 1968), 254pp; Do. [another edn.] (Cleveland: World 1968), ill.
  • Terence de Vere White, Ireland (London: Thames and Hudson 1968), p.102 [infra].
  • Ted E. Boyle, Brendan Behan (NY: Twayne Publ. 1969).
  • Seán McMahon, ‘The Quare Fellow’, Éire-Ireland, 4, 4 (Winter 1969), pp.143-57.
  • Benedict Kiely, ‘The Great Gazebo’, Éire-Ireland, 2, 4 (1967), pp.72-86.
  • Ulick O’Connor, Brendan Behan (London: Hamilton, 1970; London: Panther, 1979), 328pp., 16 pls., port.; Do., London: Black Swan 1985; Do., London: Abacus, 1993).
  • Séamus de Burca, Brendan Behan: A Memoir (Newark, Delaware: Proscenium 1971; rev. edn. Dublin: P. J. Bourke, 1993).
  • Alan Simpson, ‘Behan: The Last Laugh’ [memoir], in Des Hickey and Gus Smith, eds., A Paler Shade of Green (London: Leslie Frewin 1972), pp.209-19 [infra].
  • Raymond J. Porter, Brendan Behan [Columbia Mod. Writers 66] (NY & London: Columbia UP 1973).
  • Peter René Gerdes, The Major Works of Brendan Behan (Bern: Herbert Lang; Frankfurt: Peter Lang 1973).
  • Beatrice Behan with Des Hickey and Gus Smith, My Life with Brendan (London: Frewin 1973).
  • Richard Wall, ‘An Giall and The Hostage Compared’, Modern Drama, 18, 2 (1975), pp.165-72.
  • Anthony Cronin, Dead as Doornails (Dublin: Dolmen 1975).
  • Ronald G. Rollins, ‘O’Casey, Yeats and Behan: A Prismatic View of the 1916 Easter Week Rising’, The Sean O’Casey Review, 2, 2 (1976), pp.196-207.
  • Colbert Kearney, The Writings of Brendan Behan (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan; NY: St. Martin’s Press 1977).
  • E. H. Mikhail, ed., The Art of Brendan Behan (London: Vision 1979) [collection of reviews of The Quare Fellow, et al.; infra].
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘The Fall of the Stage Irishman’, in Ronald Schleifer, ed., The Genres of Irish Literary Revival, (Dublin: Wolfhound 1980), p.55 [infra].
  • Peter Arthur, With Brendan Behan: A Personal Memoir, foreword by Arthur C. Clarke (NY: St. Martin’s Press 1981), ix, 297pp..
  • Howard Goorney, The Theatre Workshop Story (London & NY: Eyre Methuen 1981).
  • E. H. Mikhail, Brendan Behan: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism (London: Macmillan 1982).
  • E. H. Mikhail, Brendan Behan: Interviews and Recollections, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan; Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1982), [incl. C. A. Joyce, ‘The Behan I Knew was So Gentle’; Sean Kavanagh, ‘In Prison’, authors respectively officials at Hollesley Bay and Mountjoy Prison; Corey Phelps, ‘Borstal Revisited’ et. al.].
  • Philip Bordinat, ‘Tragedy and Comedy in Plays by Brendan Behan and Brian Friel’, West Virginia University Philological Papers, 29 (1983), pp.84-91.
  • D. E. S. Maxwell, ‘Portrait of Behan’, Threshold, 35 (Winter 1984/85), pp.16-20.
  • Bert Cardullo, ‘The Hostage Reconsidered’, Éire-Ireland, 20, 2 (Summer 1985), pp.139-43.
  • Richard Wall, ‘The Stage History and Reception of Brendan Behan’s An Giall’, in Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok, eds., Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, I: Reception and Translation (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag 1987), pp.123-30.
  • Werner Huber, ‘Autobiography and Stereotypy: Some Remarks on Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy’, in Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok, eds., Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, III: National Images and Stereotypes (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag 1987), pp.197-206.
  • Rüdiger Ahrens, ‘National Myths and Stereotypes in Modern Irish Drama: Sean O’Casey, Brendan Behan, Brian Friel’, in Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics, 21 (1988), pp.89-110.
  • Diana Culberson, ‘Sacred Victims: Catharsis in the Modern Tradition’, Cross Currents, 41, 2 (1991), pp.179-94.
  • Bernice Schrank, ‘Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy as Ironic Pastoral’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 18, 1 (December 1992), pp.68-74 [var. 63].
  • Donal Ó Faoláin & Uíbh Eachach Vivan, Brendan Behan: The Man, The Myth, The Genius [Féile Zozimus, 2] (Dublin: Gael Linn 1993).
  • Michael Patrick Gillespie, ‘Violent Impotence and Impotent Violence: Brendan Behan’s The Hostage’, Eire-Ireland, 29, 1 (1994), pp.92-104.
  • John Brannigan, ‘“An Historical Accident”, National Identity in the Writings of Brendan Behan’, Irish Studies Review (Winter 1995/96), pp.26-29.
  • Declan Kiberd, ‘The Empire Writes Back - Brendan Behan’, in Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995) [Chap. 28], pp.513-29.
  • Anthony Roche, ‘Beckett and Behan: Waiting for Your Man’, in Contemporary Irish Drama From Beckett to McGuinness (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1995), pp.36-71.
  • [Liam Mackey,] ‘The Importance of Behan, Brendan’ [Mackey talks with Niall Toibin and Ronnie Drew], in Hot Press, Dublin, 20, 6 (April 1996), pp.14, 56.
  • Michael O’Sullivan, Brendan Behan: A Life (Dublin: Blackwater 1997), 350pp.
  • Shirley Kelly talks to Michael O’Sullivan [author of Brendan Behan: A Life, 1997], in Books Ireland (Dec. 1997), pp.325;
  • Benedict Kiely, ‘That Old Triangle: A Memory of Brendan Behan’, A Raid into Dark Corners: And Other Essays (Cork UP 1999), pp.169-80 [formerly in The Hollins Critic [q.d.].
  • Brian Behan with Aubrey Dillon-Malone, The Brothers Behan (Dublin: Ashfield Press 1999), 257pp. [see review, infra].
  • John Brannigan, Brendan Behan: Cultural Nationalism and the Revisionist Writer (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2002), 188pp.

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Notes
Oxford Companion to Theatre remarks upon the powerful influence of Brecht to be found in Behan’s work.

D. E. S. Maxwell, A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama 1891-1980 (Cambridge UP 1984), contains remarks on pp.xiii, 150-54, 160, 220, 223; also The Hostage ( An Giall) pp.xiii, 153, 155; ‘Moving Out’, p.220; The Quare Fellow p.xiii, 149, 150-55; Borstal Boy p.160.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology (Derry: Field Day 1991), 3, references to Breandán Ó Beacháin, pp.175-76; The Quare Fellow extract, pp.201-31; see also pp.232; 247n; 382; 523-28; 530-35; 656-57; 817; selects “Jackeen ag Caoineadh na mBlaosaod [A Jackeen Laments the Blaskets]”, p.909; selects “Do Sheán Ó Súilleabháin” and “Oscar [Wilde]”, pp.910; further at 1137; 1311.

Grattan Freyer, A Prose And Verse Anthology Of Modern Irish Writing (Dublin: Irish Humanities Centre/Ballina: Keohane's Ltd/Gerrards Cross: distributed by Smythe 1979), [contains The Big House, one-act radio play].

Donal Nevin, ed., Trade Union Century [RTE with Irish Congress of Trade Unions] (Cork: Mercier 1995), contains a poem on Jim Larkin by Brendan Behan.

Brendan Kennelly, intro., Landmarks of Irish Drama (London: Methuen 1988), contains The Quare Fellow, with works of Shaw, Yeats, Synge, Johnston, and Beckett. Appendix includes 1 page of Gaelic version.

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Prompt: Behan was prompted to write his play The Quare Fellow by the story of Bernard Kirwan, hanged in 1943 for murdering his brother the previous year. It was one of the first dramas to oppose capital punishment. (Irish Times, 12, Nov. 1995, review of Thou Shalt Not Kill, RTÉ1 a series on eleven murder cases.)

Horsemen ...: Behan’s celebrated definition of an Anglo-Irishman as ‘a Protestant with a horse’ falls in the dialogue between Meg, Pat - who supplies the information - and Ropeen in The Big House. Pat continues, ‘... an ordinary Protestant like Leadbetter, the plumber in the back parlour next door, won’t do, nor a Belfast Orangeman, not if he was as black as your boot. [...] An Anglo-Irishman only works at riding horses, drinking whisky and reading double-meaning books in Irish at Trinity College.’ [Cited in Alan Warner, A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981, p,.24.

The Bell: Anthony Roche identifies Behan’s contribution to the Bell as ‘Experiences of a Borstal Boy’, in Contemporary Irish Drama From Beckett to McGuinness (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1996, p.43.)

AC/DC: According to Anthony Cronin, Behan admitted to a ‘Herod complex’ - i.e., a sexually-indiscriminate love of youth (see Cronin, Dead as Doornails, Dublin: Dolmen 1975, p.9).

Portrait: Harry Kernoff, ‘Brendan Behan’, Adams (Blackrock), £2,100; also a life size figure on a bench on the Royal Canal, Dublin [?q. author].

The Hostage, revived at New Theatre, Temple Bar (Dublin), at 40th centenary of the playwright’s death, with cast including Anthony Fox, Terence Orr, Joe Cassidy and Laoisa Sexton.

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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)