1880-1964; b. John Casey, 30 March, 85 Upr. Dorset St., Dublin [John Casey;
later Seán Ó Cathasaigh, and finally Sean O’Casey]
to Michael Casey, a Catholic and assistant clerk in Society for Church
Missions (paid 5.15.8 p.w.; rate-payer; d.1886, aetat. 49), and Susan,
a Protestant (née Archer, d. 1918; the Susan Casside of the Autobiographies),
youngest of 13 (eight dying in childhood); brought up in Church of Ireland;
moved to 9 Innisfallen Parade, 1882; sporadic eye-trouble beginning with
ulcerated cornea in his left eye at five; received treatment from J. B. Story for trachoma at St. Mark’s
Hospital, Lincoln Place (“Open up!”); elder brothers joined the Army, while a sister
Bella [var. Ella] who married a bugler (Nicholas Benson), became a school-teacher
and occas. sheltered Sean in her flat; moved frequently to East-Wall addresses
incl. Hawthorn Tce.; family settled in 18 Abercorn Rd., 1897; early associations
with Protestant church of St Barnabas [Burnupus in Red Roses for Me],
and the Orange Lodge; attended Queen’s Theatre with his br. Archie,
watching Boucicault, Shakespeare, and others; worked in stockroom of hardware
store, aged 14; some clerical employment, before becoming manual labourer
in late teens, continuing as labourer to 1925 [var. 1926]; employed by
Great Northern Railways, 1901-11; reported for work when the company declared
a holiday on the coronation day of George V, but refused payment for same;
formed friendship with Frank Cahill, CBS teacher of St. Laurence O’Toole’s,
and co-fnd. St. Laurence O’Toole Club, Sean becoming the secretary
of the Club’s Pipe Band; got involved in ITGWU from its foundation,
4 Jan. 1907; joined Gaelic League (which he spoke of later as his university);
campaigned to have Anglican services rendered in Irish; wrote amateur
play, not produced, c.1911; contrib. Irish Worker, from 1912, and
associated with Jim Larkin; Lock Out Strike commences, 15 Aug. 1913, continuing
for seven months; became Secretary of Irish Citizen Army, drawing up its
constitution, endorsed March 1914; reputedly recruited Ernest Blythe to
the IRB; opposed ties with Irish Volunteers; resigned over motion to compelled
Countess Markievicz to choose between ICA or Irish Volunteers, 17 July
1914; did not participate in Easter Rising, 24-29 April, 1916; began writing
to order for card-manufacturer, Fergus O’Connor, 1917; death of a
sister, Isabella, Jan. 1918; as Sean Ó Cathasaigh issued The
Sacrifice of Thomas Ashe (1918), pamph., now rare; publishes Songs
of the Wren (1918), also two ‘Laments’ for Ashe; death of
Mrs. Casey, Nov. 1918 [var. 1919], her funeral being paid from by royalties
of The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (1919), soon after censored
by military authorities; left Abercorn Rd. following violent rows with
brothers, and moved in with Mícheál Ó Maoláin
at 25 Mountjoy Sq.; raided by authorities on suspicion of Republican activities;
moved to 422 N. Circular Rd., where he wrote his Dublin Trilogy; early
plays, The Frost in the Flower, written c.1910-12 for drama club
of St Lawrence O’Toole Pipers, and based on the experience of one
of the teachers who refused a better post offered him out of timidity,
submitted to Abbey 1919-20 (not now extant); The Harvest Festival,
concerning the beginnings of militancy in a trade union, also rejected
by Lennox Robinson; and The Crimson in the Tri-Colour also rejected,
though read by Lady Gregory (with a note from Lennox Robinson indicating
that it could not be produced at the time for political reasons ‘even
if ...’); Lady Gregory invites him to visit and advised him to concentrate
on ‘characterisation’, his strength; The Shadow of A Gunman
(Abbey, 12 Feb. 1923) [var. April, Ayling 1969, ‘three performances
at the end of its season’], having been submitted to the management
as On the Run; next presented Juno and the Paycock (Abbey,
3 March 1924), with Sara Allgood as Mrs. Boyle, F. J. McCormick as Joxer,
Mary Boyle; went on to a long run in London (Nov. 1925), winning the Hawthornden
Prize; next presented The Plough and the Stars (Abbey, 8 Feb. 1926),
with Ria Mooney unwittingly cast as the prostitute Rosie, meeting with riotous reception, largely due to characterisation of Pearse
as ‘man at the window’, fomented by Hanna Sheehy Skeffington
on the fourth night, followed by a public debate with her in the Universities’
Republican Club, in which he was publicly discountenanced, 1926; London
premier of The Plough, May 1926; O’Casey travelled to London
to receive Hawthornden prize for Juno, late 1926, and never returned;
greatly helped in London by James B. Fagan who introduced him to critics
James Agate and Beverley Nichols and playwright Arthur Pinero; made honourary
member of Garrick Club; The Silver Tassie, written in Kensington
[Autobiogs.] based on theme in Wilfrid Owen’s poem "Disabled",
rejected by Abbey and more specifically by Yeats; m. Eileen Carey [stage-name;
née Reynolds] (b. 27 Dec. 1900, m. 23 Sept. 1927; d. 9 April 1995),
who appeared in his plays at the West End; son Breon born, 1928; takes
part in acrimonious correspondence concerning the rejection of The
Silver Tassie, in Irish Statesman, 9 June 1928; a film version
of Juno and the Paycock [?1928]; The Silver Tassie promoted
by G. B. Shaw and produced by C. B. Cochran at the Apollo Theatre, London,
11 Oct. 1929, to a set design by The original set designed by Augustus
John; ran for 2 months with Charles Laughton in the lead role; lived in
Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire, 1931-35; refused proffered membership
of Yeats’s Irish Academy of Letters, 1932; Within the Gates,
produced London 1934, the last of his plays to elicit interest from London
theatre managers; O’Casey visited USA for its New York production,
Autumn 1934; clerical opposition aroused at production of The Silver
Tassie in Dublin, 12 Aug. 1935; 2nd son Niall born, 1935 (d., of leukemia, 1956); settled in Devon at Shaw’s suggestion, 1938; The Flying Wasp
(1938); first volume of Autobiographies appears as I Knock at
the Door (1939), banned in Ireland, and followed by Pictures in
the Hallway (1942), Drums under the Windows (1945) - object
of hostile review by George Orwell (Observer, 28 Oct. 1945) - Inishfallen,
Fare Thee Well (1949), Rose and Crown (1952) and Sunset
and Evening Star (1954); a daughter, Shivaun born, 1939; a play, The
Star Turns Red, performed by Unity Theatre, London, 12 March, 1940;
Red Roses for Me (1942), produced by Shelagh Richards, Olympia
Th., Dublin, 15 March, 1943, and later in London, 1946; Purple Dust,
dealing with two Englishmen who buy an Tudor mansion (or ‘big house’)
in Ireland, premiered in Liverpool 1945, and later enjoyed long off-Broadway
run in 1956; Oak Leaves and Lavender, a ‘big house’ play
set in Cornwall during the Battle of Britain, and dealing with anti-Fascist
evangelism, premiered in Hammersmith 1947; Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
(1949), premiered at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1949, and later successfully
produced by George Devine’s English Stage Co. at the Edinburgh Festival,
1959; The Bishop’s Bonfire (Gaiety Th., Dublin, 28 Feb. 1955),
produced Cyril Cusack and directed Tyrone Guthrie; The Drums of Father
Ned, based events of Tóstal (Nat. Fest.) of 1954, and prepared
for the stage at the Gaiety Theatre in the 1958 Dublin Theatre Festival,
but withdrawn under pressure when Archbishop John McQuaid refused to permit
an inaugural (‘Votive’) Mass for the Festival in view of the
inclusion of certain plays, chiefly McCelland’s dramatisation of
Ulysses as Bloosmday but also mimes and a radio play by Beckett;
first produced in Indiana, 1959, and produced finally at the Olympia Th.,
Dublin, in June 1966 along with that of O’Casey - who reacted by
banning professional productions of his plays in Ireland, but rescinded
his ban to permit the Abbey to perform Juno and the Paycock
and The Plough and the Stars in Dublin prior
to appearance at the World Theatre Festival, London 1964; celebrated 80th
anniversary, 1960, refusing CBE and honorary degrees; last plays published
(1961); O’Casey Festival at Mermaid Theatre, London, Autumn 1962;
Belfast production of The Plough and the Stars at Lyric theatre,
1969, and revived successfully in Abbey production, 1976; also directed
in Dublin by Joe Dowling, 1993, travelling to London (Garrick Th.), 1995;
prose writings collected as Robert Hogan, ed., Feathers from a
Green Crow (1962), fugitive writings; Under a Coloured Cap
(1963); self-portraits in Donal Davoren in The Shadow of a Gunman
(1923), and Ayemonn Breydon in Red Roses for Me (1943); Autobiographies
republished in two-volume editions (London, 1963, 1980, 1981, &c.);
d. St Marychurch [sic], Torquay, 18 Sept., after his second heart attack;
Purple Dust produced by Berliner Ensemble (1966), and Théâtre
National Populaire, Paris (also 1966); Juno revival, London National
Theatre Co., 1966; The Silver Tassie successfully adapted for English
National Opera by Mark-Anthony Turnage and Amanda Holden (librettist),
1997; revival of The Plough and the Stars, dir. Ben Barnes (Barbican, Jan. 2005). NCBE DIB DIW DIH DIL KUN ODQ OCEL FDA OCIL
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Plays
The Shadow of A Gunman (London & NY: Samuel French 1932); Juno and the Paycock (London: Macmillan 1930); The Plough and the Stars (London: 1926); The Silver Tassie (Lon. & NY 1928); Within the Gates (London: Macmillan 1933); The Star Turns Red (London: Macmillan 1940); Purple Dust; a Wayward Comedy in Three Acts (London: Macmillan 1940) [ded. ‘To Shivaun’]; Red Roses for Me (London: Macmillan 1942); Oak Leaves and Lavender (London: Macmillan 1946; NY: St Martin’s Press [1947]); Cock-a-Doodle-Dandy (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1949); Collected Plays, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1949-51; rep. 1962-64); The Rose and Crown (London: Macmillan 1952); The Bishop’s Bonfire: A Sad Play Within the Tue of a Polka (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1955); Three Plays [containing The Shadow of A Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars] (London: Macmillan 1957, and edns.); The Drums of Father Ned (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1960); Behind the Green Curtains and Other Plays [viz., title play with Figures in the Night; The Moon Shines on Kylenamoe (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1961).
Prose
Windfalls (London: Macmillan 1934); The Flying Wasp (London: Macmillan 1937); The Green Crow (Braziller 1956) [var. 1957; rep. Virgin 1994]; Mirror in My House: The Autobiographies of Sean O’Casey, 2 vols. (NY: Macmillan 1956; Do., rep. as Autobiographies, 2 vols. London: Macmillan 1963; rep. Pan books, 1980, 1981, &c.); The Drums of Father Ned (1960); Robert Hogan ed., Feathers from the Green Crow 1905-1925 (Missouri UP 1962; London: Macmillan 1963); Under a Coloured Cap (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1963); Ronald Ayling, ed., Blasts and Benedictions (London: Macmillan; NY: St Martin’s Press 1967); David Krause, ed., The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 4 vols. (London & NY: Macmillan 1975-1992); B. Atkinson, ed., The Sean O’Casey Reader (London: Macmillan 1985). Seán Moffat, ed., Sean O’Casey, The Plough and the Stars (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1987); Niall: A Lament (London: Calder 1991).
Autobiography
I Knock at the Door (London: Macmillan 1939), Pictures in the Hallway (London: Macmillan 1942), Drums under the Windows (London: Macmillan 1945), Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well (London: Macmillan 1949), Rose and Crown (London: Macmillan 1952) and Sunset and Evening Star (London: Macmillan 1954) [all six reprinted as Autobiographies in two-volume edn., London: Macmillan 1963, 1980, 1981]; Do., intro. by J. C. Trewin (NY: Carroll & Graf 1984), with index.
Miscellaneous
The Harvest Festival, a late find edited in 1980 as part of the celebrations [see Irish Literary Supplement, Fall, 1992]; ‘There They Go the Irish’, in ‘They Go, the Irish: A Miscellany of War-Time Writing, compiled by Leslie Daiken (London: Nicholson & Watson 1944); and see reply by St John Ervine, ‘Belfast, the Real Centre of Culture in Ireland’ (1944); Ronald Rollins, ‘Unpublished Letters of Sean O'Casey', Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.43-47 [contains photographic copies of letters].
Reprint editions
‘Cock-a-Doodle Dandy’, in The Playboy of the Western World and two other Irish Plays [Synge, Yeats, and O’Casey] (Penguin 1996), 224pp.; Plays 1 & 2 (London: Faber 1998): Vol I, Juno and the Paycock (1st pub. 1924), Within the Gates (1933), Red Roses for Me (1942), Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (1949); Plays, 2: The Shadow of a Gunman (1949), The Plough and the Stars (1949), The Silver Tassie (1949), Purple Dust (1951), [1st pub. dates as given in Times Literary Supplement, 17 July 1998.] Also Three Dublin Plays (London: Faber 1998), 268pp. [The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars].
Bibliography
Ronald Ayling and Michael J. Durkan, Sean O’Casey, A Worksiography (London: Macmillan 1978), 411pp., ill., contains Books and Pamphlets; Contributions to Books; Contributions to Periodicals; Translations; Manuscript, Typescript, and Proof Material; First Stage Productions and Major Revivals [longitudinal charts with actors, directors, etc.]; Adaptations; Recordings; Radio and TV Broadcasts; Motion Pictures; Index. Introductory note quotes D. H. Lawrence as calling the bibl. of his work by Edward D. McDonald ‘the bad side of books’ and the ‘bone which every dog wants to pick with me’ [xiv].
Bibliographical Details
P. Ó Cathasaigh [sic], The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (Dublin: Maunsel 1919), 62pp. Table of Contents (chaps.): The Founding of the Citizen Army; Renaissance; Reorganisation; The Quarrel with the National Volunteers; Pilgrimage to Bodenstown, 1914; The Social Side of the Army; Some General Events; Marking Tim; Some Incidents and Larkin’s Departure; Connolly Assumes Leadership; The Rising; Appendix contains Manifesto, Handbills, and Constitution. [Note that the title page author is given as P. Ó Cathasaigh.] Epigraph to Preface: ‘Answer every man directly, &c’ [four lines of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar].
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1940-1970
Winifred Smith, ‘The Dying God in Modern Theatre', The Review of Religion, 5 (March 1941), pp.267-75.
Jules Koslow, Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Plays (NY 1950).
Robert Hogan, The Experiments of Sean O’Casey (NY: St Martin’s Press 1960).
David Krause, Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Work (London: MacGibbon & Kee; NY: Macmillan 1960; 2nd edn. 1975).
Saros Cowasjee, The Man Behind the Plays (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd 1963).
Gabriel Fallon, Sean O’Casey: The Man I Knew (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1965).
Sean McCann, intro. and ed., The World of Sean O’Casey (London: Frewin [New English Library]; 1966), 251pp. [infra].
Oliver Snoddy, ‘Sean O’Casey as Troublemaker’, Éire-Ireland, 1, 4 (Winter 1966), pp.23-38.
Anna Irene Miller, The Independent Theatre in Europe: 1887 to the Present (NY: B. Blom’ [1966];).
Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey (London: Macmillan 1968).
Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey, Modern Judgements (London: Macmillan 1969).
Maureen Malone, The Plays of Sean O’Casey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP 1969).
1971-1980
Bernard Benstock, Sean O’Casey’ [Irish Writers Series]; (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP 1970).
Martin B Margulies, The Early Life of Sean O’Casey (Dublin: Dolmen 1970).
Eileen O’Casey, Sean, intro. J C Trewin (London: Macmillan 1971).
Ronald Rollins, ‘Unpublished Letters of Sean O’Casey', Éire-Ireland, 6, 2 (Summer 1971), pp.43-47.
James Kilroy, The ‘Playboy’ Riots (Dublin: Dolmen Press 1971).
E. H. Mikhail, Sean O’Casey: A Bibliography of Criticism, intro. Ronald Ayling (London: Macmillan 1972), 152pp.
[C.] H. Goldstone, In Search of Community: The Achievement of Sean O’Casey (Cork & Dublin: Mercier 1972).
Thomas Kilroy, ed., Sean O’Casey:Twentieth Century Views: A Collection of Critical Essays (NJ: Prentice Hall 1974).
E. H. Mikhail and John O’Riordan, The Sting & The Twinkle, Conversations with Sean O’Casey (London: Macmillan 1974).
Francis Mulhern, ‘"Ideology and Literary Form" - A Comment’ in New Left Review, 91 (May-June 1975)’ [q.p.].
Bernard Benstock, Paycocks and Others: Sean O’Casey's World (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1976).
Eileen O’Casey, Eileen, intro. J. C. Trewin (London: Macmillan 1976)’ [biography].
David Krause, Sean O’Casey’s World (London: Thames & Hudson 1976).
Ronald Ayling and Michael J. Durkin, Sean O’Casey: A Bibliography (London: Macmillan 1978).
James Scrimgeour, Sean O’Casey (NY: Twayne 1978).
Bobby L. Smith, O’Casey’s Satiric Vision (Kent: Kent State UP 1978).
R. G. Rollins, Sean O’Casey’s Drama: Verisimilitude and Vision (University: University of Alabama Press 1979).
C. Desmond Greaves, Sean O’Casey: Politics and Art (London: Lawrence & Wishart 1979).
G[eorge]; J. Watson, ‘Hearts o’ Flesh, Hearts o’ Stone, and Chassis’, in Irish Identity and the Literary Revival (London: Croom Helm 1979), pp.245-88.
1980-1989
Hugh Hunt, Sean O’Casey (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980; reiss. 1998).
Bernard Benstock, ‘O’Casey Special Issue’ James Joyce Quarterly, 8 (Fall 1980).
David Krause, and Robert G. Lowery, eds. Sean O’Casey: Centenary Essays (Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1980).
Maurice Harmon, ed. ‘Special O’Casey Issue’, Irish University Review, 10, 1 (1980).
Michael Ó hAodha, The O’Casey Enigma (Mercier, 1980).
Hugh Hunt, Sean O’Casey (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1980).
Robert G. Lowery, ed., Essays on O’Casey’s Autobiographies (London: Macmillan 1981; NJ: Barnes & Noble 1981).
Barbara Hayley, Juno and the Paycock’ [York Notes]; (London: Longmans Press 1981).
Brooks Atkinson, ed. Robert G. Lowery, Sean O’Casey: From Times Past (London: Macmillan 1982).
Robert G. Lowery, Sean O’Casey's Autobiographies: An Annotated Index, foreword by David Krause (Westport: Greenwood Press 1983).
James Simmons, Sean O’Casey (London: Macmillan 1983).
Robert G. Lowery, A Whirlwind in Dublin: ‘The Plough and the Stars’ Riots (Conn: Greenwood Press 1984).
John O’Riordan, A Guide to O’Casey’s Plays (London: Macmillan 1984).
See also D. E. S. Maxwell, Modern Irish Drama (1984).
Heinz Kosok, O’Casey, The Dramatist (Gerrards Cross: Smythe; NJ: Barnes & Noble 1985).
Seamus Deane, ‘O’Casey and Yeats: Exemplary Dramatists’, in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature 1880-1980 (London: Faber 1985), pp.108-122.
E. H. Mikhail, Sean O’Casey and His Critics: An Annotated Bibliography 191-1982 (London: Scarecrow Press 1985).
Michael Kenneally, ‘Ireland and Russia in the Autobiographical Imagination of Sean O’Casey’, in Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok eds., Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, Vol. 3: National Images and Stereotypes (Tübingen: Guntar Narr Verlag, 1987), pp.189-96.
Gary O’Connor, Sean O’Casey: A Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1988).
Patrick Murray, ed., Companion to The Plough and the Stars (Educational Co. of Ireland 1988).
Michael Kenneally, Portraying the Self: Sean O’Casey and the Art of Autobiography (Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1988).
1990-1999
David Krause, ed., Cock-a-doodle Dandy by Sean O’Casey’ [Irish Dramatic Texts Series]; (Washington: Cath. Univ. of Am.; Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1991).
Robert Hogan and Richard Burnham, eds., The Years of O’Casey, 1921-1926: A Documentary History (Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1992).
Christopher Murray, ‘O’Casey as Critic’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 18, 1 (Dec. 1992), pp.58-67.
Declan Kiberd, ‘The Plebeians Revise the Uprising’, in Inventing Ireland: the Literature of the Modern Nation (London: Jonathan Cape 1995), pp.218-39.
2000-
Christopher Murray, Sean O’Casey: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars (London: Faber 2000), 256pp.
Colbert Kearney, The Glamour of Grammar: Orality and Politics iand the Emergence of Sean O’Casey (Conn: Greenwood Press 2000).
Shakir Mustafa, ‘Saying “No” to Politics: Sean O’Casey’s Dublin Trilogy’, in Stephen Watt, ed., A Century of Irish Drama: Widening the Stage (Indiana UP 2000), pp.95-113.
Christopher Morash, ‘A Night at the Theatre 5: The Plough and the Stars’ [...]; Abbey Theatre, Thursday 11th February 1926’ [chap.];, A History of Irish Theatre 1601-2000 (Cambridge UP 2002), pp.163-71.
Ronan McDonald, Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O’Casey, Beckett (London: Palgrave 2002), 214pp.
Christopher Murray, ‘‘‘The Choice of Lives”: O'Casey versus Synge', in Journal of Irish Studies’ [IASIL-Japan];, XVII (2002), pp.72-87
Declan Kiberd, ‘After the Revolution: O’Casey and O’Flaherty’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.482-99.
Christopher Murray, Sean O’Casey (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 2004), 544pp. [review by Paul Johnson, TLS, 15 Oct. 2004, p.12].
W. B. Yeats (to the audience of The Plough & The Stars), quoted in A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats, A New Biography, London: Macmillan 1988; also in David Krause, Sean O’Casey and His World, Thames & Hudson 1976, p.28; Robert Hogan, Dictionary of Irish Literature, 1979, p.490 [“O’Casey”];i.)
W. B. Yeats (on The Silver Tassie), in Allen Wade, ed., Letters of W. B. Yeats, London; Hart-Davis 1954, p.741.)
W. B. Yeats, Letter to Sean O’Casey on rejection of The Silver Tassie (published by O’Casey in The Observer, 3 June 1928, with part of his reply, and rep. with comments from other Abbey directors in the Irish Statesman, 9 June; see Alan Wade, ed., Letters of W. B. Yeats, 1934, pp.74-42.
James Agate, Sunday Times review of first London production of Juno and the Paycock)’; ‘Mr O’Casey’s people talk too much but not dramatically enough (Review of first London production of The Plough and the Stars, 16 May, 1926.
P. S. O’Hegarty (‘A Dramatist of new Born Ireland’, in Northern American Review, CCXXXIV, 1927, p.32.
P. S. O’Hegarty, Review of Inishfallen Fare Thee Well, in The Irish Book Lover, Vol. XXXI [June 1949], p.44.
P. S. O’Hegarty, ‘A Dramatist of new Born Ireland’, in Northern American Review, ccxxiv, 1927, p.322.
Charles Morgan, review of first London production of The Silver Tassie, Sunday Times, 12 Oct. 1929.
A. E. Malone, quoted in ‘O’Casey’s Photographic Realism’, in Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey, Modern Judgements, Macmillan 1969, p.70).
Ronald Ayling, [ed.,] Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements ([Aurora] Macmillan 1969): Introduction [11-41] entails reviews of critical literature to date.
Samuel Beckett, quoted in Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, Jonathan Cape, 1996, p.220).
Bernard Benstock, Paycocks and Others [Chap. 4, ‘The Hero as Hero’], p.95..
Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960, p.151.
Patrick Murray, Companion to The Plough and the Stars, Dublin: Educational Co. of Ireland, 1988, p.27.
Sean Moffat, Sean O’Casey, The The Plough and the Stars, ed., Sean Moffat, Gill & Macmillan, 1987, p.26.
Denis Johnston, ‘Sean O’Casey: Appreciation’ (Daily Telegraph, 11 March 1926; reprinted in Ronald Ayling, Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements (London: Macmillan 1969), pp.83-90.
Denis Johnston, in Des Hickey and Gus Smith, eds., A Paler Shade of Green (London: Leslie Frewin 1972), pp.60-72.
Terence de Vere White, ‘The Blind is Up’, Irish Times (10.5.1969), review essay based on Brooks Atkinson, The Sean O’Casey Reader (Macmillan [1961]), from which the Shadow of a Gunman is omitted among the plays.
John Jordan, ‘Illusion and Actuality in the Later O’Casey’ [essay based on Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism lecture at Princeton Univ. in 1966]; rep. in Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements, 1969, pp.143-61.
Herbert Coston, ‘Prelude to Playwriting’, in Ronald Ayling, ed., Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements (London: Macmillan 1969), p.47-59.
Terence Brown, ‘Literary Autobiography in the Twentieth Century’, in Augustine Martin, ed., The Genius of Irish Prose (Cork: Mercier Press 1985), pp.89-98.
David Krause, ed., The Letters of Sean O’Casey, Vol. IV 1959-64 (Washington: Catholic University of America 1992), concluding the set, with a total between them of 2445 letters 1910 to 1964, over 3580pp..
Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland: The Literature of the Modern Nation (1995), pp. 22-45.
Peter Costello, The Heart Grown Brutal: the Irish Revolution in Literature from Parnell to the Death of Yeats, 1891-1939 (Gill & Macmillan 1977), p.256ff.
Richard Kearney, Myth and Motherland [Field Day Pamplets, No. 5] (Derry: Field Day Co. 1984), , p.16.
D. George Boyce, Nationalism in Ireland (London: Routledge 1982; 1991), p.324.
Tomas Mac Anna, ‘A Two-Edged Sword’, review of David Krause, ed., The Letters of Sean O’Casey, Vol. I, (Cassell [1975]), in Hibernia (Friday, 3 Oct. 1975), p.12.
Gabriel Fallon, essay in Sean McCann, ed., The World of Sean O’Casey, 1966).
Elizabeth Butler Cullingford, ‘British Romans and Irish Carthaginians: Anticolonial Metaphor in Heaney, Friel and McGuinness, PMLA, March 1996, pp.222-36.
Andrew Porter, reviewing Mark-Anthony Turnage's production of The Silver Tassie (Coliseum, Feb. 2000), in Times Literary Supplement, 15 Feb. 2000, p.18.
Bernard Adams, Denis Johnston: A Life (2002), (pp.83-84.
Colm Toíbín, ‘A complex Personality ...’, reviewing Christopher Murray, Sean O’Casey: Writer At Work, in The Irish Times, (20 Nov. 2004), Weekend.
Michael Billington, review of The Plough and the Stars (Barbican), Guardian (21 Jan. 2005), p.32.
Patrick Burke, letter to Times Literary Supplement (?26 Nov. 2005).
Bibliographical Details
Sean McCann, ed. and intro., The World of Sean O’Casey (London: Frewin’ [New English Library]; 1966), 251pp. CONTENTS:’ [essays by Anthony Butler, McCann, R. M. Fox, Donal Dorcey, Beatrice Coogan and T. P. Coogan, Niall Carroll, David Krause, N. D. Emerson, John O’Donovan, Gabriel Fallon, Ulick O’Connor, Kevin Casey, Ulick O’Connor, and Catherine Rynne].
Ronald Ayling,’ [ed.,]; Sean O’Casey: Modern Judgements’ [Selections of Critical Essays, gen. ed. P. N. Furbank]; ([Aurora]; Macmillan 1969), 259pp., bibl. and index. CONTENTS: Introduction’ [11-41]; Chronology, 42-44]; Herbert Coston, ‘Prelude to Playwriting’ [47]; P. S. O’Hegarty, ‘A Dramatist of New-Born Ireland’ [60]; 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, ‘The Silver Tassie: A Letter’ [86]; Charles Morgan, ‘The Silver Tassie’ [88]; George Bernard Shaw, ‘Letter to the producer of The Silver Tassie’ [91]; Bonamy Dobrée, ‘Sean O’Casey and the Irish Drama’ [92]; Una Ellis-Fermor, ‘Poetry in Revolt’ [106]; John Gassner, ‘The Prodigality of Sean O’Casey’ [110]; Jacques Barzun, ‘O’Casey at Your Bedside’ [120]; A. G. Stock, ‘The Heroic Image: Red Roses for Me’ [126]; William A. Armstrong, ‘Sean O’Casey, W. B. Yeats, and the Dance of Life’ [131]; John Jordan, ‘Illusion and Actuality in the Later O’Casey’ [143]; Robert Hogan, ‘In O’Casey’s Golden Days’ [162]; G. Wilson Knight, ‘Ever a Fighter: The Drums of Father Ned’ [177]; Katharine Worth, ‘O’Casey’s Dramatic Symbolism’ [183]; Jack Lindsay, ‘Sean O’Casey as a Socialist Artist’ [192]; Hubert Nicholson, ‘O’Casey’s Horn of Plenty’ [207]; Padraic Colum, ‘Sean O’Casey’s Narratives’ [220]; Marvin Malaganer, ‘O’Casey’s Autobiography’ [228].Letters and a Toast: David Krause, ‘A Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Man’ [235]; Hugh McDiarmid, ‘Sláinte Churamach, Seán’ [273].Select bibl.’ [261]; Notes on Contribs.,’ [270]; Index’ [273];
Thomas Kilroy, ed., Sean O’Casey:Twentieth Century Views: A Collection of Critical Essays (NJ: Prentice Hall 1974), CONTENTS: Thomas Kilroy, Introduction’ [ ]; Lady Gregory, ‘Journals’ extract’ [231]; R. McHugh, ‘The legacy of Sean O’Casey’ [ ]; R. Williams, ‘Sean O’Casey’ [ ]; J. Arden, ‘Ecce hobo sapiens: O’Casey's Theatre’ [ ]; R. Ayling, ‘Sean O’Casey's Dublin Trilogy’ [ ]; David Krause, ‘The anti-heroic Vision’ [ ];’ [q.a.];, ‘The Silver Tassie: Letters by Yeats, O’Casey, and Shaw’ [ ]; Robert Hogan, ‘In Sean O’Casey's Golden Days’ [ ]; G. W. Knight, ‘Ever a Fighter: The Drums of Father Ned’ [ ]; B. Benstock, ‘The O’Casey Touch’ [ ]; Seamus Deane, ‘Irish Politics and O’Casey's Theatre’ [ ]; J. Jordan, ‘The Indignation of Sean O’Casey’ [ ]; Samuel Beckett, ‘The Essential and the Incidental’ [ ]; Chronology of important dates’ [ ]; Selected bibliography on Sean O’Casey’ [173-74].
David Krause & Robert G. Lowery, eds. Sean O’Casey: Centenary Essays (Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1980) Sean O’Casey: Centenary Essays (Gerrards Cross: Smythe 1980), 257pp. CONTENTS: Robert G. Lowery, ‘Sean O’Casey, a chronology’ [ ]; Ronald Ayling, ‘Sean O’Casey and the Abbey Theatre, Dublin’ [ ]; Bernard Benstock, ‘Sean O’Casey and/or James Joyce’ [ ]; Mary FitzGerald, ‘Sean O’Casey and Lady Gregory’[ ]; David Krause, ‘The druidic affinities of O’Casey and Yeats’ [ ]; Robert G. Lowery, ‘Sean O’Casey, art and politics’ [ ]; William J. Maroldo, ‘Earliest youth’ [ ]; Alan Simpson, ‘The unholy trinity’ [ ]; Stanley Weintraub, ‘Shaw's other Keegan’ [ ]; Robert G. Lowery, ‘Sean O’Casey at the Abbey Theatre’ [ ].
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Notes
Seamus Deane, ge. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, selects from The Shadow of a Gunman, [677-700], and The Plough and the Stars [700-08]; BIOG & WORKS, 718 [as supra]; FDA3 selects Under the Window, ‘The Bold Fenian Men’ [456-62]; REMS 2 [Dublin speech and the Bible, ed.], 172 [aesthetic hegemony of Abbey in jeopardy [when] O’Casey severed connection; that he did so following the rejection of his First World War play The Silver Tassie with its Expressionist second act, might have intensified a sense that the Abbey had missed the turning tide; the 1930 proved otherwise [with Denis Johston], ed. Terence Brown]; 175 [Dublin plays can be classed tragicomedy that verge on farce or melodrama, ed. T. Brown]; 247 [nugatory ref. to poem in Time and Tide, in Beckett’s Recent Poetry]; 380 [Easter Rising read by O’Casey and others as ‘bright moments of liberty that have within them darker moments of oppression, radical revelations of the ceaseless discovery and loss of identity and freedom, which is one of the obsessive marks of cultures that have been compelled to inquire into the legitimacy of their own existence ... &c’, ed. Seamus Deane]; 382 [O’Casey repudiates 1916 while admiring it, ibid. under ‘Autobiographies and Memoirs’ sect.]; 481 [O’Faolain quotes Yeat’s footlights speech at the Plough Riot, ‘You have rocked the cradle of a new genius’ (sic), in Vive Moi!]; 484 [Patrick Kavanagh, ‘The English critics went crazy over the poetry of O’Casey’s Juno, whereas in fact we only endure that embarrassment for the laughs in Catpain Boyle’, Self-Portrait, 1964, 643 [Denis Donoghue, Yeats, O’Casey [et al.] aggravated by Irish politics to the point where their aggravation turned into verse or prose; ‘We Irish’, in Hibernia 1978 (1986)]; 656-58 [Dubliners as peasants manqué in early works of O’Casey; Fintan O’Toole, ‘Going West, ‘The Country Versus the City in Irish Writing’, in Crane Bag (1985)], 670 [among Irish masters of modern ‘British drama’, acc. Sean Golden, in ‘Post-Traditional English Literature, A Polemic’, Crane Bag (1979)]; 940 [part of small writers’ exodus, sect. ed., JW Foster]; 1312 [reconciliation of humdrum fact withpoetry of speech, spoken of by Lennox Robinson in connection with Abbey playwrights, clearly intended for Synge and O’Casey; Kiberd, ed. ‘Contemporary Irish Poetry’ Sect.]; 1313 [his slumdwellers seen to create in rolling speech a kind of spaciousness they can never find in their tenements; ed. Kiberd].
Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTÉ/Mercier 1987), lists The Moon Shines on Kylenamoe, dir. Shelah Richards (1962); The Plough and the Stars, dir. Lelia Doolan, adapt. by Blanaid Irvine (1966), and Do., dir. Michael Garvey (1977); The Shadow of a Gunman, dir. James Plunkett (1966); The Silver Tassie, dir. Brian MacLochlainn (1980); The Rebel [Sean O’Casey], adapt. by John Arden, Margaretta D’Arcy and dir. Brian MacLochlainn (1973); Sean [13 episodes], written by Michael Voysey, Neil Jordan, Eugene McCabe, dir. Louis Lentin (1980).
Kevin Rockett, et al., eds., Cinema and Ireland (London: Routledge 1988), cites Juno and the Paycock (dir Alfred Hitchcock, 1930), film seized and burnt by crowds in Limerick, angered by its portrayal of Irish family life [53]; Further, Plough and the Stars, The (1936), 44, 59, 96, 156-7 [dir John Ford; Jack Clitheroe (Preston Foster); in a curious reversal, it is the family which emerges as fanatics]; 165 [choice between wife and Ireland], 186n17; Young Cassidy (1964 [sic]); John Ford/Jack Cardiff film; ejection of the mob and de-contextualisation of Irish history featured in Young Cassidy 1965 [sic]; very loosely based on O’Casey’s life, the film is so committed to the myth of artistic isolation that the role of politics can only dwindle into insignificance. In order to develop as an artist Johnny Cassidy/Sean O’Casey (Rod Taylor) must abandon ‘everything’, class, political attachments, family, lover, and finally Ireland itself. ... the archetypal Fordian loner ... [in addition to that archetype] we are [here] denied the virtues of community ... the collectivity ... possess only a negative value [of the] howling mob in the transport strike [which conditions] his disdain for violence and his disengagement from politics. [Finally] Cassidy relies on police force to remove the mob from the theatre foyer [111, 176-7].
Booksellers: Autobiographies, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan 1981), 1st combined edn.; R G. Lowery and R Angelin, eds., My Very Dear Sean, George Nathan to Sean O’Casey, letters and articles (Assoc. UP 1985); also P O’Cathasaigh, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, (1st ed 1919) [in seldom found white wrapper]; Autobiographical sextet [all 1st eds.], £120; Pictures (NY 1949); Inishfallen (NY 1949); and Sunset & Evening Star (NY 1st ed. 1954) [Eric Stevens 1992]. Oak Leaves and Lavender (US 1st edn. 1947) [Hyland 1995]. Sean Ó Cathasaigh, The Sacrifice of Thomas Ashe (Dublin: Fergus O’Connor 1918), 16pp. [TCD].
In 1926 on the first night of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars, [Yeats] thundered, ‘Is this to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?’ Drums of Father Ned, withdrawn from Dublin Th. Festival, 1958; first prod. Lafayette, Indiana, 1959; printed 1960. For text of Yeats’s speech, see infra; for text of Yeats’s letter rejecting The Silver Tassie, see infra.)
St John Ervine wrote: ‘Belfast, the Real Centre of Culture in Ireland’ (1944) in reply to O'Casey's ‘There They Go the Irish’, in ‘They Go, the Irish: A Miscellany of War-Time Writing, compiled by Leslie Daiken (London: Nicholson & Watson 1944). NOTE, Eileen O’Casey, born in London, née Reynolds, stage-name Carey, was appearing in musicals when Seán saw and fell in love with her; played the first Minnie in The Shadow of a Gunman [‘Helen of Troy come to live in a tenement’, Plays, 1969, p.130]; wrote her biography of Sean as a corrective to misinformation in contemporary studies of her husband; d. Denville Hall, home for retired actors, London, April 1995.
In praise of Flann: O’Casey wrote an unsolicited letter of praise to Brian O’Nolan on the publication of An Béal Bocht (see Anthony Cronin, No Laughing Matter, 1989), p.144.
Tyrone Guthrie’s account of the first performance of The Bishop’s Bonfire: ‘At first the audience played up - supposedly anti-Irish or anti-clerical lines were received with jeers and hisses or, by the minority, with exaggerated laughter and applause. But gradually it became apparent that the jokes were not of the finest vintage, the satire not very pointed, the plot a little "hammy" and the performance, in spite of manful efforts by Eddie Byrne and Sean Kavanagh, a little amateurish. By the end of the second act, the excitement had fizzled away. The audience was like a wedding party after the departure of the bride; after the elation of the nuptials and the unwonted champagne comes the reaction; a melancholy, punctuated by hiccups./By the end of the last act torpor was turning to positive vexation. Cyril Cusack came forward at the curtain call and made a long prepared speech in Irish. After thanking the audience for its wonderful reception, he gave a harangue on behalf of tolerance and liberty. Under this final douche of cold water, The Bishop’s Bonfire, which had never quite blazed, fizzled into a heap of damp ashes. (Guthrie, A Life in the Theatre, Hamish Hamilton 1960, pp.267-69; see more extensively under Guthrie.)
The Drums of Father Ned (1958) was planned for Dublin Theatre Festival with Alan McClelland’s dramatisation of Joyce’s Ulysses as Bloomsday and three mime plays and a radio play by Beckett; the Tostal secretary wrote to the Archbishop for permission to arrange a votive mass to inaugurate the Festival; a subsequent enquiry concerning ‘certain plays’ resulted in the refusal of permission; O’Casey reacted on the assumption that his play was being censored by the Archbishop and wrote immediately wrote to the Irish Times [q.d.]: ‘... There we go: the streets of Dublin echo with the drum-beats of foot-steps running away. The Archbishop in his Palace and the Customs Officer on the quay viva watch out to guard virtue and Éire; the other Archbishop draws the curtains and sits close to his study fire, saying nothing; and so the Hidden Ireland becomes the Bidden Ireland, and all is swell.’ (See Brendan Smith, ‘The Drums of Father Ned: O’Casey and the Archbishop’, in Des Hickey & Gus Smith, A Paler Shade of Green, 1972, p.136). Smith comments that O’Casey’s assumption was ‘quite incorrect’, and further that some member of the committee had leaked to the British Press that there had been a correspondence with the Archbishop: ‘it was then open and the whole issue became disorientated’; confusion was added by the chaplain forming the May that there was no harm in presenting Ulysses, though ‘it didn’t become clear until later that he was confusing Homer’s Ulysses with that of Joyce’; ‘the chain of errors began with the mistake of asking him [Archbishop McQuaid] to hold a Votive Mass’ (p.138.) Quotes Padraic Colum suggesting that Archbishop McQuaid’s refusal to permit a votive Mass was not prompted by any spirit of censorship but by the inappropriateness of such a thing, and that O’Casey was being paranoid about his play which he presumed to be the object of ecclesiastical censorship; further that Beckett was misled by the news and withdrew his accordingly ‘mime plays’. (Smith, p.21); Smith concludes that the Archbishop ‘had been placed in a very awkward position in having an application made to him to have the Festival opened with a Mass’ since the Festival included ‘plays with which, according to his reasoning, a Votive Mass could not be associated’; ‘I am convinced to this date that the situation develops as it did because members of the Tóstal Council representing non-theatrical interests provoked a public row quite unnecessarily ... as a means of sabotaging the Theatre Festival. They had an idea that Ulysses was dirty and that O’Casey might be anti-clerical’ (p.151). Smith remarks that O’Casey ‘was elderly at the time, and living outside of Ireland for so long he had acquired an unbalanced view of what was happening’ (p.150); and further expresses his firm opinion view that O’Casey’s ‘brand of communism was tongue in cheek’ (p.151).
Lanthern Theatre dramatisation of O’Casey’s Autobiographies, Pictures in the Hallway (Lanthern 1966), Drums Under the Window (Lanthern 1968), both produced with Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well in an eight-hour marathon 24 July 1972 (Lanthern), cited in Guinness Book of Records at the time. SEE David Krause, ‘Remembering Liam, an epiphany of friendship’, in ILS Fall, 1992, pp.26-30.
Shaw told Denis Johnston that he regarded the second act of The Silver Tassie as one of the greatest pieces of writing for the stage; Johnston defers, but considers Shaw’s partiality due to his liking for Expressionism. (See ‘Did you know Yeats? And did you lunch with Shaw?’, in Des Hickey and Gus Smith, eds., A Paler Shade of Green (London: Leslie Frewin 1972), pp.60-72, p.68.)
Following Samuel Beckett’s withdrawal of performance rights to his plays from Dublin theatres arising from the supposed censorship of O’Casey’s Drums of Father Ned, Beckett wrote to Barney Rosset: ‘The Roman Catholic bastards in Ireland yelped Joyce and O’Casey out of their "Festival", so I withdrew my mimes [Acts Without Words I & II] and the reading of All That Fall to be given at the Pike. Now the whole thing seems to be off!’ (20 February 1958, held in Grove Press Collection, University of Syracuse, NY); Sean O’Casey wrote to The Irish Times (17 February 1958): ‘The Archbishop doesn’t know (or doesn’t care) that a work by Joyce or Beckett or even by O’Casey, performed in Dublin, is of more importance to Dublin than it is to any of those authors; that outside Dublin is a wide, wide world, and that this wide place is Joyce’s oyster, Beckett’s oyster, and even O’Casey’s oyster, or that these voices, hushed in Dublin, will be heard in many another place.’ (Both cited in Martha Fehsenfeld and Lois More Overbeck, ‘The Correspondence of Samuel Beckett: Windows on the Work’, in Beyond Beckett [Princess Grace Irish Library Series], Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1999 [pending].)
Beckett called O’Casey ‘a master of knockabout in this very serious and honorable sense - that he discerns the principle of disintegration in even the most complacent solidities, and activates it to their explosion’; especially praised one-acter The End of the Beginning, in which the two comic characters Darry Berrill and Barry Derill end ‘in an agony of callisthenics, surrounded by the doomed furniture.’ (Cited in Anthony Cronin, Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, 1996, p.58.)
‘Bonfire under a Black Sun’, in The Green Crow (1957), pp.122-45, is O’Casey’s defence of the critique of Irish clericism in The Bishop’s Bonfire.
Pencil-portrait of 1930 by Harry Kernoff in National Gallery of Ireland, reprinted in Brian de Breffny, Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopaedia (London: Thames & Hudson 1983), p.139; Sean O’Casey by Patrick Tuohy, pencil, Municipal; see Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Mus. 1965. See also Harry Kernoff's portrait, signed [1930], purchased from Lady Gregory Collection 1932 [National Gallery of Ireland].
For an account of the Plough and the Stars riot, see Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, Religion and Nationalism in Ireland (Dublin: Poolbeg 1994), pp.123ff.
Panel by Louis Laguerre, Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, Laguerre’s ‘Juno and the Paycock’, c. 1692, is introduced into plasterwork by James Pettifer (1675) below the upper flight of the great staircase; National Trust Engagement Diary, 1992 [& QRY]
Programme of Lyric Players Th. production of Irish Premiere of Cock-a-doodle Dandy (Nov. 1975: 25th Anniversary Season, ‘From Farquhar to Friel’) contains Programme note by John Boyd.
O'Casey's wife Eileen disclosed that O'Casey habitually hummed when he worked. (cited in Ronald G. Rollins, ‘Pervasive Patterns in The Silver Tassie', Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.29-37, p.30.)
O'Casey heard song "The Silver Tassie" sung by a London coal vendor, and resolved to give its title to his next play; quotes song ‘Gae fetch to me a pint o' wine, / An' fill it in a silver tossie; / That I may drink before I gae / A service tae my bonnie lossie.' (quoted from O'Casey, Rose and Crown, 1956, p.31, in p.30 of Ronald G. Rollins, ‘Pervasive Patterns in The Silver Tassie', Éire-Ireland, 6, 4, Winter 1971, pp.29-37.)
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)