ࡱ> =?<%` bjbjNN .&,,T+*******$L,h.**+** *$+0T+t/jt/t/+,jM**  T+DD DD  The Book of Irish Writers, Chapter 40 - Sean OCasey, 1880-1964 Sean OCasey was born in Dublin. He was baptised John Casey - but the name was second-hand: two other sons who had died young had been given the name before him. At the time of his birth his father was a clerk for the Irish Church Mission and the family was reasonably secure but only in comparison to the appalling conditions of many fellow Dublin tenement dwellers. His fathers death, when OCasey was just six, led to increasing poverty, though debate continues about just how severe their plight was. This partly arises from OCaseys autobiography where he depicts himself as a representative of the downtrodden in terms which may be a little over the top Afflicted early on by trachoma - an infectious disease of the eyes which was probably made worse by poor living conditions - OCaseys formal schooling was frequently interrupted and he was mostly self-taught. He presented his education as a heroic struggle in which he often had to choose between buying bread and buying a book: his solution at times was to buy the bread and steal the book! This self-education carried on while he was engaged in various labouring jobs including a stint as a railwayman. He was once sacked for refusing to accept the right of his employers to dock his wages for supposed insolence. OCasey was a socialist he was also a member of the Irish Citizen Army, the militant wing of Irish Labour. One of his earliest publications was a history of the ICA but OCasey actually left the Citizen Army in protest against its support for Patrick Pearses violent nationalism. It was in the second half of the 1910s in his mid thirties - that OCasey turned more to writing and in particular to drama. Several early plays were rejected by the Abbey Theatre in Dublin before his eventual acceptance with The Shadow of a Gunman in 1923. In this, and Juno and the Paycock in 1924, OCasey staged dangerous moments in very recent Irish history the Black and Tan war and the Civil War. The plays throw up some memorable characters - not least the ner do well Captain Jack Boyle with his drunken philosophising Isn't all religions curious?-if they weren't you wouldn't get anyone to believe in them. And his regular lament of - Th' whole worl's in a terrible state o' chassis. Audiences flocked to the Abbey helping to secure its place in newly independent Ireland. OCaseys third major play The Plough and the Stars (in 1926) looked set on opening night to repeat his earlier successes in its treatment of the 1916 Easter Rising. But controversy loomed. The balance between near farce and tragedy - which Juno and the Paycock in particular had struck - now turned to caustic satire. The second act of The Plough and the Stars juxtaposed a nationalist speech (based on the words of Patrick Pearse) with a scene involving working class drinkers and a prostitute! Outraged at this seemingly anti-nationalist scene, the audience rioted. W B Yeats (one of the Abbeys founders) upbraided the audience and declared OCaseys theatrical genius! Despite the riot, OCaseys reputation was riding high and in 1926 he went to London, initially to collect a literary prize. Here he met George Bernard Shaw (who had himself had some difficulties with Abbey productions) and, even more importantly, a young Irish actress called Eileen Carey. Eileen and OCasey married in 1927 OCasey now in his late forties. Though they settled at first in London, and though OCaseys plays were now receiving London productions, he offered his new play The Silver Tassie (its title taken from a song by Robert Burns) to the Abbey. It was brutally rejected by Yeats - a decision which was to change OCaseys life and distort his reputation. Though the play is once again largely set in Dublin, its subject was the First World War which Yeats, for his own complicated reasons, thought was not a fit subject for drama. In addition, the act set on the battlefield is experimental and Yeats thought that OCasey had over-reached himself by extending his vision beyond the Dublin tenements and his usual theatrical realism. OCasey, embittered, rejected by the theatre that had nurtured him - and which he had arguably saved - moved permanently to England. Were left with a sense of OCasey as a broadly realist writer whose major work is about the relationship between Irish nationalism and the Dublin working class, but its obvious from The Silver Tassie that he was interested in the relationship of various kinds of militarism and working class politics. 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