Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman / Juno and the Paycock / The Plough and the Stars

by Seán O'Casey, Christopher Murray (Introduction)

The classic plays of the quintessential Dublin playwright

Three early plays by Sean O'Casey--arguably his three greatest--demonstrate vividly O'Casey's ability to convey the reality of life and the depth of human emotion, specifically in Dublin before and during the Irish civil war of 1922-23, but, truly, throughout the known universe. In mirroring the lives of the Dublin poor, from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor, and charwoman in The Plough and the Stars , Sean O'Casey conveys with urgency and eloquence the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors, large and small, that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings. As Seamus Heaney has written, "O'Casey's characters are both down to earth and larger than life . . . His democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding, and his recoil from tyranny and his compassion for the oppressed were an essential--as opposed to a moral and thematic--part of his art."

A new production of Juno and the Paycock will transfer from the Donmar Theatre in London to New York in September 2000.

Genres: Plays, Drama, Ireland, Irish Literature, Theatre, Fiction, Classics

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 1969

About the author

Sean O'Casey was born in 1880 and lived through a bitterly hard boyhood in a Dublin tenement house. He never went to school but received most of his education in the streets of Dublin, and taught himself to read at the age of fourteen. He was successively a newspaper-seller, docker, stone-breaker, railway-worker and builders' labourer. In 1913 he helped to organise the Irish Citizen Army which fought in the streets of Dublin, and at the same time he was learning his dramatic technique by reading Shakespeare and watching the plays of Dion Boucicault. His early works were performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Lady Gregory made him welcome at Coole, but disagreement followed and after visiting America in the late thirties O'Casey settled in Devonshire. He lived there until his death in 1964, though still drawing the themes of many of his plays from the life he knew so well on the banks of the Liffey. Out of the ceaseless dramatic experimenting in his plays O'Casey created a flamboyance and versatility that sustain the impression of bigness of mind that is inseparable from his tragi-comic vision of life.

He was a major Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

Reviews

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd read The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock years ago but I hadn't read The Plough and the Stars until now. All three plays are quite good. I love how O'Casey writes completely in vernacular, it gives the plays a downright sense of nationalistic importance. Overall it's a good collection.

[Roger Cottrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Marxist, a classicist and 20th Century Ireland's greatest playwright. Because of his scrupulous criticism of Republicanism, his revolutionary socialism and exile in Britain he's almost a non person for Irish literary critics and wasn't mentioned once when I was at film school in Dublin. And I ask myself, what's so great about Samuel Becket in any case, when he wouldn't know one end of Aristotle's Poetics from a shovel. O'Casey's representation of working class life in Dublin is brilliant, too. There's a pub named after him near the Abbey Theatre even though he was tetotal but the Flowing Tide next door is a better gaff.

[Colleen Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant depiction of working class Dubliners living in tenements around the time of the Easter Rising. O'Casey captures the humor of Dubliners very well in the three plays as well as the raw, feelings, and relationships that existed among city center people. I read Juno and the Paycock many years ago, partly because we owned a pub in Dublin called Joxer Dalys. A great read.

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

These three tragi-comedies wonderfully evoke the lives of tenement-dwellers in the Dublin of a century ago. The plays show how the great political events of their time, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War, bring suffering and tragedy to the characters. O’Casey’s stage directions are so precise and extensive, describing not only the stage sets, but also the appearance and characters of the protagonists, that I found I could read the plays almost as short novels.

[Angelique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sean O’Casey is, duh, an excellent playwright. Although sometimes it was just him telling what happened and not getting under the drama.

I absolutely loved re reading Juno and the Paycock. Great characters, made me think about wealth, the words flew off the page and I could see it all. By far, the best of the three.

The Shadow of a Gunman was too literal. I was saying this to a friend and he was like is it the snakes on a plane of Irish plays (why are all this mutha fucking gunmen in these mutha fucking shadows?). It was like a history play. It depends a lot on staging.

The Plough and the Stars again was like a history play. Better characters than Shadow, but there were three characters I kept getting mixed up because they weren’t drawn that well. I loved the Dublin way of writing (Bourwaazee! Powst!) and I liked Nora’s character. But again, the dramah wasn’t right. Again- I’d need to see it staged.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

These plays showed a really interesting perspective that I hadn't considered before in relation to something we learn about in history classes - the impact of these big moments on the individual. This is something which is shown beautifully in all of these plays as well as the change in mentality before, during and afterwards.

[Abby · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, what I loved most about these plays are the language and how the phonetic words of the Irish from different classes are written on the page. I immediately heard them in my head and was put in the play's time and place. Each play is called a "Tragedy" and the collection is called O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy.

"Juno and the Paycock" takes place in 1922 and was the most vivid in my mind while reading it. 'Paycock' is the Irish way of saying 'peacock'. Paycock refers to Juno's ne'er do well husband. Of course that makes Juno the long suffering wife. If you are not aware of the history of Ireland during the time of the play you may want to read up on it. However, I am aware of the history but felt there was well laid information placed in the dialogue as a guide. But knowing that the British Military were highly visible and why and what their nicknames were is important.

The most fascinating thing about this play is how even the IRA and other even more vigilant Irish groups could and would bully the citizens into submission in the name of freeing Ireland.

Ultimately, even though "tragic" things happened to Juno and her family, I do not consider the play a complete "Tragedy" because I found hope at the end of the play. Most characters had endings to bad relationships and were beginning lives of truth and strength.

The play "The Shadow of the Gunman" is truly a tragedy. The play takes place in May 1920. The British army is referred to as "the Black and Tans" because of their tan military clothing and black leather belts. Dublin was undoubtedly a war zone at this time between the British Army and the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The Irish people were terrorized and bullied (to put it lightly) by the British Army. They lived in constant fear of being brutalized, imprisoned and/or executed for any reason. The mistakes and actions of the characters are irrevocably changed by the end of the play because of this constant fear. "The Shadow of the Gunman" is a history lesson as well as a play.

"The Plough and the Stars" takes place in 1915 and 1916, leading up to the Easter Rising, and refers to the Irish Labor flag which depicts a plough with stars on and around it making the plough appear to be holy or even magical. A reference to the flag by an Irishman, The Young Covey character, and Socialist is made at the beginning of the play. He is disgusted when the "Citizen Army" uses the flag during a protest. Covey feels the flag should never be used for politics and should only be used to create a "Worker's Republic". He has an ongoing verbal battle with two of the headstrong characters of the play.

With brutal honesty the play shows the tragedy of war, whether verbal or with weapons.


These plays bring you as close as possible to Irish history with well-formed characters you will root for and weep for. I highly recommend reading the O'Casey Dublin Trilogy.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irish tragi-comedy, a characteristic particular to the Irish character. Sean O'Casey belonged to the working class and here in these plays captures three Dublin families during the Irish Civil War. It's a fascinating look, and because it's in play form seems almost like listening in at a space in a time long gone. The characters are interesting and we simultaneously feel sorry and annoyed. It's especially tragic the Irish would have turned in on themselves after such a long run of horrors inflicted by the English. I also enjoyed the scene sets when O'Casey writes freely, one can see the poet in him and he paints clear wonderful pictures of his characters.

[Benjamin Fasching-Gray · Rating 5 out of 5]

They are all tragedies, so you know that all that wrong people are going to die by the end, but these are great. Lots of laughs, tears, song, and alcohol. Working class characters, but there's no whitewashing them, they are as ugly as they want to be ... I guess this stuff is social realism like Gorky or something but it doesn't seem too heavy handed ... until of course all the wrong people die. But actually, if they had lived, you'd think it was corny, so in the end, these are perfect and probably something people will be reading and hopefully performing centuries from now. I plan to read more by this guy.

[Ayne Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

A renowned Irish playwright committed to socialist ideals, O'Casey was known for his realistic portrayal of Irish tenement life, fully realized female characters, and passion for the cause of Irish independence. Two of the greatest plays of the Irish canon are part of the Dublin plays: "Juno and the Paycock" (about a family in the tenement slums) and "The Plough and the Stars" (set during the time of the famous Easter Uprising of 1916).

[Ryan Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

3 plays set in 1920s dublin. poverty, poetry, whisky, and jaysus.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've written about the Irish Theatrical Revival in my other reviews, mostly the plays of Yeats and Synge. O'Casey was a later and evidently obscurer figure in that scene (and, beside the former two, the only relevant author), something of a poor man working shit jobs in Dublin until, as the back cover apprised me, he read Shakespeare and decided to write his own plays. Rather than traditional dramas, these are more 'Irish', not only in subject matter but in their emphasis on the idiosyncracies of celtic conversations and the irascible, capricious nature of any given Irishman ... especially so in 'Juno and the Paycock', where the sitcom-esque plot about an illusory large inheritence sum produces more of a slice-of-life sort of atmosphere, but which becomes a tragedy as the family's futility unfolds. The father won't stop barcrawling nightly, the daughter is unable to find a true romantic partner, and the other citizens of the tenement suffer in their own abjectly impovershed ways. While the intense dialect and subject matter seem reminiscent of Synge, O'Casey is far less 'literary' about his tragic construction, and his dialogue shows an urban Irishman more grotesquely modern than the Aran Islanders. No, this play reminds me rather of an intense revision to the formula of Shaw's plays, where vibrant characters signify their social standing -- but, here, deprived of all hope and illusions to 'outs' by Marxist clap-trap.

This draws an obvious parallel to (Joyce') Dubliners, but in place of the paralysis in those tales of the 90s and 00s is 'shape with lion body and the head of a man' that Yeats saw, that is to say, the Irish Civil War, where Irish nationalism turned all revolutionary fervor into fratricidal anarchy (more or less). 'Shadow of a Gunman' has an impressive matrix of symbolism (the writer ie imitator is the shadow of the revolutionary, etc) dressed up around what is otherwise another tale of miserable poverty and dumb political violence, and while 'Plough and the Stars' is about the Revolution its obvious focal point is the same capacity for violence that permitted the Civil War, starting out as another slice-of-life Irish ghetto dialogue and ending in almost pornographic levels of violence and psychic damage, practically a 'Demons' or 'The Sleepwalkers' for Ireland. All the same, they are not quite the Titus Andronicuses that this may imply, but rather the result of the lesson that most Irish books implicitly bear: that the convoluted histrionics of Sterne or Joyce, or the insane monomanics of O'Brien or Beckett, are not meant to be humorous or rather realistic, and in these plays we can see this more directly than ever ... and this is perhaps not least valuable because of how scantily this Civil War was written about: prior to reading these plays I barely knew it existed, given that Yeats spent those early 20s writing about magic and abstract apocalypses, Joyce about the epiphanic richness of the past, and John Synge nothing (he was dead), and it seems the later authors preferred to write around it in the same way. From Yeats:

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

[Voyager · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plays collected here from O'Casey's "Dublin trilogy" are definitely reflections of the time. O'Casey, being a member of the Citizen Army in his youth, was more politically conscious and more willing to offer an account of contemporary sufferings and upheavals than many of his peers at the time, and he is definitely more progressive in the content of his writings than many present-day Irish playwrights. In the pages of O'Casey's plays, one gets a look into the poverty, the misery that accompanied everyday life, the brutality of Ireland antagonisers. This willingness to give a more honest account of life landed him in quite some controversy in his time, but one gets the feeling, especially when comparing his works to those of O'Flaherty, France's Barbusse, or Russia's Gorky, that while O'Casey wants to depict the common sufferings of the Irish people — from the grip of alcohol and despair over a family wounded by war to the bestial horrors of his majesty's empire — in a relatable style, he still fears the censor's pen or the scorn of the theater owner. He tries to lay bare the atrocities of the day but waters them down lest the theater owner find his plays too controversial or the authorities find his plays too "un-Christian" (as happened to many of O'Flaherty's books).

Of the plays presented here, "Shadow of a Gunman" and "Plough and the Stars" are definitely my favourites. Although "Plough and the Stars" outraged many a republican at the time of its first performance, its novel portrayal of the Easter days are remarkable, from the breadth of its characters to ease of understanding even to the youngest today. And in "Shadow of a Gunman", one cannot help but taking a liking to Dan's somber but friendly demeanor of his relationship with Minnie (to avoid spoiling too much of the short but touching story). "Juno and the Paycock" too proves itself a quaint little comedy, even if I dislike the way the IRA is portrayed in it in relation to Johnny.

On the whole, quite good plays, even if there are some aspects of them that I dislike and it feels they suffer somewhat from fear of censorship. There's a reason they are considered by many today to be classics of Irish theater.

[Jimgosailing · Rating 5 out of 5]

“but her face has now assumed that look which ultimately settles down upon the faces of women of the working class: a look of listless monotony and harassed anxiety, blending with an expression of mechanical resistance.”

Though describing Mrs Boyle here in Juno and the Paycock, O’Casey’s description here could, I think, apply equally to men or women of the working class.

O’Casey excels in capturing the vernacular of the locals. A tragedy with some comedic elements, certainly with the “peacock” and his “butter” Joxer (“I was always thinkin’ you had a slate off.” per Mrs Boyle). But by the close, tragedies have pulled a family apart.

“Still an’ all, he died a noble death, an’ we’ll bury him like a king.”
Mrs Tancred. “An’ I’ll go on living’ like a pauper.”

The Shadow of a Gunman is a straight forward exploration of the violence experienced during the uprising; and a case if mistaken identity- or at least misattribution or false association. And O’Casey’s description of Mrs Grigson…heartbreaking.

The Plough and The Stars: “The home of the Clitheroes. It consists of the front and back drawing-rooms in a fine old Georgian house, struggling for its life against the assaults of time, and the more savage assaults of the tenants.”

“He is a little, thin bit of a man, with a face shaped like a lozenge…His face invariably wears a look of animated anguish, mixed with irritated defiance, as if everybody was at war with him, and he at war with everybody.” (p136 describing Peter Flynn)

“we’re all only human bein’s. Scientifically speakin’, it’s all a question of accidental gatherin’ together of mollycewels an’ atoms.” (The Covey, p 143)

“That’s all dope, comrade; th’ sort o’ thing that workers are fed on by the Boorzwawzee.” (The Covey, p 172)

“Go on an’ get your guns if you are men - Johnny get get your gun, get your gun, get your gun!” (Bessie, p 182). So, I wonder if Dalton Trumbo read this…(though this phrase was also popular with WWI recruiting)

[Brien · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three delightful plays, hard-hitting, controversial then as now. O'Casey's slightly Gaelicized dialog reveal's the plays' characters in all their strengths and faults, the latter being quite well represented. All the plays' actions are in the period of the Irish struggle of independence from England, the late teens and early 20s of the last century. The play The Plough and the Stars was hugely controversial, a reflection of the intranecine rivalries among the Irish independence movements. This play actually caused riots outside the Abbey Theater in Dublin in 1926, and O'Casey was so disgusted by the protests he left Ireland for Devon, England, never to return to Ireland. I highly recommend for those interested in Irish history and great plays.

[Kiril · Rating 5 out of 5]

A loose trilogy of plays written just after the birth of the modern nation-state of Ireland, reflecting on the unstable political situation of the time - and most importantly, on how the poor get mixed up in it but really have no good options. Each play is devastating in its own way. Human and empathetic without losing any nuance or being one whit sentimental. Linguistically, O'Casey skilfully relays Irish idiom and manner; politically, he is unsparing, sacrificing none of his own views but ultimately damning nobody else for theirs. In the end, what I find expressed in these plays is a deep, abiding sorrow that any of the characters had to end up in any of these situations at all. And perhaps most profoundly of all, at times the plays are nothing short of hilarious.

[Debbie Smyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three plays on Dublin set during the Irish Rebellion of the mid 1920's. Written in dialect, so can be slow reading - I used the dictionary and my Irish husband to decode some the slang. Descriptive, emotional, and true to the time period. I read these plays in anticipation of a trip to NYC to see all three of the plays at the Irish Repertory in May.

[Elliot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good examples of early 20th century Irish theatre.

[Jeanne Thomases · Rating 4 out of 5]

read, yes-1976 and cast in “Juno” Repertory Philippines, Manila

[Tiarnán · Rating 3 out of 5]

very anti-republican

[Althea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but hard to get through, helped to take an online class.

[Aishwarya Senthilarasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the way how Sean O'Casey braked the traditional portrayal of women. The diction he used in his plays took me to 1920s Ireland.

[Erin Konarski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great writing for the stage, but it's definitely meant to be appreciated in an educational setting.

[Scarlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read these for class. So good. Irish dramatists class putting me on.

[Morgan Eigel · Rating 4 out of 5]

the irish seem to be good at this whole outrage thing!

[Maria Murray · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a pretty good time. I did The Plough and The Stars in school and it's amazing how much of it comes back on re-reading. (I learned about fifty percent of it off by heart to quote in essays.) Plough is definitely the best of the three - you can visually appreciate the improvement in quality and the firmer handle he has on his craft.

From Shadow of a Gunman:

"To the people the end of life is the life created for them; to the poet the end of life is the life he creates for himself; life has a stifling grip upon the people's throat - it is the poet's musician."

From Plough:

"I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible."

[Marc · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Shadow of a Gunman - 2 stars - got better towards the end.

Juno and the Paycock - 2 stars -

The Plough and the Stars -1 star - the most boring of the 3

I found his plays difficult to read because they are written with lots of Irish dialects and i.e. adds "h" to so many words like "afther", "aht" for out, and "wan" for one which makes it hard to read when it's throughout the dialogue. I don't mind some dialect but this has way too much.

[Matthew Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Plays set at various stages of the upheaval that gripped Ireland between 1915-22. Each play features predominantly working class characters and depicts the struggles, conflicts and contradictions of their lives in an increasingly schismatic society.

Shadow of a Gunman - set in 1920 during the Irish War of Independence. A poet named Donal Davoren has moved to a Dublin tenement slum where he rooms with Seamus a peddlar. The residents of the tenement believe him to be a "gunman" i.e. an IRA soldier on the run from British authorities, hiding out and laying low in the tenements. Davoren does not dissuade them from this notion, enjoying (somewhat vainly) the renown of this fugitive persona, especially when it garners attention from Minnie Powell, a young and beautiful tenement resident. Events take a tragic turn when the tenement is raided by the Black & Tans, and the residents discover the contents of a bag dropped off earlier by Seamus' 'business associate'.

Juno and the Paycock - set in 1922 shortly after the outbreak of the Irish Civil War. The play details the various misfortunes of the Boyle family-layabout drunken father "Captain" Boyle (The "paycock") who gets pains in his legs at the mention of getting a job, long suffering mother Juno who struggles to keep the family together, their son Johnny a debilitated IRA soldier who fears reprisals from an act of betrayal, and daughter Mary, who misjudges the character of a love interest and ends up abandoned and pregnant. Like the other plays in this trilogy there is plenty of humour, but this is the bleakest and most miserable of the three.

The Plough and the Stars - The most fully realised, well balanced, and best, of the trilogy -a near perfect blend of comedy and tragedy. The first two acts are set in 1915 amid growing nationalist fervour, and the second two acts are set during the Easter Rising of 1916. It's characters are battlers and working class discontents of various shades. The play neither glorifies for vilifies - it simply casts an eye over the conflicting viewpoints of the everyday people caught up in the tumult of the events that, at the time, were met with confusion in some quarters and revulsion in others, but were later to become nation-defining.

[Felicity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread before attending Druid Theatre's same-day performance of all three plays in the Dublin trilogy, presented in historical not biographical order. A contemporary Irish audience is now noticeably more receptive to O'Casey's once heretical representation of the Rising, specifically of its consequences for the working class.