Seán O'Casey

Seán O'Casey (1880–1964) was an Irish playwright whose dramas portray working-class Dublin amid political upheaval, often combining social realism with comedy and tragedy.

The Shadow of a Gunman: A 1923 play in which mistaken assumptions about an IRA gunman expose fear and hardship in a Dublin tenement. Its 1920 setting begins O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy with political suspicion inside everyday domestic life.
Dublin: The capital of Ireland, situated on the country's east coast. O'Casey's early plays draw their streets, tenements, and political tensions from the city where he grew up.
W. B. Yeats: An Irish poet and dramatist who helped lead the Irish Literary Revival and co-founded the Abbey Theatre. Yeats supported O'Casey's early plays at the Abbey, though he opposed the political treatment of The Plough and the Stars.
Irish Literary Revival: A late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century cultural movement that renewed interest in Irish literature, folklore, and national identity. The Abbey's revivalist mission framed the reception of O'Casey's urban working-class plays.
Juno and the Paycock: A 1924 tragedy-comedy about a Dublin family whose hopes are unsettled by the Irish Civil War and a promised inheritance. It shows how national conflict and false hope strain a working-class household.
Irish working class: A social group comprising people whose livelihoods depend primarily on paid manual or low-wage labor in Ireland. His plays center families whose poverty and precarious work shape their choices.
Lady Gregory: An Irish dramatist and folklorist who co-founded the Abbey Theatre with W. B. Yeats and Edward Martyn. As a leading Abbey figure, she helped bring O'Casey's early Dublin plays to the stage.
Expressionism: An artistic movement that distorts form and imagery to convey subjective experience and emotional intensity. O'Casey's turn toward expressionist staging in The Silver Tassie departed from his earlier naturalistic settings.
The Plough and the Stars: A 1926 play portraying Dublin residents during the 1916 Easter Rising. Its tenement characters experience the Rising as both political spectacle and immediate danger.
Irish nationalism: A political movement seeking Irish self-government or independence from British rule. Nationalist activism formed part of O'Casey's experience and became a contested force in his Dublin plays.

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