SEAN O'CASEY'S

JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK:

"CHASSIS" WITHIN AND WITHOUT

KAORU IMANISHI

I

Juno and the Paycock was first produced at the Abbey Theatre in 1924, and

it was an enormous success. Lady Gregory, who appreciated Sean O'Casey's

work and was his patron, proudly wrote that the production of Juno and the

Paycock saved the Abbey Theatre from financial crisis and so the Abbey

became a theatre for the people again. l She also said to Yeats, "This is one of

the evenings at the Abbey which makes me glad to have been born."2

Y eats and Lady Gregory, in the Irish Dramatic Movement, advocated two

types of drama: plays containing Celtic myths, and plays depicting the life

of peasants or working class people in the countryside or in the urban slums.

Most of Yeats's works are of the former, and the latter are represented by

those of ]. M. Synge and Sean O'Casey. William Armstrong comments:

]. M. Synge is the first of the numerous Irish dramatists of peasant life. Like Synge's O'Casey'simagination functioned best when it was dealing with a time and a place of which he had had firsthand experience. 3

O'Casey's early exprience of harsh Dublin reality compelled him to write

about lower-class concerns for shelter, food and employment. From bitter

experience he created his famous Dublin trilogy in which the setting is the

poor quarter of Dublin tenements, and the characters are lower-class people.

[99J

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In chronological order, The Plough and the Stars covers 1915 to 1916, The

Shadow of a Gunman, 1920, and Juno and the Paycock, 1922. The subjects of all

three plays are treated from the viewpoint of the slum dwellers. In these

plays O'Casey casts a doubt on the heroic images of the military actions of

this period.

Juno and the Paycock has a straightforward three act structure, and it treats

the problems of the people living in the socially and economically depressed

and politically disintegrated world of Dublin in 1920s. In this work O'Casey

criticizes human folly, furnishing details of the nature of suffering through

describing various Dublin citizens, especially the members of the Boyle

family.

IT

Juno and the Paycock has four plots: Juno's son Johnny Boyle and the

outside world, Juno's daughter Mary and her relations with boyfriends and

the labour movements, the tragicomical events after the Boyles receive the

news of the will, and finally, binding these three plots together-that of Juno

and all three family members, especially the "Paycock," Jack Boyle.

O'Casey's first intention in creating this work was to depict a wounded

Diehard, victimized for his betrayal of his organization, as the main hero.

Gabriel Fallon gives testimony to' the creation of this masterpiece:

He had been telling me for some time about a play he had mapped out, a play which would deal with the tragedy of a crippled IRA man, one Johnny Boyle. He mentioned this play many times and always it was the tragedy of Johnny. I cannot recall that he once spoke about Juno or Joxer or the Captain; always Johnny.4

O'Casey wanted to write the tragic story of a man involved in a political

movement. The aftermath of the treaty that created the Irish Free State

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provides the play's historical background. The majority of the Irish

welcomed this treaty since it meant no more fighting and killing, but Diehard

Republicans regarded it as a debasing defeat in the name of compromise, and

determined to fight until the whole of Ireland got total independence.

Consequently, "irregular" forces fought against each other, and Irish people

started killing their fellow countrymen. O'Casey could not bear this folly,

and wanted to depict the barrenness of civil strife through J ohnny's conflict.

The plot involving J ohnny acts as a mediator between the domestic

problems of the Boyle family and the civil war which influences all the Irish

people. It is only through J ohnny's political involvement that the dark side

of the historical background enters the play. Ronald Rollins states the

negative and destructive consequences of the political movements of that

time:

The fear of abrupt displacement, imprisonment, or death was real and recurrent for many Irishmen during this turbulent period in which sabotage, ambushes, lootings, savage reprisal raids, and swift execu­tions became almost daily occurrences in Ireland's nightmarish agony for independence and identification.

O'Casey himself vividly evokes the tension and trauma that engulfed his homeland during this time.5

John O'Riordan suggests, moreover, that "Chaos and confusion within the

tenement signify turmoil outside, as a result of the selfishness of the Civil

War."6

O'Casey skillfully weaves outside social and political situations into the

domestic tragedy in order to remind us of what is happening outside. At the

same time the domestic commotion reminds us of the upheaval of the outside

world even though all the action takes place inside the house. The inside is

the mirror of the outside, and the outside of the inside.

At the beginning of the first act, Mary reads from a newspaper the horrible

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death-wounds of the victim of an ambush, which suddenly makes Johnny

nervous and restless. J ohnny had his hip shot during the Easter Rising of

1916 and had his arm shattered by a bomb during the Black and Tans War of

1920. He shouts, "Oh, quit that readin', for God's sake' Are yous losing' all

your feelin's? It'll soon be that none of you'll read any thin' that's not about

butcherin",,7 At first it is not clear why J ohnny reacts so hysterically to the

newspaper article, but here is a hint that the outside world is about to

encroach on their home.

The victim reported in the newspaper is Robbie Tancred, the son of the

neighbour Mrs. Tancred, with whom Johnny was closely associated before.

After hearing this report, Johnny wants a floating votive light kept burning

and hates to be left alone. The stage direction says that "there is a tremulous

look of indefinite fear in his eyes" (49). Gradually it is revealed that Johnny

leaked inside information to the rival organization, which led to Robbie

Tancred's death. His fear grows out of a guilty conscience.

O'Casey emphasizes the futility and meaninglessness of Irishmen killing

each other over a few phrases in the Treaty. He deplores the situation in

which the majority of the people are at the mercy of extremists on both sides.

This political conflict forms the oppressive background of the play, but he

always insists that the true oppressors of the Irish people are poverty and

ignorance. He rejects the way of helping out the oppressed people through

nationalism which inevitably leads to violence. He draws attention to the

horrific situation of Ireland through depicting the bitter quarrels among the

Boyle family members and the process of the family's disintegration.

There are references in the play to The Wild Duck, and O'Casey puts

forward an Ibsenite socialist idea that the liberation of each individual is the

only solution for the whole trouble, not the entire liberation of a nation

through an ideological slogan or massive inhuman actions. He wants each

man to have the equal chance and right to lead a decent life, free {[om

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Ignorance and starvation.

By showing the reality of the Dublin slum, he wants to contribute to the

betterment of the social conditions of the poor. His main concern is the

underprivileged, who suffer from the ideological conflict and who have to

bear the poverty inflicted by exploitation and neglect. He thinks labour

movements, socialist organizations, and religious authorities fail to satisfy

the needs of lower-class people. His concern lies in the devastating impact of

political upheaval on the slum existence of the lower-class people. He

satirizes the irresponsibie authorities and also the irrationality of ordinary

people which prevents them from living life as it should be lived. B. L. Smith

notes:

In O'Casey's vision, organized religion, nationalistic organizations, and politics are all mad games played by mad men. In any conflict of these forces, civil or universal, it is individual human life that is destroyed or impaired; it is individuals who make up mobs, even when the mobs are called armies; ultimately, there is no panacea and individuals must shoulder the responsibility for their own well-being rather than blame their miseries on those in power or wait for an outside miracle to relieve their suffering 8

When the tragic tension heightens, J ohnny asks God for help: "Shut the

door, shut the door, quick, for God's sake' Great God, have mercy on me!

Blessed Mother 0' God, shelter me, shelter your son!" (73). He asks J uno to

shield him from the menace because he senses danger is imminent: "Sit here,

sit here, mother. .. between me an' the door" (74). When Mrs. Tancred

appears on her way to her son's funeral, the neighbour praises the "noble

death" of Tobbie Tancred: " ... bury him like a king" (70). Mrs. Tancred

bitterly laments: "An' I'll go on livin' like a pauper" (79). The consequence

of heroic death is suggested here. It brings misery for the people concerned.

She laments: "Ah, what's the pains I suffered bringin' him into the world to

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carry him to his cardle, to the pains I'm sufferin' now, carryin' him out 0' the

world to bring him to his grave'" (79). She not only emotionally describes the

scene of his death, but rationally balances the views :- "An' I'm told he was

the leadher of the ambush where me nex' door neighbour, Mrs. Mannin', lost

her Free State soldier son. An' now here's the two of us our women, standin'

one on each side of a scales 0' sorra, balanced be the bodies of our two dead

darlin' sons" (80). She continues: "Sacred Heart of the Crucified Jesus, take

away our hearts 0' stone ... an' give us hearts 0' flesh!. .. take away this

murdherin' hate ... an' give us Thine own eternal love!" (80). Here O'Casey's

pacifist ideas can be detected.

After everyone else is gone, a Mobiliser enters the room and finds J ohnny

there alone. At last he is found out, and is requested to account for the death

of Tobbie Tancred. Johnny pleads for mercy: "Haven't I done enough for

Ireland! I've lost me arm, an' me hip's desthroyed so that I'll never be able to

walk right agen! Good God, haven't I done enough for Ireland?" (83). The

Mobiliser answers curtly: "Boyle, no man can do enough for Ireland!" (83).

Even if he sacrifices his life for Ireland, it is not enough. O'Casey is critical

of this kind of nationalistic zeal and tries to make 'people understand the

mistake of blind fanaticism. He emphasizes that Johnny is a victim of

circumstances and criticises the whole concept of heroism. When J ohnny is

dragged out of the house to be shot for betrayal, he cries out in pain: "I'm

after feelin' a pain in me breast, like the tearin' by of a bullet!" (97). O'Casey

does not probe into the causes of political disputes here, but as David Rabey

argues

[O'Casey] is concerned to present an intensified image of the anomalies of attempted political resistance that sacrifices the human values which it ostensibly wishes to preserve, particularly highlighting the discrepancy between traditional elevated Irish ideals of heroism and the base self-destruction perpetrated in their name 9

105

O'Casey's principal aim is to make people question again fixed notions

which only make a situation more complicated and bring about disasters

among ordinary citizens. Ronald Ayling has analysed the tactics of

O'Casey's dramaturgy for this purpose:

... O'Casey sets in motion a series of emotional and intellectual collisions with which to disturb the minds of the spectators, to challenge and subvert the conventional moral and social attitudes of native audiences. He wanted to startle, shock, even scandalize Irish audiences into questioning inherited political and religious beliefs and, indeed, reverential national attitudes on all levels of public life .... It is not the familiarity of the subject matter. .. that affects native or non-native audiences so much as it is the author's deliberate and disturbing manipulation of such experience. 10

A minor plot concerning Mary is her love relationships with her

boy-friends and contribution to the labour movement. According to the stage

direction, Mary is described as being driven by two forces: "one, through the

circumstances of her life, pulling her back; the other, through the influence

of books she has read, pushing her forward" (47). Though she belongs to the

lower class, she is an intelligent girl who likes to read Ibsen. She is also a

faithful follower of Labour principles, and stands up to injustice, demanding

workers' rights. As Johnny acts according to Republican principles, Mary

sticks to her principles and is inflexible. As J ohnny's destruction is caused

by "principle so abstract that it turns into its opposite-total lack of

principle,"ll Mary is destroyed by her principles. O'Casey is critical of the

frigid attitude epitomized in the phrase "a principle's a principle" (49), which

does not allow any flexible options.

Mary shows her stance: "The hour lS past now when we'll ask the

employers' permission to wear what we like" (49), and, "What's the use of

belongin' to a Trades Union if you won't stand up for your principles?" (49).

106

She had a boyfriend, Devine,who was a staunch trade-unionist, but now she

is in love with a schoolmaster, Bentham, who may possibly give her a chance

to obtain intellectual and social emancipation. After she is eventually

deserted by Bentham, she is disillusioned by love and shocked to find that

Devine's humanity is also superficiaL O'Casey's disappointment with the

labour movement and socialism and his pessimistic view of humanity are

reflected in Mary's discovery of the discrepancy between theoretical

principles and their reality in practice.

In contrast to the plots on politics and labour movements, the will, which

Herbert Goldstone calls a "gimmick,"12 introduces comical elements into the

entire story.

In the first act we are told that J uno is the only breadwinner since Boyle is

out of work, Mary is on strike, and J ohnny cannot work because of his

handicap. Therefore they are extremely poor and often have to buy food on

credit At the end of the first act Mr. Bentham, a schoolmaster, brings the

unexpected news of the will in which Mr. Boyle is left between £1,500 and

£2,000 by his first cousin. Hearing this, Mary ecstatically cries: "A fortune,

father, a fortune!" (66). This money may help her to ascend in society. It will

give Johnny a safe haven from his pursuers by enabling him to run away:

"We'll be able to get out 0' this place now, an' go somewhere we're not

known" (66). It will be a relief from financial problems for Juno. She says to

her husband: "You won't have to trouble a job for awhile, Jack" (66). Boyle's

reaction is complex. He prays to God, decides to break his relationship with

the scoundrel Joxer, and declares: "I'm a new man from this out" (67). He

regards the money as a new-found basis for becoming a respectable man. The

news of this will completely changes the relations among family members, as

well as between the Boyle family and their neighbours.

In the second act we see the effects of the will more vividly. O'Casey's

tactical use of this will as comic relief to balance the serious issues is

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excellent. Boyle starts to buy furniture "of a vulgar nature" (68) on credit.

Juno becomes lenient toward her husband and sometimes even seems to be

subservient. She is no longer a nagging wife and mother.

In the third act, which takes place two months after the second act, the will

is revealed to be worthless because of a legal fault. Hearing this news, Mrs.

Madigan comes to take back the gramophone, which is the symbol of

spurious luxury. Boyle is stripped of his peacock's feathers. Mrs. Madigan is

adamant in breaking down the false image of Boyle : "You're not goin' to be

swankin' it like a paycock with Maisie Madigan's money-I'll pull some 0'

the gorgeous feathers out 0' your tail!" (90).

In the meantime, J uno and J ohnny do not know that the will is invalid.

Both of them think the money from the legacy is the only way to escape from

their miserable situation. Juno intends to leave the place to hide IVIary's

pregnancy. J ohnny wants to escape for life. Then Boyle reveals that no

money is coming: " ... the Will's a wash-out!" (93). Bentham's carelessness

and lack of experience in drawing up the will has shattered all the hope

and bonds of the Boyle family, percipitating the final downfall of the

family.

Financially the family are worse off than they were in the beginning.

Spiritually, this is a fatal blow to all of them. The embarrassment over the

will could be the cause of Bentham's sudden disappearance, but it is sure to

be related to the loss of hope of Mary's getting any money. His desertion of

Mary after making her pregnant would bring scandal to the family living in

conservative and religious Dublin. Mary becomes listless and weary, and is

far from the progressive girl, full of energy and spirit, seen in the first act.

Learning Bentham has deserted Mary, Juno laments: " ... oh, is there not

even a middlin' honest man left in th' world?" (93).

After J uno learns of the loss of the legacy, the peaceful relations between

Juno and Boyle end. Johnny becomes wild after he comes to know the truth,

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and verbally attacks his father for his irresponsibility. J ohnny's last hope is

shattered now, though he could not have been saved, even if Boyle had

gotten the money, because the apparition of the dead comrade would have

followed him wherever he went. Now he even blames Juno for her lack of

attention to Boyle's behaviour. J uno cannot stand this accusation after

hearing of Mary's pregnancy and Bentham's desertion: "If you don't whisht,

Johnny, you'll drive me mad."

Who has kep' th' home together for the past few years-only me? an' who'll

have to bear th' biggest part o'this throuble but me?" (94). Although she

protests against J ohnny's accusation, she realizes it is no longer possible to

sustain the entire structure of family. The only way left for her is to separate

from Boyle and find her own true worth.

ill

Juno and the Paycock is a tragicomedy l3 juxtaposing tragic and comIc

elements with irony and humor. Though the play is described as "A Tragedy

in Three Acts" (48) by O'Casey, it has a lot of comical elements. O'Riordan

comments:

... it is not tragedy in the authentic sense, but tragedy beyond tragedy: an ironic comedy-a comedy of Irish manners-that permeates the tragic underlay, one moment centred round the fraudulent "Paycock" himself and his parasitical croy ... and yet another instant, focusing on the tragic and forceful predicament of Juno herself, struggling to keep the home together against impossible odds of fate and her husband. 14

Juno and the Paycock is a difficult play to produce. It cannot be tragedy or

comedy. It requires a balance of both strains; tragic characters with comic

foils, comical situations· with tragic implications. Unless the tragi-comical

patterns and rhythms are well maintained, the entire construction becomes

either grotesquely comic or sentimentally tragic.

109

O'Casey himself comments: "A laugh is the loud echo of a sigh; a sigh the

faint echo of laugh."15 O'Casey believed that drama should be a combination

of the joy and despair of life. His mastery of the construction of the play is

found in his combining of comic and tragic elements.

Raymond Williams goes even further, and says that "life is seen as a farce

with death cutting across it»l6 in this play. Though the Boyles' destruction is

caused by forces from both outside and inside, we can still laugh at the silly

behaviour and pompous attitude of Boyle ; he is the most entertaining Irish

stock character, a likeable villain of traditional type. In contrast, we are in

deep sympathy with the bereaved mothers, Juno and Mrs. Tancred. Juno and

the Paycock not only contains humorous dialogue and ridiculous action mixed

with the tragic strain, but the comic and the tragic are intermingled so well

that comic parts relieve the tragic, and the tragic elements help to give the

comic parts their ironic depth. The drama ends on two levels: first with

Juno's desperate but hopeful walking out on Boyle to start a new life with

Mary, and then the absurdly joyous mo·od created by drunken Boyle and

J oxer in a completeiy empty and deserted room. The contrast of the comic

and tragic elements is shown well in the emotional climax of J uno and the

anti-climax of Boyle's and J oxer's last appearance on the stage. These two

endings reflect O'Casey's well-balanced idea of life mixed with tragic and

comic elements, and "they reveal the ironic cross-purposes of life."17 Robert

Lowery notes:

A striking example of O'Casey's specific use of contrast is the end of Juno and the Paycock, where the great emotional climax of the bereft mother is not left standing a catharsis to dramatise the spectator purged by pity and terror, but is contrasted with the appearance of Boyle behind drunk in a sense that, taken by itself, could have come out of a music-hall comedy18

This shifting viewpoint leads us to a more profound understanding of the

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tragic nature of the events. Boyle mocks the misfortune of his family and the

misery of Ireland as if he were a clown: "Boyle affirms by denying, rises by

falling, laments by laughing.»l9 He is comforted in his defeat by creating his

own illusory victories. Carol Kleiman comments:

Yet the laughter which arises is ... a reaffirming laughter, for it springs from our own awareness of the discrepancy between the amount of anguish evoked and the amount which might reasonably be justified by the "state 0' chassis" that prevails. We laugh at Boyle and J oxer because ... they are actually not even aware of the true dimensions of the "chassis" that has invaded their lives.20

The most distinctive feature of this tragi-comedy is the skillful character­

ization. Lady Gregory first recognized O'Casey's gift of characterization.

O'Casey notes that it encouraged him to complete this play: "'Mr. Casey,

your gift is characterisation.' And so I threw over my theories and worked at

characters and this is the result."21 O'Casey's characters are complex, and

their patterns of action and speech are sometimes inconsistent. We cannot

classify his characters as good or bad simply by their speech patterns or

actions. O'Casey believes that each person is the integration of complex

features, which are sometimes contradictory. He tries to show that Captain

Boyle is in all of us.

It is the tragedy of vanity, and of subservience to vanity. There is a touch of Boyle in all of us. We strut along thinking that our shadows shine. There's a touch of J oxer in a lot of us ; saying yes where we ought to say no. And I hope there is some of Mrs. Boyle in us all 22

Juno, similar to O'Casey's mother,23 is a kind of universal mother figure,

as her name suggests. She is regarded as the central character of the play by

some critics:

Dramaturgically she is the most important link between the different

111

lines of action, participating equally in all of them. Moreover, she has to bear the weight of all three catastrophes, the effects of which are made manifest in her person. Formally, therefore, she is the dramatist's most important device in preserving the unity of his play. As a character, Juno from the start demands more attention than the other. She also stands out because she is the only one to undergo a development; and towards the end she takes on symbolic significance.24

J uno is the name of the Roman goddess, the wife of Jupiter and the

protectress of women and marriage, who is followed by a preening peacock

with markings said to look like one hundred eyes. But her husband's

explanation of the origin of the name is banal: "You see, J uno was born an'

christened in June; I met her in June; we were married in June, an' J ohnny

was born in June, so wan day I says to her, 'You should ha' been called J uno,

'an' the name stuck to her ever since" (65). D. Maxwell comments: "This

speaks beyond the level of repartee to the play's whole system of anti-heroic

ironies."25 Whatever Bolye's sarcastic interpretation may be, Juno functions

as the main support of the Boyles. Her husband and two children need her

support and protection. She tries to prevent her family from disintegrating,

and fights against poverty which is chiefly caused by the laziness of her

husband. Besides the family troubles, there is political and social unrest

outside. Juno weaves the family relations into a meaningful pattern, as Alan

Simpson states: " ... the most satisfying positive feature of Juno and the

Paycock is the firm structure, held together by the well-defined character of

J uno herself.,,26

At the beginning she is rather narrow-minded and cannot comprehend

Mary's genuine motive for joining the strikes, and she never shows sympathy

with heroic acts. Though her concern is daily bread, basically she is

generous and understanding. She wears herself out through the hardships of

poverty, the news of her son's death, and Bentham's desertion of the pregnant

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Mary.

Here we can detect an element of poetic justice. Juno should not have

changed her attitude toward her husband only because there was a prospect

that they would get money out of nowhere. It is human character that counts.

She despised him when he was poor, and she changed her mind when she

thought he was rich. That was her fatal mistake. She also regrets that she

didn't show enough sympathy when Mrs. Tancred's son was killed. Her final

speech is the repetition of Mrs. Tancred's at her own son's funeral, but with

this repetition the speech becomes weightier, and strikes our hearts with her

compassionate and piteous tone: "Sacred Heart 0' Jesus, take away our

hearts 0' stone, and give us hearts 0' flesh l Take away this murdherin' hate,

an' give us Thine own eternal love!" (100). This prayer shows not an ending

of Juno but the beginning of a development in a new direction.

On the other hand, Captain Boyle, who is the "Paycock" of the play's title,

learns nothing and shows no development. As his nickname "Paycock"

suggests, he always brags about himself, pretends to be something he clealy

is not. He is an irresponsible and conceited drunkard who is morally

bankrupt. He always expresses a willingness to accept any work he is

offered, and while he is waiting he spends his days idling or pub-crawling

with his parasitic crony Joxer. Whenever he receives news of a job, which

inevitably threatens his leisurely life, he starts to complain about the pains in

his legs. Juno cries out early in the play: "He wore out the Health Insurance

long ago, he's afther wearing out the unemployment dole, an' now, he's

thryin' to wear out me!" (48). When Jerry informs him of a construction job

from Father Farrel, Boyle tries to escape from his responsibility. His

irresponsibility frays J uno's nerves: "I killn' me self workin', an' he sthruttin'

about mornin' till night like a paycock!" (51).

While Juno is away, he satisfies himself with false pride: "Today, Joxer,

ther's goin' to be issued a proclamation be me, establishin' an independent

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Republic, an' Juno'll have to take an oath of allegiance" (62). He is

hypocritical and insensitive to J uno's suffering; yet, he rails on about the

insensitivity of human beings. Boyle laments that this world is "in a state 0'

chassis" (71). He is caught up in his own world and creates an ideal outside

image of himself, disregarding his own flawed character. He cannot

distinguish between fantasy and reality. Ronald Rollings relates this

realist-dreamer syndrome to the dramatist's:

An awareness of this duality-this psychic ambivalence -in O'Casey's person may enable one to comprehend more completely his dramas, especially the recurrent contrast of verisimilitude and vision that is present in virtually all of them. Perhaps it is not unreasonable to suggest that the realist-dreamer syndrome in the playwright is responsi­ble, to some extent, for the verisimilitude-vision counterpoint-for the contrast between what is and what might be-in his plays27

Boyle returns home with Joxer, stumbling drunkenly after Juno has

delivered her final elegy, "I've done all I could an' it was all no use-he'll be

hopeless till the end of his days" (99). He has not realized that his entire

family has disintegrated: J ohnny has been executed, their new possessions

have been taken away by the creditors, and J uno and Mary have left. Boyle

laments without noticing the nature of his chaos: ''I'm telling you ... J oxer.

th' whole worl's ... in a terr ... ible state 0' ... chassis'" (101).

N

Juno and the Paycock is regarded as one of O'Casey's best works since

comical elements and tragical elements are well interwoven and all four

plots-the relation between Juno and her family, Johnny's betrayal and its

reprisal, the incidents caused by the will, Mary's relations with J erry and

Bentham-blend together to form the central chaos of the play. Samuel

Beckett comments:

114

Mr. O'Casey is a master of knockabout in this very serious and honourable sense-that he discerns the principle of disintegration even the most complacent solidities, and activates it to their explosion. This i!3 the energy of his theatre, the triumph of the principle of knockabout in situation, in all its elements and on all its planes, from the furniture to the higher centres. If Juno and the Paycock, as seems likely, is his best work so far, it is because it communicates most fully this dramatic dehiscence, mind and world come asunder in irreparable dissociation "chassis"28

Depicting the chaos in family and grim pictures of political struggles in Juno

and the Paycock, O'Casey criticizes nationalism, and stresses poverty as a

serious destructive cause in our life. His belief in the importance of pacifism

and fair social criticism is the structural backbone of Juno and the Paycock.

Notes

1 Cf. Ann Saddlemyer and Colin Smythe (eds.), Lady Gregory, Fifty Years After

(Gerrads Cross, Bucks.' Colin Smythe Ltd., 1987), p.167.

2 As quoted by Elizabeth Coxhead, Lady Gregory (London: Macmillan, 1961),

p.198.

3 William A. Armstrong, Sean O'Casey (Harlow, Essex: Longman Group Ltd.,

1971), p.9.

4 Cf. Harold Bloom (ed.), Sean O'Casey (New York: Chelsea House Publishers,

1987), p.157.

5 Ronald G. Rollins, Sean O'Casey's Drama: Verisimilitude and Vision (Alabama:

The University of Alabama Press, 1979), p.13.

6 John O'Riordan, A Guide to O'Casey's Plays (London: Macmillan, 1984), p.58.

7 Sean O'Casey, Seven Plays by Sean O'Casey (London: Macmillan, 1985), p.48.

All the subsequent page references to this edition will be given in the text.

8 B. L. Smith, O'Casey's Satiric Vision (Kent: The Kent University Press, 1987),

pp.7·8.

9 David Ian Rabey, British and Irish Political Drama in the Twentieth Century

(London: Macmillan, 1986), p.34.

115

10 Ronald Ayling, "Sean O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy," in Thomas Kilroy (ed.), Sean

O'Casey: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, N. J. : Prentice·Hall,

Inc., 1975), p.5.

11 Ronald Ayling (ed.), O'Casey: The Dublin Trilogy (London: Macmillan, 1985),

p.1Ol.

12 Cf. Ronald Ayling (ed.), O'Casey: The Dublin Trilogy, p.94.

13 The word "tragicomedy" was probably first used by Sir Philip Sidney in his

"Apology for Poetry" (1595). Beaumost and Fletcher, contemporaries of

Shakesperare, are usually given credit for organizing the type of play that is both

tragedy and comedy.

Cf. Robert G. Lowery, O'Casey Annual No. 2, (London: Macmillan, 1983),

p.lll.

14 John O'Riordan, A Guide to O'Caseys Plays, p.40.

15 Ibid, p.4l.

16 Cf. Ibid, p.42.

17 Ronald Ayling (ed.), O'Casey: The Dublin Trilogy, p.39.

18 Robert G. Lowery, O'Casey Annual No. 2, p.8.

19 Robert G. Lowery, O'Casey Annual No. 1, (London: Macmillan, 1982), p.34.

20 Carol Kleiman, Sean O'Caseys Bridge of Vision (Toronto: University of Toronto

Press, 1982), pp.88·89.

21 Cf. Thomas Kilroy (ed.), Sean O'Casey: A Collection of Critical Essays, p.19.

22 As quoted by John O'Riordan, A Guide to O'Caseys Plays, p.40.

23 S. Cowasjee points out that most of the main characters in this tragedy are

portraits of people O'Casey knew well. Mary Bolye also resembles his sister Ella

as described in Sean O'Casey: The Man and His Work (New York: Macmillan,

1960), p.36.

24 Heinz Kosok, O'Casey The Dramatist, (Gerrads Cross, Bucks. : Colin Smythe,

1985), p.50.

25 D. E. S. Maxwell, A Critical History of Modern Irish Drama (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1984), p.100.

26 Alan Simpson, "The Unholy Trinity: A Simple Guide to Holy Ireland" in

David Krause and Robert G. Lowery, Sean O'Casey Centenary Essays (Gerrads

Cross, Bucks.: Colin Smythe Ltd., 1980), p.207.

116

27 Ronald G. Rotlins, Sean O'Casey's Drama: Verisimilitude and Vision, p.9.

28 Samuel Beckett, "The Essential and the Incidental," a review of O'Casey's

Windfalls, reprinted from The Bookman, 1934, xxxvi, in Carol Kleiman, Sean

O'Casey's Bridge of Vision (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1982), pp.87-88.