Sean O'Casey: Critical Guide / Three Dublin Plays: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars (Faber Critical Guides)

The next installment in The Faber Critical Guides Series: An in-depth look at the maverick Irish playwright

Sean O'Casey was one of the most affecting playwrights of his generation; a renegade who came of age at the dawn of Ireland's fight for independence from Britain and championed the working-class during the bleak years of The Great Depression. Praised for his genius-ear for dialogue and the poetry of his prose, O'Casey's work brought audiences into the gritty, impoverished world of Dublin's streets and pubs. His controversial plays helped establish the reputation of the internationally renowned Abbey Theatre, where the productions of The Plough and the Stars and Juno and the Paycock were met with riots and vigorous protests.

In Sean O'Casey, Christopher Murray examines the abovementioned works as well as The Shadow of a Gunman, which taken together comprise O'Casey's famed Dublin trilogy, and elucidates the social context of the plays and the theatrical environment of the times--crucial elements in understanding O'Casey's writing.