Sean O'Casey Plays 2 (Contemporary Classics) - Softcover

O'Casey, Various

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571191827 ISBN 13: 9780571191826

Publisher: Sean O'Casey, 1998

Synopsis

Sean O'Casey Plays 2, introduced by Arthur Miller, documents O'Casey's transition from realism to his use of expressionism and symbolism.

The Shadow of the Gunman and The Plough with Stars, two installments in the Dublin Trilogy, give a realistic look at life in the slums of Dublin. Meanwhile, The Silver Tassie, originally rejected by William Bulter Yeats (director of the Abbey Threatre), is a tragicomedy based on the cruel horrors of World War I. It shows the price which the common people have to pay for the stupidities of war. Purple Dust and Hell and Healing are also included in this volume which show O'Casey's use of expressionism and symbolism.

About this title

About the Author:

Sean O'Casey was born on March 30, 1880 in Dublin, Ireland. His first plays, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars, also known as the Dublin Trilogy, were performed at the Abbey Theatre with great success; these plays are collected in one volume called The Dublin Trilogy, which is available exculsively from Faber & Faber. His many works include The Star Turned Red, The Silver Tassie, and Purple Dust. He died on September 18, 1964.

Review:

"There is a new drama rising from unplumbed depths to sweep the nice little bourgeois efforts of myself and my contemporaries into the dustbin." --George Bernard Shaw (from a letter to Charles B. Cochran, 1928)

"As for the envy you felt about the play [O'Neill's Morning Becomes Electra], hell, don't you know I want to bite off one of your ears in jealous fury every time I think of you--well, of The Plough and the Stars, to mention only one of several." --Eugene O'Neill (from a letter to Sean O'Casey, August 5, 1943)

"There is something tremendous about both Juno and the Paycock and O'Casey's other great masterpiece, The Plough and the Stars, that sends the audience reeling into the night groping wildly for superlatives. What's astonishing about these dramas, apart from the sheer richness and generosity of their humanity, is their ability, in Shakespeare's great phrase, 'to move wild laughter in the throat of death'. Both were described by the author as tragedies, and both feature violent killings, yet there is an extraordinary comic spirit at work." --Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Sean O'Casey
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0571191827
• ISBN 13: 9780571191826
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448