Seán O'Casey

Seán O'Casey (Dublin, 1880 - Torquay, 1964) was an Irish playwright and a committed socialist. He was the first Irish dramatist of note to put the lives of Dublin's working class on stage. He wrote in English, in the wake of W. B. Yeats and J. M. Synge, who were trying to build a distinctly Irish theatre, but his own view of that world was blunter and more social.

Born John Casey into a large Protestant family in north Dublin, he lost his father as a child and the household moved from one house to another around the district. His eyesight was poor, so his schooling suffered; he left at fourteen and worked as a railwayman and at various other jobs. He joined the Gaelic League in 1906 and learned Irish, and later took up the cause of the labour movement under Jim Larkin. His direct political involvement was brief, and writing soon became the centre of his life.

His first accepted play, The Shadow of a Gunman, opened at the Abbey Theatre in 1923. It was followed by Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926), the three plays now known as the Dublin Trilogy. They mix comedy and tragedy to show tenement life, the risks of blind patriotism and the violence of the Civil War and the 1916 Rising. The Plough and the Stars provoked a riot in the theatre. Later, living in London, he saw The Silver Tassie, a play attacking imperialist war, turned down by the Abbey, and went on to write more experimental work such as the allegorical Within the Gates.

His legacy lies in giving a voice to the ordinary people of Dublin at a time when Irish drama had leaned heavily on rural and heroic themes. Critics also note the sympathy with which he portrays his female characters. The Dublin Trilogy remains a core part of the twentieth-century Irish repertoire.