SOURCE: “The Sources and Themes of The Plough and the Stars,” in Modern Drama, Vol. 4, No. 3, December, 1961, pp 234-42.

In the following essay, Armstrong identifies specific sources for the main themes of The Plough and the Stars, drawing upon O'Casey's prose works to illuminate their significance.

Though Sean O'Casey did not fight in the Easter Rising of 1916, he helped to organise the Irish Citizen Army and was a shrewd and passionate observer of life in Dublin before, during, and after the most fateful week in the history of his native city. His autobiographical record of this period, Drums Under the Windows (1945), and his The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (1919) are important historical documents. They are also of much literary interest because they reveal some of the sources of his tragedy, The Plough and the Stars, and elucidate some of its main themes.

In The Story of the...