SOURCE: “‘There's Nothin' Derogatory in th' Use o' th' Word’: A Study in the Use of Language in The Plough and the Stars,” in Irish University Review, Vol. 15, No. 2, Autumn, 1985, pp. 169-88.

In the following essay, Schrank analyzes the dramatic functions of language in The Plough and the Stars, describing the effects of a developing political consciousness on the characters' discourse.

O'Casey's dramatic language is at once one of the most impressive aspects of his stagecraft and one of the least analysed. Impressionistic responses to O'Casey's language tend to alternate between nebulous enthusiasm for its Elizabethan lushness¹ and vague assertions about its ‘ideological bloat and embarrassing bombast.’² Attempting a more precise description, David Krause emphasises the comic elements of dialogue³ while Robert Hogan looks at such rhetorical devices as ‘the personified adjective’ and ‘the derogatory epithet’.⁴ Other critics focus on its dynamic qualities. For Raymond Williams, O'Casey's verbal...