by Sean O’Casey

Sean O’Casey was born John Casey in 1880 in Dublin and baptized in the Church of Ireland. After the death of his father, in 1886, the family sank into the poverty of the Dublin tenements. Throughout the beginning of the twentieth century, O’Casey was politically active, becoming a nationalist, joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (forerunner of the Irish Republican Army), and also a socialist, joining a union in 1911 and participating in a major Dublin strike of 1913. The Shadow of a Gunman was accepted for production by the Abbey Theatre in 1923. In the following year, the Abbey produced Juno and the Paycock. Though the play established his reputation in Ireland, O’Casey would ultimately find that in order to draft the plays he was interested in writing, and see them produced, he would have to leave Ireland. His next...