SOURCE: “The Silver Tassie: The Post-World-War-I Legacy,” in Modern Drama, Vol. XXII, No. 1, June, 1979, pp. 125-36.

In the following essay, Rollins and Rabby situate the dramatic patterns and techniques of The Silver Tassie within the context of other contemporary plays that deal with the horror of war, showing how O'Casey's adaptations of the theme contribute to the originality of the work

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, … 

In the final months and in the years following World War I, that extended nightmare that shattered an established hierarchical social order that had provided stability and spiritual serenity for centuries of European men, a new mood of bewilderment, despair, and cynical alienation tormented millions of disenchanted people in the western world. And as is so often the case, it was the artists, especially the playwrights, who first gave voice to this new...