In the following essay, which was originally published in a different form in Krause's Sean O'Casey: The Man and His Work (1960), Krause argues that O'Casey's first four plays articulate an antiheroic condemnation of war.

In the following essay, Kleiman argues that O'Casey's plays express an absurdist view of life, but in a more humanistic tone than is registered in the works of Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and other playwrights associated with the "Theater of the Absurd."

In the following excerpt, Krause describes the historical and religious contexts of Cock-a-Doodle Dandy in relation to the comedic themes expressed in the play.

In the essay below, Jordan examines the importance of literary allusions in O’Casey’s dramaturgy.

In the essay below, Innes argues that O'Casey's dramaturgical development exhibits a consistent pattern rather than a break in styles, as most critics maintain.

In the following essay, Kosok demonstrates that O'Casey's influence on contemporary dramatists was negligible beyond his work in the “Dublin trilogy.”

In the following essay, Zeiss analyzes O'Casey's use of formalized dialogue and epiphanies in The Silver Tassie and Red Roses for Me, contending that O'Casey's usage suggests a religious view of experience.

Hogan is an American playwright, educator, and critic. In the following excerpt, he discusses O'Casey's "expressionistic" use of rhetorical, dramatic, and stylistic artifice, which sharply contrasts with the more familiar methods of realism.

In the following essay, O'Casey responds to the animosity expressed by Dublin critics towards his plays, particularly their relentless berating of The Bishop's Bonfire.

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

In the following essay, Armstrong compares The Shadow of Gunman with certain parts of the fourth volume of O'Casey's autobiography, revealing the significance of the personal element that determines the play's formal features.

An English critic and novelist, Williams was highly acclaimed for his neo-Marxist studies of literature, culture, and society. Some of his best-known works include The Long Revolution (1961), The Country and the City (1973), and Marxism and Literature (1977). In the following excerpt, originally published in his Drama from Ibsen to Brecht (1968), Williams contends that O'Casey's dramas primarily exploit the ironic contrast between the violence and desolation of life in Dublin and the carefree...

O'Neill-Barna is an American writer. In the following review, she asserts that O'Casey's status as a major playwright and a social and theatrical visionary, long obscured by the opposition of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats and other influential critics, is firmly established in The Sean O'Casey Reader.

The Silver Tassie represents a radical departure from Sean O'Casey's early work, and its most significant aspects have been almost consistently misunderstood by his critics. The play is a conscious blend of naturalism and symbolic expressionism, and as such is unified through language, imagery, and theme, rather than through character. O'Casey himself wrote to W. B. Yeats, in their famous controversy over the play [documented in O'Casey's Blasts and Benedictions]: "...

In the following essay, which was originally published in 1953, O'Casey addresses the role and significance of a sense of humor in both literature and life.

Gilman is an American critic, editor, and educator. In the following review, a small portion of which appeared in CLC-5, he contends that O'Casey's literary reputation has been unduly inflated by critics, and that the value of his correspondence is not in "revelation about what-lies-behind-greatness … [but that of insight into a flawed career."]

Recurring patterns of destructive disorder underlie and link all the elements of [The Shadow of a Gunman] from the sloppiness of Seumas's room to the political messiness of the Irish "troubles." In Shadow, O'Casey creates a universe in which God is dead, the religious professions of his characters are full of violence and cant, the ship of state is going down in a blood-dimmed tide, slum poverty is destroying the privacy and threatening the sanity of its inhabitants, and personal...

Because of his unabashed love of melodramatic devices, and particularly because of his self-taught reflections of the Bible, Shakespeare, and Dion Boucicault, O'Casey has been regarded with some justice as Synge's opposite. An urban primitivist in contrast with the sophisticated, well-read Bohemian, he is deeply committed to the power of impassioned, idiomatic speech to reform society. His seething resentments are spewed upon a puritanical Catholic clergy, the narrow-minded petite bourgeoisie,...

In the following excerpt, Campbell contends that Juno and the Paycock and Shadow of a Gunman authentically and sympathetically portray Dublin's working classes and that these dramas also espouse a feminist political agenda.

MacNeice was an Irish-born English poet, playwright, critic and educator. In the following review of Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well, he faults O'Casey's writing as overly polemical and intemperate, yet concludes that its vitality and verbal invention redeem these shortcomings.

Certain ideas and themes preoccupied Sean O'Casey's mind throughout his life. As we might expect, they recur again and again in his work, in autobiographical narratives and occasional prose writings as well as in the drama. Most important of these recurrent interests, perhaps, is O'Casey's desire to find order and harmony in a world rent by physical and spiritual chaos…. In his drama emphasis is often placed on disorder and selfishness, shown particularly in social and eco...

Weatherby is an English journalist and novelist. In the following excerpt from an interview that was originally published in the Manchester Guardian on 10 September 1959, O'Casey reflects on his relationship to the Abbey Theatre and his decision to use a more extravagant dramatic style after Juno and the Paycock. O'Casey's wife also participates in the interview.

An American journalist and critic, Atkinson was perhaps the most influential and respected theater critic of his time. In the following mixed review of Sunset and Evening Star, he asserts that, in spite of its quarrelsome tirades and general irascibility, O'Casey's prose still evokes "grandeur" and a joyous affirmation of life.

In the following review of Juno and the Paycock and The Shadow of a Gunman, the critic hails O'Casey as an impressive talent whose early work "deserves serious consideration."

In the following review of The Silver Tassie, Morgan assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the dramatic techniques found in the London production, claiming that O'Casey's political prejudices hurt the aesthetic dimension of the play.

In the following review of the world premiere of The Silver Tassie, the critic comments on the success of O'Casey's experimental dramatic practices.

In the following review of I Knock at the Door, the first of O'Casey's autobiographies, Reynolds asserts that the book's dramatic portraits and dialogue prove "again what a greatly gifted dramatist O'Casey is."

In most of the plays written after Within the Gates we are aware of a certain weakening. The reiterated attacks on the Irish priesthood lack balance; attempts to build youthful sexuality into a saving force pall; and the author's proclaimed communism is never, not even in The Star Turns Red where the communist leader Red Jim is little more than a figure of accepted morality, loaded with human fire. O'Casey is a visionary; his various conflicts are always part of some patterned whole suffused w...

In the following review of the London premiere of The Shadow of a Gunman, the critic focuses on O'Casey's dramatic technique, observing that the play's comedic overtones undermines its tragic dénouement.

In the following review of the London debut of Cock-a-Doodle Dandy, Brien faults the eloquence of O'Casey's dramatic language, which, in his opinion, detracts from the action and motivation of the play.

In the following review of the London production of The Silver Tassie, the critic admires the “deeply felt and so remorselessly expressed” sentiments of the play.

This is the interest of Windfalls—that by its juxtaposition of what is distinguished and what is not, the essential O'Casey and the incidental, it facilitates a definition of the former. (p. 167) Mr. O'Casey is a master of knockabout in this very serious and honourable sense—that he discerns the principle of disintegration in even the most complacent solidities, and activates it to their explosion. This is the energy of his theatre, the triumph of the principle of knockabout in s...

In the following review of the Court Theatre production of The Shadow of a Gunman, Jennings perceives a problem with O'Casey's comedic timing and the play's tragic intent.