SOURCE: “The Passionate Autodidact: The Importance of Litera Scripta for O’Casey,” in Irish University Review, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring, 1980, pp. 59-76.

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

He took the Reading Lesson-book out of his pocket, opened it, and recited:

I chatther, chatther as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever. 

Well, he’d learned poethry and kissed a girl. If he hadn’ gone to school, he’d met the scholars; if he hadn’ gone into the house, he had knocked at the door.¹

I

Sean O’Casey is the most bookish of all Irish dramatists.² From The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) to the last three plays, published together, Behind the Green Curtains, Figuro in the Night and The Moon Shines on Kylenamoe (1961), quotations...