The Risen O’Casey: Some Marxist and Irish Ironies

Abstract

Sean O’Casey has not been served well by his sympathetic Marxist critics; they have misplaced their praise of his proletarian genius by distorting his dramatic art in order to constrict his work to a hard line of Communist dogma. Nevertheless, he has escaped the danger of their good intentions because he was always his own man, his own playwright, committed to his own pragmatic principles of drama, eclectic and flexible principles that were, structurally and theatrically, the antithesis of politically oriented socialist-realism. He was one of that rare breed of self-made Communists who walked alone and made a special point of never belonging to the Communist Party.