Juno and the Paycock (1924): a Camouflage of the Irish Civil War

Abstract

O’Casey’s most popularly universal play, with its amazing plunges from wild comedy to black despair, retains all its dramatic potency and much of its social relevance a half century and more since it was written. Although, in the judgement of George Jean Nathan in his foreword to Five Great Modern Irish Plays; it is ‘one of the richest tragi¬comedies’, the final impression is one of a play steeped in poetic, humorous, baleful outrage, ringing with human compassion and condemnation. Lady Gregory, in her Journals, saw the play as ‘A wonderful and terrible play of futility, of irony, humour, tragedy’. And James Stephens, in a whimsical aside, called it ‘a dote’ of a play. (The reference is included in his Letters, published in 1974.)