The Silver Tassie (1929)

Abstract

Many years may pass before Mr O’Casey’s art ceases to produce confusion in the mind of an audience accustomed by long theatrical usage to consistency of mood. Hitherto it has commonly been demanded of a play that it be tragic, or that it be comic, or, if by profession a tragi-comedy, that the contrasted elements should remain distinct, the one appearing as a ‘relief’ to the other. This theory Mr O’Casey has definitely abandoned, and has substituted for it another, still very unfamiliar in the theatre, though having its now recognised counterpart in the novels of Mr Aldous Huxley. We are no longer invited to give attention to one aspect of life and to consider it dominant for the time being. The unity of the work of art is no longer to depend upon the consistency of its material. Instead, as if the drama were being rolled over and tossed in air before our eyes like a diamond, we are so to observe its facets of tragedy, comedy, and open farce that their flashing becomes at last one flash and perhaps, by imaginative and symbolic transition, one spiritual light. Unity is to spring from diversity. The elements of drama are to be compounded — not separated, not mixed.