The Integrity of Juno and the Paycock

The Integrity of Juno and the Paycock WILLIAM A. ARMSTRONG • THE WRITING OF A GENUINE TRAGEDY is a rare literary achievement. Sean O'Casey offers Juno and the Paycock to us as a tragedy and one of the main aims of this short essay is to justify its claim to this high distinction. All tragedies reveal universal truths through their treatment of particular conflicts. Just as some of the finest Greek tragedies, like Aeschylus's Oresteia, move us more deeply if we know how their characters and events have been conditioned by the ten years' war between Greek and Trojan, so the tragic quality of Juno and the Paycock can be experienced in its fulness only if we know and appreciate the military and political background of this highly topical drama, which is set in the last year of a violent and revolutionary period of Irish history, extending from 1912 to 1922. The Irish refer to the most disastrous events of these years as 'the Troubles,' and 'troubles' is a key-word in Juno and the Paycock. In 1912, the British Government drafted a Bill designed to give Home Rule to Ireland, which up to that time had sent representatives to the Parliament in Westminster, London. The Unionist Party in Ulster, the northeastern province of Ireland, strongly opposed the Bill and organised an army called the Ulster Volunteers to prevent its being carried into effect. This led organisations in favour of independence to recruit armies to further their aims; in 1913, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union founded the Irish Citizen Army: in 1"914, the Republican party known as Sinn Fein ("We' Ourselves") formed an army called the Irish Volunteers. The institution of Home Rule was delayed by the outbreak of the First World War. United under the command of James Connolly, Padraic Pearse, and others, the Irish Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers proclaimed the establishment of an Irish Republic on Easter Sunday, 1916, and held the Post Office and other 1 2 WILLIAM A. ARMSTRONG buildings in Dublin before surrendering to the forces of the Crown after several days of heavy fighting. Boys as well as men took part in the fighting, and in Juno! (Act I, pp. 30-31) we hear that Johnny Boyle's lameness is due to his having been shot in the hip as a Boy Scout on the side of the Republicans. The patriots who fought in Easter Week were subsequently greatly' admired, which explains why Johnny's braggart father, "Captain" Boyle, lyingly proclaims at the end of the play (Act III, p. 88) that he "did his bit" in Easter Week and that "Commandant Kelly" died in his arms. Soon after the suppression of the Easter Rising, its leaders were executed. Their deaths turned Irish opinion towards the policy of the Sinn Fein party, which demanded the establishment of an independent Republic of Ireland. In 1919, Sinn Fein set up its own legislative assembly, Dai! Eireann, in defiance of the British Executive in Ireland. In the same year, Lloyd George sponsored a Bill which recommended one parliament for six of the counties of Ulster and another for the remaining twenty-six counties of Ireland. Bitterly opposed to any plan for the partition of Ireland, Sinn Fein intensified its guerilla warfare against the British Executive, which strengthened its police by recruiting some of the toughest e,X-servicemen of the First World War. The Irish nicknamed them "the Black and Tans" because they wore khaki coats, black trousers, and black caps. The ebb and flow of the conflict at this time are humorously reflected in the voluble reminiscences of Mrs. Madigan in Juno (Act II, p. 52) when she recalls how a barber in Henrietta Street hung out a pole painted green, white, and orange (the Republican colours) after Easter Week, but substituted for it one painted red, white, and blue (the British colours) after the advent of the Black and Tans. In 1921, the struggle with the British Executive ended when Lloyd George made a treaty with certain representatives of the Dail. It gave Home Rule to a newly-constituted "Irish Free State," but the latter did not include six...