Sean O'Casey: A Biography and an Appraisal

SEAN O'CASEY A BIOGRAPHY AND AN ApPRAISAL1 IT MUST HAVE BEEN very refreshing for Dublin when Dr. David Krause arrived from Brown University with a scholarly brief to investigate , not as might have been expected-Yeats or Joyce-but Sean O'Casey. One Inight perhaps imagine that a formal biography would be largely repetitious for one whose life has been so coherently described in six stout volumes of his own. But this is not the case, as Dr. Krause's excellent book clearly shows. The Irish capital has still got many caches of information-reliable and unreliable-about all her literary progeny, and it is surprising that the O'Casey data has never been adequately collected before. Apart from the surviving members of the Abbey Company that first performed his work, there are still to be found in the city-mainly in Labour circles-a number of cronies and companions-in-strikes who appear as characters in the earlier plays, sometimes without even a change of name. And all of these have plenty to say about their old friend. Besides, what greater need can there be for a good objective biography than when one has already been entertained and bemused by the subject's own vigorous conception of himself? Dr. Krause opens his account with a lmowledgeable description of the social and political background which is essential to any understanding of O'Casey's (or indeed of any Irishman's) peculiarities. In particular, he must be praised for underlining the social-revolutionary side of the Rising of 1916, and the fact-not always remembered today -that the pace was set for that dramatic upheaval, not so much by the Patriots, as by a small, resolute Labour group in which O'Casey was then an Achilles in temporary retirement. The purely political developments in Ireland during the past forty years have largely been concerned with changing the names of pre-existing institutions from English into Gaelic, and in substituting harps for the Royal arms on the public notepaper. On the other hand, no single figure has contributed so much towards the initiating of real improvements in the living conditions of the bulk of the citizens of Dublin than O'Casey's hero, Jim Larkin-a man who was much more interested in wages than in flags. What Dr. Krause might have gone on to elaborate is the fact that, if Cathleen ni Houlihan had grown into "a ragin' divi!" by 1923-a 1. Sean O'Casey, The Man and His Work, by David Krause, the Macmillan Company, New York, 1960. Price $4.50. The Experiments of Sean O'Casey, by Robert Hogan, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1960. Price $5.00, 324 1961 BIOGRAPHY AND APPRAISAL 325 state of affairs that O'Casey was the first to raise a laugh at-she has now been far outstripped in this category by the triumphant Corporation employee and Dublin busman of 1961. It is this reluctance to give up the yardsticks and cliches of a class struggle that is over and won that gives the impression that Mr. O'Casey has not got as much to say as he used to have when he started. Actually, he has got plenty to say, but so far as Ireland is concerned, this particular topic needs to be treated in reverse. Another matter that is brought to light by reading this well-documented account of a wonderful life is the danger that lies in building up the Idea of O'Casey into what we would all like it to be, rather than in appreciating it as it actually is. There has long been a tendency, particularly amongst people who are not his fellow countrymen, to patronise O'Casey as a horny-handed son of toil who, by some miraculous process of parthenogenesis, has turned out to be a literary genius. This Idea-if so it may be called-is something that is very tempting to dally with. O'Casey is obviously a genius, and for one of the Underprivileged to have done as well as he has done, is something that gives to many of us a certain glow of illegitimate satisfaction. All's...