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SEAN O'CASEY AND EXPRESSIONISM IN HIS SURVEY OF SCHOLARSHIP ON German Expressionist Drama, Walter Sokel pointed out the need for studies which would define the relationship of German Expressionism to playwrights of other theaters.1 This need is particularly felt with O'Casey. Though he is the only major British dramatist to have used Expressionism to any extent throughout his work, and though it is often mentioned that he was influenced by the German movement, he has been generally treated as an "experimenter ."2 It is the thesis of this study that the techniques of Expressionist Drama established by Strindberg and the German writers who followed him are found throughout O'Casey's plays, and more im;. portantly, that his early attempts at Expressionism became a kind of proving ground for his last plays. One finds the techniques of Expressionism in every full-length play from The Plough and the Stars in 1926 to The Drums of Father Ned in 1958, and they figure significantly in the success of the late comedies. In a passage in Rose and Crown demanding the "dramatist's right to experiment," O'Casey wrote that "at least two" of his earliest works were "about as realistic as the scents stealing from a gaudy bunch of blossoms."3 He may have been referring generally to the language of the plays, which is similar to the realistic-poetic dialogue of Synge's peasants, but almost certainly was thinking of The Plough and the Stars in particular, which he himself said made use of Expressionism.4 The offstage figure whose silhouette appears at the window in Act II is a device through which O'Casey could show the confusion of patriotism and religion which he saw as a basic cause of Ireland's problems . In spite of his separation from the action, it is the figure's speeches which determine the mood of the act, and it is his attitude which the play condemns. Thus, an important part of one of O'Casey's realistic triumphs depends on a non-realistic device. O'Casey has written of The Silver Tassie that in 1928, .when he had 1 "Recent Developments and Problems in the Study of German Expressionist Drama," Modern Drama, IV (1961), 92-96. 2 Robert Hogan discusses O'Casey's early Expressionist plays, The Silver Tassie and Within the Gates, but maintains that O'Casey's "excursion into Expressionism " only led him into a dramatic impasse, and that his last three comedies are successful attempts at an altogether new comic structure. See The Experiments 01 Sean O'Casey (New York, 1960), p. 79 and passim. 3 (New York, 1961), p. 32. 4 Vincent C. DeBaun, "Sean O'Casey and the Road to Expressionism," Modem Drama, IV (1961), p. 255. The article points out the several non-realistic elements of The Plough and the Stars which mark it a definite departure from realistic theater. 47 48 MODERN DRAMA May grown tired of "photographic realism, or slices of life," he decided to write a play "in a new way." Instead of the particular battlefields, he would create "the wide expanse of war."5 In contrast to Journey'sEnd~ which he considered a "piece of false effrontery" both in sentiment and infonu, he would go "into the heart of war."6 It is the attempt to create theĀ· total effect of an experience, to dramatize the ,cessence" of a subject, which marks O'Casey's intent here as thoroughly Expressionist.7 O'Casey's comments about his purpose in The Silver Tassie are very similar to the manifestoes of the early German Expressionist playwrights. In 1918, Ivan Goll wrote that in the plays of the Expressionists , "Men and things will be shown as naked as possible, and always through a magnifying glass for better effect. . . . The stage must not limit itself to 'real' life; it becomes 'super-real' when it knows about things behind things." In order to restore the magnifying glass, the playwright must use exaggerated methods-properties which "proclaim the character in a crudely typifying manner," and which "have their equivalents in the inner hyperboles of the plot." The result should be a "grotesque which does not...

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