Dialect in the Plays of Sean O'Casey

DIALECT IN THE PLAYS OF SEAN O'CASEY ONE OF THE DISADVANTAGES WHICH BOTH Synge and O'Casey suffered on the English stage was the difficulty English audiences experienced in trying to cope with the strangeness of the Irish vernacular. It was a strangeness that originated not only in the idiom of the characters but in the prolixity of their vocabulary and the rapidity of their delivery . In admiring O'Casey's faithful rendering of dialect, however, we might tend to overlook the very conscious control he exercised in its use, particularly in his later plays. Increasingly he employed dialect to serve clearly-defined purposes in his dramatic design. A comparison between any of O'Casey's earliest plays and any 'realistic' play of the same period shows a marked difference in the treatment of language. T. C. Murray and Lennox Robinson used language as the barest instrument of plot and characterisation: it might express feeling or mood but is rarely allowed to obtrude. O'Casey, on the other hand, in these early plays shows a preoccupation with language and an obvious belief in its power to transform reality. A Dublin audience would have been struck primarily by the obvious Irishness of the dialogue. To anyone familiar with Dublin speech much of the language of a play such as The Shadow of a Gunman catches the sharpness of contemporary Dublin idiom. This is seen at its best where there is a clash of personality leading to an exchange of edgy repartee. Thus, when the landlord comes to demand his rent early in the first act:1 TIlE LANDLORD. (ironically) Goodday, Mr. Shields; it's meself that hopes you're feelin' well-you're lookin' well, anyhowthough you can't always go be looks nowadays. SEAMUS. It doesn't matter whether I'm lookin' well or feelin' well; I'm all right, thanks be to God. THE LANDLORD. I'm very glad to hear it. SEAMUS. It doesn't matter whether you're glad to hear it or not, Mr. Mulligan. Again, in Juno and the Paycock~ the language used by Mrs. Boyle, especially in the opening scenes of the play, contains the cliches of 1 Collected Plays, Vol. I, p. 100. 387 388 MODERN DRAMA February speech that one might hear among the Dublin poor. In an altercation with her workshy husband, she exclaims:2 "Look here, Mr. Boyle, them yarns won't go down with Juno. I know you and Joxer of an oul date, an' if you think you're able to come it over with me with them fairy tales, you're in the wrong shop." This is ordinary Dublin speech that would be instantly recognized as authentic. The continuing popularity of the early plays with unsophisticated Dublin audiences owes much to the authenticity of this realistic speech. O'Casey also drew, in these early plays, not only on the familiar speech of the streets but also on the popular theatrical tradition. Here he used the wild improbable language of the stage-Irishman, in the tradition of the Shaughraun. Full of exaggerations and circumlocutions , it expressed the thoughts of a cunning yet lovable scoundrel. It is certain that few real Irishmen ever spoke like this but they enjoyed the illusion that they did. When Mrs. Boyle discovers that her husband has been spending his morning in the public house, instead of looking for a job, he rounds angrily on Jerry:3 ... What do you want to be gallopin' about after me for? Is a man not to be allowed to leave his house for a minute without havin' a pack 0' spies, pimps an' informers canterin' at his heels,? The spirited exaggeration of the language here would arouse the sympathy and amusement of an audience already educated to the convention. In these early plays, however, O'Casey does occasionally depart from an exact imitation of real or conventionally real speech at heightened moments in the drama. Mrs. Tancred and Juno employ the language of the Catholic missal, Bessie Burgess the words of a Protestant hymn. A more common method of departing from the speech of the streets or the popular tradition was the employment of a form...