Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Work by David Krause (review)

350 Comparative Drama in the actual conveying of one.” The reality Brecht offers on stage is thus the same “total reality” every dramatist brings to his audience, “a con­ dition in which the full potentiality of man for good could be realized.” Gray’s thesis is worth considering, especially when he expands upon his argument to show the influence Brecht’s political theater has had in England and America. He has written an intelligent and frequently con­ vincing book which addresses itself not only to the crucial role history has played in the theater of Bertolt Brecht, but to the larger question of the relationship between the politics and the drama of this century. ENOCH BRATER University of Michigan David Krause. Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Work, enlarged ed. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1975. Pp. 325. $8.95. Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Work is essentially a reissue of Pro­ fessor Krause’s original critical biography first published in 1960. The only addition to this second edition is a new concluding chapter titled “A Final Knock at O’Casey’s Door,” in which Krause, true to his title, divides his reminiscences into two essays, one on the man, a second on his work. The first question one wants to ask about the “enlarged edition” of Sean O’Casey is why republish it, especially since Krause’s elegiac restrospective of the dramatist’s final years has already been published in The Massachusetts Review, and his reassessment of O’Casey’s dramatic career turns up nothing very new; the same unstinting admiration of O’Casey’s tragi-comic vision and ironic technique in the early plays and Krause’s uncritical appreciation of the gusty lyricism and “comic anarchy” of the late plays pervades the reassessment as it had the original work. Indeed, Krause inadvertently undercuts his own admiration of O’Casey’s early work when he now insists that O’Casey moved away from the tragi-comic or, comic manner because he “felt the artistic and emotional need to experiment with serious themes and symbolic techniques.” The reader must pause to wonder whether now he is to take the Dublin Trilogy and Krause’s unreserved admiration for the early plays as something less than serious. The only new perspective in the reassessment is the curious sim­ ilarity Krause now finds between O’Casey and Beckett, both of whom structure “the action of their plays along similar patterns of plot re­ versal.” But to say this is merely to reaffirm a general tendency of most comedy, and beyond the fact that both O’Casey and Beckett were selfdeclared exiles from Ireland, the comparison between them sheds very little light. The book consists of eight chapters, the first five of which treat a specific period of time in the life and career of the dramatist. “Prome­ theus of Dublin” provides a terse but good account of O’Casey’s early years; the political, religious, and economic tensions of Dublin are sketched, placing O’Casey vividly within the context of Dublin during the first two decades of the century. “The Tragic-Comic Muse” presents a Reviews 351 useful perspective on the early plays, particularly the Dublin Trilogy, since Krause, for some reason, omits the early one-acters. The best chap­ ter, “The Playwright’s Not For Burning,” traces O’Casey’s traumatic struggles with Yeats and the Abbey Theatre over The Silver Tassie. Here Krause is at his best exhibiting careful, detailed scholarship and provid­ ing a maximum amount of information clearly. “The Playwright As Prophet” deals with the middle period of O’Casey’s canon, the didactic morality plays. As befits the subject, it is the dullest chapter of Krause’s book. “The Comedies: A Catharsis and A Carnival” rounds out the critical appraisal of the plays, focusing on the late romances—Purple Dust, Cock-a-doodle Dandy, The Bishop’s Bonfire, and The Drums of Father Ned. Finally, there is a chapter on O’Casey’s poetic language and the original biographical survey, which in the second edition is now fol­ lowed by the pedestrian reassessment. Part of the problem with Sean O’Casey: The Man and His...