Red Roses for Me: Fact and Symbol

RED ROSES FOR ME: FACT AND SYMBOL AMONG THE CRITICISMS LEVELLED AT the early plays of Sean O'Casey was the accusation that he had merely presented a factual commentary upon contemporary history. The present play is more vulnerable than most to this type of assessment, since it is bound more closely than any other to memories of his early life in Ireland and to the history taking shape there in 1913; yet, significantly, it is here more than anywhere else in his work that we are conscious of the artist raising the mass of facts to a poetic level beyond the reach of mere journalism. It is the purpose of this article to trace the historical and autobiographical foundations of the play, and to discover how this factual mass is illuminated by the dramatist's art. All the main characters are lifted straight out of O'Casey's account of his own experiences in his autobiography.l Mrs. Breydon is immediately identified with Mrs. Casside, Sean's mother, by her association with three plants-musk, fuscia, and geranium-which are carefully mentioned in the stage directions to the play.2 They represent O'Casey's memory of the loving care with which these plants were tended by his mother, for whom they were the only glimpse of colour in the dismal slum where she spent her life, and when Mrs. Breydon rushes over to examine them after a mob have thrown stones through the window, (Plays, 176) she reacts just as Mrs. Casside would have done, for Sean says, "She'd risk her life to rescue them from a file." (Auto., 483) Her bed, like that of Mrs. Casside which Sean asserts would satisfy a saint's thirst for martyrdom (Auto., 592) is an old horse-hair sofa, (Plays, 127) and Ayamonn's admiration of his mother's stoicism (Plays, 135) has a close parallel in Sean's testimony to the similar virtues of Mrs. Casside. (Auto., 592) The Rev. Clinton is another reminiscence of Sean's early days. The Rector of St. Barnabas, the Rev. E. M. Griffin to whom he dedicates the second volume of his autobiography, did much to help him in his struggles against poverty and slum life. There is also a reference, perhaps , to Mr. Griffin's predecessor, Mr. Harry Fletcher, who was obliged to leave the parish because of narrow-minded opposition to his high-church principles, (Auto., 357) yet in the main it is Mr. Griffin who is brought to mind in the conflict of Mr. Clinton with the 1 Sean O'Casey, Autobiographies (London, 1963). (All references are to Vol. 1) 2 Sean O'Casey, Collected Plays (London, 1957-8), iii. 127. 147 148 MODERN DRAMA September Orangemen in his parish. In an incident in Pictures in the Hallway, (Auto., 399-401) a group of them, bigoted enemies of the liberalminded Rector, is voted out of the Select Vestry through the enthusiastic canvassing of Sean, and it is clear that Ayamonn's devotion to Mr. Clinton in the play, and their comradeship in the fight against the bigotry of Foster and Dowzard, (Plays, 218-19) the two Orangemen, mirror the affection and respect of Sean for Mr. Griffin. The church to which both clergymen are attached is referred to as St. Burnupus, a Joycean adaptation of Barnabas, and even in their physical appearance they have much in common; both are bearded and have kindly expressions, both dress in black relieved by a green scarf, and both carry walking-sticks. (Plays, 180; Auto., 436-37) Sheila, Ayamonn's sweetheart, figures in the autobiography as Nora Creena, the young middle-class Catholic girl whose father and mother disapproved of Sean on both social and religious grounds. Like Nora, Sheila is timid, conventional and narrow-minded, intellectually unadventurous and emotionally inadequate to her lover's demands. She is afraid of his rationalist and communist ideals, blaming him for his association with the freethinker Mulcanny and for his support of the railway men, (Plays, 172, 178) and, lacking his generosity and breadth of vision, she fails Ayamonn as Nora had failed Sean. She is a bitter memory rising from a past betrayal, and all the...