SOURCE: “Tender Tears for Poor O'Casey,” in The Green Crow, George Braziller, Inc., 1956, pp. 177-90.

[In the following essay, O'Casey responds to the animosity expressed by Dublin critics towards his plays, particularly their relentless berating of The Bishop's Bonfire.]

It touches the heart to think of the deep and lasting affection in which the critics of Dublin hold O'Casey tight, and the big, round tears they shed so sadly over his present irresponsible playwrighting. He is lost! they cry, and will be utterly so, if he doesn't amend his ways, and turn back to first principles. He refuses; he won't: weep on, weep on, his hour is past! Tinkling their one-stringed harps, they sit them down by the waters of Anna Livia Plurabelle, and weep for the lone, lost bard. They want him to go back to the writing of another Juno and the Paycock; to the period of the first three “great” or “fine” or “grand”—they always give an uplifting adjective to the noun when they mention them—plays; and, because, so far, he has declined, they are about to build a wailing wall in Dublin to commemorate the poor playwright who took the wrong turning. Am I exaggerating now, or what? I don't think so. Listen; and let us take these critics in the order of their disappearance.

In an issue of the Irish Times in 1940, a critic, whose name doesn't appear on his comments, moans dolefully (though I imagine I feel a thrill-thread of joy through the moaning) in a review of The Star Turns Red, saying: “This play drives us to the thought that in The Plough and the Stars O'Casey's star saw the last moment of its proper brightness. These early plays were loved for the fresh fun they made in the theater [evidently a fellow fond of a loud guffaw at anything], and for their vivid version of already ‘familiar characters.’ We liked these plays because they said things about our serio-comic warfare, which, all the time we had been enduring them, we wanted so fiercely to say ourselves, but just couldn't, because we were afraid. [See? This critic liked these plays, not because they were fine plays, but because they said things he was afraid to say—and that, in his opinion, goes for drama criticism.] Then Mr. O'Casey, blown sky-high above his audiences, began to write ‘great’ plays. The first was The Silver Tassie, which the Abbey Theater at first refused—in Mr. O'Casey's artistic interest only. The latter history of that play is linked closely with the decline of his star.” That's Duine gan ainm for you.

A critic signing himself “K” quotes a critic named A. E. Malone as writing in 1929 in The Irish Drama: “For the moment the future of O'Casey is artistically a problem upon which no decided opinion can be given [and he giving a decided opinion all the time!]. It may be suggested that his basis [his basis!] is definitely localized and except his talent be greater than it at present appears to be, his future will be as much a part of Dublin as was his past.” And “K” adds for himself, “How triumphantly true!” There is nothing true in it, for there is nothing decided in it. The man was afraid to decide anything. Every man is localized insofar as he can only be himself. I can tell “K” definitely, without the slightest reservation, that however “great” O'Casey's talent may be or may become, his “future” will be as much a part of Dublin as was his past; just as Joyce carried the city to the end of his life in his heart and in his soul. In the last play written the identity is as clear and unmistakable as it is in the first one.

T. C. Murray, the dramatist de facto, and critic de jure, is also very hot and bothered about O'Casey's way of play-wrighting. Says he, “O'Casey took a strange twist after he had written his earlier plays, a lamentable thing to most of us. To discern the lamentable thing that has happened, we have only to recall those earlier masterpieces of his. One hears again and again, What's wrong with O'Casey? This is the question his best friends have long been asking.” That's the question, Joxer; that's the question. His best friends! And doesn't he know them well!

One early mornin' as I roved out,
I heard a man singin' with grreat llaamentaation!

Valentin Iremonger, a writer himself, commenting in the Irish Times, says, with hand on his troubled heart and a tear in his poetic eye, “I am still young enough to feel sorry—and a little angry—watching genius being squandered away and frittered away upon ephemeral concepts such as Mr. O'Casey has elected to promulgate.” Imagine “electing to promulgate ephemeral concepts”! Still there's dignity and sorrow in the sentence. But comicality too. As if Father O'Flynn, putting his blackthorn in his pocket, said, suddenly, “Th' time for jokin's past—we must be sarious now.” Mr. Iremonger is, presumably, a young fellow, so here's a bit of advice from an old one: Let him think a little longer before he writes some of his sentences. He is young enough to learn to write more clearly. I will give one instance of his thoughtless commenting as a critic of the drama: He is nearly distraught because of the difference between the way in which Feelim in one play receives news of the death of his son and that in which Juno, in another play, receives news of the death of hers. Treating the play with the mind of a pacifist, rather than with that of a critic, he fails to see the different circumstances, the different environment, the different psychological influences of friends and neighbors in the two plays, or the enormous effect they have on those who live among them. Mr. Iremonger—to give another instance of sleepy drama criticism—resents the fact that Oakleaves and Lavender doesn't follow the pattern of realism woven into “the early plays, that made O'Casey so secure”; yet when Feelim, the character in the play mentioned, reacts realistically to the killing of his son, and vows vengeance on the heads of those who did it, and their comrades who helped them to do it, Iremonger goes all white, and moans out a pacifistic sermon, reminding O'Casey that “two can play at that game,” which O'Casey knows quite well—and more than two for that matter; but all this is beside the point, for here Iremonger is judging a play, not as a drama critic, but as a pacifist. This critic heads his commentary with the title of “Rude Mechanicals.” What are “mechanicals,” and when do they become “rude”? Conversely, what are gentle and good-natured mechanicals? No mechanicals are ruder than those of Shakespeare, but they are delightful, lasting, incensing the woes of life with immortal laughter. “Ghost Dancers,” he says again, “are devices long since popular with amateur dramatists everywhere.” Everywhere? What is an amateur dramatist? And where's the “everywhere” where these and their ghostly dancers are to be found? When a statement like this is made, the critic should give instances of the numerous plays by amateur dramatists in which these ghostly dancers have appeared.

A Mr. Gabriel Fallon, drama critic of the Standard (a weekly journal whose editorial office is in the porchway of heaven's doorway), listens to this tale of woe, and adds the tears of middle age to the virgin ones of Mr. Iremonger. Ay, indeed: “Even middle age may drown an eye [why only one; why not the two?] unused to flow on being compelled to witness the incandescence of genius doused in an overflow of its own willfulness.” Another dignified sentence. He isn't done yet: “Unless there is a return to first principles, we shall all be forced to join our young poet in his anger and tears.” Tears, tidal tears! What, all of you to be forced to anger and tears? Unless O'Casey goes back to first principles. Really? All Eire in tears! Over O'Casey. That's too bad to be true. “How is it,” Mr. Fallon asks, “that a number of English critics described Red Roses For Me as a magnificent piece of dramatic poetry?” O'Casey doesn't know, and isn't concerned very much about it. While reminding Mr. Fallon that all the English critics aren't English (Ivor Brown is a Scotsman; Mr. Trewin is a Cornishman; and Desmond MacCarthy must have come from somewhere out of Spain), it isn't the question of the goodness or badness of a play that is the more important thing; it is the going back on the idea that the drama must change and develop a new outlook, a broader scope, and a fresh style, if it is to live as an art alongside the art of architecture, of painting, and of music. In my opinion, the time has passed for a drama to devote its expression to one aspect of life alone, and to consider that aspect of life as dominant for the time the play takes to unfold itself; that in one play one aspect of life must be the beginning, the middle, and the end of it. Consistency of mood and of manner isn't always, indeed, not even often, found in life, and why should it then be demanded in a play? This new aspect of playwrighting which puzzled audiences here in 1929—and some of the critics too—is now puzzling the Dublin critics in 1947, and provoking them to anger and tears. What angers most of them, however, is that it hasn't been altogether a failure. A jewel moved about in the hand shows many flashes of light and color; and the human life, moved about by circumstances of tragedy and comedy, shows more than many flashes of diversity in the unity of its many-sided human nature. Of course, a great play may be written around one aspect of life, but it doesn't follow that this must be the one way forever in which dramatists are to show life on the stage to those interested in the theater. Not of course that a fine play, or even a great play, may not again be written by a newer dramatist in the “realistic” manner; but it will need to be a fine one to lift itself from the sameness of the tens of thousands of realistic or naturalistic plays that have gone before it. They are as numerous as the shadowy, silvery pictures painted by Corot—hundreds of them, with additional hundreds of perfect imitations, so beloved of so many, especially by Æ; though few words of praise were given to the portraits he painted, the loveliest things Corot did. Why? Because the portraits were what only Corot could do, while the silvery landscapes could be done by a hand holding a brush with a little craft and trickery to aid it. Dramatists cannot go on imitating themselves, and, when they get tired of that, imitating others. They must change, must experiment, must develop their power, or try to, if the drama is to live.

But are those earlier plays of O'Casey the “great works” they are said to be by O'Casey's “best friends”? And is the tear at this moment shed the genuine tear it is said to be? When these “early masterpieces” appeared first on the stage, did they get the applause they deserved from the eminent Irish critics of the day? Were these plays, when they appeared, “loved for the fresh fun they made in the theater”? Did the then lower lights and the higher lights of Dublin think that these plays made O'Casey “secure” in the high-light of the drama? Let us see.

Here's what A. E. Malone (then considered an authority on the drama), Malone with his pert mustache on his little, frightened face, here's what he said: “The Plough and the Stars isn't as good a play as Juno. It is a series of tableaux vivants. O'Casey is a photographic artist. In the Plough O'Casey strives after a literary quality of speech which is alien to Dublin slum dwellers. The play has the structure of the cinema and the revenue. The Prostitute, Rosie Redmond, has no significance whatever [a touch of humor here]. The career of O'Casey induces fear for his future.” As if afraid his readers might forget what he had said, he comes out again, a little stronger: “Is O'Casey a dramatist? Is he but a combination of the cinema and the dictaphone? His plays are phases of Dublin life under conditions as abnormal as they are transient. His humor is the humor of the music-hall without its skill, or the sharpened point of its wit.” Well, O'Casey is in no way ashamed for anything of a music-hall nature appearing in his plays. Well, here's a lad who wrote a big, big book, a “book of great authority,” on the Irish Theater, who couldn't, wouldn't make up his mind about poor O'Casey, and gave most of his criticisms in a series of questions because the thought was father to the wish.

Most people will remember the tremendous opposition the plays met from the Plain People; but was this worse than that of Liam O'Flaherty, who, in a letter denouncing Yeats's defense of the play, tersely informed Yeats and the world that “in my opinion, The Plough and the Stars is a bad play.” At the same time, in the Irish Statesman, F. R. Higgins, the poet, came out with the revelation that “A new political quality, approved by the arrogance of the Gall, is the only quality for which O'Casey is offered applause. His is a technique based on the revue structure, in the quintessence of an all-Abbey burlesque, intensified by ‘divarsions’ and Handy Andy incidents, with somewhat more original settings. His plays are but a laborious bowing on a one-string fiddle, and ‘Fluther’ is but the successor of Boyle's more lively ragtime. O'Casey in his new play entirely lacks the sincerity of an artist.”

Well, there's the stern, quiet testimony of a poet, doing away with all the praise and good report of the Iremongers, the Fallons, and the Murrays. But there's another—Austin Clarke, a poet, too. He said, with the same poise and quietness, that “Several writers of the new Irish school [himself included of course] believe that Mr. O'Casey's work is a crude exploitation of our poorer people in the Anglo-Irish tradition that is now moribund.”

O'Casey exploiting the poor! And now they want him to go on with this nefarious practice. Pilfer the lot of them; take the last penny from them, then leave them to God! I wonder is it really O'Casey who does this bad thing? I shouldn't put anything past him, for he carries the Red Star in the lapel of his coat, emblazoned with those dangerous weapons—the hammer and the sickle.

But we haven't come to the end of the list yet. There are a few left still. There's Professor Daniel Corkery, the man who found the hidden Ireland. In an article praising Clifford Odets' Golden Boy he shows how this play far surpasses the “realistic” plays of O'Casey. And since Golden Boy is but a third-rate play, then O'Casey's realistic plays must be low down, deep, among the dead men. One more from others: R. M. Fox of Dublin, a writer, in the New Statesman in an issue of August, 1928, calls these plays “The Drama of the Dregs.” He says, “Peasant drama in Ireland has been succeeded by slum drama, though such an authority as W. B. Yeats tells us that the peasant drama is done, and slum drama will have a very short reign. As entertainment, this kind of drama is permissible. Neither the peasant nor the slum play deals in any direct fashion with typical problems of a group of people. But group problems may not lend themselves to drama, certainly not to melodrama, and so on the stage they are neglected. Besides entertainment we need truth.” Well, there's R. M. Fox for you, telling you and me about the drama; all about the drama. He seems to think truth should be entertaining, though I know an Irish proverb that says truth is always bitter.

It wouldn't be fair to forget the recent roar of Brinsley Macnamara about “the vulgarity of O'Casey's worthless plays that have always been given far too much honor and attention by the Abbey Theater.” So there is heard a pretty fine chorus against these “masterpieces” that have made “O'Casey so secure in the theater,” from the sparrow-like chirrup of Mr. Austin Clarke to the ready and heady roar of Brinsley Macnamara.

Now these who said these things are just as intelligent, just as important, as those who have come after them. Their criticism is as likely to be right as the criticism of the present-day complainers; so what is the playwright to do? Here we have a vociferous assembly, men of gifts, some of them intellectuals, declaiming against these early “masterpieces” as bad plays, bad art, exploitation of Eire's poorer people, and decisively declaring that O'Casey was equipped only with the technique of the revue, the quick eye of the camera, and the ready pickup mind of the dictaphone; having nothing at all of the dramatist in either heart or head. And yet the critics of today implore O'Casey, with tears in their eyes, to go back to “first principles.” All this shows how stupid these Irish critics are; that they fear O'Casey only a little less than they fear themselves; it tells O'Casey that he mustn't pay any attention to these chiming bells of St. Mary's ordering him back to the land of beginning again.

It shows, too, that Eire needs critics more than she needs playwrights. She has had good plays, good actors, good producers, but always weak, timid, frustrated, and damned bad critics. We have had no drama critic since Yeats, who, with his hazel wand and the red berry tied to an end, tried to exorcise inanity and commercialism out of the Theater of his day. But Yeats was a critic only in his spare time, and then only of the theater insubstantial. He tried to change the Theater of the world through the few things done on the Abbey stage, and, though he failed, he gave Ireland a great beginning.

The Irish Theater needs a critic who will set down the comments of the chronicles of the stage with precision, knowledge, and above all, with courage; refusing to condemn the new because he does not understand it (like the later pictures of Picasso), or dislikes it; a critic able to enter all her halls with confidence, from the highest thing the Theater has ever done to the dialogue and diversions of a Jimmy O'Dea on the Olympia stage. A critic who will never be influenced by his paper's policy or profit; who will be unafraid of clique or cleric; who, in his criticism, will separate himself from the seduction of a friend, or from animosity towards an enemy; who will know the theater of the Continent as well as he knows his own, far back, and present achievement; a critic who will look upon a play as a play, indifferent to whether it hurts or heals. Where is there a critic like that in Eire? Is there one of them who isn't afraid of his paper boss; afraid of his clique of friends; afraid of his clerical consorts; half afraid of his own thoughts? Nowhere; not yet, anyhow.

Now look, young dramatists, you have a theater to develop and to defend, and it is for this reason that I appeal to the younger (and so braver) writers in Ireland today who still go in half fear of clerical and clique; a theater of which we can be proud and of which others who know speak in high praise. Now, this isn't mere rhetorical bounce on the part of O'Casey. Listen to what George Jean Nathan, the famous American drama critic, says of the Irish Theater: “I take it there is small critical question, save alone in the lands of dictated appraisal, that the modern Irish drama leads what is left of the European theater. Our own theater is quick and alive and in many ways admirable, but its plays come mainly out of galvanic impulse rather than deep meditation. And only out of deep meditation is true drama born. Surely in searching the stage of the world theater of the later years it is difficult to find a body possessed of the Celtic poetic pulse. Surely, except in sporadic instances, that quality which insinuates into the mind and emotion its peculiarly lingering after-image is rare in the plays of men nurtured in other soils. It isn't, certainly, that all the plays that are coming out of Eire soil are masterpieces. Very, very far from that. But, as I have written in the past, in even the poorest of them, one finds a probity, a passionate undertone, a brave resolve, and a hint of spiritual music that one all too infrequently encounters in the present dramaturgy of other peoples. And in the finer plays there is a poetic sweep, a surge of human emotions, and a warm, golden glow that even the best drama of other countries most often lacks.” This quotation forms part of a preface to a book published by Random House, New York; it is titled Five Great Modern Irish Plays and costs ninety-five cents. The sale of this book may run into many thousands of copies; so one can see how many will come to regard the Irish Theater as something to be held in honor, and spoken of with respect. Readers will accept the statement on the flap of the jacket which tells the buyer that “No nation has made a richer contribution to the recent literature of the Theater than Ireland.” Than Ireland.

This is a big heraldry of Ireland's theatrical fame. It would be a shame to let the colors fade or the gold tarnish. We should try to keep the colors bright, or even make them brighter. It is an expansive shield, with room for many new designs and waxing symbols; and we can't afford to let any slinking, shrinking critic push a hand aside, eager to put a new one there.

In everything but politics, perhaps even in politics, Ireland is lagging behind—dragging her feet after her like a half-nourished child. In the novel and short story, Ireland holds her own; but in music, in painting (imagine a Dublin art critic having to rush to the National Library to search out a thing or two about Picasso!), we are still in the age of infancy. Let us, at least, hold on to our place in Drama. Ireland won't hold it long if the present-day drama critics have their way; if destructive criticism takes the form of condemning any new thought, every new style used to try to widen the achievement of the living theater; or if constructive criticism takes the form of Brinsley Macnamara's purification, when he advises that audiences should “receive a play that had no appeal, or was simply boring, in stony silence—just no applause at the end, no calls [not even catcalls?], the merciful fall of the curtain putting a finish to the matter.” Finis, the end. No applause, no calls—just the fall of the curtain, and stony silence. Was there ever before such an example of telepathic regimentation suggested to save the Irish Theater? Never, and, let us hope, there never will be again; for the thing is impossible.

To O'Casey, these are but saecula saeculorum critics. What they said thirty years ago about Juno and the Plough, they say today about whatever play he may chance to write. Not a single good berry from the bunches on the tree. Of the horde of Irish critics, one only stood out to say a word for the playwright as he murmured, “One longed in recent weeks for an angry Yeats to castigate the Irish critics for their behavior over Cyril Cusack's production of O'Casey's latest play”; one erudite critic, Donat O'Donnell, mixing a murmur with a heart-breaking sigh, called it “this sorry business”; all of them running, not for pens, but for pokers. One of the tearful lads, mentioned earlier on, not content with a first-night review, ran into a corner to write an “Open Letter to Sean O'Casey,” starting with a doleful roar of “What in the name of fortune is the matter with you?” Oh, dear, what can the matter be; oh, dear, what can the matter be—Seaneen has gone to the fair! “I'll tell you,” he goes on. “In the first place it is because your overweening vanity is severely hurt. You don't like criticism, Sean O'Casey; you only like praise.” Musta been vanity fair O'Casey went to. Vanity of vanities, saith this preacher, all is vanity, and O'Casey is gorgeous with it.

So, young Irish dramatists, go ahead, and don't bother about the critics. They are no use to you. They don't know their own minds. The most of them are influenced by their jobs. Wait till a good critic appears, and then stop awhile to listen. You'll soon get to know him when he (or she) comes, though with Ireland as she is, there'll be but a poor chance for the poor man to live or write. While the dramatists wait for the coming of a pure and proper critic, there is nothing to be done but to go on doing their best to keep Eire in the forefront of the world's drama. Should the shadow of Censorship steal over that deep meditation, mentioned by George Jean Nathan, let the dramatists turn their faces to London and New York; for, if there be fullness of merit in what they create, their work will find there, sooner or later, the fulfillment of production. Take ye no thought for the contempt these places are held in by some of the critics.

So go ahead, my hearties of Irish dramatists, for Eire, and for New York and London. Remember that every Irish dramatist, the oul' ones as well as the young, longs in his heart—and not in a corner either, but in the core—to have his play's name shine in the red, yellow, and blue lights of Broadway and the streets of London's West End. And to quote Nathan again, let every dramatist be modest enough to be “a pilgrim on the road to a Mecca that is ever just over the skyline.”