Sean O'Casey

Irish playwright Sean O’Casey was born on March 30, 1880, to a poor Protestant family living in the slums of Dublin. He left school at fourteen to work as a laborer, and became active in the Irish nationalist and labor movements. He also began submitting his plays, set in Dublin’s slums, to the Abbey Theatre, which produced his first plays, THE SHADOW OF A GUNMAN (1923), JUNO AND THE PAYCOCK (1924), and THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS (1926), an unsympathetic account of the Easter Rising that caused riots in the theatre. O’Casey moved to England, and when his antiwar play THE SILVER TASSIE (1928) was rejected by the Abbey, he broke all ties with the theatre. His later, more experimental plays include WITHIN THE GATES (1934), THE STAR TURNS RED (1940), RED ROSES FOR ME (1943), PURPLE DUST (1945), OAK LEAVES AND LAVENDER (1947), COCK-A-DOODLE-DANDY (1949), THE BISHOP’S BONFIRE (1955), and THE DRUMS OF FATHER NED (1958). O’Casey also published an autobiography in six volumes, “I Knock at the Door” (1939), “Pictures in the Hallway” (1942), “Drums Under the Windows” (1945), “Inishfallen, Fare Thee Well” (1949), “Rose and Crown” (1952), and “Sunset and Evening Star” (1954), which were published collectively as “Mirror in My House” (1956). He died in England in 1964.