Three Dublin Plays

In these three early plays -- generally considered his greatest work -- Sean O'Casey mirrors the lives of the Dublin poor of the early twentieth century, from the tenement dwellers in The Shadow of a Gunman and Juno and the Paycock to the bricklayer, street vendor, and charwoman in The Plough and the Stars. He conveys the tiny details that create a total character as well as the terrors, large and small, that the constant threat of political violence inevitably brings. As Seamus Heaney has written, "O'Casey's characters are both down to earth and larger than life ... his democratic genius was at one with his tragic understanding".