Sean O'Casey(1880-1964)

Juno and the Paycock

By Lily Huang

  1. Introduction: Sean O'Casey thinks that it is Shaw who inspires him to write what he really sees and hears for the stage rather than for Gaelic League, “I abandoned the romantic cult of Nationalism sixty years ago, and saw the real Ireland when I read the cheap edition of Shaw's John Bull's Other Island; hating only poverty, hunger, and disease” (Innes 77). The use of irony to satirize in O'Caseys plays is derived from Shaw. Juno and the Paycock is the second play of Dublin trilogy that deals with the contemporary historical events in Ireland:

    2. The three plays follow the violent course of Irish independence, although written out of sequence, with The Plough and the Stars (1926) returning to the Easter uprising of 1916, while The Shadow of Gunman (1923) and Juno and the Paycock (1924) deal with events that were still issues of contention when the plays were produced at the Abbey Theatre: the 1920 civil war between Protestant and Catholic, the quasi-military Black and Tans against the IRA; and the internecine fighting that followed the establishment of the Free State in 1922, with opposing factions within the Republican movement struggling for control of the new nation. (77)

  2. Juno and Paycock as a comic-tragedy

  1. Comic elements:

  1. shifting attitude of characters

  2. lacking self-awareness

  1. Tragic elements:

  1. death of young men

  2. destruction of family

  3. growth of characters

III. Symbolic meanings of names of characters

  1. Juno: name of a Roman Goddess; the protector of suppliants and the jealous wife of Jupiter. However, Juno Boyle is a Dublin housewife, an earthly human figure, who struggles for hard life.

  2. Captain Jack Boyle: drawn from Shakespeare’s Captain Jack Falstaff, “lacking the girth of [Shakespeare’s] Captain Jack Falstaff, but he has the same flamboyant humour and glories mendacity, the ingenious sense of self-indulgence and self-preservation” (Harrington 506).

IV. Juno and the Paycock as a dialectic drama

  1. “The play examines man’s relationship to his environment primarily in terms of money” (Schrank 439).

  2. “Another Aspect of O’Casey’s dialectical vision involves time…forces on the audience a recognition that past actions have consequences in the present and future, that history, through the causal relationships it engenders, is a living forces shaping life” (444).

  3. The third aspect is from language. That characters are unable to express meanings or to understand others represents the fail of human communication. Besides, songs indicate the folk tradition of Ireland as a mean of escaping life and repressing thought (448-453).

Questions for discussion:

  1. Explain the title: Juno and the Paycock.

  2. How do women characters react toward the cruel reality in the play?

  3. What about men--Captain Jack, Joxer Daly, Jerry Devine, and Johnny--in the play?

  4. Comment on minor characters, neighbors of the Boyles, in the play.

  5. Do you find any similarities between Shaw and O’Casey’s plays?

Selected Bibliography on O'Casey

Ayling, Ronald. ed. O’Casey: The Dublin Trilogy. London: Macmillan, 1985.

(NTU)

Bernice, Schrank. “Politics and Language in the plays of Sean O’Casey and Brian

Friel.” Ed. Bramsback Birgit. Anglo-Irish and Irish Literature. Uppsala:

Uppsala U, 1988.

---. “Dialectical Configurations in Juno and the Paycock.” Twentieth Century

Literature 21(1975): 433-56. (NTU)

Errol, Durbach. “Peacocks and Mothers: Theme and Dramatic Metaphor in

O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock.” Modern Drama 15(1972): 15-25. (FJ)

Harrington, John P., ed. Modern Irish Drama. NY: W. W. Norton, 1991.

Innes, Christopher. Modern British Drama 1890-1990. New York: Cambridge UP,

  1. (FJ)

Kaufman, Michael W. “O'Casey's Structural Design in Juno and the Paycock.”

Quarterly Journal of Speech 58 (1972): 191-98.

Kilroy, Thomas, ed. Sean O'Casey: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood

Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1975.

Leslie, Thomson. “Opening the Eyes of the Audience: Visual and Verbal Imagery in

Juno and the Paycock.” Modern Drama 29.4(1986): 556-66. (FJ)

Lowery, Robert. G. ed. O'Casey Annual No. 2. London: Macmillan, 1983. (FJ)

Maik, Hamburger. “Anti-Illusionism and the Use of Song in the Early Plays of Sean

O'Casey.” O'Casey Annual 2(1983): 3-26. (FJ)

Vena, G.. “Congruency and Coincidence in O'Casey's Juno and O'Nell's Journey.”

English Studies 68.3 (1987): 249-63. (NTU)

William A., Armstrong. “The Integrity of Juno and the Paycock.” Modern Drama

17(1974): 1-9.(FJ)