Sean O'Casey Biography

Seán was born in 1880. He was the son of middle class Protestants, brought-up in north inner Dublin City. From the age of 5 Seán suffered constantly from ulceration of his left eye, which ultimately almost made him completely blind in later years.

Seán's radical left wing views were illustrated in his life and writings. He became a militant nationalist, ardent supporter of Jim Larkin and active organiser of the Irish Citizen Army. The Abbey Theatre first performed "The Shadow of a Gunman" in 1923 and this was followed by the great masterpieces -- "Juno and the Paycock" and "The Plough and the Stars".

A bitter row with W.B. Yeats followed the rejection of the "Silver Tassie" by the Abbey Theatre and O'Casey made the decision never to return to Ireland from his home in England where he had moved in 1926. Seán continued to write in exile, and like his compatriot James Joyce, continued to write persistently about Dublin and the sad political issues of his time. O'Casey, a giant of modern drama, died in Devon 1964.

[ Send a Sean O'Casey e-Postcard ] [ Literary Dublin Main Page ] [ DublinTourist.com ]

"All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed."

"Between the writing of plays, in the vast middle of the night, when our children and their mother slept, I sat alone, and my thoughts drifted back in time, murmuring the remembrance of things past into the listening ear of silence; fashioning thoughts to unspoken words, and setting them down upon the sensitive tablets of the mind."

"Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity."

"Laughter is wine for the soul-laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness. the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living."

"The hallway of every man's life is paced with pictures; pictures gay and pictures gloomy, all useful, for if we be wise, we can learn from them a richer and braver way to live."

"The old - like children - talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!"

"There's no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible."

"Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life."

"You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build."

Return to Literary Dublin
Return to DublinTourist.com