250
PARTISAN REVIEW
7.
Sean O'Casey's proper place is on the top rung of the ladder.
Today, however, his foothold is not so sure and occasionally he lowers
at least one foot to a rung below. Lest anyone suspect that I consider
O'Casey corrupted by "Stalinism," I had better admit that
his
re–
ported editorship of the London
Daily Worker
is to me neither here
nor there. Indeed it is regrettable that
his
American publishers have
too timorously omitted to bring out
The Star Turns R ed
(London,
194·0), O'Casey's best play since
Within the Gates
and probably the
best communist play in English. Instead they have given us
Purple
Dust
(1942) and
R ed Roses For Me
(1944).
Both plays are full of good things. The former abounds
in
an
unforced humor that puts to shame both the folksy and the sophisti–
cated schools of Broadway. Even the somber
Red Roses For Me
contains such exquisite characters as little Eeada who comes in carry–
ing a statue of the Virgin Mary and quietly asks: "Could you spare
a pinch or two of your Hudson's Soap, Mrs. Breydon, dear, to give
the Blessed Virgin a bit of a wash?" For the rest, the play is another
projection of O'Casey's staple subject: Dublin. This statement is
the key to its strength and its weakness. Its strength lies in familiar
O'Casey virtues-rich dialogue, strong situation, deeply-felt characters,
stark contrasts of mood and texture. The weakness of the piece is its
failure to exist in its own right: it is made up of pieces of the O'Casey
we already know.
In fact it might be said of all O 'Casey's later plays that they
indicate no clear line of development, only the occasional introduc–
tion of a new technic, new plots, a re-grouping of elements, a more
emphatic doctrine. The bad judgment of W. B. Yeats, known to
all
who consult
The Ox ford Book of Modern Verse,
was also responsible
for O'Casey's rejection by the Abbey Theatre. In England he has
found communism but not a new art. One cannot welcome his turning
to autobiography. His
recherche du temps perdu
is inhibiting his
development. In this vein he is not a Proust; the sentimentalist,
always latent
in
him, comes to the fore; in
R ed Roses for Me
his
prose poetry becomes verbiage.
Or do I pick on O'Casey unfairly? What has
any
dramatist
achieved since 1939? The artistic theatre has always led a dog's life,
but for some time now it has hardly existed at all, except possibly in
Ireland where O'Casey is no longer welcome.
