Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly 9783030742737, 9783030742744

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BERNARD SHAW AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly

Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel

Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries

Series Editors Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Pocasset, MA, USA Peter Gahan, Independent Scholar, Los Angeles, CA, USA

The series Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries presents the best and most up-to-date research on Shaw and his contemporaries in a diverse range of cultural contexts. Volumes in the series will further the academic understanding of Bernard Shaw and those who worked with him, or in reaction against him, during his long career from the 1880s to 1950 as a leading writer in Britain and Ireland, and with a wide European and American following. Shaw defined the modern literary theatre in the wake of Ibsen as a vehicle for social change, while authoring a dramatic canon to rival Shakespeare’s. His careers as critic, essayist, playwright, journalist, lecturer, socialist, feminist, and pamphleteer, both helped to shape the modern world as well as pointed the way towards modernism. No one engaged with his contemporaries more than Shaw, whether as controversialist, or in his support of other, often younger writers. In many respects, therefore, the series as it develops will offer a survey of the rise of the modern at the beginning of the twentieth century and the subsequent varied cultural movements covered by the term modernism that arose in the wake of World War 1.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14785

Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel

Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly

Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel Massachusetts Maritime Academy Pocasset, MA, USA

ISSN 2634-5811 ISSN 2634-582X (electronic) Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries ISBN 978-3-030-74273-7 ISBN 978-3-030-74274-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Bettmann/Contributor-gettyimages This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Shaw, O’Casey, Connolly

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Peter Gahan, friend and scholar. His advice over the process of writing Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly has been invaluable. I also wish to thank friends and, or scholars who also fed said process by their remarkable work, in all of their forms: Anthony Roche, Audrey McNamara, Stephen Watt, Declan Kiberd, Gary Richardson, Alan Brody, David Clare, Susanne Colleary, Richard Dietrich, Leonard Conolly, Bernard Dukore, Michel Pharand, Jean Reynolds, Elaine Craghead, to name only some. I wish also to thank the late guiding giants from Brown University who were so influential in their specific ways, Don B. Wilmeth—mentor and dear friend—David Krause, L. Perry Curtis, and Tori Haring-Smith. I also thank Palgrave Macmillan editors Eileen Srebernik and Jack Heeney, along with Project Coordinator Aishwarya Balachandar. All excerpts © The Estate of Sean O’Casey, by kind permission of Macnaughton Lord Representation on behalf of the Estate of Sean O’Casey. I thank Shivaun O’Casey as well. My great thanks go to President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins and partner Sabina Higgins. Their steadfast acknowledgements and commitments to Ireland’s historical left, as epitomized by Bernard Shaw, James Larkin, James Connolly, Sean O’Casey, Helena Molony, Marie Perolz, Winifred Carney, Kahtleen Lynn, Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, and Margaret Skinnider. Adding the Plough and the Stars sculpture to the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin acknowledges that left, which provides

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ideals for Ireland’s future. The President’s friendship and interest in my work has spurred on much of my recent scholarship that owes a great deal to his commitment to bettering our world, as a sustainable world. In this vein, great thanks are also extended to Helen Carney and Claire Power, intrepid leaders of his staff. I also thank Anna, Alex, and Sasha, along with, of course, Maire, Alice, and Trixie. I thank my late parents Brenda Kelly and Frank. Most of all, I thank my partner and wife, Carolina, whose love and support sustains much.

Contents

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Introduction

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Shaw, O’Casey, Connolly: Stitching the Foundation, 1890s–1915

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Revolutions 1916/1917: Lynd, War Issues, the ITGWU

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Shaw’s Elderly Gentleman, O’Casey’s Trilogy Begins: Larkin/O’Brien

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Shaw’s Saint Joan: Martyred Vision

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The Plough and the Stars: The Lost Workers’ Republic

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The Intelligent Woman’s Guide, The Silver Tassie, and The Re-Conquest

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Epilogue

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Index

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About the Author

Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel is the author of six monographs, including Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, and the New Journalism (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) and Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation (2011). In addition, he co-edited Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland (Palgrave Macmillan 2020), and he is a member of the Editorial Board of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies. In 2017 he was interviewed for the The Point on National Public Radio in the United States, titled “George Bernard Shaw and the Freedom of the Press.” He is a professor of Humanities at Massachusetts Maritime.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

On 13 January 1893, the Independent Labour Party (ILP) held its inaugural conference (a three-day affair) in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Bernard Shaw attended as one of the Fabian Society’s representatives and did so with the intent of “permeating” the ILP in order to supplant “Liberalism with Progressivism” (quoted in Holroyd, Shaw, I , 270). On the evening of the conference’s third day, Shaw attended a service at the Labour Church, which attracted, according to Shaw, 4,000 people (Shaw Diaries, II , 894). No doubt, the ILP conference and church service, held only hours after the conference ended, attracted the interest of many socialists and would-be socialists throughout Britain, including the Edinburgh-born Irish socialist and ILP member James Connolly. The Labour Church, a Christian socialist society led by John Trevor, attempted to take advantage of the 1893 surge of interest by launching a monthly journal, The Labour Prophet , the following year. In its February 1894 issue, an anonymous work was included, titled The Agitator’s Wife. Written in the form of a short story overwhelmingly composed of dialogue, scholars Maria-Danielle Dick, Kristy Lusk, and Willy Maley argue convincingly that it is the play (or a version of it) authored by James Connolly and alluded to by his daughter Nora Connolly O’Brien in her 1935 James Connolly: Portrait of a Rebel Father (“‘The Agitator’s Wife’”, 1). If the story is this play, its dialogue and characterizations have © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_1

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much more in common with the New Drama that was emerging in the 1890s, including with Shaw’s early plays, than with popular melodramas. Its protagonist, for example, within her modern marriage is strong, independently minded, highly intelligent, and accepted by her husband and his male colleagues as an equal. One might even be tempted to believe its author was familiar with The Quintessence of Ibsenism. In fact, these years may well have begun Connolly’s long interest in Shaw and Shaw’s work, which continued after he emigrated to Dublin in 1896 to establish the Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP). In 1899, Connolly invited the recently returned to Ireland, from London, journalist Frederick Ryan to lecture the ISRP on Shaw, Shaw’s Fabian lectures, The Quintessence of Ibsenism, and Shaw’s early plays. This study begins from this point and will culminate with the masterful socialistic works of the 1920s authored by Shaw and Sean O’Casey, in which Connolly is a distinct presence. Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly is, in one sense, a continuation of Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation (2011). The earlier study explored Shaw’s involvement with socialist developments within Ireland from 1899 through the 1916 Easter Rising, and argued for a stage dialogue between Shaw and John Millington Synge, ranging from 1903 to beyond Synge’s 1909 death— including Synge’s reworking of Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island (1904) into The Playboy of the Western World (1907), and Shaw’s Playboy-like The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (1909), written during Synge’s final days. That book also explored the simultaneous track of the increasingly militant James Connolly, while showing the interactions—direct and indirect—between him and Shaw, from Shaw’s active involvement in Irish politics beginning in 1910 through the Rising in 1916. That monograph contributed to critical literature by reconnecting Shaw to the fields of Irish theatre and politics. However, Shaw’s Irish involvement did not end in 1916 but instead increased—significantly impacting Sean O’Casey. As the previous study functioned by contextualizing Shaw, Synge, and Connolly within the Ireland of their time, the current study is similarly propelled by contextualizing Shaw and O’Casey in relation to Connolly’s reputations after his execution in 1916. In doing so, the study examines the parallel tracks of Shaw and O’Casey, their interweaving with Irish labour and political movements up to 1922, then into their literary and critical responses through the 1920s, in Saint Joan, The Plough and the Stars , The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and The Silver Tassie.

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Such an exploration of Shaw and O’Casey’s works, strongly suggests that Connolly remained a presence for both, though for diverse reasons. While much of what Connolly advocated for had faded into the shadows by the time the Irish Free State was formed in 1922, Connolly permeates the 1920s masterworks of Shaw and O’Casey as a socialist theorist and, or as a militant activist—either in terms of his socialism or nationalism, depending on Shaw’s and O’Casey’s respective perceptions, and changing times. There was no escaping, for either Shaw or O’Casey, Robert Lynd’s 1917 assertion that Connolly was “Ireland’s first socialist martyr” (“Introduction”, vii). Near the end of Shaw’s 1904 John Bull’s Other Island, a play O’Casey much admired and one that Connolly echoed in his last play through character relations, the defrocked priest Peter Keegan ends a long speech, in which he has detailed how Tom Broadbent will efficiently develop the village of Rosscullen, in order to make profits for the land syndicate he heads, then efficiently ruin the syndicate’s investors in order to acquire for himself the resort “hotel for a few shillings on the pound”: “For four wicked centuries the world has dreamed this foolish dream of efficiency; and the end is not yet. But the end will come” (193). Keegan’s is a prophecy foretelling the collapse of usury capitalism, the formidable goal of socialists—including Connolly. A bourgeois eyewitness to Connolly’s 1916 revolution, L. G. Redmond-Howard in Six Days of the Irish Republic, asked why the “general policy of Fabianism” did not serve Connolly’s goal (85). He found the answer, he tells us, in Connolly’s 1915 The Re-Conquest of Ireland, where Connolly calls for all “to live freely” in a state where such freedom will be “no longer the property of a class”. Redmond-Howard also “discovered the key not only to the man but to the movement as well, in his definition of prophesy: ‘The only true prophets are they who carve out the future they announce.... Every dreamer should also be a man of action’” (85). While “action” can have numerous interpretations, and can equally apply to Connolly, Shaw, and O’Casey, the catalyst for the latter two in the Irish context was Connolly, whether they agreed or disagreed with his methods or directions. Whether right or wrong, in his efforts to force the realization of Keegan’s prophesy, Connolly was integrated into Shaw’s and O’Casey’s separate consciences, profoundly impacting their major literary and theoretical work of the 1920s. Chapter 2 introduces one of the study’s thematic threads, the sewing machine, stemming from William Butler Yeats’ dream of being haunted

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by a clicking and grinning sewing machine, following the 1894 premiers of his short play The Land of Heart’s Desire and Shaw’s Arms and the Man, as told in Yeats’ 1922 Trembling of the Veil. A question that should arise, which Yeats likely did not consider, is why a sewing machine? The answer is to be found by considering what the sewing machine, from the 1890s to the 1920s, represented. Dominated globally in the period by the Singer Company, the machines were the product of sweated labour, which, in turn, made possible mass-producing clothing companies that utilized sweated labour. Yeats’ nightmare implied that Shaw’s work was linear and uniformly stitched, like the products of a sewing machine, yet the machine fostered the industrialized poverty produced by modern capitalism that Shaw’s political work sought to remedy. This chapter suggests a different take on Yeats’ dream. Pursuing the Singer thread, the chapter goes on to quote from a 1905 letter on sweated labour conditions in Singer’s New Jersey factory, written by one of its workers at the time, the very same James Connolly, who emigrated to the United States in 1903. Soon after Connolly returned to live in Ireland, both he and Shaw separately delivered talks in Scotland in October 1910: Shaw advocated for equal incomes while Connolly argued for the syndicalization of all labourers. Within six months, Singer’s Kilbowie factory, along the River Clyde, was on strike with fully unified workers, regardless of skill levels, nationalities, languages, religions, and, most importantly, genders, who demanded increased salaries. The strike inspired James Larkin, in Dublin to lead the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) into a series of syndicalist strikes against Irish railways—including the Great Northern Railway that employed labourer John Casey, to become known Sean O’Casey. O’Casey’s efforts in the Transport Union would involve drafting the constitution of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA), a labour militia organized following Shaw’s call for the arming of labour at a London rally supporting Dublin workers during the 1913 Lockout. The ICA would be the militia Connolly led in the 1916 insurrection, albeit without O’Casey. Chapter 3 continues the socialist thread with Connolly towards and beyond Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising. Connolly’s play Under Which Flag ?, is viewed in the light of The Agitator’s Wife, Connolly’s first play. Given the would-be literary structure of that first play, Under Which Flag ? must be seen within the closer ties between Shaw and Connolly that were still emerging as it borrowed a social construct from John Bull’s Other Island, as well as being a response to Shaw’s second Irish play, O’Flaherty, V. C .

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The chapter continues by considering responses to Connolly’s 1916 Rising, including Shaw’s and Vladimir Lenin’s, the latter in Russia’s October 1917 Revolution. Shaw’s Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress (1917–1918) is discussed in the Russian context, as well as efforts by Dublin labour leader William O’Brien to rebuild the ITGWU following Connolly’s death. In capitalizing on his comradeship with Connolly, O’Brien initiates the 1917 reprinting of Connolly’s theoretical works, Labour in Irish History (1910) and The Re-Conquest of Ireland (1915) into a volume titled Labour in Ireland, which features an introduction by Shaw’s friend Robert Lynd. Lynd, along with Shaw, George Russell, Horace Plunkett, and Richard Tobin (the surgeon who treated Connolly prior to his execution), contributed funds for Connolly’s wife and children after the execution. Both Shaw and O’Casey responded to Lynd’s Introduction: Shaw in War Issues for Irishmen (1918) and O’Casey in The Story of the Irish Citizen Army (1919). The latter marked O’Casey’s beginning as a professional writer, as well as his public distancing from Connolly’s reputation. Having realized that O’Brien’s efforts to solidify control of the ITGWU included efforts to minimize James Larkin’s role as the union’s General Secretary (in anticipation of Larkin’s eventual return from the United States), O’Casey began aiming his criticisms against O’Brien. As O’Brien continued to draw on his Connolly ties to enhance his position within Labour, Connolly also became an O’Casey target as the ITGWU grew into two camps, one pro-Larkin and the other proConnolly. The above thus sets the stage(s) for Shaw and O’Casey in the 1920s, with the latter drawing inspiration from Shaw. Chapter 4 moves into the new decade with Shaw’s third Irish-set play, The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, the fourth part of the play-cycle Back to Methuselah (1922), which is approached within the context of the previous decade. After the years of suffering a note of hope is suggested through the choice of the elderly gentleman Barlow to remain in Ireland instead of colluding with the British Prime Minister’s unconscionable lie, even if it means Barlow’s death. As the Irish War for Independence gives way to Civil War, O’Casey emerges as an Abbey Theatre playwright, and is viewed in the chapter through his plays The Shadow of the Gunman and Juno and the Paycock. The latter connects directly to the Singer sewing machine thematic thread that runs throughout this monograph. A backdrop to the chapter is Larkin’s return to Ireland and the ensuing battle for control of the ITGWU, which soon ends up in court with charges filed by

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both sides. Larkin’s charges were dismissed and O’Brien emerged victorious, which led to Larkin’s expulsion from the union he had founded in 1909. Against what he considered as a great betrayal of Larkin, O’Casey begins writing The Plough and the Stars for the coming tenth anniversary of the Rising. Shaw for his part not only visited Ireland for the last time, but was working on his masterwork, Saint Joan. Chapter 5 focuses on Shaw’s play set in fifteenth-century France, within the Irish context of 1910–1922. While numerous scholars have detected Irish echoes within Saint Joan, this chapter argues that the echoes go further. While not arguing that Saint Joan is about Connolly’s martyrdom, the chapter does argue Connolly is a presence in the play. Given that both the play and its preface significantly focus on the process of history, Connolly’s execution, overseen by a zealous British general much like Shaw’s portrait of the feudal English Earl of Warwick, is examined, particularly through details that Shaw most likely, even definitely knew. The small group of individuals, including Shaw, that financially contributed to Connolly’s partner/wife Lily and children, had access to knowledge of Connolly’s last days and the British efforts to proceed with his execution through Richard Tobin, who medically treated the severely wounded Connolly. The decision to execute descended into a contentious debate between the British Commanding-General John Maxwell and the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, with the civil leadership giving way to the military. The links between Joan’s Church trial, and Connolly’s hastily conducted Field General Court Martial carried out by British officers with no legal background, cannot be ignored, nor can the British efforts to erase as much of Connolly as possible after his death. Again, it is not the book’s contention that Saint Joan is about Connolly, rather it argues that Connolly’s actions and execution informed Shaw’s writing of his major 1924 play, and thus reveals additional threads to the play’s tapestry and its portrayal of the process of history. Chapter 6 considers The Plough and the Stars , O’Casey’s 1926 play set leading up to and during the 1916 Easter Rising, Connolly’s Revolution. This represents the first time the play has been thoroughly explored within the deep context of Connolly’s ICA, some of which was made possible by Jeffrey Leddin’s 2019 The Labour Hercules: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism, 1913–1923. O’Casey’s setting of Acts I and II in November 1915 is explored, being the month Connolly increased his preparations for Irish revolution. At the same time Connolly continued his interest in theatre by appointing Abbey Theatre actor Helena Molony

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to head both the Irish Women’s Workers Union and the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company, the same month Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C . entered rehearsals at the Abbey, and then subsequently withdrawn. The events surrounding the play’s rehearsals, withdrawal, and the script itself, would clearly have been reported to Connolly by Molony and fellow Abbey actor Sean Connolly (no relation to James)—both of who were also ICA members; Sean Connolly held the rank of Captain, much like The Plough and the Star’s Jack Clitheroe. O’Casey thematically criticizes Connolly in The Plough’s Act I for inducing men, such as Clitheroe, to leave their homes and families to go to their death, as voiced by Nora Clitheroe. Nora, however, also expresses Connolly’s contention in The Re-Conquest of Ireland that working-class women were slaves to their husbands, who were themselves slaves to their capitalist employers. In essence, O’Casey criticizes the insurrectionist Connolly, not the socialist Connolly. The Plough and the Stars ’s Acts III and IV are read in the context of specific events in the Easter Rising, complete with echoes from Shaw’s post-Rising letters to The New Statesman and London’s Daily News. O’Casey’s portrait of the play’s tenement residents looting during the Rising’s early days, specifically in the play’s Act III, is shown to be influenced by Shaw’s Saint Joan. While the bourgeois make up of much of the Abbey’s 1926 audience would have viewed the looting of Dublin businesses through a class lens, O’Casey does not demonize his looters— recalling Shaw’s distinct refusal to demonize the historical individuals who colluded in Joan’s burning. This is carried to the closing moments of Plough’s Act IV when two British soldiers sing of home as the rebel headquarters in the General Post Office burns—the soldiers know they will soon be in the Great War’s front-line trenches. In Act IV we learn of Clitheroe’s death within the Imperial Hotel, where the ICA’s huge socialist Plough and the Stars flag flew, machine stitched, likely with a Singer machine. The recounting of Clitheroe’s death, and the portrait of Nora’s descent into debilitating sorrow, rings of the uselessness of Clitheroe’s death, and the uselessness of all the suffering and death that the Rising produced for Dublin’s poor—caught in Connolly’ conflagration. O’Casey leaves his audience with the emptiness of failed rebellion. Chapter 7 pulls the threads of the study together by examining Shaw’s deposition of socialism, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism and O’Casey’s war play The Silver Tassie, both published in 1928. The discussion of the Guide begins with its exploration of

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nineteenth-century industrial capitalism, where smaller companies built around inventions were bought up by larger capitalist companies for their inventions, which were then expanded through massive production with sweated labour. This led to the production of small machines for home use, such as sewing machine, creating an ever-expanding consumermarket. The Guide’s Irish connections are looked at, including Connolly’s presence in Shaw’s discussion of labour and syndicalism, and, importantly, in his advocacy for equal incomes. Connolly’s theoretical work, which Shaw had access to, is probed for Connolly’s views on equal incomes. If, as argued, Shaw had read Connolly’s Labour in Ireland, specifically TheRe-Conquest of Ireland, he would have detected the influence of his own 1910 Dublin lecture, “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland”. The chapter discusses Connolly’s “Woman” chapter, where he asserts that working-class women bear the greatest burden under capitalism, especially within marriage. Connolly writes that “The worker is the slave of the capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of the slave” (292). Shaw’s Guide borrows and reiterates this argument in its “Woman in the Labour Market” chapter, using almost the same language, writing: “as capitalism made a slave of the man, and then by paying the woman through him, made her his slave, she became the slave of a slave, which is the worst sort of slavery” (197). In turn, The Silver Tassie includes not only O’Casey’s condemnation of the Great War, an attitude he shared with Connolly, but also his most effective, hitherto undetected, response to Connolly, specifically to his The Re-Conquest of Ireland (originally from 1915). The Re-Conquest inexplicably contains no mention of the Great War and its impact on the Dublin working class in its first years, even though much of Connolly’s journalism from that time focused on the War and its impact both on international socialism and socialism within Ireland. It was a strange reversal of August 1914, when during the War’s first weeks, O’Casey was endeavouring to force the aristocratic Constance Markievicz out of the ICA, appearing oblivious to the potential destructiveness of War. By building on Saint Joan’s considerations of the historical process, The Silver Tassie, in contrast, foregrounds the destructiveness of the war, and thereby highlights a weakness in one of Connolly’s most important theoretical works. Compared to Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C ., O’Casey’s Great War play highlights the war’s cost to the Dublin poor. Even the cost to Susie Monican, who forges a new identity by Act III as a self-assured nurse (at first glance

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similar to O’Flaherty’s opportunities from the War), is revealed in late Act IV when she can express no empathy with the War maimed. It conforms to the disturbing perception that life was only for the able-bodied. The play’s stark portraits of its characters also reveal that nothing is learned by its main character Harry Heegan. All he takes from the War is loss, the loss of everything that he thought he was. That loss becomes the thrust of the play, epitomized by the soldiers’ question from Act II of, why War? There is no answer by play’s end, only the question of why remaining. An answer may be found in Shaw’s exactly contemporary work, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, which argues that the Great War, and all wars that will follow, will exist for as long as “we persist in depending on Capitalism for our livelihood and our morals” (156–157). Although the Introduction to Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation ended by suggesting that that book would demonstrate “Shaw’s legacy in Irish socialism” (6), it only detailed part of that legacy. This present work completes that task.

References Connolly, James. The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsel, 1917. 219–346. Dick, Maria-Danielle, Kristy Lusk, and Willy Maley. “The Agitator’s Wife (1894): The Story Behind James Connolly’s Lost Play?” Irish Studies Review, 27.1, 1–21. 2018. Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw: Volume I, 1856–1898, The Search for Love. New York: Random, 1988. Lynd, Robert. “Introduction: James Connolly.” Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. vii-xxvi. Redmond-Howard, L. G. Six Days of the Irish Republic. Cork: Aubane Historical Society, 2006. Shaw, George Bernard. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. New York: Brentano’s, 1928. ———Other Island. London John Bull’s: Penguin Books, 1984. ———Bernard Shaw: The Diaries 1885–1897, Vol. II . Ed. Stanley Weintraub. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986.

CHAPTER 2

Shaw, O’Casey, Connolly: Stitching the Foundation, 1890s–1915

In “The Tragic Generation”, part of his autobiographical The Trembling of the Veil, published in 1922, William Butler Yeats made an infamous remark about Bernard Shaw when recalling the 1894 premier runs of his own The Land of Heart’s Desire and Shaw’s Arms and the Man at London’s Avenue Theatre with Florence Farr: “Presently I had a nightmare that I was haunted by a sewing machine, that clicked and shone, but the incredible thing was that the machine smiled, smiled perpetually” (283). Anthony Roche, in his superb The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899–1939, argues that this scathing comment undermined Shaw’s reputation in Ireland for decades, leading many Irish dramatists, excluding O’Casey, to dismiss Shaw’s plays, and Shaw’s contributions to Irish drama. As Roche points out, Yeats’ envisioned direction for Irish theatre in both 1894 and 1922 meant that “Shaw’s plays [are] anathema to all he valued in the theatre and certainly did not want them staged at the Abbey [Theatre]”. The exception, prior to 1916, was The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet (1909), which had more to do with Shaw’s defiance of the British censor, and the Abbey’s stand against the British administration in Ireland, than it did with Yeats embracing Shaw’s canon (81).1 Indeed, Shaw’s masterful Irish play John Bull’s Other Island did not premier at the Abbey in 1904 but at London’s Royal Court Theatre.2 Furthermore, Yeats’ nightmare image of Shaw contributed to the exclusion of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_2

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Shaw’s contributions to modern Ireland through the twentieth century and beyond. Roche counters such exclusion and prejudices with his Shaw chapter in the above book. Recent scholars who have contributed to revitalizing Shaw’s significant presence in modern Irish drama and politics include Peter Gahan in Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition (2010), myself in Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation (2011), David Clare in Bernard Shaw’s Irish Outlook (2016), and the 2012 International Shaw Society conference Audrey McNamara organized at University College Dublin. All of the above built on Declan Kiberd’s astute arguments in Inventing Ireland (1995) and Irish Classics (2000) that Shaw be considered an Irish dramatist (Inventing, 181). Yet as Roche argues, Yeats’ nightmare commentary was a damning slight against Shaw’s critical reputation in Ireland, and perhaps elsewhere, generating later perceptions that Shaw’s plays were mechanical and inorganic (81). Yet of all the machines of the Industrial Revolution, why a sewing machine? Sewing machines in 1894—and 1922—were lifeless unless operated by a sewer (sewist), where linear and uniform stitching became possible yet was devoid of personal artistry. Such, of course, was incongruous to Yeats’ aesthetical sensibilities. However, there was more to sewing machines than how they sewed. The machines by the 1870s were mass produced, and were shortly in most middle and upper-class homes, used by domestic servants tasked with repairing or altering their employers’ clothing. Perhaps Yeats was insinuating a commercialism and domesticity, with such reflecting Yeats’ anticipation of some popular fascination for Shaw, as recalled for 1922; Yeats claimed he was “aghast” with Arms and the Man’s energy while seeing it performed (many times) in 1894 (Roche, 81). Yet the other side of the popularity of sewing machines is the fact that because the machines were so functional, they made large scale shirt and clothing factories possible, where sweated workers toiled in poorly lit and overcrowded conditions throughout the Western world (then entire world)—and all of the mass produced sewing machines at the time were manufactured by underpaid, unrepresented workers toiling through long hours in a prolonged workweek with no safety precautions, and no protection if injured on the job. The leader in the sewing machine industry was the Singer Sewing Machine Company that in 1873 opened a new factory on 32 acres of land in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the United States, with a workforce of 6,000; in the same year Singer opened a factory in Kilbowie Clydebank, Scotland, with 2,000 workers. By 1885, the demand for sewing machines

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in the British Isles and Europe led to the opening of a new Kilbowie factory, which became Singer’s largest with 7,000 employees (“Made in Jersey”). In 1902 Singer opened a third massive factory in Podolsk Russia, then in Buenos Aires, controlling roughly twenty-five thousand mostly unskilled workers world-wide. Sewing machines in the 1890s and early 1900s featured cast iron housing with metal mechanical gears and parts connected to a cast iron foot pedal via a rubber belt that was processed from an African or South American rubber plantation by grotesquely exploited workers; a wooden cabinet, which needed to be built and stained, supported the machine on an iron base. Production involved many workers in different jobs in constant repetition to create thousands of machines, of which the majority in turn made sweated clothing factories and industries, of all sizes, practicable. The sewing machine represented much more than an affront to Yeats’ artistic vision through its domestic functionality as the machine symbolized, in the industrial age, more than something linear; it was an international embodiment of the industrialized abuse of workers. Given Shaw’s continuous desire to eradicate poverty in favour of true equality, Yeats’ sewing machine commentary is ultimately not completely outrageous; it might be more illuminating in its fuller context—namely, that the machine’s manufacturing would eventually reflect workers’ revolutions. In fact, five months prior to an important strike action at Singer’s Kilbowie, Clydeside, factory in April 1911, Shaw lectured in Edinburgh and Glasgow, the latter within the industrial Clydeside district, with Beatrice Webb (in Edinburgh), Sidney Webb (in Glasgow), and on his own in both.3 On 26 October 1910 at Edinburgh’s University Union, Shaw’s lecture, “University Socialism”, called for equal incomes: “Socialism meant a state of society in which every person received from their birth a sufficient income to keep them in a dignified and handsome condition, without any condition as to character or anything else. Society would start with the assumption that everybody born must be in that position, and also with the further advantage that everybody’s income should be precisely and exactly equal” (quoted in “University Socialism”, 8).4 Calling for equal incomes within miles of sweated workers on Clyde’s riverside, including Singer’s workforce at Kilbowie, had to have provocatively registered with the socialists and trade unionists who attended the lectures. The lectures, after all, were presented on the eve of what would become the next decade’s Red Clydeside Movement, and they would not be the last lectures Shaw delivered during labour unrest.

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Shaw’s 1910 Glasgow and Edinburgh lectures with the Webbs and solo, were part of their Fabian campaign against destitution, which followed, by two weeks, Shaw’s earlier campaign lecture in Dublin.5 The lecture, “The Poor Law and Irish Destitution”, relegated the Poor Law system as cruel and ineffective, while indicting the comfortable classes for manufacturing and allowing poverty.6 Shaw, as an active world betterer against poverty produced by industrialized capitalism, harboured no interest in being a disciple of Yeats’ professed aristocracy of art. He openly dismissed Yeats’ mystical Irish leanings in 1904 when John Bull’s Other Island’s Larry Doyle dismisses the premise of Yeats’ and Lady Augusta Gregory’s play Kathleen Ni Houlihan (1902): “the Irishman in Ireland” “cant be intelligently political;… If you want to interest him in Ireland you’ve got to call the unfortunate island Kathleen ni Hoolihan [sic] and pretend she’s a little old woman” (John Bull’s, 81) However, Yeats also noted in “The Tragic Generation”: “I delighted in Shaw, the formidable man. He could hit my enemies and the enemies of all I loved, as I could never hit” (283). One of those enemies included the Dublin capitalist William Martin Murphy, who, through his Irish Independent newspaper campaigned against Dublin providing a gallery to house Hugh Lane’s impressionist paintings collection,7 and led Dublin employers to lockout unionized workers in 1913.8 Indeed, Shaw took aim at Murphy, and Murphy’s employer class, in 1913, making a crucial impact on Ireland. So, while Yeats unflatteringly portrayed Shaw as a clicking, smiling sewing machine, Shaw was one who could, and would, strike at what the sewing machine fully represented for the working classes, and did so with a formidable wit in the theatre and scathing prose on the speakers’ platform and in his journalism. The horrors of sewing machines for toilers only increased with the beginning of the new century, as in the Clydeside and all of Singer’s factories, which would historically witness, in one form or another, revolution. In December 1904, the Singer Company opened its new and ornate office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the Nevsky Prospekt Street, heralding the international achievements of the company and signalling the elevation of its owners to the extravagances of the gilded age—yet the building also heralded the other side to gilded wealth. Opened for little more than a month, the building witnessed hundreds if not thousands of proletariat factory workers and reforming agitators march past, with Russian Orthodox icon banners, on route to the Winter Palace

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to present petitions and grievances to Tsar Nicholas II. They were met by the Tsar’s troops who fired on them, known as Russia’s Bloody Sunday. As if immune to such protests and slaughters that evolved into the crushed 1905 Russian Revolution with its 15,000 plus deaths, and ignoring the omen of this Bloody Sunday, the Singer Company furthered its symbols of grandiose achievements in 1908 with its new skyscraper headquarters building in New York—all while the New Jersey factory significantly increased its non-union and underpaid workforce (Mieville, 25; Nevin, Connolly, 246). On 19 November 1905, an Edinburgh-born Irish labourer at the New Jersey factory, who had emigrated in 1903 from Dublin named James Connolly, wrote to a friend in Scotland: I have left Troy [New York] and settled in Newark [New Jersey]. I was working for six weeks as a machinist in a shop here, what we call an engineer at home. I had a Socialist foreman and he employed me at laying out work as it is called, and between us we buncoed the capitalist into the belief that I was an expert mechanic. If ever I am fortunate enough to escape from this cursed country and get back to Europe, when I meet Tommy Clarke he and I will have a great talk about ‘our trade’ in Scotland and America. At present I am running a lathe in Singer’s Sewing Machine factory at Elizabeth. It is like at [Kilbowie] Clydebank. Employs between 8,000 and 9,000 men and a special train runs every morning from Newark. So I and Neil MacLean [in Scotland] are employed by the same boss. (Between Comrades, 279)

This very James Connolly eventually began unionizing Singer’s New Jersey factory workers. In April 1906, he added German to his languages in order to unionize German workers, which matched his fluency in Italian as he unionized Singer’s Italian workers. It was Singer’s practice to employ workers of varying cultures to obstruct solidarity, but unifying all workers, regardless of nationalities, religions, genders, and skill levels, would become Connolly’s approach to organized labour. Nevertheless, Connolly left Singer’s factory once he was “marked” by employers as a union organizer, leaving in an effort to protect his friend at the factory—the socialist foreman alluded to in Connolly’s above letter (Nevin, Connolly, 252). Connolly would return to Dublin in 1910, within months of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union strike that saw 20,000 women workers striking against nearly 500 waist shirt factories in New York—sweatshops built around rows of sewing machines,

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now electric for increased production, in the workers’ 12-hours workdays (ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/history/earlystruggles.html). A year later saw New York’s Triangle Waist Shirt factory fire, in which 145 workers, mostly sewing machine operators, were killed due to being locked-in while at work—with many women workers leaping from the 8th and 9th floors where the factory was located, a block from Washington Square (“Triangle”). Three months after returning to Ireland, Connolly delivered lectures and talks to small socialist clubs and trade unionist committees in Scotland, just days prior to Shaw’s October 1910 Edinburgh and Glasgow lectures. Connolly undoubtedly drew in his talks from his 1908 pamphlet The Axe to the Root , stressing the syndicalist tactic of workers’ unity to negate the dividing elements management used to stifle unification.9 Interestingly, the April 1911 strike at Singer’s Kilbowie factory not only called for increased wages, but it was also conducted on the syndicalist tactic for all 11,000 workers, which consisted of Scottish Protestants, Irish Catholics, Russian Jews, skilled and unskilled, and women and men. Two years later, federated employers in Dublin, led by William Martin Murphy, endeavoured to break the syndicalization of Dublin labour, implementing the 1913 Dublin Lockout. During this prolonged action, the former New Jersey Singer employee and union organizer and socialist James Connolly, now based with the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), would find himself sharing the speakers’ platform with Shaw, united in a cause. The ITGWU had been formed in 1909 by James Larkin. In 1911, fueled by the initial success of the syndicalist strike at Singer’s Kilbowie factory, Larkin took aim at Irish railways; first by endeavouring to unionize workers and then calling for strikes in the Railway shops and divisions. This was specifically attempted with the Great Southern and Western Railway (GSWR) and the Great Northern Railway (GNR). Perhaps not strong enough for two such simultaneous strike actions, the ITGWU’s efforts against the railways were unsuccessful. The GSWR’s board, including William Martin Murphy and led by its president William Goulding, experimented with locking out all its workers (Yeates, Lockout, 3). While nothing had been gained by workers against the GSWR, approximately 90% of workers retained their jobs. The union suffered a worse defeat against the GNR as management sacked all workers suspected of retaining their ITGWU membership (Murray, 81). One employee who was let back, but then dismissed in late 1911 after he was

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overheard “praising Jim Larkin” and the ITGWU, was a labourer who had been in the GNR’s employ since 1902 named John O’Casey (Krause, “Notes”, 10). O’Casey, who was not giving up his ITGWU membership, wrote to the GNR in order to ascertain why he was dismissed. After a series of letters, O’Casey was informed that his “service was no longer needed” (qtd. in O’Casey Letters, I , 12). In a defiant gesture, O’Casey submitted his correspondence with the Railway’s secretary to the ITGWU’s weekly Irish Worker, which its editor, Larkin, published on 4 February 1912. The worker’s gesture was a harbinger of yet another socialist voice for modern Ireland, to be known as Sean O’Casey—who would join the ranks, with Shaw, of Ireland’s important dramatists.

Enter O’Casey O’Casey, like Shaw, was born and raised in Dublin, but most likely not of the genteel poverty that Shaw’s family experienced. Shaw was born south of the River Liffey on Synge Street, more genteel than not, while O’Casey was born north of the Liffey amid streets of severe poverty. Christopher Murray, in his important O’Casey biography, notes that O’Casey’s family was “lower middle class. Their housing—always rented accommodation—was never ‘slum’ housing in the common understanding of that emotive word”. Still, O’Casey’s family lived among severe poverty that was abundantly visible (Murray, 17). Born four years after 20-yearold Shaw emigrated to London in 1876, O’Casey, according to Murray, was unable to avail himself, as the young Shaw had done, of Dublin’s National Gallery, “for he was ‘too ragged and too shy to venture a visit’” (62). However, O’Casey, like Shaw—and Connolly—was a voracious reader. Such reading over his nine years as a railway labourer led to an enhanced vocabulary. Murray asks rhetorically of the correspondence O’Casey published in the Irish Worker with the GNR’s secretary: “Was ever a manual labourer so literate and so literary?” (81). In his 1945 autobiographical sketch Drums Under the Window, O’Casey—by then a renown dramatist—recalled a friend telling him that Shaw was “The cleverest Irishman the world knows…. A godsend to men who try to think, who’s creating a new world out of a new thought. Read John Bull’s Other Island and the Ireland you think you know and love will vanish before your eyes” (Drums, 252). This friend informed O’Casey that a “paper-covered” edition of the play could be purchased for sixpence. O’Casey relates that on a pay-day he purchased the sixpence

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copy and immediately read it. He was, he tells us, transformed by seeing “Shaw everywhere” and noted that Shaw’s portrait of Ireland was not romantic but as it was, and led him to see Ireland as “being hitched to a power and will to face the facts. And this Irishman Shaw, was helping us to do it” (Drums, 255–257).10 This episode, as depicted by O’Casey, testifies to the success of the sixpence paper edition of Shaw’s major Irish-set play, which Shaw had arranged for with his London publisher Constable to coincide with the 1912 Home Rule Bill. The inexpensive copy, known as the Home Rule edition, was published in January 1912 and made available in Britain and Ireland at a price for most economic classes.11 In 1945, O’Casey was intent on portraying some of the influences and provocations that contributed to his development, such as discovering Shaw soon after his railway sacking. Following that sacking, O’Casey’s working-class militancy grew in numerous directions (Murray, 82). He became an enthusiast in the Gaelic League, joined the St. Laurence O’Toole’s Club—helped organize its Pipers’ Band with O’Casey as its secretary, embraced nationalist directions, and, of course, continued his interest in the ITGWU. The ITGWU’s early years saw the blending of labour politics with socialism, particularly under Larkin to October 1914 and then under James Connolly to 12 May 1916. As early as 1911, Larkin formed the ITGWU newspaper, the Irish Worker. As editor, Larkin denounced “erring employers and corrupt civil servants by name”, perceived enemies of labour, and quickly reached a weekly circulation of 20,000 (Morrisey, O’Brien, 55). The paper also provided Larkin with a platform for benefiting workers. In the 29 June 1911 edition, Larkin wrote: “If it is good for the employers... to have clean clothing and good food, and books and music, and pictures, so it is good that the people should have these things also—and that is the claim we are making today” (as quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 55). Part of Larkin’s vision for Irish workers and their families was enhanced when the ITGWU acquired Liberty Hall in early 1912, formerly the Northumberland Hotel. The building not only was the ITGWU’s headquarters, it also became the “centre for the social and cultural activities of the union. The ‘Hall’ soon housed the Irish Workers’ Choir, and the Juvenile and Adult Dancers’ class, while an Irish language class was formed, followed by the founding of the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company” (Larkin, “James Larkin”, 5). Murray states that O’Casey worked on the renovations to the interior of Liberty Hall, including what became the

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first stage for the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company (IWDC) (Murray, 94). The company was organized and led by Delia Larkin, with its first performances on St. Stephens Night, 26 December 1912 (Moriarty, “Delia Larkin”, 432). While Delia organized the company, the first productions were staged by A. P. Wilson. Little is known about the Scottish Wilson, who went by A. Patrick Wilson in Ireland, and later as Andrew P. Wilson in Scotland (Gregory, Shaw, Lady Gregory, 97). Eleven months prior to the performances in Liberty Hall, Wilson had joined the Abbey Theatre’s acting school, where he became a member of the Abbey’s second company in March 1912. Wilson’s one-act Victims was the first play set in a Dublin tenement, and shared the IWDC’s first bill with Rutherford Mayne’s The Troth, Norman McKinnell’s The Bishop’s Candlestick, and Seumas O’Kelly’s The Matchmaker. Also in 1912, Wilson became a regular columnist for the Irish Worker, signing his articles as “Lucan”, “Mac”, or “Euchan” (O’Brien, Forth, 260; Murray, 95). On 8 February 1913, O’Casey, then a regular at republican Tom Clarke’s tobacco and news shop on what is now Parnell Street, wrote to the Irish Worker criticizing an article by Wilson, signed as Euchan: “The Rebel Movement: Labour and Its Relation to Home Rule”. Wilson argued that as the 1912 Home Rule Bill for Ireland was passed, to be implemented in 1914, the need for armed nationalist struggle was over. Instead, Wilson suggested that Ireland’s future battle would be between capitalists and labour (O’Casey Letters, I , 13– 14). O’Casey contested Euchan’s view, insinuating that “Euchan” knew little about Ireland as a Scot: “what does he know about Ireland’s past?” (13). The Irish Worker printed Wilson’s reply in which he reiterated his points; leading to the publishing of O’Casey’s further response on 22 February: “We are out to overthrow England’s language, her political government of our country, good and bad; her degrading social system; her lauded legal code which are blossoms on the tree which springs, not from the centre of Dublin Corporation, nor from the Halls of Westminster, but which has its roots in the heart of the English race” (O’Casey Letters, I , 16). The debate would continue in the paper to 8 March, clearly indicating that in early 1913, O’Casey’s socialism slanted towards Irish republicanism, while Wilson’s was more international. However, O’Casey’s slant was not inappropriate for the Irish Worker in 1913—nor would it be within three years’ time.

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Adrian Grant, in Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909–1936, asserts that the ITGWU’s Irish Worker embraced certain traditions of Irish Republicanism. This was evidenced in its “masthead [that] proudly quoted from [1840s] James Finan Lalor: ‘the principle I state and mean to stand upon is that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre is vested of the right in the people of Ireland’” (quoted in Grant, 37). Later in the year, on 10 May 1913, O’Casey qualified his views as he contributed an article to the paper in which he stated: If a union of Labour and Republican forces would result in the achievement of an independent Ireland, or even bring that happy consummation appreciably nearer, would we hesitate and say, ‘Not yet, not yet; wait for the aristocrats’?… It is up to us now to turn away from the self satisfied gentry and the soulless controllers of commerce, and to unite the Separatist ranks with the forces of Labour for a free Ireland and the social advancement of the people. (qtd. in Grant, 55)

O’Casey was articulating republicanized socialism. It was a position that carried influence from Connolly’s 1910 book Labour in Irish History, if without Connolly’s nuanced reasoning and arguments.12 In his debate with Wilson, O’Casey referenced Connolly: “James Connolly could give you some valuable information on this quest” (O’Casey Letters, I , 23). Labour in Irish History, a socialist reading of Irish history, had been published in 1910 Dublin as Connolly returned from the United States, eventually becoming the ITGWU’s Belfast organizer.13 The book posits that Irish rebellions against Britain failed due to their dependence on the bourgeois class, who became informants out of greed. Most notably, the book undermines some iconic Irish historical figures, such as Daniel O’Connell, who was instrumental in achieving Catholic Emancipation in 1828. Connolly asserts that O’Connell, as a product of the capitalist class, participated in suppressing Robert Emmet’s 1803 rebellion. In turn, Connolly classified Emmet as a socialistically slanted republican. Connolly designed the book to promote Irish socialism within the sphere of republicanism, and endeavoured to promote his book through socialist and ITGWU meetings in Ireland and Scotland. In Drums under the Windows, O’Casey recalls seeing Connolly either after Connolly’s return in 1910, or, as possibly indicated, prior to his emigration from Ireland in 1903. He relates seeing Connolly rise to

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address a small gathering when he overhears an acquaintance state, “That’s James Connolly, our secretary, an’ if you knew all you should know, you’d know without askin’”. O’Casey replied by asking “Secretary of what?”, with the reply being, “Secretary of the Irish Socialist Republican Party [ISRP]” (15–16). Prior to this dialogue, O’Casey mentions another individual moving about the meeting offering various publications for sale, including Connolly’s Socialism Made Easy (15). Confusion stems from the fact that the ISRP, of which Connolly was its Secretary for most of its existence since forming in 1896, ended in 1903, a few months after Connolly resigned and emigrated to the United States. Socialism Made Easy was published in Chicago in 1909, six years after the ISRP’s collapse. While such underscores the shortfalls in recalling strict history in O’Casey’s reflective autobiographical books, it does relate Connolly’s speaking efforts, which he undertook before he left Ireland and resumed after his return. Connolly used such talks to promote his published socialist theoretical pamphlets and books, including Labour in Irish History after returning in 1910. Given the sometimes lose history in O’Casey’s later reflective books, relying on them for his mindset during the periods being related can be problematic. After all, O’Casey’s thinking, as with most people, changed over years and decades. So, while O’Casey later resented some of Connolly’s actions, he had more in common with Connolly’s ideologies in the years prior to 1916 than not, which possibly continued into 1918. As revealed above in his debate with Wilson, and his May 1913 Irish Worker article, O’Casey then favoured a republicanized working-class Irish socialism. Yet by late August 1913, Wilson’s position that Ireland’s future battle was to be between capitalists and labour became the immediate reality for Dublin—while in Russia, 300 years of autocratic Romanov rule was being celebrated as the poor struggled to survive as lights blazed and glistened on the Nevsky Prospect before the Singer Building.

Lockout In the months leading to the 1913 Dublin Lockout, the very battle Wilson had foreseen, Larkin took aim through the Irish Worker at William Martin Murphy, who, in addition to being on the GSW Board, chaired the Board of the Dublin United Tramways Company. His newspaper holdings included the Irish Independent and Irish Catholic, both of which advocated employers’ positions. Throughout these months, Larkin was

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forging his popularity among workers. Desmond Ryan noted that Larkin “aroused the vague, incoherent and almost helpless masses and welded them into harmonious union, articulate, organized and militant”. In his nightly addresses to the workers outside Liberty Hall, Larkin delivered fiery speeches from an upper window on “the virtues of temperance, [and called out] bowelless employers, white-livered curs, adjective scabs, and other obnoxious individuals” (“Historians on Larkin”, 387). In October 1912, Larkin entered the debate over whether Dublin should provide a gallery for Hugh Lane’s gift of Impressionist paintings. As Larkin maintained that workers and their families should enjoy paintings as much as the comfortable classes, he joined those advocating for the gallery: Yeats, Gregory, George Russell, Shaw, and others in support.14 As discussion for the gallery expanded into a meeting on 30 November 1913 at the Dublin Lord Mayor’s residence, the Mansion House, Larkin on the same day published a reply from Shaw to an invitation to attend a meeting to denounce corrupt members of Dublin’s city government, in the Irish Worker, in which Shaw denounced Dublin as “a city of derision” (Shaw, Lady Gregory, 85). It anticipated the gallery debate in 1913. Being one of the main opponents to the gallery for Lane’s collection, Murphy wrote on 23 January 1913 in his Irish Independent that only a “handful of dilettante” favoured the gallery “for which there is no popular demand and one which will never be of the smallest use to the common people of the city” (as quoted in Morrissey, Murphy, 39). Shaw responded on 12 April with a self-interview of himself in the Irish Times : “When asked if he thinks the paintings and gallery are valuable, Shaw responded: ‘Think it! It is valuable. Is anybody in Dublin so stupendously ignorant as not to know that it will be one of the most precious collections of the kind in Europe?’” (“Municipal Art”, 7). In turn, Dublin poet George Russell denounced Murphy and his cohorts who opposed the gallery as “the meanest, the most uncultured, the most materialistic and canting crowd which ever made a citizen ashamed of his fellow-countrymen” (as quoted in E. Larkin, “AE”, 214). By July 1913, Murphy, learned that the ITGWU was recruiting workers within the Dublin United Tramways Company (Yeates, Lockout, 5). The sixty-nine-year-old Murphy responded by sacking six known ITGWU agitators, and told workers at the Irish Independent that they had to choose between their jobs or the union. Larkin responded by calling on newsboy members of the ITGWU to stop selling the Irish Independent ,

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just as ITGWU workers at Eason’s Stationery, then a Dublin newspaper distributor, refused to load or unload Murphy’s papers. Murphy responded by sacking two hundred tramway workers for union membership. Then on 26 August, Larkin called for tram crews to stop and leave their respective trams in protest, which they did. In response, Murphy led the Dublin Employers Federation into locking out all ITGWU workers across the city, including at Jacob’s Biscuit factory. In further retaliation, Larkin called for strikes from sympathizing unions. The lockout spread to almost every major employer in Dublin, except Guinness, leading to over 25,000 workers, and their families, affected.15 Suffering during the Dublin Lockout was severe, which included police brutality. The Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) executed orders to protect employers and employers’ property, resulting in baton charges against assembled workers over the weekend of 30–31 August. The brutality on the Saturday left two labourers dead, and hundreds injured— many with severe head injuries. When a workers’ demonstration for Sunday 31 August was banned by the DMP, some members of the ITGWU still congregated on O’Connell Street (which the Government called Sackville Street) to hear Larkin’s address. In disguise, with assistance from comrades, Larkin appeared before the crowd on a balcony of the Imperial Hotel, the crown jewel of Murphy’s commercial empire. Larkin was almost immediately arrested and the DMP then baton-charged the crowd, which included workers and others strolling on a Sunday afternoon, from multiple and calculated angles. O’Casey, in Drums Under the Window, described being on O’Connell Street on 31 August as the DMP attacked: “Carried along by ebbing and flowing mass of people, he saw dimly that they had gone beyond Nelson’s Pillar; while topping the crowd, he could see police helmets darting hither and thither, batoning and blustering, batoning, batoning everyone” (Drums, 295). Another person on the street to see Larkin speak and witnessed the police attack was poet, playwright, and future rebellion leader with a leftist slant, Thomas MacDonagh, who testified to the Disturbances Commission that investigated the DMP’s 30–31 August actions: “I saw the police batoning the people and striking them on the head… I saw them attack an old woman with a shawl over her head and baton her brutally…. I heard the continual rapping of batons on people’s heads” (as quoted in Yeates, Lockout, 66). The DMP violence injured another six hundred, marking the 31st as Dublin’s Bloody Sunday (Yeates, Lockout, 68). It was an echo of the bloodier Sunday in 1905 on St. Petersburgh’s Nevsky Prospekt.

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As the Lockout continued, feeding the Dublin labourers and their families became paramount. British labour unions sent food supplies as a soup kitchen was established in the basement of Liberty Hall. O’Casey, mostly under-employed since his 1911 sacking, served in the kitchen and successfully collected contributions for the Women’s and Children’s Relief Fund (Murray, 88). By late October, Larkin was jailed for inciting sedition. London’s leftist Daily Herald, formed in 1912 with some funding from Shaw, organized a rally at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 1 November to advocate for Larkin’s release and raise funds for Dublin workers. The speakers’ platform featured leading English socialists, trade unionists, and suffragettes, as well as Dublin socialists that included Shaw. George Russell’s speech condemned the Catholic Church in Dublin for stifling the plan to send children of locked-out parents to be cared for by English labourers’ families for the Lockout’s duration.16 Russell also attacked the Dublin courts for imprisoning Larkin but not the employers who conspired to maintain thousands in extreme poverty. Connolly then followed Russell, and Shaw followed Connolly. Connolly’s and Shaw’s speeches would resonate over the next three years—and beyond. They are, arguably, among the most important of Ireland’s revolutionary period. Connolly was often called to Dublin from the ITGWU’s Belfast Office during the Lockout, and filled in for Larkin at the London rally.17 In his speech, Connolly alluded to the passed Home Rule Bill awaiting implementation, which contained no social reforms with regard to workers and women’s suffrage, therefore allowing subservience to continue: You cannot build a free nation on the basis of slavery. We are against the domination of nation over nation, class over class, sex over sex. But if we are to make Ireland the Ireland of their dreams and aspirations we must have a free and self-respecting and independent people. You can never have freedom and self-respect whilst you have starvation, whether it is the green flag or the Union Jack that is flying over our head. If there is nothing in your stomach it matters mighty little what flag is flying. (quoted in Sheehy-Skeffington, “London’s Magnificent Rally”)

Connolly the theorist, sounding more international than not, concluded by saying that Irish labour “would not be defeated, and that they meant to continue to fight”—then appealed for “financial support” for lockedout workers (quoted in “Anti-Clerical Campaign”, 5). Then, Shaw spoke and raised the radical bar further. It was as if the speeches by these three

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leftist Dubliners created a dramatic and rising crescendo to revolution, perhaps even staged, with Shaw delivering the climatic words. After attacking the Catholic Church’s hierarchy in Dublin for blocking the temporary move of workers’ children, building on Russell’s assault, Shaw then criticized Dublin employers for not employing people “at decent Trade Union wages”—an ITGWU position that reverberated with Shaw’s advocacy for equal wages. Next, he attacked the Dublin courts, taking the Dublin Crown Prosecutor to task for “charging Larkin with sedition on the grounds that he said the employing class lived on profits” (“Mad Dogs”, 96). Shaw then turned to the DMP’s violent attacks against locked-out workers, delivering a call that Connolly would lead into revolution: If you once let loose your physical force without careful supervision and order you may as well let loose in the streets a parcel of mad dogs as a parcel of policemen. It has been the practice, ever since the modern police were established, in difficulties with the working class to let loose the police and tell them to do their worst to the people. Now, if you put the policeman on the footing of a mad dog, it can end in one way—that all respectable men will have to arm themselves. (“Mad Dogs”, 97)

When asked by a voice in the crowd how they should arm themselves, Shaw responded: “I should suggest you should arm yourself with something that would put a decisive stop to the proceedings of the police”. Shaw then added that “I hope that observation will be carefully reported. I should rather like to be prosecuted for sedition and have an opportunity of explaining to the public exactly what I mean” (“Mad Dogs”, 97). Of Russell, Connolly, and Shaw, only Shaw could have made the call to arm Irish labour without being arrested, which he affirmed by saying he desired prosecution so he could explain in a public court. Such played to his carefully crafted identity as a public intellectual. The three speeches represented an extraordinary jolt within Ireland’s revolutionary period. This was not the first time Shaw had advocated for the arming of proletariats against a state. Weeks after Tsar Nicholas II’s troops fired on proletariat protestors in St. Petersburg in January 1905, Shaw addressed a rally in London’s Trafalgar Square organized by the Friends of Russian Freedom. In his speech, Shaw stated that “If they [impoverished protestors] oppose the state, the state would shoot them, and until all the working class populations of the world understood thoroughly that when

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they stirred out of their ordinary round to oppose the State they must do it with arms in their hands or it would be understood that none of them really meant business”. (“The Crisis”, quoted in Soboleva and Wrenn, 113). Such likely stemmed for Shaw from being among protestors batoncharged by London’s police in Trafalgar Square in 1887 (Gibbs, 129).18 Of course, Shaw’s support of locked workers in 1913 did not mean he supported syndicalism, but rather that he understood what Dublin workers’ were facing against employers and a government unwilling to intervene meaningfully. Two weeks later, after Shaw’s speech calling for the arming of Dublin workers, Larkin was released early from prison and Connolly addressed gathered workers outside Liberty Hall, echoing Shaw’s “sedition”: “I am going to talk sedition. The next time we are out for a march, I want to be accompanied by four battalions of trained men. I want them to come with their corporals, sergeants and people who will be able to form fours. Why should we not drill and train our men in Dublin as they are doing in Ulster?19 .... See if the police will clear us off the street [now] as they [have] threatened” (qtd. in Nevin, Connolly, 463). The Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was being formed as a labour militia to counter the DMP, reverberating with Shaw’s words to arm. When the ICA first met, on 30 November 1913, to begin drilling, it was led by former British Army Captain turned radical Jack White. White called its labour members together by invoking Shaw, which the Irish Times reported: “He [White] had a conversation with a Jesuit priest, and they discussed George Bernard Shaw, when the priest said ‘he wrote Socialism.’ He (Captain White) asked him if the democracy of Ireland was not fit for the socialistic life, and the priest replied that they were not” (“In Croydon Park”, 6). The context of the Jesuit priest in White’s retelling was the concerted Jesuit effort in Ireland from 1910 to stifle socialism within the country. The leftist White was undoubtedly familiar with the Jesuits’ anti-socialist endeavours, which Connolly had challenged in 1910, and he knew Shaw. The year before, on 6 December 1912, White had shared the speakers’ platform with Shaw at London’s Memorial Hall for a meeting of Irish Protestants for Irish Home Rule. White’s first comments to those forming the Citizen Army’s ranks that utilized Shaw’s reputation, testified to the Dublin working-class’ knowledge of Shaw.20 Joining the ICA, which historian D. R. O’Connor Lysaght has called Europe’s first “Red Guard”, was Sean O’Casey (O’Connor Lysaght, 21).

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In the next month, on 13 December, Connolly reported in the Irish Worker that the ICA was already having an effect, as DMP constables were now backing away from confrontations with workers. The title of Connolly’s article, which his socialist and labour colleague William O’Brien later recalled as being borrowed from the title of Shaw’s play that had provoked Yeats’ Shaw-sewing machine nightmare, was “Arms and the Man” (Forth, 127).21 In the previous year, 1912, an inexpensive paper edition of Arms and the Man was published by Constable, as with the Home Rule edition of John Bull’s Other Island—two inexpensive editions available to 1913 Dublin, including Connolly, O’Casey, and workers. And as Arms and the Man undermined romanticized militarism in terms of aristocratic hero-worshipping, Connolly in his “Arms” ICA article projected the replacement of such romanticizing with arms in service of the people, as in Shaw’s call to arm the “respectable”. The once Singer toiler was engaging and reacting with Shaw’s words, which perhaps was rooted in the early 1890s (In this chapter). Curiously, when O’Casey wrote and published a history of the ICA in 1919, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, and when recalling the ICA in Drums Under the Windows , O’Casey—with much admiration for, and influence from Shaw since 1912—makes no reference to Shaw’s ties to the ICA’s formation. O’Casey had to have been aware of Shaw’s 1 November 1913 Lockout speech—which was well covered in Dublin papers.22 He also makes no mention of the first drilling of the ICA weeks later in which White referred to Shaw in addressing ICA members, which was also wellpublicized by Dublin papers (if O’Casey was not present). Furthermore, O’Casey also makes no reference to Connolly’s December 1913 Irish Worker article on the ICA in its borrowed title from Arms and the Man, yet O’Casey was no stranger to Liberty Hall, the Irish Worker, or Arms and the Man.

O’Casey and the ICA While the ICA was in its early training, Larkin, released from prison in mid-November, left for England where he called on English labour unions to undertake sympathy strikes. The hope was that such strikes throughout Britain would force a resolution in Dublin and break the capitalist hold throughout the British Isles. Rather than agree, British labour leaders reached the end of their support. While some English, Welsh, and Scottish trade union leaders resented Larkin’s call to dictate to their unions,

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the reality was that most sympathizing British unions had exhausted their own strike funds by sending food to Dublin workers, and were in no position to sustain prolonged strikes of their own (Yeates, Lockout, 496). As a result, some ITGWU workers in Dublin, and workers of unions engaged in sympathy strikes, returned to work by late December. In mid-January the ITGWU held a mass meeting where members were told to return to work as their strike fund was depleted. Ignoring the advice just relayed, Larkin arose saying that they could fight on indefinitely. He was “received in silence” (Morrisey, O’Brien, 84). Workers then attempted to return to work, but many were not taken back. Those who were rehired were done so on condition that they renounce their ITGWU membership and accept lower wages. Women workers at the Quaker-owned Jacob’s Biscuit Factory were the last allowed back, where they were humiliated by their male supervisors, while others were blacklisted and refused employment.23 Of Jacob’s nearly 900 male workers before the Lockout, only 100 were allowed back (Newsinger, Rebel, 105). With Dublin workers in defeat, Connolly wrote in the Irish Worker in February: We asked for the isolation of the capitalists in Dublin, and for answer the leaders of the British labour movement proceed calmly to isolate the Working Class of Ireland.... And so we Irish workers must again go down into Hell, bow our backs to the lash of the slave drivers, let our hearts be seared by the iron of his hatred, and instead of the Sacramental wafer of brotherhood and common sacrifice, eat the dust of defeat and betrayal. Dublin is isolated. (“Isolation”, 4)

Connolly’s sense of the abandonment, betrayal of Irish labour by British labour leaders fed his sense of the isolation of Dublin’s working class. His perception of the failure of international labour unity for Dublin would have a profound impact. Stepping forward from the despair of defeat, O’Casey began to take an active role in the ICA in the early months of 1914, leading him to suggest a tighter organization. To that end, he drafted the ICA’s constitution, which was accepted that March. The first statement reads: “That the first and last principle of the Irish Citizen Army is the avowal that the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland” (quoted in Murray, 88). As Lauren Arrington points out and as O’Casey acknowledges, this directly echoed the masthead of

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the Irish Worker, namely the 1848 quotation from James Fintan Lalor (1807–1849): “the principal I state and mean to stand upon is that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre is vested of right in the people of Ireland” (Grant, 37; Arrington, 102; O’Casey, Drums, 335). Since Larkin as editor of the paper selected the weekly masthead, O’Casey was following Larkin’s sense of a republicanized Irish socialism in composing the ICA’s constitution. Larkin likely used the Fintan Lalor quote due to Connolly’s view of Lalor in Labour in Irish History, which received a “glowing review” in the Irish Worker’s first issue (Grant, 45).24 In the book, Connolly internationalized Lalor’s theories by advocating “[that] his [Fintan Lalor’s] principles as of the creed of the world, and not merely only to the incidents of the struggle of Ireland against England” (188). Connolly demonstrates this by quoting Lalor arguing that rural peasants should withhold their rents until they, “the true proprietors ” of Irish land pay the rents to “themselves”, adding that such “would propagate itself through Europe…. Mankind will yet be masters of the earth” (quoted in Connolly, Labour, 187). So arguably, the Lalor quotation used for the Irish Worker, and then in the ICA’s O’Casey-drafted constitution, clearly was consistent with Connolly’s argued importance of Fintan Lalor’s beliefs, domestically and internationally. By drafting the ICA’s constitution, O’Casey became the ICA’s secretary; Connolly, after the Lockout ended, returned to Belfast to continue his then ITGWU position. Jeffrey Leddin notes that it was at this time that ‘Irish’ was routinely included in the Irish Citizen Army, rather than just ‘Citizen Army’ (54). However, before O’Casey became the ICA’s secretary, and before he drafted its constitution, he pursued an agenda to differentiate the ICA from the Irish Volunteers, which too had formed in November 1913. In January and February, O’Casey wrote a number of articles in the Irish Worker criticizing the Irish Volunteers. O’Casey saw the Volunteers as only a bourgeoise response to the Ulster Volunteer Force, which had formed to block Home Rule. The Volunteers then, in O’Casey’s view, only focused on Home Rule. This, for O’Casey, offered little or nothing for restructuring society, particularly with regard to the oppression of the working class—yet the Volunteers were open to workers’ enlistment, despite their lack of a labour position. On 21 February 1914, O’Casey took aim at Padraic Pearse, who by then was emerging as an Irish

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Volunteers leader. O’Casey personally named Pearse, among the Volunteers, as “worse than all” (O’Casey Letters, I , 40). He claimed that while workers were locked out from the Dublin United Tramways Company, Pearse “consistently used the trams on every possible occasion, though the contractor of the Dublin Tramways System was the man [William Martin Murphy] who declared the workers could submit or starve” (“Volunteers and Workers”, O’Casey Letters, I , 40–41).25 O’Casey, apparently, was unaware that some Volunteer leaders publicly wrote and spoke on behalf of workers during the Lockout, including Pearse. In October 1913, Pearse wrote in the militant nationalist paper, Irish Freedom, edited by Tom Clarke (whom O’Casey knew) and Sean MacDiarmada: “My instinct is with the landless man against the master of millions. I may be wrong, but I do hold it a most terrible sin that there be landless men in this island of waste yet fertile valleys, and that there should be breadless men in this city where great fortunes are made and enjoyed” (as quoted in Ellis, 223–224). Pearse went further by suggesting that employers should step into the “shoes of our hungry citizens”: I am quite certain they will enjoy their poverty and hunger. They will go about with beaming faces.... When their children cry for more food they will smile; when their house falls upon them they will thank God; when policemen smash their skulls they will kiss the chastening baton. They will do all these things—perhaps in the alternative they may see there is something to be said for the hungry man’s hazy idea that there is something wrong somewhere. . . . If I were as hungry at this moment as many equally good men of Ireland undoubtedly are, it is probable that I should not be here wielding this pen; possibly I should be in the street wielding a paving stone. (as quoted in Yeates, Lockout, 220)

As Grant argues, the “Dublin Lockout was the event that ignited Ireland’s revolutionary decade”, including for middle-class republican leaders who adopted radical stances, such as Clarke and Mac Diarmuid who shared Pearse’s pro-labour sentiments (75). If Pearse did ride the trams during the Lockout, his words, at least contradictory to such action, were contributing to a foundation for the coming together of republicanism and socialism towards the forming of a new Irish militancy of revolution, at least in ideological terms among its different leaders.26 In April 1914, as the ICA’s secretary, O’Casey prepared a mailing to Irish Trades Bodies and Unions. The effort was to attract recruits for the ICA. The mailing included the ICA’s Constitution, as well as

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the “FIRST HANDBILL ISSUED BY IRISH CITIZEN ARMY”, which listed reasons why workers should not join the Volunteers, but why they should join the ICA (O’Casey Letters, I , 51). The reasons were mostly along class lines. The insinuation was that bourgeois Volunteer leaders would not address workers’ issues, while working-class ICA leaders would. Consistent with O’Casey’s then slant towards Irish republicanized socialism, the handbill stated that the ICA stood “for Labour and the principles of Wolfe Tone, John Mitchel and Fintan Lalor” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 51). In May and June, O’Casey challenged the Volunteers’ leaders to a debate, with three ICA leaders, on the question of which organization was better suited for working-class members. The Volunteers declined. Connolly, at this time, remained in Belfast.

War When the Great War erupted over 1–4 August 1914—with Britain entering on 4 August—Britain suspended Irish Home Rule on the eve of its implementation for the War’s duration and called on Irishmen to fight its war. Connolly, in the Irish Worker’s first issue after Britain declared War, contributed an article, “Our Duty in the Crisis”: What should be the attitude of the working-class democracy of Ireland in the face of the present crisis? . . . Should the working class of Europe, rather than slaughter each other for the benefit of kings and financiers, proceed tomorrow to erect barricades all over Europe, to break up bridges and destroy the transport services that war might be abolished, we should be perfectly justified in following such a glorious example and contributing our aid to the final dethronement of the vulture classes that rule and rob the world. . . . This may mean more than a transport strike, it may mean armed battling in the streets to keep in this country the food for our people. . . . Starting thus, Ireland may yet set the torch to a European conflagration that will not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shriveled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord. (“Our Duty”, 4)

Soon after this initial war article, which revealed Connolly’s thinking that Ireland could start the “European conflagration” to ignite socialist revolution, Connolly published “A Continental Revolution” in the Scottish Socialist Forward. In it, Connolly acknowledged that the main warring countries, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, had the strongest

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socialist movements, but also the strongest capitalist and imperialist masters (“Continental”, 240). He also recognized that the expanding War was deconstructing socialist movements as labourers in all countries enlisted in their respective armies. Among the first to enlist in Ireland were the many blacklisted workers from the Lockout, who had not worked for twelve months. Connolly asked: What then becomes of all our resolutions, all our carefully built machinery of internationalism, all our hopes for the future? Were they all as sound and fury, signifying nothing? Civilization is being destroyed before our eyes; the results of generations of propaganda and patient heroic plodding and self-sacrifice are being blown into annihilation . . . this war appears to me as the most fearful crime of the centuries. In it the working classes are to be sacrificed that a small clique of rulers and armament makers may state their lust for power and their greed for wealth. Nations are to be obliterated, progress stopped, and international hatreds erected into deities to be worshipped. (“Continental”, 240–242)

The War was, for Connolly, erasing international socialism, fueling further his sense of the abandonment of Irish labour by English labour leaders near the Lockout’s end, fueling a greater sense of the isolation of socialism within Ireland. Even many militant socialists in Britain supported the war, as in socialist and labour syndicalist Tom Mann, who prior to the War Connolly had seen as an ally and “the greatest of internationalists”, but who now supported England’s war effort. This led Connolly to label Mann, “a raving jingo, howling for the blood of every rival of the British capitalist class” (As quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 625). Of course, Connolly was not the only socialist to lament the War’s eradication of international socialism, nor was he the only socialist to see opportunity through the War—as in Russia’s Vladimir Lenin. One month into the War, Lenin called “for the revolutionary mobilisation of the proletariat against the War” (Mieville, 32–33). Yet while Shaw, like Connolly and Lenin, endeavoured to see possibilities for socialism in the War, he supported Britain’s war efforts, yet was not publicly criticized by Connolly. Perhaps this was due to Shaw’s 1913 efforts for workers, and his levelling heavy criticism on the British Government’s inefficient leadership and dismal execution of the War’s opening months. Shaw’s position was tempered with the hope that a British and French victory would lead to greater democracy across Europe, and end the British, French, and German militarism generated by aristocratic

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and capitalist imperialism. Coinciding with Shaw’s War position was his continued involvement in Beatrice Webb’s anti-poverty campaign, with Shaw still advocating for equal incomes as the way to true democracy and peace.27 Yet within the War’s early months, Shaw anticipated the militant socialist’s potential reaction to events in his provocative Common Sense About the War: No doubt the heroic remedy for this tragic misunderstanding is that both armies should shoot their officers and go home to gather in their harvests in the villages and make revolution in the towns; and though this is not at present a practicable solution, it must be frankly mentioned, because it or something like it is always a possibility in a defeated conscript army if its commanders push it beyond endurance. (Common Sense about the War, 17)28

O’Casey, at the end of the War’s first month, despite his perception of the closed and insular nature of the bourgeois Volunteers, was not focused on an international socialistic response to the War but on a domestic situation within the ICA—nor did O’Casey appear at the time to appreciate how the Great War would impact Ireland and, most specifically, the working classes in Dublin and beyond. Connolly in turn did—and O’Casey later would, dramatically and illuminatingly, if retrospectively. Soon after war was declared, Connolly told his socialist and labour colleague William O’Brien, “I will not miss this chance” (as quoted in O’Brien, Forth, 269). If he was as good as his words in “Our Duty in the Crisis”, Connolly was embracing the notion that Ireland “may yet set the torch to a European conflagration” to end the capitalist and imperialist grips on Europe, which, of course, meant revolution—a revolution in Ireland that could ignite a socialist revolution throughout Europe and beyond. O’Casey in turn, was, like most, not yet seeing the War clearly. In that August 1914, as the Singer Sewing Machine factories in Kilbowie Clydebank Scotland, Podolsk Russia, and New Jersey in the United States began gearing up for munitions manufacturing for the War, O’Casey made a motion to the ICA’s council that Countess Constance Markievicz be forced to resign from either the ICA or from the nationalist women’s Cumann na mBan, which was affiliated with the Volunteers.29 Markievicz had been one of the ICA’s six vice chairs and co-treasurers since March of the same year (Arrington, 101). O’Casey may have first developed an antipathy towards Markievicz given her Anglo-Irish

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ascendancy background, the Gore-Booths of County Sligo. She subsequently studied art in Paris, where she met a Polish aristocratic artist named Casmir Markievicz. They married and eventually settled in Dublin where they first associated with the city’s aristocracy but eventually moved to artistic endeavours, including theatre. Constance Markievicz then engaged with republicanism, and, through Helena Molony and Nellie Gifford, became involved in the labour movement of Larkin and Connolly. In fact, it was both Markieviczs, with assistance from Molony and Gifford, who smuggled Larkin into Dublin and the Imperial Hotel on 31 August 1913, Dublin’s Bloody Sunday.30 Constance also worked in the Liberty Hall soup kitchen during the Lockout, securing admiration from both Larkin and Connolly, and many locked-out workers and their families. O’Casey, in his 1945 Drums Under the Window, suggested that a photograph of Markievicz stirring a soup cauldron in Liberty Hall during the Lockout was staged and posed, given her clean apron. O’Casey wrote: “Whenever a reporter from an English or an Irish journal strayed into the Hall and cocked an eye over the scene, there was the Countess in spotless bib and tucker, standing in the steam, a gigantic ladle in her hand, busy as a beebeesee, so that a picture of the lady of the ladle might brighten the press the morrow” (314). In support of his contention, O’Casey remarks that the sketch of the Liberty Hall kitchen during the Lockout by Irish portraitist William Orpen “doesn’t show sign or light of the good-natured dame anywhere” (314). However, O’Casey does not consider Orpen’s formal commissioned portrait of William Martin Murphy, head of the Dublin Employers Federation during the lockout, nor does he comment on the clean aprons of the two additional women in the Markievicz soup kitchen photograph. O’Casey’s insinuation that Markievicz did not really work the soup kitchen feeding locked-out workers and their families was most likely unwarranted, given her involvement with numerous members of the ITGWU and its affiliated Irish Womens’ Workers Union (IWWU) (Arrington, 98; O’Casey, Drums, 211–212).31 What O’Casey certainly did not appreciate in August 1914 was Markievicz’s standing within the ICA and the labour movement, particularly with Larkin (Arrington, 101–102). Instead, O’Casey was set in his efforts to distance the ICA from the Volunteers. When O’Casey first made his motion to the ICA’s council for Markievicz to resign, she received a vote of confidence from those present, to which O’Casey was asked to apologize (Murray, 89). At the general meeting of the ICA that followed,

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which Larkin chaired, Markievicz again was overwhelmingly supported. In recalling the meeting in his 1960s Forth the Banners Go, published after O’Casey’s death, William O’Brien who worked closely with the ITGWU leadership during the Lockout—despite being of a tailors’ union in 1913–1916—stated that Markievicz “was very favourably known…. [and] Larkin… seeing the strong feeling in favour of Madam Markievicz [,] he tried to settle up the matter and pressed O’Casey to withdraw his opposition to her” (122). O’Casey refused, then resigned from the ICA. Six months later, the ITGWU and the ICA honoured Markievicz with a ceremony for her soup kitchen service during the Lockout, which no doubt further distanced O’Casey from the movement he had endeavoured to shape (Nevin, Connolly, 590). O’Brien’s view of O’Casey was not favourable, which was vehemently reciprocated even though O’Brien organized the food shipments into Dublin from British trade unions during the Lockout, which O’Casey helped to distribute (Morrissey, O’Brien, 79). O’Brien was an accomplished organizer, and later made much of his comradeship with Connolly. However, as will be discussed in Chapter 3, Markievicz’ later positions possibly lend some credence to O’Casey’s concerns about her relationship to Labour—something unknown to Connolly and Larkin in 1914.

ITGWU Maneuvering For the remainder of 1914, and into 1915, O’Casey experienced various illnesses, likely associated with malnutrition (Murray, 92). In early October 1914, Larkin—who had become somewhat listless following the Lockout—encouraged O’Casey to “visit the Charles Street Tubercular Clinic” (Murray, 92). Yet at the same time, Larkin had accepted an invitation to lecture from the Industrial Workers of the World in the United States, and left Ireland days later. Prior to leaving, Larkin informed Connolly that he wanted him to move to Dublin and take over editing the Irish Worker and head the ITGWU’s insurance section, with P. T. Daly heading the union in Larkin’s absence as Acting General Secretary. Connolly declined the insurance section and asked O’Brien to persuade Thomas Foran, the ITGWU’s president, that Connolly should be made the Acting General Secretary. Morrisey asserts that O’Brien’s effort likely convinced Larkin to change course and name Connolly as Acting General Secretary, relegating Daly to the insurance section. Morrissey suggests that this manoeuvring involved character assassination

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of Daly, but allowed Connolly to take “the lead in the [labour] movement towards revolution” (O’Brien, 88). However, any such manoeuvring in this regard was not without some merit in that during the Lockout, when Larkin was jailed or in Britain requesting sympathy strikes, Connolly served as the ITGWU’s Acting General Secretary. Connolly illuminated this in a 9 October letter to Larkin, a last effort, on the day prior to Larkin’s departure: During the very critical period of last year’s fight [the Lockout] you placed me in charge, and to bring me to Dublin now and put me in a position subordinate to Daly would be equal to announcing to the public that you had come to the conclusion that I am not fit to be the trustee. . . . [Furthermore] I have no confidence personally in Daly’s abilities to manage the union. (Between Comrades, 523)

Connolly’s manoeuvring against Daly for control of the ITGWU, which included command of the ICA, had something to do with the dislike of Larkin by both Connolly and O’Brien. As early as 1911, Connolly in a private letter to O’Brien stated that Larkin “is utterly unreliable—and dangerous because unreliable” (Between Comrades, 461). As a consequence of their views towards Larkin, they were likely not keen to see Larkin’s close ally Daly as Acting General Secretary. Of course, the ITGWU’s Lockout defeat and the start of the Great War changed much of the union’s dynamics, and Larkin was ultimately convinced that Connolly was more suited to lead the union. After all, Larkin shared Connolly’s conviction of the isolation of Dublin workers. In his last speech in Dublin prior to America, Larkin stated: “To enlist for Catlin-Ni-Houlihan may mean a dark and narrow cell for your body, but think of the great joy it will bring to your soul!” (quoted in Larkin, James Larkin, 182). Larkin was calling for the Irish working class to fight for Ireland, rather than joining Britain’s War. In other words, Larkin clarified his professed sentiment for a republicanized socialism on leaving Ireland in October 1914, just as he, Connolly, and O’Casey had through their affinity for Fintan Lalor’s writings. By becoming the ITGWU’s Acting General Secretary, Connolly had the partial means to ignite a revolution through the ICA he now led. After all, Connolly could draw on Karl Marx and Frederick Engles’ directive from their 1870 Ireland and the Irish Question that “the solution of the Irish question [… was] the solution of the English, and the English as

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the solution of the European” (251), which Richard English explains as Marx and Engels’ belief that Ireland was “the revolutionary starting point for the journey to international [working-class] freedom” (173). This echoed Fintan Lalor’s advocacy, as detailed in Connolly’s Labour in Irish History, that rebellion in Ireland over proprietorship would “propagate itself through Europe” (qtd. In Connolly, Labour, 187). Nevertheless, and despite his revolutionary aspirations, Connolly had to oversee the rebuilding of the union, which had not recovered from the Lockout and was decimated by the relentless British efforts for Irish military recruits. Recruitment was to become contentious.

Labour Theatre Meanwhile, O’Casey’s former debating antagonist in the Irish Worker, A. Patrick Wilson, had become manager of the Abbey Theatre. In March 1914, Wilson staged The Lord Mayor, written by Shaw’s lifelong Dublin friend, Matthew Edward McNulty. The production featured a rising Abbey actor named Sean Connolly, no relation to James, who during the Lockout worked the Liberty Hall soup kitchen, presumably at times with O’Casey and Markievicz. He was also an officer in the ICA. By play’s end, Connolly’s character James O’Brien turns on the capitalists and slum landlords who manipulated his election so he would be in their control and declares, with echoes from the Lockout, “I’ll be the independent champion of the people’s rights. I’ll be the citizens’ Lord Mayor” (McNulty, 50). Then within a week following Larkin’s departure to America in October 1914, and a month prior to the Government’s suppression of the Irish Worker for its anti-British recruiting stance, Wilson staged his own three act play, The Slough. While there is no record of O’Casey having seen The Slough, it is unlikely that he would have missed the play with its echoes of the ITGWU. Given O’Casey’s propensity for writing letters to the press, it is surprising that he did not do so following the play’s premier, to defend the absent Larkin against Wilson’s portrayal of a character blatantly based on Larkin. Of course, O’Casey might have done so but no such signed letter was published. Another explanation, of course, was that O’Casey’s illnesses ran from late August 1914 into much of 1915. Yet as Murray suggests, the family depicted in The Slough is similar to the family arrangements in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock, premiered by the Abbey ten years later. Wilson’s play, unpublished during O’Casey’s life, was the first

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full-length straight labour play staged in Dublin since John Galsworthy’s Strife was performed by the Dublin Repertory Theatre in August 1913, and the first full-length Irish labour play staged by the Abbey since St. John Ervine’s 1911 Belfast-set Mixed Marriage.32 Wilson’s The Slough reverberated with echoes from the Lockout, and Larkin.33 Wilson’s play opens just after a major syndicalist strike action and prior to a second, with the second strike dissipating after a number of months. The main focus is a family named Hanlon. The head of the family, Peter, is suspected of having been a scab in the earlier strike. One of Hanlon’s daughters, Peg, leaves for Liverpool in search of shop work. The youngest daughter, Anne, is in frail health with consumption—anticipating Molser in O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars .34 Anne is in love with a union member, Tom Robinson. Act II is set in the committee room of an unnamed union that resembles the ITGWU. A meeting is held with the union’s leader, Jake Allen, chairing. He obviously appears to be based on Larkin. Interestingly, Allen attempts to justify the sympathy strikes that had been called in the recent strike—as in the Lockout—and the failure of such strikes to force employers into negotiations with the main union. The reverberations from the Lockout were clear, particularly to the Abbey Theatre’s then primarily bourgeois audience. The Act II meeting moves to the consideration of Peter Hanlon and the suspicion that he was a scab labourer. While a neighbour defends Hanlon, due to the illness of Hanlon’s wife, Hanlon is expelled from the union. The third act is set after the failure of the second strike. The desolation for the Hanlon family is compounded by Peg’s return from Liverpool, where it becomes evident that her shop work turned to prostitution for survival. The consumptive Anne learns that the character she loves, Robinson, was beaten and arrested by police after he tried to stop strikedefeated union members from attacking her father. This leaves Anne to death. Steven Dedalus Burch, in writing on The Slough, asserts that in Allen, “Wilson presents a recognizable composite of the general public’s perception of ‘Larkin’: bellicose, highhanded, megalomaniac” (“Historical Invisibility”). Presumably, “general public” refers to the Abbey’s main audience. The fact that Wilson knew Larkin well and had been keenly aware of the ramifications of the Lockout, during and after, was accented by his performing the Allen role in the play’s premiere. The Irish Times

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noted of Act II that the scene “of the committee room of the General Union, is extremely humorous, and terminates in an uproar as Peter Hanlon is fired out as a defaulter” (a scab). Interestingly, the bourgeois paper that had exhibited little sympathy with workers during the Lockout, believed that the play “is not used to point a moral” (as quoted in Hogan with Burnham and Poteet, 343). Since the play generated laughter of the Larkin-Allen figure, it seems that such was tied to the audience’s perception of Larkin gained through the pro-employers’ press that portrayed him during the Lockout as a dangerous egotist. Wilson’s derogatory portrait of Larkin reveals that Wilson, as some in the ITGWU who knew Larkin, was not endeared to him. O’Brien, again who strongly disliked Larkin and his impetuous leadership by 1914, recorded that The Slough “was a play about Larkin and the strike. It was very true to life but it showed Jim [Larkin] up rather badly. He was seen at a meeting of the men’s executive bossing the show for all he was worth, opposed by just one member and slavishly supported by the rest. ‘Twas a sight for the gods when his one opponent told him he couldn’t do so and so ‘because it was agin the standin’ orders,’ to hear Jim’s double rise and say with dramatic emphasis ‘Oh I can’t I? Well, then I move the suspension of the standing orders!’ All the same I didn’t relish outsiders laughing at it. I wouldn’t mind if it was confined to ourselves” (Forth, 260). Given his sense of Larkin, O’Brien clearly saw The Slough as primarily playing to the bourgeois Abbey audience’s derogatory view of Larkin, which O’Brien agreed with but resented a non-labour class’ laughter. While O’Casey would not have agreed with O’Brien’s view of Larkin, he would have agreed regarding the ridiculing laughter had he seen the play performed—which Murray believes was most likely (96).O’Brien, for his part, regularly attended the Abbey Theatre, as well as Dublin’s commercial theatres whenever a Shaw play was performed. O’Brien’s and O’Casey’s differing perspectives of Larkin would, in a few years, dramatically impact O’Casey.

Connolly, the ICA, Anti-Recruitment While he occasionally attended the Abbey Theatre, we do not know if Connolly witnessed The Slough.35 We do know that he was well underway with his agendas as the Great War slugged towards its first Christmas. In December 1914, Connolly’s efforts for Maunsel to republish his Labour in Irish History in an inexpensive paper edition, in the spirit of the 1912

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Home Rule edition of John Bull’s Other Island, was successful. At the same time, Connolly’s anti-recruitment efforts in the Irish Worker led British authorities to successfully pressure the printer used by the paper to stop printing anti-recruiting papers. Within days, Connolly started a new paper, The Worker, which was printed by Connolly’s socialist contacts in Scotland’s Clydeside. A feature of the small paper was the inclusion of excerpts from previously published articles that appeared in other papers and journals. The paper’s second issue, 2 January 1915, featured an excerpt from Shaw’s “The Last Spring of the Old Lion”, originally published in the New Statesman on 12 December 1914—a month after Common Sense About the War. Connolly’s use of Shaw’s article, which depicted Britain as a lion attacking perceived enemies suspected of challenging its believed dominance, was a further example of Connolly’s continued interest in Shaw’s efforts and his use of such for his own purposes (qtd. in Curry, “Worker”, 81). Soon, British authorities began seizing The Worker as it was being offloaded from the Glasgow steamer, ending the paper’s brief run. A few months later, in May 1915, Connolly acquired an antiquated printing press that he set in Liberty Hall and promptly resurrected The Workers’ Republic—a paper he had founded and edited for the Irish Socialist Republican Party from 1898–1903. Connolly, also with the acquired press, published his 64-page pamphlet The Re-Conquest of Ireland, his last major and relatively long theoretical work. Connolly wrote: “The re-conquest of Ireland must mean the social as well as the political independence from servitude of every man, woman and child in Ireland” (Re-Conquest, 218). As we will see in Chapter 4, The Re-Conquest echoed much of Shaw’s 1910 Dublin lecture, “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland”. In addition, the pamphlet continued from Connolly’s Labour in Irish History and moved into the experiences of 1910 to 1915, such as tracing the rising prominence of “the working class agitator”, such as Larkin and himself. It was an effort from Connolly to define a socialistic move towards Irish independence, with independence for all classes. As seen in Chapter 6, Shaw echoed The Re-Conquest ’s “Woman” chapter in his The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism’s “Women in the Labour Market” chapter in 1928, sealing the shared socialistic point between Shaw’s and Connolly’s respective published ideologies. Also in The Re-Conquest, Connolly acknowledged the importance of intellectuals supporting a socialistically free Ireland: “Not the least of the many encouraging signs given to the world during the great Dublin

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Labour dispute… was the keen and sympathetic interest shown by the intellectuals in the fortunes of the workers”, as in Shaw and Russell (ReConquest, 329). Clearly, O’Casey was not alone among Irish socialists thinking highly of Shaw’s efforts. O’Brien, in fact, amassed a large collection of Shaw material during his life, yet left no or little trace of any appreciation for O’Casey and his work (Morrissey, O’Brien, 394). It was a reciprocated view. O’Casey’s health issues led him into St. Vincent’s Hospital, on Dublin’s St. Stephen’s Green, on 5 August 1915 for surgery on tubercular glands. While the treatment was successful, the experience, as Murray depicts, brought O’Casey into contact with Irish soldiers in the British army recovering from wounds suffered in the War. The hospital, as many Irish hospitals, was used during the War for military casualties. In the process, O’Casey observed and spoke with numerous wounded soldiers, which he would later use in his masterwork, The Silver Tassie (1928). However, five days prior to entering St. Vincent’s, the ICA, embracing its O’Casey-drafted Constitution, participated in a dramatic militant demonstration. On 1 August, the Fenian Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, who had spent decades in exile in New York working to encourage Irish independence, was buried in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery, following a politicized funeral procession through Dublin. Marching were units of the Irish Volunteers (IV) and the Irish Citizen Army. The Republican leader Tom Clarke had persuaded Connolly to involve himself and the ICA. Included in the Funeral Souvenir Booklet was an article by Connolly, explaining the ICA’s participation: “In honouring O’Donovan Rossa the workers of Ireland are doing more than merely paying homage to an unconquerable fighter. They are signifying… that there is no outside force capable of enforcing slavery upon a people really resolved to be free, and valuing freedom more than life…. The Irish Citizen Army in its Constitution pledges its members to fight for a Republican Freedom for Ireland…. by right of our faith in the separate destiny of our country, and our faith in the ability of the Irish Workers to achieve that destiny” (Connolly, “Honours Rossa”,). The ICA and IV had taken a further step towards cooperation, at least by their leaders—exactly what O’Casey had endeavoured to prevent a year earlier regarding Markievicz’s association with both. Connolly, no doubt still sensing the isolation of Dublin labour, and the collapse of international socialism with the War was turning the ICA towards revolution, which would necessitate an alliance with

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radical IV leaders. Such a move, and others to follow, led to later divisions within the ITGWU.36 Another move involved the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company, led by Delia Larkin since 1912. By November 1915, Delia Larkin, with her brother still in America, was “forced out of the ITGWU” (Arrington, 119). Arrington relates that there had been financial disputes between Delia and the ITGWU leadership going back to the 1914 autumn (119). Arrington further relates that Connolly, as Acting General Secretary, was under “extreme pressure to ensure that the union was working effectively”, meaning financially (120). The union, of course, was still in a prolonged rebuilding phase.37 Replacing Delia Larkin as head of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU) was Helena Molony, who by this time was a close associate of Connolly’s. She was also an Abbey Theatre actor, where she had trained with A. P. Wilson and Sean Connolly. So, Molony also replaced Delia Larkin as head of the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company, since 1914, Molony, like Sean Connolly, was a member of the ICA. Both would be important comrades to James Connolly, even with regard to Shaw. In the 1915 spring, leftist journalist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington was arrested for an anti-recruiting speech and sentenced to six months hard labour, where he commenced a hunger strike. While in prison, his partner Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington wrote to Shaw for assistance, even knowing that Shaw supported British recruitment. Shaw responded with a letter: “There is nothing to be done. The Defense of the Realm Act abolishes all liberty in Great Britain and Ireland” (“Letter From”, i). Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, with Shaw’s approval, published the letter in the Freeman’s Journal , which Connolly also included in a pamphlet printed with the Liberty Hall press he had recently acquired. Connolly highlighted Shaw’s letter in the pamphlet with added capitalization of Shaw’s provocative phrases: “Even if the powers given by the Act were insufficient, the Government could act arbitrarily without the least risk, as there is no remedy for such arbitrariness EXCEPT A REVOLUTION” (Letter From, ii). The Connolly-Liberty Hall-printed pamphlet also included Francis Sheehy-Skeffington’s speech from the dock (for which Connolly did not add capitalizations). Such, of course, increased Shaw’s profile within Liberty Hall’s revolutionary sphere. Curiously, O’Casey, once again, makes no mention in his ICA book or in later autobiographical sketches of Connolly’s Liberty Hall pamphlet with Shaw’s letter. Shaw followed his letter on Sheehy-Skeffington’s imprisonment with a further

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contribution to 1915 Dublin, in the form of his second Irish-set play, O’Flaherty, V. C .—just as Connolly increased efforts to revolution.

Shaw, O ’Flaherty, V. C. In Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation, I detail the Abbey Theatre’s planned premier of O’Flaherty V. C . Shaw had written it for the Abbey with the partial intent of generating badly needed revenue for the Theatre—namely through a planned Abbey tour of the play in the English music hall circuit during the 1916 summer. Such tours had proved lucrative for the Abbey since 1912, perhaps with largely Irish working-class audiences in Britain’s industrial cities, London, Manchester, and Birmingham. Ironically, one of the more successful Abbey plays in the circuit was John Millington Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen, which had been heavily criticized when premiered in 1903 Dublin.38 In fact, Shaw took much from Synge’s plays Shadow and The Playboy of the Western World, including plot conventions from the former, in writing O’Flaherty V. C .—as detailed in the above book. Shaw’s second intent for O’Flaherty was associated with a request from Sir Matthew Nathan, British Undersecretary for Ireland, for help recruiting more working-class Irishmen for the War (Holroyd, Bernard Shaw, 379–380; Biggs, “Shaw’s Recruiting”, 107). Peter Gahan notes that Shaw had met Nathan earlier in the year over dinner at Horace Plunkett’s house, Kilteragh, which possibly included a follow-up meeting the next day at the Undersecretary’s residence in Phoenix Park (“Two Great Irish Houses”, 213).39 Undoubtedly, the War was discussed. Since the British army, including its Irish regiments, had suffered devastating casualties since August 1914, Britain needed more troops. In addition to writing O’Flaherty V. C ., Shaw also provided Nathan with a “poster text” outlining how Britain should recruit Irishmen—presumably in Ireland and in Britain (Laurence and Grene, “Introduction and Notes”, 184). While most would not have known about Shaw’s recruiting poster-text, which was partially used by British authorities and distributed without Shaw’s name in February 1916, many would have known of O’Flaherty V. C . had the play premiered at the Abbey in November 1915 and, most importantly, toured British music halls the next summer. A music hall circuit success with O’Flaherty, V. C . would have helped Shaw’s war-time reputation in Britain, having suffered since publishing Common Sense About the War. However, O’Flaherty, V. C. was not Shaw’s

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first recruitment effort in Ireland. Two weeks after publishing Common Sense in November 1914, Shaw submitted a letter to Dublin’s Freeman’s Journal , calling for the Irish to enlist in the British or French armies, especially given France’s support for Irish rebellions in 1798 and 1803: “If they will not join the French army as volunteers, or the British army as regulars, they can, nonetheless, understand that the one thing they must not do if they are good Irishmen is to join the Germans or help the Germans against the French” (“Ireland and the First”, 103). Yet in the 1915 autumn, O’Flaherty V. C . proved to be far more provocative than a recruiting play, and not necessarily in the way Nathan had hoped. O’Flaherty V. C ., consistent with Shaw’s 1915 views of Ireland and the War, follows a rural peasant named Denis O’Flaherty who, as a British soldier, received the Victoria Cross for excessive bravery at the front, and is on a recruiting leave in Ireland with his general and landlord to his mother’s tenant holding, Sir Pierce Madigan. Through the one-act play, it is revealed that the War has provided O’Flaherty with an opportunity to see something of the world, to know that there is life beyond his mother’s holding, and all that the holding entails for him—namely his mother and former romantic interest Teresa. O’Flaherty for the first time sees his mother and Teresa as they are, closed minded rural working-class peasants arguing with an acquired mimicked bourgeoisie greed over what they can get from O’Flaherty, including the separation allowance for his mother. Teresa confirms her greed by asking about his pension should he be severely wounded, to which he replies to himself: “And if I do get a pension itself, the devil a penny of it will youll ever have the spending of” (O’Flaherty, 272). When asked by his mother what has happened to him given his new views, such as wanting to settle in republican France, O’Flaherty replies: Whats happened to everybody? That’s what I want to know. Whats happened to you that I thought all the world of and was afeared of? Whats happened to Sir Pierce, that I thought was a great general, and that I now see to be no more fit to command an army than an old hen? Whats happened to Tessie, that I was mad to marry a year ago, and that I wouldn’t take now with all Ireland for her fortune? I tell you the world’s creation is crumbling in ruins about me; and then you come and ask whats happened to me? (O’Flaherty, 273)

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The war has indeed changed O’Flaherty as he now understands his Ireland owning to the fact that he has gained invaluable perspective. It is O’Flaherty’s acquired knowledge from his War experiences, outside Ireland in the British army, that thematically disrupts the status quo of his home existence and disrupts the domestic space within destitute Ireland. It sends his mother and Teresa into rantings while elevating O’Flaherty to want more than rural poverty-ridden ignorance. It becomes a quest for a better existence. As his mother and Teresa squabble over what they can sponge from him, he tells Madigan that he will return to the War’s front in order to find peace.40 In a September 1915 letter to Lady Gregory, Shaw stated that the War induced in his O’Flaherty “a terrible realism and an unbearable candor” that allows O’Flaherty to see “Ireland as it is, his mother, as she is, his sweetheart as she is; and he goes back to the dreaded trenches for the sake of peace and quietness” (Shaw, Gregory, 95). O’Flaherty’s ability to see Ireland as it is as if the play can instil the same into its Great War wouldbe Dublin audience, is similar to O’Casey’s 1945 comments about his first reactions to John Bull’s Other Island in 1912, that the play led him and Ireland “to face the fact[s]” (Drums, 257). Facing the facts in O’Flaherty, V. C . not only illuminates O’Flaherty into wanting more in his life, it reveals the cursed agony of his mother’s and Teresa’s respective plights during the War, as separation allowances and pensions introduced steady cash into the hands of Ireland’s destitute at a fearful cost, which is an aspect of the play that demands attention; Ireland’s War-time economic reality is revealed in the span of the thirty to forty-minute play.41 Interestingly, the play’s portrayed disruption of the domestic space was to be both challenged and altered, for their own agendas, by Connolly and O’Casey. Fearing that the play could incite disruptions in Dublin over its portrait of the Flanders War trenches being more peaceful than domestic rural Ireland—long considered by many Dublin-based nationalists to be Ireland’s ideal—the British military in Ireland pressured Dublin Castle to, in turn, pressure the Abbey Theatre to withdraw the play. Yeats, with Gregory in America at the time, complied. The official British position was that since Dublin was placarded with posters of an Irish war hero named Michael O’Leary, a recipient of the Victoria Cross, the performance of the play could be construed as provocative with regard to O’Leary.42 Perhaps, but the play’s withdrawal did not stop its provocation from reaching Liberty Hall, where O’Casey’s former ICA comrades, including Helena Molony and Sean Connolly, were responding

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to James Connolly’s efforts to revolution—which were also simultaneous to Connolly’s renewed theatre interests. In assuming control of the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company, Molony staged George Farquahar’s 1706 play The Recruiting Officer on 7 November 1915.43 This coincided with the early rehearsals of Shaw’s O’Flaherty V. C ., which, before being withdrawn, was scheduled for late November performances. Given the Abbey Theatre’s small company of actors, it is extremely probable that Molony and Sean Connolly had knowledge of Shaw’s play; perhaps one was even in its cast as both tended to play older characters. Given James Connolly’s anti-recruitment efforts against British enlistment, a satirical recruitment play would have provoked interest at Liberty Hall. Of course, scheduling Farquhar’s play may have only been due to Connolly’s anti-recruiting efforts, rather than a reaction (in part) to Shaw’s play. However, given that Molony and Sean Connolly had at least some knowledge of O’Flaherty, V. C . at the Abbey, it is highly probable that they shared it with James Connolly, who knew and keenly followed (as we have seen) Shaw’s work. As stated, in November 1915 Connolly heavily increased his preparations for revolution, at a time when he could not possibly have missed knowing of O’Flaherty, V. C.—nor could he have missed hearing of its Abbey withdrawal. Interestingly, O’Casey would set Acts I and II of The Plough and the Stars , in this very same month. Connolly, as recalled by O’Brien, individually addressed each ICA member in November 1915—which included Molony and Sean Connolly. He informed each that they would soon be called to revolution and wanted no one who was not prepared to fight (O’Brien, Forth, 276). Also in this busy month, Connolly began leading ICA route marches around Dublin. Towards the end of January 1916, the Irish Volunteers leaders, Pearse, Clarke, Joseph Plunkett, and Eamonn Ceannt—all who publicly supported workers during the Lockout—secretly met with Connolly and reached an agreement. They scheduled a revolution for Easter 1916. The Dublin impact of Shaw’s O’Flaherty V. C . was about to be felt at Liberty Hall weeks before the revolution, which O’Casey witnessed. And for his part, O’Casey contributed to Connolly’s anti-recruitment efforts by writing and submitting a satirical anti-recruiting ballad, “The Grand Oul’ Dame Britannia”, to the Workers’ Republic, which Connolly published on 15 January (“Says the Grand”).44

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Soon after the January agreement, Pearse wrote his poem “The Rebel”, which, according to Roisin Ni Ghairbhi, argued that “the oppression of servile masses… can no longer endure and that the people themselves must act to free themselves” (“A People”, 164). The poem’s line “I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly” is much in line with Connolly’s socialism (“The Rebel”, 337). Ghairbhi notes that in “‘The Rebel’… Pearse offer[s] witness of, and empathy with, ordinary working people who have suffered historic disadvantage” and intimates that the poem, which does not specify Ireland, connects to Connolly’s “international socialism” (“A People”, 166, 183). The ideological coming together of Connolly and Pearse was nearly complete—regardless whether Pearse rode trams during the Lockout or not. Approximately in late January or early February, Connolly set into motion the creation of a new and enlarged version of the ICA’s the Plough and the Stars flag, to measure six feet by five and a half feet. It needed to be large enough to be flown in battle from a building, perhaps even from a capitalist’s prized business. Most likely, the flag was made in Liberty Hall’s shirt cooperative, which employed some union members blacklisted since the Lockout. The flag’s “three lengths of green fabric” were “machine stitched together”; the sewing machine used was most probably a Singer machine, itself made at Singer’s Kilbowie Scotland factory (Phelan). On 19 February 1916, Connolly ran an advertisement in the Workers’ Republic announcing the next night’s offerings by the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company (IWDC), as well as announcing that Liberty Hall’s large room had been “fitted up as a Theatre to Accommodate the Huge Crowds for which the Front Room is insufficient”. The header for the advert read: “Next to the Revolution/ The Greatest Event of 1916” (“Next To”, 4).45 In the next month, March, Moloney and the IWDC staged a second recruiting play, James Connolly’s Under Which Flag ?—a play that carried provocation from O’Flaherty V. C ., and represented Connolly’s resurging theatre interests. A few weeks later, the former Singer Sewing factory worker’s Irish revolution was at hand. And a year later, Singer’s gilded building on Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg, Russia, then called Petrograd to avoid German connotations, would witness revolutions at its doorsteps that deposed the Tsar, brought down a provisional bourgeois reformist government, and saw Lenin’s Bolsheviks seize urban control. The 1916 effort to materialize Peter

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Keegan’s prophecy from John Bull’s Other Island was on its threshold: conflagration.

Notes 1. The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet had been written as a challenge to the British theatre censor, Lord Chamberlain’s Office, which banned the play when submitted. However, as its authority did not extend to Ireland, the Abbey Theatre’s directors, Yeats and Lady Gregory, staged the play in August 1909. 2. John Bull’s Other Island was not performed at the Abbey Theatre until the 1916–1917 season. 3. In early October 1910, Shaw’s Man and Superman, with a company led by Harley Granville Barker and Lillah McCarthy, ran for a week at the Scottish Repertory Theatre in Glasgow. 4. . Shaw’s 1910 lectures in Scotland prompted some irate press letters. Following his Edinburgh University lecture, The Scotsman published a letter asking: “Are we supposed, however, to take this sort of stuff seriously; or was Mr. G. B. S. simply humbugging his audience with his usual fooling?” (“University Socialism,” 8). Another letter in the same paper dismissed Shaw’s equality of incomes as “cant and rubbish” (“University Socialism,” 8). In the same edition, page 9, the paper ran an article under the header “The Tyrnanny of Socialism”. 5. Peter Gahan, in Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905–1914, explains that the Webbs’ and Shaw’s campaign against destitution stemmed from Beatrice Webb’s Minority Report, which was in response to the Royal Commission on the Poor Law. Extending their campaign to Dublin and Scotland, Gahan reveals, raised objections from Poor Law administrators in Ireland and Scotland against being inspected for the Royal Commission. Subsequently, their workhouses were not inspected. However, Beatrice Webb visited Ireland and found workhouse conditions to be severe, and Shaw found similar in Dublin workhouses (Gahan, 71–72). 6. See SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Volume 33 for a transcript of Shaw’s 1910 Dublin lecture. 7. Hugh Lane, Lady Gregory’s nephew, gifted his collection to Dublin on condition that a gallery be provided. 8. Yeats rushed his poem, now titled “September 1913”, into publication in the 8 September 1913 Irish Times , depicting Murphy with his sordid money till. 9. Connolly’s Scottish lectures were also in aid of raising money needed to move his family back to Ireland from New York.

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10. In a 1938 letter to Charlotte Shaw, O’Casey alluded to his first encounter with the 1912 edition of John Bull’s Other Ireland: “my young Dublin comrade, member of the Fourth Order of St. Francis, who first put the green-covered copy of “John Bull’s Other Island” into my then reluctant hand” (O’Casey Letters, I , 742). The paper cover of the 1912 edition is green with white lettering. Interestingly, O’Casey was not the only literary figure to acquire a copy of this edition. Yeats sent a copy to Maude Gonne in France in January 1912 (Gonne-Yeats, 307). 11. O’Casey apparently did not see John Bull’s Other Island when performed in Dublin in October 1912 by an accomplished amateur company headed by Evelyn Ashley and Flora MacDonnell. O’Casey also seems to have missed seeing another revival of the play the following year, also in October, staged again by Ashley and MacDonnell in a company then called the Dublin Repertory Theatre, which included Casmir Markievicz as a co-director. Tellingly, O’Casey was underemployed during these years. 12. In a 15 January 1947 letter to Jack Carney, a former ITGWU comrade and friend, O’Casey claimed that Connolly’s Labour in Irish History “was largely written by [Francis] Sheehy Skeffington [sic]” (O’Casey Letters, II , 437). This is suspect given that Connolly wrote to William O’Brien from New York in 1909 asking if he could persuade Sheehy-Skeffington to find a London publisher for Labour in Irish History. Connolly did not meet Sheehy-Skeffington until July 1910 when he returned to Ireland from the United States. Of course, Sheehy-Skeffington might have helped with polishing the manuscript before publication, but there is no evidence of this. 13. The publisher of Connolly’s Labour in Irish History was Maunsel, led by editor George Roberts. Maunsel, by 1910, was an important Dublin publisher of the Irish Literary Revival. They published J. M. Synge’s works, including Synge’s Collected Works in 1910, one year after Synge’s death. Maunsel also was the publisher for Shaw’s War Issues for Irishmen (1918). 14. Gregory was one of the founding directors of the Abbey Theatre with Yeats and J. M. Synge. She was also Hugh Lane’s aunt, and tirelessly advocated for a Dublin gallery for Lane’s Impressionists collection. 15. In early September 1913, during the Lockout, two working-class tenement buildings collapsed in Dublin’s Church Street, killing seven, injuring many, and leaving families homeless. On 16 September 1913, after weeks of Dublin and London papers running photographs of the collapsed buildings and their extensive debris, Murphy’s Irish Independent newspaper ran a photograph of destitute children, many barefoot, from the Church Street area under the sarcastic header “Needless to say, they are all deeply interested in the fate of the [proposed Municipal] Art Gallery”. On the next day, the paper ran another photograph of destitute children before

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16.

17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

a dilapidated building under the header, “And they still think of Art Galleries” (Corlett, Darkest Dublin, 64; 50). Such callous comments from Murphy’s paper demonstrated no empathy for the destitute while sufferings increased during the Lockout. Of course, tying the poverty to the proposed Gallery jabbed at Larkin’s advocacy for the Gallery, yet played to the Irish Worker’s demonization of Murphy. The Church missed an opportunity; rather than unequivocally dismissing the children’s scheme in autumn 1913, it might have organized alternative relief for Catholic children to be cared for by English Catholic families. As the DMP’s efforts against the ITGWU escalated on 30 August 1913, Larkin told union members: “In case I am arrested I appoint Jim Connolly to act in my place” (quoted in Connolly, Between Comrades, 497). Shaw was among the socialists, radicals, anarchists, and many of the working class from East London who converged on London’s Trafalgar Square on 13 November 1887 to protest the recently passed Crimes Bill for Ireland, which prohibited free assembly in Ireland and Britain (Holroyd, I , 184; Gibbs, 481–482). Ulstermen committing themselves to resisting Home Rule for Ireland had formed the Ulster Volunteer Force under Edward Carson, with the intent of arming. See Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation for more on the socialist influence of Shaw within Ireland, 1899–1916. In his 2017 Judging Shaw, Fintan O’Toole makes the same point about James Connolly using the title from Shaw’s Arms and the Man for his 13 December 1913 Irish Citizen Army article in the Irish Worker (114). I previously made this connection and point in my 2011 Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation (155), though O’Toole failed to cite it. He did cite the book on a different point regarding Shaw’s The Shewingup of Blanco Posnet . O’Casey did note in his The Story of the Irish Citizen Army that English socialist George Lansbury, editor and founder of the Daily Herald reminded the audience at a 1917 rally supporting Russian Revolution in London’s Royal Albert Hall, that he had four years earlier shared the same platform with James Connolly at the 1913 rally for locked out Dublin workers (Granville, 59). Since O’Casey knew Lansbury and Connolly spoke at the 1913 rally, he had to have known that Shaw too spoke at the rally. Rosie Hackett was one ITGWU member (of its women’s union, the Irish Women’s Workers Union) who was blacklisted by Jacob’s after the Lockout. The ITGWU employed her in Liberty Hall, where she joined the ICA. Connolly had edited a re-printing of Fintan Lalor’s Rights of Ireland and Faith of a Felon in 1896.

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25. In August 1913, after sacking six known ITGWU agitators from the Dublin United Tramways Company, Murphy told workers that if there was to be a strike, the company’s shareholders “will have three meals a day... I don’t know if the men who go out can count on this” (as quoted in Yeates, Lockout, 7). 26. There is evidence that O’Casey later became aware of Pearse’s support for workers. While preparing for a debate in 1926 on his The Plough and the Stars , O’Casey drafted a statement in which he claimed that he had no intent in the play “to ridicule the passion[,] the enthusiasm & the idealism of Pearse. His sympathies with the poor & the toil-ruined working men & women may possibly have been deeper & greater than mine” (qtd. in Moran, O’Casey, 57). 27. See Peter Gahan’s Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905–1914. 28. While Common Sense about the War was published in mid-November 1914, Shaw had made earlier allusions to working-class revolt in the War, as in “The Peril of Potsdam”, Daily News and Leader on 11 August 1914, and in an interview conducted by Irish-American syndicated journalist Mary Boyle O’Reilly titled, “Cleverest Man in England Talks War to Mary Boyle O’Reilly—George Bernard Shaw Slashes Right and Left”. It appeared in various American, and eventually (in-part) in British papers, starting on 18 October 1914. See Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, and the New Journalism. 29. Singer’s New Jersey factory manufactured munitions, shells and pistols, for the British Army, and then for the United States military when the United States entered the War in 1917. 30. Nellie Gifford was from a bourgeois Church of Ireland background. She, like her sisters Grace and Muriel, turned to radical causes. She became a labour advocate during the Lockout and joined the ICA, fighting with it in the 1916 Rising. 31. Part of the public perception of Constance Markievicz’s soup kitchen work involved the Dublin Repertory Theatre (DRT). In early 1913 the DRT, an accomplished amateur theatre was formed by Casmir Markievicz, Anthony Evelyn Ashley, and Flora McDonald. They performed four nonconsecutive one-week runs in Dublin’s commercial Gaiety Theatre in 1913, which included noted productions of Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple (staged by Casmir) and John Bull’s Other Island (staged by McDonald). In November, they were scheduled to run Eleanor’s Enterprise by Shaw’s friend George Birmingham (Reverend Hannay). Since Casmir’s partner/wife Constance Markievicz was in the cast, the Gaiety’s manager, David Telford, objected given Constance’s work in Liberty Hall’s soup kitchen feeding the families of locked out workers. Telford was concerned how the Gaiety’s usual bourgeois audience might react. When Casmir

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32. 33.

34. 35.

36.

37.

38.

39.

Markievicz refused to replace Constance in the cast, and she refused to end her Liberty Hall work, Evelyn Ashley withdrew the production. Casmir then resigned and published the relevant correspondence in the Dublin press. O’Casey does not allude to this in Drums Under the Window. For more on the DRT, see “Shaw and the Dublin Repertory Theatre” in SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 35.2, Fall 2015. 168–184. Wilson’s The Slough also shares similarities with Ervine’s Mixed Marriage, in the areas of the portrayed families and love-interests. One might speculate that the scheduling of Wilson’s The Slough in November 1914 influenced Larkin’s acceptance of the American invitation with an October departure. There is no direct evidence to suggest this, but Larkin most likely knew the scheduling and he certainly knew Wilson—and Wilson knew the inner workings of the ITGWU leading to and during the Lockout. Consumption was prevalent in the Dublin tenements, and tenements everywhere, in the early twentieth century. Within days of returning to Dublin in 1910, Connolly attended the Abbey Theatre (Holloway, Joseph Holloway’s, 141). Connolly may have done so with O’Brien, who was largely responsible for orchestrating Connolly’s return. Prior to his emigration in 1903, Connolly, with O’Brien attended a performance of Frederick Ryan’s The Laying of the Foundations. In October 1915 O’Brien, as the Acting Secretary of the Dublin United Trades Council, issued a statement calling for “organized workers to join either the Citizen Army, or the Volunteers” (Morrissey, O’Brien, Photo 8). In his efforts to rebuild the union, Connolly ended the lease on Croydon Park, which included the large house where Larkin and family had lived, along with its land used for outside union gatherings, such as the ICA’s first training. The Abbey Theatre’s British music hall productions followed full-evening performance runs in a London theatre over a few weeks. The summer music hall runs generated revenue for the Theatre and its actors, which was welcomed given that both were usually without work during summers until late August. Interestingly, in a file in Ireland’s National Archives on the prolonged ITGWU’s labour dispute with the City of Dublin Steampacket Company that was settled under Connolly’s leadership in early April 1916—the last labour dispute he worked to resolution—there are minutes from a meeting between the Company’s management and Britain’s Under Secretary to Ireland, Matthew Nathan. The minutes detail Nathan’s overruling the “demands to seize Liberty Hall, confiscate the weapons of the Irish

2

40.

41.

42.

43.

44.

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Citizen Army and deport Connolly to Edinburgh” (Nevin, Connolly, 579). See Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation for further analysis of O’Flaherty V. C . In War Issues for Irishmen (1918), Shaw clarifies his recruitment message for Irish rural labourers: “If it has opportunities and advantages, it also has dangers and hardships [….] But if an Irish agricultural labourer compares the soldier’s condition [... to] his own, he will think twice before missing such a chance as the war offers him of seeing a little more of the world than the half-dozen fields and the village public house which now imprison him” (199). One reason for the vehement animosity between Mrs. O’Flaherty and Teresa stems from the separation allowance provided to the closest dependent of a man serving in the British military during the War. If O’Flaherty were to marry Teresa, she would replace O’Flaherty’s mother as the beneficiary—of course, both are keenly aware of this. The same would apply to O’Flaherty’s military service pension, which would increase if significantly wounded. When O’Flaherty, V. C . entered rehearsals at the Abbey Theatre and then withdrawn from the schedule, Shaw denied that he drew anything in the play from Michael O’Leary. However, in a 1921 letter, Shaw admitted that he did take the idea of the V. C. from O’Leary: “His exploit created the situation I dramaticized; but my play is entirely fictitious” (Shaw, Collected Letters, III , 717). The Worker’s Republic advertisement for the Liberty Hall 7 November 1915 listed The Recruiting Office. As no play of that title has been located, it seems likely that the play was Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer. Perhaps the well-read James Connolly selected the play. The National Library of Ireland indicates that “The Grand Oul’ Dame Britania” “first appeared in print [in] ‘The Workers’ Republic’ 15 January 1916” (“Says the Grand old dame Britannia”). The song’s title variations reflect a second version that was published as a broadside in late 1916, which mentioned Roger Casement. The Library notes O’Casey as the author of both versions. David Krause, in The Letters of Sean O’Casey, Volume I , mistakenly names 16 June 1916 as its publication in The Workers’ Republic (70); the second series of The Workers’ Republic ended with its 22 April 1916 edition. Connolly’s publishing O’Casey’s “The Grand Oul’ Dame Britannia” is the only direct evidence that Connolly knew or knew of O’Casey. Connolly’s involvement with the ICA after December 1913 ended once he resumed his Belfast ITGWU duties after the Lockout’s defeat but resumed in October 1914 when he became the ITGWU’s Acting General Secretary based then in Dublin. O’Casey’s ICA involvement ran from

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January to August 1914, and his ITGWU participation seems to have waned with his ICA resignation and his illnesses beginning in fall 1914. Of course, they likely crossed paths in Dublin during the Lockout. 45. The February 1916 advertisement also announced that a “Workers’ Orchestra” had been added to the IWDC’s Sunday performances, under the direction of Michael Mallin, ICA chief of staff (“Next to”, 4).

References “Anti-Clerical Campaign”, Irish Independent, 3 November 1913, 5. Arrington, Lauren. Revolutionary Lives: Constance and Casimir Markievicz. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Burch, Steven Dedalus. “Historical Invisibility: The Vexatious A. P. Wilson and the Abbey Theatre”, http://goliath.ecnext.com (accessed 27 August 2007). Connolly, James. “The Isolation of Dublin.” Forward, 9 February 1914, 4. ———. “Our Duty in the Crisis.” Irish Worker, 8 August 1914, 4. ———. “Next to the Revolution” Advert. Workers’ Republic, 19 February 1916, 4. ———. Labour in Irish History. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. xxvii–218. ———. The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. 219–346. ———. “A Continental Revolution.” James Connolly’s Selected Writings. Ed. Peter Berresford Ellis. London: Pluto Press, 1973. 239–242. ———. Between Comrades: James Connolly, Letters and Correspondence 1889– 1916, Ed. Donal Nevin. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2007. ———. “Why the Citizen Army Hounours Rossa”. www.marxist.org/archive/ Connolly/1915/07whyrossa.htm. (accessed 22 May 2009). Corlett, Christiaan. Darkest Dublin: The Story of the Church Street disaster and a pictorial account of the slums of Dublin in 1913. Dublin: Wordwell, 2013. Curry, James. “The Worker: James Connolly’s ‘Organ of the Irish Working Class’”. Periodicals and Journalism in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Writing Against the Grain. Ed. Mark O’Brien and Felix Larkin. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2014. 75–88. Ellis, Peter Berresford. A History of the Irish Working Class. London: Pluto Press, 1972. English, Richard. Irish Freedom: The History of Nationalism in Ireland. London: Pan Books, 2007. Gahan, Peter. Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905–1914. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

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———. “Bernard Shaw in Two Great Irish Houses: Kilteragh and Coole”. In Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 205–236. Gibbs, A. M. Bernard Shaw: A Life. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005. Gonne, Maude and W. B. Yeats. The Gonne-Yeats Letters: 1893–1938. Ed. Anna MacBride White and Norman Jeffares. London: Hutchinson, 1992. Grant, Adrian. Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909–1936. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012. Granville, David. “The British Labour and Socialist Movement and the 1916 Rising”. The Impact of the 1916 Rising. Ed. Ruan O’Donnell. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008. 49–70. Gregory, Lady Augusta. See Shaw, Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey. Hogan, Robert with Richard Burnham and Daniel P. Poteet. The Abbey Theatre: The Rise of the Realists, 1910–1915. Dublin: Dolmen, 1979. Holloway, Joseph. Joseph Holloway’s Abbey Theatre: A Selection from his unpublished journal Impressions of a Dublin Playgoer. Ed. Robert Hogan and Michael O’Neill. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967. Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw: Volume II, 1898–1918, The Pursuit of Power. New York: Random, 1989. “In Croyden Park,” Irish Times, 1 December 1913, 6. Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995. Larkin, Emmet. “James Larkin: Labour Leader”. James Larkin: Lion in the Fold. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998. 1–7. Laurence, Daniel and David Grene. “Notes”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. Ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 184. Leddin, Jeffrey. The Labour Hercules: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism 1913–1923. Newbridge, Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2019. McNulty, Matthew Edward. The Lord Mayor. Dublin: Talbot Press, c1915. “Made in Jersey: Singer Sewing Machines”, www.nj.com (accessed 16 July 2018). Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. Ireland and the Irish Question. Moscow Progress Publishers, 1971. Mieville, China, October: The Story of the Russian Revolution. London: Verso, 2017. Moriarty, Theresa. “Delia Larkin: Relative Obscurity”. James Larkin: Lion in the Fold. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1998. 428–438. Morrissey, Thomas, S. J. William Martin Murphy. Dundalk: Dundalgan Press, 1997. ———. William O’Brien, 1881–1968: Socialist, Republican, Dail Deputy, Editor, and Trade Union Leader. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007.

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Murray, Christopher. Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. 2004. Nevin, Donal. James Connolly: ‘A Full Life’. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005. Newsinger, John. Rebel City: Larkin, Connolly, and the Dublin Labour Movement. London: Merlin Press, 2004. Ni Ghairbhi, Roisin. “A People That did Not Exist? Reflections on Some Sources and Contexts for Patrick Pearse’s Militant Nationalism”. The Impact of the 1916 Rising: Among the Nations. Ed. Ruan O’Donnell. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008. 161–186. O’Brien, William. Forth the Banners Go: Reminiscences of William O’Brien as Told to Edward MacLysaght. Dublin: Three Candles Press, 1969. O’Casey, Sean. Drums Under the Windows. Mirror in My House: The Autobiographies of Sean O’Casey, Volume I . New York: Macmillan, 1956. 375–431. ———. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1910–1941, Vol. 1. Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. ———. [O’Cathasaigh] “Volunteers and Workers”. Sean O’Casey Letters, Vol. I . Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. 40–41. ———. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1942–1954, Vol. II . Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1980. ———. “Says the Grand old dame Britannia”. www.catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtl s000667045 (accessed 19 January 2020). O’Connor Lysaght, D. R. “The Irish Citizen Army, 1913–1916: White, Larkin, and Connolly”. History Ireland (March-April 2006): 19–23. O’Toole, Fintan. Judging Shaw. Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2017. Ritschel, Nelson O’Ceallaigh. “Shaw and the Dublin Repertory Theatre”. SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 35.2, University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015. 168–184. Roche, Anthony. The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899–1939. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2015. Shaw, George Bernard. John Bull’s Other Island. London: Penguin Books, 1984. ———. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1911–1925, Vol. 3. Ed. Dan Laurence. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ———. “O’Flaherty, V. C.”. Selected Short Plays. New York: Penguin, 1988. 253–278. ———. “Municipal Art Gallery: The Bridge Site, Interview with Mr. George Bernard Shaw”. Irish Times, 12 April 1913. 7. ———. “Letter from George Bernard Shaw on Sheehy-Skeffington’s Sentence”. F. Sheehy-Skeffington’s Speech from the Dock with Letter from George Bernard Shaw, ed. James Connolly, i–iv. Dublin: Liberty Hall, 1915. ———. Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Ed. Dan Laurence and Nicholas Grene. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993.

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———. “Ireland and the First World War”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Grene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 101–104. ———. “Mad Dogs in Uniform”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 95–97. ———.Common Sense About the War. What Shaw Reilly Wrote About the War. Ed. J. L. Wisenthal and Daniel O’Leary. 16–84. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. ———. “War Issues for Irishmen”. The Matter With Ireland, 2nd. Ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 184–201. Sheehy-Skeffington, “London’s Magnificent Rally to the Dublin Rebels”, Daily Herald, 3 November 1913, 1. Soboleva, Olga and Angus Wrenn. The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia. New York: Peter Lang. 2012. “Triangle Waist Shirt Company Fire”, www.history.com/topics/triangle-shirtw aist-fire (accessed 22 July 2018). “University Socialism”, The Scotsman, 28 October 1910. 8. Yeates, Padraig. Lockout Dublin 1913. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2000. Yeats, William Butler. Autobiographies. London: Macmillan, 1991.

CHAPTER 3

Revolutions 1916/1917: Lynd, War Issues, the ITGWU

In February 1916, weeks after the Irish Volunteer’s military council and Connolly agreed to a joint revolution, the British army, Irish Command, released a recruiting pamphlet targeting Dublin labourers: “the Dublin slums were more unhealthy than the trenches in Flanders” (Nevin, Connolly, 615). As argued in Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation, this likely came from the recruiting “poster-text” that Shaw composed for Sir Matthew Nathan, Undersecretary of Ireland, in late 1915. Shaw repeated the sentiment in his 1918 War Issues for Irishmen, another recruitment attempt: “A trench is a safer place than a Dublin slum” (War Issues, 198). Of course, the 1916 pamphlet (that did not mention Shaw) was seen by Connolly, who noted in The Workers’ Republic, on 26 February: “You can die honourably in a Dublin slum,... if you die of fever or even of want, rather than sell your soul to the enemies of your class and country, such death is a thousand times more honourable than if you won a VC committing murder at the bidding of your country’s enemies” (“The Slum”, 1; quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 616). Connolly was probably alluding to Michael O’Leary, V. C., placarded on recruiting posters; yet given Connolly’s almost certain knowledge of O’Flaherty, V. C ., the play likely figured in as well. When Connolly announced Liberty Hall’s new theatre in February 1916, he knew his play Under Which Flag ? would soon premiere on © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_3

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its stage. If the new theatre was to be “Next to the Revolution/ The Greatest Event of 1916”, Connolly’s play was to have its part. It certainly represented a step in the provocative preparations for revolution, which British authorities assisted. Two days before Connolly’s play premiered, The Gael newspaper’s office was raided by Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) detectives on 24 March. The raid destroyed the paper’s printing press, with many files seized. A few days later, The Gael ’s editor, Joe Stanley, wrote to Shaw as his copy of Plays for Puritans had been seized. Stanley inquired if the book was seditious. Shaw replied no, but conceded that there is certain dialogue in one of its plays, The Devil’s Disciple, set during the American Revolution: a “pigheaded lunatic like King George” (quoted in Driver).1 Shaw suggested that an “overzealous” DMP constable might have caught the line while flipping through the book’s pages. As Sean Driver points out, the line refers to George III, not George V who reigned during the Great War. However, DMP detectives would have known of the Connolly-published 1915 Sheehy-Skeffington pamphlet with Shaw’s letter, including its added caps highlighting Shaw’s provocative words. Connolly responded to The Gael ’s raid by calling out the ICA to guard Liberty Hall and its printing press. ICA members guarded the Hall from that point on, including during Under Which Flag ?’s premiere. The DMP detectives who witnessed the performance, and the audience, had to pass armed ICA members to reach the new theatre space. Included in that audience, and passing his former ICA comrades, was O’Casey. Under Which Flag ? was not, as we know, Connolly’s only playwriting attempt. His daughter Nora Connolly O’Brien reveals an earlier play titled The Agitator’s Wife (James Connolly, 97). As mentioned in Chapter 1, Maria-Danielle Dick, Kristy Lusk, and Willy Maley discovered what most likely is the play, published as an anonymous short story (mostly in dialogue) with the same title in the February 1894 The Labour Prophet , a journal of the Labour Church, based in Manchester, edited by its leader John Trevor (“‘The Agitator’s Wife’”, 1). If the story is the play, it has far more in common with the 1890s New Drama than with popular melodramas, even to the point of focusing on marriage as if having read The Quintessence of Ibsenism’s discussion of marriage and theatre (Christian, 2). The work presents a strong and intelligent woman, independently minded, in the form of Mary Arnold, who fills in for her ailing husband during a trade union agitation with employers and is accepted by her husband’s fellow male workers (Agitators’ ). Its dialogue is crisp

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and tells its story concisely, as does the dialogue in Under Which Flag ?, completed twenty-two years later. While Connolly was a voracious reader, even within his 1894 Edinburgh poverty, it is difficult to ascertain his specific drama influences. However, he revealed his antipathy for popular melodramas, Irish or not, in a Workers’ Republic review of P. J. Bourke’s For the Land She Loved, in the pivotal month of November 1915: “The play is such a terrible mixture of duels [...] climax and anti-climax, that it would be, indeed, very difficult to criticize it, or even give an idea of what it was all about” (3). Connolly was for a theatre of ideas, as he was aware of Shaw’s drama. And while not a literary equal to O’Flaherty, V. C ., Under Which Flag ? is not without purposeful and literary construction.2 In fact, the play challenges O’Flaherty, V. C . while Connolly—steep in Rising preparations—chose again to express himself as a dramatist. Set among the rural poor during the 1867 Fenian Risings, Under Which Flag ? addresses Shaw’s portrait of O’Flaherty’s acquired knowledge from his British War experiences that disrupt the domestic space as knowledge elevates him to see Ireland as it is—which Shaw portrays as plagued by ignorance and poverty, epitomized through Madigan, O’Flaherty’s mother, and Teresa—while also echoing John Bull’s Other Island (JBOI ).3 Connolly’s play opens with the proletariat mother Ellen O’Donnell, in contrast to Shaw’s Mrs O’Flaherty, pleasantly conversing with the young woman Mary O’Neill, an orphan who had been taken in by the O’Donnells: “who reared me all these years when they had enough to do to rear their own” (Under, 106). Peter Gahan suggests that this family set-up recalls Nora Reilly having been taken in by the Doyle family after her father died in the years prior to the action in JBOI . Connolly most likely had read JBOI —perhaps the 1912 Home Rule edition as O’Casey—and or saw the play in production.4 He certainly knew Arms and the Man well enough in December 1913 to borrow its title for his ICA development article, and would have been keen to know Shaw’s first Irish-set play. So, in contrasting his play against O’Flaherty, Connolly was also echoing JBOI in part, but changing the classes involved. Instead of the landlord’s daughter being taken in by the estate agent’s family, Connolly portrays a peasant family having taken in a destitute orphan. And in further contrast to O’Flaherty, Connolly’s portrayed generosity of Ellen O’Donnell and Mary O’Neill’s reciprocated fondness is clearly the opposite of the desperate greed of O’Flaherty’s mother and Teresa. And as the action reveals, Mary O’Neill is romantically linked to Ellen’s son

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Frank, as Shaw’s Teresa is linked (or formerly linked) to O’Flaherty— which, in relation to the similar backgrounds between Under Which Flag ?’s Mary and JBOI ’s Nora, the romantic link of Mary and Frank also echoes the same between Nora and Larry Doyle in the 1904 play. Shaw’s first two Irish-set plays hover within Connolly’s 1916 play. As the O’Donnell family gathers, the domestic tranquillity is stirred when Mary asks how the family friend Dan McMahon came to be blind: a product of English incarceration. John O’Donnell, a second son, stirs further by announcing—twisting Shaw’s argument that getting out of Ireland educates: “I’m for America,... Ireland is only fit for slaves. America is the place where a man is a man, a free man” (Under, 112). Significantly, it is Ellen who responds, revealing her internationalist class perspective: “Always slaving for other people,… And do you think you will get out of that by going to America?…. The poor of the world are always slaving for other people, always going hungry that others may be clothed, badly housed that others may live in palaces” (Under, 112). Of course, Ellen’s sentiment benefits from Connolly’s seven American years as a union organizer and socialist, therefore inadvertently affirming Shaw’s view, but within the play’s action Ellen is an Ireland-bound proletarian educated to socialism. Next Connolly’s play addresses British military service, as in Shaw’s O’Flaherty, as an agent of education and financial gain for the agricultural poor. Frank announces his intention to enlist in the British army, further shattering the home: “I will see the world, be well taken care of, and after my time is done, retire on a pension, and come home and spend my days in Ireland” (Under, 113). While Mrs O’Flaherty is appalled that her son intends, after military service, to live in France, Frank’s father contrastingly is horrified by his son’s intention of enlisting in the British army. Despite her nationalist flourishes, Mrs O’Flaherty’s objection to France is over a perception of the risqué, not his intended turn from Ireland. In Under Which Flag ?, the father embodies Connolly’s position on British military service: “A pension is blood money got from the British government, and every bit of food that’s bought with a soldier’s money has blood on it, the blood of the people murdered to keep the bloody empire going!” (Under, 114).5 The contrast between O’Flaherty’s mother and O’Donnell’s father is clear. The point is furthered by the character McMahon: “Ireland has many curses, but the worse curse of all are the poor amadams who take the blood money of the enemy, and imagines that they could eat and drink at England’s expense without being corrupted” (Under, 115).6

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McMahon was performed by ICA Captain and Abbey Theatre actor Sean Connolly, while the production was most likely staged by his Abbey and ICA comrade, Helena Molony—the two who arguably shared details of O’Flaherty, V. C . with James Connolly.7 By Under Which Flag ?’s end, Frank, then a British soldier, deserts for Irish revolution, embracing James Fintan Lalor’s conviction that the land of Ireland belongs to the people. Undoubtedly, Connolly’s play made an impact on its Liberty Hall audience, intimating a socialist rising with a republican slant as stipulated by the O’Casey-drafted ICA constitution. That impact was supported by the Workers’ orchestra conducted by ICA Chief of Staff, Michael Mallin, with ICA bugler William Oman—and by additional ICA members in attendance and connected with the production, as well as members of the labouring class served by Liberty Hall. It would take O’Casey until 1945 before he publicly wrote of seeing the play’s premiere, suggesting it meant “the labour movement was flying under false colours” (quoted by Murray, 97). Yet by 1945, much had changed, and such a view was not necessarily consistent with O’Casey’s public views as late as early 1918. However, in 1916, O’Casey side-stepped the revolution. In pursuing the ICA’s constitution, Rising historian Brian Barton asserts that by April 1916, Connolly had forged the ICA “into a potent force and potential weapon for his own use—‘a real revolutionary army’. He vetted his officers, determined its structure, imposed a rigid discipline and above all demanded an ideological commitment to revolution and the goal of an independent Irish socialist republic” (328). Because of such a focus, Barton maintains that the ICA was “superior to the much larger Irish Volunteer Force in its unity of purpose, its lack of factional and ideological division and in the quality of its training” (328). While O’Casey would later question the ideological focus of some ICA officers, Connolly—as staging Under Which Flag ? attests—was endeavouring to cover multiple bases in preparation. These efforts represented a colossal push to achieve Peter Keegan’s prophesy, from JBOI , of capitalism’s end. In the week that followed the premiere of Connolly’s play, on 8 April, Francis Sheehy-Skeffington reviewed Under Which Flag ? in the Workers’ Republic, noting that the play “breathes the true spirit of patriotism and at the present time nothing could be healthier for the youth of Ireland than the lesson it teaches” (Sheehy-Skeffington, “Under,” 2). While Sheehy-Skeffington has been widely viewed as a strict pacifist, his review of Connolly’s play suggests a more complex individual—perhaps not dis-similar to Shaw, who advocated against militarism in the decades

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leading to the Great War, but believed there were times to fight.8 Being a close friend and comrade to Connolly, Sheehy-Skeffington had written the day before, 7 April, to Shaw asking him to publish an included document with an English paper. The document, Sheehy-Skeffington argued, was from Dublin Castle and revealed that the British army and DMP had plans to disarm rebel leaders “and seize their quarters” (Shaw, “Neglected,” 122). While Shaw chose not to try publishing the document on receipt, not believing it, a similar statement was leaked by rebel leaders on 19 April, four days prior to Easter Sunday. The document Shaw received not only anticipated the leaked document, it likely was an effort by Connolly (and fellow rebellion leaders) to stir the London pot, casting the British military as aggressors and the rebels as defending Ireland. Also at this time, 8 April 1916, Connolly published his last important essay in the Workers’ Republic—the same issue that contained SheehySkeffington’s above review. “The Irish Flag” announced an Irish flag raising over Liberty Hall: “Where better could that flag fly than over the unconquered citadel of the Irish working class?” (“Irish Flag,” 1). Connolly reiterated once again his commitment to a socialistic revolution, echoing Marx and Engels’ belief in Ireland’s role in spreading socialist revolution, as well as Fintan Lalor’s views: “who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord; not the sweating, profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute pressman—the hired liars of the enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the Irish working class, the only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.... The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour” (“Irish Flag,” 1). Connolly’s words, two weeks before the Rising, reflected his ideology expressed in the early days of the Great War, that a revolution in Ireland could ignite the conflagration of socialist revolution across Europe. However, he had argued in Labour in Irish History, that historical Irish rebellions failed due to the bourgeoisie “constantly betraying the struggle”; events on 22–23 April likely suggested to Connolly that such was again the case (McGuire, 7).9 Did that mean O’Casey’s animosity towards Volunteer leaders in 1914, perhaps influenced by Connolly’s above 1910 book, were sound in 1916? So while O’Casey had vilified Pearse, it was not Pearse, nor Clarke nor MacDiarmada nor Markievicz who endangered revolution, but the IV’s official leader, Eoin MacNeill.

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Revolution I When O’Casey challenged the IV’s leadership in 1914 to a debate on whether workers should join the ICA or the IV, he received a short note from MacNeill. MacNeill claimed that he was unaware of the IV making any “distinctions” between “the noble and obscure, the rich and the poor”, and declined to debate (O’Casey Letters, I , 55).10 When the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, John Redmond, committed the Volunteers to join the British army in September 1914 for the War, MacNeill led a break-away section who had no intention of enlisting in the British military. Over the next two years, a military council formed within the IV, unbeknownst to MacNeill, and began planning for rebellion—this was the council that met with Connolly in January 1916. While MacNeill supported the IV’s militarization, he saw the organization as a defensive force should Britain try to enforce conscription on Ireland or disarm them. When MacNeill learned of the planned rebellion, set for the next day on Easter Sunday, he placed adverts in William Martin Murphy’s Irish Independent cancelling the planned manoeuvres (most rank and file IV members thought usual route marches were scheduled). MacNeill’s efforts undermined the plans for Easter Sunday. The Military Council with Connolly decided to push ahead with revolution, but on Easter Monday, 24 April. MacNeill’s countermanding orders on Easter Sunday compromised the Rising before it began, which, in conjunction with the failure to deliver arms from Germany, meant that the Rising was mostly restricted to Dublin.11 The Military Council of Padraic Pearse, Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Joseph Plunkett, Eamonn Ceannt, and Sean Mac Diarmada, with Connolly—the seven signatories of the Easter Proclamation (printed in Liberty Hall) that proclaimed an Irish Republic to serve all Irish, all classes, all genders—hoped that once the Rising commenced, more would join the fight. As has been reported many times, Connolly had no illusions about success after MacNeill’s interference. On parting from labour comrade William O’Brien at Liberty Hall, who had assisted by writing ICA orders, Connolly remarked: “We are going out to be slaughtered.” O’Brien asked, “Is there no chance of success?”; the reply: “None whatever” (as quoted in Morrisey, O’Brien, 103).12

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Connolly, the former Singer factory toiler, commanded the rebel forces within Dublin and proved an active Commandant-General. He was the only rebel leader and Proclamation signatory to be wounded during the fighting, and severely so. The combat lasted from Monday noon to Saturday afternoon, with some garrisons surrendering on Sunday. Connolly’s strategy, based on what worked and failed in the suppressed 1905 Russian Revolution (fought mostly in St. Petersburg and Moscow), was to occupy perceivably defensible buildings as primary garrisons and hamper British troop movements by street barricades. Rebels stationed in numerous buildings would fire on the stalled troops from various angles (which had some success at Mount Street Bridge), followed by resisting the expected direct garrison assaults. Undoubtedly, it would have had more success if more had participated than the estimated 1,500– 2,000 men and women who fought through the week, armed with rifles of various qualities, handguns, and shotguns. The outcome became inevitable when the British countered with 20,000 soldiers with quality modern rifles, machine guns, and artillery.13 As demonstrated in Shaw, Synge, Connolly, Connolly’s Rising plan seized numerous buildings and locations connected to the 1913 Lockout, such as Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, Eason’s Stationery, the offices of William Martin Murphy’s Irish Independent newspaper, and Murphy’s Imperial Hotel, across from the General Post Office (GPO—the rebel headquarters garrison) in O’Connell Street. Connolly had the ICA’s new and enormous Plough and the Stars flag raised on the Imperial Hotel: “Connolly plainly derived intense satisfaction from seeing the socialist banner atop this palace of capitalism” (Townshend, Easter, 160). Yet more importantly, flying the Plough and the Stars on Murphy’s hotel symbolized Connolly’s socialist presence—even stamp—on the Irish revolution. However, it also opened the door for competing views of what the flag symbolized atop the Imperial Hotel during the Rising. O’Casey would later suggest that by flying the ICA’s flag while fighting with the IV, Connolly had abandoned socialism for a bourgeoise putsch. Yet centring the heart of the Rising on O’Connell Street had its own engagement with the Lockout’s ghosts. It had been the site of the DMP’s baton charge against workers and others on 31 August 1913, when Larkin addressed the street from an Imperial Hotel balcony. For their part, the British shelled Liberty Hall first, knowing the Hall’s ties to the ICA, the ITGWU, and socialism through Connolly and Larkin.

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Shelling Liberty Hall first, while it was empty, reflected a British military decision to strike the Irish left.14 The fate of journalist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington might also point to such, if not from the command level then at least from the level of some officers. Sheehy-Skeffington, fresh from his Under Which Flag ? review, was well-known to the British military and the DMP—easily recognizable with his tweed suit, red hair and beard (not unlike Shaw before his hair whitened but without Shaw’s height). He was stopped at a British checkpoint during the Rising’s Tuesday evening and was immediately detained (Caulfield, 153).15 An Irish officer in the British army, Captain Bowen-Colthurst, interrogated Sheehy-Skeffington, then formed a patrol and took Sheehy-Skeffington along to search the premises of Alderman James Kelly’s tobacco shop. In the shop were two journalists seeking shelter from the fighting: P. J. MacIntyre and Thomas Dickson. The former had railed against Connolly becoming the ITGWU’s Acting General Secretary in Larkin’s absence, and the latter edited the Eye-Opener paper which claimed it was “published by Irishmen and trade unionists” (Glandon, 12–13; 113). The next morning, Bowen-Colthurst formed a firing squad and had the three journalists executed without trials. British command first affirmed that Bowen-Colthurst’s initiative was “carried out with discretion” (Foy and Barton, Easter, 190). The Captain then took his patrol back to the streets and found Richard O’Carroll, head of the Bricklayer’s union, and shot him. Leaving O’Carroll where he fell, expiring ten days later.16 After the execution of the three journalists, a British officer, Major Sir Francis Vane, endeavoured to have the executions investigated. When he related the situation to Major Ivor Price, Chief Army Intelligence officer in Dublin, Price “hinted that Sheehy-Skeffington got what he deserved” (Quinn, “Sir Francis Vane’s”).17 No doubt, the execution of Sheehy-Skeffington, with the two journalists, was felt by Shaw, himself a journalist believing the free press was democracy’s foundation. Later in 1916, he referred to Herbert Asquith’s coalition Government in relation to Sheehy-Skeffington’s execution as a “Terrorist Government” (Shaw, Gregory, 122).18 As the Rising continued on its Thursday, 27 April, Connolly was wounded twice. The first grazed a shoulder. The second came after directing an occupation in Upper Abbey Street near the offices of the Irish Independent , and erecting further street barricades. While proceeding back to the GPO alone, a British bullet struck him above his left ankle, splitting both bones in his lower leg. Away from those he had directed,

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and out of sight from the GPO, he crawled towards the headquarters, bleeding profusely. Once in sight of the GPO, he fired his handgun repeatedly into the air to attract his comrades. Connolly carried an American 0.45 automatic handgun during the Rising, an unusual weapon in 1916 Dublin (Barton, Secret Court Martial Records, 334). While the ICA acquired its weapons from numerous sources, including a significant quantity of modern English Lee-Enfield rifles from British enlisted soldiers (the smaller ICA was better armed with more modern rifles than the much larger IV), little is known of how they acquired pistols beyond their being easily smuggled through ships (Leddin, 117–118). Connolly’s Colt-designed 1911 0.45 could have been manufactured at Colt’s Connecticut factory, or at Singer’s New Jersey factory, which produced the Colt-designed gun during the War. If made by Singer’s, it is likely that the Singer foreman Connolly had befriended when he worked at the New Jersey factory (Chapter 1) sent Connolly the 0.45; Connolly utilized many friends in procuring ICA armaments (Leddin, 117–118). Murray suggests that during the Rising, O’Casey “made his way to St. Stephen’s Green,” the iconic park that ICA members occupied before taking the adjacent Royal College of Surgeons (102). This ICA garrison was commanded by Michael Mallin and Constance Markievicz. Murray contends that “O’Casey felt uncomfortable about his non-participation … as many of his … friends fought” (103). Following the Rising, O’Casey maintained correspondence with at least one of those friends, the ICA’s James Shiels, who was interned in England, then Wales. O’Casey provided Dublin news and signed one of his letters, “Give my love to all the Boys” (O’Casey Letters, I, 60).19 Yet before O’Casey could write to Shiels, and before even Yeats could compose his iconic testament to the Rising, “Easter 1916,” Shaw turned quickly to his most immediate avenue for intervention: journalism. News of the Rising, its collapse, its surrender, and the destruction of Dublin’s centre was propagated to London by the British popular press, as epitomized by the Illustrated London News on 6 May 1916 when it published photos of Dublin centre’s destruction, adjacent to a photo of Connolly. The press took up the military’s sense that socialism was behind the Rising, which was easy to demonize within capitalist Britain. The caption under Connolly’s photo read: “the chief rebel leader, and a Syndicalist Labour Agitator” (“Sinn Fein,” 581, 584). For so many reasons, being a Dubliner, a socialist, a critic of Britain’s handling of the Great

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War, an internationalist, and for knowing Connolly, Shaw was compelled to respond. I previously discussed Shaw’s two published letters to the London press in the days following the Rising in Shaw, Synge, Connolly, and Socialist Provocation and Bernard Shaw, W. T. Stead, and the New Journalism. However, Shaw had written a third Rising press letter, being the first of the three. In a 30 April 1916 letter to H. W. Massingham, then editor of The Nation, Shaw noted: “The Irish business is rather ghastly. I have somewhere in London or down in Ayot a copy of the document about which Ginnell asked the question in the House on which, following up Robert Lynd, I have sent a screed to the Daily News [sic]” (Shaw Letters, III , 397). The document Shaw refers to, that Irish Parliamentary Party MP Lawrence Ginnell questioned in the House of Commons, has become known as the Castle Document. As mentioned above, it was the document purported to be from Dublin Castle that contained plans to arrest rebel leaders and seize their arms. It is unclear whether Shaw alluded to the document in his “screed” to the Daily News, “following up” an article by Ulster leftist journalist Robert Lynd that was sympathetic to the Rising’s leaders. The paper failed to publish Shaw’s “screed.” Given the date of his letter to Massingham, the day the last rebel garrisons surrendered in Dublin, Shaw had written to the Daily News while the Rising was still underway. Shaw’s second Rising letter appeared in the New Statesman on 6 May and was titled “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising.” Shaw argued against the British army (and popular press) portraying the rebels as traitors: “He who fights for the independence of his country may be an ignorant and disastrous fool, but he is not a traitor and will never be regarded as one by his fellow countryman. All the slain men and women of the Sinn Fein Volunteers fought and died for their country as sincerely as any soldier in Flanders has fought and died for his” (121).20 Shaw also called for English restraint in responding to the defeated Rising, while including a copy of the Castle document Sheehy-Skeffington had sent him. What Shaw did not realize when writing this letter was that by the time it was published, seven rebels (some leaders and some not) had been executed by the British army.21 For his third Rising press letter, “The Easter Week Executions” Shaw returned to the Daily News, which published it on 10 May. By that time, twelve Rising rebels had been shot by firing squads. As I argued in the above two monographs, Shaw knew when he wrote his third Rising letter

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that Connolly was not among those executed to date, and in criticizing the Government’s decision to execute rebels, Shaw’s letter may have been an effort to preserve Connolly’s life22 : You say that “so far as the leaders are concerned no voice has been raised in this country against the infliction of the punishment which has so speedily overtaken them.” As the Government shot the prisoners first and told the public about it afterwards, there was no opportunity for effective protest. But it must not be assumed that those who merely shrugged their shoulders when it was useless to remonstrate accept for one moment the view that what happened was the execution of a gang of criminals. My own view—which I should not intrude on you had you not concluded that it does not exist—is that the men who were shot in cold blood after their capture or surrender were prisoners of war, and that it was, therefore entirely incorrect to slaughter them. The relation of Ireland to Dublin Castle is in this respect precisely that of the Balkans States to Turkey, or Belgium or the city of Lille to the Kaiser, and of the United States to Great Britain. . . an Irishman resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his country is doing only what Englishmen will do if it be their misfortune to be invaded and conquered by the Germans in the course of the present war. (124)23

The sentiment of the English fighting their occupiers if defeated by Germany, echoes an article by Robert Lynd that the New Statesman published on 1 April 1916, “If the Germans Conquered England.”24 The essay described the German occupation, should Britain lose the War, as being identical to England’s occupation of Ireland. Interestingly, and probably not known to Shaw when he wrote “The Easter Week Executions”, excerpts from Lynd’s essay—as Connolly had published excerpts from Shaw’s “The Last Spring of the Old Lion” in The Worker in early 1915—were published on page one of the four page paper Irish War News , prepared during the Rising by Connolly. Clearly the New Statesman was being read by an eclectic array of leftist Irish readers, and Lynd was soon to play an even more important post-Rising role with regard to Connolly, impacting both Shaw and O’Casey. On the day Shaw’s “The Easter Week Executions” was published, 10 May, William Martin Murphy’s Irish Independent , stated, in no uncertain terms: “Let the worst of the ringleaders be singled out and dealt with” (qtd. In Yeates, 574), and ran a photograph of Connolly with the caption: “Still lies in Dublin Castle, slowly recovering from his wound” (quoted

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in Connell, Who’s, 5).25 Two days later, Connolly and Sean MacDiarmada, the last two remaining leaders, were shot, and London papers publicized it the next day, 13 May 1916—some with accompanying photos of Connolly. The commanding British General, John Maxwell, referred to Connolly as “very poisonous” and “the worst of the lot” as he resisted pressure from Asquith to stop the executions (quoted by Foy and Barton, 190). Although executions ceased, thousands were arrested and interned following the Rising, whether they had fought or not. While some were released quickly, such as O’Casey, many others were interned in England and Wales. In December 1916, Asquith, and Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey resigned, with David Lloyd George succeeding as Prime Minister of the coalition Government. Most of the Irish prisoners were released by Christmas.

Remembering Connolly By mid-1916, Connolly and the other leaders of the 1916 Rising were being revered and reconsidered. Popular opinion in Dublin, first against the Rising or numbed by its destroyed city centre, turned in favour of the rebel leaders following their executions. On the anniversary of Connolly’s death, the ITGWU raised a large banner across the façade of Liberty Hall, then under reconstruction. It read “James Connolly Murdered on May 12, 1916.” Adrian Grant relates that the banner was removed when the DMP demanded it. ICA women Helena Molony, Rose Hackett, and Jinny Shanrahan raised a replacement banner with the same inscription across the same façade, then barricaded themselves within the building’s access routes to the upper façade, forcing the DMP to remove it (74). These were not the only efforts to Connolly’s memory; one would reverberate through the directions pursued by Shaw and O’Casey by decade’s end. Prior to being executed, Connolly’s attending surgeon at the military hospital in Dublin Castle, Richard Tobin, delayed verifying that Connolly was healthy enough to be tried by Field General Court Martial. During the days between the Rising’s surrender on 29 April and early May, Tobin operated on Connolly’s severely wounded leg. Tobin, who had been a British army surgeon during the Boer War, was usually assigned to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin where he had treated O’Casey in 1915 (Moran, O’Casey, 72). Nevin, in his encompassing Connolly biography, relates that Connolly and Tobin engaged in numerous conversations

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during Connolly’s treatments—leading Tobin to develop “a deep admiration” for Connolly (664). Eventually, the British army consulted a second physician, Alfred Parsons of the Royal City of Dublin Hospital. Parsons had been J. M. Synge’s physician when Synge’s cancer killed him in 1909. After examination, Parsons was asked if Connolly was “fit to be shot?” Parsons: “No man is fit to be shot” (Connell, Who’s, 49–50).26 The Field General Court Marshall proceeded. Following Connolly’s execution, Tobin and poet George Russell, a friend of both Connolly and Shaw, raised funds for Connolly’s widow Lillie, and her children. Shaw contributed the single most at £50 (Gahan, “Bernard Shaw,” 237). An additional contributor was Robert Lynd. Lynd’s contribution included “money received from literary work to Mrs. Connolly” (Grogan, 254). The amount of this contribution is not known. While all of this was generous, Tobin’s and Russell’s involvement continued. In a 1917 letter to Sylvia Lynd, Lynd’s partner and wife, Russell conveyed that while awaiting execution in Dublin Castle, Connolly “in a fashion appointed Dr. Tobin and I” to assist Connolly’s son Roderic (Grogan, 254). Such an arrangement would have had to have been conveyed directly to Tobin by Connolly or through Lillie and Connolly’s daughter Nora, the only outside visitors allowed to see Connolly while in Dublin Castle. Russell and Tobin advised Roderic, while Tobin funded Roderic’s further education. Tobin’s own son had been killed in the Great War, while fighting in the British army, so perhaps Roderic, at 15 in 1916, was a welcome concern. Roderic had served with his father in the GPO during the Rising until the Wednesday, when Connolly sent all of the young teenage rebels home once British artillery reached O’Connell Street.27 Yet it was Lynd’s involvement with remembering Connolly that was to prove provocative, stemming from the rebuilding efforts of the ITGWU after the Rising. The reconstruction of Liberty Hall was only part of the union’s second rebuilding since the Lockout. This second effort gained momentum after key individuals who had been interned following the Rising, even though non-combatants, were released at various points during 1916. These included William O’Brien, Thomas Foran, and P. T. Daly, with the latter held to December. Morrissey notes: “The absence of Larkin in the United States and of Daly in prison, and the death of Connolly, left a void which O’Brien, assisted by his identification with the increasingly revered Connolly, patriot and trades unionist, was poised to occupy with the assistance of his friend and colleague, Tom Foran, president”

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of the ITGWU (111–112). And as Morrissey notes O’Brien’s shortcomings, lacking Connolly’s “command of philosophy and theory”, O’Brien “was to make himself the custodian of Connolly’s papers and teaching” which boosted his own place within Labour to the point that soon, “much of the real power in the labour movement, as in the trade union movement, was to reside in him” (Morrissey, O’Brien, 112).28 As soon as they were released from internment, O’Brien and Foran became immersed with rebuilding the ITGWU—with O’Brien, then still in the Tailor’s union. O’Brien became an ITGWU member in January 1917, relying on his years of comradeship with Connolly. After all, they knew each other during the Irish Socialist Republican Party (1896–1903), and O’Brien had been instrumental in assisting Connolly’s return from the United States in 1910. In a real sense, Connolly’s work in Ireland from 1910 into 1916 owed much to O’Brien. A major step in both the ITGWU’s rebuilding and O’Brien’s position with regard to Connolly’s legacy in post-Rising Ireland was undertaken in the fall of 1916, when O’Brien arranged for the re-publication of Connolly’s two longer major works: Labour in Irish History and The Re-Conquest of Ireland (1915).29 The former had been published by the Dublin publisher Maunsel, an important publisher of Irish books, including Synge’s work, during the first two decades of the twentieth century. The latter shorter book had been first published by Connolly at Liberty Hall. The new venture of republishing both works, titled Labour in Ireland, was undertaken by Maunsel. O’Brien asked Robert Lynd to write an Introduction to the volume, which he dated October 1916. The book was published the following year. Given Lynd’s connection to the Rising through his excerpts in Irish War News , Lynd was a relevant choice.30 Lynd opened dramatically, arguing the case for Connolly’s historical reputation: James Connolly is Ireland’s first Socialist martyr. To say so is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a simple historical fact that must be admitted even by those who dispute the wisdom of his actions and the excellence of his ideals. (vii)

In endeavouring to depict Connolly’s revolution, Lynd writes: Connolly deliberately and consciously took up the mantle which fell sixtyseven years ago from Fintan Lalor’s shoulders. And he took it up not only

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as a citizen of Ireland, but as a citizen of the world. ‘Fintan Lalor, like all the really dangerous revolutionaries in Ireland,’ he once wrote, in a sentence in which he seems to be justifying his own attitude, ‘advocated his principles as part of the creed of the democracy of the world, and not merely as applicable only to the incidents of the struggle of Ireland against England.’ (ix)

Lynd’s efforts were insightful not only of Connolly, but also on how the Irish, and others, were to see Connolly in death. In contemplating why Connolly did not see the threat of German militancy as many others, Lynd writes: “Connolly could not interest himself very deeply in a war which he interpreted, I imagine, as a struggle between one group of capitalist governments and another. [....] “Probably he would have denied that a war between two real democracies was possible. And indeed if European society had been based on the Socialistic principles advocated by Connolly, even a blind man must see that the present war would never have taken place” (xi).31 Lynd also suggests that Connolly’s ideologies, like Lalor’s that emerged during the 1840s Great Famine, had to have been provoked by suffering: “influenced by the spectacle of the perennial disaster of Dublin slum-life—disaster embittered by the failure of the industrial war begun by Mr. James Larkin” (xiii).32 In considering Connolly’s two works in the volume, Lynd asserts that “Labour in Irish History is in great measure a history of the militancy of the Irish poor during the last two centuries”, while The Re-Conquest of Ireland “is Ireland’s case against Murphyism [with Murphyism referring to William Martin Murphy’s and Dublin employers’ Lockout victory]…. To Connolly Dublin was in one aspect a vast charnel-house of the poor” (xviii). Lynd further assesses Connolly’s beliefs: “He believed in a co-operative commonwealth in which the ideals of Sir Horace Plunkett [Shaw’s great friend], the Gaelic Leaguer, the Suffragist, the Republican, the Christian, and the Sinn Feiner should all be harmonized” (xxii).33 In reaching his conclusion, Lynd notes: “after the failure of the strike [Lockout], the economic disaster of the Dublin poor must have seemed irretrievable by anything short of a miracle. Connolly saw the strong growing stronger and the weak growing weaker, and he may have thought that all that was left for a brave man to do was to put himself at the head of the weak and to lead them in one desperate assault on the invincible powers of evil. The alternatives that presented themselves to him were, in this view, to

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go down fighting or to go down without striking a blow” (xxiii). Lynd also relates speaking to T. M. Kettle during Kettle’s last time in Dublin in August 1916, who suggested that Connolly felt “intolerable outrage” at the triumph of the bourgeoise and imperialists over the poor (xxxv).34 Lynd also touches on the calls for clemencies in both the London and Dublin press (as led by himself and Shaw) during the executions of the Rising’s leaders when it was known that Connolly still lived, and remarks that only Murphy’s Irish Independent “warned the Government against clemency as a peril” (xxvi). Lynd closes: One does not need to accept the point-of-view of the insurgent leaders in order to realise the value of Connolly’s work as a Socialist historian and propagandist. Syndicalist, incendiary, agitator—call him what you will: it still remains true that his was the most vital democratic mind in the Ireland of his day. (xxvi)35

Lynd provided a strong testament as to Connolly’s importance, implying that Connolly gave the Rising a reason beyond just ending British rule, even if the majority of the bourgeois Volunteers were not sympathetic to labour or were oblivious to Connolly’s goals. Of course, what was to follow would contain differing perceptions. An intriguing side point to Lynd’s Introduction, and of the very 1917 publication of Labour in Ireland, is that the book had to have passed through the British military censor (O’ Drisceoil, 59).36 The censor either did not understand the socialist argument, or the British military saw value in allowing Connolly’s socialist stamp on the Rising to be published, as if believing potential American allies in the Great War, namely President Woodrow Wilson, would not sympathize with Connolly’s Rising if it seemed a socialist revolution. Maunsel periodically reprinted Labour in Ireland until the publisher shut in 1926; then O’Brien published it, with Lynd’s Introduction, directly through the ITGWU into the 1940s. The memory of Connolly was crucial for O’Brien, to which Lynd’s Connolly assessment contributed. And as astute as Lynd’s assessment was, it would prove useful for Shaw and incendiary for O’Casey. Yet 1917, when the book first appeared, was to prove to be an inflammatory year, like Connolly’s projected conflagration.

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Revolution: II When Connolly wrote “Our Duty In the Crisis” in August 1914 at the War’s start—stating that “Ireland may yet set the torch to a European conflagration”—he, as argued, had a definite vision of Irish revolution (4), which (again) he echoed two weeks before the Rising, “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour” (“Irish Flag”, 1). And while Shaw saw revolution as “impracticable” at War’s start but a real possibility, there were some aligned to Connolly’s vision. In 1916, Vladimar Lenin authored The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination, published in the magazine Vorbote. Like Connolly, Lenin wrote that socialist parties, in addition to attaining their own revolutions, must be committed to bringing the same to all nations: Victorious socialism must achieve complete democracy and, consequently, not only bring about the complete equality of nations, but also give the effect to the right of oppressed nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to free political secession. Socialist Parties which fail to prove by all their activities now, as well as during the revolution and after its victory, that they will free the enslaved nations and establish relations with them based on the basis of a free union and a free union is a lying phrase without the right to secession—such parties would be committing treachery to socialism. (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/x01.htm)

Essentially, both Connolly and Lenin viewed revolution as international, not merely limited to one’s own country. However, Jerome aan de Wiel, in “Ireland and the Bolshevik Revolution,” suggests that the Easter Rising was “not welcomed by many communist leaders”, such as Lev Trotsky (38). However, Lenin’s view was considerably different, being more in line with Marx and Engels on the Irish question. He noted, “a blow delivered against the British imperialist bourgeoisie in Ireland is a hundred times more significant than a blow of equal weight in Africa or Asia” (quoted in de Wiel, 38). As for the concerns of his fellow Bolsheviks with Connolly being allied in the Rising with middle-class republicans, Lenin wrote: “Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip service to revolution without understanding what revolution is” (“The Discussion”). To Lenin, Connolly’s aligning himself with his allies was acceptable and realistic; necessary given the ICA’s 1916

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combatants numbered 220–250 women and men. And in aligning himself with bourgeois, radical republican leaders, Connolly probably believed he was following Marx’s notion that the first revolutions in the unravelling of capitalist societies had to be bourgeoisie, to be followed by total workers’ revolutions. Days before the Rising, Connolly told the ICA: “In the event of victory, hold on to your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty” (quoted in Whelan). Yet as Townshend argues in Ireland: The 20 th Century, “Connolly anticipated Lenin in accepting that the forces of nationalism might begin the revolution which could ultimately open the way for socialism” (quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 708). Such socialistic views of Connolly’s Rising were also expressed in New York, where Connolly had spent much of his seven years while in the United States. The radical editor Emma Goldman published in the June 1916 edition of Mother Earth, an article by Irish playwright Padraic Colum titled, “On the Death of James Connolly and Francis Sheehy-Skeffington.” Colum argued that “the Rising was an essentially anti-capitalist act” (Beatty). In the same edition, Goldman’s editorial noted that the Rising “may grow in significance in the near future. The rebels of Dublin may become the advance guard of an international social revolution, which will shake the very foundations of all governments and privileged classes, who have thrown humanity into the hell-fire of this war” (quoted in Beatty). Interestingly, Goldman and Colum echo Lenin’s reaction to Connolly’s 1916.37 While Lenin’s views on Ireland’s 1916 were seemingly consistent with Connolly’s, he observed from exile events developing within early 1917 Russia, noting that revolutions were nearly at hand—as Shaw had foretold. Russia’s 1917 started with military successes against Germany, but its losses for three years had been excessive, and supplies were scarce. Consequently, food supplies in the cities were reduced and domestic morale withered. Tsar Nicholas II took command of the army on the German front, where he proved ill-equipped for the task. While he stationed himself at the front, he left his unpopular German wife Alexandra to handle domestic affairs. The situation in Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) was sliding beyond control. International Women’s Day on 23 February drew proletarian marchers numbering as many as 100,000 given the increasing factory strikes. The next day, the crowds on Petrograd’s main avenue Nevsky Prospekt were estimated at 160,000 (McMeekin, 95–96).

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The crowd of protestors grew daily, being first fuelled by the excessive breadlines. By 26 February, army units were set up along the intersections of the Nevsky Prospekt to control the protests, but units grew reluctant to oppose the crowds; chaos descended. Police attacked the crowds with machine guns and sniping from roofs, but eventually crowds were defended by some soldiers, while others fired into the crowds. Hotels and restaurants displaying food had their windows smashed as protestors flooded in—bakeries had long been looted. Many foreigners on the street began seeking refuge in the Singer Sewing building, which housed the American Consulate Office on the upper floors. The company’s staff covered the building’s gilded eagles lest they be mistaken for Tsarist Romanov eagles and become targets for protestors. 27 February saw more military mutinies. Police stations were sacked, including that of the Tsar’s secret police, the Okhrana (Rappaport, Caught, 96–98). As protestors gained control of the streets, police and military officers loyal to the Tsar were sought, taken away, or simply killed where found. Marches, protests, rioting, killing, and running for cover or food in Petrograd occurred before the Singer building with its ornate gilded façade as working-class anger, brewing long before 1905, erupted. As reformist politicians and military generals attempted to restore order and address the demands of the protestors, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on 2 March—and abdicated for his son. A provisional Government was formed in the State Duma with reformist Prince Georgy Lvov at its head. The Provisional Government arguably represented the bourgeoisie phase of the revolution. On 3 April, Lenin returned. The February Revolution, as it evolved from bread protests to riots, was far from being organized and lacked the ability to form sustainable government control. Within a short period, the chaos—revealing deep divisions—threatened more violence. Given his long interest in Russia going back to the 1880s, as well as his socialism, Shaw keenly watched Russian developments. On the Tsar’s abdication, Shaw noted in a 30 March letter to Frank Harris, “Good news from Russia, eh? Not quite what any of the belligerents intended... but the Lord fulfills himself in many ways” (Shaw, Collected Letters, III , 463). In May, Shaw wrote to Maxim Gorky: “in England we know nothing of Russia except that there has been a revolution, and that the differences between the right, left, and centre have created a situation of extreme difficulty and delicacy for the provisional government.” Given the autocratic Tsar in contrast to Republican France and England’s democratic leanings, Shaw had been

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revolted by the English-French-Russian alliance that failed to prevent war and generated a colossal World War: “I regard the revolution as such a gain to humanity that it not only at last justifies the Franco-AngloRussian alliance (which in the days of Tsardom was a disgrace to western democracy), but justifies the whole war” (Shaw, Collected Letters, III , 474). Then Shaw argued for the Provisional Government to remain in the War, that with a focus on the external, the Government could unify the country: “The Russian revolutionary government must therefore cherish the present war a Providential.... When a Russian republic, hand in hand with the French and American republics, has destroyed the military prestige of the Prussian and Austrian monarchies, republicanism will have nothing more to fear from dynasties” (475). This was a flawed argument since the War for Russia was past any unifying principles, as evidenced by Nicholas II. Of course, Shaw was marshalling support for his longstanding view that the War must be won by England and France, which he thought more likely if Russia remained involved. Shaw explained to Gorky: “Let me therefore remind you that I am an Irishman, and that patriotism in my country takes the form of implacable hostility to English rule,.... I take the part of England in this war exactly as a Russian might: that is, as an ally believing that the defeat of the central empires is essential to the success of the common cause of democracy and Socialism. I will not pretend to be unbiased; but that bias is certainly not an English one” (476).38 However, Russia’s continued involvement in the war would be catastrophic for the Provisional Government, especially as Lenin and Bolsheviks denounced the war as “a continuation of bourgeois politics” (quoted in Rappaport, Caught, 206). Of course, Shaw was not alone in England and Ireland in watching Russian developments. The English popular press, as well as the Irish, followed the Russian changes with vigour, even if news trickled slowly from Petrograd. According to Adrian Grant, the ITGWU’s William O’Brien attended an international socialist conference in Leeds in June 1917 (74). O’Brien praised the changes while raising some pertinent points: I gather, from reading some of the capitalist newspapers, that revolution is popular nowadays. Twelve months ago you had a revolution in Ireland. The papers and the politicians that acclaimed the revolution in Russia did not acclaim the revolution in Ireland, where the leaders were taken out and shot like dogs … One of them some of you knew—James Connolly. (quoted in Grant, 75)

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June 1917 was not without further Irish developments. That month, Prime Minister David Lloyd George arranged, as a response to the Rising, for an Irish Convention to meet in Dublin that would allow Irishmen, excluding Irish women, to decide how Home Rule should be implemented. In anticipation of the Convention, the Government released the remaining rebels interned since the Rising, including O’Casey’s friend Thomas Ashe. However, neither militant republicans, now under the banner of Sinn Fein, nor Ulster Unionists would participate. Shaw himself fiercely endeavoured to be nominated to the Convention but was unsuccessful. He had argued that he would “get a fair hearing from the extremists because I defied the lighting of the Maxwell terror &c,” a direct allusion to his “Easter Week Executions” press letter, with Maxwell being the British General who confirmed the executions (Shaw, Collected Letters, III , 482). Shaw’s friend Horace Plunkett, the Convention’s Chairman, also failed to secure Shaw’s nomination but allowed Shaw an unofficial influence over the Convention through himself. Shaw believed he was not nominated due to the London press, the continued fallout from Common Sense About the War. In a November 1918 letter to Lady Gregory, Shaw noted: “I have the whole English press against me whenever I move; and the politicians will not do anything for anyone who has not a press backing. Plunkett’s failure to get me nominated to the Irish Convention shews how sure they are that I am negligible, but dangerous if they gave me any chance” (Shaw, Gregory, 141). Shaw’s vision for Ireland’s future during the Convention was a Federation of equal nations—Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales—domestically independent while sharing an economy and defence. In December, Shaw publicized his plan, as an appeal for public support, by publishing “How to Settle the Irish Question” in London’s Daily Express, and in pamphlet form in both London and Dublin. He argued that the Convention need only to replicate the Acts that afforded self-rule in Canada, Australia, and South Africa: “strike out the colonial names and replace them with Irish ones, and the thing is done” (173).39 Plunkett delivered the Convention’s report and recommendations to London on 9 April 1918, the day Lloyd George announced the Government would extend conscription to Ireland, shattering “in a single stroke any hope held out by the Convention’s recommendation of a peaceful transition to Home Rule for the whole island” (Gahan, “Irish Convention,” 82).40

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In Russia, on 3 July 1917, protesting workers and soldiers returned to Nevsky Prospekt in demonstration, this time in opposition to the War. Bolsheviks had successfully inundated “the armies with defeatist propaganda” (McMeekin, 199). The following day, the Government, whose main objective was to crush the Bolsheviks fired machine guns into the protestors (Rappaport, Caught, 216). Although order was tentatively restored, Lvov resigned from the Provisional Government, with Aleksandr Kerensky replacing him as minister-president. Kerensky was intent on nullifying if not eliminating the Bolshevik presence: Lenin returned to exile. In Ireland, the following month, August 1917, Thomas Ashe was arrested for a seditious speech and sentenced to two years in prison.41 Having been released from internment in June, Ashe, who had commanded the 5th Battalion of the IV in north of County Dublin during the 1916 Rising, had resumed political activities. Soon after entering the prison, Ashe went on hunger strike, adopting the tactic used by women suffragettes prior to the Great War, which Connolly used during the Lockout. As they had with suffragettes, the British forcefed Ashe, which resulted in Ashe’s death on 25 September. O’Casey, in tribute, wrote a number of poems and pamphlets memorializing his friend, as well as a letter to the Dublin Saturday Post on 6 October. O’Casey celebrated Ashe as a republican leader with a commitment to labour: “few realised that he was a true Republican and a firm and convinced advocate of the rights of Labour. It will be a surprise to many to hear that he loved the working classes as ardently and as fearlessly as he loved Ireland. Some of us remember well the human and inexhaustible sympathy he displayed with the fighting workers during the stirring and bloody days of the Great Strike of 1913” (O’Casey Letters, I , 64). In the same letter, O’Casey portrayed Ashe as being a “warm supporter of the Ideals of Labour, voiced then by Labour’s great leader, Jim Larkin” (64). O’Casey praises Ashe for embracing republican ideals while simultaneously embracing labour—along the lines of Connolly’s socialist reading of Fintan Lalor. Nevertheless, Murray suggests that “Ashe represented the fusion Connolly had failed to achieve”, which would become O’Casey’s public view over the next year. However, two weeks before his Ashe letter, O’Casey had written, also to the Dublin Saturday Review, about a recent meeting of the Dublin Trades Council in which a number of labour leaders, including O’Brien, were calling for Labour to step aside in future elections in favour of

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Sinn Fein, now energized by the turn of public opinion in favour of an independent Ireland. Perhaps O’Brien believed that Irish labour would fare better with an Irish government. So, while O’Casey was growing concerned with labour’s movement into a strict republican camp, by praising Ashe he was also mostly still in step with the ITGWU as the union reportedly had “one of the largest contingents of the representatives” at Ashe’s funeral (Grant, 75). This was further evident in early 1918 when O’Casey chastised small Dublin publisher, Fergus O’Connor, for not taking his earlier advice to republish Fintan Lalor’s works (O’Casey Letters, I , 71). At this time, O’Casey—now endeavouring to work as a writer—still attempted to praise Connolly in print. In fact, there were more similarities than differences in the ideologies of Ashe and Connolly, and certainly more than between Ashe and Larkin in 1917. Yet by the time of Ashe’s arrest, hunger strike, death, and funeral, events were spiralling. The European War, which became a World War with the United States’ entry, was about to harvest a development Connolly had sought to provoke, and Shaw had warned of. Lenin returned to Russia as September became October 1917. On 25 October, the Bolshevik Red Guard—Europe’s second red guard after the ICA—began cutting telephone and telegraph wires from Government buildings and seized a number of key buildings throughout Petrograd, as had been attempted in 1916 Dublin. They then took the Winter Palace and arrested the Provisional Government, minus Kerensky who had fled. Bolsheviks also attempted to seize control of Moscow but faced fierce resistance from within the Kremlin building from troops either still loyal to the Provisional Government, or in opposition to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks began recruiting “Red Guards from Moscow’s industrial suburbs,” which included the industrial town of Podolsk, 37 kms from Moscow (McMeekin, 210–211). Workers from the Podolsk Singer factory no doubt numbered among those who joined the October Revolution’s battle for Moscow—a conflagration of revolution. By the evening of 2 November, the Kremlin, and Moscow were controlled by Bolsheviks. As Sean McMeekin notes, at this point, Russia’s involvement in the Great War “was beginning to wind down. But the war for Russia had only just begun” (211). Shaw’s concern that Russia would withdraw from the War was materializing. Olga Soboleva and Angus Wrenn note that “Initially the Bolshevik uprising took Shaw by surprise; for the first time he seemed to have difficulties in keeping up with the pace of political change” (118). Of course,

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some of this was due to the sporadically delayed western reporting from Russia. There were numerous Western reporters and photographers in Russia throughout 1917, but a photograph of Nevsky Prospekt taken during the violence of 4 July was only published in London’s Daily Mirror on 19 September, under the header: “Crowd Mown Down By Machine Guns at Petrograd” (Rappaport, Caught, [in the second photo set]). Soboleva and Wrenn state that “at a meeting of the Fabian Society in 1917, where the Bolsheviks were anathematized and vilified [as they had seized Petrograd and Moscow through militant violence as Connolly had attempted in Dublin], did Shaw raise his voice, saying ‘We are socialists. The Russian side is our side’—his words were greeted in silence” (119). Civil war in Russia ensued, becoming a gruesome enterprise.42 Soboleva and Wrenn also note that Shaw’s words to Fabians regarding Bolsheviks in late 1917 was repeated in his short play Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress , written in December 1917 and premiered in January 1918. The play represents Shaw’s early expressed thoughts on the October Revolution and Bolsheviks seizing urban control. It might seem curious that Shaw chose the theatre to voice his early public commentary on the Revolution, but this most likely was due to the incomplete news coverage from Russia after October 1917. Not knowing the details of Bolshevik ideologies, of course, made responding journalistically difficult, and Shaw well knew the danger of journalism when facts were unknown. However, if we subscribe to Connolly’s belief of igniting a conflagration of revolution, then Anajanska is not distant to Irish considerations. In his Bolshevik play, originally titled Anajanska, The Wild Grand Duchess, Shaw had a war play for the English Music Hall circuit, as he and the Abbey Theatre had planned for O’Flaherty, V. C . Annajanska’s premier took place at London’s Coliseum music hall, and featured Lillah McCarthy in the title role, with costumes by Charles Ricketts.43 The production was at least partially designed to assist McCarthy since her recent divorce from Harley Granville Barker. Despite not having accurate and up to date information on Russia, the play’s opening discussion between General Strammfest and Lieutenant Schneidekind about to which government their report should be sent, was an accurate account given the contending governments and parties within Russia since Nicholas II abdicated. Given its subject and historical context, Annajanska is an extraordinary play, one that Audrey McNamara argues is “technically skillful” (148). While Russia is exchanged for Beotia, and Tsar replaced with Panjandrum,

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Shaw is clear that the play is on revolutionary Russia, especially given that the name of Annajanska appears Russian.44 Of course, exchanging The Wild Duchess with The Bolshevik Empress for its 1919 publication, also emphasizes the point. Even in its original configuration, the allusion to the confinement of the Panjandrum and his family by the “Republic of Beotia” reflects the same treatment for ex-Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, their four daughters (Grand Duchesses), and son Alexis by the Provisional Government, then by Bolsheviks to July 1918. Interestingly, Shaw suggests a pathway for survival for those as the Grand Duchess, as Annajanska (the Panjandrum’s daughter) states to army General Strammfest: “The Revolution has made us comrades” (309). When he admits that if he could, he would reinstate the old regime, Annajanska answers: You would keep the people in their hopeless squalid misery? you would fill those infamous prisons again with the noblest spirits in the land? you would thrust the rising sun of liberty back into the sea of blood from which it has risen? And all because there was in the middle of the dirt and ugliness and horror a little patch of court splendor in which you could stand with a few orders on your uniform, and yawn day after day and night after night in unspeakable boredom until your grave yawned wider still, and you fell into it because you had nothing better to do. How can you be so stupid, so heartless? (313)

After he tries to hold on to his belief in the old regime, she scoldingly states: “You are mad, infatuated. You will not believe that we royal divinities are mere common flesh and blood even when we step down from our pedestals and tell you ourselves what a fool you are” (314). Yet even Strammfest, with all that his career must have represented, responds to Annajanska’s declaration that “I am come to save the Revolution”, by saying: “I have come to think that I had better save that than save nothing” (314–315). Their discussion continues with Strammfest asking what the Revolution will do for the people: “Are they not hanging, shooting, imprisoning as much as ever we did? Do they ever tell the people the truth? No: if the truth does not suit them they spread lies instead, and make it a crime to tell the truth” (315). Shaw is touching on the violence, often chaotic within the Russian Civil War, as Annajanska asks, “why should they not? We did it [in the old regime]. You did it, whip in hand: you flogged women for teaching children to read” (315).45 Annajanska then

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gives voice to Shaw’s mindset within the years of revolutions: “Some energetic and capable minority must always be in power. Well, I am on the side of the energetic minority whose principles I agree with. The Revolution is as cruel as we were; but its aims are my aims. Therefore I stand for the Revolution” (315). Shaw was now seeing that the Revolutionary violence, conflagration, in Russia was understandable, possibly necessary, just as he had when he called for workers to arm in Dublin in 1913, or when commenting on proletariat slaughter in 1905 St. Petersburg.46 Shaw still raised his hope that Russia remain in the War when Annajanska, near the play’s end, echoes Shaw’s argument to Gorki: “The war can save it [the Revolution]” (316). A month after the play premiered, February 1918, the Bolsheviks signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Germany, ending Russia’s involvement in the Great War. Yet with regard to Shaw’s play, Annajanska, in anticipation of Shaw’s Saint Joan, vows to save the Revolution by revealing that under her cloak is a military uniform, to which Strammfest ends the play on seeing her in uniform: “You! Great Heavens! The Bolshevik Empress!” (316). McNamara suggests the Annajanska’s representation of both the old regime and the revolution reflects the revolutionary changes at the time throughout Europe, that “nothing is what it seems”—all is changed (150). At play’s end, Shaw draws from his long-standing causes of Women’s Suffrage and rights, socialisms, and revolutions, epitomized in Annajanska. The play, in touching on some aspects of the Bolshevik struggle to expand its control of Russia, to establish a socialist state, Shaw outlines who can be a part of the Revolution and new order—even a Grand Duchess and a career army general. While some Russian generals survived the Revolution, and even served it, many Romanovs (the former ruling family) did not. And those who did survive did so by escaping Russia. Nicholas II’s mother, the Dowager Empress, escaped via the British navy, as did one of her daughters. Even Princess Irina and husband Prince Felix Yusupov—he was among those who had killed Rasputin (a source of hatred directed towards Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra given his status at court) had to and did flee Russia.47 As for Shaw’s Annajanska, its message to its original London music hall audience, decidedly working class, was a message of class: that when the Revolution comes, all can have a place, even if not working class provided they commit themselves to the new order, like a former Grand Duchess. A cynic might suggest that Shaw was covering himself and partner Charlotte should they find themselves caught in revolutionary

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violence, but the play’s theme is poignant in that the Revolution must be embraced. Another aspect of the play, of course, is Shaw’s contention that his music hall audience should be cognizant of Russian developments—if not, the play could help. As Shaw’s Russian Revolution play opened 1918, Bolsheviks nationalized the Singer Podolsk factory (“Singer Factories—Podolsk”) and the War continued.

Irish Repercussions In the same month that Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress premiered, O’Brien and Cathal O’Shannon, of the ITGWU, met Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet plenipotentiary in London. O’Shannon recalled: “It was a great pleasure for us to hear him speak of James Connolly, and as he spoke I thought how Connolly’s heart would have rejoiced at the success of the Bolsheviks, and how he would have handled the situation. In Russia, Litvinoff [sic] told us, they had heard of Connolly and his work years ago, even before 1913” (quoted in O’Connor, 14). This would mean familiarity with Connolly’s publications. This proclaimed Bolshevik admiration for Connolly continued when Connolly’s son Roderic travelled to Petrograd in 1920, when Lenin personally told Roderic he had read Connolly’s Labour in Irish History and described Connolly as “‘head and shoulders’ above his contemporaries in the European socialist movement” (McGuire, 36). With Litvinoff and Lenin thinking highly of Connolly, did Connolly’s 1916 Dublin Rising indeed ignite revolutionary conflagration that spread to Russia? It is impossible to answer but given Lenin’s defence of the Rising and his praise—and Litvinov’s—for Connolly’s theoretical writings, the Dublin Revolution at the very least was suggestive to Lenin—as the 1905 Russian Revolution had been suggestive to Connolly. And as if echoing Connolly, Lenin on 26 October, the day after Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace and much of Petrograd, delivered a speech in which he claimed that their Revolution “would soon break out across France, Germany, and England” (Rappaport, Caught, 295). It was the dream of conflagration, but which in Russia was to be mired in a long and horrid civil war—which in July 1918 saw the Bolsheviks killing Nicholas II and his immediate family with their last attendants. In February 1918, the month following O’Brien and O’Shannon’s exchanges with Litvinov on Connolly, O’Casey endeavoured to interest publisher Fergus O’Connor in some new ideas for songs, such as “Voices from the Dead Connolly” and “The Bonnie Bunch of Roses O”. James

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Moran explains that the latter song “castigates England... and puts Connolly on a pedestal” (37).48 Publicly praising or portraying Connolly in a positive light by O’Casey was about to cease as an old issue from within the ITGWU re-emerged. It would profoundly impact O’Casey, the dramatist, in the next decade. The issue involved P. T. Daly, James Larkin’s close associate within the ITGWU—the very person Larkin, in 1914, first thought to name as the union’s Acting General Secretary while he was in America—until O’Brien, Foran, and Connolly convinced him to name Connolly instead. While O’Casey might not have known of these 1914 machinations, he did become aware of new efforts against Daly. As the ITGWU was being rebuilt, largely by O’Brien and Foran, with allies such as O’Shannon, they, like Connolly, had not always favoured Larkin’s lead. They probably resented the idea of rebuilding and expanding the union only to have it eventually taken over by Larkin, who was still in the United States with no sign of when he would return. To protect their rebuilding efforts, and their ITGWU leadership, O’Brien and Foran commenced changes that could limit Larkin if and when he reappeared. These changes included the undermining of Larkin’s main ITGWU ally, Daly. A rumour became widespread, appearing in Dublin papers in March 1918 that had damning consequences for Daly as Ireland was moving towards the General Election at the end of that year, which would see overwhelming victories for Sinn Fein candidates. The Daly rumour probably originated from the highly respected ITGWU official and ICA officer, William Partridge. While interned in Wales for his role in the 1916 Rising, he became gravely ill with Bright’s Disease. Before his early release due to the illness, Partridge told fellow incarcerated ICA comrades in spring 1917: “If I do not live to reach Ireland I want you to tell the people in Dublin [presumably ITGWU comrades] that I am convinced that P. T. Daly is a government man and should not be let know anything of importance” (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 135). The rumour, perhaps leaked in March 1918 to the Dublin press by O’Brien and Foran, or someone else within the ITGWU, gained momentum. This prompted O’Casey, who remained a Larkin ally, to write in defence of Daly, which the Evening Telegraph published on 7 March 1918. O’Casey argued that he personally knew that Tom Clarke and Sean Mac Diarmada, both executed Rising leaders, had been close friends with Daly: “There is not the least shadow of doubt that Daly held the confidence of these two leaders, and I speak not on an acquaintance of

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a few months, but an intimate friendship of many years” (O’Casey Letters, I , 74). Clarke’s widow Kathleen Clarke, who was also MacDiarmada’s sister, wrote to the paper refuting O’Casey by saying that her husband and brother had fallen out with Daly and insinuated that it had been due to suspicions of Daly’s political allegiances. This prompted O’Casey to write again to the paper. He specifically alluded to a 1915 public meeting that Clarke participated in that Daly chaired: “If P. T. Daly did not have the confidence of the militant leaders of the Volunteers, why was he allowed to preside at this meeting?” (78). At the same time as O’Casey’s defence of Daly in the Evening Telegraph, O’Brien delivered an address at the Trades Union Congress. As reported in Dublin papers (that O’Casey most likely saw), O’Brien attempted to strengthen his position within the Labour movement by drawing further on Connolly: “of James Connolly, one of whose oldest friends in the labour movement I can proudly claim to be.... His are the ideals we follow, his principles we adopt, his memory and inspiration from which we draw our strength and our place in the forefront of the fighting army of Labour and in the battle for freedom and justice in this and all other lands” (quoted in Desmond, 31). As O’Brien and his allies within Labour, regardless of the fact that they were drifting away from Connolly’s socialism and radical trade unionism (and quietly not embracing the Bolshevik war for Russia), drew on the memory of Connolly as they endeavoured to push Daly aside, O’Casey began slanting himself against Connolly—he interpreted correctly that machinations against Daly were machinations against Larkin.49 The last development that O’Brien and Foran wanted was Larkin’s return as the ITGWU’s General Secretary with his former autonomy. As such, they continued to target Daly, which resulted in removing Daly “from all positions of influence in the movement, and as a result, O’Brien made an able and implacable enemy.” From then on, Daly aggressively played on his ties to “Larkin as against O’Brien’s claim to fellowship with Connolly” (Morrissey, O’Brien, 160– 161). O’Brien’s efforts were increased in late March 1918, with Cathal O’Shannon taking over as editor of the ITGWU’s Irish Opinion; he promptly began running editorials that celebrated Connolly while making no allusions to Larkin, as if writing Larkin out of the union and Irish Labour (Murray, 110). Even as the United States entered the Great War, the War’s conclusion was still in doubt. The early months of 1918 saw a massive military campaign from Germany, which, Gahan notes, fuelled Lloyd George’s

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decision to declare conscription for Ireland. The situation was further inflamed by Britain’s wholesale arrests in May 1918 of republicans on suspicion of collaboration with Germany (“Convention”, 82). These developments, by early autumn, led Shaw to again encourage Irish enlistment in the British army by writing a short book/pamphlet titled War Issues for Irishmen.50 The publisher for War Issues was Maunsel, that had published Connolly’s Labour in Ireland with Lynd’s Introduction in 1917.51 Shaw still believed that the allies had to win a victory for democracy over German militarism in order for the War to be more than unprecedented suffering—and the British State censor who cleared Shaw’s book/pamphlet for publication—and cleared it was—was cognizant of Britain’s desperation for more troops. Shaw began War Issues for Irishmen by remarking that the British Government “instead of addressing itself to the practical problem of inducing Irish workers to enlist, seeks rather to justify its own point of view of the government classes” (186). In addressing the recruitment of Irish workers, Shaw drew on Connolly to make his case. That Shaw did so, seemed on the surface to be at odds with Connolly’s anti-recruitment efforts, but it was Connolly’s internationalism that Shaw embraced: But at least they [the Irish] must be dimly conscious that there was an attempt made in Dublin in the Easter of 1916 to establish an independent Irish Republic, and that one of its leaders was a noted Socialist trade unionist named James Connolly who, being captured by the British troops, was denied the right of a prisoner of war, and shot. Now Connolly owed his position and influence as an Irish Nationalist leader to the part he had taken in organizing the great strike of the transport workers in Dublin in 1913 [the Lockout], and the remains of his organization was the nucleus of the little army of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Shaw was not alone in thinking that Connolly was crucial for bringing the Rising into reality.52 And in stating that Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army, formed during the Lockout, was the “nucleus” of the Rising’s rebel army, Shaw likely was cognizant of his role in the ICA’s formation. Shaw continued by reminding the 1918 Irish that locked out labourers in 1913 were assisted by English workers: The strike was sustained for many months after it would have exhausted the resources of the Irish workers [ITGWU] had they not been aided from abroad. Where did the aid come from? From the reckless generosity of the

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English unions. The English worker fed, out of their own scanty wages, the Irish strikers and their families for months.

Next Shaw recalled his stand with Connolly during the 1 November 1913 rally in London, where he, Shaw, had called for locked out Dublin workers to “arm themselves,” to which Connolly two weeks later announced the formation of what became the ICA (Shaw, “Mad Dogs”, 97; Nevin, Connolly, 463): I myself, with Connolly and Mr. George Russell, was among the speakers at a huge meeting got up in aid of the strike by Mr. James Larkin in London . . . Connolly got the money [raised at the London rally] by the plea that the cause of Labour was the cause all the world over, and that as against the idler and the profiteer England and Ireland were “members one of another”. (196)

Interestingly, Shaw’s “the cause of Labour was the cause of all the world over” reverberates with Connolly’s “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour.” Continuing with the Lockout rally, Shaw states, in reference to the money raised: … We took the money and were glad to get it and spend it. We cannot now with any decency forget Connolly and change the subject [from Connolly’s internationalism] to Cromwell and General Maxwell. I have a right to remind the Irish people of this, because I was one of those who asked for the money; and I was cheered to the echo by Englishmen and Englishwomen for doing so. I am an Irishman; and I have not forgotten. (196–197)

Shaw continued by pointing out that General Maxwell and the anti-Irish Home Rulers in the British War Office cannot call on Connolly’s internationalism to encourage Irish enlistment: “They can hardly hold up Connolly as a hero after shooting him, or claim the payment of debts due to him as debts of honour.” Shaw: It is only through Connolly and the international solidarity that Connolly stood for that the Irish worker can be made to feel that his cause and that of the English worker is a common cause. (War Issues, 197)

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By portraying Connolly as an international socialist reveals an understanding of Connolly’s ideology that was arguably enhanced by Lynd’s Introduction to Labour in Ireland, and by Connolly’s book and pamphlet within that volume—as well as by, quite possibly, Connolly’s April 1916 “Irish Flag” article that contains the above quotation on “The cause of labour...”. As we will see in Chapter 7, Shaw had knowledge of Connolly’s Labour in Irish History and, most specifically, The Re-Conquest of Ireland—the two works in Labour in Ireland—during the next decade. Certainly, Shaw’s portrait of Connolly as an internationalist in War Issues is verified by Connolly’s theoretical socialist writings and argued in Lynd’s Introduction. However, it remains questionable as to how many people in 1918 actually saw Shaw’s assessment of Connolly as the War ended before War Issues for Irishmen could be marketed, with most printed copies discarded by Maunsel. In a matter of months, into 1919 (after formation of the First Dail Eireann—an Irish Parliament while still under British rule), O’Casey abandoned his former publisher Fergus O’Connor in favour of Maunsel’s for his new book/pamphlet.53 The decision to try Maunsel was, as Murray suggests, a reflection of O’Casey “taking the business of writing more professionally” (121). Murray indicates that it made sense for O’Casey to try Maunsel’s given that by 1919, its list of books “was replete with names from the Irish literary and cultural renaissance, Yeats excepted”—and Shaw, although Shaw was nearly included with War Issues (but in actuality, Yeats and Shaw were included in the first issue of Maunsel’s short-lived journal of Irish writing, Shanachie in 1906, represented by Shaw’s short story “The Miraculous Revenge” [the first entry in the volume] and Yeats with “Against Witchcraft” and “The Praise of Deirdre”). Murray also relates that from the 1916 Rising to 1919, “Maunsel’s had published 117 new books and pamphlets. It was the highwater mark of political publishing” (121). A question that arises then is, did O’Casey turn to Maunsel because of its literary prowess or because it had been publishing numerous titles related to the Rising since late 1916—including Labour in Ireland. O’Casey’s book was The Story of the Irish Citizen Army. While Murray offers little regarding O’Casey’s negotiations and discussions with Maunsel’s editor George Roberts on the project, outside of relating the work’s proofs and censored sections, one is left to speculate—with little encouragement—on whether O’Casey and Roberts at all discussed Shaw, O’Casey’s admiration for Shaw, and

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War Issues for Irishmen. Most likely the answer is no as Murray carefully demonstrates O’Casey’s shy disposition before his name was made as a dramatist. So, without likely knowledge of Shaw’s 1918 portrait of Connolly, but with full knowledge of Connolly’s long efforts of embracing Fintan Lalor’s socialistic arguments that O’Casey had once championed, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army differed from Shaw’s verification of Connolly’s 1916 internationalism. As argued above, O’Casey began perceptively interpreting the machinations against Daly, from March 1918 on, as efforts to distance the ITGWU from Larkin, being carried out by Connolly’s former comrades in Labour and the union, principally O’Brien, Foran, and O’Shannon. These three continued to project themselves as Connolly’s followers, using their ties to Connolly to strengthen their positions in leading the ITGWU. Consequently, as a continuing Larkin supporter, O’Casey—as Daly and his allies—recognized that to strike at the memory of Connolly was to strike at O’Brien and the anti-Larkinites within the ITGWU. One of the targets in O’Casey’s ICA book when dealing with Connolly’s leadership, was Lynd’s Introduction to Labour in Ireland. O’Casey took direct issue with Lynd’s assessment of the 1916 Connolly: A well-known author has declared that Connolly was the first martyr for Irish Socialism; but Connolly was no more an Irish Socialist martyr than was Robert Emmett, P. H. Pearse, or Theobald Wolfe Tone. (52)54

In April 1914, when he drafted the “FIRST HANDBILL ISSUED BY THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY”, O’Casey saw Wolfe Tone as socialistic, stating that the ICA “stands for Labour and the principals of Wolfe Tone” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 51).55 However, such was not part of O’Casey’s focus in 1919. His dismissal of Lynd’s Connolly perception countered Shaw’s assessment of the internationalist Connolly—which, again, O’Casey probably never saw. Yet a significant aspect of O’Casey’s ICA book, which anticipates his 1921 play The Crimson in the TriColour, and his later The Plough and the Stars , is the fact that while he later professed admiration for Shaw, and credited Shaw, along with Larkin, for leading him to clear thinking regarding Ireland, there is no mention of Shaw’s role with the ICA’s formation in his ICA book. There is no mention of Shaw calling for the arming of workers during the 1 November 1913 Lockout rally. There is no mention of Jack White opening the ICA training at the end of that November by drawing on

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Shaw. There is no mention of Connolly using the title of Shaw’s Arms and the Man for a December 1913 Irish Worker article on the ICA’s development. Arguably, the inclusion of Shaw within a Connolly context for O’Casey would have meant an inconsolable contradiction, with the danger that such a contradiction would lend merit to Connolly’s August 1914—and Easter 1916—vision of Ireland igniting the conflagration of socialist revolution. Such an inclusion would have given credence to O’Brien’s self-portrait as Connolly’s comrade. Of course, it would be interesting to know what Shaw thought of his absence in The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, an original copy of which he had at Ayot St. Lawrence (Lawrence, “The Library”, 158). While Shaw may not have known the full extent of his role in the ICA’s formation, he most definitely remembered calling for the arming of Dublin workers while following Connolly on the speakers’ platform. However, these types of omissions and contradictions were present in O’Casey’s early work, as seen in an intended book in the immediate wake of The Story of the Irish Citizen Army. Buoyed by his ICA book, O’Casey attempted a second, titled “Three Shouts on a Hill,” which included three essays: one on labour, a second on nationalism, and a third on Gaelic (Krause, “Notes,” O’Casey Letters, I , 87). O’Casey sent this manuscript to Shaw, with the request that Shaw write a preface for the book. Shaw, who did not then know O’Casey or anything about him, replied on 3 December 1919: “Of course the publishers will publish it with a preface by me; but how will that advance you as an author?.... You must go through the mill like the rest and get published for your own sake, not mine”. Regarding O’Casey’s three essays, Shaw asked: “Why do you not come out definitely on the side of Labour & the English language?.... You ought to work out your position positively & definitely. This objecting to everyone else is Irish, but useless” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 88).56 Perhaps taking Shaw’s advice, O’Casey began refining his focus, which positioned him for the 1920s—and for Larkin’s return—while Shaw began making sense of war and revolution and the failure of England and France to follow his advice from Common Sense About the War for making a lasting peace. The 1920s were to be a crucial decade for both Shaw and O’Casey, and Irish letters. And while Connolly’s presence had been bolstered by Lynd’s labelling him as Ireland’s first socialist martyr, and echoed by Lenin’s admiration, Connolly’s radicalism would be obscured by some. As 1919 advanced, Ireland’s war for political independence was emerging as militant republicanism came to a head—raising the profiles

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of 1916 veterans Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins, while revitalizing the “slanderer of Lane and Synge” and denouncer of Larkin and organized Labour, Arthur Griffith (Yeats, Autobiographies , 416; Donal O’ Falluin, “1913 Lockout”).57 In the process, the ITGWU’s stepping aside in favour of the republican movement, inadvertently or not, allowed Connolly’s ITGWU Labour agenda to drift from the stage, even as O’Brien tried to promote Connolly’s ideology as the theoretical guide for a socially just Republic that O’Brien could not uphold. Perhaps Larkin could help if released from New York State’s Sing Sing Prison and returned to Ireland, which would occur while O’Casey was emerging as an important dramatist focused on Dublin’s working class—as Shaw turned in a remarkable literary output. The decade would witness masterworks by Ireland’s two socialist dramatists, impacted by the decade Connolly had sought to force the realization of Peter Keegan’s prophesy. As one could acknowledge it and the other attempted to deny it, the dead Connolly’s further presence for Shaw and O’Casey was ultimately inescapable.

Notes 1. Shaw did not allow The Devil’s Disciple to be performed during the Great War. 2. My views on Under Which Flag ? have continually evolved since I first wrote on the play in 1998. The likely and recent discovery of The Agitator’s Wife fuels further evolution and warrants a comprehensive study of Connolly’s theatre knowledge and interests. Connolly was aware that a theatre of ideas carried great potential, from the 1890s New Drama to the Irish National Theatre Society’s performance of Frederick Ryan’s The Laying of the Foundation, which he saw in 1903 (in a benefit for the ISRP), to attending the Abbey Theatre within days of retuning to Ireland in 1910, and to his long knowledge of Shaw. 3. In setting his play during a previous failed rising, Connolly seems to be following Gregory and Yeats’ 1798-set Cathleen Ni Houlihan, especially given the rural cottage settings of both. However, Connolly steers away from allegorical fantasy, perhaps cognizant of its dismissal in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Ireland. 4. Connolly was in Ireland in October 1912 when an amateur company led by Anthony Evelyn Ashley and partner/wife Flora McDonnell, staged a revival of John Bull’s Other Island at Dublin’s commercial Gaiety Theatre. The Irish Times ’ review of the production noted that the Home Rule edition of the play, published earlier in the year, increased the number of

3

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6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

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Dubliners, “doubtless larger than ever”, who were interested in seeing the play (8). A young Connolly enlisted in the British army and was stationed for a time in Ireland—which brought him to Ireland for the first time. Connolly’s use of “bloody empire” was perhaps possible given Pygmalion’s Eliza (1914). Amadam is Gaelic for “idiot”. The character of Ellen O’Donnell in Under Which Flag ?’s premier was performed by Kathleen Barrett, sister of Sean Connolly, who was also an ICA member. Sheehy-Skeffington’s review of Connolly’s play is inconsistent with the popular belief in Sheehy-Skeffington’s unswerving pacifism. While he was not a combatant in the Easter Rising, he was a close associate of Connolly and his review of Connolly’s play in the Workers’ Republic suggests a committed ally to Connolly’s revolution. Charlie McGuire, in Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland, asserts that James “Connolly’s belief that the Irish bourgeoise was hamstrung by British imperialism, rendering it incapable of fulfilling its historic role, anticipated the theory of neo-colonialism. It was a theoretical innovation that marked Connolly out as an original and sophisticated thinker” (7). O’Casey published the correspondence he received from the Volunteers, namely MacNeill’s response and that from L. G. Gogan, the Volunteers Assistant Secretary, in the Irish Worker in June 1914. A shipment of rifles, a few machine guns, and ammunition were sent to Ireland by Germany in a ship disguised as a Norwegian freighter. The shipment was to arrive in Dingle Bay a few days before Easter. Due to various mishaps, the ship, named the Aud, was intercepted by the British navy, then scuttled by its German navy crew with its cargo while being led into Cork Harbor. Also at this time, Roger Casement, formerly of the British Colonial Service who had assisted in securing the arms from Germany, was returned to Ireland by a German U-Boat, in the same vicinity where the Aud was endeavoring to rendezvous with Irish rebels. Casement was arrested shortly after landing. Despite O’Brien’s work in the Rising’s preparations, he was not a combatant. Being lame in one leg, Connolly had attached him to the effort of establishing a civilian government should the Rising succeed. The British artillery shells used in the Rising were most likely produced at a factory that had switched over to war-time production, such as Singer’s Kilbowie and New Jersey factories. Singer’s Russian factory produced armaments for Russia. While the final meetings prior to the Rising between Connolly and his fellow Rising leaders were held in Liberty Hall, and many of the

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15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

combatants—almost all participating ICA members and a number of Volunteer contingents—congregated at Liberty Hall on Easter Monday, and departed prior to 12:00 noon, Liberty Hall was left vacant. Only a caretaker remained, who abandoned the building when artillery shelling began. During the Great War, Sheehy-Skeffington’s anti-recruiting leaders in the suffragette paper Irish Citizen, which he edited, cost the paper many readers. Charlotte Shaw, Shaw’s partner/wife, responded by providing funding to the paper. In its 13 November 1915 edition, the paper quoted excerpts from Shaw’s article on Edith Cavell, a British nurse working in Belgium who was executed by the German military for assisting wounded allied soldiers: “We... can enfranchise her sex in recognition of her proof of its valour.... If this proposal is received in silence, I shall know that Edith Cavell’s sacrifice has been rejected by her country” (quoted ni Holroyd, “Body Politic,” 24–25). The Bricklayers’ Union was allied with the ITGWU during the 1913 Lockout, with a sympathy strike. Sir Francis Vane, like Shaw, adamantly opposed “the crude wartime [press] propaganda that had demonized the Germans” during the War, and had called for leniency for Germany when the War ended (Quinn). Due to his efforts concerning Sheehy-Skeffington’s execution, Vane, a career army officer, was forced to resign. Shaw wrote in a 22 August 1916 letter to Lady Gregory: “I refuse flatly to put foot in Ireland without a safe conduct from the present Terrorist Government. If I do not fear the fate of Skeffington, at least I can pretend to” (Shaw, Gregory, 122). In the Fabian Society’s 1917 Labour Year Book, that covered 1916, Shaw noted: “There was a calamitous outbreak in Ireland followed by a reign of terror of Martial Law and the outlook became bleaker” (quoted in Granville, 53). Murray confirms that O’Casey’s friend James Shiels was a member of the ICA. However, Joseph E. A. Connell, in Who’s Who in the Dublin Rising 1916, identifies Shiels as a Volunteer Captain attached to the 2nd Battalion based in the Jacob’s Biscuit factory garrison. However, there were ICA members in Jacob’s, which may explain the differing views to Shiels’ affiliation (Who’s, 164–165). Shaw adopts “Sinn Fein” to refer to the Rising’s rebels, which he took from the British popular press. Sinn Fein at the time was a minor party started in 1905, and most certainly was not connected to the rebel leaders who signed the Easter Proclamation. After the Rising, Sinn Fein became a major party as those who fought and survived, along with many new supporters, adopted the party for the 1918 General Election.

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21. Padraic Pearse, Thomas Clarke, and Thomas MacDonagh were the first executed on 3 May. On 4 May, Joseph Plunkett, William Pearse, Edward Daly, and Michael O’Hanrahan were executed, followed by John MacBride on 5 May. Six more Dublin leaders, major and minor, would be executed before 12 May, plus one in Cork. Roger Casement would be executed in August in London. 22. Another aim of Shaw’s “Easter Week Executions” letter was to criticize the Asquith coalition Government for making scapegoats of their top administrators in Ireland, Chief Secretary Austine Birrell and Under-Secretary Matthew Nathan. Both were forced to resign after the Rising. Shaw cited the Government’s failure to disarm Ulster Unionists resisting Home Rule as a contributing factor; once one group was armed, any group could arm. 23. Shaw’s press letters on the Rising were generating attention. The nationalist Maud Gonne wrote to Yeats from Paris in May 1916, within days of Shaw’s letters, which may have been sent to her by Yeats: “I sent translations of Shaw’s letter to several French papers. The editors took them with avidity but the [wartime] censor forbade it. The censor in its wisdom, has decreed that France is not to hear the truth about its ally’s doings in Ireland” (Gonne-Yeats, 376). In the same month, Yeats took Gonne’s daughter Iseult to meet Shaw for lunch (Gonne-Yeats, 378). 24. Robert Lynd enjoyed a long career as an essayist and journalist. He became the literary editor of the Daily News in 1908. Andrew Boyd noted that “For more than 40 years he [Lynd] contributed [...] on almost every conceivable topic for the Daily News, the News Chronicle, the New Statesman, and John O’London’s Weekly” (Boyd). In addition, Lynd wrote a number of books. 25. A section of Dublin Castle was used as a military hospital during the War, and Connolly was treated there after the Rising in a heavily guarded room. 26. There is an undated signed statement by Richard Tobin, “In Medical Charge of patient”, in the records of Connolly’s Field General Court Martial. The statement testifies to Connolly’s mental condition while in Dublin Castle: “He has been perfectly rational and in complete possession of his faculties”. But at the end of the typed statement, and above Tobin’s signature, a handwritten phrase was added: “and that he is fit to undergo his trial” (https://courtmartial.national archives.ie/searchphp?name=Connolly&key=&submit=search). 27. Richard Tobin paid for Roderic Connolly’s education at Blackrock College. Interestingly, Lillie Connolly resisted pressure to send Roderic to Pearse’s St. Enda’s School following the Rising. Roderic and Tobin remained friends for years, with Roderic regularly visiting the retired Tobin. Tobin recalled James Connolly, from the time he cared for him after the Rising as “Wonderful man. Wonderful man. Never met his like” (quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 664).

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28. Connolly had wanted Francis Sheehy-Skeffington to maintain his writing and works, with royalties to Lillie Connolly and their children. However, when he relayed this to daughter Nora during a granted visit on 9 May, she told him of Sheehy-Skeffington’s murder (Nevin, 664). 29. Desmond Ryan, a 1916 veteran, wrote in London’s Daily Herald, October 1916, “for anyone familiar with Connolly’s writings in Workers’ Republic or with Labour in Irish History, [the Rising] could not have been anything unexpected” (Granville, 60). 30. Maunsel also published in 1917 a collection of Lynd’s political essays, If the Germans Conquered England and Other Essays, which included Lynd’s essay that provided the book’s title. In the book’s Prefatory Note, Lynd wrote: “Some people will remember that at the outbreak of the insurrection in Dublin in Easter Week, 1916, the insurgents issued a little paper called Irish War News . The first page opened with an article entitled: ‘If the Germans Conquered England’, which was based upon, and was more or less a quotation and endorsement of, the first essay in the present book. Thus the essay, if it has no other interest, is, at least, of interest in the use to which it was put on an historic occasion” (ix). Lynd had previously published his books with English publishers. 31. Lynd’s suggestion that if Connolly’s socialism was embraced by European societies, “the present war would never have taken place” echoes a similar statement in Shaw’s Common Sense About the War—published the year before The Re-Conquest of Ireland was first published. After stating that the War benefited capitalists on all sides, Shaw writes: “As long as we have the state of things, we shall have wars and mendacious diplomacy. And this is one of many overwhelming reasons for building the State on equality, because without it equality of status and general culture is impossible. Democracy without equality is a delusion more dangerous than frank oligarchy and autocracy. And without Democracy there is no hope of peace” (77–78). 32. Lynd further argued that it was Connolly who “provided the immediate impulse of the insurrection. His soul was on fire not merely with an ideal... but with the visible wrongs of the thousands of men and women thrust back by the triumph of Dublin employers to the edge of starvation and despair. I do not mean to say that the other [rebel] leaders were untouched by these wrongs—Pearse especially is said to have absorbed the social ideals of Connolly in recent years—but none of them descended into the hell of Irish poverty with the same burning heart” (xvii-xviii). 33. Lynd, similar to O’Casey, recalled that he first “heard” of Connolly while attending small socialist meetings, in Lynd’s case in Belfast, during the days of the Irish Socialist Republican Party—therefore prior to Connolly’s departure to the United States in 1903.

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34. Thomas Kettle was a poet, journalist, University College Dublin Professor of Economics, and an intellectual with nationalist leanings. He had been an Irish Parliamentary Party MP from 1906–1910. A friend of both Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and James Joyce, Kettle—like many Irish Home Rulers—enlisted in the British army during the Great War, where he was killed in the Battle of the Somme. 35. Lynd similarly provided the Preface to James Connolly: Portrait of a Rebel Father by Connolly’s daughter Nora Connolly O’Brien in 1935. Lynd, like Shaw, had endeavored to assist in the defense of Roger Casement. 36. Donal O‘ Drisceoil reveals that books from Dublin publishers had to pass through the British State censor. In July 1916, Maunsel “submitted proofs of its Anthology of the Irish Rebellion, featuring literary writings by rebel leaders” of the Rising, with the censor ruling against publication but suggested it be ‘re-submitted at a later date.” It was published in 1917, with some poems deleted, as Poets of the Insurrection: Pearse, Plunkett, Thomas MacDonagh, and McEntee (O’ Drisceoil). 37. Emma Goldman was exiled from the United States in 1918, moving to Russia. However, Goldman was horrified by Bolshevik violence during Russia’s long civil war, where ideals gave way to brutality. 38. Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst shared Shaw’s view that Russia should remain in the War, and visited Petrograd in June 1917 in an effort to not only organize Russian women into voting blocks, but also to support the Provisional Government’s commitments to remain in the War (Rappaport, Caught 187). 39. The pamphlet version of “How to Settle the Irish Question” was published in London by Shaw’s usual publisher Constable, and by Talbot Press in Dublin—both in December 1917. While this might be overlooked, it represents a subtle change as Constable’s books were readily sold in Dublin. Using a London publisher for a pamphlet on Ireland’s future to be sold in Dublin, might have been criticized. 40. See Peter Gahan’s “Bernard Shaw and the 1917 Irish Convention” in History Ireland: Ireland After the Rising, 1916–1918 Changed Utterly, 2017. 81–85. 41. Thomas Ashe’s seditions speech praised the 1916 Rising, and claimed that Irish Parliamentary Party MP from Liverpool, T. P. O’Connor (the only IPP member from an English district) was then in the United States not to recover his health, as claimed, but to gain American support for the Irish Convention (Joy Joyce, “From the Archives, September 4 1917”, Irish Times , September 4, 2010, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/ september-4th-1917-1.646844).

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42. In December 1917, Lenin established the Cheka, that specifically fought against what was perceived as counterrevolutionary efforts. One of the Ckeka’s descendent forces was the Soviet Era KGB. 43. Shaw’s Great Catherine was another short play designed for music halls, which featured actor Gertrude Kingston. 44. Annajanska recalls the name of Nicholas II’s youngest daughter Anastasia. Of course, the play preceded the romantic notions about Anastasia surviving the group execution of her parents, siblings, and herself in July 1918. 45. In the 11 March 1890 St James’s Gazette, Shaw’s letter “Russian Prisoners and English Politicians” chastised English politicians who remained silent on published reports that a Russian woman prisoner, after slapping a prison governor, was flogged to death (17–18). 46. In a 1920 letter to Sasha Kropotkin-Lebedeff, Shaw remarked that the violence in the Russian Civil War “is costing a good deal, and has tried the faith of our revolutionists rather severely” (Shaw Collected Letters, III , 700). 47. Grigory Rasputin, a peasant born priest, generated significant scandals in St. Petersburg/Petrograd through his relationship with Empress Alexandra and Nicholas II. The Russian public was unaware that the royal heir, Tsarich Alexis, was hemophilic and Rasputin reportedly had success in calming the boy during bleeding episodes. The scandal intensified, fueled by Rasputin’s increasing influence at court, once Nicholas took command of the army. 48. Publisher Fergus O’Connor published Constance Markievicz’s “A Call to the Women of Ireland” in 1918. 49. Murray suggests that the Labour movement in Ireland in 1918 grew reluctant to publicly sympathize with Bolsheviks, fearing how the Catholic hierarchy might respond (105). 50. Shortly after writing War Issues for Irishmen, Shaw delivered a lecture in Dublin, “Literature in Ireland” on 26 October. The lecture repeated some of Shaw’s ideas on the Irish as expressed in O’Flaherty, V. C . and War Issues. This is particularly seen in Shaw’s argument that in order for the Irish to advance, they must spend time outside Ireland, to which he illustrated through the work of George Moore to John Millington Synge to James Joyce. 51. Dan H. Laurence and David H. Greene suggest that Stephen Gywnn, one of Maunsel’s authors then working on British army enlistment, “through the Irish Recruiting Council”, had arranged for War Issues for Irishmen to be published by Maunsel (Notes, 184). Shaw wrote to Maunsel’s editor George Roberts regarding War Issues on 3 November 1918, authorizing 2,000 copies, and additional printing as necessary, all without royalties (Shaw Collected Letters, III , 569–570).

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52. Shaw’s and Connolly’s friend, George Russell stated in his post-1916 poem “To the Memory of Some I knew Who Are Dead” that Connolly “cast the last torch on the pile” that ignited the Rising, as in a conflagration (as quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 704). 53. Refusing to take their seats in Westminster, the first Dial Eireann was formed by victorious Sinn Fein candidates in the December 1918 General Election. 54. The constant Dublin theatre goer, from the 1890s into the 1930s, Joseph Holloway, recorded in his journal on 28 March 1924 that “The book he [O’Casey] wrote on the Citizen Army wasn’t thought much of by those connected with it [the ICA]” (quoted in Hogan and Burnham, O’Casey, 239). 55. Theobald Wolfe Tone was a leader of the United Irishmen, who in 1796 and 1798 secured some assistance from France for Irish revolution. In the latter year, a small quantity of French troops landed in north County Mayo, which serves as the backdrop to Yeats and Gregory’ 1902 play Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Wolfe Tone was arrested for treason and took his own life while awaiting execution. In Labour in Irish History, Connolly argues that Robert Emmet was pro-labour. 56. Murray notes that O’Casey kept Shaw’s letter regarding “Three Shouts on a Hill” “for years” (124). 57. Yeats referred to nationalist newspaper editor Arthur Griffith as the “slanderer of Lane and Synge” in Dramatis Personae, 1922. The Lane remark was due to Griffith’s public position in 1912–1913 against the proposed gallery to house Hugh Lane’s gift of his Continental Impressionist paintings to Dublin. From the premier of Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen in 1903 through The Playboy of the Western World’s 1907 premier run, Griffith used his newspapers, first The United Irishman, then Sinn Fein, to denounce Synge’s work as amoral. During labour disputes in Dublin once the ITGWU was formed, Griffith opposed workers’ positions. During the 1911 Bridge Street Bakers strike, Griffith wrote in Sinn Fein demanding that the Government use its army against workers in order to secure food delivery to Dublin (Glandon, 100).

References Barton, Brian. The Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010. Beatty, Aidan. “The Irish Jew Who Had Taken a Pledge Never to Work: Emma Goldman, the Irish and the Easter Rising”. www.aidenbeatty.com (accessed 20 January 2019).

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Boyd, Andrew. “Robert Lynd: Essayist and Irishman.” History Ireland, Summer 2003. http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/ robert-lynd-essayist-andirishman/ (accessed 7 July 2017). Caulfield, Max. The Easter Rebellion. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1995. Christian, Mary. Marriage and Late Victorian Dramatists. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Connell, Joseph E. A., Jr. Who’s Who in the Dublin Rising 1916. Dublin: Wordwell, 2015. Connolly, James. The Agitator’s Wife. https://www.cowgate.com/2019/03/ 12/james-connollys-the-agitators-wife (accessed 16 July 2020). ———. “The Irish Flag.” Workers’ Republic, 8 April 1916. ———. “Land They Loved”, Worders’ Republic, November 1915, 3. ———. “The Slums and the Trenches”. Workers’ Republic, 26 February 1916, 1. ———. Under Which Flag?. In Four Irish Rebel Plays. Ed. James Moran. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007. 105–132. Curry, James. Artist of the Revolution: The Cartoons of Ernest Kavanagh (1884– 1916). Cork: Mercier Press, 2012. de Wiel, Jerome ann. “Ireland and the Bolshevik Revolution”. History Ireland, November / December 2017, www.historyireland.com/volume-25/ issue-6-novemberdecember-2017/ireland-bolshevik-revolution/ (accessed 4 December 2017). Desmond, Barry. No Workers’ Republic: Reflections on Labour and Ireland, 1913– 1967 . Dublin: Watchword, 2009. Driver, Sean. “Letter from Joseph Michael Stanley to George Bernard Shaw, 28 March 1916 (Military Archives of Ireland)” www.letters1916.maynoothuniv ersity.ie/item/1251 (accessed 12 August 2018). Foy, Michael and Brian Barton. The Easter Rising. Gloucestershire, England: Sutton, 1999. Gahan, Peter. “John Bull’s Other War: Bernard Shaw and the Anglo-Irish War, 1918.” SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Volume 28, Shaw and War. Ed. Lagretta Tallent Lanker. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. 209–238. ———. “Bernard Shaw and the Irish Convention.” History Ireland: Ireland After the Rising 1916–1918 Changed Utterly, a History Ireland annual, 2017. 81– 85. ———. “Gaiety Theatre: ‘John Bull’s Other Island’”, Irish Times, 29 October 1912, 8. Glandon, Virginia. Arthur Griffith and the Advanced Nationalist Press Ireland, 1900–1922. New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Gonne, Maude and W. B. Yeats. The Gonne-Yeats Letters: 1893–1938. Ed. Anna MacBride White and Norman Jeffares. London: Hutchinson, 1992.

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Grant, Adrian. Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909–36. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012. Granville, David. “The British Labour and Socialist Movement and the 1916 Rising”. The Impact of the 1916 Rising. Ed. Ruan O’Donnell. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008. 49–70. Grogan, Peter Rare Books. Catalogue Four. Autumn 2017. Hogan, Robert and Richard Burnham. The Years of O’Casey, 1921–1926: A Documentary History. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1992. Holroyd, Michael. “George Bernard Shaw: Women and the Body Politic”. Critical Inquiry, Autumn 1979. 17–32. James Connolly Field General Court Martial Records. https://courtmartial.nat ionalarchives.ie/search-php?name=Connolly&key=&submit=search. Joyce, Joy. “From the Archives, September 4 1917”, Irish Times, September 4, 2010. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/september-4th-1917-1.646844. Laurence, Dan. “The Library at Shaw’s Corner”. “Some Principal Shaw Research Sources. Bibliographical Shaw, SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 20. Eds. Dan Laurence and Fred Crawford. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. 157–160. Laurence, Dan and David Greene. “Notes”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. ed. Eds. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 184. Leddin, Jeffrey. The Labour Hercules: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism 1913–23. Newbridge, Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2019. Lenin, Vladimir. The Discussion of Self-Determination Summed Up. https:// www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/x01.htm (accessed 27 December 2017). ———. The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to SelfDetermination. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jan/ x01.htm (accessed 27 December 2017). Lynd, Robert. If the Germans Conquered England and Other Essays. Dublin Maunsel: 1917. ———. “Introduction: James Connolly.” Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. vii–xxvi. McGuire, Charlie. Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, 2008. McMeekin, Sean. The Russian Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 2017. McNamara, Audrey. “From Ellie to Eve: The Quintessence of Marriage in Shaw’s Heartbreak House, Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, and Back to Methuselah”. Bernard Shaw’s Marriages and Misalliances. Ed. Robert Gaines. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 143–158. Moran, James. The Theatre of Sean O’Casey. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2013.

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Morrissey, Thomas, S. J. William O’Brien, 1881–1968: Socialist, Republican, Dail Deputy, Editor, and Trade Union Leader. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. Murray, Christopher. Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. 2004. Nevin, Donal. James Connolly: ‘A Full Life’. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005. O’Brien, Nora Connolly. James Connolly: Portrait of a Rebel Father. Dublin: Talbot Press, 1935. O’Casey, Sean. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1910–1941, Vol. 1. Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. ———. (P. O Cathasaigh). The Story of the Irish Citizen Army. London: Maunsell, 1919. O’Connor, Emmet. Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia, and the Communist Internationals, 1919–43. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004. O‘ Drisceoil, Donal. “Keeping Disloyalty within Bounds? British Media Control in Ireland, 1914–1919” Irish Historical Studies, xxxviii.149, 52–69. 2012. O’Falluin, Donal. “1913 Lockout in Dublin and Larkinism”. http://www.wsm. ie/c/1913-lockout-dublin-larkinism-myths (accessed 23 December 2020). Quinn, James. “Sir Francis Vane’s Quest for Justice After Easter Week”. History Ireland, March / April 2016. www.historyireland.com/volume-24/sir-francisvanes-quest-for-justice-after-easter-week/ (accessed 16 August 2018). Rappaport, Helen. Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917—A World on Edge. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016. Redmond-Howard, L. G. Six Days of the Irish Republic. Cork: Aubane Historical Society, 2006. Shaw, George Bernard. Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress. Selected Short Plays, 253–278. New York: Penguin, 1988. 301–316. ———. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1911–1925, Vol. 3. Ed. Dan Laurence. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ———. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1926–1950, Vol. 4. Ed. Dan H. Laurence. New York: Viking, 1988. ———. Common Sense About the War. What Shaw Reilly Wrote About the War. Eds. J. L. Wisenthal and Daniel O’Leary. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. 16–84. ———. “The Easter Week Executions.” The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. ed. Eds. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 124–26. ———. “How to Settle the Irish Question”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. ed. Eds. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 153–173. ———. “Mad Dogs in Uniform.” The Matter with Ireland, 2nd ed. Eds. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 95–97.

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———. “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising.” The Matter with Ireland, 2nd ed. Eds. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 120–123. ———. “Russian Prisoners and English Politicians”. St. James’s Gazette, 11 March 1890. 17–18. ———. Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Eds. Dan H. Laurence and Nicholas Grene. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. ———. “War Issues for Irishmen”. The Matter With Ireland, 2nd. ed. Eds. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 184–201. Sheehy-Skeffington, Francis. “Under Which Flag?” Workers Republic, 8 April 1916, 2. “Singer Factories—Podolsk, Russia”. www.singersewinginfo.co.uk/podolsk/ (accessed 12 January 2019). Soboleva, Olga and Angus Wrenn. The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. Townshend, Charles. Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion. London: Allan Lane, 2005. Whelan, Ella. “James Connolly: We Only Want the Earth”. www.spiked-online. com/newsite/article/james-connolly-we-only-want-the-earth/18179#.W2X GlPZFzVg (accessed 4 January 2019). Yeates, Padraig. Lockout Dublin 1913. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2000. Yeats, William Butler. Autobiographies. London: Macmillan, 1991.

CHAPTER 4

Shaw’s Elderly Gentleman, O’Casey’s Trilogy Begins: Larkin/O’Brien

No more than faint echoes of Lynd’s powerful 1917 Connolly assessment lingered into the 1920s, a decade when the dramatist O’Casey emerged with a sharpened focus on the Dublin poor; Shaw’s contributions culminated in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. As Connolly’s labour tactics and his socialist impact on the Rising were marginalized in the new Irish State by developing political and trade union spheres, his presence nevertheless persisted for Ireland’s two important socialist authors through the 1920s. Where the previous decade ended with Lynd, Shaw, Lenin, O’Brien, and his ITGWU allies harbouring favourable views of Connolly, O’Casey was not isolated in his disagreement with Lynd’s assessment. The Scottish Forward, that had published Connolly’s “A Continental Revolution” in August 1914—in which Connolly lamented the collapse of internationalist socialism at the start of the War—stated that it did not support Connolly’s 1916 efforts (Sherry, 51). That said, the Scottish socialist John Maclean did not dismiss Connolly. Dave Sherry, in “Ireland and Scotland in the First World War: from the Dublin Rising to Red Clydside”, notes that “Like Lenin, Maclean saw the Easter Rising as the first blow against the [Great] war and British imperialism” (51). In fact, when the War commenced, “Maclean took the same position as Lenin and James Connolly” (Sherry, 50). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_4

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Vehemently opposing the War, Maclean “consistently argued for [workers’] strike action to stop” it (Sherry, 50). Sherry argues that Maclean, a “Clydeside socialist” and friend of James Larkin, saw labour unrest in Ireland and Scotland prior to and through the War as interconnected. In citing J. Smith’s “Taking the Leadership of the Movement”, Sherry reveals that in 1913, the Glasgow Labour movement “led the way in supporting the Dublin Lockout” workers (Sherry, 50). This in turn, Sherry asserts, led Maclean to embrace Connolly’s positions, including opposing British military recruitment. Maclean staged antiWar meetings at the gates of Clydebank factories producing armaments, which included Singer’s Kilbowie factory. These led to a February 1915 strike at Weirs Pump factory, “a key munitions plant” (Sherry, 51), and Maclean’s imprisonment for sedition in 1916. In Connolly’s last Workers’ Republic issue, and the last before the Rising, Connolly expressed solidarity with the Weir strikers (Nevin, Connolly, 623). Sherry asserts that the working-class struggle in Scotland and Ireland from 1907 into the 1920s “produced James Connolly and John MacLean, arguably the two finest revolutionaries of the British and Irish labour movements” (54). Satnam Virdee’s Racism, Class and the Radicalized Outsider also argues that Clydeside’s 1910–1920s labour movement owed much to “The call for solidarity [which] was in one sense an organic growth of James Connolly’s earlier forceful advocacy of industrial unionism and proletarian internationalism” (71). This was Connolly’s position during his October 1910 talks along the River Clyde, when Shaw also lectured in both Glasgow and Edinburgh, against destitution and for equal incomes, six months before the 1911 strike at Singer’s Kilbowie factory (Chapter 2). Encouraged by Bolshevik conflagration in Russia, numerous strikes erupted throughout Europe and the United States in 1919, which capitalist governments and their media soon labelled the Red Scare. On 31 January, “40,000 workers and unemployed marched on Glasgow’s George’s Square[,] Bloody Friday, as it became known” (Sherry, 52). Marchers were baton-charged by police, but then repulsed the police. The Government’s response: “trainloads of troops & tanks … flooded into Glasgow from England” (Sherry, 52). Three months later, May Day 1919, “150,000 [workers] marched through Glasgow with the Irish anthem, ‘The [A] Soldier’s Song’,” which rebels sang during the 1916 Rising. The Glasgow May Day march carried “The Red Flag” and its

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speakers included Connolly’s ICA comrade, Constance Markievicz, by 1919 a member of Ireland’s new Parliament (Sherry, 52).

1919 As Scotland began 1919 with workers’ marches and labour strikes, Ireland began on a different, though no less significant tack. It established its own parliament, known as Dail Eireann; in spite of continuing British rule. This had been precipitated by the 1918 General Election, which took place weeks after the Great War ended. While the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), that had advocated British enlistment during the Great War, was decimated, the Sinn Fein party, transformed into a viable political party after 1916, captured 73 out of 105 Irish seats. The elected Sinn Fein candidates formed the First Dail, whose Declaration was inspired by the 1916 Easter Proclamation. Significantly, the First Dail also adopted Labour’s Democratic Programme: It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training …. (Quoted in Higgins, “Address on the 100th”)1

One hundred years later, President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins remarked that the language of the Democratic Programme of the First Dail reflected the ideals of James Connolly, just as Connolly’s views on land ownership and economic equality had been included in the Easter Proclamation. Higgins stated that the Programme’s language was “emancipatory …, and programmatic and systemic in its vision. It is possible to trace a connection in the text from the Constitution of the Citizen Army through James Connolly to the Proclamation and on to the Democratic Programme as it would come to be known” (“Address on the 100th”). Higgins, who has masterfully negotiated the multiple centennials of Ireland’s modern historical formation during his two terms as President, astutely acknowledged the influence of the O’Casey-drafted ICA Constitution, which drew from James Fintan Lalor. In using language that

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displaced fear, Higgins suggests that it “offered hope. In place of selfinterest, it demanded duty. In place of injustice, it mandated equality” (“Address on the 100th”). The adoption of Labour’s Democratic Programme was due to both the inroads O’Brien made with Sinn Fein leaders, like Michael Collins, as well as the Irish Labour Party’s (ILP) decision to stand no candidates in the 1918 General Election.2 That, however, left the First Dail devoid of significant Labour representation, and its mostly bourgeois members were committed more to ending British rule than fulfilling the Democratic Programme’s promise. This, of course, reflected O’Casey’s criticism of Labour in 1917, of taking itself out of the political fight, and which Connolly himself had warned against in 1916: “hold on to your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached” (qtd. in Whelan). The consequence of not standing Labour candidates in 1918 was to dominate Ireland’s 1920s. On the day the First Dail met, the War of Independence commenced far from the Dail, or anyone in Dublin; a convoy transporting gelignite to a quarry in County Tipperary was attacked in Soloheadbeg by eight Volunteers, soon to become the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Two Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officers were killed.3 The First Dail now began moving towards the administration of a war for Independence, which digressed into a war fought using guerrilla tactics, not by small armies openly seizing buildings under hoisted flags proclaiming an Irish Republic as in 1916. Such tactics were matched by British forces, feeding a grotesque pageant of reprisals that crossed into sectarian violence. In April 1919, a localized opportunity arose for labour’s Dublin leadership to reverse the direction Ireland was heading, or at least radicalize that direction in concert with workers’ revolts underway throughout Europe and America. Members of the IRA based in Limerick city attempted to free a comrade from British custody, Bobby Byrnes, who was also a trade unionist. The attempt resulted in Byrne’s death and the death of an RIC officer. Following Byrnes’ funeral, the British military enforced martial law throughout the city. On 13 April, the Limerick Trades Council called for a city-wide strike and sought assistance from the national Trades Council executive in Dublin, which included William O’Brien and Thomas Foran. Tom Johnson, also of the national executive, travelled to Limerick but O’Brien and Foran did not, and neither did they do so in their executive capacity within the ITGWU (Morrissey, O’Brien, 167–169). As Thomas Morrissey points out during the Limerick strike,

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workers “supervised the operation of shops, controlled the food ques, and directed traffic. It was this clear evidence of responsible worker control that led some visiting journalists to label the situation as ‘the Limerick Soviet’” (168). Arguably, O’Brien and Foran, and other Dublin trade unionists missed an opportunity. Had they expanded the strike throughout Ireland, Irish labour would have severely undermined British rule—as was the case briefly in Limerick—a prerequisite for an Irish republic, as Connolly had claimed (“The Irish Flag,” 1). Labour might then have played a more prominent part as moved into the 1920s. That said, O’Brien and Foran were in a difficult position, literally squeezed between the British military and the IRA. In defending their lack of action for Limerick, O’Brien stated that the Trades Council executive “gave Limerick all the assistance in their power …. Anything that was not done was due to lack of machinery rather than lack of desire or earnestness on the part of the executive” (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 179). Two months after the Limerick Soviet started, William Martin Murphy, leader of the Dublin Employers’ Federation that had locked-out Dublin workers in 1913, died on 25 June 1919—Murphy’s Imperial Hotel had been destroyed during the Rising with only its façade surviving along with the ICA’s “Plough and the Stars” flag, and his Irish Independent newspaper had called for Connolly’s execution. Before he died, Murphy conveyed his belief that “the seeds of [1916] rebellion had been sown in 1913”, not due to underpaid workers in poverty, but because of socialist agitators like Connolly (Yeates, Lockout, 574). In November 1919, the Socialist Party of Ireland (SPI) (separate from the ILP and led by O’Brien), formed the James Connolly Labour College, with Connolly’s oldest daughter Nora as its president (McGuire, 28). Shaw and wife Charlotte donated “a trunkful” of socialist books that formed the basis for the College’s library (Spainneach). Presumably, Shaw titles were included. The British military raided the College in 1920, from which it never recovered (O’Connor, “The Irish Labour History Society: An Outline History”).

1920s Shaw began contemplating the post-war world by writing Heartbreak House during the war but published during the same year the First Dail was formed. A play with Irish undertones, as David Clare and Audrey McNamara have argued, its final Act culminates with a German Zeppelin

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bombing raid. The play’s characters, as representatives of “leisured” Europe, reflect the societal apathy that preceded the War—when the informed should have been alarmed by the armament races and incompetent foreign policies—and their inability to fully comprehend portrays their apathy during the War’s horrors (Shaw, “Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall”, 12). As a distant explosion is heard from a German bomb, Captain Shotover consciously or inadvertently confuses reality with his seafaring past: “Something’s happening … Breakers ahead!”; he blows his whistle. The lights switched off, producing outrage. The servant Guinness explains that the police had phoned ordering lights out so as not to assist the zeppelins. When Randall requests that Lady Utterword takes to the cellars for shelter as the police ordered, she replies: “The governor’s wife in the cellars with her servants! Really, Randall!” As the raid advances, the characters view the bombing, fascinated as if holiday fireworks. On realizing that Mangan and the burglar—“the two practical men of business” as Lady Utterword calls them—have been killed in the nearby explosion, her sister Hesione Hushabye states: “But what a glorious experience! I hope they’ll come again tomorrow night”, to which Ellie replies, “Oh I hope so” (177–181). While the play indicts the society that allowed the War to happen and then be fought by aristocratic generals steeped in nineteenth-century tactics, it leaves the question dangling: where, out of such madness, does the world go? During the 1919 summer, O’Casey wrote a play titled The Harvest Festival . Envisioned after Labour stood aside for Sinn Fein in the December 1918 election, Harvest Festival portrays a workers’ revolution in Dublin, as in 1913. Despite not being performed, Christopher Murray sees in the play hints of O’Casey’s soon-to-be realized mastery of stage craft (125). He notes that in the plot “the working-class hero dies, his body is refused reception at the church, and his comrades take him off to an alternative ‘church’, the trade union hall, singing a new hymn ‘We’ll keep the Red Flag Flying here’: a new ritual, born of the October 1917 revolution, replaces the old. … O’Casey … skillfully conflating 1913 with 1917” (126). No doubt, Connollyites would have seen such a scenario, if performed, as being consistent with both Connolly’s agitations and their perception that his Revolution was tied to Bolshevik Revolution; O’Casey, on the other hand, arguably composed this early play to shift focus away from republicans to workers, consistent with the idealism of Larkin’s leadership during the Lockout (while ignoring Larkin’s own republican-slanted socialism prior his American departure). Of course,

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O’Casey’s portrait of the trade union hall with religious overtures was a long way from the similar hall depicted in Act II of A. P. Wilson’s The Slough, which, in effect, had ridiculed Larkin’s leadership and undermined the ITGWU as staged for the primarily bourgeois audience of the Abbey Theatre in November 1914 (Chapter 2). Wilson was in Scotland by 1919, and with republicans consumed with the War for Independence, O’Casey was determined to remember workers. O’Casey, who saw “Shaw as his model”, attended the Abbey during the week of 4 November when he saw Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion (Murray, 131; Krause, “Notes”, O’Casey Letters, I , 876).4 Murray suggests that in Androcles, O’Casey witnessed Shaw’s suggestion that “the powers that be always keep in reserve two sure weapons for use against revolutionaries, persecution and the incubation of violence”, as Shaw noted in the play’s postscript, and “by leading the herd to war, which immediately and infallibly makes them forget everything, even their most cherished and hard won public liberties” (Murray, 131; quoted in Murray, 131). Hence, with many socialists—not all—enlisting in the 1914 armies, the Great War’s succeeded in eradicating decades of work building up international socialism. Yet as 1919 gave way to 1920, Shaw was contemplating what nationalism might mean in the post-Great War world, for Ireland and more, writing Back to Methuselah, a five part cycle that includes as Part IV, Shaw’s third Ireland-set play, The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman.5

Burrin Pier Back to Methuselah, as Peter Gahan asserts, alludes to numerous “textual models”, ranging from the Bible to Plato’s Republic, to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Blake’s Jerusalem, Goethe’s Faust, Nietzche’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, to name but some—along with ties to the ancient Irish myth Tir na nOg and to works by Shaw’s contemporary James Joyce, namely Ulysses (1922) and with some anticipation of Finnegan’s Wake (1939) (Shaw Shadows, 260).6 We can add to this list, not as a model but as a companion work, W. B. Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”, written in 1919 (published 1920). This is particularly evident in The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, when the Elderly Gentleman is unable to communicate verbally with the Woman in Act I as they share no common cultural awareness. While they use the same vocabulary their meaning is not

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discernable to each other as their common shared knowledge/experience is non-existent or beyond reach. This is seen almost immediately in Act I when the Woman responds to the Elderly Gentleman’s early explanation for his visit: “I do not understand. You say you have come here on a pious pilgrimage. Is that some new means of transport?” To which the Elderly Gentleman replies: “I find it very difficult to make myself understood here. I was not referring to a machine, but to a-a-a sentimental journey” (492). Gahan terms this with regard to the Elderly Gentleman as “Dead thought … a language whose metaphorical basis (that perpetual metonymy of signifiers) has congealed into fixed signifier-signified (Imaginary) relations” (Shaw Shadows, 237). The meanings of words, seemingly within the same language, lack any basis of interactive meaning between the Woman and Elderly Gentleman. Yeats draws on this idea of collapsed shared meanings with the very title of his poem, which draws on the precise idea of the shared cultural meaning of “the second coming”. Yet whichever “beast” is coming that the poem refers to, it most certainly is not the Christ as imagined (or mis-imagined) for centuries by Christians. Yeats refers to the shared knowledge and imagery as “Spiritus Mundi”, which works itself into the image of the Sphinx that begins to move in the poem. Yet how can the stone image move if divorced from its associated imagery (and for that matter, can stone move)? And who can say what the Sphinx really represents as the fifth century Greeks certainly knew no better than any other culture or society encountering the stone figure as a product of ancient Egypt—not even Napoleon. The collapse of the shared understanding and meaning of language and its images in Yeats’ poem, becomes itself a metaphor (that may or may not be believed) for the collapse of civilization in 1919–1920. Shaw draws on such a collapse in writing Back to Methuselah, but rather than seemingly indicate an apocalyptic vision as in Yeats’ poem, Shaw offers a vision towards new beginnings—which may very well be in the same direction as suggested by Yeats’ poem. The Irish-set The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman draws on the masterful Irish satirical novel, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver Travels. Indeed, as Gahan argues, the Elderly Gentleman at the end recognizes himself in a situation like Gulliver’s when faced with leaving the Houyhnhnms to return to a debased life among Yahoos (Shaw Shadows, 248). Shaw’s Elderly Gentleman comes to see the impossibility of himself returning with the Prime Minister, his son-in-law, to Bagdad, the then capital of Britain, to live among the politician’s lies.

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The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman is set on Galway Bay, with Act I specifically on Burrin Pier, not far from Lady Gregory’s summer home Mount Vernon. Ireland’s Burren region, despite its beauty, was/is a desolate landscape. Echoes of Cromwellian exile remain in the landscape that Shaw utilizes for his futuristic play set in 3000 A.D., in a world divided into short livers and long livers. In line with the historical moment and Shaw’s work through the 1910–1920 decade, the work’s preface offers numerous angles setting out Shaw’s views as he wrote the play. In the section titled “The Betrayal of Western Civilization”, Shaw summarizes the situation from the close of the nineteenth century towards and into 1920, as greater industrialization promoted the rise of militarism that had been justified as insuring peace: … political opportunism had brought parliaments into contempt; created a popular demand for direct action by the organized industries (“Syndicalism”); and wrecked the centre of Europe in a paroxysm of that chronic terror of one another, that cowardice of the irreligious, which, masked in the bravado of militarist patriotism, had ridden the Power like a nightmare since the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The sturdy old cosmopolitan Liberalism evaporated. Ordinances for the government of our Crown Colonies contain, as a matter of course, prohibitions of all criticism, spoken or written of their ruling officials, which would have scandalized George III and elicited Liberal pamphlets from Catherine II. Statesmen are afraid of the suburbs, of the newspapers, of the profiteers, of the diplomatists, of the militarists, of the country houses, of the trade unions, of everything ephemeral on earth except the revolutions they are provoking; and they would be afraid of these if they were not too ignorant of society and history to appreciate the risk, and to know that a revolution always seems hopeless and impossible the day before it breaks out, and indeed never does break out until it seems hopeless and impossible; for rulers who think it possible take care to insure the risk by ruling reasonably. This brings about a condition fatal to all political stability: namely, that you never know where to have the politicians. … But the present panic, in which Prime Ministers drift from election to election, either fighting or running away from everybody who shakes a fist at them, makes a European civilization impossible; for peace and prosperity depend on the loyalty of States to civilization. Every meaner consideration should have given way to this loyalty. What actually happened was that France and England made an alliance with Russia to defend themselves against Germany; Germany made an alliance with Turkey to defend herself against the three; whilst the United States held aloof as long as they could, and other States either

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did the same or joined in the fray through compulsion, bribery, or their judgement as to which side their bread was buttered. (322)7

Shaw continued by remarking that the terms of Germany’s surrender were beyond what the allies had hoped. He added that the pre-war alliances (minus Bolshevik Russia), that now decimated Germany’s economy and political stability post 1918—exactly what Shaw had warned against in Common Sense About the War—generated no world stability of any lasting potential. What was clear to Shaw, was that the world powers in 1914 had betrayed all, with many of those leaders removed or killed, yet there was no guarantee in 1918 that it would not all happen again, and continuously. Shaw remarked, “How will it all end we do not yet know” (322). Shaw looked to the future, while understanding the past. In many, or all respects, the Methuselah cycle was conceived and written in reaction to the Great War, as was Yeats’ “The Second Coming”. The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, completed within two years of War Issues for Irishmen, in which Shaw drew on Connolly’s internationalism, portrays a future Ireland with no nationalisms. The play opens with the Elderly Gentleman, Joseph Popham Bolge Bluebin Barlow sitting on a bollard on the pier. With “his head bowed and his face in his hands”, he is sobbing when the Woman enters. On being perceived as a foreigner, Barlow states that he is not to be regarded “as a foreigner. I am a Briton”. Once established that he is from the capital of the British Commonwealth, he explains: “You may not be aware, madam, that these islands were once the centre of the British Commonwealth, during a period now known as The Exile. They were its headquarters a thousand years ago” (492). On trying to explain his presence, he states that he is visiting “numerous lands of my fathers. We are of the same stock, you and I. Blood is thicker than water” (492). Again, the two possess little shared knowledge beyond the rudiments of language, with the Woman’s knowledge of language being void of the cultural trappings of Barlow’s English. Her understanding of “Blood is thicker than water” is literal, with no understanding of the phrase relating to blood relations. Similar confusion is provoked over the word decency, which Barlow states “cannot be discussed without indecency” (494). Such confusions leads to an insightful if pessimistic discussion. The Woman, in trying to understand Barlow, states that she is one of the “guardians of the district; and I am responsible for your welfare—”. Despite using the literal meaning of guardian, Barlow becomes incensed: “The Guardians! Do you take me for

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a pauper?” (495). The echoes of the Poor Law and its district Workhouse Guardians rings through, with Shaw—who had worked with Beatrice and Sidney Webb to end destitution and the way it had been treated since the 1830s through the Poor Law and its workhouse system supervised by Guardians—suggesting that the system’s legacy, if not the actual system, remains in 3000. This intimates that bourgeois values can continue to place the blame for poverty on the destitute, rather than with the class that manufactured, maintained poverty. Such, of course, echoes Shaw’s 1910 Dublin lecture, “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland”. Eventually Barlow encounters Zoo, to whom he recounts his being descended from ancestors who “wrestled for the prime ministership of the British Empire …. Lions in war, sages in peace, not babblers and charlatans like the pigmies who now occupy their places in Bagdad, but strong silent men, ruling an empire on which the sun never set, my eyes fill with tears; my heart bursts with emotion” (508). Barlow, in recounting Britain’s past glories, of one thousand years earlier, states: Consider this island on which we stand, the last foothold of man on this side of the Atlantic: this Ireland, described by the earliest bards as an emerald gem set in a silver sea! Can I, a scion of the illustrious British race, ever forget that when the Empire transferred its seat to the East, and said to the turbulent Irish race which it had oppressed but never conquered, “At last we leave you to yourselves; and much good may it do you,” the Irish as one man uttered the historic shout “No; we’ll be damned if you do,” and emigrated to the countries where there was still a Nationalist question, to India, Persia, and Corea [Korea], to Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli. In these countries they were foremost in the struggle for national independence; and the world ran, continually with the story of their sufferings and wrongs. … Hardly two hundred years had elapsed when the claims of nationality were so universally conceded that there was no longer a single country on the face of the earth with a national grievance or a national movement. Think of the Irish, who had lost all their political faculties by disuse except that of national agitation, and who owed their position as the most interesting race on earth solely to their sufferings! The very countries they had helped to set free boycotted them as intolerable bores. (509–510)

This is a telling commentary for 1920–1921 Ireland, by that time embroiled it in its War for Independence by republican factions fixated on Irish nationalism. And, of course, social justice and class struggle

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is forgotten, incapable of being collectively and meaningfully addressed because of the ongoing obsession with nationalism. Barlow has travelled to Ireland (from Bagdad, the then centre of Britain), with the British Prime Minister, Badger Bluebin, Bluebin’s wife and daughter (who are Barlow’s daughter and granddaughter), and with General Aufsteig, the Emperor of Turania. Shaw intimates that a British Government is again allied with an autocratic leader, as it was during the Great War with Russia’s Nicholas II—as if little had been learned from earlier alliances. Bluebin and Aufsteig have come to consult the oracle, which is located in Galway. In discussing the purpose of the visit to Ireland, to seek the Oracle’s advice, the character Zoo reveals that they know exactly what the Prime Minister wants: Your Prime Minister pretends that he has come to be guided by the oracle; but we are not deceived: we know quite well that he has come here so that when he goes back he may have the authority and dignity of one who has visited the holy islands and spoken face to face with the ineffable ones. He will pretend that all the measures he wishes to take for his own purposes have been enjoined on him by the oracle. (526)

Barlow responds by explaining that the leader of the opposition party will be able to obtain a written statement of the oracle’s advice, proclaiming that “Secret diplomacy has been totally abolished” (526). The exchange rings of the Great War, which, in Shaw’s view, was the result of incompetent secret diplomacy. In the months leading to the War, the bungled secret diplomacy was Shaw’s accusation against Herbert Asquith’s Liberal Government, particularly under Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey for aligning Britain to Tsarist Russia against Germany, a country Shaw viewed as having closer ties to Britain than autocratic Russia. In his letter to the editor, “Armaments and Conscription: A Triple Alliance Against War”, The Daily Chronicle, 18 March 1913, Shaw wrote: “From time to time the Secretary for Foreign Affairs announces to the House of Commons that we are trapped in some alliance which we had not the faintest intention of making” (8). In Common Sense About the War, Shaw referred to the Foreign Office’s White Paper that supposedly detailed Grey’s diplomacy with Russia and France. He noted that the Paper was “recorded in the language of diplomacy … on or between the lines. That language is not so

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straightforward as my language” (30). The insinuation was that the White Paper was at best obscuring the factual account, which Zoo confirms: “Yes: you publish documents; but they are garbled or forged” (526). On meeting with the Oracle, Aufsteig recalls such commanders of the Great War as Britain’s Field Marshall Douglas Haig. He explains that his talent is “the shedding of human blood …. I mean the shedding of oceans of blood, the death of millions of men”. Such language, of course, would have been well understood in the years following the Great War. Aufsteig explains further: “I have never shed blood with my own hand. They kill each other: they die with shouts of triumph on their lips. Those who die cursing do not curse me. My talent is to organize this slaughter; to give mankind this terrible joy which they call glory; to let loose the devil in them that peace has bound in chains” (535). Realizing that he cannot stop organizing war and massive death, he asks the oracle to stop the cycle, to which she does the obvious and shoots him. In his audience with the oracle in Act III, the reason for the journey, the Prime Minister (the Envoy) asks his question about when to hold a General Election: “Now what we want to know is this: ought we to dissolve [the Government] in August, or put it off until next spring?” (558). The oracle’s answer of “Go home, poor fool”, is the same answer given the previous Prime Minister fifteen years earlier. As Zoo had foretold, the Envoy prepares to lie to the British public. When pressed by Barlow, “Surely we must tell the truth”, the Envoy elects to repeat the lie of previous generations to serve himself, despite his pretensions of saving Britain: I am not thinking of my feelings: I am not so selfish as that, thank God. I am thinking of the country: of our party. The truth, as you call it, would put the Rotterjacks [opposition party] in for the next twenty years. It would be the end of me politically. Not that I care for that: I am only too willing to retire if you can find a better man. (561)

Repulsed by the PM’s ease with lying to the public in serving himself before the people, Barlow echoes the decades of such political lies and deceptions that Shaw had witnessed, which had led to horrific consequences during the Great War. To the oracle, Barlow asks for guidance: “I cannot go back and connive at a blasphemous lie” (562). He chooses to remain, meaning his death: “It is the meaning of life, not death, that makes banishment so terrible to me” (562). This choice represents,

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despite its portrayed bleakness, the hope that The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman presents. The decade that had led to the writing of Back to Methuselah offered little hope from Britain’s parliamentary system. Instead, it offered brutal responses to industrial trade union agitations, pursued a non-democratic foreign policy of secret alliances without the people’s knowledge nor consent, failed to disarm Ulster Unionists that allowed all sides in Ireland to arm themselves, fabricated lies in favour of romantic heroism to mask capitalist greed and incompetence with Titanic’s 1912 sinking, entered the Great War allied with the autocrat Nicholas II when it was easier to go to war than not, fostered the arms race that created the slaughter, executed the War with incompetent aristocratic generals incapable of understanding industrial war technology, generated the conditions that necessitated Dublin’s 1916 Easter Rising, executed its leaders for fighting for their country as Britain celebrated those who fought for theirs, failed to follow through with the Irish Convention while announcing conscription for Ireland instead, placed the War debt on Germany after the War while it seized and occupied with France former German and Turkish colonies, and continued its failure domestically to address poverty that could have been eradicated by equal incomes. In short, when Shaw was writing Back to Methuselah, the only discernible progress resulting from the colossal suffering was the overthrow of Nicholas II and the continuing Bolshevik efforts to establish socialist rule through Russia’s vast territories. In Britain, Parliamentary failings continued, epitomized by the Envoy’s “blasphemous lie” in The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, violating the sanctity of truth that democracy must attain in order to rule. And if there was to be hope, as Shaw’s The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman argues, progress requires an act of conscience in the vein of Barlow, the Elderly Gentleman, preferring death over living with a contemptuous lie. And in 1920 into 1921, Ireland needed hope, particularly its working and non-working classes.

War for Independence During the calendar transition from 1920 into 1921, Ireland’s War for Independence accelerated. The January 1919 attack at Soloheadbeg represented not only the War’s first fired shots, but also the model for IRA engagement. The RIC became targets as they were less equipped and prepared than the British army. As W. J. Lowe suggests, the British

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Government, still led by David Lloyd George, refused to recognize the IRA as legitimate military counterparts, just as it would not recognize Dail Eireann as a legitimate government. The consequence was that the British attempted to deal with the insurgency as a police action against criminal activity. However, as attacks increased, many rural RIC stations were closed as indefensible. As RIC numbers fell off dramatically, the British responded by recruiting new RIC recruits, particularly veterans of the Great War within England, Scotland, and Wales.8 These new recruits formed what became known as the Black and Tans, based on the mixture of their uniforms, literally of black and tan. In addition, new RIC Auxiliary units worked exclusively against the IRA. Lowe argues that the units were essentially mercenary British soldiers, hired to suppress a rebellion (“Who Were”). Initially, violence increased. Given the IRA’s guerilla tactics, Auxiliary units responded with reprisals on communities suspected of supporting IRA units who seemingly disappeared after quick attacks.9 The IRA’s guerrilla tactics stemmed from their lack of military resources leaving them unable to engage British forces in conventional war. They had also learned from the perceived failure of occupying buildings in 1916 without artillery and enough combatants to defend them. Guerrilla tactics were, with the exception of 1916, part of the tradition of previous Irish rebellions. Although the danger of discipline becoming unmanageable on all sides was always present in a guerrilla campaign. The violence of the War was felt in many areas of the country, particularly in Cork, both city and County. In spring 1920, its Lord Mayor Tomas MacCurtain was assassinated by members of the RIC. His successor as Lord Mayor was playwright Terence MacSwiney, who was arrested for sedition after taking office.10 While in prison, MacSwiney went on hunger strike and died after 74 days on 25 October. Unlike with Thomas Ashe in 1917, the British did not force-feed MacSwiney, who happened to die on the same day that a meeting of the National Peace Conference was held in a committee room in the House of Commons, addressing the British reprisal violence in Ireland. At the end of the month, Shaw’s friend Lady Gregory recorded in her journal: “Today I wrote to G. B. S., begging him to come over to Coole and examine into these Black and Tan horrors”, which had reached into Gregory’s vicinity surrounding Coole Park (quoted in Laurence and Grene, “Notes”, 153). She had publicly criticized the Black and Tans’ terrorizing violence in a series of articles in London weekly The Nation, edited by Shaw’s friend H. W. Massingham (“Augusta, Lady Gregory”).

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Shaw responded to Gregory on 6 November 1920. After first commenting that the British newspapers were writing much on Black and Tan violence, Shaw added: “The [British] Government replies that (a) they [the Black and Tan violence] are all the work of Sinn Feiners disguised in the uniforms they have stolen, and (b) they [the Black and Tan reprisals] are more than justified by the provocation given. The incident of the woman in Kiltartan who was shot as unprotected game with her child in her arms by a passing police sportsman from a lorry has been in every paper here that I have seen”.11 On the peace conference meeting, Shaw specifically reported that it was “of the most ghastly futility. [Horace] Plunkett and [Joseph] Develin [MP] spoke: so did I. But the others driveled about publishing information and rousing the conscience of England” (Shaw and Gregory, 154). Shaw saw the “hysteria” in London over the Black and Tan violence as “very useless” with no organized direction to challenge the Government’s policy (155). Later in the month on 21 November, Michael Collins, the IRA’s Director of Intelligence, targeted British Intelligence officers in Dublin. In the early morning, 14 people were killed: 8 intelligence officers, two Auxiliary officers, and four people unconnected to British operations (Dorney). The Black and Tans and Auxiliaries inevitably responded on the same day. Moving into a football match at Dublin’s Croke Park, the combined forces fired into the crowd of spectators and athletes. Fourteen people were killed, many wounded. Three IRA prisoners being held in Dublin Castle were also killed on the same day. Before the month ended, on the 28th, an IRA unit had ambushed a patrol of 18 Auxiliaries travelling in two lorries near Kilmichael in rural Cork. Sixteen Auxiliary officers were killed in the ambush, one was badly wounded and another escaped only to be found later and killed by another IRA unit. The IRA suffered three dead. Additional Auxiliary units, assisted by British army troops, burned houses in retaliation. The violence bled into 1921, with Shaw paying close attention, as was O’Casey. On 15 May 1921, in Ballyturin Gort, in County Galway, close to Lady Gregory’s Coole Park, an automobile stopped to open a gate. In it was the RIC’s District Inspector, Cecil Blake, his wife Eliza Blake, their driver, two British soldiers, Captain Cornwallis and Lieutenant McGreery, and Margaret Gregory—Lady Gregory’s daughter-in-law, widow of her son Robert (killed during the Great War as a British army pilot). While stopped, an IRA unit ambushed the motor and its occupants. All were killed except Margaret Gregory, who may have been consciously spared.

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The ambush led to more retaliations with homes and local shops burnt. When this occurred, Lady Gregory was staying with the Shaws at Ayot St. Lawrence. Shaw told Gregory the news on the morning of 17 May. She recorded in her diary: “He said ‘There is bad news in the papers—but Margaret is not hurt’, and told me of the shooting of Captain Blake and his wife and the two officers, and then I saw a telegram from Margaret for me ‘Sole survivor of five murdered in ambushed motor’” (Shaw and Gregory, 159). Two months later, on 11 July, a truce was reached between Dail Eireann and the British Government, which would establish formal negotiations to determine Ireland’s future; and a poignant question was asked regarding the nature of this potentially new Ireland in the ITGWU’s The Voice of Labour in October 1921: “Who will own Ireland when Ireland is free?” (quoted in Ferriter, Nation, 220). The question carried echoes from the Democratic Programme, the 1916 Easter Proclamation, Connolly’s “The Irish Flag” article (April 1916), the ICA’s constitution, The Irish Workers ’ masthead, and Fintan Lalor’s views that Ireland belonged to its people. The following month, November 1921, the Irish White Cross, a charitable organization endeavouring to assist the poor, reported that “about 100,000 men, women and children are in actual want or homeless” (quoted in Ferriter, Nation, 220). The issue of poverty remained prevalent. The Democratic Programme that the First Dail adopted mandated the elimination of the Poor Law system in Ireland, established by Britain in 1838. Inspectors were appointed to visit and report on the workhouses throughout the country. In November 1921, the inspector who visited the Belmullet workhouse in north County Mayo reported: “For absolute neglect and waste this is the worst case I have yet come across. It is 40 miles from any railway station and in consequence has been immune from inspection. It is the last word in the rotten poor law system” (quoted in Ferriter, Nation, 222). Synge’s point about class in The Playboy of the Western World, set near Belmullet, still had class relevance in 1921 with its portrait of the well-fed, fair-skinned comfortable farmer Shawn Keogh and his negotiated business arrangement for marrying the publican’s daughter Pegeen, dressed in peasant clothing as her father’s drudge. Reports from other workhouses in Ireland during that autumn were hardly much better. The poverty issue, of course, would have implications for Ireland’s west once the Truce period was entered. This was particularly true of the question of land distribution. The rural poor sought land, the

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breaking up of the remaining landlord estates and the holdings of large farmers. While approximately 50,000 acres of land was redistributed in the second half of 1920, the Dail lacked the commitment to socially and economically reform rural Ireland and ultimately shied away from wholesale distribution (Ferriter, Nation, 230). Large farmers and their financial support were well represented in the Dail. Finances were cited by the Dail as reasons for failing to provide housing assistance throughout Ireland, even in areas decimated by the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries. All this went against the Democratic Programme, which had called for the care of all vulnerable members of society, rural and urban. Diarmuid Ferriter notes that the Dail’s promises in support of the Democratic Programme became “hollow promise[s], forgotten in the midst of a primarily political and military revolution which was being managed in the main by men with Victorian mindsets” of comfortable classes (Nation, 223). William Cosgrave, a member of the First Dail and its Minister for Local Government revealed the First Dail’s predominant sentiment with regard to the Irish working class, rural and urban, in a May 1921 letter to Austin Stack, the Dail’s Minister for Home Affairs: People reared in workhouses, as you are aware, are no great acquisition to the community and they have no ideas whatever of civic responsibilities. As a rule their highest aim is to live at the expense of the ratepayers. Consequently it would be a decided gain if they all took it into their heads to emigrate. When they go abroad they are thrown on their own responsibilities and have to work whether they like it or not. (quoted in Ferriter, Nation, 223)

Cosgrave comes close to echoing John Bull’s Other Island’s Broadbent when discussing what is to become of Matthew Haffigan as the syndicate’s Golf Hotel resort is built, and Haffigan is returned to being a landless pauper: “Haffigan had better go to America” (157). For Broadbent’s vision for an Ireland was a syndicate to manufacture profits for himself while for Cosgrave, who envisioned an Ireland free from English rule but not England’s capitalist system, emigration would be a convenient answer. No doubt, the bourgeois Cosgrave had not attended Shaw’s 1910 Dublin lecture “The Poor Law and Irish Destitution”, when Shaw had indicted the Irish middle class for allowing poverty while maintaining that the poor were not poor due to their own making. He had revealed that Dublin Corporation (Dublin’s city government) had spent significant funds on

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workhouses to manufacture the poor, and then the Corporation said it “was the pauper’s own fault” (“The Poor Law”, 7). Despite having fought in the 1916 Rising as a member of the Volunteers, Cosgrave did not share the left-slanted mindset of the Volunteers’ leaders of Pearse, Clarke, Ceannt, and MacDonagh—all executed like Connolly. Although Cosgrave was no comrade of Connolly’s, one of Connolly’s close comrades from 1916, Constance Markievicz, was a member of the First Dail and its Minister of Labour. So, despite not contesting the 1918 General Election, Labour surely had a voice through Markievicz. In September 1921, the ITGWU had complained to the Department of Labour, which Markievicz led, for ending its funding grants to Limerick County Council, resulting in workers being sacked from road repair work (Ferriter, Nation, 217, 218). Of course, finances were a constant issue for the First Dail, but questions remain as to Markievicz and the working class. This comes into some focus in a private letter to Markievicz’s sister, labour and suffragette advocate Eva Gore-Booth, in autumn 1917 while Markievicz was imprisoned following the Rising: The trade unions’ appeal always seems to me to be so very sordid and very selfish. Till something suddenly makes them realise the value of self-sacrifice they will never be much use to humanity. They are only scrambling for champagne and frock coats in the end. (quoted in Ferriter, Nation, 224)

The last sentence seemingly refers to the looting during the Rising, as some of Dublin’s tenement residents seized items that had been beyond their reach; surely their economic circumstances deserved understanding from Markievicz.12 As such, Markievicz’s mindset in the letter reflects more her social class rather than Connolly’s and Larkin’s commitment to workers, and is contrary to Markievicz’s own role during the Lockout when she and husband Casmir, with eventual ICA members Helena Molony and Nellie Gifford, disguised and smuggled Larkin into Dublin’s Imperial Hotel to address O’Connell Street in what became the Lockout’s Bloody Sunday. Yet Markievicz’s comment above, and her lack of rigorous pro-labour advocacy as Minister of Labour, suggests that O’Casey’s distrust of Markievicz was not unfounded. As far back as summer 1914 he had insisted that Markievicz choose between Cumann na mBan or the ICA, between the bourgeoise or working class. Where Chapter 2 argued that O’Casey’s later debunking of Markievicz’s soup

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kitchen work during the Lockout was stretched and probably unwarranted—especially given Larkin’s and Connolly’s affinity for Markievicz’s commitment to workers, her reticence to act for Labour during the First Dail lends some credence to O’Casey’s later anti-Markievicz sentiment.13 Nevertheless, Markievicz, like many in the First Dail, was prioritizing independence from Britain over everything—and her failure to strongly advocate for workers as Minister for Labour, further emphasized Labour’s mis-step in failing to contest the 1918 General Election.14 When a new General Election was called in May 1921, Labour again opted not to contest it on grounds of national unity. Labour’s decision was provoked by the partition of Ireland by the Government of Ireland Act of 1920, commencing on 3 May 1921. Ulster was to contest for seats in a newly created “six county northern parliament” (Grant, 103). As Sinn Fein ran unopposed in 26 counties, it took 124 seats—but, again it took its seats in the Dail, now the Second Dail, rather than in the Westminster Parliament. Adrian Grant notes: Labour’s refusal to engage in political action during 1918-1921 not only set it back in Irish political life and facilitated the conservative nature of the eventual state that emerged, it also had disastrous consequences on the potential for a strong socialist republican movement to emerge in an independent Ireland. (105)

Although Labour had placed itself in a difficult position, the 1921 Truce carried much promise for a new Ireland. O’Brien had been among Labour’s leaders who decided against contesting the 1918 and 1921 General Elections, though he would be among those in Labour endeavouring to influence the future of Ireland. In 1920–1921, this involved turning again to Connolly and “Connolly’s writing” (Morrissey, O’Brien, 196). O’Brien undoubtedly believed that Connolly’s socialist theoretical work could and should contribute to a new socially just Ireland. During the spring and summer of 1921, O’Brien and Cathal O’Shannon corresponded about a two-volume book of Connolly’ writings, as well as a biography of Connolly’s life (O’Brien and O’Shannon). Of course, from a cynical perspective, there was always an element of serving his own cause when promoting Connolly’s work, but O’Brien had been a committed socialist going back to the Irish Socialist Republican Party with Connolly (1896–1903). While the twovolume work never materialized, nor did their Connolly biography,

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O’Brien did republish Connolly’s 1908 The Axe to the Root as an ITGWU pamphlet, which argued for syndicalization. The unsigned accompanying Introduction was most likely authored by Cathal O’Shannon, with input from O’Brien. Although the Introduction’s first paragraph acknowledges that the theory of syndicalism was enhanced by the ITGWU through both “Jim Larkin and James Connolly, first as workers in actual toil, and secondly as Trade Union organizers”, Larkin is not mentioned again. As the essay predates the ITGWU’s 1909 founding, the Introduction implies that Connolly was the theorist behind the ITGWU’s commitment to syndicalism, even though Larkin had formed the union while Connolly was still in New York. The Introduction states: “The plan, the methods, and the aims of the I. T. & G. W. U. are those set forth in this, the most popular of James Connolly’s works” (i). While it is debatable whether The Axe to the Root was Connolly’s most popular work, by republishing it with its theoretical discussion of syndicalism, O’Brien and O’Shannon were undermining Larkin’s position as founder of the ITGWU—yet the pamphlet’s first publication in 1908 cannot be disputed. To leave no ambiguity as to when Connolly wrote the pamphlet, the Introduction explains that it “was written in the year 1908, … for the guidance of the American working-class in its struggle for freedom” (ii). Larkin’s followers may well have resented the pamphlet’s Introduction, and its single mention of Larkin. Clearly, this republication of The Axe to the Root , with its Introduction, was another step in pushing the ITGWU in a very specific direction. Morrissey writes that over the years 1919–1921, O’Brien and Foran, assisted by O’Shannon, “had put in place a[n ITGWU] constitution and rules, continued the expansion of the union throughout the country and the centralization of power in the head-office, removed from their positions the likely challenges to their power [namely Daly], and had given the union a disciplined form that would trammel any take-over should Larkin return” (197–198). The new rules and centralization of power greatly restricted the role of the General Secretary, who previously had been responsible, with full autonomy, for both leading the union in its day to day operations and strategizing its directions and future. O’Brien and Foran hoped this would stymie Larkin, who was still officially the ITGWU’s General Secretary. Although Larkin had been imprisoned in New York for sedition during the 1919 Red Scare, O’Brien and Foran were taking no chances.

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Before O’Brien and Foran removed Daly from heading the ITGWU’s Insurance Division, Daly tried to consolidate Larkin’s allies. He convinced Larkin’s sister Delia to return to Dublin and secured a position for her within the Insurance Division. She had previously headed the Irish Women Workers’ Union left the union before leaving the union in fall 1915, a year into Connolly’s term as Acting General Secretary. Nevertheless, Delia Larkin’s return to Dublin was not enough to stop Daly’s dismissal, which led to the withdrawal of numerous ITGWU staff members, including Delia.15 In 1921, Delia Larkin married a goods conveyor named Patrick Colgan, which would later prove highly significant. Given O’Brien’s preoccupation with Larkin’s eventual return, it is difficult to separate that from O’Brien’s genuine efforts to further Connolly’s theoretical writings for an Ireland moving away from Connolly’s radicalism. However, O’Brien may well have believed that without Connolly’s role in 1916, Ireland would not have been on the brink of a new Ireland in 1921—and Connolly was also in the thoughts of another who contributed to the changing Ireland, though from a different perspective: W. B. Yeats.

Yeats Yeats prepared his Autobiographies in 1922 for publication the next year. In “Book IV”, “The Tragic Generation”, within its The Trembling of the Veil section, Yeats recalled the 1894 premieres of his The Land of Heart’s Desire and Shaw’s Arms and the Man, and voiced his nightmare of being “haunted by a sewing-machine, that clicked and shone, but the incredible thing was that the machine smiled, smiled perpetually”, insinuating the machine was Shaw (283). In The Trembling of the Veil ’s next section, “The Stirring of the Bones”, Yeats, perhaps not too unlike O’Brien, invokes Connolly, the former Singer Sewing Machine factory worker. In relating Queen Victoria’s last visit to Ireland, in 1900, Yeats writes: I find Maud Gonne at her hotel talking to a young working-man who looks very melancholy. She had offered to speak at one of the regular meetings of his Socialist society [Irish Socialist Republican Party, ISRP] about Queen Victoria, and he has summoned what will be a great meeting in the open air. She has refused to speak, and he says that her refusal means

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his ruin, as nobody will ever believe that he had any promise at all. When he had left without complaint or anger, she gives me very cogent reasons against the open-air meeting, but I can think of nothing but the young man and his look of melancholy. He has left his address, and presently, at my persuasion, she drives to his tenement, where she finds him and his wife and children crowded into a very small space—perhaps there was only one room—and, moved by the sight, promises to speak. The young man is James Connolly who, with Padraic Pearse, is to make the Insurrection of 1916 and to be executed. (366–367)

Yeats mentions Gonne’s speech at Connolly’s ISRP’s meeting, and relates that later “that night Connolly carries in procession a coffin with the words ‘British Empire’ upon it, and police and mob fight for its ownership, and at last, that the police may not capture it, it is thrown into the [River] Liffey” (368). Reading of the riots that spread through Dublin in the next morning’s papers, Yeats comments: “I count the links in the chain of responsibility, and wonder if any link there is from my workshop” (368). Regardless of Yeats’ ambiguity in seeming to enjoy some credit in relation to Connolly while acknowledging his role in the agitations that resulted in arrests, he had intertwined (in a snippet) his own narrative with Connolly. Autobiographies tied Yeats to the changing Ireland, and perhaps Yeats, like Shaw, recognized that Connolly had served a theoretical agenda, a cause beyond simple bourgeois nationalism. While the First Dail and the IRA had been focused on nationalism, the theorist Connolly had provided ideas for a future Ireland beyond a mere change of flags.

Changing Flags The Treaty negotiated between Dail-IRA and Britain in December 1921 following the Truce, was immediately contentious. The Treaty debates in the Dail from late December to the ratifying vote on 7 January 1922 divided its members. Connolly’s son Roddy, who had revived his father’s old newspaper the Workers’ Republic, denounced the “shameful treaty” and called for Irish Labour to reject it (qtd. in Morrissey, O’Brien, 204). The ITGWU’s Voice of Labour printed on 8 January a cabled message from New York’s Sing Sing Prison, being James Larkin’s response to the Dail’s vote on the Treaty. Sounding not ideologically distant from Connolly, Larkin stated:

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We stand for the dead. We entered into a compact with them when living. We will not fail them. Clarke, Pearse, Connolly, and our other comrades did not die for a phase. They did not die that unscrupulous, ambitious, creatures that have climbed to power over the dead bodies of our comrades should be permitted to seal, sign and deliver in a written hand the soul of our race. (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 204)

As Murray clarifies, Larkin was seeing “his old enemy Arthur Griffith” as one of the forces behind the negotiation and Treaty acceptance (139).16 Still, Larkin was expressing his republican-slanted socialism, as he had when he adopted Lalor’s quote for The Irish Worker’s masthead—which he maintained through the Lockout to his 1914 departure. However, his statement on the Treaty proved problematic to those who now controlled the ITGWU. Almost immediately the Voice of Labour published a retort, distancing the ITGWU from Larkin’s statement. Morrissey writes, “To O’Brien, and the [paper’s] editor, O’Shannon, … it was particularly annoying to have Larkin claiming identification with Connolly and the other leaders of 1916 as if he had been privy to all their plans” (204). The paper and the ITGWU sought to “dissociate themselves from much that is in the document [Larkin’s statement], and in particular from the personal charges of cowardice, treachery and aggrandizement made therein” (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 204). Although O’Brien, Foran, and O’Shannon were still utilizing their personal ties and stating their adherence to Connolly’s beliefs and theoretical writings, they were furthering the ideological gulf between themselves and Connolly’s programme for a socialist Ireland. Undoubtedly, they believed that the Treaty would provide the stability for organized Labour to thrive. Perhaps this was influenced by the acquaintance O’Brien had forged with Michael Collins, one of the chief negotiators and supporters of the Treaty.17 Of course, Larkin’s cabled statement provided a strong indication that Larkin intended to return to Ireland once released from prison, and his calling on the memory of the Rising’s leaders, especially Connolly, seemed to suggest that Larkin could undermine their ties to Connolly—and therefore undermine their leadership of the union and Labour. While we cannot know with absolute certainty how Connolly would have reacted to the Treaty, he could have opposed it by recognizing—as did Larkin—Labour’s old adversary among the Treaty’s leaders, Griffith. In this vein, he would have held such adversaries responsible for the

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Dail’s failure to adhere to the Democratic Programme, and the lack of reform for workers—then endeavoured to forge a clear workers’ agenda. However, Connolly may have instead turned towards Bolshevik Russia and its socialist revolution for an allegiance in the interest of unifying workers, and, in a sense, bypass the Treaty issue. Connolly’s children who were politically active, Nora and Roddy, opposed the Treaty in the belief that their father would have done the same. However, the Workers’ Republic Connolly had envisioned in 1916 was not to be seen in an Ireland overwhelmingly focused on the Treaty—and it was still uncertain what would emerge from the Russian conflagration. As opponents and supporters of the Treaty campaigned for their respective causes in anticipation of the General Election set for 16 June 1922, anti-Treaty members of the IRA occupied the Four Courts in Dublin. O’Casey at this time was aggressively aligned himself with the anti-Treaty side, perhaps in reaction to Labour’s position (Murray, 139). The Irish Labour Party did contest the 1922 General Election, which endorsed the Treaty. The ILP won 17 seats, and now led by Thomas Johnson with O’Brien, believed the Treaty offered the best opportunity for Labour—which kept them in opposition to Larkin. Murray writes that with Labour’s support of the Treaty, O’Casey was “finished” with “Labour in Ireland” (140). On 28 June, the Irish Civil War began when the Free State Army shelled their former comrades with artillery supplied by the British. Yet despite O’Casey’s familiarity with anti-Treaty garrisons before the shelling, he did not join a garrison. The subsequent fighting in Dublin city centre destroyed much that had survived the Rising six years earlier. Shaw and wife Charlotte travelled to Ireland in late summer, staying mostly in Rosslare Strand, Co. Wexford, where there was little Civil War combat. While they were in Rosslare, Griffith, who was then President of the Dail, unexpectedly died of natural causes. Michael Collins, then the commandant of the Free State Army, succeeded as President. In the next week, as Peter Gahan details, Shaw and Charlotte travelled to Horace Plunkett’s home Kilteragh in Foxrock, Co. Dublin, for dinner on 19 August, where they met Collins (Gahan, “Irish Houses”, 225).18 Two days later, the Irish Times published Shaw’s article “The Eve of Civil War” where he criticized the anti-Treaty position, as stated in pamphlets by Erskine Childers and Eamon de Valera. Shaw tended towards the Treaty as Ireland’s best option, but rather than whole-heartedly embrace the Treaty, he focused on the futility of the anti-Treaty republicans. Responding to

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the above two pamphlets, Shaw could see no clear agenda, stating that what de Valera and Childers “are driving at—what they think they are doing, as the English say—I can only say that I dont know. And that is the weakness of their position”. Shaw suggested that when the populace voted in favour of the Treaty, “they [the anti-Treaty supporters] had either to accept the popular verdict and set to work to convert the Irish people to their views or to choose” to fight “to subdue the country by armed force, British fashion, and coerce it to become an independent little republic”—the latter was already underway. As to carrying on a war against Free State troops armed with British artillery and weapons, Shaw asked: “What chance against General Collins had Mr de Valera without military aptitude?” (“Eve,” 273–275). It was an astute comment given de Valera’s limited military experience as a rebel brigade commander during the 1916 Rising. While a detachment of his command had inflicted heavy casualties on British troops at Mount Street Bridge, de Valera, who had personnel in his command garrison in Boland’s Bakery and Mill that could have easily been sent as reinforcements, failed to do so, and consequently a successful rebel position eventually fell to overwhelming British forces. During the War for Independence, de Valera played no military role, spending some of it in the United States endeavouring to gain recognition of the Dail, of which he was then President. One wonders if the dinner conversation at Kilteragh included Collins commenting on de Valera’s hesitant command during the Rising, and non-combative role during 1919–1921, or perhaps Shaw learned of such elsewhere. Shaw concluded his Civil War article by writing: “I was a Republican before Mr. de Valera was born. … I am a Supernationalist and a Socialist; and all I have to say to an Irish carpenter (for instance) is that as long as he hates an English carpenter he will be a slave, no matter what flag he flies. … Look at Russia: now there is a really interesting country politically” (“Eve”, 275). The flag reference in this context arguably invokes Connolly’s play Under Which Flag ? and, more directly, Shaw’s memory of Connolly’s speech that immediately preceded his at the 1 November 1913 rally for Dublin workers during the Lockout, when Connolly stated: “You can never have freedom or self-respect whilst you have starvation, whether it is the green flag or the Union Jack that is flying over our heads. If there is nothing in your stomach it matters mighty little what flag is flying” (quoted in Sheehy-Skeffington, “London’s Magnificent Rally”, Daily Herald, 1). Given the allusion to Connolly’s Lockout sentiment focused on workers, and his reference to Bolshevik Russia, Shaw viewed

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the Treaty situation in Ireland as a distraction, whereas if the anti-Treaty position was strictly adhering to Workers’ rights, they would have had an agenda worth fighting for. The day after Shaw’s Civil War article was published, Michael Collins was killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty republican forces in West Cork. The futility of violence continued. As the Civil War continued into 1923, Larkin was released from prison on 17 January, having been pardoned by New York’s newly elected Irish-American governor, Al Smith. By then, the Bolshevik Russian Government had taken an interest in Larkin. Almost a year before, Larkin had been “elected to the Moscow soviet to represent the Moscow International Communist Tailoring Factory, [composed mostly of returned tailors …] from the USA” (O’Connor, Reds, 80–81). This may have irked O’Brien, a tailor by trade. On 3 February, Larkin was invited to visit Russia, and at the same time, he aligned himself further with the anti-Treaty republicans, claiming that he was returning to Ireland to fight for a republic and work with de Valera (O’Connor, Reds, 82–83). In mid-March, Larkin wired Thomas Foran of the ITGWU and “requested £5,000 to buy a steamer” ship without specifying why, beyond vague intimations that he was organizing direct trade between Ireland and Russia (O’Connor, Reds, 83). Emmet O’Connor writes that “O’Brien in particular resented the self-seeking demands on the union’s purse” (Reds, 83). Nearly two weeks later, Larkin was re-arrested by the American FBI and charged with being an “alien anarchist” (O’Connor, Reds, 83). Larkin immediately requested a British passport, which was eventually granted and he travelled to Southampton where he was greeted by supporters, led by Daly. On 30 April, Larkin returned to Ireland (O’Connor, Reds, 84). Larkin addressed an estimated crowd of 4,000 outside Liberty Hall, and called for an end to the Civil War—despite his statements from the United States that suggested he would support anti-Treaty republicans. O’Connor argues that Larkin had misunderstood his republican contacts while in the U. S., and thought they were in favour of ending the War— whereas waring republicans in Dublin had expected “Larkin would swing labour behind them” (O’Connor, Reds, 84). By failing to do the latter, Larkin lost an (or the) opportunity to shift the anti-Treaty position to a workers’ rights agenda. Without an influx of new support, the antiTreaty IRA leader, Frank Aiken, ordered the cessation of hostilities in May, ending the Civil War. At the ITGWU’s delegate conference in the

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middle of the month, Larkin claimed he had left Ireland in October 1914 “on the appeal of James Connolly and at the suggestion of Clarke and Pearse in order to get arms and ammunition” (Morrissey, 215). Larkin’s claim was publicly refuted by Lillie Connolly (Connolly’s widow), Kathleen Clarke (Clarke’s widow), and O’Brien. O’Brien, Morrissey relates, believed “Larkin was telling lies to somehow share in the regard and honour in which the leaders of 1916 were held” (O’Brien, 216). By the end of the month, Larkin concluded that the ITGWU had been greatly changed in his absence, that it was no longer his union. The realization led him to attempt to re-take the union (O’Connor, Reds, 85). The ITGWU developments were not the only changes Larkin encountered on his return. Larkin’s old friend Sean O’Casey, who had headed the Jim Larkin Correspondence Committee while Larkin was imprisoned in the U. S. (and received no reply from O’Brien to send greetings to Larkin), was now an Abbey Theatre playwright (O’Casey Letters, I , 97–100; Murray, 129). His play The Shadow of a Gunman had been successfully premiered on 12 April, a few weeks before Larkin’s Dublin return.

The Trilogy Begins As Murray notes, the programme for the premier run of Gunman included an inserted note: “During the second act the sounds customary during a raid by the Auxiliaries are heard” (quoted in Murray, 142). While the Civil War’s combat in Dublin had subsided by April 1923, sounds of raids could still be heard. Murray suggests that during the four performances of the play’s first run, “audiences were bowled over by O’Casey’s removal of any barrier between reality and illusion” (142). O’Casey set Gunman during the War of Independence within a Dublin tenement, specifically in the room shared by characters Donal Davoren and Seumas Shields. A key element of the play’s action is an IRA tactic of the period when some of its activists used tenements in order to disappear among the poor. Hiding weapons in the tenements was also part of that tactic. The action of the play hinges on a character named Maguire, described in the list of characters as a “soldier of the IRA”, leaving a bag in Davoren’s and Shields’ room. It is later learned that Maguire was killed in an ambush. When some residents in the tenement suspect the newly moved-in Davoren is an IRA gunman, it leads fellow tenement resident Minnie Powell to take an interest in him, attracted by the romance

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that the secret gunman fighting for Ireland inspired in some. Davoren, a would-be writer, is, as Murray suggests and James Moran echoes, based on O’Casey in a self-mocking fashion (142; 39). Fearing the tenement is to be raided by Auxiliaries in Act II, Davoren inspects Maguire’s bag and discovers that it contains Mills bombs (hand grenades). As the tenement is being raided, Minnie rushes in and asks if they have anything to hide. Prepared to risk her own freedom, she takes the bag of grenades to her room on the floor above, but the Auxiliaries seize Minnie with the bombs and take her down to the street to their lorry. Two “bursting bombs” are heard offstage along with gunshots as the auxiliaries are ambushed, and voices are heard asking who has been killed, “‘Minnie Powell’ …. ‘She went to jump off the lorry an’ she was shot’” (O’Casey, Shadow, 61). The play was favourably reviewed by the Evening Herald, calling it “the most genuine comedy that I think I have ever seen” (quoted in Murray, 142). Despite the ongoing Civil War, the first audiences revelled in the play’s comedic moments, even as tragic-comedy. It signalled the beginning of O’Casey showing the impact of Ireland’s wars on the forgotten working class, the poorest paid the price. The consequences for Minnie are far from romantic, dying for Davoren, who with Shields, says nothing as Auxiliaries are heard dragging her down the stairs with the bag of bombs that she took to protect Davoren. She dies for nothing. The tragic-comic sense of the moment certainly makes it clear that she did not die for Ireland, despite her repeated shouts, “Up the Republic” Or if she did, it was useless and accomplished nothing. It is not even clear who killed Powell, as Moran details: “Did her British enemies pull the trigger, or was she peppered by one of her own side during the reported nationalist ambush on her captures?” (53). Of course, from the play’s standpoint, she would have fared better by cowering and keeping to herself while the Auxiliaries searched the building. And taking this further, O’Casey through the Powell character echoes Shaw’s assault on the notion of self-sacrificing women in his The Quintessence of Ibsenism, a work O’Casey most likely read. The Quintessence had included a response to the 1891 condemnation of The Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff by journalist/editor W. T. Stead. Because Bashkirtseff had put herself before bourgeois demands that she, like all women, was expected to sacrifice herself, Stead claimed that she “was the very antithesis of a true woman” (Shaw, Quintessence [1891], 36). Minnie Powell, in what would become O’Casey’s style, demonstrated the waste of such self-sacrifice.

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O’Casey presents more than one perspective, in that they (Davoren and Shields) had only just discovered the bag’s contents and that the auxiliaries would probably not have listened to Davoren’s explanation that the bag had been left by Maguire. After all, the Auxiliaries had destroyed the Grigsons’ room despite the Grigsons being loyalists (to Britain). Their “picture over the mantelpiece of King William crossing the Boyne” is mistaken by the Auxiliaries for a portrait of Irish rebel Robert Emmet (O’Casey, Shadow, 57).19 The brutality and killing in the play is portrayed as pointless, just as there is nothing romantic in either the gunman Maguire leaving a bag of explosives with Shields and Davoren, or in the false perception that Davoren is a gunman, that results with Powell being killed. The Shadow of a Gunman’s fourth performance generated “the largest audience since the first night of Shaw’s [The Shewing-up of ] Blanco Posnet in 1909” (Murray, 143). As the struggle for the ITGWU was escalating, its outcome would be significant for O’Casey. By the 1923 autumn, Larkin and the ITGWU’s Executive Committee, led by O’Brien and Foran, had filed court proceedings against each other, and then engaged in a “propaganda war” while they awaited the trial (Morrissey, O’Brien, 220). The Executive Committee published a pamphlet that asked “Why is Larkin attacking the Transport Union Executive? Because he ran away in 1914 and returned in 1923 to find the Union a powerful and nation-wide organization, with its members enjoying better conditions than those enjoyed by members of any other organization. Larkin cannot bear to think that the Union survived his absence” (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 221).20 Larkin’s argued that the changes enacted by the Executive Committee, particularly those that restricted the General Secretary, were illegal, and he charged that the Executive had mishandled union funds—not unlike the claims that had been made against Daly when O’Brien and Foran removed him from heading the ITGWU’s Insurance division. The court proceedings began on 18 February 1924. During the proceedings, Larkin was allowed to directly question members of the Executive. When questioning O’Brien, Larkin asked about funds in ITGWU branches, namely “Who made up the tot of these so-called figures?” O’Brien confirmed that he did, to which Larkin stated: “Of course, you arranged everything”. O’Brien replied, “I did my duty and have always done so. I faced the rifles when you were in security”,

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to which Larkin asked, “And were you taken over to England?”, presumably referring to those interned following the Rising, and while O’Brien was not a Rising combatant, he was arrested and interned in Wales with Rising rebels (it is remembered that the physically lame O’Brien had assisted Connolly in Rising preparations up to the last minutes). O’Brien replied, “Yes, and taken out of my bed by the Black and Tans on two occasions, when you were far away” (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 223– 224). O’Brien was tying himself to the Rising and the suffering during the War for Independence, and insinuating that Larkin was safely away in the U. S., though Larkin’s time in Sing Sing Prison could not have been comfortable. All of Larkin’s charges, including that union funds in a bank account in 1913 had been misappropriated, were dismissed. On 3 March, O’Brien wrote to Larkin explaining that the next meeting of the Executive would allow him (Larkin) to explain why he should not be suspended nor expelled from the union. On the evening of the same day, O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock premiered at the Abbey Theatre.21 Murray argues that Juno and the Paycock is “the best-constructed of all of O’Casey’s plays” (149). Set during the Civil War and within a small apartment in a tenement house, it follows the Boyle family: Juno Boyle, (Captain) Jack Boyle, Mary Boyle, and Johnny Boyle. Working class and barely able to survive, the family is wrought with the issues of the times. Jack Boyle spends the majority of his time with drinking sponge Joxer Daly, refusing to work and contributing nothing to the family as his unemployment dole is nearly exhausted. His drinking, since it is clear he covers Joxer’s drinks as well as his own, is a drastic drain. Mary is on strike from her employment, and Johnny is unable to work. He bears the scars of Ireland’s wars: he limps due to a bullet in a hip from 1916 and he lost an arm during the Civil War fighting against the Treaty Free State soldiers. Only Juno is employed and working. While the play has been often discussed, it is worth reviewing how O’Casey jabs at much of what he perceives as the burdens pressed onto the working class, from the curse of Captain Boyle’s drinking to Mary’s strike action to Johnny’s suffering to the bourgeois values the Captain and Johnny adhere to when it comes to Mary in Act III. Much of all of this is borne by Juno, one of the great characters of Irish drama, and arguably a variation of Synge’s mother Ireland-image in Riders to the Sea’s Maurya—herself an answer to the romantic nationalist image of mother Ireland in Gregory and Yeats’ Kathleen Ni Houlihan.22

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When Juno asks Mary why she went on strike over the sacking of a person she never liked, Mary replies, in trade union lingo: “What’s the use of belongin’ to a Trades Union if you won’t stand up for your principles? Why did they sack her? It was a clear case of victimisation. We couldn’t let her walk the streets, could we?” To which Juno replies, “No, of course yous couldn’t—yous wanted to keep her company. Wan victim wasn’t enough. When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Unions go wan better be sacrificin’ a hundred” (200). The Trades Unions are criticized further in Act III, when Jerry, a former romantic interest of Mary’s who claims to still love her, returns on hearing she was abandoned by the English Charles Bentham. Jerry, who is standing for the Secretary of his union and is encouraged to think he will secure it, returns to Mary in an effort to resume their relationship, as if saving her. It quickly becomes evident to Mary that Jerry is unaware that she is pregnant, and, as she anticipates, once he learns it he says: “My God, Mary, have you fallen as low as that?” His understanding and love for Mary vanishes, replaced by judgmental bourgeois values. As Mary recites the verse Jerry had read “when you gave the lecture in the Socialist Rooms some time ago, on Humanity’s Strife and Nature”, Jerry walks away. It is not a stretch to imagine that O’Casey harboured such views of O’Brien within the ITGWU, agreeing with Larkin’s charge that O’Brien was pursuing own self-interests before those of the workers. The succumbing to bourgeois values of Jerry Devine is matched by Jack Boyle and Johnny on learning of Mary’s pregnancy. Jack, who demonstrates no redeeming traits in the play and has little to no regard for the welfare of his family, condemns Mary. He makes it clear that he will throw her from the home: “Ay, she’ll leave this place, an’ quick too!” (238). He sees his daughter’s situation in terms of how it will impact him, as if he had a reputation beyond a drunkard: “whenever I’m seen they’ll whisper, ‘That’s th’ father of Mary Boyle that had th’ kid be th’ swank she used to go with”, which is emphasized by Johnny: “She should be dhriven out o’ th’ house she’s brought disgrace on!” (238). Just as Captain Boyle is in no position to be judgmental, neither is Johnny given that it is clear he betrayed his childhood friend and republican comrade Tancred, who was killed by Free State soldiers due to Johnny’s informing. Neither father nor son can show compassion for Mary, and her abandonment by Bentham, who returns to England on realizing the Boyles were to receive no inheritance.

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Echoes from Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island drift through O’Casey’s play, as in Connolly’s Under Which Flag ?, particularly with the Boyles and Bentham. While romantically linking himself to Mary, Bentham, who is studying law, wrote the will of a first cousin of Jack Boyle’s who leaves half of his estate to Boyle and the other half to a second cousin. Lacking any type of business savvy, the Boyles do not realize that the will, upon Boyle reading it, does not specifically name him or the second cousin. This leads to other cousins and relations contesting the will, which results in the Boyle’s receiving none of the £1500–2000, half of the estate. In terms of Shaw’s Broadbent, the Boyles are inefficient. They run into serious debt as Boyle borrows on the expectation of receiving the money, much like the Rosscullen characters who will mortgage their land to Broadbent on the terms of what the land is worth to Broadbent for the planned resort, far more than it could ever be worth to the inefficient Rosscullen characters, allowing Broadbent to foreclose. By plays’ end, Johnny has been taken away and killed in a reprisal by the anti-Treaty IRA. As he is being led off, Johnny asks: “Are yous goin’ to do in a comrade?—look at my arm, I lost it for Ireland”, which is answered with, “Commandant Tancred lost his life for Ireland” (243). Finally, only Juno will stand by Mary and help her raise the child away from Captain Boyle, when she is asked to identify Johnny’s dead body, she repeats the lines she heard Mrs. Tancred say in Act II on her way to bury her son: What was the pain I suffered, Johnny, bringing you into the world to carry you to your cradle, to the pains I’ll suffer carryin’ you out o’ the world to bring you to your grave! Mother o’ God, Mother o’ God, have pity on us all! Blessed Virgin, where were you when me darlin’ son was riddled with bullets, when me darlin’ son was riddled with bullets? Sacred Heart o’ Jesus, take away our heart’s o’ stone, and give us hearts o’ flesh! Take away this murdherin’s hate, an’ give us Thine own eternal love! (245)

O’Casey brings voice to senseless death, particularly the reprisal killings during the Civil War and the War of Independence that preceded it. The implied question the play asks, is how does Tancred’s death or Johnny’s death, one killed by Free State soldiers and the other by anti-Treaty IRA/diehards serve Ireland? Arguably, one of the play’s great achievements is how appropriate it was to 1924 Ireland as it endeavoured to look

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forward after so much suffering, much as Juno and Mary look forward to raising Mary’s child for the future. In this highly accomplished play, O’Casey includes a curious moment in Act I. Captain Boyle is alone cooking his breakfast, when “steps are heard approaching”. The stage direction continues: “The door opens and a bearded man looking in says … ‘You don’t happen to want a sewin’ machine?’” Boyle “furiously” replies, “No I don’t want e’er a sewin’ machin!” (208). No doubt, the moment helps to portray the lack of privacy in the tenements, that a man endeavouring to sell a product can just open the door and intrude. As this brief business requires another actor, in most revivals it is often cut.23 Yet of all the things the man, a bearded man, is selling, it is a sewing machine. It suggests that O’Casey had indeed read The Trembling of the Veil section in Yeats’ Autobiographies with Yeats’ dream of being pursued by a clicking and smiling sewing machine, Bernard Shaw. The selfish and drinking Boyle turns the sewing machine bearded man away, whether the family could use or afford the machine or not. This curious incident hints at another level to O’Casey’s humour in a play so deeply suited to its 1924 Dublin. The end of the play has little room for Boyle’s destructive behaviour: its closing moments look to the future for Mary’s as yet unborn child (assuming the child lives). Perhaps such hope echoes Barlow’s act of conscience at the end of The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman. An intoxicated Boyle enters at play’s end, having drunk the very last of his money: “I can join a … flying … column … I done … me bit … in Easter Week” for Ireland—spoken in mockery of all the fighting for Ireland of the previous years, drunken words and sentiments that should have no place in Ireland’s future.24 In the days after Juno and the Paycock premiered in February 1924, the future of socialism in Ireland, particularly for O’Casey’s admired friend Larkin as well as the ITGWU, was anything but secure. O’Brien, whom O’Casey would remember as “the mangy rat”, moved quickly by acting against the Rapid Transit Company breaking an ITGWU picket line at Dublin’s Kingsbridge Rail Station (O’Casey Letters, II , 65). The Rapid Transit Company was, in fact, owned by Delia Larkin’s husband Patrick Colgan and there was a suggestion that Larkin himself was an investor in the company, which was not denied; Larkin was living in the same house as Delia and Colgan (Watts, 37–38). O’Brien then succeeded in expelling Larkin from the ITGWU. O’Casey, who like Larkin saw O’Brien as the culprit rather than Larkin’s recklessness, would remember Larkin’s expulsion as he began what would be considered the third play of his Dublin

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Trilogy, The Plough and the Stars —meant as a statement on the Rising’s tenth anniversary. As the Irish Civil War ended and Juno premiered amid the struggle for control of the ITGWU, Shaw was writing and completing his Saint Joan, a play he had been considering for more than a decade. The two Irish socialist dramatists in the 1920s were poised to contribute significant work, indeed great work, and Connolly was a presence for both.

Notes 1. The Democratic Programme had largely been drafted by Thomas Johnson of the Irish Trade Union Congress and Labour Party (ITUCLP). A member of the Belfast Union of Shop Assistants he later became president of the ITUCLP. Adrian Grant notes that Johnson was “a constitutionalist whose politics were much closer to the British Labour Party than the socialist republicanism of the [early] ITGWU.... [he would lead] the Irish Labour Party into the Free State Parliament, and would continue to play a comparatively moderate role throughout the years of turmoil which were to follow” (Grant, 72). 2. The ILP was founded in 1912 by Connolly, Larkin, and O’Brien in order to provide workers with political representation. However, its original radicalness was in decline after Connolly’s death and Larkin’s continued absence. By that time, Labour was under pressure to distance itself from militancy, fueled by threats from British authorities to close Liberty Hall. In May 1917, after ICA women raised a banner across Liberty Hall’s façade marking Connolly’s execution, followed by ICA members drilling in the Hall’s main room as they had prior to the Rising (where Under Which Flag ? premiered), British authorities closed Liberty Hall. It would re-open under the condition that the ICA be banned from the building, and no such banners be raised (Morrissey, O’Brien, 118). 3. One Constable, James McDonnell, “was a native speaker from Belmullet, Co. Mayo” (O’Toole, “First Murky”), where Synge set his 1907 The Playboy of the Western World that had asked its audience to contemplate acceptable and unacceptable violence. 4. Shaw’s plays were regularly being produced at the Abbey Theatre since autumn 1916. 5. At this time, O’Casey attempted “a debate play” on Shaw, titled “The Crimson Corncakes”. It was never completed (Murray, 131). 6. Shaw had read serialized sections of Ulysses in the Little Review while writing Back to Methuselah (Gahan, Shaw Shadows, 260). 7. The Russia Shaw refers to here was Tsarist Russia leading into 1914. Shaw submitted letters to the London press criticizing England’s alliance with

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8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

Tsar Nicholas II’s Government, as in “The Peace of Europe and How to Attain It”, in The Daily News and Leader, 1 January 1914. This was revisited in Shaw’s Common Sense About the War, November 1914. Traditionally, the RIC ranks were Irish born. In 1919, Robert Lynd wrote a pamphlet published by the Peace and Ireland Council (of which Shaw was a member) titled “Who Began It?: The Truth about the Murders in Ireland”. Lynd wrote: “It was the agents of the [British] Government who began the killing. It was the Government who began ‘provoking’ the Irish rather than the Irish who began provoking the Government” (www.ricorso.net/rx/az-data/ authors/1/Lynd_R/life.htm). MacSwiney was involved in the Cork Dramatic Society that included Daniel Corkery, who recalled of MacSwiney: “Shaw’s dramatic technique he admired very much” (quoted in Hogan with Burnham and Poteet, 94). MacSwiney’s play The Holocaust was performed by the above Society in December 1910, which focused on the recently failed ITGWU strike of Cork dockworkers. It was the first Irish play set in an Irish tenement. The Dublin paper the Leader reviewed the play, noting it portrayed “the problem of slum life—of unemployment, underfeeding, joylessness, and unregarded misery” (as quoted in Hogan with Burnham and Poteet, 94). Kiltartan is a section of Gort, County Galway, which included Gregory’s Coole Park. The dialogue Gregory used in her plays was based on Kiltartan dialect. During the Rising, when stores and businesses in Dublin’s O’Connell Street area were being looted, Connolly ordered rebel soldiers to fire over the looters’ heads. He refrained from ordering them to shoot the looters. He understood the reasons behind the looting, cognizant of poverty’s impact. Markievicz, in St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons, witnessed little looting. Markievicz elected to fight in the Rising as an ICA member rather than with the Volunteers as she was heavily associated with Connolly during the months leading to the Rising. After 1916, when respected ITGWU organizer and ICA officer William Partridge was buried in County Roscommon in summer 1917, Markievicz delivered the funeral oration and was among the ICA members who fired a volley over Partridge’s grave. (McNally). Labour contested the 1920 Local Elections, securing 394 seats, second to Sinn Fein’s 550 (Grant, 97). In addition to Delia Larkin, other ITGWU officers who resigned over Daly’s dismissal included Michael Mullen, and George Norgrove. O’Brien, during this time, commented that “She [Delia Larkin] and her friends... [had been] very critical of Connolly” (quoted in Morrissey, O’Brien, 170). Norgrove was a 1916 ICA veteran, as were his three daughters and wife.

4

16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

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They all served in the ICA unit led by Sean Connolly that took Dublin’s City Hall but were unable to hold it. Griffith, a member of the Treaty’s negotiation team, had sided with management against workers through the various papers he had edited. Not all Irish Treaty negotiators supported the eventual Treaty, Eskine Childers was one. He had delivered many of the German Mauser rifles brought into Ireland in July 1914, many of which were used in the 1916 Rising. During the Civil War, Childers was executed by the Free State. See Peter Gahan’s “Bernard Shaw in Two Great Irish Houses: Kilteragh and Coole” in Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland. King William was British King William III, who defeated the deposed James II at the Battle of the Boyne, 1690. He became an iconic figure for Protestant loyalists in Ulster. Robert Emmet, also a Protestant, led a failed rebellion against English rule in 1803, and was brutally executed. The charge that Larkin had run away in 1914 was not without some credence. He certainly had been lethargic after the Lockout’s defeat, and he likely knew that A. P. Wilson’s The Slough was to premier at the Abbey Theatre a month after he received the American lecture offer (see Chapter 2). There was also resentment that Larkin had escaped Ireland’s turmoil since 1914. In October 1923, O’Casey’s one-act play Kathleen Listens In premiered. A satirical take on Kathleen Ni Houlihan, the title character of Yeats and Gregory’s 1902 play, questioned the republicanism that Kathleen represented. While not well received, poet Susan Mitchell reviewed it for the Irish Statesman: “O’Casey is not Shaw, but he has a lively mind and no bitterness” (quoted in Murray, 147). In Cathleen Ni Houlihan, Cathleen as mother Ireland calls on her young men to fight and, if necessary, die for her. Synge’s Maurya in Riders to the Sea, and O’Casey’s Juno, bury their sons. The sewing machine man was included in the play’s premier, as well as in James Fagan’s London revivals in 1925 and 1927. He was also included in the 1940 New York revival with Sara Allgood and Barry Fitzgerald, directed by Arthur Shields. “Flying Column” was the name for IRA rural units in the War for Independence. Some anti-Treaty units also functioned as Flying Columns. It was likely that Michael Collins was killed by one.

References Connolly, James. The Axe to the Root and Old Wine in New Bottles. Repsol Pamphlet, Number 14 (no date, c1940).

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———. “A Continental Revolution”. James Connolly’s Selected Writings. Ed. Peter Berresford Ellis. London: Pluto Press, 1973. 239–242. ———. “The Irish Flag”, Workers’ Republic, 8 April 1916. Ferriter, Diarmaid. A Nation and Not a Rabble: Irish Revolution 1913–1923. New York: The Overlook Press, 2015. Gahan, Peter. “Bernard Shaw in Two Great Irish Houses: Kilteragh and Coole”. Bernard Shaw and the Making of Modern Ireland. Ed. Audrey McNamara and Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 205–236. ———. Shaw Shadows: Rereading the Texts of Bernard Shaw. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004. Grant, Adrian. Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909–36. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012. Higgins, Michael D. “Address on the 100th Anniversary of the Inaugural Meeting of the First Dail Eirenann”, https://president.ie/en/diary/details/ president-gives-keynote-address-at-the-centenary-commemoration-of-the-1stdail/speeches (accessed 24 January 2019). Hogan, Robert with Richard Burnham and Daniel P. Poteet. The Abbey Theatre: The Rise of the Realists, 1910–1915. Dublin: Dolmen, 1979. Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw: Volume III, The Lure of Fantasy. London: Chatto and Windus, 1991. Krause, David. “Notes”. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1910–1941, Vol. 1. Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. 87, 183. Laurence, Dan H. and Nicholas Grene. “Notes”. Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and Nicholas Grene. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. Lynd, Robert. “Who Began It?: The Truth About the Murders in Ireland”, www. ricorso.net/rx/az-data/authors/1/Lynd_R/life.htm. McNally, Frank. “Fanfare for a Roscommon Man—An Irishman’s Diary About the Labour Activist and 1916 Rebel William Partridge”, www.irishtimes.com/ opinion/fanfare-for-roscommon-man-an-irishman-s-diary-about-the-labouractivist-and-1916-rebel-william-partridge-1.3152596 (accessed 18 February 2019). Moran, James. The Theatre of Sean O’Casey. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2013. Morrissey, Thomas, S. J. William O’Brien, 1881–1968: Socialist, Republican, Dail Deputy, Editor, and Trade Union Leader. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. Murray, Christopher. Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. 2004. Nevin, Donal. James Connolly: ‘A Full Life’. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005. O’Brien, William. Forth the Banners Go: Reminiscences of William O’Brien as Told to Edward MacLysaght. Dublin: Three Candles Press, 1969.

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O’Brien, William and Cathal O’Shannon. Correspondence manuscripts in the National Library of Ireland, MS, 13,977/12; MS 13,977/14. O’Casey, Sean. Juno and the Paycock. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama. Ed. John P. Harrington. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 197–246. ———. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1910–1941, Vol. 1. Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. ———. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1942–1954, Vol. II . Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1980. ———. The Shadow of a Gunman. Sean O’Casey: Plays, 2. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. 1–62. O’Connor, Emmet. “The Irish Labour History Society: An Outline History”, www.academia.edu/5217266/The_Irish_Labour_History_Society_ An-Outline_History (accessed 2 May 2019). ———. Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia, and the Communist Internationals, 1919–43. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004. O’Toole Fintan. “The First Murky, Inglorious Shots of the War for Independence”, Irish Times, 12 January 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/ heritage/fintan-o-toole-the-first-murky-inglorious-shots-of-the-war-of-indepe ndence-1.3752483 (accessed 12 January 2019). Shaw, George Bernard. “Armaments and Conscription: A Triple Alliance Against the War”. What I Really Wrote About the War. London: Constable, 1931. 8–13. ———. Common Sense About the War. What Shaw Reilly Wrote About the War. Ed. J. L. Wisenthal and Daniel O’Leary. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. 16–84. ———. “The Eve of Civil War”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. ed. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and David H. Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 273–275. ———. Heartbreak House. The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, Vol. V . London: Max Reinhardt, Bodley Head, 1972. 59–181. ———. “Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall”. Heartbreak House. The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, Vol. V . London: Max Reinhardt, Bodley Head, 1972. 11–58. ———. John Bull’s Other Island. London: Penguin Books, 1984. ———. “The Peace ad How to Attain It”, The Daily News, 1 January 1914. ———. Preface to Back to Methuselah. The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, Vol. 5. London: Max Reinhardt, The Bodley Head, 1972. ———. “Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland” in “On Irish Destitution”. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 33. Ed. Michel Pharand. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. 4–16.

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———. The Quintessence of Ibsenism. The Collected Works of Bernard Shaw, Volume XIX . New York: William H. Wise and Company, 1931. ———. Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and Nicholas Grene. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. ———. The Tragedy if an Elderly Gentleman (Part IV). Back to Methuselah. The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw Collected Plays with Their Prefaces, Vol. 5. London: Max Reinhardt, The Bodley Head, 1972. 491–563. Sheehy-Skeffington, F. “London’s Magnificent Rally to the Dublin Rebels”, Daily Herald, 3 November 1913, 1. Sherry, Dave. “Ireland and Scotland in the First World War: From the Dublin Rising to Red Clydeside”, irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr/search/aut hors/view?firstName=Dave&middleName=&lastName=Sherry&affiliation=& country=IE (accessed 2 May 2019). Virdee, Satnam. Racism, Class and the Radicalized Outsider. London: Red Globe Press, 2014. Whelan, Ella. “James Connolly: We Only Want the Earth”, www.spiked-online. com/newsite/article/james-connolly-we-only-want-the-earth/18179#.W2X GlPZFzVg (accessed 4 January 2019). Yeates, Padraig. Lockout Dublin 1913. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2000. Yeats, William Butler. Autobiographies. London: Macmillan, 1991. ———. “The Second Coming”. The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan, 1956. 184–185.

CHAPTER 5

Shaw’s Saint Joan: Martyred Vision

In summer 1923, as O’Casey was between the premiers of The Shadow of the Gunman and Juno and the Paycock, Shaw and Charlotte Shaw visited Ireland for the last time. During this visit, as numerous scholars have noted, Shaw worked on Saint Joan. Declan Kiberd notes that “writing [Saint Joan] in the heart of republican Kerry, that backdrop of so many recent battles [War for Independence and Civil War], Shaw must have sensed many local resonances in the theme of a nation fighting free of the shackles of foreign ownership” (Inventing Ireland, 438). James Moran adds that Shaw, “in describing Joan as someone who clearly wishes” to drive the English out of her country, “may have been thinking about” the wars in Ireland since 1916. He further suggests that Shaw’s Preface to the play “points readers towards parallels between Joan’s experiences and the recent struggles in Ireland” (“Meditations”, 155).1 This is particularly true of references to Roger Casement, who was tried for treason in London after the Rising and hanged.2 Irish echoes in Saint Joan include the discussion in Scene VI, where the English Chaplain criticizes Joan for claiming that the voices she hears speak to her in French. On the Inquisitor asking if Latin would have been correct, the character Cauchon states, “No: he thinks they should have spoken in English” (119). The exchange recalls, and not without a jibe, the Gaelic League debates over Gaelic as Ireland’s national language, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_5

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as opposed to English.3 More directly, Joan echoes the title character in Gregory’s and Yeats’ 1902 Kathleen Ni Houlihan, when she promises Baudricourt, “Your name will be remembered for ever as my first helper” (54); Kathleen promises to those who help her: “They Shall be remembered for ever” (10). McNamara argues that Shaw uses Hibero-English at times for Joan, as in Scene II when she asks: “Where be Dauphin?” (“Saint Joan: A Saint for Ireland” [ACIS 2019 Paper]; Shaw, Saint, 72). And then there are the nods in Saint Joan to Shaw’s earlier plays connected to Dublin’s Abbey Theatre, including one that anticipates Joan’s trial. The Abbey famously premiered Shaw’s The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet in 1909. Set in the wild American west with cowboys and the like, it is first recalled in Saint Joan’s Scene I when Captain Robert de Baudricourt asks his impudent Steward: “Am I squire of Braudricourt and captain of this castle of Vaucouleurs; or am I a cowboy?” (49–50). Whatever “cowboy” may have referred to in fifteenth century France (if the term then existed), those of Saint Joan’s early audiences who knew Shaw’s work would likely have recognized the connection to the earlier play, whether in New York, London, or Dublin.4 In Scene VI, during a discussion as to whether the lesser charges should be dropped in Joan’s trial in order to focus solely on the heresy charge, the character Courcelles objects: “it seems to me that there is a conspiracy here to hush up the fact that The Maid stole the Bishop of Senlis’s horse”. On being told by Cauchon that the trial “is not a police court”, Courcelles exclaims “But the Bishop’s horse! How can she be acquitted for that?” (120). In a comically absurd moment (as in Blanco Posnet ) Courcelles interjects again during Joan’s questioning: “Were you in a state of grace when you stole the Bishop’s horse?” This provokes Cauchon into replying: “(rising in a fury) Oh, devil take the Bishop’s horse and you too! We are here to try a case of heresy; and no sooner do we come to the root of the matter than we are thrown back by idiots who understand nothing but horses” (130). And, of course, recalling the stolen horse charge in Blanco Posnet hints at the similarity between the trials presented in it and Saint Joan, with guilt decided in both before they begin. Saint Joan also recalls O’Flaherty, V. C ., in again borrowing phraseological conventions from Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World (1907) and In the Shadow of the Glen (1903). In O’Flaherty, Shaw generated a rural Irish flavour to its dialogue (see Chapter 2). Yet the reasoning

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behind repeating such borrowing (on limited occasions)—as well as occasional usage of Hibero-English—in Saint Joan cannot be seen as instilling an Irish flavor to the dialogue, but rather as providing an Irish echo. In Saint Joan’s Scene I, Shaw’s Baudricourt blusters about the lack of eggs and demands to know the cause. Eventually his Steward relates that the castle is under a spell “as long as The Maid is at the door” (50–51). After further curses and demands, Baudricourt calls down from his window to Joan outside the castle, to which Joan replies: “Is it me?” (52). In Act I of Synge’s Playboy, when Pegeen states to Christy Mahon, “Wasn’t I telling you, and you a fine handsome young fellow with a noble brow?”, Christy replies, “Is it me?” (77). Shaw uses the reply as both Joan and Christy are surprised by the sudden interest they receive; even Joan, armed with her voices, is surprised that after two days of waiting Baudricourt now calls for her. Since both characters are from rural backgrounds, borrowing the phrase can make sense, again with an Irish echo. A further Irish context for Saint Joan possibly came from the assistance Shaw received from Father Joseph Leonard, of the Catholic Vincentian Order—as various scholars have observed (including McNamara and Gahan). Shaw had met Fr. Leonard in Ireland in 1909 during the summer Blanco Posnet premiered (Laurence, “Notes”, Shaw Collected Letters, III , 795). Leonard was originally from County Sligo, receiving his training in London—perhaps not too unlike the training John Bull’s Other Island’s Peter Keegan received outside of Ireland, having been an Irish priest not trained at the Maynooth seminary: “I’m not a Mnooth man” (94).5 So, like Keegan, Fr. Leonard benefitted from an internationalist perspective in having seen something of the world beyond Ireland. During the Great War, he served in the British army as a decorated chaplain on the western front, reaching the rank of Captain—perhaps confirming Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C . view, that the War provided educational opportunity. Fr. Leonard’s noteworthy friends, in addition to Shaw and Charlotte, included Hazel Lavery, wife of Irish painter John Lavery, and later Jacquelin Bouvier Kennedy.6 Leonard assisted Shaw’s research of Joan. In a 11 December 1922 letter, Shaw remarked that Joan’s trial by the Inquisition had been undertaken “quite mercifully and fairly” (Shaw Collected Letters, III , 795). Leonard, in his reply on 14 December, clarified that the trial was “illegal and unjust. Cauchon [who held the trial without Rome’s involvement] was clearly out for her [Joan’s] death. As an example[,] take what he said, after her retraction, to the English, ‘We shall get her yet’” (quoted in Laurence, “Notes”, Shaw Collected Letters,

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III , 797). This may have been influential, though Cauchon does not state the line in Shaw’s play. However, the play notes that Cauchon ran the trial outside his assigned geographical territory. Shaw acknowledges Leonard (without naming him) in the play’s Preface when published in 1924, being appreciative of Leonard’s advice—an Irish priest with a multi-nationalist perspective. So, with these and other Irish influences and elements that Shaw inserted, or projected into Saint Joan, which possibly included Michael Collins (whom he met days before Collins’ assassination), Shaw’s play carries a relevance for Ireland, and beyond. The recent war years for Ireland resembled, on a smaller scale but still traumatic, the continuous wars France endured during the fifteenth century, making Saint Joan exceedingly pertinent as Shaw endeavoured to address how history is to record and view the distant and recent past. In his Preface to the play, Shaw alludes to “the Joan of the first part of the Elizabethan chronicle play of Henry VI (supposed to have been tinkered [with] by Shakespear) [that] grossly libels her in its concluding scenes in deference to Jingo patriotism” (10). Shaw is correct, of course, in his assessment of Henry VI, Part I ’s portrayal of Joan, being in excessive service to English nationalism during Elizabeth I’s reign, just as Shakespeare’s Richard III validates Henry Tudor, affirming Elizabeth I’s Tudor throne. Shaw notes that the impression “left by it [Henry VI, Part I ] is that the playwright [probably a collaboration of playwrights including young Shakespeare], having begun by an attempt to make Joan a beautiful and romantic figure, was told by his scandalized company that English patriotism would never stand a sympathetic representation of a French conqueror of English troops, and that unless he at once introduced all the old charges against Joan of being a sorceress and harlot, and assumed her to be guilty of them, his play could not be produced” (23).7 Shaw well knew of such stifling of historical truth in the interest of national ideologies. And throughout his long career as playwright and journalist, Shaw was committed to the truth—as he saw it. During the Great War, his journalism afforded him direct and quick responses, as in Common Sense About the War, where Shaw dealt with the present for the future: “I am writing history because an accurate knowledge of what has occurred is … indispensable” (34). But as the guns stopped, Shaw had now to consider the historical process and its tendency, or need, for creating martyrs, as with his martyred Joan within the present

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context of 1923–1924. For his part, O’Casey would make his own decisions as he began composing The Plough and the Stars . And permeating both was the continued presence of Connolly, seven years dead in 1923.

History Saint Joan had its premier, with Winifred Lenihan as Joan, in late December 1923 with the New York Theatre Guild, which had premiered Heartbreak House and Back to Methuselah in 1920 and 1922, respectively. Saint Joan’s London premier was in March 1924 with Sybil Thorndike. Despite the play’s Irish ties, Shaw refused Lady Gregory’s request to premier it in Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. At first, Shaw, in a 22 November 1924 letter to Gregory, stated that Thorndike would tour in the play after its initial London run, “round the big cities” (Shaw, Gregory, 173). On 10 June 1925, Shaw wrote to Gregory explaining that Thorndike’s husband “let” slip the opportunity for a Thorndike tour of the play, adding that “only a big house [theatre] could stand the length of its cast and the price of its costumes and scenic fit-up” (echoing Yeats’ rejection explanation of John Bull’s Other Island in 1904, that it was too large for the Abbey’s small stage) (Shaw, Gregory, 174). Instead, Saint Joan’s Dublin premier, on 22 June 1925, was with the Charles Macdona Players, which featured Dorothy Holmes-Gore as Joan (Grene and McFeely, 245).8 The Irish Times review of that premier, appearing on 23 June, ran with the header, “‘SAINT JOAN’, MR. SHAW’S MASTERPIECE PRODUCED IN DUBLIN”: Last night “Saint Joan” was produced for the first time in Dublin at the Gaiety Theatre, before a crowded and most enthusiastic audience. Beautifully staged, the piece was acted well, if somewhat unevenly, by the Macdona Players. Never before, perhaps, has stronger meat been given us in modern drama. It is a play of terrible daring, which yet justifies its author’s audacity, and never loses the cool dramatic temper. Its fineness of language, and fullness of intellectual suggestion, are beyond appreciation at a single hearing, and the play must be read, after seeing, to be enjoyed completely. Mr. Shaw’s accomplished stagecraft seasons even its enormously long speeches with subtle relief, and many moments of intense dramatic excitement grip the attention of the dullest. Many a play-goer is moved who hardly glimpses the depths of thought which the author opens; but there is none who could fail to recognize a ripeness and strength seldom seen outside classic drama. (6)

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The review concludes: “Dublin should be grateful to Mr. Macdona for the greatest dramatic treat of many years”. Of Dorothy Holmes-Gore’s Joan, the review states: “Joan was splendidly played … [her] rich voice filled the passages of eloquence with overmastering conviction” (6). Given the force of the role, the long litany of actors triumphing in the role of Joan had begun.9 In his Preface, Shaw discusses some of the numerous topics he touched on in the play, such as “Joan’s Manliness and Militarism”. While this carries shades of Shaw’s long support of women’s suffrage and feminism, it specifically addresses Joan’s “craze for soldiering and the masculine life” (19). Shaw suggests that Joan “was the sort of woman that wants to lead a man’s life” (what was perceived as a “man’s life” as opposed to a woman’s life), and then proceeds to touch on the phenomena of women who have historically posed as men in armies and navies, fighting essentially as men. Shaw also mentions women who lived as men within civilian life, such as French novelist George Sand (20). He suggests that had Joan “not been one of those ‘unwomanly women’, she might have been canonized much sooner” (20). Shaw may be acknowledging, without specifying, George Moore’s 1918 novella Albert Nobbs , yet he expands this notion into the movement that emerged in small degrees during the Great War, namely modern women fighting in armies as women. In the Preface, Shaw writes: “In reactionary Russia in our own century a woman soldier organized an effective regiment of amazons, which disappeared only because it was Aldershottian enough to be against the Revolution” (20). Shaw was referring to Maria Bochkareva who had formed the Women’s Death Battalion in spring 1917, following the February Revolution. Bochkareva, “an uneducated peasant”, organized the battalion to supplement the Russian battalions still fighting on the German front, serving the bourgeoise Provisional Government (“Women’s”).10 With the Provisional Government continuing to fight in the War after Nicholas II’s abdication, many of the regular battalions had suffered significant casualties, desertions, and mutinies by the spring and summer of 1917 (Chapter 3). The news of the Women’s Death Battalion and its leader reached London through Emmeline Pankhurst’s visit to Russia in spring and summer 1917. Pankhurst had travelled to Russia hoping to contribute to the shaping of post-Tsarist society. Also, she, as Shaw in 1917, was adamant that Russia should remain in the War to keep German forces divided between multiple fronts. On viewing the Women’s Death Battalion training and marching, with Bochkareva at its

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front, Pankhurst stated that the “wonderful, splendid woman” leading them was “the greatest thing in history since Joan of Arc” (quoted in Rappaport, Caught, 197). Pankhurst and Bochkareva posed for press photographs together, with the former endeavouring to be thoroughly supportive. Pankhurst also delivered a fund-raising speech in Petrograd in support of the Battalion, and she was present when Bochkareva was presented with her Ensign rank and officer’s sword.11 In July, the Battalion “went over the top against the Germans, during a five-day battle at Smorgan” (Rappaport, Caught, 200). After the battle, Pankhurst telegraphed London: First Women’s Battalion number[ed] two hundred and fifty. Took place of retreating troops. In counter attack made one hundred prisoners including two officers. Only five weeks training. Their leader wounded. Have earned undying fame, moral effect great. (Quoted in Rappaport, Caught, 201)12

Given Pankhurst’s enthusiasm for the Battalion, and its coverage in the American and British press that she encouraged, it is understandable how Shaw learned of Bochkareva and her Battalion, including Pankhurst’s Joan of Arc allusion. In addition, Pankhurst spoke twice in London with her travelling colleague while in Russia, Jessie Kenney, on what they called their “Russian Mission” at Queen’s Hall in November 1917—they had left Russia in September.13 As Shaw indicated in his Saint Joan Preface, Bochkareva’s Battalion remained loyal to the Provisional Government, which, of course, collapsed. Sometime after the October Revolution, Bochkareva was arrested. She was executed by Bolsheviks in 1920, but unlike Joan, has been largely forgotten by history—even though her autobiography, My Peasant Life and Exile, was published in 1919 by Shaw’s London publisher Constable. In the Preface to Saint Joan, Shaw refers to the question of writing history: … history books deal with periods of which the thinking has passed out of fashion, and the circumstances no longer apply to active life. For example, they are taught history about Washington, and told lies about Lenin. In Washington’s time they were told lies (the same lies) about Washington, and taught history about Cromwell. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they were told lies about Joan, and by this time might very well be told the truth about her.

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This last phrase reflects, of course, Shaw’s suggestion that his play is telling Joan’s truth. However, it also projects Shaw’s approach to the process of history, which is beyond the cliché that over time truth or real history can be told. Shaw continues: Unfortunately the lies did not cease when the political circumstances became obsolete. The Reformation, which Joan had unconsciously anticipated, kept the questions which arose in her case burning up to our own day (you can see plenty of the burnt houses still in Ireland), with the result that Joan has remained the subject of anti-Clerical lies, of specifically Protestant lies, and of Roman Catholic evasions of her unconscious Protestantism. The truth sticks in our throats with all the sauces it is served with: it will never go down until we take it without any sauce at all. (40)

Shaw’s reference to “burnt houses” in Ireland refers to the landed estates burnt during the War for Independence and Civil War, with most of the houses having belonged to Irish Protestant landowners. On some occasions, such burnings were related to public activity by the given landowner, such as assisting British or (during the Civil War) Free State forces, but many were burnt merely because the owners were Protestants. The sectarian element, particularly in rural Ireland, bled into the activity of rural republican units, which mostly or exclusively were composed of Catholic members.14 This was evidenced by the burning of Charlotte Shaw’s former family estate in rural Roscarberry, Cork, Derry House, and the burning of Horace Plunkett’s Kilteragh outside Dublin. The latter seems particularly egregious given Plunkett’s long efforts on behalf of improving Ireland—but, of course, having had Collins to his home shortly before Collins’ death, since Collins was most likely followed, may have made Kilteragh a target of anti-Treaty republican forces, who burnt it.15 By suggesting that history, or historical truth will never “go down”, never be intelligently processed, until history can be presented without the “sauce” or sauces of ideologies and various prejudices, carries with it the essence of historical truth, the truth of history. This not only becomes a prominent focus of Saint Joan, it became, through the play, the watchword for the plays for a socialist Ireland through the 1920s, as strands of differing political ideologies jockeyed towards a new Ireland, whatever and whenever that would materialize. The process of history, raising not only the question of historical distancing (whatever the number of years) but also the application (by writer or audiences/readers) of “sauces”.

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For example, Bochkareva’s Women’s Death Battalion in Shaw’s Preface had a slightly earlier precedent: the women members of the Irish Citizen Army who fought during the 1916 Rising. These specifically included the ICA women who fought in Dublin’s City Hall garrison,16 as well as those who fought in the ICA occupation of St. Stephen’s Green/Royal College of Surgeons that included as second-in-command Constance Markievicz, who performed Joan of Arc in a 1914 Suffrage Pageant and wore a man’s uniform during the Rising (Markievicz Photograph).17 Additional ICA women included Winifred Carney, who served in the GPO as James Connolly’s adjutant. These ICA women represented the first instances of organized women as women combatants in modern war. Did Shaw allude to the Russian example over the Irish because it was further removed (geographically) from the recent conflicts in Ireland, and without the “sauce” of Irish wars? If we answer yes, then there is some sense that Saint Joan is definitely commenting on recent Irish and British history—but, of course, the international Shaw did not tie his play to one country, any more than he tied his play to only fifteenth century France. However, the radicalness of the ICA’s women and the ICA’s ideologies as derived from Connolly (and, indeed, O’Casey who drafted ICA’s constitution) were increasingly out of favour with the conservative Irish Free State that emerged after the Civil War, as well as out of favour with Britain. That made it nearly impossible to even allude to the 1916 ICA women without readers/audiences applying their ideologies and, or prejudices—“sauces”—to muddle the historical truth. Similarly, if the Russian Women’s Death Battalion had joined the Bolsheviks, mentioning them in 1924 would have caused the applications of “sauces” given the west’s then anti-Lenin prejudices.

The Play In Scene I, given the play’s feudal context, Shaw raises the question of class, specifically through Baudricourt when he tells Poulengey about Joan’s background: She’s not a farm wench. She’s a bourgeoise. That matters a great deal. I know her class exactly. Her father came here last year to represent his village in a lawsuit: he is one of their notables. A farmer. Not a gentleman farmer: he makes money by it, and lives by it. Still, not a laborer. Not a mechanic.

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As such, Baudricourt warns: “if you get her into trouble, you may get me into no end of a mess, as I am her father’s lord, and responsible for her protection. So friends or no friends, Polly, hands off her” (55). Beyond the statement that peasant women were subject to sexual abuse from men of higher feudal ranks, establishing Joan’s class in the opening scene is extremely relevant from Shaw’s perspective. He devotes a section to it in the play’s Preface, “Joan’s Social Position”, and revisits it in his “Saint Joan” lecture he delivered on 30 May, 1931—the 500th anniversary of Joan’s execution. The Preface states: “By class Joan was the daughter of a working farmer who was one of the headmen of his village, and transacted its feudal business for it with neighboring squires and their lawyers”. Shaw continues, “These facts leave us no excuse for the popular romance that turns every heroine into either a princess or a beggar-maid” (12). Obviously, Shaw is making the case for the truthfulness of his Joan portrayal, but importantly for this is his sense of Joan’s class. He endeavours in the Preface, and again in 1931, to overcome the fact that Joan was illiterate, like most fifteenth century women regardless of social class. Shaw acknowledges: “many princesses at that time and for long after might have” been illiterate and cites Marie Antoinette as being unable to spell her own name at Joan’s age (12). Then Shaw states, this does not mean that Joan was an ignorant person, or that she suffered from the diffidence and sense of social disadvantage now felt by people who cannot read or write. If she could not write letters, she could and did dictate them and attach full and indeed excessive importance to them. (12)18

Shaw was arguing that Joan was capable of understanding “the political and military situation in France much better than most of our newspaper fed university women-graduates understand the corresponding situation of their own country today”, and adds that. knowledge of an interest in public affairs was nothing extraordinary among farmers in a war-swept countryside…. Joan’s people could not afford to be ignorant of what was going on in the feudal world. They were not rich; and Joan worked on the farm as her father did, driving the sheep to pasture and so forth. (13)

Shaw further emphasizes, that “there is no evidence or suggestion of sordid poverty” in Joan’s history, and claims that she was “even” more

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“of an intellectual, than most of the daughters of our petty bourgeoisie” (13). In Shaw’s progressive argument, establishing Joan’s class is crucial for undermining any assumptions that Joan is ignorant. To Shaw, sordid poverty, more often than not, meant ignorance. In his 1912 Fabian Society lecture “The Crime of Poverty”, Shaw argued, “The greatest curse of poverty is that it destroys the will power of the poor until they become the most ardent supporters of their own poverty” (96). Thus, Shaw chooses to stress an intelligent Joan in the Preface and through the play. After all, if the play functions as an exploration of the historical process leading towards Joan’s martyrdom, and later her rehabilitation, it must hinge on her intelligence as opposed to sorcery or the like. To Shaw’s thinking, an intellectual was/is probably the highest attainable rank, regardless of class—though it is usually, again Shaw’s thinking, achieved by those not born to severe poverty, or by those who manage to extricate themselves out of poverty. A case of the latter for Shaw would have been Connolly, if he was aware of Connolly’s Edinburgh-Cowgate poverty he was born to; despite Connolly’s near constant hardships to financially support his family, he mostly managed to avoid the life of a menial worker after he left Singer’s New Jersey factory, replacing it with work as a trade unionist-organizer and socialist theorist. From Shaw’s mentioning of Connolly in War Issues for Irishmen (and Shaw’s financial contribution to Connolly’s family after his execution), from Connolly’s speech he had witnessed in 1913, to Connolly’s socialistic writings that he likely encountered in the 1917 Labour in Ireland with Lynd’s Introduction, Shaw viewed Connolly as possessing high intellectual abilities.19 To achieve what Joan set herself to accomplish, as well as Connolly and other martyrs to their respective causes among Shaw’s contemporaries, intelligence was a prerequisite; in Scene I, it is imperative that Joan is shown as intelligent and knows how to advance. Shaw makes clear in his Preface that he was/is prepared to see Joan as not only a saint, whom the Church will (eventually) recognize for supernatural actions “eligible for canonization”, but also—most importantly—as a genius. Shaw casts off the lingering nineteenth century tendency to portray women protagonists as romantic objects (10). He defines genius as “a person who, seeing further and probing deeper than other people, has a different set of ethical valuations from theirs, and has the energy enough to give effect to this extra vision and its valuations in whatever manner best suits his or her specific talents” (10). Indeed.

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The next element of Joan that Shaw presents in the play is her dangerousness, which Shaw speaks of in his 1931 “Saint Joan” lecture as an attribute that “arises with almost every person of extraordinary ability” (214). In Scene II, it is the dull-witted and ineffective Charles, or the Dauphin, who recognizes Joan’s dangerousness, if unable to fully appreciate its relevance. On discussing Joan being sent by Baudricourt, Charles tells the Archbishop that “she is coming to me: to me, the king, not to you, Archbishop, holy as you are” (67). It speaks of the social shifts Joan represents for Shaw, anticipating Protestantism, where a king is elevated above Church leaders answering directly to God and the people to the King (bypassing priests); the collapse of both old Catholicism and feudalism. The Archbishop tells Charles, with all the authority his position has enjoyed: “You cannot be allowed to see this crazy wench”. Charles replies “(turning) But I am the king; and I will”. The coming secular social shift immediately follows with La Tremouille sating “(brutally) Then she cannot be allowed to see you. Now!” with Charles answering, “I tell you I will. I am going to put my foot down—”(67). After further discussion regarding the failure to recapture Orleans and the failure of the priests’ prayers for a west wind to allow the army’s advance upriver to Orleans, Joan is sent for. Following another dialogue on the nature of Church miracles and half-truths uttered by diplomats and military leaders, which echoes Common Sense About the War, Joan enters. In demanding to speak to the king alone, she again threatens the social order but the Archbishop and others eventually accede to her visit. By scene’s end, Charles has given the command of his army to Joan, without consulting either the Archbishop or the feudal lords, essentially bypassing the conventional Church and secular orders. Scene III, set at the start of the siege of Orleans on 29 April 1429, portrays Dunois turning over the King’s army to Joan, while also revealing further insight into Joan’s dangerousness. (As James Moran indicates, 29 April was coincidentally the day the rebel headquarters surrendered during Ireland’s 1916 Rising [157].) In their discussion, Dunois remarks that Joan is in love with war, to which she replies that the Archbishop in Scene II had said she was in love with religion. Dunois asks, “Do you want to be like a woman with two husbands?” Joan responds: I will never take a husband…. I am a soldier: I do not want to be thought of as a woman. I will not dress as a woman. I do not care for the things

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women care for. They dream of lovers, and of money. I dream of leading a charge, and of placing big guns. (83)

Such sentiment from Joan, of course, suggests the suffragette movement in Shaw’s time, and its modern women warriors, as in Russia’s Women’s Death Battalion, and others like the 1916 ICA women—including those who never sought conventional marriages, such “dangerous” women as Kathleen Lynn, Madelaine ffrench-Mullen, Margaret Skinnider, Helena Molony, and Rose Hackett to name a few. Joan negates Dunois’ suggestion of church before battle: “the English will not yield to prayers: they understand nothing but hard knocks and slashes” (84). Such a statement would have been frequently expressed in Ireland in the decade prior to Shaw completing the play, as well by populations of most British colonies, and by the axis allies during the Great War. Dunois exits, “dragging her [Joan] along with him” after Joan admitted to tears. Dunois says, “Never mind the tears; make for the flash of the guns”. Shaw is true to his word in portraying Joan as real. In his Preface, he dismissed Friedrich Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans (1801): “Schiller’s Joan has not a single point of contact with the real Joan, nor indeed with any mortal woman that ever walked this earth” (23). Not all courage and fearlessness, Shaw’s Joan is moved by the moment of attack, partially fulfilling her commitment to her voices (85). Scene IV introduces the English Earl of Warwick and Cauchon, the Bishop of Beauvais of northern France (he had “been turned out of his diocese by her [Joan’s] faction”) (88), along with an English Chaplain (who is first seen writing at a table, as a clerk). In the opening dialogue between Warwick and the Chaplain, Warwick reacts to the use of “Frenchman” for the various regional factions within France: “They actually talk of France and England as their countries. Theirs, if you please! What is to become of me and you if that way of thinking comes into fashion?” The dull-witted Chaplain asks how can such “hurt us?” Warwick replies: “Men cannot have two masters. If this cant of serving their country once takes hold of them, good-bye to the authority of their feudal lords, and goodbye to the authority of the Church. That is, goodbye to you and me”. On hearing that Warwick may attempt to buy Joan from Charles’ followers, concedes that middlemen will require payments, the Chaplain exhibits the anti-Semitism prevalent at the time— and since—among many Christian Europeans. Warwick, as a practical

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feudal lord, replies: “In my experience the men who want something for nothing are invariably Christians” (88). Once Cauchon enters, Warwick admits to him that his feudal army cannot prevent Charles being crowned at Rheims, “practically by the young woman from Lorraine”. They then discuss Joan. The Chaplain serves the scene by representing unreasonable prejudices, in this case English, but of which Warwick does not practice. The Chaplain insists “No Englishman is ever fairly beaten”, to which Warwick explains to Cauchon, “Our friend here takes the view that the young woman is a sorceress. It would, I presume, be the duty of your reverence lordship to denounce her to the Inquisition, and have her burnt for that offence”. Cauchon replies affirmatively were Joan to be captured in his diocese, where he would have Church responsibility (89). Warwick and Cauchon, as accomplished diplomats, discuss Joan while dismissing the Chaplain’s constant fantastic bursts denouncing Joan as a witch. Cauchon carefully replies, “She is not a witch. She is a heretic”. Again, working their way through the Chaplain’s interruptions, Warwick states directly to Cauchon, “My lord: I wipe the slate as far as the witchcraft goes. None the less, we must burn the woman”. Cauchon: “I cannot burn her. The Church cannot take life. And my first duty is to seek this girl’s salvation”. Warwick follows with: “No doubt. But you do burn people occasionally”. Cauchon clarifies that when the Church judges one to be a heretic, “the heretic is handed over to the secular arm”. Warwick replies: “Precisely, And I shall be the secular arm in this case…. If you will answer for the Church’s part, I will answer for the secular part” (92–93). Cauchon insists that he will not be used politically, “I will not suffer your lordship to smile at me as if I were repeating a meaningless form of words, and it were well understood between us that I should betray the girl to you. I am no mere political bishop…. if there be a loophole through which this baptized child of God can creep to her salvation, I shall guide her to it”. On being accused as a traitor by the Chaplain, Cauchon turns “Trembling with rage”. Warwick defuses the conversation by saying to Cauchon that traitor “does not mean in England what it does in France. In your language traitor means betrayer: one who is perfidious, treacherous, unfaithful, disloyal. In our country [rather nationalistically for Warwick after earlier denouncing such tendencies] it means simply one who is not wholly devoted to our English interests” (93). This English definition is interesting given the play’s 1923/24 context, in light of those executed by the British for being traitors, including the 1916 leaders and Casement.

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After all, Shaw’s contention was that the Irish Rising’s leaders were not traitors since they were not English. Interestingly as the scene continues, the Chaplain interjects again by asking how Joan can be accused of heresy when she neglects the observance of “a faithful daughter of The Church?” Cauchon defines Joan’s behaviour: “She sends letters to the king of England giving him God’s command through her to return to his island on pain of God’s vengeance, which she will execute…. Has she ever in all her utterances said one word of The Church? Never. It is always God and herself”. Warwick, quick on the reply, says in further provocation, either in ignorance of Joan’s social class or dismissive of it in his feudal world: “What can you expect? A beggar on horseback! Her head is turned”. Cauchon replies that Joan’s head has been turned by the devil, “He is spreading this heresy everywhere…. It is cancerous: if it be not cut out, stamped out, burnt out, it will not stop until it has brought the whole body of human society into sin and corruption, into waste and ruin”. He goes on: What will the world be like when The Church’s accumulated wisdom and knowledge and experience, its councils of learned, venerable men, are thrust into the kennel by every ignorant laborer or dairymaid whom the devil can puff up with the monstrous self-conceit of being directly inspired from heaven? It will be a world of blood, of fury, of devastation, of each man striving for his own hand: in the end a world wrecked back into barbarism.

Warwick replies, almost with a comedic touch, “You feel strongly about it, naturally” (95–96). Warwick proceeds to lead Cauchon to view Joan from his feudal position: “you have noticed that in these letters of hers, she proposes to all the kings of Europe, as she has already pressed on Charles, a transaction which would wreck the whole social structure of Christendom? … there are temporal institutions in the world as well as spiritual ones. I and my peers represent the feudal aristocracy as you represent The Church. We are the temporal power. Well, do you not see how this girl’s idea strikes at us? … Her idea is that kings should give their realms to God, and then reign as God’s bailiffs”. Cauchon first sees such as “sound theologically” until Warwick continues:

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It is a cunning device to supersede the aristocracy, and make the king the sole and absolute autocrat. Instead of the king being merely the first among his peers, he becomes their master. That we cannot suffer: we call no man master. Nominally we hold our lands and dignities from the king, because there must be a keystone to the arch of human society; but we hold our lands in our own hands, and defend them with our own swords and those of our tenants. Now by The Maid’s doctrine the king will take our lands—our lands!—and make them a present to God; and God will then vest them wholly in the king. (97)

Cauchon responds to Warwick: “I see you are no friend to the Church: you are an earl first and last, as I am a churchman first and last. But can we not sink our differences in the face of a common enemy? I see now that what is in your mind is not that this girl has never once mentioned The Church, and thinks only of God and herself, but that she has never once mentioned the peerage, and thinks only of the king and herself” (98). Warwick responds in agreement, “Quite so. These ideas of hers are the same idea at bottom. It goes deep, my lord. It is the protest of the individual soul against the interference of priest or peer between the private man and his God. I should call it Protestantism if I had to find a name for it” (98–99). Cauchon continues with a speech that curiously anticipates Brexit and other populist causes, such as “America First”, and which may explain the many revivals of the play since 2016: … as a priest I have gained a knowledge of the minds of the common people; and there you will find yet another most dangerous idea. I can express it only by such phrases as France for the French, England for the English, Italy for the Italians. Spain for the Spanish, and so forth. It is sometimes so narrow and bitter in country folk that it surprises me that this country girl can rise above the idea of her village for its villagers. But she can. She does. When she threatens to drive the English from the soil of France she is undoubtedly thinking of the whole extent of country in which French is spoken. To her the French-speaking people are what the Holy Scriptures describe as a nation. Call this side of her heresy Nationalism if you will. I can find you no better name for it. I can only tell you that it is essentially anti-Catholic and anti-Christian; for the Catholic Church knows only one realm, and that is the realm of Christ’s kingdom. Divide that kingdom into nations, and you dethrone Christ. Dethrone Christ, and who will stand between our throats and the sword? The world will perish in a welter of war. (99)

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Joan’s form of nationalism is qualified in that she claims no goals for occupying territory that is not France, as she defines France. She expresses no designs to assert French control over England in England, once the English return to England. This is perhaps a fine distinction, but in this vein Shaw sees an internationalist tint to Joan’s nationalism in as much as colonial power, imperialism, is driven (or at least rationalized) by a keen sense of nationalism, in which illusions of nationalist superiority are fostered and generated. Without imperialism, constructive internationalism can prosper. After hearing Cauchon’s speech on the nationalist aspect of Joan’s heresy, Warwick, at his most cynical responds: “Well, if you will burn the Protestant, I will burn the Nationalist, though perhaps I shall not carry Messire John [the Chaplain] with me there. England for the English will appeal to him”. The Chaplain replies to this jibe, accenting the dangers of nationalism feeding imperial ambitions and conquests: “Certainly England for the English goes without saying: it is the simple law of nature. But this woman denies to England her legitimate conquests, given her by God because of her peculiar fitness to rule over less civilized races for their own good”. He continues by expressing what “plain commonsense”, or rather what his nationalist/imperialist ignorance dictates him to see: the woman is a rebel; and that is enough for me. She rebels against Nature by wearing man’s clothes, and fighting. She rebels against The Church by usurping the divine authority of the Pope. She rebels against God by her damnable league with Satan and his evil spirits against our army. And all these rebellions are only excuses for her great rebellion against England. That is not to be endured. Let her perish. Let her burn. Let her not infect the whole flock. It is expedient that one woman die for the people. (99–100)

The Chaplain’s speech affirms imperialism via nationalism’s belief in its given superiority over “the other”. His views are consistent with the colonialist mindset, as illustrated by the Denshawai incident in Egypt and official Britain’s response to Irish rebellions, 1916–1921, as well as in its colonies. That Joan should “die for the people”, of course, reverberates with Christ’s crucifixion (from the Roman perspective) and plays on Christ’s sacrifice for all, but the sentence also reflects on the Irish rebels who were executed in 1916—though one execution was not enough, any

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more than one execution was ever enough for ancient Rome. The Chaplain’s comment recalls Lynd’s “If the Germans Conquered England”, published in the 1 April 1916 New Statesmen and excerpted in Irish War News by Connolly during the Rising (See Chapter 2), with his assertion that those occupied by a foreign power would rebel, just as the English would if occupied by Germany. In the next scene, Scene V, when he states that he will be able to drive the English out: “They have no roots here” (105), Dunois echoes the strength of those who rebel against an occupier. Scene V follows Charles’ coronation as king and opens with Joan and Dunois. The former confirms that during the battle for Orleans, “We lived at the bridge”, and finds life without battle, “when there is no danger; oh, so dull! dull! dull!” (101). Her sentiments echo those of Robert Gregory during Shaw’s 1917 visit to the Western Front. In a February 1918 letter to Lady Gregory, after learning of Robert’s death in the War, Shaw stated that Robert told him that “the six months he had been there had been the happiest of his life”. He added, “To a man with his power of standing up to danger—which must mean enjoying it—war must have intensified his life as nothing else could; he got a grip of it that he could not through art or love” (Shaw, Gregory, 137–138). The scene continues with Dunois revealing to Joan that she has few friends in Charles’ court, to which she asks: “Why do all these courtiers and knights and churchmen hate me? What have I done to them?” (101). Unable to see her impact on Charles, the feudal lords, and Churchmen, Dunois asks her, “Do you expect stupid people to love you for shewing them up?” Joan remarks that she thinks Dunois is her only friend, and, when she says she will return home after they take Paris, Dunois states: “Some … would rather Paris took you, I think. So take care” (102). On entering, Charles confirms that he does not want Paris taken: “let us be content with what we have done. Let us make a treaty. Our luck is too good to last; and now is our chance to stop before it turns”. Joan, incensed, reprimands the king: “Luck! God has fought for us; and you call it luck! And you would stop while there are still Englishmen on this holy earth of dear France!” (105). This last sentence echoes anti-Treaty Irish republicans who fought over a treaty that, among other conditions, left most of Ulster with England. After the Archbishop admonishes Joan, followed by Charles asking why Joan’s voices do not speak to him as king (beginning to see himself elevated over feudal lords and churchmen), Joan replies: “They do come to you; but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the

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evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it” (106). While certainly only conjecture, and the angelus bell was common throughout Catholic Europe, alluding to it in the play may carry a further context related to the 1916 Dublin Rising. Veterans of the ICA recalled hearing the noon angelus bell ringing as they marched from the ITGWU’s Liberty Hall into the Rising. Rose Hackett, an ICA member, in her official 1930s witnesses statement as a Rising participant, recalled as her contingent headed for St. Stephen’s Green: “I know we passed Clarendon Street chapel when the Angelus bell rang, and we were ordered to go on the double [march]”, suggesting that the bell was the signal (Hackett-WSRef#546).20 While Shaw obviously could not have known of witness statements made in the 1930s when writing Saint Joan, he knew Dublin and knew the noon bell would have rung from the city’s Catholic churches when the Rising’s rebels marched to their garrisons.21 London press reports repeatedly indicated the time rebellion started, and Shaw may have surmised the bell’s importance to those who, like many of the working-class ICA, did not own watches. ICA’s Matthew Connolly (no relation to James) who fought in the City Hall, recalled the Rising’s first day combat: “It was hard to keep track of time, it is hardly likely any of our men carried a watch” (quoted in Bateson, 27). Perhaps it was the mixing of spiritual and secular, as seen in Shaw’s play. After Joan lectures the King, the Archbishop, La Hire, Bluebeard, and Dunois on the need to take Paris, Dunois strongly states: “Do not think, any of you, that these victories of ours were won without generalship …. the people will run after The Maid and her miracles and not after the Bastard’s [himself] hard work finding troops for her and feeding them. But I know exactly how much God did for us through The Maid, and how much He left me to do by my own wits; and I tell you that your little hour of miracles is over, and that from this time on he who plays the war game best will win—if the luck is on his side” (107–108). Joan is incredulous that if the English capture her, she will be burnt as a witch, and realizes that none of the French feudal lords will risk rescuing her if the capture occurs. When the Archbishop tells her, “You stand alone”, Joan replies, “I have better friends and better counsel than yours” (111). She exits stating: “I will go out now to the common people, and let the love in their eyes comfort me for the hate in yours. You will be glad to see me burnt; but if I go through the fire I shall go through it to their hearts for ever and ever. And so, God be with me!” (112). La Hire admits, after she exits, “I could follow her to hell when the spirit rises in her like

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that” (113). Interestingly, the remark echoes one Michael Collins made regarding James Connolly, recalling their time together in the GPO rebel headquarters during the Rising, the only time the bourgeoise Collins ever had contact with Connolly: “Connolly was a realist…. There was an air of earthy directness from Connolly. I would have followed him through hell had such action been necessary” (“James Connolly”). Perhaps Collins repeated the comment at Plunkett’s dinner when he met Shaw, two days prior to being killed. If they discussed de Valera’s lack of military experience (Chapter 4), it is possible the comment was made—and, it is possible that Shaw asked Collins about Connolly in the Rising—again conjecture, but possible. Scene VI. Scene VI, set on 30 May 1431 in Rouen, opens with final preparations for Joan’s trial after months of church examinations. The Inquisitor confides to Warwick that after thinking the case was only political, he changed his view after sitting in for two examinations of Joan; believing now that it is “one of the gravest cases of heresy within my experience”. Despite such a conclusion of Joan’s guilt before the trial commences, the Inquisitor adds: “Never has there been a fairer examination within my experience, my lord. The Maid needs no lawyers to take her part: she will be tried by her most faithful friends”. “Friends”, of course, who are convinced of her guilt, prosecuting her trial, and judging her. After the Promoter (Prosecutor) D’Estivet claims to have implored “her to have pity on herself”, Warwick reiterates his position: “we certainly do not share your pious desire to save The Maid: in fact I tell you now plainly that her death is a political necessity which I regret but cannot help”. After being assured that Joan continues to condemn herself when questioned, “You need have no anxiety about the result, my lord,” prompting Warwick’s response: “Well, by all means do your best for her if you are quite sure it will be of no avail…. I should be sorry to have to act without the blessing of the Church” (116–117). The quick opening section of Scene VI makes clear the trial’s outcome, which could not have been a surprise to Shaw’s original audience, since most would have known Joan’s fate. Shaw’s focus is not on Joan’s fate, but how and why it is reached. As he states in the Preface, trials infiltrated with political necessities lack judicial fairness, which is “unavoidable. A trial by Joan’s French partisans would have been as unfair as the trial by her French opponents; and an equally mixed tribunal would have produced a deadlock”. Shaw continues:

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Such recent trials as those of Edith Cavell by a German tribunal and Roger Casement by an English one were open to the same objection; but they went forward to the death nevertheless, because neutral tribunals were not available.22 Edith, like Joan, was an arch heretic: in the middle of the war she declared before the world that ‘Patriotism is not enough.’ She nursed enemies [German soldiers] back to health, and assisted their prisoners [British, French and Belgium POWs] to escape, making it abundantly clear that she would help any fugitive or distressed person without asking whose side he was on, and acknowledging no distinction before Christ between Tommy [English soldier] and Jerry [German soldier] and Pitou [Belgium soldier] …. The modern military Inquisition [the English Cavell was tried for treason by a German military court-martial that] …. shot her [by military firing squad] out of hand …. Joan was persecuted essentially as she would be today. The change from burning to hanging or shooting may strike us as a change for the better. The change from careful trial under ordinary law to recklessly summary military terrorism may strike us as a change for the worse. But as far as toleration is concerned the trial and execution in Rouen in 1431 might have been an act of today; and we may charge our consciences accordingly. (26–27)

This last phrase strongly alludes to the military trials used by the British army, as “military terrorism”, against Irish rebels in the Easter Rising and the War for Independence. As we saw in Chapter 3, Shaw referred to Herbert Asquith’s Government that executed the 1916 Rising leaders as a “Terrorist Government” (Shaw, Gregory, 122). What the military trials under Asquith and his successor David Lloyd George shared with Joan’s trial is the fact that their outcomes, from the British military’s position, were considered political necessities, as Warwick insisted for Joan’s trial, with verdicts assured beforehand. Shaw differentiates, for history, the difference between Casement’s trial and Joan’s; the former being “a national political trial” and Joan’s as a “combination” of an Ecclesiastical and Inquisition trial (Preface, 27). We may take this further, since Shaw provided the example of Edith Cavell, that Casement’s trial was a civil trial in London, though he had been arrested in County Kerry. Having been involved with securing German arms for the 1916 Rising (to have been used in Ireland’s west), Casement was tried for treason—again an Irish person being charged with treason against England.23 What Shaw does not directly mention in his

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Preface, but strongly alludes to through the military trial example of Cavell, and arguably in the play, is the trial and execution, via military firing squad, of fourteen leaders and followers of the 1916 Rising—about which Asquith was repeatedly questioned over in Parliament, and repeatedly requested to publicize the records of the trials (Barton, 37).24 Shaw’s two published press letters criticizing the British military response to the Rising’s rebels, including “The Easter Week Executions” on 10 May 1916 (two days prior to Connolly’s execution), stirred pressure that forced Asquith to agree to publicly release the records of the Dublin trials, to which the British military objected. However, with Asquith’s resignation in December 1916, his successor, Lloyd George chose not to honour Asquith’s promise (Barton, 37). The 1916 leaders were tried by the military’s Field General Court Martial (FGCM), which during the Great War functioned under the Defense of the Realm Act (DORA). As Brian Barton explains, FGCM trials, which were administered and judged by three military officers “had the advantage of being quicker, more predictable, and easier to convene [than general Court Martials and civil trials] … [and] there was no requirement that [… the three presiding officers] be legally trained” (35). Barton further suggests that the FGCM trial procedures in Dublin conveyed “a legitimising veneer, [but] with the outcome a forgone conclusion” (50). Also, FGCM procedures allowed trials to be conducted without legal counsel for the accused, and none of the 1916 leaders had legal representation (Barton, 36).25 Where Joan’s Inquisitor claimed she was being tried “by her faithful friends”, the officers trying the 1916 rebels were reported as: “exceedingly courteous” (quoted in Barton, 34). The British General sent to Ireland during the Rising as Commanderin-Chief of its military in Ireland, Sir John Maxwell, informed the Press Association shortly after the executions, in words that anticipate the Inquisitor in Shaw’s play regarding the fairness of Joan’s soon-to-start trial: “every trial [of the 1916 rebels] was absolutely fair to the prisoner …. The officers acting as judges were in all instances inclined towards leniency” (quoted in Barton, 50). Yet when meeting Padraic Pearse within hours of the headquarters surrender, on 29 April, Maxwell recorded telling Pearse that “I could hold out no hope for the [Rising’s] leaders [with regard to escaping death sentences]” (quoted in Barton, 58).26 In this regard, Maxwell appears in a similar vein as Saint Joan’s Warwick.

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Having made clear the political necessity of the trial’s outcome, Warwick exits to allow the trial to proceed (which he will not witness), Cauchon remarks: “What scoundrels these English nobles are” (118). Numerous other Churchmen and assessors then enter for the trial, including the English Chaplain who immediately makes a protest. His ally, Courcelles explains that they had included in their indictment sixty-four counts against Joan and object to these being reduced. The Inquisitor explains that they need only to focus on twelve, which will “be quite enough”. Moving past Cauchon’s objection to removing the charge that Joan claimed the voices spoke to her in French, not English as well as the charge of stealing the Bishop of Senlis’ horse, the Inquisitor explains the need to narrow the charges: “Heresy, gentleman, heresy is the charge we have to try. The detection and suppression of heresy is my peculiar business: I am here as an inquisitor, not as an ordinary magistrate. Stick to heresy, gentlemen; and leave the other matters alone” (120). On being asked if there is harm in Joan’s heresy, the Inquisitor relates a long discourse that includes: The records of the holy Inquisition are full of histories we dare not give the to the world, because they are beyond the belief of honest men and innocent women; yet they all begin with saintly simpletons…. the woman who quarrels with her clothes, and puts on the dress of a man, is like the man who throws off his fur gown and dresses like John the Baptist; they are followed, as surely as the night follows the day, by bands of wild women and men who refuse to wear any clothes at all. (121–122)

The Inquisitor continues by further explaining that heresy often starts as appearing harmless, then grows to “a monstrous horror of unnatural wickedness” and can appear in a person combined with humility, “Therefore be on your guard”. He further adds, “The heretic in the hands of the Holy Office is safe from violence, is assured of a fair trial, and cannot suffer death, even when guilty, if repentance follows sin” (123). Given his assurances made to Warwick earlier, it seems that none question Joan’s guilt and none believe she will repent—yet they are committed to offering the chance for repentance, with an eye, seemingly, on the future when they themselves may be judged. As the trial proceeds, Joan’s replies are perceived as provocative, leading to Courcelles’ zealous insistence that “torture is customary” (127). We might remember Shaw’s intervention in a debate in 1904

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on corporal punishment in the London Times from 1904: “The radical objection to flogging is not its cruelty, but the fact that it can never be cleared from the suspicion that it is a vicious sport disguised as reformatory justice” (“Flogging”, 41–42). Cauchon ends the torture discussion, “I will not have it said that we proceeded on forced confessions” (127). On refusing to agree to put the Church before God, Joan states that she will not “do anything contrary to the command I [Joan] have from God, I will not consent to it, no matter what it may be” (129). On being asked by the Inquisitor to believe in the Church’s view that her revelations were “sent by the devil to tempt” her, “will you not believe that the Church is wiser than you?” Joan replies saying that “I shall mind God alone, whose command I always follow”. Cauchon states, “Out of your own mouth you have condemned yourself” (130). The promoter, D’Estivet, then identifies “two horrible and blasphemous crimes”, being the “intercourse [conversations and following] with evil spirits and wearing men’s clothes”. The Inquisitor presses Joan on the latter: “For the last time, will you put off that impudent attire, and dress as becomes your sex?” Joan replies, “I will not” (131). After replying to the accusation of “her terrible pride and selfsufficiency”, Joan replies: “I have done nothing wrong. I cannot understand” (132). The Inquisitor reveals that the trial is nearing its conclusion: “those who cannot understand are damned. It is not enough to be simple. It is not enough to be what simple people call good. The simplicity of a darkened mind is no better than the simplicity of a beast” (133). Joan is then introduced to the executioner, asking: “But you are not going to burn me now?” (133). She is then pressed, “You can save yourself”, To which she states: “Yes, my voices promised me I should not be burnt. St. Catherine bade me be bold”. Cauchon interjects, “Woman: are you quite mad? Do you not yet see that your voices have deceived you?” Using “woman” rather than “girl” or “maid”, now denies Joan’s youth. Joan recants: Oh, it is true: it is true: my voices have deceived me. I have been mocked by devils: my faith is broken. I have dared and dared; but only a fool will walk into a fire: God, who gave me my commonsense, cannot will me to do that. (134)

Immediately after Joan’s recantation, the Chaplain launches into accusations against Cauchon, the Inquisitor, and the court, consistent with

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Warwick’s earlier definition of “traitor” for the English: “You are all traitors. You have been doing nothing but begging this damnable witch on your knees to recant all through this trial” (135). Once the recantation statement is read, Joan is helped to sign it. Removed from the excommunication threat, Joan is told by the Inquisitor that she is to “end thy earthly days in perpetual imprisonment” (137). At that, she tears up the recantation statement, declaring: “Light your fire: do you think I dread it as much as the life of a rat in a hole? My voices were right” (137). Elaborating that she cannot live shut off from “the wind in the trees, the larks in the sunshine, the young lambs crying through the healthy frost, and the blessed church bells that send my angel voices floating to me on the wind…. without these things I cannot live; and by your wanting to take them from me, or from any human creature, I know that your counsel is of the devil, and that mine is God” (138).27 Immediately, the Chaplain orders the executioner to “Light your fire, man. To the stake with her”. When asked why God will not deliver her, Joan replies: “His ways are not your ways. He wills that I go through the fire to His bosom; for I am His child, and you are not fit that I should live among you. That is my final word to you” (138). Given all she had accomplished, in relation to the failures, or sins, of the churchmen, the French, and the English feudal lords, they do not deserve her presence that delivers revolutionary promise towards the future. As a “relapsed heretic”, Cauchon condemns Joan: “And now we cast thee out, segregate thee, and abandon thee to the secular power” (138). The Chaplin in a frenzy rushes to help drive her out with Warwick’s soldiers, exclaiming “Into the fire with the witch”. Cauchon becomes alarmed that Warwick is not present, that the official procedure for turning the heretic over to the secular arm is not being followed. Cauchon exclaims, “These English are impossible: they will thrust her straight into the fire. Look!” He tells the Inquisitor that they must stop it, but the latter responds: “We have proceeded in perfect order. If the English choose to put themselves in the wrong, it is not our business to put them in the right. A flaw in the procedure may be useful later on: one never knows. And the sooner it is over, the better for that poor girl” (139). The rush to execute reflects on, perhaps, the British military’s rush to execute the 1916 Rising leaders, with the first three executions carried out three days after the initial surrender. The Inquisitor continues, “it is soon over. But it is a terrible thing to see a young and innocent creature crushed between these mighty

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forces, the Church and the Law”. When Cauchon expostulates at the word “innocent”, the Inquisitor replies: “Oh, quite innocent. What does she know of the Church and the Law? She did not understand a word we were saying. It is the ignorant who suffer. Come, or we shall be late for the end”. After Warwick enters and is alone with Cauchon, the latter suggests that “there is some doubt whether your people have observed the forms of law”, prompting to Warwick’s quick and ready reply, “I am told that there is some doubt whether your authority runs in this city, my lord. It is not in your diocese. However, if you will answer for that I will answer for the rest” (140). The Chaplain returns, gravely shaken by having witnessed Joan’s burning. Expressing overwhelming guilt, he claims an English soldier gave Joan two sticks to form a cross. Despite being overwrought, he still plays the English nationalist as he damns himself for his role in Joan’s death. He insists that the people who laughed at Joan during her execution “were French people, my lord: I know they were French”. He exits claiming he is “no better than Judas: I will hang myself” (142). Alone with the Executioner, Warwick remarks that he will compensate the Executioner for discarding all that remained of Joan, rather than adhering to the then usual practice of executioners selling charred relics from the executed. He reports: “Her heart would not burn, my lord; but everything that was left is at the bottom of the river. You have heard the last of her”. Warwick comments, “The last of her? Hm! I wonder!” (143).28 The lasting legacy of martyrs has historically been troublesome for those who guaranteed the martyrdom, whether in spiritual or political realms.

The Irish Element After each of the fourteen Dublin rebel leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed, each body was to receive, according to the instructions Brigader General J. Young of Irish Command who prepared the procedures, “a label pinned on his breast giving his name. When the ambulance is full, it will be sent to Arbour Hill Detention Barracks, entering by the gate at the Garrison Chapel. The party then will put the bodies close along side one another in the grave (now being dug), cover them quickly with quicklime (ordered [no doubt by General Maxwell]) and commence filling in the grave” (quoted in Barton, 80). The location of the burial yard within the British military prison, Arbour Hill, was—and remains— an obscure Dublin location, and a secure location in 1916. Burying the

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executed without coffins and covering them with quicklime guaranteed the accelerated decay of the bodies, including the bones. Maxwell, apparently, was intent on eliminating the possibility of relics, and even a grave for pilgrimages. After the executions began, public pressure grew, following Shaw’s and Lynd’s press letters, and continued with each round of executions (one, two, three, or four per day). On 7 May, Asquith telegrammed Maxwell “saying he hoped the shootings would stop” (Barton, 88). The next morning four rebel leaders were executed.29 On 9 May, Maxwell wrote further to Asquith, indicating that the FGCM trials in Dublin were nearing their end, but claimed that “Connolly and Sean McDermott still remain to be tried today and, if convicted, must suffer extreme penalty” (quoted in Barton, 89).30 Then on 10 May (the day Shaw’s “The Easter Week Executions” letter was published in The Daily Mail ), Asquith telegrammed Maxwell again, stating “the executions must stop at once” (quoted in Barton, 88). According to William Wylie, an Irish-born British officer with a law degree who fought with Crown forces during the Rising and was appointed prosecutor by Maxwell for many of the FGCM trials, he was shown Asquith’s telegram halting the executions. Wylie claimed that after reading it, Maxwell asked him “Who is next on your list”, to which he replied, “Connolly, Sir”. Maxwell answered: “Well I insist on him being tried”. Wylie claimed he then pointed out the fact that Connolly was wounded, which Maxwell obviously knew as it was most likely he who decided Connolly was to be kept in the military Red Cross War Hospital at Dublin Castle, and in isolation. Maxwell replied, “The court can be convened in hospital”. Wylie recalled: “I again demurred. I forget what I said but it was to the effect that Connolly should not be tried until he was well again. Maxwell didn’t reply and the next I heard was that Connolly had been tried [by a different prosecuting officer] and condemned” (quoted in Barton, 88).31 Maxwell had lost faith in Wylie for prosecuting Connolly, although the concern over trying and executing a wounded individual had been discussed in Parliament as Asquith had requested of Maxwell a “report of [Connolly’s] … condition and prospect of recovery” (quoted in Barton, 89). Connolly’s wounded condition was reported in various papers, fueling questions over his treatment. However, it seems that Maxwell, in relation to Connolly, anticipated Saint Joan’s characterization of Warwick, to which we might ask, why was Connolly’s execution necessary? Or rather, what was Connolly’s sin? And was the sin

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significantly more than Eammon de Valera’s, who had been a garrison commandant during the Rising but escaped even a trial?32 In an answer to Asquith’s order that the executions had to stop, Maxwell prepared reports on 11 May on the rebel leaders already executed, and those, in his view, who were next for execution, and sent the reports to Asquith. The reports were collectively titled “Short History of rebels on whom it has been necessary to inflict the supreme penalty” (Barton, 326). The report on Connolly opened with: “This man has been a prominent leader in the Larkinite or Citizen Army for years”, which preceded—presumably for emphasis—the other reasons for confirmation of Connolly’s execution, such as having “held the rank of Commandant General of the Dublin Division in the rebel army”, which one might have expected to be the most pressing reason (quoted in Barton, 326). Knowing that the Citizen Army was tied to the Labour Movement, and Larkin, in the years preceding the Rising, reveals how the British military viewed Connolly and the threat he and Labour represented, being Connolly’s socialism. British military Intelligence, as well as the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s G Division that monitored political movements, were aware, therefore Maxwell was aware, of Connolly’s socialist publications and lectures. He, unlike the other Rising’s leaders, represented the most dangerous threat from the perspective of a career British military and imperialist general as Maxwell. In essence, Connolly’s execution represented for Maxwell in 1916, “a political necessity”, just as Joan represented the same for Warwick.33 In actuality, both Joan and Connolly represented similar threats to Warwick and Maxwell (and what they represented), being the deconstruction of their respective social orders, which could lead to something quite different. As Joan threatened the feudal order in Warwick’s world tied to the old Catholic order, Connolly threatened the capitalist and imperialist order of Maxwell’s world with social economic change via equality. Joan and Connolly threatened serious and “deep” change—the change of everything that affirmed Warwick and Maxwell. And to each English war lord, the executed deaths of Joan and Connolly were required. After all, Maxwell would note that the socialist Connolly was “very poisonous” and “the worst of the lot” (quoted in Foy and Barton, 190); yet on 11 May, Maxwell’s report justifying Connolly’s execution, carried an added handwritten notation from, presumably, Asquith’s office: “Execution Suspended by Prime Minister” (quoted in Barton, 326). However, later in the day on 11 May, Asquith acquiesced to Maxwell’s (and the British military’s) take on the militant socialist

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and abruptly stated in the House of Commons that Connolly (without naming him) had taken “the most active part of all…. I do not see my way … to interfere with the decision of Sir John Maxwell” (quoted in Barton, 341). Maxwell’s and Asquith’s (eventual) conclusion that Connolly’s execution was a “political necessity” was, at the time, part of the British Government’s and Military hierarchy’s mindsets at the highest levels. Nearly a year after Connolly’s revolution, in March 1917, the same political necessity revealed itself through the perceived and continual socialist threat. After Tsar Nicholas II abdicated in early March, the British King George V, Nicholas’ first cousin, and the British Government (then led by Lloyd George) offered sanctuary, through Russia’s Provisional Government, to Nicholas and his immediate family (the former Empress, their four daughters, and son). Within weeks, George and the Government began to withdraw the offer from permanent sanctuary, to sanctuary for the War’s duration, then to no sanctuary (Rappaport, Race, 268–280). Helen Rappaport, in The Race to Save the Romanovs, argues that George ultimately placed the British Constitutional Monarchy, as fitting to his oath of coronation before his personal relatives (281). George, cognizant of intense public animosity against Nicholas—that included numerous journalistic efforts from Shaw going back to the 1890s, not the least being his criticism of the English and French alliance with autocratic Russia in Common Sense About the War—feared that housing the former Russian autocrat would lead to “worker-led strikes and protests across the country …. [and] a republican-style uprising on the streets of London”, no doubt with Dublin’s Rising still fresh in British memories (Rappaport, Race, 281–282). Given the Bolshevik conflagration that followed Connolly’s Dublin conflagration, the British Government feared the socialist threat— which in 1916, meant that Connolly’s execution was a political necessity, with Asquith surrendering to that necessity. During the late night into the early hours of 12 May 1916, Connolly’s wife and oldest daughter Nora were called to Dublin Castle for the last meeting with Connolly before he was transported to Kilmainham Gaol. Shortly after dawn, Connolly, placed in a chair due to his recovering condition and wearing hospital pajamas, was executed. In a seeming effort to emphasize Connolly’s death (or to guarantee it beyond the eleven bullets from the firing squad), the Connolly firing party received special instructions, unlike with any of the previous thirteen 1916 Dublin executions (which involved a small white target pinned over hearts).34

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Each member of the party was given a special target on Connolly’s body; two were instructed to aim at Connolly’s face: “Both shots took effect penetrating at each side of his nose, the remainder entered his chest with the exception of one which entered his abdomen” (Military Provost Marshall’s Staff, Dublin, quoted in Barton, 343). As Shaw had commented, “The change from burning to hanging or shooting may strike us as a change for the better”; we cannot apply Shaw’s further words on Joan’s execution to Connolly’s, “cruelty for the salvation of Joan’s soul”—unless it is considered in the secular (Preface, 27–31).35 While it is unclear how much Shaw could have known of the particulars surrounding Connolly’s execution, namely Maxwell’s machinations with Asquith towards executing Connolly, he undoubtedly could infer much on his own through press reports on the executions of other rebel leaders, and on Connolly’s hospitalization that revealed the elongated time it took for Connolly to be executed compared to the first twelve. Shaw undoubtedly would have been keenly interested in the Dublin socialist he had met. After all, in Shaw’s first published post-Rising press letter, “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising” (6 May, New Statesman), Shaw asked: “Will Punch give us a cartoon of Mr. Connolly, in the pose of the King of the Belgiums, telling his conqueror that at least he has not lost his soul by his desperate fight for the independence of his country against a foe ten times his size?” (120). While Shaw was recalling a Punch cartoon from the beginning of the Great War, he chose to place Connolly, rather than Pearse who was the proclaimed Irish Republic’s provisional president, as the embodiment of said Republic, signifying Shaw’s continued interest in Connolly. However, there is evidence that suggests the possibility that Shaw had access, after the fact, to some intimate knowledge of the discussions between Maxwell and Asquith regarding Connolly’s execution. Asquith’s 10 May telegram to Maxwell ordering the stop of all executions was erroneously not directly delivered to Maxwell, but rather to Dublin Castle where it was handed to J. C. Ridgeway, an enlisted man in the Royal Ambulance Corp attached to the military Red Cross War Hospital. Ridgeway had been appointed Connolly’s attendant (Barton, 340; 337). The telegram read: “The execution of James Connolly is postponed” (quoted in Barton, 340). While Ridgeway turned the telegram over to an officer, he most likely shared its contents with the surgeon attending Connolly, Richard Tobin. Tobin, it is recalled, contributed to the fund following Connolly’s execution to assist Connolly’s family, to which Shaw also donated to (the most generous single donation), along

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with donations from Robert Lynd, George Russell, and Sir Horace Plunkett (see Chapter 3). Given the correspondence that must have been passing among the five contributors, Tobin, Shaw, Plunkett, Russell, and Lynd, it is quite possible, maybe even probable, that Shaw heard of Asquith’s telegram and more.36 Of course, it would not have taken a great deal for Shaw to understand that Maxwell, and the military he represented—as well as, ultimately, Asquith, who was never favourable to labor—became fixated on Connolly’s execution, and then the attempted erasure of his being.37 Yet well before the FGCM trial for Connolly was held, Connolly had laid out a path for the future, one that he knew would not include his physical being as he awaited execution. As was British military custom at the time when transporting wounded individuals, Connolly was sedated (probably with morphine) prior to leaving the hospital. He was blindfolded while in the horse-drawn ambulance, but his hands were not tied. In Kilmainham’s old stone breakers’ yard near a large entrance from the outside, he was placed on a common kitchen chair and shot. Yet by then, the historical process involving Connolly, who rose from abject poverty to a socialist theorist and revolutionary leader known internationally, was already underway, partially initiated in conjunction with Maxwell’s zeal for having him shot. And as Shaw explains in his Preface to Saint Joan, death does not end a martyr’s history, rather it is its “beginning” (45). True rehabilitation, if it is to go down, as Shaw suggests, will involve wiping away the “sauce”. While it is not my intention to suggest that Saint Joan is actually about James Connolly, nor a collection of contemporary Irish political martyrs, but rather to suggest that Saint Joan contains elements of Connolly’s life as a militant nationalist martyr. To that extent, Connolly is present in Shaw’s exploration of the process of history to know the present, and to advance modern civilization following colossal wars and universal suffering. To Shaw, it was paramount to know what happened, and why. For example, warlords such as Warwick were not uncommon in the years following the Great War and Ireland’s recent wars for independence, so portraying Warwick’s methodical approach to achieve what he views as a political necessity, was likely helpful in understanding such figures. Part of that understanding, despite his astute abilities and formidable efforts, was Warwick’s failure to prevent the process of Joan’s future rehabilitation and, most importantly, the societal changes he feared. In fact, his efforts advanced both. So, Joan became a saint. What then of the former Singer sewing machine factory worker?

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Rehabilitation In his preface to the Saint Joan, Shaw briefly commented on the play’s Epilogue: I could hardly be expected to stultify myself by implying that Joan’s history in the world ended unhappily with her execution, instead of beginning there. It was necessary to shew the canonized Joan, as well as the incinerated one; for many a woman has got herself burnt by carelessly whisking a muslin skirt into the drawing room fireplace, but getting canonized is a different matter, and a more important one. (45)

The Epilogue is set twenty-five years after Joan’s execution, in 1456, the year Joan’s rehabilitation officially began. The scene is Charles’ Royal bedroom and starts as a dream sequence. He is now Charles VII and older, but without much character growth since last seen in Scene V. He is first visited by Ladvenu, who claims to have attended and testified at the inquiry considering Joan’s trial. Charles is told: “the true heart that lived through the flame is consecrated; a great lie is silenced forever; and a great wrong is set right before all men” (145). Charles is pleased as he states that “they can no longer say that I was crowned by a witch and a heretic, I shall not fuss about how the trick has been done” (145). He is told Joan’s sentence “is broken, annulled, annihilated, set aside as nonexistent, without value or effect” (146). Charles, in an insightful moment, states that “if you could bring her back to life, they would burn her again within six months, for all their present adoration of her” (146). Charles’ dream continues with Joan’s appearance: “Easy, Charlie, easy…. No one can hear thee. Thourt asleep”. Charles explains the outcome of the inquiry, as initiated by Joan’s mother and brothers. When the dead Cauchon appears, Joan asks him, “What luck have you had since you burned me?” (148). He replies, “None. I arraign the justice of Man. It is not the justice of God”. On asked if alive or dead, he answers: “Dead. Dishonored. They pursued me beyond the grave. They excommunicated my dead body: they dug it up and flung it into the common sewer”. Joan: “Your dead body did not feel the spade and sewer as my live body felt the fire”. Joan then comments on her martyrdom, that there is a debt to Cauchon: “I hope men will be better for remembering me; and they would not remember me so well if you had not burned me”. Cauchon then makes a crucial point for Shaw’s play, in that those who prosecuted and judged, as Cauchon, were not merely villainous: “They will be worse

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for remembering me; they will see in me evil triumphing over good, falsehood over truth, cruelty over mercy, hell over heaven. Their courage will rise as they think of you, only to faint as they think of me. Yet God is my witness I was just: I was merciful: I was faithful to my light: I could do no other than I did” (149). And interestingly, Charles responds to Cauchon’s words on his (Cauchon’s) role in Joan’s burning: “Yes: it is always you good men that do the big mischiefs” (149). Perhaps this was to be O’Casey’s position with his next play. Dunois, still among the living, claims he wrote “a fine letter to set you right at the new trial. Perhaps I should never have let the priests burn you” (150). Warwick enters, and still practical, congratulates Joan on her rehabilitation: “The truth is, these political necessities sometimes turn out to be political mistakes; and this one was a veritable howler; for your spirit conquered us …. History will remember me for your sake, though the incidents of the connection were perhaps a little unfortunate” (154). As is seen in much of Shaw’s work, there is no attempt to vilify or demonize any of the characters who contributed to Joan’s martyrdom. In that process, Shaw allows the historical truth to appear, fostering an understanding of the past without being torn asunder by various ideologies or “sauces”. It is in this realm that Saint Joan reflects Ireland’s recent past. If Connolly was, as Lynd stated, “Ireland’s first Socialist martyr”, such secular martyrdom was made possible by Maxwell’s dogged efforts to carry forth the execution in his quest, no doubt, to fulfill his duty to Britain and Empire (Lynd, “Introduction”, vi). In fact, in the very vein of Shaw’s Warwick. The truth of Warwick’s role in Joan’s martyrdom is visible, regardless of whether Warwick was historically as pragmatic as portrayed in Shaw’s play. He is seen and defined by his sense of duty, and not presented as a villain that might serve an agenda other than the truth. This too facilitates a clear and unclouded view of Maxwell, and of Connolly. In essence, it allows Maxwell to be seen and defined by his sense of duty, rather than by an anti-English scenario that would likely lead to further mischief. This then can encourage a clearer view of Connolly and deliver his reputation into the terms of Lynd’s above comment, along with recognizing Lynd’s assertion that Connolly’s socialist martyrdom was “a simple historical fact” to be accepted “even by those who dispute the wisdom of his actions and the excellence of his ideals” (vii). In addition, Shaw’s refrain from demonizing Warwick and Cauchon for their roles in Joan’s execution reflects Connolly’s own mindset in the

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days and hours prior to his execution. In the moments before Connolly was carried on a stretcher down the servants’ stairs in Dublin Castle to be transported to his execution at Kilmainham Goal, the attending Capuchin priest Father Aloysius asked Connolly if he would forgive the soldiers who will kill him. Connolly replied: “I do, Father, … I respect every man who does his duty” (quoted in Barton, 341). Presumably, this included Maxwell. Similarly, Lynd reported in his Introduction to Labour in Ireland that Connolly’s “conduct during his imprisonment and at his execution is said to have made a deep impression on the [British] soldiers … he died without bitterness. He bequeathed a creed and an example not only to Ireland but to the world” (xxvi).38 While it is unclear if Shaw could have known of Connolly’s comments to Father Aloysius, Shaw assuredly knew of Lynd’s assessment while writing Saint Joan, which had Surgeon Tobin as its source. Connolly would remain in Shaw’s thoughts, having a further presence in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism by decade’s end. More immediately, the dead Connolly would have a presence within O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars , which portrays members of the ICA in the lead up to and during 1916. Would O’Casey’s many axes to grind with O’Brien over Larkin’s expulsion from the ITGWU influence the iconic play on 1916? Would O’Casey’s play respond to Connolly’s revolution as Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I responded, as Shaw suggests, to Joan’s rehabilitated image in 1591? A Dubliner whom Shaw had assisted more than once, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, believed so—and shared her view with Dublin. However, historical truth, as Shaw demonstrates, is cunning, and far more complicated. That applies also to O’Casey’s focus and his significant place within Irish drama.

Notes 1. Audrey McNamara and Peter Gahan too, among other scholars, have recently argued Saint Joan’s ties to Ireland during the years Shaw conceived and wrote the play. 2. Casement, formerly of the British Colonial Service who had been knighted for exposing abuses of rubber plant workers in the Congo and South America, had arranged German assistance for what became the Easter Rising. On 21 April 1916, while a shipment of arms was off County Kerry in a freighter crewed by German Navy personnel, Casement was put ashore by a German U-Boat. He was arrested and removed to London. After the Rising, Casement was tried for treason in a civil court and

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sentenced to death. Shaw, among other Irish authors and public figures, signed a partition on Casement’s behalf. Shaw also wrote a speech for Casement, which he argued should be the only defense. Not taking Shaw’s advice, the speech was ignored until after the verdict. By then, it was too late. Casement was hanged on 3 August 1916. Shaw was never enthusiastic about the Gaelic League’s efforts to promote Gaelic. During his 1910 Dublin lecture, “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland,” Shaw stated: “An extraordinary Language supposed to have been spoken in ancient Ireland but which never was, and never would be spoken anywhere on the face of the earth”. Given that this section of the speech was hissed, Shaw told the audience that if they hissed further, he “would begin to talk to them in Gaelic and then they would see where they were” (9–10). The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet was in the Abbey’s repertoire for decades and included in the Theatre’s early American tours. In London, followers of Shaw would have remembered the censorship controversy over the play in 1909. Maynooth College, now Maynooth University, was founded in 1795 as a Catholic seminary. By the early twentieth century, most Irish priests had trained at Maynooth. Jacquelin Kennedy, personally met Father Leonard in Dublin in 1955 when her husband, John F. Kennedy, then a U. S. senator, and she visited Ireland. Jacquelin and Fr. Leonard maintained a close correspondence (Parsons). Shaw elaborates in his Preface that Joan’s portrait in Henry VI, Part I , “is not more authentic than the descriptions in London papers of George Washington in 1780, of Napoleon in 1803, of the German Crown Prince in 1915, or of Lenin in 1917” (23). Charles Macdona, an Irish-born actor, had toured Britain and Ireland with Pygmalion in fall 1914 and 1915. In 1921, Macdona formed the Macdona Players as a touring company specializing in Shaw’s plays. It was Macdona’s company that staged the first professional English production of Mrs Warren’s Profession in 1925, and the first professional London production in 1926. The Macdona players frequently toured Ireland with Shaw plays, starting in 1922. George Jean Nathan in his American Mercury column ‘The Theatre’, February 1924, reviewed the Theatre Guild’s American premier: “Shaw’s ‘Saint Joan’, though it is a work far above the general, fails to satisfy us. From a lesser genius, it might past muster [….] One looks for brilliant illumination and one finds but pretty, unsatisfying candle light. This ‘Saint Joan’ seems to me to be [… an] affectation on Shaw’s part to prove late in his career to a doubting world that he has, after all, a heart” (241).

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10. The Women’s Death Battalion was formed after the February 1917 Revolution, but before the Bolshevik’s October 1917 Revolution. It was aligned with the Provisional Government, and then failed to join the Bolsheviks. Hence, Shaw’s remark that the battalion was “against the Revolution”. 11. Bochkareva’s promotion to an officer rank was revolutionary for a woman and peasant. 12. The Women’s Death Battalion suffered 50 casualties in the Smorgen Battle, including Bochkareva who required extensive hospitalization. Part of Bochkareva’s argument for the Women’s Death Battalion, which Pankhurst propagated, was that it was willing to carry on the fight against Germany while many army battalions were not. Those who balked at further fighting the Great War did so not because of cowardice, but because of the overwhelming futility that had set in by 1917. 13. During her time in Petrograd, Pankhurst enjoyed a celebrity status as she lunched with then Prime Minister of the Provisional Government, Prince Lvov (who resigned after the July 1917 violence). She also met Prince Felix Yusupov, Rasputin’s main assassin (December 1916). Yusupov invited Pankhurst to his palace where he showed her the basement “room where Rasputin was murdered and regaling them [Pankhurst and Kenney] with the full grisly details” (Rappaport, Caught, 201). Soon after, Yusupov and wife Princess Irina Alezandrovna, fled Russia. In 1920, Pankhurst’s daughter Sylvia assisted Connolly’s son Roderic in getting into Bolshevik Russia (McGuire, 32). Sylvia was among the speakers at the November 1913 rally for locked-out Dublin workers, which included Shaw and Connolly. 14. The 1916 Rising’s participants were not exclusively Catholic, such as Protestant Arthur Shields, who fought with the GPO garrison. Shields was an Abbey Theatre actor in 1916. His father, Adolphus Shields, was a Dublin socialist who played a role in enticing Connolly to emigrate to Dublin in 1896, resulting in Connolly forming the ISRP (1896–1903). On reporting to Liberty Hall for the Rising, Connolly greeted Shields: “I hope you will prove to be as good a man as your father” (Villiers). After the Rising and his British internment, Shields returned to the Abbey. In the late 1930s, he emigrated to the U. S., forging an acting and directing career in New York Theatre, and Hollywood films. In 1936, Shields was in John Ford’s adaptation of O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars , which heavily reworked O’Casey’s play. In the film, Shields played Padraic Pearse in the GPO (Villiers). 15. Horace Plunkett also assisted Connolly’s family after the execution. He financially contributed to a fund for the family, with Shaw, Lynd, George Russell, and Surgeon Richard Tobin. Plunkett also interceded on behalf

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of Connolly’s widow Lillie in her effort to move her daughters to the U. S. When the ICA’s City Hall garrison was overrun by British troops, the surrender was offered by Medical Officer Kathleen Lynn (McCoole, Mna). During “Daffodil Day” in 1914, part of Suffrage weeks in Dublin, Markievicz performed in two presentations as Joan of Arc (Davidson). Margeret Skinnider was another ICA woman who fought in the Rising. She was attached to St. Stephen’s Green and later the Royal College of Surgeons. She “was in charge of a group of five men” to occupy houses near the Russell Hotel. In their gun battle with British troops, Skinnider was hit by three bullets (Leddin, 156–157). Shaw in 1931: “She [Joan] was, unquestionably, an exceptional and extraordinarily able woman. She was a farmer’s daughter, with no special advantages of education. She could not read and she could not write, although she could dictate letters and did. She had, unquestionably, military ability” (213). Shaw also likely read some of Connolly’s journalism as he knew of the Irish Worker and its successor, The Workers’ Republic. Starting in the 1930s, the Irish Government compiled witness statements from veterans of the Easter Rising, War of Independence, and Civil War. Many veterans complied, though not all. Shaw certainly remembered the Angelus bell in Ireland when he wrote John Bull’s Other Island. In Act IV when Broadbent responds to Keegan’s “Silent O Moyle, be the roar of thy waters,” which was in reaction to Broadbent’s plans for a hotel resort by the river, Broadbent suggests, “You know, the roar of a motorboat is quite pretty.” The defrocked priest responds, “Provided it does not drown the Angelus” (155). Cavell, who was working as a nurse in Belgium under German occupation, was tried by a German military court, essentially a court martial trial of a British civilian. Casement’s “sins” from the British military position included his 1915 article, “The Far-Fetched Baleful Power of a Lie,” in which he refuted the British Government’s Blue Book, also of 1915, that chronicled German war atrocities to date. Casement’s article was published in a German Englishlanguage paper. A fifteenth Irish rebel was tried, again by FGCM, and executed in Cork: Thomas Kent. FGCM trials were also used in Egypt, as well as with German and Turkish POWs (Barton, 35). General Maxwell, interestingly, was repulsed by the conditions of Dublin’s slums, and considered the urban poverty “a disgrace to the British race” (quoted in Barton, 61). Any such common ground with Connolly and

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Shaw with regard to Dublin poverty while Maxwell remained General of Command in Ireland, led nowhere officially; personally, Maxwell donated “£200 to the St. Vincent’s de Paul Society to help relieve distress” (Barton, 61). A lark figures prominently in O’Flaherty, V. C ., which drew on the lark allusion in Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen. There was, of course, a tradition within medieval Catholicism of preserving the hearts of departed future saints, and those some viewed as saintly. This carried into mid-nineteenth century Ireland with Daniel O’Connell, who had, as a MP, successfully campaigned for Catholic emancipation. His heart was preserved in Rome, while his body was interned in Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery. On the evening of 4 May 1916, Britain’s George V telegrammed General Maxwell offering his congratulations: “Now that the recent lamentable outbreak has finally been quelled I wish to express to my gallant troops in Ireland [,] to the Royal Irish Constabulary [,] and to the Dublin Metropolitan Police my deep sense of the wholehearted devotion to duty and spirit of sacrifice with which throughout they have acted [.] George R [.]” (quoted in Barton, 67). By the time the telegram was sent, “830p [8:30 pm],” seven Irish rebels had been executed, including Pearse, T. MacDonagh, T. Clarke, W. Pearse, and J. Plunkett (quoted in Barton, 67). Mac Diarmada (McDermott) was one of the Rising’s primary organizers. However, he wore no uniform during the fighting, and held no rank. His execution may have been delayed due to his being partially lame from polio. This situation was likely overshadowed by delays due to Connolly’s battle wound. The prosecutor for Connolly’s FGCM trial is not known. FGCM records only record charges, witness statements, the accused’s statement, and the verdict and sentence. Wylie prosecuted most of the 1916 leaders and compiled the list of those to be tried (not all were). Questions remain on how some were selected for execution. For example, Michael O’Hanrahan was an officer under Thomas MacDonagh at the Jacob’s Biscuit factory garrison, but not a commandant, yet was executed. When word was sent to the British line on 29 April that the rebel command, through Pearse, wished to surrender, Brigadier-General William Lowe, who directed the military fight against the rebels, sent word that Pearse had to present himself to Lowe, surrender unconditionally, and that “Mr Connolly follows on a stretcher” (quoted in Barton, 335). The British military was aware of Connolly’s importance to the Rising. British military firing quads during the Great War consisted of twelve soldiers. Their rifles were loaded by an officer, with one rifle loaded with

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a blank cartridge. Individual squad members would not know if they fired a bullet or the blank. However, those assigned to fire into Connolly’s face had bullets. In his Introduction to the 1917 Labour in Ireland, Lynd, noted Connolly’s martyrdom in the secular world: Connolly “was not a heretic, a lonely lover of the unpopular” (xxii). It is an interesting distinction given Shaw’s play completed six years later, which may have remained with Shaw as he took up Joan’s martyrdom. Tobin later recalled one of his conversations with Connolly, who asked Tobin what he thought the military would to do with him. Tobin replied, “You will be shot…. They can’t do anything else. Can they buy you?”, Connolly, “No.” Can they frighten you?”, Connolly, “No.” Tobin, “Will you promise if they let you off with your life, to go away and be a good boy for the future?” “No.” “They can do nothing else but shoot you” Connolly replied, “I recognize that” (quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 664). In Shaw’s 1913 Lockout speech, Shaw stated: “The last time I was on a public platform with Mr. [George] Lansbury the Government calling itself a Liberal Government [with PM Asquith] had prosecuted a Labour leader under the Mutiny Act” “Mad Dogs”, 96). Shaw was specifically referring to having speaken, on 3 April 1912, in support of English labour leader Tom Mann at a rally held by the Free Speech Defense Committee protesting Mann’s arrest during the 1912 Miners Strike. The rally was held at London’s Opera House. Such would later be confirmed by the British soldiers and nurses who attended Connolly while in hospital, including nurse B. Sullivan who mailed a clipping of Connolly’s hair to Lily Connolly before he was removed from Dublin Castle—and Surgeon Tobin, who likely administered the morphine for Connolly’s the journey to Kilmainham Gaol.

References Barton, Brian. The Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010. Bateson, Ray. They Died by Pearse’s Side. Dublin: Irish Graves Publication, 2010. Connolly, James. Between Comrades: James Connolly, Letters and Correspondence 1889–1916. Ed. Donal Nevin. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2007. Davidson, Tess. “A Mixture of Guns and Chiffon: On Radical Dress of Irish Women Rebels”. vestoj.com/guns-and-chiffon/ (accessed 14 July 2019). Grene, Nicholas, and Deirdre McFeely. “Shaw Productions in Ireland, 1900– 2009”. Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Volume 32. Ed. Peter Gahan. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 236–259.

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Hackett, Rose. WSRef#546. www.bureauofmilitaryhistory.ie. Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw: Volume III, The Lure of Fantasy. London: Chatto and Windus, 1991. “James Connolly Birthday”. https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/ james-connolly-birthday (accessed 20 July 2020). Kiberd, Declan. Inventing Ireland. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995. Leddin, Jeffrey. The Labour Hercules: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism 1913–23. Newbridge, Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2019. Lynd, Robert. “Introduction: James Connolly”. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, the Re-conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. vii–xxvi. McCoole, Sinead. Mna: Women of 1916. Dublin: The Department of Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltach, 2014. McGuire, Charlie. Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, 2008. McNamara, Audrey. “Saint Joan: A Saint for Ireland”. ACIS Conference Paper, 2019. Moran, James. “Meditations in Time of Civil War: Back to Methuselah and Saint Joan in Production, 1919–1924”. Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition. Ed. Peter Gahan. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 30. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 147–160. Nathan, George Jean. “The Theatre.” The American Mercury. Ed. H. L. Menken and George Jean Nathan (February 1924). New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1924. 241–247. Nevin, Donal. James Connolly: ‘A Full Life’. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005. Parsons, Michael. “Who Was Fr. Joseph Leonard?” Irish Times, 13 May 2014. www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/who-was-fr-joseph-leonard-1.179 2260?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irisht imes.com%2Flife-and-style%2Fpeople%2Fwho-was-fr-joseph-leonard-1.179 2260 (accessed 22 July 2019). Rappaport, Helen. Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd, Russia, 1917—A World on Edge. New York: St. Martin’s Press. 2016. ———. The Race to Save the Romanovs. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018. “‘Saint Joan’, Mr. Shaw’s Masterpiece Produced in Dublin”. The Irish Times. 23 June 1925. 6. Shaw, George Bernard. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1911–1925, Vol. III . Ed. Dan H. Laurence. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ———. Common Sense About the War. What Shaw Reilly Wrote About the War. Ed. J. L. Wisenthal and Daniel O’Leary. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. 16–84. ———. “The Crime of Poverty”. Platform and Pulpit. Ed. Dan Laurence. London: Rupert-Hart-Davis, 1962. 93–96.

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———. “The Easter Week Executions”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 124–126. ———. “Flogging in the Navy”. The Letters of Bernard Shaw to the Irish Times. Ed. Robert Ford. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007. 41–44. ———. John Bull’s Other Island. London: Penguin Books, 1984. ———. “Mad Dogs in Uniform”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 95–97. ———. Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and Nicholas Grene. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. ———. “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 120–123. ———. “Preface” to Saint Joan. London: Penguin Books, 1957. 7–47. ———. “Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland” in “On Irish Destitution”. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 33. Ed. Michel Pharand. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. 4–16. ———. The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. In The Doctor’s Dilemma, Getting Married, and The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet. London: Constable, 1937. 427–457. ———. “Saint Joan” Lecture. Platform and Pulpit. Ed. Dan Laurence. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1962. 208–215. ———. Saint Joan. London: Penguin Books, 1957. Synge, John Millington. The Playboy of the Western World. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama. Ed. John P. Harrington. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 68–112. Villiers, Eric. “The Hollywood Hit that Hid Secrets of the Easter Rising”. Irish Times. The Hollywood hit that hid secrets of the Easter Rising (irishtimes. com). “Women’s Death Battalion”. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-womensbattalion-of-death. Yeats, William Butler, and Lady Augusta Gregory. Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama. Ed. John P. Harrington. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 3–11.

CHAPTER 6

The Plough and the Stars: The Lost Workers’ Republic

In 1924, during a conversation with the chronicler of Dublin Theatre since the 1890s, Joseph Holloway, O’Casey revealed that he had “read Saint Joan and thought the dialogue fine and chockful of raps at England” (Hogan and Burnham, O’Casey, 242). O’Casey saw the play during its Dublin premier run at the Gaiety Theatre in late June 1925, presented by the Charles Macdona Players with Dorothy Holmes-Gore as Joan. O’Casey reported to Lady Gregory on 29 June: “The Play was delightful, beautiful and worthy of our fellow-countryman Shaw”. He also added that Scene III, “in which occurs the Kiltartan sneeze was particularly lovely”. Gregory had told O’Casey that when Shaw read her Scene III in draft, she suggested the Page sneezes to indicate the change in wind, which she would have done if it were one of her Kiltartan plays (Krause, “Notes” O’Casey Letters, I , 137).1 O’Casey also mentioned in his letter that a carpenter whom he had persuaded to see the play, saw it “and was so delighted, that he is now reading the Play”. O’Casey ended the letter by saying that he looked forward to seeing Man and Superman at the Abbey Theatre, which ran for seven performances that August—a year that saw eight weeks of Shaw at the Abbey (O’Casey Letters, I , 137; 188).2 Saint Joan passed its Dublin opening week without incident, even as The Irish Times ’ review (23 June) acknowledged that in his Preface, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_6

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“Shaw declares that, in canonising her in 1924, Rome yielded acknowledgement to the inspiration of genius, or private judgement, and took a Protestant saint to her bosom” (“’Saint Joan’ Mr. SHAW’S”, 6). Part of the context of Saint Joan’s Dublin production was Yeats’ 11 June speech in the Free State’s Seanad (Senate) during the debate in which the Government sought to block a divorce bill that allowed for remarriage. The Protestant Yeats warned: “If you show that this country, Southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Catholic ideas and Catholic ideas alone, you will never get the North” (80–81).3 Sensing potential objections to the Protestant Shaw’s Saint Joan, the Irish Times ’ review advised: “These controversial thoughts should be set aside on entering the theatre; and not till after seeing the play should the spectator compare his own moral with Mr. Shaw’s” (“‘SAINT JOAN’ MR. SHAW’s”, 6). Such a comment suggests that the reviewer understood Shaw’s views on prejudicial “sauces” and wanted the audience to process the play for themselves, without institutional doctrines. While Yeats’ Seanad speech was largely brushed aside, Saint Joan represented a Dublin triumph for Shaw. Perhaps Shaw’s grasp of historical process allowed his arguments their say, where they could work themselves out within the viewers’ conscience. Also in 1925, a third Dublin Protestant was preparing the next play in his Dublin trilogy. O’Casey’s approach to history in his Dublin trilogy plays, was, on the surface, more in the immediate present than Saint Joan’s past, closer to the immediacy of O’Flaherty, V. C . However, the timeliness of The Shadow of the Gunman and Juno and the Paycock, written and premiered within months of the War for Independence and Civil War, spoke to their first Dublin audiences’ weariness with political violence, home raids and reprisals. Those two plays portrayed the futility of violence, asking, for example, what was achieved by the killing of Johnny Boyle in Juno and the Paycock amid the sufferings of tenement life? And when the immediacy of these plays wore off, or was distanced by location, the two plays were seen to function effectively with their universal theme of war’s cost to the poor. This was clear from the London (non-Abbey Theatre) run of Juno, staged by James Fagan, with over 202 performances from November 1925. This London success opened doors for O’Casey, including a contract from Macmillan for publishing Shadow and Juno, beginning a long relationship with the publisher.4 In Saint Joan, O’Casey encountered a different approach to history than the near immediacy of his Shadow and Juno. Perhaps O’Casey

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recognized in Shaw’s play the reminder with Joan’s burning that, long before the Great War’s modern weapons, people had been capable of horrific violence against their fellows. Or maybe O’Casey felt the historical Joan was too distant for what he wished to portray, even though Saint Joan enjoyed immediate relevancy through its historical context(s). It is unclear how O’Casey responded to Saint Joan’s commentary on martyrs, those generated by “political necessity”, in the play he found “delightful”. However, it is likely, he seized on Charles’ comment in the play’s Epilogue: “it is always you good men that do the big mischiefs” (149). This, O’Casey could build upon, and arguably did. By the time O’Casey saw Saint Joan, he had been working for nearly eight months on what would become The Plough and the Stars , cognizant of the approaching ten-year anniversary of 1916 Rising (Murray, 162). Yet after a decade, could historical baggage in a 1916 play be avoided, either from audience or dramatist, or overcome by an audience’s weariness of violence, as had been achieved in Shadow and Juno with the War for Independence and Civil War? The danger lay in the exalted status that 1916 still carried, for some. Murray notes that “the politics of the Plough have more to do with [mid-1920s] Dublin […] than with [1916] Dublin”. Fresh in O’Casey’s mind as he started the play in 1924 was what Larkin called “the great betrayal” of the workers, applied especially to Larkin himself (Murray, 163). It was when Larkin lost the court case against O’Brien and Foran, which not only ended his bid to regain control of the ITGWU but led to his expulsion from its membership. Murray contends that while preparing to write Plough, O’Casey was fixated on betrayal, which for O’Casey, was tied to William O’Brien (163). Expelled from the ITGWU in March 1924, Larkin headed to Moscow that June. While on route, Larkin’s brother Peter and Larkin’s son James junior, formed the Workers’ Union of Ireland (WUI) “as a communist alternative to the ITGWU” (O’Connor, “Big Jim Larkin”).5 On his return from Russia, Larkin headed the new union; “two-thirds of the ITGWU’s 1924 members in Dublin transferred” to the WUI, but few did so from rural Ireland (Grant, 113). As Larkin now turned aggressively to a communist stance, so too did the WUI, helping to distance it from the ITGWU. O’Brien and Foran, on the other hand, were focused on maintaining the ITGWU as a functioning trade union, as opposed to fighting a war. Larkin resurrected the notion of establishing a workers’

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republic, which Connolly ultimately had failed to deliver. Larkin historian Emmet O’Connor argues that given the 1916 Rising, Larkin “felt upstaged by Connolly and resented Connolly’s status as labour’s national martyr”, despite the fact that Larkin’s and Connolly’s ideologies were once closely aligned (“Big Jim Larkin”). Larkin’s personal animosities towards O’Brien, similar as O’Casey’s, were by 1924, only furthered by O’Brien’s continuing promotion of Connolly’s writings and reputation. O’Casey most likely knew that O’Brien had arranged for the Lynd Introduction for the 1917 reprint of Connolly’s two main works in Labour in Ireland, which O’Casey had challenged in his 1919 ICA book (Chapter 2). However, for O’Casey, the push-back that O’Brien, Foran, and the ITGWU suffered from Larkin’s new WUI went only so far—and it was definitely not enough for Larkin. Larkin’s war with O’Brien, Foran, O’Shannon, and the ITGWU played out “on the grounds of egoism [rather] than political principal”, with Larkin relying “more on character assassination and slander than reasoned socialist argument” (McGuire, 95–96).6 Murray relates that as Larkin’s erratic behaviour continued O’Casey essentially moved on. The latter explained to Lady Gregory: “I love the man and am afraid he would bring me into the movement. And I do not believe it will succeed on his present lines, but through art and culture and the people of culture” (163; quoted in Murray, 163). Murray indicates that O’Casey was naïve to think “culture”, as in a play or dramatic movement, “could uplift and transform a people”. Nevertheless, O’Casey was inspired by Shaw. As Murray contends, he saw Shaw’s Arms and the Man with its attack on sham romanticism as an influence for The Plough and the Stars (165–166). So despite all of the animosity O’Casey had built against O’Brien and company, Plough may be seen more than a personal attack on O’Brien through Connolly and his 1916, and even as a play that borrows elements from Saint Joan. O’Casey took the title for his play from the ICA’s flag—specifically the battle-flag that Connolly had flown during the Rising from a top corner of the Imperial Hotel’s façade, the prized possession of William Martin Murphy’s holdings. The flag, measuring six feet by five and a half feet, survived the Rising along with the hotel’s façade amid the fires that consumed much of O’Connell Street (Sackville Street).7 O’Casey had claimed that the Plough and the Stars was “the finest flag … Ireland ever had” (quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 555).

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Murray and Moran argue that in writing The Plough and the Stars , O’Casey took aim at Connolly and his Rising. The latter writes that O’Casey’s play “criticizes … James Connolly by name, and constitutes a specific reaction against … Connolly’s play … Under Which Flag ? (Moran, O’Casey, 54). Both Murray and Moran cite O’Casey’s comments from his autobiographical works, including O’Casey’s description of the production of Under Which Flag ?’s as having “blundered a sentimental way over a stage in the [Liberty] Hall in a green limelight, shot with tinsel stars” (quoted in Moran, Four Irish, 23; quoted in Murray, 97). Yet as seen in Chapters 2 and 3, O’Casey’s autobiographical sketches cannot be taken strictly as fact, and should not be used to make inferences on O’Casey’s alleged differences with Connolly before or in 1916. For example, Moran writes that “O’Casey squabbled with Connolly, and resigned from the militia [ICA]”, inferring that O’Casey’s August 1914 resignation was over differences with Connolly (Four Irish, 23). However, Connolly was working for the ITGWU in Belfast when O’Casey resigned and was not involved. O’Casey verified as much in a March 1942 letter to Plebs : “[I] resigned from the Citizen Army because of a difference with the Countess Markiewicz, when Jim Larkin—not Jim Connolly—was in control of its organised members” (O’Casey Letters, II , 24). In any case, Moran astutely sees elements of Under Which Flag ? thematically altered in O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars . For example, he points out the wall portraits in Connolly’s stage directions of the O’Donnell cottage, a print of Robert Emmet (of 1803) near an image of Saint Anthony (known for his attention to the poor); in O’Casey’s play, in the Clitheroe flat, the Emmet print is next to an erotically revealing print of “The Sleeping Venus”. Moran contends that O’Casey’s pairing undermines the implied connection in Connolly’s play between an historic nationalist icon and religion by turning the pairing into the idea of “uncontrollable lust”—lust for killing in the name of Ireland and for sex (Four Irish, 24). However, it is likely that the Venus print was Nora’s decorative decision/acquisition, reflecting her neglected sexuality. Furthermore, Connolly argued in Labour and Irish History that Emmet anticipated socialism in his revolutionary ideals, and was, therefore, much more than a nationalist icon in Connolly’s thinking. Of course, O’Casey once publicly embraced Labour in Irish History as did Larkin (Chapter 2), but he probably replicated the Emmet image to imply that Connolly in 1916 followed the nationalist martyr Emmet, executed in 1803. However, O’Casey’s two images may be no more than the type

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of examples that the tenement poor, in lives without self-perceived relevance, turn to for self-worth—which could also be said for the pairings in Under Which Flag ? Certainly, O’Casey’s borrowing from and reactions to Connolly’s play in Plough, as well as to A. P. Wilson’s The Slough (Chapter 2), was a long-standing practice in early modern Irish drama, if not in most drama. What O’Casey did not recognize, or chose not to reveal in his later biographical sketches, was Connolly’s borrowing from O’Flaherty, V. C . for Under Which Flag ?. Yet there is direct commentary in O’Casey’s play on Connolly and the revolution that he attempted under the Plough and the Stars.

The Play Acts I and II of The Plough and the Stars are set in November 1915, with Act I being the “living-room” of the Clitheroe flat in a Dublin tenement. Described as “wide, spacious, and lofty”, it seems extraordinarily large for a tenement flat, where such rooms were usually divided into multiple flats. O’Casey, in a response to a review of the play in the ITGWU’s Voice of Labour, explained that the set was altered to fit the Abbey’s stage, which was a small stage in 1926 (O’Casey Letters, I , 176). Nevertheless, the quality of the flat is reflected through the delivery of a fashionable hat for Nora Clitheroe from Dublin’s Arnott’s Department store, to which neighbour Mrs Gogan comments, “Such notions of upperosity she’s getting” (67–68). Interestingly, the ICA’s uniforms (of those members with uniforms) were ordered from and made by Arnott’s.8 Of course, such “upperosity” on Nora Clitheroe’s part, also seen in forcing her uncle Peter and her husband’s cousin the Covey to maintain “proper” manners within the flat, revisits the mimicking of bourgeois values within tenements as seen in Juno and the Paycock. The lack of privacy, also seen in Juno, is present with neighbours entering the Clitheroe flat at will—which Nora addresses by having Fluther repair the door’s lock. The opening scene’s discussion between Gogan and Fluther, another resident, establishes that Nora is “screwing every penny she can out” of Peter and The Covey—both of who live in the Clitheroe flat. Arguably, Nora is fighting to live more comfortably than her means allow. Fluther asks Gogan, “How is it that Clitheroe himself, now, doesn’t have anythin’ to do with the’ Citizen Army? A couple o’ months ago, an you’d hardly ever see him without his gun, an th’ Red Hand o’ Liberty Hall in his hat?”9 Gogan replies, “Just because he wasn’t made a Captain

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of. He wasn’t goin’ to be in anything where he couldn’t be conspishuous. He was so cocksure o’ being made one that he bought a Sam Brown belt, an’ was always puttin’ it on an’ standing in th’ door showing it off, till th’ man came an’ put out th’ street lamps on him. God, I think he used to bring it to bed with him!” (70). The insinuation is that Clitheroe’s ICA interest only existed while he thought he was going to be promoted to Captain, and is without any commitment to the ICA’s cause. This clashes with historian Brian Barton’s assertion that Connolly “demanded an ideological commitment to revolution and the goal of an independent Irish socialist republic” from ICA members, though such an effort does not mean that all members were truthful with Connolly (328).10 Yet O’Casey setting Acts I and II in November 1915 was no accident as it was the very month when Connolly accelerated his preparations for the Rising, particularly with the ICA—and it was also the month when Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C . went into rehearsals at the Abbey Theatre. According to O’Brien, Connolly spoke individually to each ICA member that November, informing each that they would soon be called to fight and he wanted no one who was not prepared to do so (Forth, 276).11 This was recalled in O’Brien’s Forth the Banners Go, published in 1969, just after O’Brien’s death and four years after O’Casey’s death.12 Since O’Brien and O’Casey periodically traded public jabs over Connolly and the ICA, perhaps O’Brien’s mentioning these talks of Connolly with ICA members-talks was in part a response to the specific time setting of Plough’s Acts I and II. O’Casey likely knew of these talks through his ICA friends, and, of course, he probably was also aware that Connolly had increased his Rising preparations in other ways that month, such as reviving the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company with Helena Molony (Chapters 2 and 3). On 27 November, Connolly provocatively wrote in the Workers’ Republic: “Should the day ever come when revolutionary leaders are prepared to sacrifice the lives of those under them as recklessly as the ruling class do in every war, there will not be a throne or despotic government left in the world” (“Conscription”, 1). In Plough, this sentiment is, arguably, addressed in how Clitheroe, through his desire for relevance—made desperate by his class—is led into war, where he might feel vital despite a life of endless toil. To be fair to Connolly, given his significant wound during the Rising, he was as reckless with himself as he was with those he led into battle—quite the opposite of the ruling class’ warlords.

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Further into Act I, an intoxicated Bessie Burgess appears and expresses contempt for Nora’s social airs: “You little over-dressed throllope, you, for one pin I’d paste th’ white face o’ you!” (81). When Jack Clitheroe then enters, O’Casey’s stage direction notes: “It is a face in which is the desire for authority, without the power to attain it” (81). In a spirit reminiscent of “Not Bloody Likely!” in Shaw’s Pygmalion, (419), though without the comic angle, Clitheroe after pushing Burgess out, tells Nora, “There, don’t mind that old bitch, Nora”—a word repeated three further times, including near play’s end (82). Peter’s return to the main room in his full uniform of the Irish National Foresters, a mutual aid organization started in the nineteenth century, marks another of O’Casey’s ironic comments on the absurdity of various Irishmen wearing uniforms. Peter’s includes a sword and a “slouch hat, with the white ostrich plume” (83). In addition to mocking such men, with no interest in participating in any struggle with or for Ireland or anything else, the hat may also mock the ICA uniform that Constance Markievicz wore during the Rising: a man’s uniform with a large woman’s hat with black plumes, seen in photographs of Markievicz taken prior to the Rising (in wide circulation after 1916) and also in British army Intelligence photographs taken after the Rising ( “Madame”). During tea in Act I, shared by Nora and Jack Clitheroe with The Covey and Peter, Clitheroe speaks of the evening’s planned meeting on Ireland and “the Citizen Army carryin’ th’ flag of the Plough and the Stars”. The Covey, most likely representing O’Casey’s direct voice, remarks: “They’re bringin’ nice disgrace on that banner now”. Clitheroe asks, “How are they bringin’ disgrace on it?”, as if not understanding how it could be disgraceful. The Covey replies: “Because it’s a Labour flag, an’ was never meant for politics.... What does th’ design of th’ field plough, bearin’ on it th’ stars of th’ heavenly plough, mean, if it’s not Communism? It’s a flag that should only be used when we’re buildin’ th’ barricades to fight for a Workers’ Republic!” (84).13 The Communism remark carries with it the influence of Larkin’s 1924 Russian visit, and the IUW’s push toward communism, but it also carries the Socialist Party of Ireland’s 1921 expulsion of O’Brien and Cathal O’Shannon “for reformism, consecutive non-attendance at meetings and ‘consistent attempts to render all efforts to build up a communist party’” (Grant, 137). And, of course, the Clitheroe and Covey exchange insinuates that Connolly betrayed the Labour Movement in late 1915. Interestingly, O’Casey either ignores or

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was unaware of Lenin’s affinity for Connolly and Lenin’s take on Connolly’s efforts in 1916 (as well as Roderic Connolly’s 1920 Moscow meeting with Lenin) (Chapter 3). The Covey’s flag comment does not take into account Connolly’s 8 April 1916 article in the Workers’ Republic, “The Irish Flag”, which in part comments on the recent raising of an Irish Republic flag over Liberty Hall. Connolly’s article clarifies his ICA intentions just days prior to the Rising (Chapter 3), regardless of the fact that the flag raised was not the Plough and the Stars. It ends with: “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour (“Irish Flag”, 1).14 In a general sense, Plough seems to ignore Connolly’s socialist writing to suggest that the Rising was only nationalistic. It ignores Marx and Engels’, as well as Lenin’s views that socialist revolution requires a collaboration with nationalism—and it ignores Larkin’s own republican slanted Irish socialism, as well as the ICA’s constitution (Chapters 2 and 3). Interestingly, as Moran reveals, O’Casey in the 1930s understood nationalism’s role in socialist revolution to the extent that he stated the Welsh had to break away from England and establish their “own independence. National Freedom must, unfortunately, come before Communism” (quoted in O’Casey, 59). However, O’Casey’s view in Plough served to undermine O’Brien’s efforts regarding Connolly: by silencing Connolly’s socialism in the context of 1916 O’Casey undermined O’Brien’s effort to define himself within Irish Labour as Connolly’s friend and comrade. Ultimately, in the Plough, O’Casey delivers much more than personal animosity towards O’Brien over the perceived betrayal of Larkin, and Connolly is not the focus of the play. The focus instead is kept on the tenement dwellers impacted by Connolly’s (and Pearse’s) revolution. Once The Covey and Peter exit in Act I, Nora comments on Clitheroe being lost in thought, to which he replies: “You were always at me to giv up th’ Citizen Army, an’ I gave it up; surely that ought to satisfy you”. She answers, “Ay, you gave it up—because you got th’ sulks when they didn’t make a Captain of you. It wasn’t for my sake, Jack” (86). When Clitheroe tries to initiate intimacy with Nora, recalling Ibsen’s Nora from A Doll’s House, Clitheroe says to Nora: “Mrs Clitheroe doesn’t want to be kissed, sure she doesn’t? (He kisses her again.) Little, little red-lipped Nora!” She replies: “Oh, yes, your little, little red-lipped Nora’s a sweet little girl when th’ fit seizes you; but your little, little red-lipped Nora

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has to clean your boots every mornin’, all the same” (87).15 Most interestingly, Nora’s reply, specifically mentioning her task every morning of cleaning Clitheroe’s boots, directly echoes Connolly’s The Re-Conquest of Ireland, included in the 1917 Labour in Ireland, specifically the a section on women mentioned earlier: “The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female is the slave of that slave”. Connolly goes on to say that even marriage, “does not mean for her a rest from... labour, it usually means that... she has added the duty of a double domestic toil... her whole life runs—a dreary pilgrimage from one drudgery to another” (38, 40–41). Despite O’Casey’s effort to down-play the Rising’s socialist elements, Connolly’s theoretical socialism was still embraced by O’Casey and permeates the play, ideas that Shaw would revisit by decade’s end. After Nora gets Clitheroe to sing “When You Said You Loved Me”, generating a peaceful romantic moment between the Clitheroes, a knock is heard on the door. Brennan is heard: “Commandant Clitheroe, Commandant Clitheroe, are you there? A message from General Jim Connolly”. Brennan presents a “dispatch from General Connolly”, which states: “Commandant Clitheroe is to take command of the eighth battalion of the ICA which will assemble to proceed to the meeting at nine o’clock.... At two o’clock a.m. the army will leave Liberty Hall for a reconnaissance attack on Dublin Castle”, signed, “Com. [Commandant] Gen. [General] Connolly”.16 On asking why he is referred to in the dispatch as Commandant, Brennan explains that Connolly and the ICA’s staff officers have promoted Clitheroe to the rank of Commandant Captain. When Clitheroe presses to know why he had not been informed of his promotion, Brennan says he delivered Connolly’s promotion letter to Nora a “fortnight ago”. Nora pleads, “Send him away an’ stay with your own little re-lipp’d Nora” (91). Shaking Nora’s shoulder, Clitheroe demands to know what she did with the letter. Nora answers: “I burned it, I burned it! That’s what I did with it! Is General Connolly an’ th’ Citizen Army goin’ to be your only care?” A ringing moment in the play, which Moran suggests solidifies O’Casey’s projected statement on Connolly “as the figure who directly coaxes men to their death, away from the love and comfort of home life” (O’Casey, 38). Nora centres in on Clitheroe’s shallow reason for his ICA involvement, “Is your home goin’ to be only a place to rest in? Am I goin’ to be only somethin’ to provide merry-makin’ at night for you? Your vanity’ll be th’ ruin of you an’ me yet... That’s what’s movin’ you: because they’ve made an officer of you, you’ll make a glorious cause of what you’re doing” (92). Clitheroe becomes enraged,

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physically grabs her arm—“Let go—you’re hurtin’ me!” “You deserve to be hurt... Any letter that comes to me for th’ future, take care that I get it... D’ye hear—take care that I get it!” (92). His brutality emphasizes not only Clitheroe’s vanity—as Nora’s charge hits its mark—but also emphasizes that Clitheroe sees Nora’s burning Connolly’s letter as the betrayal of his chance for relevance. Thematically, we see that Connolly and his ICA violate and disrupt the Clitheroe’s domestic space. This counters the violation of the O’Donnells’ domestic space in Connolly’s Under Which Flag ?, which first occurs when the son John expresses his desire to emigrate, and then more seriously by the son Frank who announces he will enlist in the British army. However, Connolly’s portrayed violation of the domestic space countered the similar violation in Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C ., which in comic mode, is disrupted by the competing greed of O’Flaherty’s mother and his former romantic interest Tessie. Three plays with three disruptive causes of domestic harmony. Harmony for the poor is portrayed by the three writers as being fragile and all too susceptible to disruption in a world at war, with little hope of personal glory. Of course, Clitheroe’s sense of Nora’s betrayal over his ICA promotion also suggests something of the betrayal of Larkin, who frequently was viewed by detractors as arrogant and egotistical (McGuire, 95–96). After all, given Larkin’s role in 1913, his legacy did not need him to continue as the only leader of the ITGWU, although his ego disagreed. So, while O’Casey portrays the revolutionary nationalist Connolly as wrecking the domestic life of the Clitheroe’s, the Clitheroes in Act I affirm the socialist Connolly with regard to Nora’s enslavement to Clitheroe. The militant is criticized while the theoretician is embraced; this combination ultimately is what the Act I’s consideration of Connolly involves. After Clitheroe exits with Brennan for their night with Connolly and the ICA, the consumptive young Mollser enters, who recalls the consumptive character Anne in A. P. Wilson’s The Slough. Consumption, of course, was rampant among the urban working-class well into the twentieth century. While speaking of envying Nora’s health and “th’ lovely place you have here”, Mollser remarks on the soldiers heard marching offstage: “Oh, this must be some more o’ the Dublin Fusiliers flyin’ off to the front” (93), being Irish soldiers in a British army regiment heading off to the European War against Germany. The reference to the Great War thematically places Connolly’s ICA on a parallel plane with the British

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army, not to suggest that they were equal forces, but to suggest that both armies disrupt everything. Then, in a direct echo of O’Flaherty, V. C ., the Fusiliers are heard singing “It’s a long way to Tipperary”. In O’Flaherty, V. C., Shaw’s stage direction stipulates that before the actions begins, the “last four bars of God Save the King are heard in the distance, followed by three cheers. Then the band strikes up It’s a Long Way to Tipperary and recedes until it is out of hearing”. In the opening dialogue, O’Flaherty comments to his landlord and General, Sir Pearce Madigan, “I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life til I came back from Flanders” (258–259). O’Flaherty, V. C ., as mentioned earlier, had been scheduled to premiere at the Abbey Theatre in November 1915, the very time when Plough’s Acts I and II take place as well as when Connolly increased his preparations for revolution. O’Casey not only knew Connolly’s play, but also O’Flaherty—but perhaps not the links between the two. By presenting the sounds of Irishmen marching off to fight and die in the Great War, together with Molser’s words at the close of Act I, “Is there anybody goin’, Mrs Clitheroe, with a titther o’ sense?” (94), a critical note is sounded which impinges on both Under Which Flag ? and O’Flaherty, V. C . with working-class Irishmen leaving their homes for War. Thus, O’Casey also refutes Shaw’s recruiting position during the Great War, “A trench is a safer place than a Dublin slum”, as well as the worldly education that the War might offer Irish labourers (Chapters 2 and 3). In that criticism O’Casey again echoes Connolly, this time his views on British military enlistment in Ireland (War Issues, 198). Connolly permeates even when being disputed. However, the agreements with Connolly are with his socialism, not with his physical revolution. It was an interesting balance since Connolly, and others, tried to see the two as one. As might have been expected, the bourgeoise Dublin theatre-goer Joseph Holloway took “exception to the character Rosie Redmond” in Plough’s Act II, and O’Casey “had been apprehensive about the effect Rosie Redmond might have on the audience” (Murray, 172; 173). However, a prostitute on the Abbey stage by February 1926 was nothing new. Prostitute Feemy Evans in Shaw’s The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet had premiered at the Abbey in 1909 and remained in its yearly repertoire to the end of the 1930s.17 Significantly, Rosie’s last name, much like the title character of Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession (1893) who shares her surname with Sir Charles Warren, the Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police in 1887–1888, is shared with John

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Redmond, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party from 1900–1918. Both character’s surnames had relevance for their respective authors. Warren had ordered a police baton charge against working-class protestors, anarchists, and socialists (including Shaw) in a Trafalgar Square demonstration in 1887, while Redmond had advocated for Irish Home Rule, having achieved the passing of a watered-down Home Rule bill in 1912 (but suspended for the War). He failed to advocate for workers during the Dublin Lockout despite the publicized police violence against workers (Chapter 2), and he also had tirelessly campaigned for Irish enlistment in the British military during the War.18 Rosie Redmond delivers the first prominent line of Plough’s Act II, set in a Dublin Pub, in response to the barman’s comment, “Nothin’ much doin’ in your line tonight, Rosie?”. With mocking echoes of saints and martyrs (perhaps Joan) she replies: “There isn’t much notice taken of a pretty petticoat of a night like this.... They’re in a holy mood. Th’ solemn-lookin’ dials on th’ whole of them an’ they marchin’ to th’ meetin’. You’d think they were th’ glorious company of th’ saints, an’ th’ noble army of martyrs thrampin’ through th’ sthreets of paradise. They’re thinkin’ of higher things than a girl’s garthers” (96). She also notes the grand size of the meeting, given its four platforms, with one outside the pub’s large window. Moran notes that in Plough O’Casey also takes aim at Padraig Pearse, the Volunteers leader who became President of the provisional government of the Irish Republic during the Insurrection. 19 In Act II, the “Voice of the Man” (partially in view outside the pub during moments of his speech) is meant to be Pearse—his words are excerpts from Pearse’s speeches: “He [O’Casey] picked out some well-known examples of Pearse’s most bloodthirsty writing, and inserted them into The Plough and the Stars ” (O’Casey, 55). A good number of the play’s first audiences would therefore have recognized Pearse’s words, especially those who had known Pearse—including as Pearse’s mother. The first section of the speech even seems to echoe The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman’s General Aufsteig and the carnage of the Great War, but Pearse’s words predate Aufsteig: “It is a glorious thing to see arms in the hands of Irishmen.... Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood.... There are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them!” (96). The problem, if it is seen as such, is that Pearse’s words are presented outside a pub, yet Pearse had campaigned in temperance movements, particularly with the Capuchin Order in Dublin (Barton, 124). He and

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Connolly, and other 1916 leaders, had emphatically called for abstinence within the Volunteers and ICA. So addressing listeners before a pub seems inconsistent with the real Pearse, but O’Casey’s point probably lies more with those who venture inside the pub than with Pearse. Still, the speech’s setting outside a pub takes a liberty with historical truth, which Shaw had stressed with Saint Joan. By tying Pearse’s words, and the hearers of those words, to a pub—particularly those who go in and out for drinks—adds to O’Casey’s argument on the commitment among Dublin’s poor to the ICA, the Volunteers, or not. It also, of course, provides a glimpse of a recruiting-type speech that is only alluded to in Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C . (perhaps not-unlike O’Flaherty’s heroic embellishments). After the first section of the speech is seen/heard Rosie comments, “Oh here’s the two gems runnin’ over again for their oil!”, signifying the entrance into the pub of Peter and Fluther (97). Peter states that “A meetin’ like this always makes me feel as if I could dhrin Loch Erinn dhry!”, to which Fluther responds: “You couldn’t feel any way else at a time like this when th’ spirit of a man is pulsin’ to be out fightin’ for th’ truth with his feet thremblin’ on th’ way, maybe to th’ gallows...” (97). He then claims, “The blood was BOILIN’ in me veins!”. When the speaker, Pearse, returns to the pub’s window, he states: “Comrade soldiers of the Irish Volunteers and of the Citizen Army, we rejoice in this terrible war [the Great War]. The old heart of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.... we must be ready to pour out the same red wine in the same glorious sacrifice, for without shedding of blood there is no redemption!” (98). As Fluther and Peter run out, “this is too good to be missed!” the Covey enters for a glass. Rosie immediately moves to the Covey. He tries to ignore her until she says, “Well, it’s up to us all, anyway, to fight for our freedom”. He orders another drink and one for Rosie, replying, “Freedom! What’s th’ use o’ freedom, if it’s not economic freedom?” (99–100). He attempts to interest her in the fictious “Jenersky’s Thesis on the Origin, Development, an’ Consolidation of the Evolutionary Idea of the Proletariat ”. On realizing what Rosie is endeavouring to do, he abruptly states: “I’ve something else to do besides shinannickin’ after Judies!… I don’t want to have any meddlin’ with a lassie like you!” and exits (101). Despite the Covey’s interest in socialist theory, he shows little compassion for Rosie, whom he should see as a victim of the capitalist system, rather than contemptuously treating her with bourgeoise morality.20 Peter and Fluther return with Mrs Gogan and her infant. Gogan stirs Fluther and

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Peter into arguing after commenting on Peter’s Foresters uniform—petty arguments (reminiscent of O’Flaherty’s mother and Teresa) in contrast Pearse’s words outside meant to inspire Dubliners into fighting against Britain, not each other. Adding to the talk is the entering Bessie Burgess. At this point Burgess enters, a Dublin Protestant who’s son is a currently in the British army, she reflects on the crowd outside: “I can’t for th’ lie o’ me undherstand how they can call themselves Catholics, when they won’t lift a finger to help poor little Catholic Belgium”. One of the main recruiting slogans in Ireland for enlistment in the British army during 1914 into much of 1915 was to help Catholic Belgium, which had been overrun by the German army. She continues about the Great War and her son’s involvement in it, her sentiments contradicting Pearse’s earlier words on the sanctity of the War’s blood sacrifices: There’s a storm of anger tossin’ in me heart, thinkin’ of all th’ poor Tommies [British soldiers], an’ with them me own son, dhrenched in water an’ soaked in blood, gropin’ their way to a shattherin’ death, in a shower o’ shells! Young men with th’ sunny lust o’ life beamin’ in them, layin’ down their white bodies, shredded into torn an’ bloody pieces, on th’ althar God Himself has built for th’ sacrifice of heroes! (103–104).

As Gogan and Burgess start squabbling over insinuations on Gogan’s morality (again adopted bourgeois values), and as Peter and The Covey resume their arguing, Pearse returns into sight and hearing, adding further contrast to Burgess’ above quoted speech: “The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. War is a terrible thing, but war is not an evil thing.... When war comes to Ireland she must welcome it as she would welcome the Angel of God!” (105). As Pearse again moves out of view, The Covey states: “Dope, dope. There’s only one war worth havin’: th’ war for th’ economic emancipation of th’ proletariat” (105). As their argument intensifies, the barman pushes Gogan and Burgess out of the pub, which leads to Fluther and The Covey arguing over the Labour Movement, as to whether the former knows anything about it when Rosie takes Fluther’s side. The Covey responds “savagely to Rosie”, “It’ll be a long time before th’ Covey takes any insthructions or reprimandin’ from a prostitute!” (111). As The Covey is pushed out and Fluther and Rosie move to the snug, Clitheroe, Brennan, and Volunteer officer Lieutenant Langon enter. Brannon carries a Plough and the Stars flag while Langon

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carries a green, white, and orange tricolour (flag). The stage direction states they are in “a state of excitement” (114). As with the earlier characters, these three soldiers for Ireland also need drinks. Clitheroe: “Three glasses o’ port!” Brennan: “We won’t have long to wait now”. Langon: “Th’ time is rotten ripe for revolution” (114). Interestingly, it is the bourgeois Langon, of the Volunteers who uses the word revolution. That may be a slight jab at Connolly, though Connolly meant revolution in a fuller sense, O’Casey seemingly is insinuating that a revolution with a social restructuring of society will not happen. When Brennan states, “You have a wife, Clitheroe”, he responds, “Ireland is greater than a wife” (114–115). Thematically, the transformation is nearly complete, the surrendering of their lives as they know them to the cause. For Pearse’s last words in the Act, O’Casey uses the end of Pearse’s O’Donovan Rossa graveside speech, delivered historically on 1 August 1915 in Glasnevin Cemetery (definitely not outside a pub). That occasion represented the first organized demonstration to include both the ICA and Irish Volunteers (Chapter 2): They [the British Government] think they have pacified Ireland; think they have foreseen everything; think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!—they have left us our Fenian [rebels from previous rebellions] dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland, unfree, shall never be at peace! (115)

Having listened to Pearse’s closing words over their glasses “o’ port”, Brennan exclaims “Imprisonment for th’ Independence of Ireland!” Langon: “Wounds for th’ Independence of Ireland!” Clitheroe: “Death for th’ Independence of Ireland!” (115). As the three express their desire for independence, any sentiment for a Workers’ Republic is implicitly left out. Arguably, the three echo the trinity in Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island of Tom Broadbent, Larry Doyle, and Peter Keegan who in their Act IV discussion on Ireland’s future, not in terms of rebel soldiers but rather in terms expressed by the capitalist Broadbent—both trinities far removed from Keegan’s desire for a socialist Ireland, a holy trinity where all people are equal and worshipped, “in which all life is human and all humanity divine” (John Bull’s, 163). Plough’s Act II ends with Rosie and Fluther exiting the snug and making their way out of the pub, while Clitheroe’s voice is heard outside: “Dublin Battalion of the Irish Citizen Army, by th’ right, quick march!” (116).

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The play’s bringing together of the Irish Volunteers (IV) and the ICA in November 1915 is historically too early. Although there was a brief mutual participation for O’Donovan Rossa’s August 1915 funeral, the IV and ICA did not explicitly come together until Pearse and other radical IV leaders met with Connolly in late January 1916, when they agreed to a joint rebellion for the coming Easter. However, O’Casey makes his point by portraying the ICA joining the bourgeoise IV, represented by the IV Langon, as the ICA Clitheroe and Brennan listen to Pearse’s words without mentioning the workers. When the play provoked demonstrations that disrupted the performance during its opening run, reminiscent of those against Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in 1907, there were curiously no references to ICA inaccuracies. The ICA was not organized with battalions, but into “sections”; of course, battalion is more dramatic (Matthews, 28–29; Leddin, vii). Yet the main objection from the demonstrators in the Theatre was the presence of what became Ireland’s national flag, the tricolour, being brought into a pub. Yet what about the Plough and the Stars being brought into a pub?

Acts III and IV In his 30 April 1916 letter to The Nation editor H. W. Massingham abour the Rising, Shaw noted, “Dublin slums are so damnable that the mere mob part of the business must have been pretty bad” (Collected Letters, III , 398). Shaw is referring to the looting during the Rising, particularly north of the River Liffey when the Dublin Metropolitan Police withdrew its personnel after suffering casualties in the Rising’s early hours. In Plough’s Act III, set during an early day in the Rising (which began on 24 April 1916), O’Casey touches on the looting, but only after commenting first on the combat, revealing a reality that is anything but romantically heroic. Set infront of the tenement that includes the Clitheroe’s flat, the Act opens with Gogan settling her daughter Molser outside. Despite Molser’s comments on her improved breathing, she comments on “th’ horrible sinkin’ feelin’”, suggesting her consumption has progressed since the previous Acts. Gogan comments that she was “kep’ awake all night with the shootin’” (118). The expository dialogue reveals that Nora went in search of her husband, while Fluther in turn went to find her. The Covey and Peter enter with reports of the fighting, including the British Lancers who rode towards the rebel headquarters in the GPO that first day until

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fired upon by the rebels: “there was a volley from th’ Post Office that stretched half o’ them, an’ sent th’ rest gallopin’ away” (119). The Covey also relates that Pearse read the Easter Proclamation in front of the GPO, declaring an Irish Republic. Peter tells of the patrol boat HMS Helga entering the Liffey River and firing on Liberty Hall, which, in fact, began on the second day. Burgess begins her mocking commentary on the tenement’s men not fighting in the Rising: “Go on an’ get guns if yous are men—Johnny get your gun …. Yous are all nicely shanghaied now; th’ boyo hasn’t a sword on his thigh now!” (120). And while Peter is not is his Foresters uniform, Burgess’ “shanghaied” comment resonates with the reality of the tenement poor, and others pulled into the events engulfing Dublin, caught in the chaos orchestrated by the Rising’s leaders. Fluther and Nora enter with Nora speaking about her search at the rebel barricades and garrisons, “I shamed my husband an’ th’ women of Ireland be carryin’ on as I was” (121). The expectation, particularly after the Rising, was that the women who remained home had to play their supporting roles, and suffer in silence—a characteristic conservative view that ignored the Rising’s women combatants. Yet Nora states in opposition, “An’ there’s no woman gives a son or a husband to be killed—if they say it, they’re lyin’, lyin’, against God, Nature, an’ against themselves!” (122). She continues by stating that Clitheroe, whom she believes would now rather be with her, is a coward, as are all of the rebels: I tell you they’re afraid to say they’re afraid! … Oh, I saw it, Mrs Gogan …. At th’ barricade in North King Street I saw fear glowin’s in all their eyes.… An’ in th’ middle o’ th’ street was somethin’ huddled up in a horrible, tangled heap …. His face was jammed again th’ stones, an’ his arm was twisted round his back …. An’ every twist of his body was a cry against th’ terrible thing that had happened to him …. An’ I saw they were afraid to look at it …. (123)

In helping Nora into the tenement, Burgess tauntingly asks Fluther, Peter, and The Covey, “Why aren’t yous in the GPO if yous are men? It’s paler an’ paler yous are getting’ …. A lot of vipers, that’s what th’ Irish people is!” (124). In the years following the Rising, the very question of who was out in 1916, and who was not, taunted many. Of course, with Burgess’ son in the British army and perhaps with her religion as well (though, as stated above, Protestants did take part in the Rising but were increasingly marginalized by mainstream Catholics later), she aligns herself with the

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British, or at least is loyal with her son in their ranks; she also receives the Government’s separation allowance with her son at War. Within minutes “the distant boom of a big gun is heard”, with Fluther asking, “Surely to God they’re not goin’ to use artillery on us?”. The Covey replies, “Not goin’! (Vehemently) Wouldn’t they use anything on us, man?” (125).21 Burgess returns with looted items, announcing: They’re breakin’ into th’ shops, they’re breakin’ into th’ shops! Smashin’ th’ windows, batterin’ in th’ doors, an’ whippin’ away everything! An’ th’ Volunteers is firin’ on them. I seen two men an’ a lassie pushin’ a piano down the street, an’ th’ sweat rollin’ off them thryin’ to get it up on the pavement. (126)

Fluther and The Covey head off to join the looting, followed soon by Burgess and Gogan, all allies now. Peter fearing the fighting, stays behind. The Covey returns with sacks of flour and ham. Gogan and Burgess return with “the pride of a great joy illuminating their faces”, as they push the pram loaded with clothes and boots, topped with “a fancy table” (131). Clearly from the play’s perspective, the looting represented an opportunity for those living in the tenements who usually had no opportunity to acquire many necessities, never mind luxuries. The play presents a human side to the looters who had been largely denounced from many perspectives. O’Casey could not have known of Constance Markievicz’s private letter to her sister Eva Gore-Booth, remarking on the Rising’s looting— “They are only scrambling for champagne and frock coats in the end”, but Plough’s portrait of looters in contrast reflected empathy, absent from many others, including the former ICA officer Markievicz (quoted by Ferriter, Nation, 224). Next to enter are Clitheroe, Brennan, and the badly wounded Langon—all in uniform and armed. Brennan asks Clitheroe, “Why did you fire over their heads? Why didn’t you fire to kill?” Clitheroe: “No, no, Bill; bad as they are they’re Irish men an’ women”; Brennan: “Irish be damned! Attackin’ an’ mobbin’ th’ men that are riskin’ their lives for them. If these slum lice gather at our heels again, plug one o’ them, or I’ll soon shock them with a shot or two meself!” (132–133). Connolly is reported to have commented in the GPO when the looting began, “Unless a few of them are shot, you won’t stop them”. However, he refrained from ordering anything more than firing over their heads (Barton, 333). However, Brennan’s lack of empathy, and his referring

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to the poor from the tenements as “slum lice” rings of class prejudice, despite his being in the ICA. Listed as a chicken butcher in the list of characters, he presumably owns the butcher shop that sells to the tenement folk and consequently is slightly above them in class. This adds a curious class element to the play, with O’Casey suggesting that not all members of the ICA were labourers.22 Nora enters and rushes to Clitheroe. Undoubtedly, she thinks he has returned to her. He admits, “My Nora; my little, beautiful Nora, I wish to God I’d never left you”. Nora: “It doesn’t matter—not now, not now, Jack. It will make us dearer than ever to each other …. Kiss me, kiss me again” (134). Burgess taunts Clitheroe and Brennan from a window: “Th’ Minsthral Boys aren’t feeling very comfortable now. Th’ big guns has knocked all th’ harps out of their hands. General Clitheroe’s rather be unlacin’ his wife’s bodice …. An’ th’ professor of chicken-butcherin’ there, finds he’s up against somethin’ a little tougher even than his own chickens” (134). As Langon pleads for medical help, Clitheroe tells Nora to “Loosen me, darling, let me go”. Nora clings to him. Brennan: “Go on Jack, bid her goodbye with another kiss, an’ be done with it! D’ye want Langon to die in me arms while you’re dallyin’ with your Nora?” In Nora’s fight to keep him with her, she tells how she screamed his name at rebel barricades. Clitheroe: “What are you more than any other woman?” Nora: “No more, maybe; but you are more to me than any other man, Jack” (135). Eventually, Clitheroe forces her away from him and leaves with Brennan and the grievously wounded Langon. When Burgess sees Nora lying on the street, she brings her into the house.23 A heavily intoxicated Fluther provides another glimpse of the looting as he returns with various items, including a half gallon jar of whiskey. Bessie leads him, too, into the tenement, and then, with Molser’s worsening condition, Bessie risks the dangers to find a physician. Perhaps marginalized by her religion and the Rising, Burgess becomes the figure who endeavours to pull the tenement’s dwellers through the ordeal. And, of course, many who had served in the British military, or had a son or husband or brother in such service during the Great War, felt marginalized in 1920s Ireland, particularly after the 1919–1922 wars in Ireland. Yet overall in Act III, O’Casey reveals a side to the Rising that speaks of those caught within it, whether as residents—even regardless of class given the comic interruption by the bourgeois woman from affluent Rathmines not knowing where she is—or as rebel officers separated from their command detachments trying to find relief for their dying comrade.

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And as the Rising moves closer to its conclusion under British artillery, O’Casey continues to focus on the cost to ordinary Dubliners. Act IV with the action set in Burgess’ flat, appears to be set on the Friday of the Rising, 28 April, when the rebel command evacuated the burning GPO. Fluther comments on the red sky over central Dublin as he peers out a window: “Th’ sky’s getting’ reddher an’ reddher…. You’s think it was afire…. Half o’ th’ city must be burnin.’” Peter echoes The Covey’s caution to stay clear of the window lest it draw machine-gun fire from British soldiers endeavouring to liquidate rebel snipers, “we had to leave our own place th’ way they were riddlin’ it with machine-gun fire”. The expository exchanges also establish that Molser has died, and is awaiting to be collected for burial—making the point that the curse of consumption and other illnesses associated with poverty did not stop for the Rising.24 To further it, The Covey remarks: “Sure she never got any care. How could she get it, an’ the’ mother out day an’ night lookin’ for work, an’ her consumptive husband leavin’ her with a baby to be born before he died!” He continues on Nora’s condition: “The doctor thinks she’ll never be th’ same.... She’s ramblin’ a lot; thinkin’ she’s out in th’ country with Jack; or getting’ his dinner ready for him before he comes home; or yellin’ for her kiddie. All that, though, might be th’ chloroform she got.... I don’t know what we’d have done only for oul’ Bessie” (142). Burgess elaborates on Nora’s mental fragility, revealing O’Casey’s growing admiration for Eugene O’Neill’s work, “as if her mind had been lost alive in madly minglin’ memories of th’ past …. (Sleepily) Crushin’ her thoughts …. together ... in a fierce... an’ fanciful … (she nods her head and starts wakefully) idea that dead things as livin’, an’ livin’ things are dead” (143). Brennan enters in civilian clothes and asks for “Mrs Clitheroe;... I was told I’d find her here”. He reveals he has Clitheroe’s last message for her, and explains Clitheroe’s death: In th’ Imperial Hotel; we fought till th’ place was in flames. He was shot through th’ arm, an’ then through th’ lung …. I could do nothin’ for him—only watch his breath comin’ an’ goin’ in quick, jerky gasps, an’ a tiny sthream o’ blood thricklin’ out of his mouth, down over his lower lip …. I said a prayer for th’s dyin’, an twined his Rosary beads around his fingers …. Then I had to leave him to save myself …. Look at the way a machine-gun tore at me coat, as I belted out o’ th’ buildin’ an’ darted across th’ street for shelter [presumably across a back street behind the

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building that would have led toward connecting streets to the north Liffey tenements] …. An’ then, I seen The Plough and the Stars fallin’ like a shot as th’ roof crashed in, an’ where I’d left poor Jack was nothin’ but a leppin’ spout o’ flame!” (144)

As discussed previously, the Plough and the Stars flown from the Imperial Hotel did not fall but survived the fires and the almost entire building’s collapse; and the façade survived. Presumably, by the time O’Casey was able to see the destruction on O’Connell Street for himself, the flag had been taken down as the British military was keen to lower and remove the flags quickly, lest they become symbols for rebel martyrs. However, in O’Casey’s play, the fall of the flag and Clitheroe’s death, as well as Brennan’s abandonment of his friend and his ICA uniform speaks of the Rising’s failing, and, given the ICA flag on the Hotel garrison, the collapse of Connolly’s ICA. After Burgess scolds Brennan for abandoning Clitheroe, Brennan defensively replies: “I took my chance as well as him.… He took it like a man. His last whisper was to ‘Tell Nora to be brave; that I’m ready to meet my God, an’ that I’m proud to die for Ireland.’ An’ when our General heard it he said that ‘Commandant Clitheroe’s end was a gleam of glory.’ Mrs Clitheroe’s grief will be a joy when she realizes that she had a hero for a husband” (144–145). It seems that Brennan is embellishing, particularly since Clitheroe had admitted to Nora in Act III that he wished he had never left. Viewed historically, the scene Brennan describes and his escape, seems unlikely. Rebel evacuations from the Imperial were reported as beginning after 10:00 p.m. on the Rising’s Thursday, when the main staircase collapsed with fires rising through floors under continued artillery shelling. The Hotel collapsed—except for its façade— at 3:30 a.m. on the Friday morning. If “our General” that Brennan refers to is meant to be Connolly, who was then in the GPO, crossing O’Connell Street from the Hotel during that time frame seems impossible as machine guns were constantly raking the street. There are no accounts of any rebels crossing the street at that time as it “was lit up by huge flames and although the distance across was little more than 100 yards they would [have] be[en] easy targets” (Molyneux and Kelly, 248–252). As for Connolly, he had been seriously wounded late that Thursday afternoon with much blood loss, and would not have been able to respond to Brennan’s account of Clitheroe’s, or any other account of a rebel’s death (Connolly’s slight rally came on Friday morning). Those who did escape

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the Imperial Hotel and adjacent buildings did so through back streets into tenements on Marlborough and Gloucester Streets, and to others north of the Liffey tenements, where presumably the play’s tenement is located (Molyneux and Kelly, 249), Brennan’s escape to the tenement building was practically possible, but not with a detour to the GPO. However, the situation’s effect for the play’s characters huddled in Burgess’ room is effectively made and reflects O’Casey’s continued portrayal of the human cost. Nora, disjointed in her thoughts, asks for her husband and her lost baby. Once Burgess gets her into the adjoining room, The Covey tells Brennan that “you’d best be slippin’ back to where you come from”, with Brennan replying: “There’s no chance o’ slippin’ back now, fo th’ military [British] are everywhere: a fly couldn’t get through. I’d never have got here, only I managed to change me uniform for what I’m wearin’.... I’ll have to take me chance, an’ thry to lie low here for a while” (148). The Covey claims that there is no place for Brennan to hide with them, and that the British soldiers will soon be in the building, to which Peter echoes Burgess’ earlier taunt but without the taunting angle: “An’ then we’d all be shanghaied!” (148). Corporal Stoddart of the British army then enters “in full war kit” (148). It is revealed that he has come on account of Molser and asks, “Was she plugged?” When told it was consumption, he replies “is that all?” The Covey answers pointing to the class angle: “Is that all? Isn’t it enough? D’ye know, comrade, that more die o’ consumption than are killed in th’ wars? An’ it’s all because of th’ system we’re livin’ undher?” (149). Stoddart replies, “Ow, I know. I’m a Sowcialist moiself but I’as to do my dooty”. The Covey: “Dooty! Th’ only dooty of a Socialist is th’ emancipation of th’s workers” (150). The exchange echoes both Connolly’s lament in the early days of the War, when socialists and trade unionists across Europe abandoned their international socialism for their nations’ respective armies: “What then becomes of all our resolutions, all our carefully built machinery of internationalism, all our hopes for the future?” (“Continental”, 240– 241)—and also of Connolly’s words about the soldiers who will execute him, “I respect every man who does his duty” (quoted in Barton, 349). The Covey again quotes Jenersky’s socialist pamphlet, provoking Stoddart to reply, “Ow, cheese it, Paddy, cheese it!” (150) echoing Hodson from Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island to the argumentative Matthew Haffigan in similar Cockney tones, “Ow, check it, Paddy, cheese it” (129).

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When an ambulance is heard for the second time in Plough’s Act IV, Stoddart remarks on the rebel sniper who has been firing on British troops. Yet, when Gogan enters and speaks of Molser, Stoddart is compassionate, “Git it aht, mother, git it aht” (151). Eventually he asks for a count of the men in the tenement. He reveals that “All men in the district ‘as to be rounded up. Somebody’s giving ‘elp to the snipers, and we ‘as to take prescautions”; his officers ignore the fact that women might be assisting the sniper or even that the sniper may be a woman, as was Margaret Skinnider during the Rising in the St. Stephen’s Green/Royal College of Surgeons ICA garrison (152; Connell, Who’s, 275). When Burgess explains that she is loyal to Britain and that her son is at the front “fightin’ for is King and country!” Stoddart claims: “we’re pumping lead in on ‘em from every side, now; they’ll soon be shoving up th’ white flag” (152), which reflects on the final moments of the Act coinciding with the ending of the Rising. The British Sergeant Tinley enters, complaining about the rebel snipers using “Dumdum bullets” or hollow-point bullets: “That’s not playing the goime: why down’t they come into the owpen and foight fair!” Interestingly, Fluther vehemently answers: “Fight fair! A few hundhred scrawls o’ chaps with a couple o’ guns an’ Rosary beads, again’ a hundhdred thousand thrained men with horse, fut, an’artiller … an’ he wants us to fight fair! (To Sergeant) D’ye want us to come out in our skins an’ throw stones!” (155). Fluther reflects certain pride in the rebels for the odds they faced, echoing Shaw’s remark in his first published post-Rising press letter that satirically asks if Punch will depict Connolly as it had Belgium’s King Albert when German troops overran his country in 1914: “at least he has not lost his soul by his desperate fight for the independence of his country against a foe ten times his size?” (“Neglected”, 120).25 After The Covey, Peter, Fluther, and Brennan are led away, Nora enters and awakens an exhausted Burgess. As Nora confusingly stumbles about, Burgess tells her to step away from the window as British soldiers outside shout the same. When Burgess goes to push Nora away from the window, “Two rifle shots ring out in quick succession” (157) and she falls against the window. Burgess realizing that she is badly wounded and dying, cries out in desperation: “Merciful God, I’m shot, I’m shot, I’m shot! … Th’ life’s pourin’ out o’ me! (To Nora) I’ve got this through... through you... through you, you bitch, you! … O God, have mercy on me!” Staggering, she echoes Pearse’s words from Act II: “This is what’s afther comin’ on me for nursin’ you day an’ night …. I was a fool, a fool, a fool!”

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(158). This is an interesting take on the end of Pearse’s speech in Act II, which claimed the British were fools in their dealings with Ireland, whereas Burgess states she was a fool for compassionately helping Nora. Burgess, who had risen above her earlier taunts and insults when helping those in the tenement, is now killed by those whom she had been politically loyal to, as Tinley acknowledges, “Ow Gawd, we’ve plugged one of the women of the ‘ouse” (159). The play’s last comments on the Rising constitutes its closing moments. With Brugess’ body covered with the sheet Gogan spread over it, Stoddart asks Tinley that since there is tea, “Wot abaht a cup of scald?”; Tinley: “Pour it aht, Stoddary, pour it aht. I could scoff hanything just now” (160). As they enjoy their tea over Burgess’ body (another lost life), the sounds of combat from central Dublin becomes louder and the sky through the window “flares into a fuller and deeper red” (160). Tinley adds, “There goes the general attack on the Powst Office” (161). An ambulance is again heard, and British soldiers are heard outside singing “Keep the home fires burning” as Dublin burns. Tinley and Stoddart join in with singing the second verse, a song traditionally sung by soldiers in Britain’s modern wars to boost morale, while the GPO rebels are about to evacuate the GPO and run through heavy machine gun and rifle fire from multiple angles.26 In 1926, Dubliners might have been thinking of how they would remember the Rising’s tenth anniversary, two months after the February opening of O’Casey’s play, which suggests that its cost must be recognized.

The Opening Run’s Epilogue The relevance of The Plough and the Stars is achieved through its portrait of residents of one Dublin tenement, caught in the build up to and execution of the 1916 Rising. Their struggles for personal relevance and worth in an economic reality that offered them little hope is presented in a non-judgmental light. Even the looting in Act III offers explanation, rather than condemnation. And, of course, the play shows the cost to the poor, arguably forgotten or brushed aside in 1926 Ireland. On that score, O’Casey endeavours to reinsert class into the 1926 consciousness of 1916, as well as into 1926 Ireland—the poverty was still there. While elements of historical truth regarding the Rising are stretched, or altered in the play, O’Casey makes his points legitimately, as any successful

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artistic political playwright does, portraying the suffering of Dublin tenement inhabitants caught in the Rising. Nevertheless, as we saw, opposition arose during the second performance, aimed at “the Irish tricolour’s being brought into the pub in act 2” (173). Murray states that the organized opposition to the play erupted during its fourth performance, 11 February 1926, enacted by women “on behalf of widows, sisters, daughters and supporters of the men [and women] who fought in the 1916 Rising” (173). The protest and disruption came during Act II when some young women and men rushed the stage, with verbal altercations between actors and the protestors. Murray writes that when, “the lights went up at the end of act 2 the audience was in turmoil, mainly, it would appear, over the desecration of the national flag in a public house” (174). In Act III, more protestors made it to the stage, resulting this time in physical altercations and thrown projectiles, mostly shoes (Murray, 175). Yeats took the stage and tried to shout over the noise, and famously spoke (he took care to supply the Irish Times with his comments): ‘Is this’, he shouted, ‘going to be a recurring celebration of Irish genius? Synge first, and then O’Casey! The news of the happenings of the last few minutes will flash from country to country. Dublin has once more rocked the cradle of a Reputation. From such a scene in this theatre went forth the fame of Synge. Equally the fame of O’Casey is born here tonight. This is his apotheosis.’ (quoted in Murray, 175).

As the police restored order, Murray relates, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington stood and rebuked the audience who were taking in the play “for forgetting the men of Easter Week”, and added: “All you need do now is to sing ‘God Save the King” (175–176; quoted in Murray, 176). Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington, whom Shaw and wife Charlotte had assisted in the past, was a formidable opponent against O’Casey’s play. She had been an activist for women’s suffrage and advocated leftist politics. Her husband, journalist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was also an advocate for women’s suffrage and socialistic causes prior to his execution in 1916. He had covered the Dublin Lockout for the leftist London Daily Herald, a paper Shaw had contributed to when formed in 1912. Both Sheehy-Skeffingtons had also worked in Liberty Hall during the Lockout, with Hanna being “one of the key figures who set up the Dublin soup kitchen which fed hundreds of strikers [and locked out workers] and

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their families” (Flaherty). Given the work in the kitchen, where O’Casey too worked during the Lockout, he and Sheehy-Skeffington likely had met and worked together. Francis had been an ICA vice-president when O’Casey was its secretary. And since the Rising, Hannah had tirelessly advocated for republican causes and had served as a judge in Sinn Fein law courts. On 15 February 1926, Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington wrote to the Irish Independent , William Martin Murphy’s former paper and the paper that had called for Connolly’s execution in 1916. She was responding to the paper’s editorial on Plough in order to address some “misses … regarding the Abbey Theatre protest” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I ,167). She explained that the protest “was not directed against the individual actor, nor was it directed to the moral aspect of the play [presumably she was referring to Rosie Redmond]. It was on national grounds solely”. She claimed that the play “held up to derision and obloquy the men and women of Easter Week”. She also stated that she had attended Abbey plays for “over 20 years … and I admire the earlier ideals of the place that produced ‘Kathleen Ni Houlihan’… that sent Sean Connolly out on Easter Week” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 167–168). Sean Connolly, being the Abbey actor, who is remembered as an ICA Captain who led the contingent that occupied Dublin’s City Hall during the Rising—and was the first rebel killed. He had acted with the Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company in James Connolly’s Under Which Flag ? and during Easter Week 1916, he had been scheduled to play Michael Gillane in Gregory and Yeats’ Kathleen Ni Houlihan (1902). Sheehy-Skeffington held that play, set during the failed 1798 rebellion, as a standard for Irish political comment, presumably because the play’s young man Gillane follows Kathleen (the personification of Ireland) to fight and die for her. Gillane is convinced or seduced by Kathleen’s songs and words, but after a verse in which she speaks of the death and imprisonment of those who will follow her, Michael states, “I do not know what that song means, but tell me something I can do for you” (9). His reasoning for joining Kathleen is not carefully thought out. Was Sheehy-Skeffington suggesting that blind reasoning is a better motivation than Clitheroe endeavouring to improve his self-esteem? Is not Kathleen’s final promise that those who follow her “shall be remembered for ever” (10) meant to appeal to the listener’s vanity for self-importance? Ultimately, Clitheroe’s motivation for fighting with the ICA in 1916 is not far from Michael Gillane’s motivation to fight in 1798.

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Unlike Synge who refrained from entering the debate on his play in 1907, O’Casey fully responded and prompted a press debate. O’Casey countered Sheehy-Skeffington’s points, and particularly addressed the question of the national flag in the Act II pub on 20 February in the Irish Independent : “They [the protestors] objected to the display of the Tricolour, saying that that flag was never in a public house. I myself have seen it there…. I have seen it painted on a lavatory in ‘The Gloucester Diamond” (O’Casey Letters, I , 170). The Gloucester Diamond was a pub located at the diamond intersection between Gloucester Place and Gloucester (now Sean MacDermott) Street. For decades it was the centre of the “Monto” section of Dublin, the red-light district visited by Leopold Bloom in Joyce’s Ulysses , and which was finally closed in 1926—the same year as Plough’s opening (“Heart of Dublin Gloucester Diamond”). O’Casey also remarks that one young republican, presumably in the play’s audience during the protests, “whispered to me in admiration the name of Shaw, inferentially to my own shame and confusion. Curious champion to choose, and I can only attribute their choice to ignorance, for if ever a man hated sham, it is Shaw”. He continued: Let me give one example that concerns the subject I am writing about. Describing in “Arms and the Man”, a charge of cavalry. Bluntchli says: “It’s like slinging a handful of peas against a window-pane: first one comes, then, two or three close behind him, then all the rest in a lump.” Then Raina answers with dilating eyes (how like a young Republican woman!): “Yes, first One! The bravest of the brave!” followed by the terrible reply: “Hm; you should see the poor devil pulling at his horse! (O’Casey Letters, I , 170)

Arms and the Man, of course, was the play that provoked a presence in Yeats’ nightmare of Shaw as a clicking sewing machine, the title of which Connolly borrowed for an ICA article in December 1913. Sheehy-Skeffington replied in the same paper on 23 February: “Is it merely a coincidence that the only soldiers whose knees do not knock together with fear and who are different to the glories of their uniform are the Wiltshires [the play’s British soldiers]”. She continues, most likely revealing her familiarity with Shaw’s Preface to Saint Joan: “Shakespeare pandered to the prejudices of his time and country by representing Joan of Arc as a ribald, degraded camp-follower. Could one imagine his play being received with enthusiasm in the French theatre of the time,

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subsided by the State?” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 172). The last refers to the state subsidy the Abbey started to receive in 1925 as Ireland’s National Theatre. On 26 February, O’Casey continued the debate in the Irish Independent : “Mrs. Skeffington’s statement that ‘every character connected to the Citizen Army is a coward and a slacker’ [only two ICA members appear on stage] is, to put it plainly, untrue. There isn’t a coward in the play. Clitheroe falls in the fight. Does Mrs. Skeffington want him to do any more? Brennan leaves the burning building when he can do nothing else; is she to persist in her declaration that no man will try to leap away from a falling building?” O’Casey also takes up a comment levelled at The Covey referring to Pearse’s words about the sanctifying quality of spilling blood: “Does she not understand that the Covey is a character part, and that he couldn’t possibly say anything else without making the character ridiculous? …. And it doesn’t follow that an author agrees with everything his characters say. I happen to agree with this, however; but of these very words Jim Connolly himself said almost the same thing as the Covey” (O’Casey Letters, I , 175). Indeed, Connolly had dismissed some of Pearse’s public views on the importance of blood sacrifice in late 1915. In an editorial in The Workers’ Republic, Connolly directly responded to Pearse’s comments on the Great War’s blood-letting: “No! We do not believe that war is glorious, inspiring, or regenerating. We believe it to be hateful, damnable, and damning…. Any person, whether English, German, or Irish, who sings the praises of war is, in our opinion, a blithering idiot” (quoted in “Putting the Language”). In replying to a critical review of Plough by Tom Irwin in the Voice of Labour, the paper of the ITGWU edited by O’Brien’s ally Cathal O’Shannon, O’Casey refuted the statement claiming that O’Casey was in the ICA when revolution was planned: “I had no connection whatever, direct or indirect, with the I.C.A. at that time: I had left, abandoned, deserted, fled from (take your choice of terms) the I.C.A. long before James Connolly had begun to ‘prepare that body for armed revolution’” (O’Casey Letters, I , 176). The review had chastised O’Casey for degrading the ICA, given his association with the group. O’Casey’s response was followed up by comments from O’Shannon, which probably carried O’Brien’s input.27 O’Shannon addressed O’Casey’s claim that he left the ICA prior to Connolly planning for revolution, insinuating that O’Casey’s claim was false. O’Shannon also recalled the press debate O’Casey had with Kathleen Clarke, widow of executed Rising leader Tom Clarke, in

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March 1918 over Clarke and Sean MacDiamada’s severed friendship with P. T. Daly (Chapter 3). Given Larkin’s 1924 expulsion from the ITGWU, O’Shannon, by stirring up the 1918 Daly dispute, clearly ties the paper and the ITGWU to Kathleen Clarke, and therefore to the Rising’s leaders, perhaps to suggest that Larkin and O’Casey were anti-1916. O’Shannon also claimed that there was no difference between the O Cathasaigh (the Gaelic version of his name O’Casey had previously used) of 1914 (when he tried to force Markievicz out of the ICA) or of 1918, or “the O’Casey of 1926” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 176–177). (Markievicz remained a popular figure among Dublin’s working class.) After she challenged him on 1 March 1926, O’Casey publicly accepted and debated Sheehy-Skeffington about Plough, which The Irish Independent covered. It appears that Sheehy-Skeffington, an accomplished public speaker, got the better of O’Casey, who had to sit a few minutes after he started, but then he resumed. One of the points he raised was about the tricolour: “Referring to the flag in the play, he [O’Casey as reported in the paper] said that it was not symbolical or representative of any one county or province, or of the Republicans, but was symbolical of the whole of Ireland, and if it represented the whole of Ireland it would have to take its place among the Bessie Burgesses, Jinnie Gogans, and Fluther Goods— even the Rosie Redmonds, as it did among the President of the Dail, the President of the Seanad, and President of a Republican convention. One of the golden stars on the tricolor was Easter Week, and in his opinion another was Irish drama. That flag had also to take the spots of disease, of hunger, hardship” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 179–180). Murray’s comment that The Plough and the Stars had more to do with 1920s Dublin than 1916 is clearly true. We might go further: just as the protests against Synge’s Playboy reveal much of that master work so do the protests against Plough. While numerous points of contention were raised by Sheehy-Skeffington and others, the main recurring point was the flag, which O’Casey repeatedly returns to in his defenses. This, of course, goes all the way back to Connolly’s Under Which Flag ?, and, by inference, to Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C . when its title character chooses to return to the killing trenches in Flanders and fight under Britain’s Union Jack. The objections to the flag in O’Casey’s play in 1926 were all concerned with the tricolour, specifically it being brought into a pub by Lieutenant Langon of the Irish Volunteers. No objection was made over the Plough and the Stars flag being brought into the same pub in the same scene by Captain Brennan of the ICA. Even O’Casey, in his responses, referred

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only to the tricolour. Of course, the tricolour had since become the new Irish state’s national flag, but in 1916, it was the flag of the Irish Volunteers. The ICA’s flag in the Rising, with the large battle version made for and flown from the Imperial Hotel, was symbolic not only of its militia but also of the ITGWU and Irish Labour—the reason Connolly had it flown over Murphy’s Hotel. Yet the flag’s symbolic meaning had literally and publicly slipped out of the national consciousness by 1926. Such slippage or erasure of relevance reveals one of Plough’s themes, beyond the cost to the poor and all the “big mischiefs” of good men: the flag’s absence from the national consciousness soberly reveals the failure after independence to achieve the Workers’ Republic that had been so central to the thinking of Connolly and Larkin, and their followers in 1913– 1916. The failure of the 1926 Dublin audience to respond in any way to the ICA flag clearly indicated that a Workers’ Republic was no longer even wanted or envisioned by a many Dubliners.28 The question asked in the title of Connolly’s Under Which Flag ? is answered by the reaction to O’Casey’s 1926 play: bourgeois rather than the socialist flag. Curiously, there is little evidence of ICA veterans from 1916 protesting against O’Casey’s Plough during its opening run, and no known response from O’Brien, a steadfast protector of Connolly, beyond his likely involvement in Cathal O’Shannon’s (an ICA Rising veteran) statement mentioned earlier.29 Pearse’s mother did see a performance of Plough, but there is no account of Connolly’s widow Lillie attending. Her absence, and the absence of many ICA Rising veterans may reflect a disconnect of many in the Irish left after the Rising. Even as early as summer 1916, Lillie Connolly resisted pressure from the National Aid Association, set up to financially assist families of the Rising’s rebels, to send her son Roddy to the school Pearse had established, St. Enda’s. She opted instead to send him to Blackrock College, with surgeon Richard Tobin covering the expense (McGuire, 18). Indeed, a number of ICA Rising veterans returned to the ITGWU rather than fight in the War for Independence and the Civil War, and most resisted leaving for Larkin’s breakaway union, the WUI. Curiously, the absence of O’Casey and his play from recent studies of the Irish left in the 1920s no doubt reflects the left’s nonengagement with O’Casey, particularly with Plough. For example, Emmet O’Connor’s Reds and the Green: Ireland, Russia and the Communist Internationals 1919–43 (2004) and Charlie McGuire’s Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland (2008) make no mention of O’Casey or his play; yet devote much attention to the 1920s. In fact,

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one might argue as Declan Kiberd does in Inventing Ireland that Plough became popular with “the new elite [of the Irish Free State], a grouping which had already begun to deny the very process which led to its installation” (233). A large section of that denial was the socialism that Connolly brought to the Rising, a denial evidence by the public objections made against the Plough by those connected to the republicans of 1916—even though they too, were being pushed aside by the Free State “elite”. While O’Casey’s play on 1916 proved provocative in 1926, it follows Shaw’s approach in Saint Joan of not demonizing the play’s characters. The inhabitants of the Dublin tenements, and their looting in 1916, would most likely have been seen with disgust by the Abbey Theatre’s mostly bourgeoise audience, whether Republicans or Free State supporters, or just professionals taking in a theatre evening. Yet, O’Casey does not demonize the looters. Even Fluther’s looting a half gallon jug of whiskey is portrayed as being perpetrated by one who risked his life to find Nora when she ventured into the combat zones searching for Clitheroe. However, the opportunity for looting that appeared in Petrograd the following year, 1917, was too tempting, precipitating the breaking of the old order where proletarians could claim a fraction of luxury. O’Casey presents a humanistic view of tenement residents, who in 1926 were still living in deplorable conditions. The flag of the rulers had changed from Union Jack to Tricolour, but the slums were still slums, and its residents still trapped. O’Casey’s humanistic approach refuses to romanticize an ICA officer in the Rising. In fact, all of Clitheroe’s shortcomings are based on his class-imposed feeling of inferiority (which does not excuse nor erase his physical abuse of Nora in Act I). And, as Nora suggests, there was fear among the Rising’s combatants, rather than romance. When Sean Connolly, from the north of the Liffey tenements, was preparing to lead his ICA contingent toward Dublin Castle as the Rising began, James Connolly shook his hand outside Liberty Hall and said, “Good luck, Sean. We won’t meet again” (as quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 638). O’Casey adamantly countered the charge that Clitheroe was portrayed as “a coward and slacker”, writing, “There isn’t a coward in the play” (O’Casey Letters, I , 175). And given the chance to leave and stay with Nora, which Clitheroe no doubt wants in Act III, he returns to fight; whether right or wrong, it is not to be romanticized. If there are characters demonized in Plough, it would be Connolly and Pearse, but neither are seen beyond Pearse’s shadow on a platform. The play is not about the leaders of the Rising, but rather about those

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Dubliners caught within the Rising. Even the British soldiers in Act IV are as caught, or as Peter says, “shanghaied”, as much as the characters in Burgess’ tenement flat when they enter. Corporal Stoddart and Sergeant Tinley are merely doing their duty, as all of the play’s characters. Not too unlike Connolly’s comment respecting “every man who does his duty” or when Shaw’s Warwick assures Joan, “The burning was purely political. There was no personal feeling against you, I assure you”, she replies, “I bear no malice” (154). A month after The Plough and the Star’s premiere run, O’Casey accepted the Hawthornden Literary Prize in London, essentially for Juno and the Paycock. The prize committee, included Robert Lynd who had praised Connolly as “Ireland’s first Socialist martyr”. The award was presented to O’Casey by Lord Oxford, the former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. In his address, Asquith stated of Juno: “In the delineation of character, in the rich variety and appropriateness of the dialogue, in the invention of situations, in the pathos and in humour, it is the truest and most adequate sense of the word, a great work of art” (quoted in Murray, 185). Perhaps Asquith who had led his Government against workers and their families in industrial actions, including his failure to resolve the 1913 Lockout, embraced Juno’s comment on trade unions: “When the employers sacrifice wan victim, the Trades Union go wan better be sacrificin’ a hundred” (Juno, 200). Nevertheless, the radical left criticized O’Casey for accepting an award from Asquith. Jack White, who first trained the ICA in November 1913, vilified O’Casey for having accepted “the literary prize from the hands of Asquith, Prime Minister of the Government that shot Conolly [sic], his old chief [...] but men have their function at their time and place and according to their lights, O’Cathasaigh to write in ink, Conolly in blood” (quoted in Moran, O’Casey, 20). While O’Casey would never have said that Connolly was his chief, displaying a dislike for Connolly in private letters for decades, Plough resists disparaging Connolly beyond a few character allusions. To have done differently would have truly equated O’Casey’s Plough to Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part I ’s demonizing of Saint Joan. Yet as the Irish Free State became increasingly conservative, Shaw would write his monumental treatise on socialism with Connolly’s presence, while O’Casey wrote his masterly play on the Great War with its legacy of suffering, with both an embrace of and a jab at Connolly. Yeats’ dreamimage of Shaw as a sewing machine was about to be challenged yet again. All that the machine represented from the 1890s-1920s, the gilded

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riches, industrial poverty, and colossal war, was to be addressed in 1928 by Ireland’s two most prominent socialist writers—even if neither were living in Ireland.

Notes 1. Gregory wrote most of her plays in Kiltartan dialect, named for the Galway area near her Coole Parke. 2. The Abbey Theatre staged John Bull’s Other Island, Man of Destiny, Fanny’s First Play, Arms and the Man, Man and Superman, Androcles and the Lion, and Major Barbara, in 1925, as well as presenting three performances of their production (that year) of Arms and the Man in Cork (Grene and McFeely, 245). Shaw’s plays, beyond The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet , had become regular features of the Abbey’s repertoire since fall 1916. 3. The Irish Free State added the Seanad to its parliamentary system in 1922, which initially included 60 seats, half of which were appointments— including Yeats’. 4. Fagan’s London production of Juno and the Paycock used numerous or recent Abbey Theatre actors, such as Sara Allgood and her sister Maire O’Neill (Molly Allgood) as Juno and Mrs. Maddigan, respectively. Arthur Sinclair performed Captain Boyle. Permission had to be granted from the Abbey Theatre, which then held the performance rights having staged its premiere in Dublin. Allgood and O’Neill revived their roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 film adaptation of the play. 5. In addition to the events that led to Larkin’s expulsion from the ITGWU in 1924, there were also rumors regarding the break-up of Larkin’s marriage at the time. These involved Larkin’s wife Elizabeth and the ITGWU’s president Tom Foran, which led to Larkin living with his sister Delia and her husband (Chapter 4) (O’Connor, “Big Jim Larkin”). After leaving Larkin in Chicago in 1916, Elizabeth returned to Dublin but never lived with James again. During the 1922 campaign for Larkin’s release from New York’s Sing Sing Prison, of which O’Casey was a Dublin organizer, Elizabeth refused to support the campaign (O’Connor, “Big Jim Larkin”). 6. Connolly’s son Roderic, who had supported Larkin on his return to Ireland, stated that Larkin was the “incarnation upswelling of the Irish masses” (quoted in McGuire, 95). However, as Larkin’s quarrels with O’Brien and the ITGWU degenerated into character assassinations instead of theoretical discussions, Roderic, and many Irish communists, drifted away (McGuire, 95–96).

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7. The battle-flag of the ICA was returned to Ireland in 1956 by T. A. Williams, who was a Second Lieutenant in the British army during the Rising. He took the flag down from the Imperial Hotel’s facade, as verified by an article in the Irish Times on 11 May 1916. Investigations into the flag in 1956 by Ireland’s National Museum included correspondence with O’Casey, who stated that the original ICA flag design had a blue background, whereas the flag Williams presented has a green background. However, O’Casey conceded that the green flag, given the provenance, was the 1916 flag. In the years leading up to the 1913 and 1916 centenaries, the National Museum applied up-to-date testing, which revealed that the material, dyes, and paint were consistent with a flag of the 1916 period, and its traces of smoke and ash were consistent with its proximity to significant fires. Forensics testing was also undertaken by Ireland’s police and army, indicating that the bullet holes in the flag were consistent with types of machine guns the British used in the Rising. In addition to Williams’ claim that the flag was still flying after the Hotel collapsed except for its façade, a rebel in the GPO during the Rising stated: “Friday dawned on a desolate sight opposite us. All that remained of Clery’s and the Imperial Hotel was the front wall of the building on the top of which to Connolly’s great delight the flag of the Irish Citizen Army still floated proudly” (Phelan). It survived the Dublin conflagration. 8. Despite being close to the GPO, Arnott’s only suffered minor damage during the Rising, and minimal looting. 9. The ICA intended to periodically revolve its four hat pins/badges, with each representing one of Ireland’s four provinces. In 1915–1916, the badge was the “Red Hand” of Ulster. The Red hand symbol originated as representing Ulster loyalty to Britain. 10. ICA officer and 1916 veteran Helena Molony stated in a RTE radio broadcast in 1963 that under Connolly the ICA in 1916 adhered to an “idea of freedom [that] was the widest of its kind, the abolition of domination of nation over nation, class over class, sex over sex”, which echoes Connolly’s words and ideas (quoted in Steele). 11. The ideological commitment Connolly required of ICA members in November 1915 is evidenced in two examples from ICA ranks who were killed during the Rising, according to the “Republican Soldiers Casualty Committee” report composed in 1928. Member Arthur Weekes, whose address was listed as “Norwich England”, joined the ICA in November 1915. He worked as a chef at Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel, which catered to the wealthy. Weekes “was a German by birth” and “belonged to the German Communist Party and Irish Socialist Party” (Report P156 [66]). In addition to embodying Connolly’s internationalism, Weekes’ affiliations suggest a strong commitment given the month he joined. Weekes also used the surname “Neill”, presumably to avoid anti-German sentiment

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at the Hotel. He was killed on 29 April in Moore Lane when the GPO headquarters was evacuated. ICA member John O’Reilly, who worked as a carter, lived in the north of the River Liffey tenements at 14 Lower Gardiner Street, near O’Casey. He joined the ICA “on formation” in November 1913 (P156 [64]). He was killed at Dublin’s City Hall on 24 April, the Rising’s first day. In Forth the Banners Go, O’Brien clarified his own 1916 position through Connolly’s last words to him on the day the Rising commenced. After preparing orders for Connolly’s signature, Connolly told O’Brien: “Go straight home. There is nothing you can do now, but you may be of great service later on” (288). The Covey’s comment that the ICA’s flag “was never meant for politics” is an odd statement. A flag for a Labour militia formed to protect workers from batoning police during the Lockout, was political. O’Casey’s account of this raising a green flag over Liberty Hall appears in the 1945 Drums Under the Windows: “There was a dire sparkle of vanity lighting this little group of armed men: it sparkled from Connolly’s waddle, from the uniformed stiff to attention, and from the bunch of cock-feathers fluttering in the cap of the Countess [Markievicz]…. There they stood—a tiny speck of green among a wide surge of muddily garbed watchers, still and silent too, as if from their listlessness they were draining out their last drop of energy and hope into this tiny goblet-group of men so that they might go forth and make a last short fight for them. Here was the purple heart of Ireland…. It was a childish thought for Connolly to harbor: it was a fiery-tale, a die-dream showing a false dawn that no soul saw” (401–402). O’Casey makes no mention of Connolly’s speech delivered on the occasion to the ICA, which ended: “Hold on to your rifles. The Volunteers may stop before our goals are achieved. We are out for economic as well as political independence” (quoted in Nevin, Connolly, 623). ICA 1916 veteran, and an associate of Connolly’s, Seamus McGowan, claimed in 1934 the speech ended with: “Hold on to your rifles; if we are successful, your fight begins” (quoted in McGuire, 13). O’Casey is consciously following the Irish drama tradition of Noras, starting with Synge’s Nora in In the Shadow of the Glen (1903) that draws from Ibsen’s Nora. Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island Nora follows, then John St. Ervine’s Mixed Marriage Nora (1911), and O’Casey’s. The American Eugene O’Neill continued the tradition in his most Irish play, A Touch of the Poet (1942). In preparing for revolution, Connolly led the ICA in frequent route marches around Dublin and surrounding areas, along with occasionally staging mock attacks on Dublin Castle, Britian’s administration in Ireland.

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17. However, Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession did not have a professional staging in Dublin until 1928 (Grene and McFeely, 247). Mrs Warren’s Profession received its Dublin premier in 1914 by the amateur but accomplished Dublin Repertory Theatre (See “Shaw and the Dublin Repertory Theatre,” SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, 35.2). 18. Rosie Redmond shares her first name with a prominent member of the ICA and the Irish Women Workers’ Union ( the ITGWU’s woman’s wing), Rosie Hackett. Hackett worked at Jacob’s Biscuit factory prior to the Lockout and was blacklisted for having organized Jacob’s women workers into the IWWU. She was then employed in Liberty Hall, and joined the ICA. She fought in the Rising in the St. Stephen’s Green/Royal College of Surgeons garrison. After the Rising, she returned to her work in the IWWU and ITGWU and did not break to the IUW with Larkin. Given her prominence in Liberty Hall, it seems unlikely O’Casey did not know her. In addition, since he went to some lengths to use uncommon names like Fluther and The Covey—though Peter is seen in Dublin— it raises the question if Rosie’s name is merely coincidental. Yet since Hackett was a follower of Connolly’s, the possibility that the name is borrowed exists, though there is nothing in Hackett’s history to suggest prostitution. Of course, Connolly, Shaw and O’Casey knew that underpaying factory workers often led to prostitution for survival. It was not an issue of morality. In 2014, a new pedestrian bridge over the River Liffey near Liberty Hall was appropriately named for Rosie/Rose Hackett. 19. In the months leading to the Rising, Pearse was a prominent member of the secretive five person (until Connolly and Thomas MacDonagh were added in January and March 1916, respectively) Military Council that wrestled control of the Volunteers from its overall leader, Eoin McNeill. 20. Murray, rather than seeing elements of O’Casey in The Covey, suggests that the character is meant to mock Connolly’s belief in socialist theories, including, presumably, his own (164). Murray reveals that many leftist Dubliners in 1926 took exception to the play, particularly with The Covey. 21. There have been suggestions that Connolly believed the British, being capitalists, would not use artillery where businesses could be destroyed. 22. ICA Captain Sean Connolly (no relation to James) who led the ICA attempt to pin down Dublin Castle during the Rising, worked as a clerk in Dublin City Hall with motor (automobile) registrations, and was a leading actor with the Abbey Theatre. He also acted in amateur productions, as in Connolly’s Under Which Flag ? Perhaps Sean Connolly appears above working class, but his residence was among in the tenements on the north side of the city, much like O’Casey. As Murray points out, Nicholas Grene’s work with the Abbey Theatre’s original promptbook for Plough’s premiere, reveals that O’Casey had considered rewriting Clitheroe as a

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clerk, changing from a bricklayer (cited by Murray, 169–170). O’Casey knew Sean Connolly; perhaps the contemplated change had Sean in mind. Historically, it probably would have been unusual, if not unlikely, for three officers, two ICA Captains and one Volunteer Lieutenant, to be on their own during the Rising’s mid-week. If there is an insinuation that they abandoned their commands, it seems to have been reversed given Brennan’s accounts in Act IV. Still, it appears odd that two Captains would endeavor to find medical attention for the Lieutenant, rather than assigning others to do it. Perhaps it reflects friendship; O’Casey seems to be implying that the Rising provided some comradeship across class lines, assuming that Langon is middle-class as most of the Volunteers. However, there is evidence that some labourers, even trade unionists fought in the Rising as members of the Volunteers. Richard O’Carroll, leader of a bricklayer’s union, was one. Burying the dead during the Rising became extremely difficult due to the fighting and the numbers involved, which included many non-combatants caught in crossfire or stray bullets—or fired on as suspected rebels. Not all rebels wore uniforms since individuals had to purchase their own. There is evidence that some of the ammunition for the German Mauser rifles used in the Rising, known as Howth rifles since many were landed from Germany in Howth in July 1914, were hollow-point bullets. The British never officially made the charge. Many in Plough’s first audiences probably would have assumed that Tinley and Stoddart, and many of the British soldiers in Dublin during the Rising, would soon be moved (after the play’s action) to the German or Balkans fronts, as indeed most of the battalions in the Wiltshires Regiment (of which Tinley and Stoddart are identified with) participated in many of the Great War’s major battles. Only the Regiment’s ¾ Battalion was stationed in Dublin during the War, but that commenced in May 1918. The Regiment’s records do not indicate any involvement in the 1916 Rising (“The Duke”). Oddly, O’Brien’s take on O’Casey’s plays is unknown. As he had been a regular Dublin theatre-goer, it is nearly unfathomable that he would have missed seeing the plays. And given O’Brien’s watchful eye on Connolly’s writing and Connolly’s role with the ICA, it seems impossible that he did not see The Plough and the Stars , unless he avoided it as a protest. When Connolly’s partner and wife Lillie Connolly died in 1938, her coffin was draped by both the tricolour and the Plough and the Stars. In Mary McAuliffe and Liz Gillis’ important Richmond Barracks 1916: We Were There, 77 Women of the Easter Rising, there is a comment on ICA member Kathleen (Katie) Barrett, who fought in the ICA contingent at Dublin’s City Hall, led by Barrett’s brother Sean Connolly: “In 1927 she [Barrett] and others protested at the Abbey Theatre at what they

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considered the belittling portrayal of the Citizen Army men who fought in 1916 in the production of Sean O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (109). Besides the typo of “1927” for O’Casey’s play, no reference is cited, and it is one of the very few, if not only allusion to an ICA veteran protesting the play in the Abbey. There certainly are no accounts of organized ICA veterans protesting it. The Barrett entry in the above book is flawed by stating that the Liberty Hall Players staged patriotic dramas by James Connolly and Arthur Griffith” (107). While Connolly’s Under Which Flag ? was, obviously, performed at Liberty Hall (with Barrett in the cast with her brother Sean), no plays by Griffith—if he ever wrote a play—were. Griffith’s public anti-labour positions were well known by Connolly and at Liberty Hall.

References Barton, Brian. The Secret Court Martial Records of the 1916 Easter Rising. Stroud, Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2010. Connell, Joseph E. A. Who’s Who in the Dublin Rising 1916. Dublin: Wordwell, 2015. Connolly, James. “Conscription”. Workers’ Republic, 27 November 1915, 1. ———. “The Irish Flag”. Workers’ Republic, 8 April 1916. ———. The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, The Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. 219–346. “The Duke of Edinburgh’s Regiment [the Wiltshire’s Full Name]”, www.longlo ngtrail.co.uk (accessed 19 August 2019). Ferriter, Diarmaid. A Nation and Not a Rabble: Irish Revolution 1913–1923. New York: The Overlook Press, 2015. Flaherty, Ann. “Staging the Life of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: ‘The Ablest Woman in Ireland’”. Irish Times, 28 October 2019. www.irishtimes.com/cul ture/books/staging-the-life-of-hanna-sheehy-skeffington-the-ablest-womanin-ireland-1.4062750 (accessed 30 October 2019). Flaherty, Ann. “Staging the Life of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: ‘The Ablest Woman in Ireland’”. Irish Times, 28 October 2019. www.irishtimes.com/cul ture/books/staging-the-life-of-hanna-sheehy-skeffington-the-ablest-womanin-ireland-1.4062750 (accessed 30 October 2019). Grant, Adrian. Irish Socialist Republicanism 1909–36. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2012. Grene, Nicholas and Deirdre McFeely. “Shaw Productions in Ireland, 1900– 2009”. Shaw and the Irish Literary Tradition. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, Volume 32. Ed. Peter Gahan. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. 236–259.

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“Heart of Dublin Gloucester Diamond” www.DublinCity.ie (accessed 22 June 2020). Hogan, Robert and Richard Burnham. The Years of O’Casey, 1921–1926: A Documentary History. Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Colin Smythe, 1992. Leddin, Jeffrey. The Labour Hercules: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism 1913-23. Newbridge, Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2019. Matthews, Ann. “Vanguard of the Revolution? The Irish Citizen Army, 1916”. The Impact of the 1916 Rising: Among the Nations. Ed. Ruan O’Donnell. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008. 24–36. McAuliffe, Mary and Liz Gillis. Richmond Bararcks 1916: We Were There, 77 Women on the Easter Rising. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016. ———. “The Madame Rebel: The Colourful Life and Times of Constance Markievicz”. www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/lifestyle/features/themadame-rebel-the-colourful-life-and-times-of-constance-markievicz-894330. html; www.google.com/search?q=Constance+MArkievicz&tbm=isch&sou rce=hp&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwju2c_h6dLjAhXwx1kKHepcCxIQsAR6BA gEEAE&biw=1536&bih=774&dpr=1.25#imgrc=dzoZSn7Nalt75M (accessed 30 December 2019). McGuire, Charlie. Roddy Connolly and the Struggle for Socialism in Ireland. Cork: Cork University Press, 2008. Molyneux, Derek and Darren Kelly. When the Clock Struck in 1916: Close Quarter Combat in the Easter Rising. Cork: The Collins Press, 2015. Moran, James. “Introduction”. Four Irish Rebel Plays. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007. ———. The Theatre of Sean O’Casey. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2013. Murray, Christopher. Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2004. Nevin, Donal. James Connolly: ‘A Full Life’. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005. O’Brien, William. Forth the Banners Go: Reminiscences of William O’Brien as Told to Edward MacLysaght. Dublin: Three Candles Press, 1969. O’Casey, Sean. Drums Under the Windows. Mirror in My House: The Autobiographies of Sean O’Casey, Volume I . New York: Macmillan, 1956. 375–431. ———. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1910–1941, Vol. 1. Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. ———. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1942–1954, Vol. II . Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1980. ———. The Plough and the Stars. Sean O’Casey: Plays, 2. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. 63–161. O’Connor, Emmet. “Big Jim Larkin: Hero and Wrecker”. History Ireland, July/August 2013. www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-his tory/big-jim-larkin-hero-and-wrecker/ (accessed 16 August 2019). O’Reilly, John. Republican Soldiers Casualty Committee Report, P 156 (64).

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Phelan, Rachel. “The Citizen Army’s ‘Starry Plough’ Flag”. History Ireland, November/December 2014. www.historyireland.com/volume-22/citizenarmys-starry-plough-flag/ (accessed 24 August 2019). “Putting the Language of Pearse in Context”. Irish Independent, 11 March 2016. www.independent.ie/irish-news/1916/rising-perspectives/puttingthe-language-of-pearse-in-context-blood-sacrifice-and-1916-34611012.html (accessed 16 August 2019). “‘Saint Joan’, Mr. Shaw’s Masterpiece Produced in Dublin. The Irish Times. 23 June 1925. 6. Shaw, George Bernard. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1911–1925, Vol. III . Ed. Dan Laurence. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ———. John Bull’s Other Island. London: Penguin Books, 1984. ———. “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising.” The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. Ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 120–23. ———. O’Flaherty, V. C. In Selected Short Plays. New York: Penguin, 1988. 253–278. ———. Saint Joan. London: Penguin Books, 1957. ———. Pygmalion. Pygmalion and Three Other Plays. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004. ———. War Issues for Irishmen. in The Matter With Ireland, 2nd. Ed. Ed. Dan Laurence and David Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 184–201. Steele, Karen. “Revolutionary Lives in the Rearview Mirror: Memoir and Autobiography”. In Irish Literature in Transition, 1880–1940, Volume IV . Ed. Marjorie Howes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 114–132. Weekes, Arthur. Republican Soldiers Casualty Committee Report P156 (66). Yeats, William Butler and Lady Augusta Gregory. Kathleen Ni Houlihan. Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama. Ed. John P. Harrington. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. 3–11.

CHAPTER 7

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide, The Silver Tassie, and The Re-Conquest

By the early 1920s, Singer’s factories, and the innumerable factories with sweated labour they epitomized, had, with exceptions like Singer’s Podolsk Russia factory, survived intact following the Great War and the labour revolts that flared up in its wake. As a result, capitalism doubleddown, strengthened, and expanded its hold—even Russia produced more questions than positing a clear way forward given its struggles for authoritarian rule. On the eve of western economic depression, Shaw published his polemical work, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism in 1928, which struck at the economic system Shaw held responsible for the industrialized destitution that assembly-line factories like Singer’s manufactured, as well as at the Great War and its slaughters on an industrial scale. In 1928, Sean O’Casey contributed an Irish work with an international scope, The Silver Tassie. While Shaw’s polemical work and O’Casey’s play represent masterworks by their respective authors, Connolly may seem to have a distinctive presence in both, even twelve years after his death. The theoretical Connolly as represented in his The Re-Conquest of Ireland, reprinted in 1917’s Labour in Ireland with Lynd’s Introduction, is discernable in both. This 1917 reprinting reached more readers than the original 1915 Liberty Hall pamphlet. William O’Brien, responsible for the 1917 reprinting, served Connolly well—and, ultimately, impacted both the Shaw and O’Casey work. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4_7

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The Guide Shaw began writing what would became The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism when asked by his sister-in-law, Mary Cholmondeley, for ideas about socialism that she could present to a “women’s study circle” (Laurence, “Notes,” Shaw Collected Letters, III , 900). A. M. Gibbs suggests that when Shaw started writing the work, there was a recognizable need given the persistent political uncertainty “when [Britain’s] first Labour prime minister …, former Fabian Ramsay MacDonald” formed a minority Labour Government (with tacit support from the Liberals) in January 1924 (380), and MacDonald formally recognized Russia’s Soviet Government. When after less than a year MacDonald’s coalition collapsed and Conservatives formed a new Government, Shaw continued to work on the Guide. On 21 January 1925, Shaw wrote to his publisher, Constable’s Otto Kyllman: “I have not yet settled the name of the book yet [sic], except that it will be The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to—. Whether the—will be Capitalism or Socialism or both I don’t know: really the book will be What Everybody Ought to Know and Everybody Pretends to Know & Most People Don’t Know. Capitalism has not been explained; and I am, so far, the only person who knows what it really is” (Shaw, Collected Letters, III , 900). It was in the next year, 1926, that Shaw and Charlotte met O’Casey during the London production of The Plough and the Stars . In fact, Shaw and artist Augustus John “sat beside O’Casey” on opening night, 12 May (Murray, 190). Shortly after, Charlotte reported to Lady Gregory: “We have both seen the Plough and the Stars . Wonderful! We are both worked up to a high pitch of excitement and admiration. O’Casey is a great man” (quoted in Shaw, Gregory, 178). Shaw no doubt appreciated Plough’s balanced portraits of tenement folk caught within the Rising; perhaps while viewing Plough he recalled his “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising” (Chapter 3). Its passage on the Dublin tenements anticipates Plough: … all the Liffey slums have not been demolished. Their death and disease rates have every year provided waste, destruction, crime, drink, and avoidable homicide on a scale which makes the fusillades of the Sinn Feiners [rebels] and the looting of their camp-followers hardly worth turning the head to notice. It was from these slums that the auxiliaries poured forth for whose thefts and outrages the Volunteers [rebels, including the ICA] will be held responsible, though their guilt lies at all our doors. Let us

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grieve, not over the fragment of Dublin city that is knocked down, but over at least threequarters of what has been preserved. (121)1

After seeing Plough, Murray relates that Shaw and O’Casey became friends during or following a luncheon hosted by Lady (Hazel) Lavery, wife of Irish artist Sir John Lavery, on 3 June (190). Armed with this new friendship, a personal reconnection to his native city, Shaw continued writing The Guide. Holroyd asserts that Shaw’s goal with The Guide was to celebrate “a beautiful concept of moral fairness: that everyone is entitled to an equal share of the national wealth, regardless of occupation”. The Guide elaborates, “Socialism means equality of income and nothing else.… [and if self-proclaimed socialists] do not mean equality of income they mean nothing that will save civilization” (Holroyd, III , 130; Shaw, Guide, 94). Shaw had lectured on equality of income in Scotland in October 1910 (Chapter 2), and as Peter Gahan points out in Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty and Equality in the Modern World, 1905–1914, Shaw delivered a major series of 1914 Fabian lectures on “Redistribution of Incomes”, which were “duly reported in the press at the end of 1914 [four months into the Great War]. Their full elaboration in print would be put off until 1928’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, the definitive expression in print of his views on economic equality and income redistribution” (134). Shaw traverses the idea that true socialism, true equality of incomes leads to communism: “The more Communism, the more civilization” (Guide, 14). He adds, “The Communism of Christ, of Plato, and of the great religious orders, all take equality in material substance for granted as the first condition of establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Whoever has reached this conclusion, by whatever path, is a Socialist” (94). Holroyd adds that Shaw had wanted The Guide to be not only his “magnum opus” but also the “standard work on socialism” (quoted in Holroyd, 130). Holroyd also quotes Shaw remarking to Kyllmann that “The only difficulty about it is that it ought to have been written at least 70 years ago” (Collected Letters, III , 130)—at about the time Isaac M. Singer established the Singer Company (1851). In outlining capitalism’s expansion during the nineteenth century, Shaw, in the Guide, noted that early small manufactures of recently invented machines were wiped “off the face of the earth” by “big capitalists” (138). Shaw notes how machine production was ever expanding, which allowed a day’s clothing production to exceed more “than ten

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thousand women could make by hand” (139). He also noted these large capitalist concerns “sell you machines to use yourself in your own house, such as vacuum cleaners”, and, of course, sewing machines (139). Production that had and was transforming everything, particularly in the realm of capital and labour, generated an employer class that sought to buy labour cheaply and set, in return, “as much as he can” from purchased labour—“precisely the opposite of the workers’ interest and policy” (187). Holroyd points to the timeliness of The Guide as its initial publication coincided with “the democratic equality of one adult one vote [that] was finally reached in the 1929 general election” in Britain, which added “five million newly-qualified women to the electoral register” (Holroyd, III , 131). Holroyd reveals that Shaw was happy for The Guide to assist with the Labour Party’s 1929 campaign, particularly with women candidates and women voters. One can assume that The Guide also influenced Labour’s overall election results, returning MacDonald as Prime Minister heading his second minority Labour Government. In discussing how The Guide functioned, Holroyd notes Shaw’s accessible writing style, along with utilizing feminine pronouns to represent both genders (III,132). As he writes early in the book: “let every person have that part of the wealth of the country which she has herself produced by her work (the feminine pronoun here includes the masculine)” (19). It suggests, as does its title, that The Guide is speaking directly to women, clearly conveying that women are as equal as men. Shaw continues: “What the Socialists say is […] that the only satisfactory plan is to give everybody an equal share no matter what sort of person she is, or how old she is, or what sort of work she does, or who or what her father was” (19). He also allows that women readers, all readers, are free to disagree or propose alternative plans, but insists that they must not dismiss the socialists’ philosophy, from your mind as none of your business. It is a question of food and lodging, and therefore part of your life. If you do not settle it for yourself, the people who are encouraging you to neglect it will settle it for you; and you may depend on it they will take care of their own shares and not yours, in which case you may find yourself some day without a share at all. I have seen that happen very cruelly during my own lifetime. In the country where I was born, which is within an hour’s run of England at the nearest point, many ladies of high social standing and gentle breeding,

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who thought that this question did not concern them because they were well off for the moment, ended very pitiably in the workhouse. (20)

Shaw, of course, had long advocated for women’s rights, whether suffrage, income, and, or rights within marriage, which he explored throughout his plays, particularly in Getting Married (1908). While The Guide functions as an international work, Ireland is often present. Thus in the chapter “Your Rent”, when Shaw alludes to the land question following the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Land Acts enacted by the British Government, “in Ireland, where the Government bought the agricultural land and resold it to the farmers, which eased matters for a time, but in the long run can come to nothing but exchanging one set of landlords for another” (124).2

Revolution, Government, and International Socialism When writing on the natural path to communism, as the definitive path of true socialists, Shaw argues that whoever has not reached the commitment to equal incomes “is no Socialist, though he or she may profess Socialism or Communism in passionate harangues from one end of the country to the other, and even suffer martyrdom for it” (94). Continuing, Shaw writes: So now you know, whether you agree with it or not, exactly what Socialism is and why it is advocated so widely by thoughtful and experienced people in all classes. Also, you can distinguish between the genuine Socialists, and the curious collection of Anarchists, Syndicalists, Nationalists, Radicals, and malcontents of all sorts who are ignorantly classed as Socialists or Communists or Bolshevists because they are all hostile to the existing states of things. (94)

A question arises as to whether by alluding to Syndicalists, and martyrdom before it, was Shaw including Connolly in such a mix of malcontents? Of course, Shaw may have had in mind numerous self-defined socialists and martyrs in and out of Ireland who pursued the various creeds he mentions. Could Shaw have had a real sense that Connolly, who had claimed two weeks prior to his 1916 revolution that “The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of

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labour”, believed in equal incomes (“Irish Flag”, 1)? Throughout this study, I have considered it likely that Shaw read the 1917 reprinting of Connolly’s Labour in Irish History (originally published in 1910) and The Re-Conquest of Ireland (originally published in 1915) in Labour in Ireland, with Lynd’s Introduction. If Shaw did so, he would have read the following from the beginning of The Re-Conquest: The conquest of Ireland had meant the social and political servitude of the Irish masses, and therefore the re-conquest of Ireland must mean the social as well as the political independence from servitude of every man, woman and child in Ireland. (218)

It appears that Connolly was advocating for equality for all individuals within Ireland, which, in Shaw’s terms must mean equality of income. While Connolly speaks about Ireland, if we remember his context in 1915, he was gearing for a socialist revolution in Ireland that he thought would ignite a conflagration of socialist revolutions throughout Europe and beyond. After all, Connolly and Lenin shared similar goals prior to their respective revolutions. Lenin supposedly took some of his direction from the pre-Great War Second Socialist International that obliged socialist parties “to resist or overthrow their respective governments if they plunged their countries into an imperialist war” (Resis). Shaw for his part qualifies the Russian or Bolshevik Revolution by writing in The Guide, “The success of the Russian revolution was due to its leadership by Marxist fanatics; but its subsequent mistakes had the same cause. Marxism is not only useless but disastrous as a guide to the practice of government” (441). And he points out that Soviet Russia in 1928 “is not Socialism. It still involves sufficient inequality of income” (374). Shaw’s argument is that Lenin’s Bolsheviks, once they seized power “found themselves without any highly organized Capitalistic industry to build upon”, outside of a few exceptions, as Singer’s Russian Podolsk factory (375). Essentially, there were “no Ford factories in which workmen earn £9 in a five-day week and have their own motor cars” (Shaw, Guide, 375). Shaw maintains that despite the pitfalls and dangers of capitalism, it builds an infrastructure upon which communism, equality of all, can then build a productive socialist state. So while Tsarist Russia was not completely devoid of capitalist infrastructure, there was far less than existed in advanced capitalist countries such as Britain. Arguably, part of Shaw’s assessment of the post-1917 Russia includes the

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perception that none of the Bolshevik Marxist revolutionaries understood how to utilize the capitalist infrastructure that then did exist. Singer’s Podolsk factory serves as an example of the failures and difficulties. It was “officially nationalised into state control” in 1918, with the brand name changing to “Podolsk”, but “production was slow to return”. In 1914, prior to the changeover to arms production, the factory annually produced 675,000 sewing machines, but in 1924 when the factory was again producing sewing machines, only 60,000 machines were made. It took until 1931 for Soviet production to reach 520,000 machines (“Singer Factories—Podolsk, Russia”). Shaw’s assessment seems to have been quite accurate. Connolly never reached the point of establishing a socialist government in Ireland to build upon existing capitalist infrastructure. Prior to the Rising, he had asked four allied but mostly non-combatant Dubliners to form a provisional civil government in case the revolution succeeded: Alderman Tom Kelly, nationalist Sean O’Kelly, suffragette Hanna SheehySkeffington, and Connolly’s labour colleague William O’Brien (Yeates, Lockout, 572; Townshend, Easter, 161). Presumably, the invitation to these four was intended to avoid the pitfalls that awaited a quickly formed government led only by militant fanatics of various colours. While not conclusive, of course, this plan may well represent Connolly’s effort to insure a cohesive and successful governing process that could utilize the existing capitalist infrastructure to achieve a more equal society, given Alderman Kelly’s strong empathy with labour, particularly during the 1913 Lockout—and Hannah Sheehy-Skeffington was also sympathetic to labour, with O’Brien supporting gender equality. Connolly and his Liberty Hall comrades were prepared to draw on capitalist infrastructure in 1916, as apparent in the examples of the enormous 1916 battle version of The Plough and the Stars flag stitched together with a capitalist-produced sewing machine, and the ICA uniforms. Interestingly, Shaw moves to the end of The Guide’s Revolution chapter by stating that “you must have your settled constitution back again”, but adds “the risings and coup d’état, with all their bloodshed and burnings and executions, might as well have been cut out as far as the positive constructive work of Socialism is concerned” (378–379). Shaw had long held this view, despite the times he also recognized the need or inevitability of revolutionary changes, sometimes including violence. In 1905, following Russia’s Bloody Sunday, and in 1913 with locked out Dublin workers, Shaw called for armed responses from labourers

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(Chapter 2) (Soboleva and Wrenn, 113; Shaw, “Mad Dogs”, 97). The difference by 1928 was the preceding fifteen years of war and bloody revolutions, which could have been avoided, in Shaw’s view, had common sense prevailed in democratic governments. Shaw added: So we may just as well ignore all the battles that may or may not be fought, and go on to consider what may happen to the present Labour Party if its present constitutional growth be continued and consummated by the achievement of a decisive Socialist majority in Parliament, and its resumption of office, not, as in 1923-24, by the sufferance of the two Capitalist parties and virtually under their control, but with full power to carry out a proletarian policy, and, if it will, to make Socialism the established constitutional order in Britain. (379)

Of course, Connolly was no parliamentarian; so, had he been dismissed by Shaw when writing The Guide? One might suggest that ultimately, Shaw—as O’Casey—dismissed Connolly as a militant over 1916. In alluding to Ireland within The Guide’s Revolution chapter, Shaw notes that “During the thirty years of the parliamentary campaign for Irish Home Rule there were always Direct Action men who said ‘It is useless to go to the English Parliament: the Unionists will never give up their grip of Ireland until they are forced to; and you may as well fight it out first as last’. And these men, though denounced as wanton incendiaries, turned out to be right” (371). Of course, since Shaw’s views of revolution remained mostly consistent over decades, it is not surprising that he defended Connolly and the 1916 leaders after their efforts collapsed. And arguably, he defended them for their goals beyond his national affinity for them, just as he defended Bolsheviks in 1917 and wrote of Connolly’s internationalism in 1918 (Chapter 3). So, it should not be surprising for The Guide to echo Connolly, when their socialisms converged.

Trade Unions Continuing to work under the assumption, which will move closer to acceptance as the arguments herein continue, that Shaw indeed read Labour in Ireland, he likely moved first through Labour in Irish History. In doing so, Shaw would have noted Connolly quoting Shaw’s friend and fellow Fabian Sidney Webb. In writing of the nineteenth-century Irish John Doherty, following his discussion of the Chartist Feargus O’Connor

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and James Bronterre O’Brien, Connolly notes that in the 1830s and 1840s: “An earlier Irish apostle of the Socialist movement of the working class, John Doherty […] bore more of the marks of constructive revolutionary statesmanship”. In elaborating, Connolly writes: “In his ‘History of Trades Unionism’ [1894], Sidney Webb quotes Francis Place—the best informed man in the labour movement in England of his day—as declaring that the English Reform Bill crisis in 1832, Doherty, instead of being led astray, as many labour leaders were, to rally to the side of the middle class reformers, was ‘advising the working class to use the occasion for a Social Revolution’” (193–195). Furthermore, near the end of Labour in Irish History, Shaw would have encountered Connolly’s dismissal of the quest to repeal the union between Britain and Ireland in favour of a different definition of freedom: “so the Irish toilers from henceforward will base their fight for freedom not upon the winning or losing the right to talk in an Irish Parliament, but upon their progress towards the mastery of those factories, workshops and farms upon which a people’s bread and liberties depend” (214). While Connolly’s distrust of classes other than that of workers was evident, he was indicating workingclass independence rather than the nationalist goal of Home Rule—and “mastering” of the factories replicates Shaw’s argument that socialists must build on existing capitalist infrastructure. In addition, the independence Connolly is suggesting most likely meant shared wealth and equal incomes. Connolly’s views were broader and more critical in The Re-Conquest of Ireland, where he understood the value of middle-class support, and the value of the Co-Operative Movement, as led by Shaw’s friend Horace Plunkett: “Everywhere we see Friends” (331).3 In addition, of course, after returning to Ireland in 1910 Connolly began writing articles that would feed into The Re-Conquest. In Re-Conquest ’s Chapter 3, “Dublin in the Twentieth Century” Shaw likely recognized himself in the chapter’s opening sentence: “Someone has said that the most deplorable feature of Irish life is the apparent lack of civic consciousness” (249). Shaw stated such in his crucial 1910 Dublin lecture, “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland”, delivered on 3 October, just weeks before his lectures in Glasgow and Edinburgh (Chapter 2). Connolly was not in Dublin for Shaw’s lecture as he was already in Scotland delivering socialist talks, but he clearly knew Shaw’s lecture. Close friends of Connolly either definitely attended the lecture, like Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, or most likely did in the case of O’Brien and Frederick Ryan. These socialist and labour comrades undoubtedly

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would have detailed Shaw’s lecture to Connolly, and there can be no question whether Connolly, a voracious reader who knew of Shaw and Shaw’s works since at least 1894, if not earlier (Chapter 4), had read Shaw’s full lecture, published in both The Freeman’s Journal and The Irish Times . Shaw opened his lecture by stating that he wanted to “rouse them [his Dublin audience] to a sense of Civic duty. He had no doubt that in their private capacity they were extremely amiable people, but he could not acquit them of the most monstrous civic crimes when he thought what destitution, and what the Poor Law system was in Ireland at present. He would very much rather they gave up the practice of private virtue, and took up the practice of civic virtue—if they felt they had to make a choice between them” (7). Connolly continued his chapter by writing that Dubliners, since they voted their municipal government into office, known then as Dublin Corporation, had a civic responsibility to make sure that the Corporation satisfactorily addressed health, education, and housing for all Dubliners (250; 251–265). Shaw touched on all of these in his 1910 Dublin lecture, and, as we saw in Chapter 3, Connolly would draw again from Shaw in early 1916, specifically from O’Flaherty, V. C . in writing Under Which Flag ? Shaw’s chapter “Trade Union Capitalism” looks at the development of trade unions, mostly associated with workers of factories, mines, and railways. He suggests that unions are mostly possible where “members work together in large bodies; live in the same neighborhoods; belong all to the same social class; and earn about the same money” (205). This is close to being at odds with Connolly’s 1908 pamphlet The Axe to Root, in which he argued that all workers connected to an industry had to be united, despite their different occupations and different wages— as well as differing nationalities, religions, and genders—exemplified in the 1911 Singer Kilbowie factory strike (Chapters 2 and 4). However, Shaw is going further, and certainly further chronologically than Connolly’s chapter “Labour in Dublin” in The Re-Conquest. Shaw comments on the employers’ tactic of lockout, as specifically experienced in 1913 Dublin and, obviously, elsewhere. He notes that industrial actions initiated by employers to break or weaken a trade union, such as lockouts, are referred to as strikes by the capitalist press “because their readers blame workers instead of the employers for a strike; but some of the greatest strikes should have been called lock-outs” (206). Shaw himself was guilty of this in War Issues for Irishmen when he referred to the Dublin Lockout as a strike: “I myself, with Connolly and Mr [sic] George Russell, was

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among the speakers at a huge meeting got up in aid of the strike by Mr James Larkin” (196). Connolly in The Re-Conquest ’s Labour chapter praised the development of the sympathy strike, growing, he asserts, from the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union’s adopted “watchword”, “An injury to one is the concern of all” (269). He suggests that its development in Dublin was a “desperate necessity. Seeing all classes of semi-skilled labour in Dublin so wretchedly underpaid and so atrociously sweated, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union taught them to stand together and help one another, and out of this advice the more perfect weapon has grown” (272). However, Connolly did not live long enough to see how the trade unions and employers developed leading to and during the 1920s. As we saw in Chapter 4, the ITGWU split over the efforts of O’Brien, and allies, to prevent Larkin from resuming his union leadership after he settled in Dublin. Prior to that, within a few years of Connolly’s death, O’Brien had moved the ITGWU away from its radical Connolly and Larkin roots, formerly radical anti-capitalist trade unions were evolving into something quite different. Shaw, looking at the changes, but consistent with his long standing labour views, argues in The Guide that “nearly four and a half millions” of labourers “are converts to Capitalism, and duly enrolled in militant unions”: Between six and seven hundred battles a year, called trade disputes, are fought: and the number of days of work lost to the nation by them sometimes totals up to ten millions and more. If the matter were not so serious for all of us one could laugh at the silly way in which people talk of the spread of Socialism when what is really threatening them is the spread of Capitalism. The moment the propertyless workers refuse to see the finger of God in their poverty, and begin organizing themselves in unions to make the most money they can out of their labour exactly as they find the landlord doing with his land, the capitalist with his capital, the employer with his knowledge of business, and the financier with his art of promotion, the industry of the country, on which we all depend for our existence, begins rolling faster and faster down two opposite slopes, at the bottom of which there will be a disastrous collision which will bring it to a standstill until either Property drives Labour by main force into undisguised and unwilling slavery, or Labour gains the upper hand, and the long series of changes by which mastery of the situation has already passed from landlord-capitalist to the individual employer, from the individual employer to the joint stock company, from the joint stock company to the Trust, and finally from the

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industrialist in general to the financiers, will culminate in its passing to capitalized Labour. (209)

While Connolly may have a small presence in Shaw’s arguments on trade unions and employers’ developments in the 1920s, as certainly syndicalism, once a necessary tactic as Connolly believed and maintained, had, in a grotesque collaboration with employers, become a part, in Shaw’s argument, of Capitalism, which Shaw had long anticipated and believed. As mentioned earlier, when Shaw supported locked out Dublin workers in 1913, it was not a support for syndicalism but rather a support born from Shaw’s understanding of what the workers were up against from employers and a government unwilling to intervene constructively. In the scenario of trade unions embracing capitalism, as Shaw maintains in the Guide, workers in factories such as Singer’s could expect endless threats of work stoppages by employers or trade union leaders until employers/financiers closed the given factory in favour of cheaper, non-union labour elsewhere—Singer’s Kilbowie factory was ultimately abandoned in 1980. Shaw’s projected alternative route was “Socialism … because it promises a way out” (209).

Women The “Woman” chapter in The Re-Conquest, and the “Women in the Labour Market” chapter in The Guide reveal the most direct convergence of Connolly’s and Shaw’s respective theoretical socialisms, resulting in a Connolly presence in Shaw’s magnum opus. It might even suggest that Shaw, who often drew on another’s work, to borrow/adopt an idea—a concept—did so with Connolly, just as Connolly had embraced Shavian ideas in his work. Women’s rights were integral to the socialism of both Shaw and Connolly; both devoted years and energy to women’s rights and gender equality, including in their respective plays,4 and both devote significant chapters to women in the Guide and The Re-Conquest, respectively. Connolly led up to his “Woman” chapter with his “Belfast and its Problems” chapter. In outlining the low wages, often in piece-meal fashion, for women producing articles of clothing—such as receiving 2 1/2d. per dozen of women’s aprons or 10d. per dozen of men’s drawers—Connolly writes: “From these very low rates of pay must be deducted the time spent in visiting the warerooms for work, the necessary upkeep of the worker’s

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sewing machine, and the price of thread used in sewing, which is almost invariably provided by the worker” (282). Again, it is the abuse of workers that machines, like the sewing machine—most likely a Singer machine— added to the workers, particularly to women. There was nothing smiling about those machines, as in Yeats’ dream of Shaw—but there was much from Connolly and Shaw in addressing the sweated labour conditions produced by such machines used to speed production. Connolly begins his “Woman” chapter by commenting on the conditions of women workers in sweated Belfast factories, particularly noting “the extremely high rate of sickness in the textile industry, the prevalence of tuberculous and cognate diseases, [that] affected principally the female worker” (289). Connolly then moved into discussing “the terrible nature of the conditions under which women and girls labour in the capital city [Dublin], the shocking insanitary conditions of the workshops, the grinding tyranny of those in charge and the alarmingly low vitality which resulted from the inability to procure proper food and clothes with the meagre wages paid” (289). Connolly suggested that the “development in Ireland of what is known as the woman’s movement has synchronised with the appearance of women upon the industrial field, and that the acuteness and fierceness of the woman’s war have kept even pace with the spread amongst educated women of a knowledge of the sordid and cruel nature of the lot of their suffering sisters of the wage-earning class” (290). Connolly then returned to the notion of a civic responsibility he had gleamed in the text of Shaw’s 1910 lecture, “The Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland”: We might say that the development of what, for want of a better name is known as a sex-consciousness, has waited for the spread amongst the more favoured women of a deep feeling of social consciousness, what we have elsewhere in this work described as a civic consciousness. The awakening amongst women of a realisation of the fact that modern society was founded upon force and injustice, that the highest honours of society have no relation to the merits of the recipients, and that acute human sympathies were rather hinderances than helps in the world was a phenomenon due to the spread of industrialism and to the merciless struggle for existence which it imposes. (290)

Like Shaw, Connolly recognized that socialism can be advanced by educated women.

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In his “Woman” chapter, Connolly also addresses marriage, long a presence in Shaw’s work and his own, as in The Agitator’s Wife (1894) (Chapters 1 and 2). Specifically, Connolly’s chapter considers marriage for working-class women: Marriage does not mean for her a rest from outside labour, it usually means that to the outside labour she has added the duty of a double domestic toil. Throughout her life she remains a wage-earner; […] when at night she drops wearied upon her bed it is with the knowledge that at the earliest morn she must find her way again into the service of the capitalist, and at the end of that coming day’s service for him hasten homeward again for another round of domestic drudgery. So [,] her whole life runs—a dreary pilgrimage from one drudgery to another; the coming of children but serving as milestones in her journey to signalise fresh increases to her burdens. Overworked, underpaid, and scantily nourished because underpaid, she falls easy prey to all diseases that infect the badly-constructed “warrens of the poor”. Her life is darkened from the outset by poverty and the drudgery to which poverty is born, and the starvation of the intellect follows as an inevitable result upon the too early drudgery of the body.

Connolly then rhetorically asks, echoing similar questions he had repeatedly asked over years of the working classes, “Of what use to such sufferers can be the reestablishment of any form of Irish State if it does not embody the emancipation of womanhood?” (297). He posits that the abuse of working women was due to the capitalist system: “So [,] down from the landlord to the tenant or peasant proprietor, from the monopolist to the small business man eager to be a monopolist, and from all above to all below filtered the beliefs, customs, ideas establishing a slave morality which enforces the subjection of women as the standard morality of the country” (298). Shaw, in his “Women in the Labour Market” chapter, which he notes is “grim”, draws a similar conclusion as Connolly’s corresponding Woman chapter (Guide, 186). Relying on his vast knowledge of working women’s conditions, for example, from his 1888 experience assisting striking women workers during the Bryant and May Matchstick strike, he writes of “huge factories sprung up employing hundreds of girls at wages of from four-and-sixpence to seven-and-sixpence a week, the great majority getting five. [… mere] starvation wages. […] Some of the largest fortunes made in business: for example in the match industry, were made

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out of the five shilling girl” (198). Shaw carried the argument of the capitalist effects onto prostitution, to which Connolly indirectly alludes. Shaw states: It is easy to ask a woman to be virtuous; but it is not reasonable if the penalty of virtue be starvation, and the reward of vice immediate relief. If you offer a pretty girl twopence halfpenny an hour in a match factory, with a chance of contracting ecrosis of the jawbone from phosphorous poisoning on the one hand, and on the other a jolly and pampered time under the protection of a wealthy bachelor, which was what the Victorian employers did and what employers still do all over the world when they are not stopped by resolutely socialistic laws, you are loading the dice in favor of the devil so monstrously as not only to make certain that he will win, but raising the question whether the girl does not owe it to her own self-respect and desire for wider knowledge and experience, more cultivated society, and greater grace and elegance of life, to sell herself to a gentleman for pleasure rather than to an employer for profit. (199)

Shaw continues this direction by exploring the marriages many women accept in order to survive: “Capitalism acts on women as a continual bribe to enter sex relations for money, whether in or out of marriage” (201). He then presents the same conclusion as Connolly, that women paid the greater price within Capitalism: “Thus it is the woman, not the man, who suffers the last extremity of the Capitalist system” (292). Within this continued focus on women and work we find Connolly’s direct presence in Shaw’s masterwork on socialism and capitalism—and Shaw’s presence in Connolly’s theoretical work—as both argue that capitalism exacts the highest toll from working-class women. Connolly writes in The Re-Conquest of Ireland’s “Woman” chapter: “The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave” (293). Shaw, in his corresponding chapter in The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism writes: “Capitalism made a slave of the man, and then, by paying the woman through him, made her his slave, she became the slave of a slave, which is the worst sort of slavery” (197). It is possible that Connolly and Shaw both reached the same idea independently with regard to working women under capitalism, and certainly working women’s lot was one of slavery. Socialism began for both Shaw and Connolly through Karl Marx, and both were likely also familiar with G. W. H. Hegel’s views on women. Yet Shaw’s and Connolly’s respective phraseologies, “the slave of that slave” and “the

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slave of a slave” suggests that Shaw was familiar with Connolly’s phrasing, which validates an angle of Connolly’s theoretical socialism, or at least his development from Marx and the earlier Hegel. Shaw alludes to the same notion of working women within marriage in Back to Methuselah’s In the Beginning, which Shaw started writing in 1918, the year after Connolly’s Re-Conquest of Ireland was reprinted. Connolly also borrowed from Shaw repeatedly for decades, their sharing the speakers’ platform on 1 November 1913 in London’s Royal Albert Hall, may have meant much to both Shaw and Connolly, with both, arguably, recognizing the acute relevance of each other’s approaches, despite Connolly’s ultimate militancy. In an odd way, Connolly, perhaps because of his martyrdom, or because Shaw met him at a crucial historical moment, fares better than Lenin in The Guide, whose revolution seized some centralized governmental control at the cost of socialist ideals. An interesting later adoption of the idea that under capitalism woman is the slave of a slave—representing a further relevancy of the notion— appeared in the 1972 song, written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, titled “Woman is the Nigger of the World”. The progression of the song is seemingly the same argument posited by Connolly and Shaw, in The Re-Conquest and The Guide, culminating in the song’s lyric: “Woman is the slave to the slave”. In a television interview conducted of Lennon and Ono by Dick Cavett, at the time the song was released, Lennon stated: “woman is slave of a slave, that is what Connolly said, the great Irishman” (Lennon). Not only did Connolly’s socialistic ideas surface for leftist leaning Lennon and Ono, but in the previous decade, the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album cover featured an image of Shaw, among the many other images, reflecting more than a mere counterculture artwork. Shaw and Connolly still counted in the 1960s, at least in scattered moments for some on the intellectual fringe. That decade also saw O’Casey’s death in 1964, and featured Ireland’s 50th anniversary commemoration of the Easter Rising in 1966, which exclusively focussed on the nationalism of the event—with little to no popular attention to Connolly’s theoretical socialist writings, and no understanding of Shaw’s ties to that Dublin event. Next, in 1928, came O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie, which again portrays the great cost to the Dublin tenement class of war, this time the Great (capitalist) War.

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The Silver Tassie On 29 May 1928, Lady Gregory noted in her diary that Shaw’s new book, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism had arrived, noting: “That will be good reading”. In her next day’s entry, Gregory recorded that it is “so clear, so simple, so convincing”. On 2 June, she writes: “G.B.S.’s Socialism leads one on. I read last night more than was good for my eyes. Being a worker myself my withers are unwrung, but it would be hard to get the wasters into the traces”. Always willing to work, despite those who saw only her ascendancy background, Gregory could distance herself from wasters. She continued by noting that The Guide was “very hard to put down” (Shaw, Gregory, 182). Yet a few days after Gregory received the book from Shaw, O’Casey would publish the correspondence over the Abbey Theatre’s rejection of his new play, The Silver Tassie, in the Observer on 3 June—just as he had published correspondence between himself and the Great Northern Railway’s secretary over his 1911 sacking in The Irish Worker. The Silver Tassie focuses on the Great War through a Dublin workingclass family. This was more than appropriate given the well-over 200,000 Irishmen who fought with the British military in the War (compared to the 1500–2000 women and men who had fought English rule in 1916). Act I is set in a tenement flat, specifically in “the eating, sitting, and part sleeping room of the Heegan family”. The room includes a sort of shrine to the son, twenty-three year old Harry Heegan. A gilded stand displays “a purple velvet shield on which are pinned a number of silver medals surrounding a few gold ones”. There is also “a red-coloured stand resembling an easel, having on it a silver-gilt framed picture photograph of Harry Heegan in football dress, crimson jersey with yellow collar and cuffs and a broad yellow belt, black stockings, and yellow football boots” (167). Irish football uniforms in 1914–1915, as military uniforms (including the ICA’s), were, of course, stitched by sewing machines, likely a Singer machine. These items celebrate Harry’s triumphs on the football field for the local club, and provide colour to the otherwise stark room that, without these colours, would be similar to the tenement room depicted in Juno and the Paycock. The shrine items, while affirming Harry’s athletic achievements, presumably also portray Mrs Heegan’s devotion to her son. Yet as with Nora Clitheroe’s decorative items in her and Jack’s tenement flat in The Plough and the Stars , the signs of Harry’s football triumphs, displayed as decorations, reflect economic class at play

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in that they represent efforts to confirm self-worth amid the Dublin urban poverty. Harry’s sporting successes are not unlike the sense of relevance Jack Clitheroe’s ICA rank provides for him—a relevance and importance that was mostly elusive within the straitened economic circumstances of tenement life. Near Act I’s end, Harry tells his friend Barney about his crowning moment of glory with the Club’s president (Surgeon Maxwell), “See the President of the Club, Dr. Forby Maxwell, shaking hands with me, when he was giving me the cup, ‘Well done, Heegan!” (188). Unlike Clitheroe, Harry’s quest for relevance from his football prowess is shared by his family, but in ways that too reflect the family’s economic class. Harry’s father Sylvester, while talking with his friend Simon, proudly highlights Harry’s triumphs: “the day that caps the chronicle was the one when he punched the fear of God into the heart of Police Constable 63 C under the stars of a frosty night on the way home from Tenenure” (170). “C” refers to one of five divisions of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), with C Division serving the city south of the River Liffey (“Dublin Metropolitan Police (1836–1925)”). The story about an altercation with the DMP constable on the way home from Terenure, an affluent south Dublin suburb (where a football match was held), indicates a class incident, that the constable harassed working-class tenement dwellers for traversing beyond their inner-city neighbourhood (which is close to the quays and mouth of the Liffey given the visibility of the steamship’s mast from the Heegan flat) (167). For Mrs Heegan, Harry’s worth, in addition to his youth and physicality, has been increased during the War by the separation allowance she receives from the Government for Harry’s military service. Anthony Roche points out that in this respect, Mrs Heegan is close to Shaw’s Mrs O’Flaherty and Teresa in O’Flaherty, V. C ., as he quotes Mrs Heegan stating “my governmental money grant would stop at once” if Harry misses the ship to return him to War (quoted in Roche, 96; O’Casey, Silver Tassie, 180). As with Shaw’s Mrs O’Flaherty and Teresa— and Connolly’s railing against the separation allowance in the Workers’ Republic— O’Casey making a point about Mrs Heegan’s concern for the separation allowance is a comment on the family’s poverty.5 The implication is that the allowance provided an income that was likely not matched by Harry before enlisting, nor for most working-class recruits; and while at the front, Harry is fed by the army. A steady income was not something for the impoverished to take lightly. And while Shaw’s O’Flaherty took issue with his mother’s and Teresa’s obsession with the separation

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allowance—and disability allowance if he were to be wounded (O’Flaherty, V. C ., 274), O’Casey’s Harry Heegan never gains such insight. Heegan, like O’Flaherty in Shaw’s play, on temporary leave from the front lines in Act I, never attains the philosophical level that O’Flaherty gains from the War; O’Casey’s tack is different. Shaw’s O’Flaherty is proclaimed a hero by the British military and awarded the Victoria Cross from the King, but he sees what such a distinction means to him (a higher military pension when his service is over), whereas Harry Heegan’s hero status is domestic and provincial, achieved through local sport. In Act I, Harry is too intoxicated with his football prowess by the time he enters to have any thoughts regarding his class or the War, having been carried along the streets to the tenement: “some of them carrying Harry on their shoulders, an’ others are carrying that Jessie Tait too, holding the silver cup in her hands” (186).6 As Roche argues, Jessie is another trophy for Harry, as much as winning “the coveted Silver Tassie cup three times running” (141). And, as Roche also notes, Susie Monican, who “fancied Harry” despite him being taken with Jessie, is also a trophy to Harry through her infatuation (Silver Tassie, 178; Roche,141). Harry’s domestic life, unlike Shaw’s O’Flaherty’s, is not all torment in that his football has given him momentary escape from domestic poverty and, now, briefly from the War. Yet the War and poverty’s domestic torment is still present, seen first through Monican’s morbid “scorchin’ Gospel” as she brandishes Sylvester and Simon for their talk, while she polishes—symbolically and literally—the British army Lee-Enfield rifle Harry had been assigned, and then its bayonet (168).7 The further sense of domestic torment in Act I—beyond Mrs Heegan’s obsessive worry over Harry returning to the ship in time, and the fleeting sense of Harry’s football prowess—is seen through Teddy Foran’s violent domestic abuse of Mrs Foran. On hearing the first crashes from the Foran flat above the Heegan’s, Mrs Heegan states: Oh, there he’s at it is again. An’ she sayin’ that he was a pattern husband since he came home on leave, merry-making with her an’ singin’ dolorously the first thing every mornin’. I was thinkin’ there’d be a rough house sometime over her lookin’ so well after his long absence … you’d imagine now, the trenches would have given him some idea of the sacredness of life! (181)

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The scene hears further crashes from the Foran flat, along with screams from Mrs Foran. Eventually she enters the Heegan flat and “scrambles in a frenzy under the bed” while Mrs Heegan and Susie Monican exit into the second Heegan room, slamming the door shut (181–183). The Heegans have heard and evidently witnessed Foran’s wife-beating violence before, perhaps many times. Once Teddy enters, Sylvester Heegan, who also took cover under the bed, tells Teddy he has no right to harm his wife. Teddy replies: “She’s my wife, isn’t she? An you’ve no legal right to be harbourin’ her here, keepin’ her from her household duties” (184). The implication is that such violence is a curse many women in the tenements suffered. Teddy Foran’s violence, as well as Jack Clitheroe’s against Nora in Plough, is used to mask his failures and fears—not to excuse but as indicative of his perceived lack of relevance. Diverging from Shaw’s O’Flaherty, V. C ., particularly its sense that the War offers a constructive and educational escape to the Irish poor, O’Casey’s Teddy Foran in Act I has received nothing of the sort as his propensity for domestic violence is still present. If the War provides relief beyond separation allowances, it is through Mrs Foran’s escape from Teddy while he is away at the front. The idea that the relief shown in Act I is merely a fragile veneer is evident when Harry Heegan enters amid shouts from outside, “Up Harry Heegan and the Avondales!”, as he wears his orange-coloured football jersey over his khaki army trousers and his military cap—described as “stained with trench mud” (186). On entering, Harry states: “Won, won, won, be-God; by the odd goal in five. Lift it up, lift it up Jessie, sign of youth, sign of strength, sign of victory!” (187). The irony, of course, is that the Great War destroyed youth, strength, and victory, and will do so in the play. In response to Harry’s entrance, Mrs Heegan comments to her husband, “I knew, now, Harry would come back in time to catch the boat” (187). Even when facing the reality that they must board the ship, Harry jokes to Barney, still feeling the glory of victory on the football field, “Out with one of them wine-virgins we got in ‘The Mill in the Field’, Barney, and we’ll rape her in a last hot moment before we set out to kiss the guns!” (189). The vile and debasing joke from the War’s front lines is perhaps the first sign that Harry knows where he is going—as if his trench mud cap was not enough. Unlike O’Flaherty, V. C ., that suggested the Irish poor enlist in the War for opportunity, O’Casey’s play portrays little opportunity for Irishmen—unless it be a chance for War’s ugly and abusing moments. The War, in turn, cares nothing for Harry’s sports.

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Roche suggests that O’Casey’s stage direction for Act II, “Every feature of the scene seems a little distorted from its original appearance” applies also to Act I (Silver Tassie, 197; Roche, 140). Undoubtedly, there is truth in this in that, as Roche argues, Act I’s discussion between Sylvester and Simon recalls the interactions between Captain Boyle and Joxer in Juno and the Paycock, but in The Silver Tassie, it appears to be “a rather jaded rerun of the Captain and Joxer [. … as] much of the vitality seems drained from them [Sylvester and Simon]” (140). In addition to such dialogue, there is the pipe miming that occurs with the same two characters, exemplifying the non-realism of the Act that enhances the distorted world being portrayed, as described in the stage directions: Simon empties his pipe by tapping the head on the hob of the grate. He then blows through it. As he is blowing through it, Sylvester is emptying his by tapping it on the hob; as he is blowing it Simon taps his again; as Simon taps Sylvester taps with him, and they look into the heads of the pipes and blow together. (174)

This ritualistic sequence, almost dance-like, reflects the disconnect among the tenement characters as they await Harry’s return, and then departure for the War. It is as if nothing can really be experienced. The offered realities of Act I’s depictions, despite its unreal portrayal, is in contrast to the comedic elements of O’Flaherty, V. C ., where O’Flaherty realizes that his relevance was found at War through his acquired knowledge, and so returns with comfort. There is no sense of any such acquirement in the returning tenement soldiers in O’Casey’s Act I, instead they return because they must. Not to return was desertion. Act II depicts the War through an image of a landscape laid waste by War. Set amid ruins of a monastery with scared fields in the distance, “heaps of rubbish mark where houses once stood” (196). A Red Cross hospital is set in a section of the monastery still standing, while a stainedglass window depicting the Virgin is visible. A life-sized crucifix, damaged by an artillery shell with the figure and one arm leaning forward, towards the Virgin. The religious imagery, particularly Catholic imagery amid the carnage, is strong—as are the further signs of the Great War. Barney is tied to a gunwheel due to a disciplinary charge, while a large howitzer artillery gun awaits use. Perched above the set to a side, looking down on the scene is the Croucher, a soldier resembling death, who’s uniform is “covered with mud and splashed with blood” (197). Rain falls steadily with

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gusting wind—generating the mud and destruction associated with the Great War, particularly among those who had fought in its the trenches. When the group of soldiers enter Act II “from fatigue, bunched together as if for comfort and warmth” (198), their dialogue, identified in the text as 1st Soldier, 2nd Soldier, and so on, resembles a grotesque ritual: 1st Soldier ‘Cold and wet and tir’d’. 2nd Soldier ‘Wet and tir’d and cold’. 3rd Soldier ‘Tir’d and cold and wet’. 4th Soldier (very like Teddy) ‘Twelve blasted hours of ammunition transport fatigue!’. (198)

The 1st Soldier, while chanting, recalls “the missus” stating: “An’ I gets the seperytion moneys reg’lar”, then cuts into asking, “But wy’re we ‘ere, wy’r we ‘ere,—that’s wot I wants to know?” (200). Barney joins in singing “to the air of the second bar in the chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne’”: “We’re here because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here!”—a haunting empty answer (200). So, while the soldiers’ situation leads them to question, the War provides no tangible answers, nor does it provoke insights. Borrowing from Shaw’s Irish Great War play, O’Casey also continues to break from it. O’Casey draws on a particular Irish incident from the Great War when a visitor, who is to later lecture soldiers on habits in the Artic, asks if he took the road rather than walking around the hill, would it be shorter to the camp and is it safe. The Corporal replies: “Yes. Only drop shells off and on, crossroads. Ration party wip’d out week ago” (207–208). The crossroads implies a reference to the young Irish poet Francis Ledwidge, who was killed on 31 July 1917 by an exploding shell prior to the third battle of Ypres, and was buried first where he, and those killed with him, fell at “Carrefour de Rose (Rose Crossroads)”. Ledwidge was later reinterred in the Artillery Wood Military Cemetery (“Francis Ledwidge”). In an October 1924 letter to Gregory, O’Casey noted: “I have been thinking of Synge, Hugh Lane, Robert Gregory—standing on the galley in ‘The Shadowy Waters’, ‘blue & dim, with sails & dresses of green and ornaments of copper’—and Ledwidge, the young pale poet; all now of the dead” (O’Casey Letters, I , 119).

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Stretcher-bearers enter carrying casualties. As the Red Cross Station is at capacity, they wait. Once placed on the ground, the wounded begin chanting: Carry on, carry on to the place of pain, Where the surgeon spreads his aid, aid, aid. And we show man’s wonderful work, well done, To the image of God hath made, made, made, And we show man’s wonderful work, well done, To the image God hath made! (209)

The Staff-Wallah, being an officer, reads out an utterly meaningless order: Brigade Orders, C/X 143. B/Y 341. Regarding gas masks. Gas-masks to be worn round neck so as to lie in front 2 1/3 degrees from socket of left shoulder-blade, and 2 ¾ degrees from socket of right shoulder-blade, leaving bottom margin to reach ¼ of an inch from second button of lower end of tunic. (212)

Donning gas masks during combat would afford little time to calculate the various degrees from shoulder sockets, and so on, further emphasizing the horrid futility of the War. The Corporal returns: “The attack. Along a wide front the enemy attacks. If they break through it may reach us even here”. The Soldiers “in chorus as they all put on gas masks”, state: “They attack. The enemy attacks” (214). Following the Corporal’s lead as he stands before the artillery howitzer, the soldiers, including the Croucher, gather in front of the canon on one knee with backs to the audience. They state in unison, “We believe in God and we believe in thee” (214), suggesting that the Soldiers’ belief in what appears as real, the artillery gun, blends with religion as it may be their only protection as the enemy advances. The Corporal: Dreams of line, of colour, and of form; Dreams of music dead for ever now; Dreams in bronze and dreams in stone have gone To make thee delicate and strong to kill. (215)

The Soldiers continue as a chorus answering the Corporal’s prayer to the canon, “We believe in God and we believe in thee” (215). The officer returns, dishevelled, announcing that the enemy had broken through the

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front lines, “Every man born of woman to the guns, to the guns” (216). As the Soldiers take their positions with the canon, O’Casey dramatically brings the scene’s horror to life, yet in a surreal manner: “The gun swings around and points to the horizon; a shell is swung into the breach and a flash indicates the firing of the gun, searchlights move over the red glare of the sky; the scene darkens, stabbed with distant flashes and by the more vivid flash of the gun which the Soldiers load and fire with rhythmical movements while the scene is closing. Only flashes are seen; no noise is heard” (216–217). Concluding the battle scene without noise increases the Act’s and play’s disjointed sense of terror, which is accented by the rhythmic dialogue, generating the expressionistic experience of artillery combat—from exhaustion to fighting for survival, fulfilling their training to work together as a cohesive unit without individuality, and becoming added mechanisms to the gun itself. And how else could the combat, with weapons capable of mass destruction, be effectively portrayed with any sort of meaning?8 In fact, the Act contributes to the overall sense of the War as devoid of any and all meaning, emphasizing the play’s overall sense of Harry Hegan’s failure to learn anything from the War, and so unlike Shaw’s O’Flaherty, it raises the question of whether the Great War, or any war, from the perspective of workers-turned soldiers, has any meaning? The combat of the Great War, perhaps all wars, must have appeared as an unreal nightmarish process of fear, horrific flashes, ghastly wounds, and death. Adding to the expressionism of the Act’s style and experience is the fact that the Soldiers never refer to the enemies in the Act as Germans (nor curse them with derogatory terms on their nationality) as does Shaw’s O’Flaherty. This dually suggests a universal commentary on war and—most importantly—projects the irrelevance of the enemy in the horror of the moment, as the Soldiers’ lives are forfeited by the Army Command to become one with the howitzer gun—their second god who might keep them alive, but at what cost? This was a long way from O’Flaherty’s comment on combat near the end of O’Flaherty, V. C .: “Only a month ago, I was in the quiet of the country at the front, with not a sound except the birds and a bellow from a cow in the distance as it might be, and the shrapnel making little clouds in the heavens, and the shells whistling, and maybe a yell or two when one of us was hit” (278). Act II also begins to excise the romantic notions of the Great War’s blood sacrifice, as expressed by the Pearse figure in Plough’s Act II (Chapter 4). Nothing sanctifies souls or countries or anything else in The Silver Tassie’s portrait of War’s combat, leaving behind only nonsensical

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and industrialized waste. The War, through the howitzer, had expanded all industrialized machines into the real nightmare that does more than click and grin. Of course, the real howitzers behind the front lines and their shells could very well have been manufactured by a factory turned to war-time production, such as Singer’s Kilbowie factory. A notable feature of Act II is its expressionism. Moran suggests that Ernst Toller’s expressionistic plays influenced Act II’s structure, but points out that in 1953 O’Casey wrote to David Krause: “Toller has had no influence whatever upon me […] I have never read a play by Toller twice, and admire only his MASSES AND MEN, though I find this too timid and too much of a wail” (quoted in Moran, 76). Krause, in Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Work, asserts that it was rather Eugene O’Neill’s expressionistic work of the 1920s that influenced the expressionism of The Silver Tassie (98–99). Murray reports that from royalties earned in 1924, O’Casey purchased published plays by O’Neill. In fact, the Soldiers’ mechanized identification with the howitzer in The Silver Tassie’s Act II end is strongly reminiscent of O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, when in Scene Three the stokers shovel the coal into the ship’s boilers in a mechanized dance of capitalized industrialization, with individuality swallowed for the moment (O’Neill, Hairy, 136).9 Of course, O’Neill understood such industrial work from his working on steamships, and during his time as a labourer in Singer’s Sewing Machine factory in Buenos Aires in 1910 (Selected Letters Eugene O’Neill, 170).10 The Silver Tassie’s Act III is set within a Dublin hospital ward where wounded soldiers are mixed with civilian patients. As Murray implies, the scene reflects O’Casey’s memory of being a patient in St. Vincent’s Hospital “in the hands of the Religious Sisters of Charity” in fall 1915, a hospital that focussed on the “sick poor of Dublin regardless of denomination”. The hospital in Act III is also of a Catholic order and given that tenement residents are among its patients, it too is a hospital that serves the poor. Murray adds that “O’Casey later remembered a ‘host of wounded soldiers’ dressed in blue with red ties with whom he talked [while in St. Vincent’s and …]. O’Casey was to bring this rather surreal situation into The Silver Tassie […]. As mentioned previously, at St. Vincent’s, O’Casey was tended to by Surgeon Richard Tobin, who would treat Connolly following the Rising (Murray, 93). However, as the older Tobin was known for his careful attention and strong empathy for patients, he is not O’Casey’s model for Surgeon Forby Maxwell (Murray, 93).11

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Susie Monican, who had been infatuated with Harry and had nearly buried herself in religious righteousness in Act I, is seen in Act III as transformed. The Silver Tassie uses Monican to reflect the opportunities many women were then afforded by the Great War. Monican has become a hospital nurse—no doubt due to the many War wounded that civilian hospitals had to take on. As such, she has—in the vein of Shaw’s Denis O’Flaherty—seized her opportunity and established for herself a tangible persona, though with a cost. Maxwell, the attending surgeon, had been mentioned in Act I as presenting Harry Heegan with his football trophy. Interestingly, the surgeon shares his surname with General John Maxwell, the British Commander who confirmed the Dublin death sentences following the 1916 Rising, and insisted on the execution of the severely wounded Connolly. The Maxwell name, of course, in 1928 would still have been associated for Dubliners with the British general. Here, the surgeon Maxwell is portrayed as being more interested in sexual relations with nurses, such as Monican, than caring for his patients. In every sense, the hospital scene, Act III, continues the feelings of the grim reality of war from Act II, particularly for those bearing shattering wounds. The lecherous Maxwell sings as he makes his move towards Monican. In an effort to maintain professional decorum, she says, “Twenty-three is at it again”. Maxwell: “Uh, hopeless case. Half his head in Flanders. May go on like that another month” (227). Maxwell’s dialogue, like Monican’s and Act II’s officer and corporal, often drops certain words, such as predicates—reflecting the continuing expressionist atmosphere that engulfs Harry Heegan. Harry’s father Sylvester and friend Simon are civilian patients in the same hospital. They comment on Harry’s condition: Sylvester: Down and up, up and down. Simon: Up and down, down and up. Sylvester: Never quiet for a minute. Simon: Never able to hang on to an easy second. Sylvester: Trying to hold on to the little finger of life. Simon: Half-way up to heaven. (219)

On being offered encouraging words from Simon, Harry rejects it: Oh, shut up, man! It’s a miracle I want—not an operation. The last operation was to give life to my limbs, but no life came, and again I felt the

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horrible sickness of life only from the waist up. (Raising his voice) Don’t stand there gaping at me, man. Did you never before clap your eyes on a body dead from the belly down? Blast you, man, why don’t you shout at me, ‘While there’s life there’s hope!’ (225)

Speaking to Maxwell, Harry desperately seeks hope as he reports a “timid, faint, fluttering kind of a buzz” in his upper legs and adds that he is “looking forward to the operation tomorrow”. Maxwell replies, “That’s the way to take it” and adds what Simon failed to, “While there’s life there’s hope”, the stage direction indicates that Maxwell says the line “with a grin and a wink at Susie” (228). On catching Maxwell’s gesture to Monican, Harry exits knowing Maxwell was merely uttering an empty conventional phrase. No doubt, Harry also felt Maxwell’s insensitivity given Harry’s position sexually. When Susie asks Maxwell if the surgery will “Do him any good, d’ye think?” he replies, “Oh, blast the good it’ll do him” (229). When Maxwell and Monican are seen gossip about a nurse disciplined for being seen with a Resident surgeon in the Resident’s room (229), Maxwell leeringly notes, “Damn pretty little piece. Not so pretty as you, though”. He then adds, “Kicks higher than her head, and you should see her doing the splits”. When Monican answers, “Not very useful things to be doing and poor patients awaiting attention”. Maxwell insinuates, “And don’t tell me, Nurse Susie, that you’ve never felt a thrill or left a bedside for a kiss in a corner” (230). Beyond adding to the horror of the hospital for war patients such as Harry, it is difficult to contemplate whether this surgeon Maxwell, given his surname, is meant as a commentary on the British military General Maxwell. Of course, General Maxwell’s role during the Rising was to oversee the restoration of order in Ireland and lead the British response once the rebel command surrendered. In addition to the execution of rebel leaders and wholesale arrests and internments (transported to England and Wales), he implemented martial law, which was resented by many Dubliners. Within O’Casey’s play, the Maxwell character is at the very least an unsympathetic and boorish lech. Adding to the sense of the war continuing for the severely wounded, Mrs Foran enters leading her husband Teddy, “who has a heavy bandage over his eyes” (231). Mrs Foran now faces years of tending a blinded husband who had viciously and repeatedly beaten her, arguably starting a new chapter of her slavery to him—in the sense of Shaw and Connolly

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arguing that working-class married women were slaves to their husbands. Of course, as Shaw and Connolly may have reached the concept of married working women being the slaves of their worker husbands, slaves of slaves, independent of each other (despite their similar phraseology that suggests otherwise), O’Casey too might have reached the idea separately from Shaw and, or Connolly; however, in The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, 1919, O’Casey acknowledged Connolly’s theoretical socialism: the “effective reasoning of James Connolly” (10). Act III also sees Harry asking his parents “Where’s Jessie? I thought you were to bring her with you?” When told Jessie stopped to talk with someone outside, Harry asks if it is Barney. Teddy blurts out: “Maybe she wanted to talk to him about gettin’ the V. C”. When Harry, who had not previously heard the news, asks why Barney is receiving the V. C. Teddy says: “For carryin’ you wounded out of the line of fire”. Harry: “Christ Almighty, for carryin’ me wounded out of the line of fire!” (233). Again, the question of a V. C. is raised in an Irish Great War play, although with different associations than for Shaw’s O’Flaherty who received it for killing six German soldiers. Still, it was Britain’s highest military honour, which had lost much of its associated honor in the new Ireland of 1928. Harry is horrified knowing that Barney’s is receiving the medal for saving him to live with the loss and absence of everything he had in Act I, including Jessie to Barney.12 O’Casey adds to the nightmarish reality through Mrs Heegan, Mrs Foran, and Simon’s speculating, in front of Harry, on the possible success of Harry’s surgery next day: even “if it gave him back the use” of at least one leg, Harry “could get by with one leg”. As in Act I, Mrs Heegan, returns to the military allowance: “Even at the worst, he’ll never be dependin’ on anyone, for he’s bound to get the maximum allowance”. Simon asks, “Two quid a week, isn’t it?” Sylvester: “Yes, a hundred per cent total incapacitation” (233). As in Act I, and in O’Flaherty, V. C . with Mrs O’Flaherty’s and Teresa’s similar concern for the military allowance, the money from military allowance is contextualized with tenement poverty. Such a small, but steady weekly income is considered significant by Harry’s parents and their fellow tenement residents. However, not one of them considers how Harry will have to negotiate the tenement stairs. The disjointed nature of the scene continues with Harry, during this discussion, steadily staring outside waiting for Jessie. The lack of characters’ sensitivity and awareness of what they say in front

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of Harry, except for Mrs Foran and Monican within her nurse’s professionalism, reflects not only the un-reality of the scene, but also how, more generally, maimed veterans were forgotten, or at least not understood by those at home. Finally, Jessie, in the distance, in reply to Mrs Foran calls: “I’m not going up!” When asked to bring Harry his ukulele, she shouts from afar, “Barney’ll bring it up!” (235). When Harry desperately and repeatedly calls Jessie, she runs away. At the commotion, Monican returns and forces the visitors to leave. Mrs Heegan sarcastically remarks, revealing a momentary and deeper understanding of Harry’s lot: “A nice way to treat the flotsam and jetsam of the battlefields!” (235). The desolation and desperation triggered by war is evident in the Act’s final moment. After hearing the hymn of Salve Regina, Harry prays: “God of the miracles, give a poor devil a chance, give a poor devil a chance!” (239). The Avondale Football Club setting for Act IV, during a club dance, further emphasizes Harry’s ongoing war, but on the front where he formerly triumphed. Barney with Jessie at his side appears with his service medals, including the V. C. Harry follows them, prompting Jessie to say to Barney: “Here he comes prowling after us again! His watching of us is pulling all the enjoyment out of the night. It makes me shiver to feel him wheeling after us”. Barney, with no consideration for his former friend, replies: “We’ll watch for a chance to shake him off, an’ if he starts again we’ll make him take his tangled body somewhere else” (241). The coarse cruelty reflects that the wounded soldiers from the War, who will never recover what they lost, are not only not wanted they face a disturbing lack of empathy from the physically “able-bodied” characters. Adding to the terrible vision portrayed, Harry unleashes his suffering through words directed at Barney and Jessie, ringing of echoes from the unreal combat dialogue from Act II: Cram pain with pain, and pleasure cram with pleasure. I’m going too. You’d cage me in from seeing you dance, and dance, and dance, with Jessie close to you, and you so close to Jessie. Though you wouldn’t think it, yes, I polish’d floor with a sweet, sweet heifer. (As Barney and Jessie are moving away he catches hold of Jessie’s dress.) Her name? Oh, any name will do—we’ll call her Jessie! (243)13

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Harry’s further marginalization and exclusion from the club is highlighted by Monican pushing Harry off the dance floor, with Mrs Heegan on one side and Surgeon Maxwell on the other, and Barney and Jessie watching from the entrance. Maxwell instructs Mrs Heegan to take Harry home. Harry: “When they drink to the Club from the Cup—the Silver Tassie— that I won three times, three times for them—that first was filled to wet the lips of Jessie and of me—I’ll go, but not yet”. His mother states, “Come home, Harry; you’re getting’ your allowance only on the understandin’ that you take care of yourself” (251). Mrs Heegan’s concern for the government allowances, given the cost of the War to Harry, echoes Connolly’s Under Which Flag ?, which asserted that such allowances are “blood money” (Under, 115). As Harry and Teddy prepare to leave, Simon, Sylvester, and Mrs Foran unwittingly start an expressionistic dialogue sequence taken over by Harry and Teddy, furthering O’Casey’s stark portrait: Simon: The air’ll do him good. Sylvester: An’ give him breath to sing his song an’ play the ukulele. Mrs Heegan: Just as he used to do. Sylvester: Behind the trenches. Simon: In the Rest Camps. Mrs Foran: Out in France. Harry: I can see, but I cannot dance. Teddy: I can dance, but I cannot see. Harry: Would that I had the strength to do things I see. Teddy: Would that I could see the things I’ve strength to do. (253)

Mixed into the middle of Harry and Teddy’s further exchanges, Mrs Foran and Sylvester speak of the ukulele, with hopes that Harry will play it: “I do love the ukulele, especially when it goes tinkle, tinkle, tinkle in the night-time”. Sylvester disjointedly answers: “Bringin’ before you glistenin’ bodies of blacks, coilin’ themselves an’ shufflin’s an’ prancin’ in a great jungle dance; shakin’, assegais an’ spears to the rattle, rattle, rattle an’ thud, thud, thud of the tom-toms” (254), echoing, perhaps, the expressionistic scenes of alienation in O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones , when the haunted Jones begins to hear that “the far-off tom-tom increases perceptibly” in Scene Two (46).14 The surreal nature of O’Casey’s dialogue reflects the now relentless realities of Harry’s and Teddy’s worlds as more words are stripped of their meaning, recalling the lost dialogue in The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, and the lost floating images of Yeats’ “The Second Coming”:

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Harry: The rising sap in the trees I’ll never feel. Teddy: The hues of branch or leaf I’ll never see. Harry: There’s something wrong with life when men can walk. Teddy: There’s something wrong with life when men can see. Harry: I never felt the hand that made me helpless. Teddy: I never saw the hand that made me blind. (254)

A final confrontation by Harry with Barney and Jessie seals the unbearable and on-going bleakness of the War for him: “So you’d make merry over my helplessness in front of my face, in front of my face, you pair of cheats! You couldn’t wait till I’d gone, so that my eyes wouldn’t see the joy I wanted hurrying away from me over to another?” (258). Barney turns on Harry: “You half-baked Lazarus, I’ve put up with you all the evening, so don’t force me now to rough-handle the bit of life the Jerries left you as a souvenir!”. Harry responds to Barney with what has been growing beneath the surface since Act II, addressing the Victoria Cross for saving him: “When I wanted to slip away from life, you brought me back with your whispered ‘Think of the tears of Jess, think of the tears of Jess’, but Jess has wiped away her tears in’ the ribbon of your Cross, and the poor crippled jest gives a flame of joy to the change” (259). Accentuating it Maxwell, far from any medical sensitivity, insists to Mrs Heegan, “This can’t be allowed to go on. You’ll have to have to bring him home” (260). This is in contrast to Act I when Harry spoke of Maxwell’s congratulations to him on winning the Cup. At this point, Harry flings the silver Cup, the Silver Tassie to the floor. Teddy, having attained some understanding himself, addresses Harry: “Come Harry, home to where the air is soft. No longer can you stand upon a hill-top; these empty eyes of mine can never see from one. Our best is all behind us—what’s in front we’ll face like men, dear comrade of the blood-fight and the battlefront!”, to which Harry repeats, “What’s in front we’ll face like men!” (261). Harry exits, pushed by Sylvester, with Teddy walking beside with his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Mrs Heegan follows. Once gone, Maxwell says, with even less professional decorum than earlier, “we’ve wasted too much time already”. Jessie utters, “Poor Harry!” And Monican responds revealing something of the cost of her practically acquired knowledge of men wounded in war: Oh nonsense! If you’d passed as many through your hands as I, you’d hardly notice one. (To Jessie) Jessie, Teddy Foran and Harry Heegan have

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gone to live their own way in another world. Neither I nor you can lift them out of it. No longer can they do the things we can do. We can’t give sight to the blind or make the lame walk. We would if we could. It is the misfortune of war. As long as wars are waged, we shall be vexed by woe; strong legs will be made useless and bright eyes made dark. But we, who have come through the fire unharmed, must go on living. (Pulling Jessie from the chair) Come along, and take your part in life. (262)

Clearly the football club dance represents the continuity of life for the able-bodied, but what, one wonders, are the psychological demons that Barney and his fellow able-bodied survivors of the Great War’s gruesome fighting, will have to live with?15 Monican, who had in Act I nearly given herself to pious self-torture over Harry, annunciates the play’s stark commentary on the Great War, and all wars. She discovered through her nurse’s profession dealing with the war wounded and maimed like Harry and Teddy, the cost of the loss of empathy. As with O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy plays, which were clear in their focus on the cost of Irish wars on the working-class, The Silver Tassie widens it to the cost to the working-class of the entire Great War. Domestic existence, which was portrayed as broken in The Plough and the Stars by the build-up to and through the 1916 Rising, is shown as shattered in The Silver Tassie by the colossal all-out war in Europe whose consequences ten years later in the Ireland of 1918 are an over-riding lack of empathy. Ireland’s lack of empathy for its disabled Irish veterans of the Great War reflected a desire for many to move forward, directly impacted by the recent historical events that shaped Ireland: 1916, War for Independence, Civil War, and the establishment of the Irish Free State. They led many Irish to desire life without being reminded by past horrors, as Monican intimates in her last speech. Yet an important aspect of the play’s context was the near total marginalization in the 1920s of Irish veterans who had fought in Britain’s army and navy during the Great War. The very events that had led to a new Ireland, but which had not transformed Irish tenement life, contributed to this lack of empathy for veterans. Supporters both of the Free State Government and those who split from Sinn Fein to follow Eamonn de Valera into the Fianna Fail Party in 1926, as well as those who remained loyal to Sinn Fein, all had fought against the British in Ireland or supported those who had. There was, therefore, little incentive to address the struggles of the disabled Irish War veterans of Britain’s

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military—especially accented those in Britain’s Irish regiments that fought against rebel insurgents in the Rising. And, of course, this was felt most by Ireland’s poor. All of this made The Silver Tassie so relevant in 1928 and was the primary reason the play should have been premiered at the Abbey Theatre, Ireland’s national theatre. Instead, the Abbey leadership rejected the play that would lay bare the Irish cost of a global war, across national boundaries.

Rejection The Abbey had four directors in 1928: Yeats, Gregory, Robinson, and Walter Starkie (a Trinity College Professor of Classics and Spanish literature). Murray indicates that Gregory and Robinson did not originally have “rejection in mind [.… and] would have wanted changes in the script before doing it [.… though’ Robinson’s position hardened as time went on]” (201).16 Starkie was out of the country when the play arrived, as was Yeats. Robinson’s initial letter to Gregory after reading the play indicated that O’Casey could re-work Acts III and IV (O’Casey Letters, I , 237). Robinson’s professed take was on the play’s structure, rather than its subject. Gregory wrote to O’Casey on 27 April, sending him Robinson’s letter and Yeats’, adding: “His [Yeats’] letter has only come today, and I think I ought to mail it to you at once though I am afraid it might hurt you—or at least disappoint you—(as his criticism did me, on my first draft of ‘Sancho’)”. Yeats’ letter, addressed to O’Casey but sent to Gregory, was dated 20 April 1928. Yeats’ letter remarked: “I had looked forward with great hope and excitement to reading your play, and not merely because of my admiration for your work, for I bore in mind that the Abbey owed its recent prosperity to you. If you had not brought us your plays just at that moment I doubt if it would now exist” (quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 267). Perhaps based on such an acknowledgement alone, the Abbey should have premiered the play. Yeats continued, saying he had “admiration” for Act I: “I thought it was the best first act you had written, and told a friend that you had surpassed yourself”. After reading the remaining Acts, Yeats stated: “I am sad and discouraged. You have no subject”. He suggested that the trilogy plays were successful because O’Casey had been “exasperated almost beyond endurance by what you had seen or heard as a man is by what happens under his window, and you moved us as Swift moved

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his contemporaries”. Yeats continued by first attacking The Silver Tassie’s subject, remarking that O’Casey was not interested in the Great War, and insinuated that he had not fought in it, so “[you only] write out of your opinions”. Yeats then shifted to the play’s structure, which he claimed was a series of “unrelated scenes”. He attacked the lack of main character and any “dominating action”. Yeats even thought that the War’s vastness had overwhelmed O’Casey, leaving him without a focus. Finally, he remarked that Shakespeare did not shape Hamlet or Lear, but rather they shaped him (O’Casey Letters, I, 268). It was a damning letter. O’Casey replied to Yeats on each point. On the notion that O’Casey was not interested in the Great War, O’Casey asked: “Now, how do you know that I am not interested in the Great War? […] Your statement is to me an impudently ignorant one to make, for it happens that I was and am passionately and intensely interested in the Great War. Throughout its duration I talked of the Great War with friends that came to see me, and with friends when I went to see them. I talked of the Great War and of its terrible consequences with Lady Gregory when I stayed at Coole. I have talked of the Great War with Doctor Pilger, now the cancer expert in Dublin, who served as surgeon at the front”. O’Casey next took up Yeats’ comment about his lack of the War’s battlefield experiences: Do you really mean that no one should or could write about or speak about a war because one has not stood on the battlefields? Were you serious when you dictated that [Yeats claimed he dictated his letter to his wife]—really serious, now? Was Shakespeare at Actium or Phillipi? Was G. B. Shaw in the boats with the French, or in the forts with the British when St. Joan and Dunois made the attack that relieved Orleans? And someone, I think, wrote a poem about Tir n nOg who never took a header into the Land of Youth. And does war consist only of battlefields? (O’Casey Letters, I, 271)17

O’Casey then expressed what he experienced among the War wounded in 1915 at St. Vincent’s Hospital: “I have walked some of the hospital wards. I have talked and walked and smoked and sung with the bluesuited wounded men fresh from the front. I’ve been with the armless, the legless, the blind, the gassed and the shell-shocked; one with a head bored by shrapnel who had to tack east and west before he could reach the point he wished to get to; with one whose head rocked like a frantic pendulum” (O’Casey Letters, I, 272).

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In addressing Yeats’ criticism that the play lacked a “dominating character”, O’Casey wrote: “In ‘The Silver Tassie’ you have a unique work that dominates all the characters in the play. I remember talking to Lady Gregory about ‘The Plough and the Stars’ before it was produced, and I remember her saying that ‘The Plough’ mightn’t be so popular as ‘Juno’, because there wasn’t in the play a character dominating and all-pervading as ‘Juno’, yet ‘The Plough’ is a better work than ‘Juno’, and, in my opinion—an important one—‘The Silver Tassie’, because of, or in spite of, the lack of a dominating character, is a greater work than ‘The Plough and the Stars’”. Furthermore, O’Casey asked Yeats: “was there ever a play, worthy of the name of play, that did not contain one or two or three opinions of the author that wrote it? And the Abbey Theatre has produced plays that were packed skin-tight with the author’s opinions—the plays of Shaw, for instance” (O’Casey Letters, I, 272). Replying by letter to Yeats, Robinson, and Gregory—and later to Starkie—was not sufficient for O’Casey. As stated above, he published most of the correspondence with Yeats, Gregory, and Robinson in The Observer, after George Russell baulked with The Irish Statesman. Following the publication, Yeats sent the entire correspondence, which now included a letter from Starkie that O’Casey had not seen, on to Russell, who then published all of it. Starkie’s letter, which according to Murray was back-dated on Yeats’ insistence to 30 April, stated that despite reservations about O’Casey’s “experimenting” with a new form, “I feel strongly that the Abbey Theatre should produce the play” (Murray, 201; quoted in O’Casey Letters, I , 274). However, by alluding to Shaw in his letter to Yeats, specifically to Shaw’s Saint Joan, O’Casey had landed a brilliant jab. In 1904, of course, Yeats had rejected John Bull’s Other Island; and given Shaw’s reputation by 1928, the Shaw reference emphasized how wrong Yeats was—again. Shaw, of course, read the public correspondence of The Silver Tassie’s rejection (published on 3 and then 9 June), and he read the play after it was published on 12 June (Murray, 203). Shaw wrote O’Casey on 19 June, in which he famously opened his letter with” “What a hell of a play!” Yet in the remainder of that letter, and in the letter Shaw wrote to Gregory in which he alludes to the rejection, Shaw absolutely provides the most concise and insightful assessment of The Silver Tassie. To O’Casey, Shaw continued:

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Of course the Abbey should have produced it—as Starkie rightly says— whether they liked it or not. But the people who knew your uncle when you were a child (so to speak) always want to correct your exercises; and this was what disabled the usually competent W.B.Y. and Lady Gregory. Still, it is surprising that they fired so very wide considering their marksmanship. A good realistic first act, like Juno, an incongruously phantasmic second act, trailing off into a vague and unreal sequel; could anything be wronger? What I see is a deliberately unrealistic phantasmo-poetic first act, intensifying in exactly the same mode into a climax of war imagery in the second act, and then two acts of almost unbearable realism bringing down all the Voodoo war poetry with an ironic crash to earth in ruins. There certainly is no falling-off or loss of grip; the hitting gets harder and harder right through to the end. (quoted in Eileen O’Casey, 27; quoted in Shaw and Gregory, 183)

In his letter to Gregory, on 26 June, Shaw addresses the play and rejection by writing: Why did you and W.B.Y. treat O’Casey as a baby? Starkie was right: you should have done the play anyhow. Sean is now hors concours. It is literally a hell of a play; but it will clearly force its way on to the stage; and Yeats should have submitted to it as a calamity imposed on him by the Act of God if he could not welcome it as another Juno. Besides, he was extraordinarily wrong about it on the facts. The first act is not a bit realistic: it is deliberately fantastic chanted poetry. This is intensified to a climax in the second act. Then comes a ruthless return for the last two acts to the fiercest ironic realism. That is so like Yeats. Give him a job with which you feel sure he will play Bunthorne, and he will astonish you with his unique cleverness and subtlety. Give him one that any second rater could manage with credit, and as likely as not he will make an appalling mess of it. He has certainly fallen in up to his neck over O’C. (Shaw and Gregory, 185–187)

Not only had Shaw understood the structure of O’Casey’s play, he also embraced its subject and thematic push that undercut the “Voodoo War poetry”. Yes, it was quite different from O’Flaherty, V. C ., but, again, Shaw’s intent with that play was much different, and written during the War itself. While he arguably wrote Heartbreak House to reflect the disconnect of society to the War and its horror, Back to Methuselah to find a way forward after the War’s carnage and imposed loss, and Saint Joan to tell the historical truth, O’Casey in 1928 set out to do all three. As

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such, O’Casey wrote the play on the War—the War whose outcome Shaw had feared and warned against in Common Sense About the War. Shaw had argued then that the War had to be about something that would be worth all the slaughter and suffering: “Democracy without equality is a delusion more dangerous than frank oligarchy and autocracy. And without Democracy there is no hope of peace” (Common, 77–78). Had the War delivered true democracy, it would have had its worthy cause. And Shaw had warned against the allied leaders placing the War debt on Germany once the War ended: “We had better not say to the Kaiser at the end of the war ‘Scoundrel: you can never replace the [Belgium] Louvain library, nor the sculpture of Rheims; and it follows logically that you shall empty your pockets into ours’” (Common, 187). So, while he had also advocated in Common Sense for the creation of an organization along the lines of what became the League of Nations in 1920 (66–67), by 1928 the League was already foreshadowing its inability to maintain peace with its 1923 failure to stop Mussolini’s forces invading Greece’s Corfu. The Silver Tassie portrays not only the complete futility of the Great War, with its millions of dead and disabled—and displaced—it also portrays through its able-bodied characters’ lack of empathy and compassion, that nothing had been learned from the war: the Great War had been fought for nothing. Pushing home its truth in dealing with what should have been unimaginable, O’Casey had indeed created a “hell of a play”. Heinz Kosok argues that The Silver Tassie is one of the great anti-war plays not only of this “[the Great War] but of any war” (177). So as The Silver Tassie resonates beyond the Great War, and beyond Dublin, the play achieves an internationalism, perhaps an Irish internationalist perspective, as in much of Shaw’s work. In an odd way, the play brings O’Casey towards the vein of Shaw’s portrait of Connolly in War Issues for Irishmen, Irish but focussed on more. And while The Silver Tassie shared Connolly’s anti-enlistment conviction during the War’s first years, and his dismissal of and contempt for Pearse’s blood-sacrifice notions of the Great War, as portrayed in The Plough and the Stars ’ Act II, Tassie, arguably, responds astutely to Connolly’s The Re-Conquest of Ireland that was republished in the 1917 Labour in Ireland. As we know, O’Casey read Lynd’s Introduction to the book and presumably the entire book. If so, O’Casey would have realized that The Re-Conquest (originally from 1915) makes no mention of the Great War. In a sense, the situation was the reverse of August 1914, the month the Great War began, when O’Casey was focussed on trying to expel Constance Markievicz from the

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ICA, while Connolly was writing and publishing journalism on what the Great War was going to mean for international socialism and revolution. That Connolly does not allude to the War in The Re-Conquest is nearly inexplicable as his journalism at the time frequently criticized the War while opposing British recruitment efforts. True, many of the work’s chapters had been based on articles published between 1912 and mid1914, Connolly had then expanded the work with new material including that which coincided with the War. But by not mentioning the War, being focussed only on Irish conditions, the work was ripe to be responded to as the Great War was very much part of Ireland’s condition and was impacting his socialistic efforts. In this regard, The Silver Tassie serves as a refutation of an aspect of Connolly’s The Re-Conquest with its socialist focus on Ireland, particularly on its tenement class, within a wider frame. In this, the play is an important Irish work that still, in today’s world where empathy is severely lacking once again, remains extremely relevant. Shaw points to this aspect of the play in his 19 June letter to O’Casey: You really are a ruthless ironfisted blaster and blighter of your species; and in this play there is none righteous—no, not one. Your moral is always that the Irish ought not to exist; and you are suspected of opining, like Shakespear [sic], that the human race ought not to exist—unless, indeed, you like them like that, which you can hardly expect Lady Gregory, with her kindness for Kiltartan, to do. Yeats himself, with all his extraordinary cleverness and subtlety, which comes out just when you give him up for a hopeless fool and (in this case) deserts him just when you expect him to be equal to the occasion, is not a man of this world; and when you hurl an enormous smashing chunk of it at him, he dodges it, small blame to him. (quoted in Eileen O’Casey, 27–28; Shaw and Gregory, 184)

Shaw intimates that O’Casey presents his characters in The Silver Tassie with a brutality; the characters are indeed more two dimensional than three. The focus is not on developed realistic characters, like Plough’s Nora Clitheroe, but on brutal situations spun from the War, including through its images and hollow dialogue. And, most importantly, O’Casey presents his characters suffering the War’s horror through no fault or failing of their own. In Ireland, as the Government-imposed conscription was never implemented, the Irish within Ireland had volunteered,18 yet that did not mean they knew why they were in the War. Barney speaks for the Soldiers (including an East Londoner) in The Silver Tassie’s Act II when he asks without receiving an answer: “wy’r we ‘ere,—that’s wot

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I wants to know?” (200). All that Harry Heegan knew of life’s joy was through his football triumphs, which its trophies brought moments of relevance to the worker turned soldier. Harry never attains an insightful understanding of the war’s values, morals, and meanings during or after the War. The play’s contention is that the War had no meaning. The Silver Tassie, like its Soldiers, asks why, but provides no answers. Answers instead may be found in the crucial The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, in a sense a companion work—both published in the same year (nearly the same month). Shaw, in the Guide states: We still celebrate, by two minutes’ national silence, not the day on which the glorious war broke out, but the day the horrible thing came to an end. Not the victory, which we have thrown away by abusing it as helplessly as we fought for it, but the Armistice, the Cessation, the stoppage of the Red Cross vans from the terminuses of the Channel railways with their heartbreaking loads of mutilated men, was what we danced for so wildly and pitifully. If ever there was anything made clear in the world it was that we were no more directly guilty of the war than we were guilty of the earthquake in Tokio. We and the French and the Germans and the Turks and the rest found ourselves conscripted for an appalling slaughtering match, ruinous to ourselves, ruinous to civilization, [….] The attempt to fight out the war with volunteers failed: there were not enough. The rest went because they were forced to go, and fought because they were forced to fight. The women let them go partly because they could not help themselves, partly because they were just as pugnacious as the men, partly because they read the papers (which were not allowed to tell them the truth), and partly because most of them were so poor that they grasped at the allowance which left most of them better off with their husbands in the trenches than they had ever been with their husbands at home.

Shaw continued with the why and where: How had they got into this position? Simply by the original sin of allowing their countries to be moved and governed and fed and clothed by the pursuit of profit for capitalists instead of by the pursuit of righteous prosperity for “all people that on earth do dwell”. The first ship that went to Africa to sell things to the natives at more than cost price because there was no sale for them at home began not only this war, but the other and worse wars that will follow it if we persist in depending on Capitalism for our livelihood and our morals. (156–157)

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O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie dramatized the horrors of the Great War, the grotesque enhancement of the very impulses that built the Singer empire, reaping its rewards in the Gilded Age—that accelerated with wartime production—on the backs of sweated workers. It was, as Connolly foresaw in the days after Britain declared War, “the most fearful crime of the centuries” (“Continental”, 242), which O’Casey’s play makes clear. Ultimately, Shaw and O’Casey, provided the crucial historical commentary in the 1920s on the decade that Connolly had endeavoured to steer away from the rising industrial capitalism, and force into existence Peter Keegan’s prophesy of a time without capitalism. In that, Connolly maintained a presence for both Shaw and O’Casey, all socialists in their different ways—whether they wanted to or not. Three secular saints, if you like, did what they could to undermine the causes of poverty that the sewing machine represented during their lives, to change the world, including Ireland. The world is still not ready to receive them, or their collective socialism. However, in Ireland’s 1928 Tailteann Games, Saint Joan received first prize for drama.

Notes 1. Auxiliaries in Shaw’s “Neglected Morals” press letter from 1916 is not referencing the Auxiliary units of the Royal Irish Constabulary added during the War of Independence 1919–1921. In this case, the word is referencing the poor who looted during the early days of the 1916 Rising. 2. The Land Acts in Ireland were explored in John Bull’s Other Island’s Act III between Larry Doyle and Matthew Haffigan, the latter a benefactor of recent Acts. Doyle: “Do you think, because youre [sic] poor and ignorant and half-crazy with toiling and moiling noon and night, that youll [sic] be any less greedy and oppressive to them that have no land at all than old Nick Lestrange [a former landowner …]?” (119). 3. Connolly learned of Horace Plunkett’s Co-Operative Movement after returning to Ireland in 1910. In praising the Co-Operative Movement, Connolly wrote: “The idea is capable of almost infinite expansion, and not least amongst its attractions is the hope that the minds of Irish men and women once set thus definitely in the direction of common work, common ownership, and democratically conducted industry, their thought would not cease from travelling that path until they had once more grasped the concept of an Ireland of whose powers, potentialities and gifts each should be an equal heir, in whose joys and cultures all should be sharers” (Re-Conquest, 324).

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4. Candida, among many of his plays, reflects Shaw’s vision of gender equality, as does Connolly’s The Agitator’s Wife (Chapter 3). 5. In “The Ties That Bind” article, February 1916, Connolly wrote, “For the sake of a few paltry shillings Separation Allowance thousands of Irish women have made life miserable for their husbands [and sons] with entreaties to join the British Army” (“Ties”, 1). 6. O’Casey’s stage directions clarify that Jessie carries the silver football cup “joyously, rather than reverentially, elevated, as a priest would elevate a chalice” (186). Such is reminiscent of Shaw’s stage direction from Arms and the Man describing how Raina holds Sergius’ photograph: “she takes it in her hands and elevates it, like a priestess” (7). 7. While O’Casey does not specify the play’s year, the presence of the service rifle in the home of a soldier on leave suggests late 1914. Since the ICA had purchased numerous Lee-Enfield rifles from British soldiers, the army by “the end of 1914 […] require[d] their soldiers to leave their rifles at Kingstown upon arrival [while on leave] and to collect these […] when leaving” (Leddin, 119). 8. On The Silver Tassie, O’Casey later recalled: “I had seen war plays where attempts at ‘realism’ would consist of explosions that would near lift one out of one’s seat. I determined to do a play in which a shot wouldn’t be heard. […] it would have been useless to try to make it real …; so I set out to show the spirit of war” (quoted in Kosok, 106). 9. The O’Neill books O’Casey purchased in 1924 most likely included The Emperor Jones (with Diff’rent and The Straw) and The Hairy Ape, both published in London by Jonathan Cape in 1922 and 1923, respectively. 10. Throughout his career, O’Neill focused many of his plays on working-class characters and issues. He knew a number of radicals in New York, such as journalist John Reed, who in 1920 introduced Connolly’s son Roderic to Lenin. 11. Moran notes that some influence might have come from Richard Tobin’s son, Paddy. Prior to the War, Paddy Tobin had been an accomplished rugby player. While not of Harry Heegan’s class, Paddy was on Trinity College Dublin’s first rugby team in 1914, “playing alongside others who would die at the Dardanelles during same assault” in which Paddy was killed. Moran adds, “These and other stories doubtless circulated on the [hospital] wards that O’Casey inhabited during 1915, preparing the way for Harry Heegan’s tragic narrative” (72). 12. In accenting Maxwell’s insensitivity regarding Harry further, and to make clear the extent of Harry’s maiming, Mrs Foran twice has to stop Teddy from stating the extent, reflecting Mrs Foran’s greater sensitivity than Maxwell’s. Suggesting, of course, that there could be more sensitivity within the tenements than with Maxwell’s class.

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13. Arguably, the line “You’d cage me in” may well be another echo from O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, a play where its main character, Yank, struggles to fit into life, becoming oppressed with being caged: “Cage me in for her to spit on!” (154). 14. The Dublin Drama League produced The Emperor Jones in Dublin in 1927, which O’Casey most likely knew (Clarke and Ferrar, 33). 15. The psychological impact on the able-bodied survivors of the Great War would be explored by some 1920s writers, such as Ernest Hemmingway in “Soldier’s Home” (1925) and Farewell to Arms (1929). 16. Prior to receiving any of the responses from the Abbey’s directors, but two weeks after submitting the play to Robinson, O’Casey sent Robinson a possible cast list. He proposed Barry Fitzgerald and Gabriel Fallon as Sylvester and Simon, Eileen Crowe as Susie Monican, F. J. McCormack as Harry Heegan, and Arthur Shields as the Surgeon Maxwell, to name a few (O’Casey Letters, I , 235). 17. Tir n nOg was the land of youth in Irish mythology. 18. While some Irish who volunteered for the British army did so out of a patriotism for Britain, or for a heroic adventure (early enlistment)— many more, especially from the impoverished classes, volunteered with no choice. Dubliners who had been blacklisted following the 1913 Lockout had not worked since before the Lockout, so enlistment represented employment. In November 1915, at the urging of Dublin Castle, employers threatened War eligible workers with sacking if they did not enlist. And, of course, the separation allowance was often more than the husband, father, or son could make while working at home, if employed.

References Connolly, James. “A Continental Revolution”. James Connolly’s Selected Writings. Ed. Peter Berresford Ellis. London: Pluto Press, 1973. 239–242. ———. “The Irish Flag”. Workers’ Republic, 8 April 1916. ———. “The Re-Conquest of Ireland”. In Labour in Irish History, the ReConquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. 219–346. ———. “Labour in Ireland”. In Labour in Irish History. Labour in Ireland: Labour in Irish History, the Re-Conquest of Ireland. Dublin: Maunsell, 1917. xxvii–218. ———. “The Ties That Bind”. The Workers Republic, 5 February 1916, 1. ———. “Under Which Flag?”. Four Irish Rebel Plays. Ed. James Moran. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007. 105–132. “Dublin Metropolitan Police (1836–1925)”. irish-police.com/dublin-metropoli tan-police/ (accessed 22 February 2020).

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“Francis Ledwidge Biography”. www.francisledwidge.com/francis-ledwidge-bio graphy.php (accessed 19 January 2020). Gibbs, A. M. Bernard Shaw: A Life. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005. Hamilton, Hugo. “James Connolly”. Signatories. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2016. 29–42. Holroyd, Michael. Bernard Shaw: Volume III, the Lure of Fantasy. London: Chatto and Windus, 1991. Irish Labour Party Archive, National Library of Ireland. http://catalogue.nli.ie/ Collection/vtls000506342/HierarchyTree. Krause, David. Sean O’Casey: The Man and His Work. New York: Macmillan, 1960. Kosok, Heinz. The Theatre of War: The First World War in British and Irish Drama, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Laurence, Dan. “Notes”. In Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1911–1925, Vol. III . Ed. Dan Laurence. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. Laurence, Dan. “Notes”. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1926–1950, Vol. IV . Ed. Dan H. Laurence. New York: Viking, 1988. Leddin, Jeffrey. The Labour Hercules: The Irish Citizen Army and Irish Republicanism 1913–23. Newbridge, Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2019. Lennon, John and Yoko Ono, with Dick Cavett, Interview 1972. https.www.you tube.com/watch?v=iOu7QtVLfJQ. Moran, James. The Theatre of Sean O’Casey. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2013. Murray, Christopher. Sean O’Casey: Writer at Work. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. 2004. O’Casey, Eileen. Cheerio Titan: The Friendship Between George Bernard Shaw and Eileen and Sean O’Casey. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1989. O’Casey, Sean. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1910–1941, Vol. 1. Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1975. O’Casey, Sean. The Letters of Sean O’Casey, 1942–1954, Vol. II . Ed. David Krause. New York: Macmillan, 1980. ———. The Silver Tassie. Sean O’Casey: Plays. London: Faber and Faber, 1998. 163–269. ———. The Story of the Irish Citizen Army. Dublin: Maunsel, 1919. O’Neill, Eugene. The Emperor Jones. New York: Boni and Liveright. 1928. ———. The Hairy Ape. O’Neill: Complete Plays 1920–1931. 119–164. ———. Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill. Ed. Travis Bogard. New York: Limelight, 2004. Roche, Anthony. The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899–1939. London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2015.

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Shaw, George Bernard. Arms and the Man. The Dramatic Works of Bernard Shaw. No. IV, Arms and the Man, a Comedy. London: Constable, 1912. ———. Bernard Shaw Collected Letters, 1911–1925, Vol. 3. Ed. Dan H. Laurence. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. ———. Common Sense About the War. What Shaw Reilly Wrote About the War. Ed. J. L. Wisenthal and Daniel O’Leary. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006. 16–84. ———. The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism. New York: Brentano’s, 1928. ———. John Bull’s Other Island. London: Penguin Books, 1984. ———. “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising”. The Matter with Ireland, 2nd. Ed. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and David H. Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 120–123. ———. O’Flaherty, V. C. In Selected Short Plays. New York: Penguin, 1988. 253–278. ———. “‘Poor Law and Destitution in Ireland’ in ‘On Irish Destitution’”. SHAW: The Annual of Bernard Shaw Studies, 33. Ed. Michel Pharand. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. 4–16. ———. Shaw, Lady Gregory, and the Abbey: A Correspondence and a Record. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and Nicholas Grene. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993. ———. “War Issues for Irishmen”. The Matter With Ireland, 2nd. Ed. Ed. Dan H. Laurence and David H. Greene. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2001. 184–201. “Singer Factories—Podolsk, Russia”. www.singersewinginfo.co.uk/podolsk/ (accessed 12 January 2019). Soboleva, Olga and Angus Wrenn. The Only Hope of the World: George Bernard Shaw and Russia. New York: Peter Lang. 2012. Townshend, Charles. Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion. London: Allan Lane, 2005. Yeates, Padraig. Lockout Dublin 1913. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2000.

Epilogue

As this study began with Yeats’ haunting sewing machine dream of Shaw from The Trembling of the Veil, we end with Yeats’ rejection of O’Casey’s The Silver Tassie. Throughout, we followed Shaw’s and O’Casey’s socialist movements in the second and third decades of twentieth-century Ireland, culminating with their work of the 1920s that addressed poverty whether in Ireland or elsewhere. Along these parallel tracks of Shaw and O’Casey, was the lingering presence of James Connolly, to be found in their master works: Saint Joan, The Plough and the Stars , The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and The Silver Tassie. Whether or not Connolly was the socialist martyr Lynd had argued, his efforts unleashed a fearful cost, including his life. In the decidedly non-socialistic 1940s Ireland, O’Casey was drawn to respond to a review in Irish Democrat of his Drums Under the Windows, in which the reviewer, E. M. Boyle, argued that Connolly was “the outstanding figure of the Labour Movement”. O’Casey’s reply appeared in February 1946, “That Connolly was, relatively, a great man, there is no doubt”, he wrote, but added that Larkin had the greater magnetism (O’Casey Letters, II , 346). William O’Brien, as he had during the 1926 production of The Plough and the Stars , remained silent. O’Casey’s letter prompted three replies, by Boyle, Barry O’Meara, and Paddy Clancy. O’Casey’s response to the three was then published in April 1946: “Paddy Clancy says ‘Connolly proved himself a scientific socialist’ by mixing the © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4

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struggle for national liberation with the struggle of the working-class. He is right, of course, but what my friends fail to see is that I resented Connolly doing this because I knew when he separated himself from the Labour Movement per se, the power would pass to the hands of a clique who cared, not for their class, but for themselves alone. I felt then that while Connolly stayed there, this could never happen, and, as it fell out, I happened to be right” (O’Casey Letters, II , 359). The “clique” was O’Brien and his allies who had wrestled for control of the ITGWU after Connolly’s execution. Interestingly, in this 1946 press correspondence O’Casey distanced Connolly from O’Brien’s post-1916 “clique”. Of course, O’Casey was probably correct in believing that O’Brien and his allies would not have controlled the ITGWU had Connolly lived, and the union likely would have maintained its radical direction of 1911–1916, or at least it would have taken longer to wane. That same year, 1946, in July on the occasion of his 90th birthday, Shaw received a gift from Patrick O’Reilly, a Dublin dustman. The gift was made on behalf of the Dublin Bernard Shaw Branch of the Irish Labour Party, that O’Reilly chaired—the party that Connolly had formed with Larkin and O’Brien in 1912 (Laurence, “Notes,” Shaw Letters, IV , 772; Irish Labour Party). Perhaps Shaw appreciated the party’s founding, maybe his last tie to the Dublin socialists of 1913, prior to O’Casey. As for Connolly, his martyrdom as a socialist was occasionally recognized in the decades after the 1920s. In 1968, Abbey Theatre actors presented a reading of Under Which Flag ? in the 1960s Liberty Hall, and the 1975 The Non-Stop Connolly Show written by Margaretta D’Arcy and John Arden was produced, attempting to “install Connolly as a workingclass hero” (Kosok, 66). In the late 1990s, a Connolly statue was erected across from Liberty Hall with his defining words, “The cause of Ireland is the cause of labour; the cause of labour is the cause of Ireland”. Further recognition has come more recently, particularly from President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins. During Ireland’s decade of centenaries, Higgins and partner Sabina Higgins—who participates in an annual staged reading of Under Which Flag ?—have repeatedly referred to Connolly’s commitment to an inclusive and just Ireland for all. Tellingly, they installed a Plough and the Stars sculpture on the grounds of Áras an Uachtaráin [the House of the President] that acknowledges Connolly, Larkin, O’Casey, his play, and the Irish Citizen Army—which also must include Shaw given his call to arm workers in 1913. One hundred years after his death, a performance of a “James Connolly” monologue by Hugo Hamilton was presented

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within Signatories, a work of eight monologues written by eight writers, one for each of the seven 1916 leaders who signed the Easter Proclamation, and one for Elizabeth O’Farrell, the nurse who carried the surrender flag to the British forces.1 The Connolly monologue focuses on his legacy as told through an Irish immigrant in Birmingham, England, recalling how she and her sisters—when they ranged in ages from two to five— were rescued from abduction by their Dublin babysitter, Angela. Angela frequently spoke of Connolly’s convictions: Angela said there was something that bothered him. Apart from inequality. Apart from capitalism and inequality and injustice, and God was never much of a socialist, and the ordinary people of Ireland never getting their fair share of things, and women still being the slaves of slaves. (36)

The monologue ends by recalling more of Angela, who after rescuing the children, sang “her song for James Connolly” so they would forget their ordeal (40). The song is John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” (1970), with the refrain “A working class hero is something to be”, ending with “If you want to be a hero then just follow me” (quoted in Hamilton, 40). Of course, Lennon was familiar with Connolly’s The Re-Conquest of Ireland, and its argument that, “The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave” (292), which was shared in Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and O’Casey had dramatized through Nora Clitheroe and Mrs Foran. Given recent gender developments as the signs of a new revolution, the statement remains relevant in what is still a capitalist world, This study has argued that the former Singer factory worker Connolly, who chose to believe that the pre-1914 international socialist calls for revolutionizing the world—in the spite of the Great War—remained significant, had, through his theoretical work and death, a presence in the 1920s master works of Shaw and O’Casey (“Continental”, 240–242). Additionally, the study has suggested that Yeats’ sewing machine dream was misguided given Shaw’s ideological endeavors over decades, which included an affinity for Connolly and Connolly’s reciprocated interest. Rather than being a production line sewing machine, Shaw was at key moments aligned with a fellow Irish socialist who had experienced the

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machine’s production line, and worked to undermine the destitution caused by its sweated labour—and who, along the way, inspired O’Casey, who always strove for workers and the class they represented. Still, Peter Keegan’s prophecy remains elusive.

Note 1. Signatories was performed in Kilmainham Goal, where the 1916 leaders were executed.

Index

A Abbey Theatre, 5, 6, 19, 37–39, 42, 43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 52, 53, 63, 83, 94, 113, 134, 137, 141, 143, 148, 151, 182, 189, 195, 200, 215, 220, 222, 225, 226, 247, 263, 265, 276 Aloysius, Fr., 180 Arbour Hill, 172 Ashe, Thomas, 80–82, 99, 121 Ashley, Anthony Evelyn, 51, 94 Asquith, Herbert, 6, 67, 71, 97, 118, 167, 168, 173–177, 185, 221 Auxiliary(ies), 121, 122, 124, 134–136, 232, 270 B Barrett, Kathleen, 95, 226, 227 Birmingham, George (Reverend Hannay), 51 Black and Tans, 121, 122, 124, 137 Bochkareva, Maria, 152, 153, 155, 182

Bolsheviks, 81–83, 85, 86, 88, 99, 108, 112, 116, 120, 131–133, 175, 182, 236, 237 Bourke, P.J. play For the Land She Loved, 61 C Casement, Roger, 53, 95, 97, 99, 147, 160, 167, 180, 181, 183 Cavell, Edith, 96, 167, 168, 183 Ceannt, Eamonn, 46, 65, 125 Childers, Erskine, 131, 132, 143 Cholmondeley, Mary, 232 Civil War, 5, 83, 84, 86, 99, 100, 131–135, 137, 139, 141, 143, 147, 154, 155, 183, 190, 191, 219, 262 Clarke, Kathleen, 88, 134, 217, 218 Clarke, Thomas, 65, 97 Colgan, Patrick, 128, 140 Collins, Michael, 94, 110, 122, 130, 131, 133, 143, 150, 166

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 N. O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly, Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74274-4

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INDEX

Colum, Padraic, 77 Connolly, James articles “A Continental Revolution”, 31, 107 “The Citizen Army”, 26, 52, 101, 109, 174, 196, 202, 217, 227 “Honours Rossa”, 41 “The Irish Flag”, 64, 111, 123, 197 “Isolation”, 28 “Our Duty in the Crisis”, 31, 33, 76 “The Ties That Bind”, 271 books Axe to the Root , 16, 127 Labour in Ireland, 5, 8, 73, 75, 89, 91, 92, 131, 157, 180, 185, 192, 198, 231, 236, 238, 267 Labour in Irish History, 5, 20, 21, 29, 37, 39, 40, 49, 64, 73, 74, 86, 91, 98, 101, 193, 236, 238, 239 The Re-Conquest of Ireland, 3, 5, 7, 8, 40, 73, 74, 91, 98, 198, 231, 236, 239, 245, 267, 277 Socialism Made Easy, 21 plays The Agitator’s Wife, 1, 4, 60, 94, 244, 271 Under Which Flag?, 4, 47, 59–63, 67, 94, 95, 132, 139, 141, 193, 194, 199, 200, 215, 218, 219, 225, 227, 240, 260, 276 Connolly, Lillie, 72, 97, 98, 134, 183, 219, 226 Connolly, Roderic, 72, 86, 97, 182, 197, 222, 271

Connolly, Sean, 7, 37, 42, 45, 46, 63, 71, 95, 143, 173, 215, 220, 225, 226 Constable, 18, 27, 60, 99, 141, 153, 232, 248 Cumann na mBan, 33, 125 D Daily Chronicle, 118 Daily Herald, 24, 50, 98, 132, 214 Daily Mirror, 83 Daly, P.T., 35, 36, 72, 87, 88, 92, 127, 128, 133, 136, 137, 142, 218 Denshawai, 163 De Valera, Eamon, 94, 131–133, 166, 174, 262 Dublin Castle, 45, 64, 69–72, 97, 122, 173, 175, 176, 180, 185, 198, 220, 224, 225, 272 Dublin Lockout, 1913, 16, 21, 240 Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP), 23, 25–27, 50, 60, 64, 66, 67, 71, 174, 184, 205, 248 Dublin Repertory Theatre (DRT), 38, 49, 51, 52, 225 Dublin Saturday Post , 81 Dublin United Tramways Company, 21, 22, 30, 51 E Easter Rising, 2, 4, 6, 7, 76, 95, 107, 120, 167, 172, 180, 183, 246 Emmet, Robert, 20, 92, 101, 136, 143, 193 Engels, Frederick, 37, 64, 76, 197 Ervine, St. John, 38, 52, 224 play Mixed Marriage, 38, 52, 224 Evening Herald, 135 Evening Telegraph, 87, 88

INDEX

F Fabian Society, 1, 83, 96, 157 Farquahar, George, 46 play The Recruiting Officer, 46, 53 Field General Court Martial (FGCM), 6, 71, 97, 168, 173, 177, 183, 184 First Dail, 91, 109–111, 123–126, 129 Foran, Thomas, 35, 72, 73, 87, 88, 92, 110, 111, 127, 128, 130, 133, 136, 191, 192, 222 Forward, 31, 107 Freeman’s Journal , 42, 44, 240 Free State, 3, 131, 132, 137–139, 141, 143, 154, 155, 190, 220–222, 262 G The Gael , 60 George, David Lloyd, 71, 80, 121, 167 George V, 60, 175 Gifford, Nellie, 34, 51, 125 Ginnell, Lawrence, 69 Glasnevin Cemetery, 41, 184, 204 Goldman, Emma, 77, 99 Gonne, Maud, 49, 128, 129 Gore-Booth, Eva, 34, 125, 207 Gorky, Maxim, 78, 79 Great Northern Railway (GNR), 4, 16, 17, 247 The Great War (World War I), 7–9, 31, 33, 36, 39, 60, 64, 69, 72, 75, 81, 82, 85, 88, 94, 96, 99, 109, 113, 116, 118–122, 149, 150, 152, 159, 168, 176, 177, 182, 184, 191, 199–203, 208, 217, 221, 226, 231, 233, 247, 250–252, 254, 256, 262, 264, 267, 268, 270, 272, 277

281

Gregory, Lady Augusta, 14, 19, 22, 45, 48, 49, 80, 96, 101, 115, 121–123, 142, 143, 151, 164, 192, 232, 247, 264, 265, 268 Grey, Sir Edward, 71, 118 Griffith, Arthur, 94, 101, 130, 131, 143, 227 H Hackett, Rose (Rosie), 50, 71, 159, 165, 225 Hamilton, Hugo, 276, 277 Harris, Frank, 78 Higgins, Michael D. (President of Ireland), 109, 110, 276 Holloway, Joseph, 52, 101, 189, 200 Holmes-Gore, Dorothy, 151, 152, 189 I Ibsen, Henrik, 197, 224 play A Doll’s House, 197 Illustrated London News , 68 Independent Labour Party (ILP), 1 The Labour Prophet , 1, 60 Irish Catholic, 21 Irish Citizen Army (ICA), 4, 6–8, 26–31, 33–37, 39, 41, 42, 45–47, 50–53, 60, 61, 63, 65, 66, 68, 71, 76, 77, 82, 87, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 101, 109, 111, 123, 125, 141, 142, 155, 159, 165, 180, 183, 192–199, 202, 204, 205, 207, 208, 210, 212, 215–221, 223–227, 232, 237, 247, 248, 268, 271, 276 Irish Democrat , 275 Irish Freedom, 30 Irish Independent , 14, 21, 22, 49, 65–67, 70, 75, 111, 215–218

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INDEX

Irish Labour Party (ILP), 110, 131, 141, 276 Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP), 65, 69, 99, 109, 201 Irish Republican Army (IRA), 110, 111, 120–122, 129, 131, 133, 134, 139, 143 Irish Socialist Republican Party (ISRP), 2, 21, 40, 73, 94, 98, 126, 128, 129, 182 Irish Times , 22, 26, 38, 48, 94, 99, 131, 151, 189, 190, 214, 223, 240 Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), 4, 5, 16–18, 20, 22–25, 28, 29, 34–39, 42, 49–54, 66, 67, 71–73, 75, 79, 82, 86–88, 92, 94, 96, 101, 107, 110, 113, 123, 125, 127–130, 133, 134, 136, 138, 140–142, 165, 180, 191–194, 199, 217–219, 222, 225, 241, 276 Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU), 35 Irish Volunteers (IV), 29, 30, 41, 42, 46, 64–66, 68, 81, 159, 202, 204, 205, 218, 219 Irish War News , 70, 73, 98, 164 Irish Women’s Workers Union (IWWU), 7, 34, 42, 50, 225 The Irish Worker, 17–19, 21, 22, 27–29, 31, 35, 37, 40, 50, 95, 123, 130, 183, 247 Irish Workers’ Dramatic Company (IWDC), 7, 18, 19, 42, 46, 47, 54, 195, 215 J Johnson, Thomas, 131, 141 Joyce, James, 99, 100 books

Ulysses , 113, 141, 216 K Kerensky, Alexander, 81, 82 Kettle, T.M., 75, 99 Kiberd, Declan, 12, 147, 220 Kyllmann, Otto, 232, 233 L Lalor, James Fintan, 20, 29, 31, 36, 37, 50, 63, 64, 73, 74, 81, 82, 92, 109, 123, 130 works Rights of Ireland and Faith of a Felon, 50 Lane, Hugh, 14, 22, 48, 49, 94, 101, 252 Larkin, Delia, 19, 42, 128, 140, 142 Larkin, James, 4, 5, 16, 18, 36, 74, 87, 90, 108, 129, 191, 241 Ledwidge, Francis, 252 Lenin, Vladimir, 5, 32, 47, 76–79, 81, 82, 86, 93, 100, 107, 153, 181, 197, 236, 246, 271 Lennon, John, 277 songs “Woman is the Nigger of the World”, 246 “Working Class Hero”, 277 Leonard, Fr. Joseph, 149, 150, 181 Liberty Hall, 18, 19, 22, 24, 26, 27, 34, 37, 40, 42, 45–47, 50–53, 59, 60, 63–67, 71–73, 95, 96, 133, 141, 165, 182, 194, 197, 198, 206, 214, 220, 224, 225, 227, 231, 237, 276 Litvinov, Maxim, 86 Lowe, General William, 120, 121, 184 Lynd, Robert, 3, 69, 70, 72–75, 91, 93, 97–99, 107, 142, 164, 173, 177, 179, 180, 192, 221, 275

INDEX

Introduction to James Connolly’s Labour in Ireland, 5, 8, 73, 75, 89, 91, 92, 131, 157, 180, 185, 192, 198, 231, 236, 238, 267 journalism “If the Germans Conquered England”, 70, 98, 164 M MacCurtain, Tomas, 121 Mac Diarmada (McDermott), Sean, 65, 87, 184 Macdona, Charles, 152, 181 Charles Macdona Players, 151, 181, 189 MacDonald, Ramsay, 232, 234 MacLean, John, 107, 108 MacNeill, Eoin, 64, 65, 95 MacSwiney, Terence, 121, 142 play The Holocaust , 142 Mallin, Michael, 54, 63, 68 Markievicz, Casmir, 34, 49, 51, 52, 125 Markievicz, Constance, 8, 33–35, 37, 41, 51, 64, 68, 100, 109, 125, 142, 155, 183, 196, 207, 218, 267 Marx, Karl, 36, 37, 64, 76, 77, 197, 245, 246 Massingham, H.W., 69, 121, 205 Maunsel, 39, 49, 73, 75, 89, 91, 98–100 Maxwell, General John, 6, 71, 80, 90, 168, 172–177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 256, 257, 271 McDonald, Flora, 51 McNulty, Edward Matthew, 37 play The Lord Mayor, 37 Moloney, Helena, 47

283

Moore, George, 100, 152 Novella Albert Nobbs , 152 Murphy, William Martin, 14, 16, 21–23, 30, 34, 48–51, 65, 66, 70, 74, 75, 111, 192, 215, 219 N Nathan, Sir Matthew, 43, 44, 52, 59, 97 The Nation, 69, 121, 205 The New Statesman, 7, 40, 69, 70 New York Theatre Guild, 151, 182 Nicholas II (Romanov), Tsar, 15, 25, 77–79, 83–86, 100, 118, 120, 142, 152, 175 Norgrove, George, 142 O O’Brien, Nora Connolly, 1, 5, 60, 72, 98, 99, 111, 175 O’Brien, William, 5 O’Carroll, Richard, 67, 226 O’Casey, Sean (O’Cathasaigh, Sean) books Drums Under the Window, 17, 20, 23, 27, 34, 52, 224, 275 The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, 5, 27, 50, 91–93, 258 plays Juno and the Paycock, 5, 37, 137, 140, 147, 190, 194, 221, 222, 247, 251 Kathleen Listens In, 143 The Harvest Festival , 112 The Plough and the Stars , 2, 6, 7, 38, 46, 47, 51, 92, 141, 151, 180, 182, 191–194, 196, 197, 201, 205, 210,

284

INDEX

213, 218, 226, 227, 232, 247, 262, 265, 267, 275 The Shadow of the Gunman, 5, 147, 190 The Silver Tassie, 2, 7, 8, 41, 231, 246–249, 251, 254–256, 260–265, 267–271, 275 songs “The Bonnie Bunch of Rosses O”, 86 “The Grand Oul’ Dame Britannia”, 46, 53 “Voices from Dead Connolly”, 86 O’Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah, 41, 204, 205 O’Farrell, Elizabeth, 277 Oman, William, 63 O’Neill, Eugene, 209, 224, 254 plays The Emperor Jones , 260, 271, 272 The Hairy Ape, 255 Ono, Yoko, 246 O’Reilly, Mary Boyle, 51 O’Reilly, Patrick, 276 O’Shannon, Cathal, 86–88, 92, 126, 127, 130, 192, 196, 217–219 P Pankhurst, Emmeline, 99, 152, 153, 182 Parsons, Alfred, 72 Partridge, William, 87, 142 Pearse, Padraic, 29, 30, 46, 47, 51, 64, 65, 97, 98, 129, 134, 168, 176, 182, 184, 197, 201–206, 212, 213, 217, 219, 220, 225, 254, 267 poem “The Rebel”, 47

Plebs , 193 The Plough and the Stars (flag), 47, 218, 237 Plunkett, Horace, 5, 43, 74, 80, 122, 131, 154, 177, 182, 239, 270 Plunkett, Joseph, 46, 65, 97, 184 R Redmond-Howard, L.G., 3 Redmond, John, 65, 201 Roberts, George, 49, 91, 100 Roche, Anthony, 11, 12, 248, 249, 251 Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), 110, 120–122, 142, 184, 270 Russell, George (AE), 5, 22, 24, 25, 41, 72, 90, 101, 177, 182, 240, 265 Russia, 5, 13–15, 21, 31–33, 47, 77–79, 81–86, 88, 95, 99, 108, 115, 116, 118, 120, 131–133, 141, 152, 153, 159, 175, 182, 191, 231, 232, 236, 237 Ryan, Frederick, 2, 52, 94, 239 S Shakespeare, William, 216, 264 Play Henry VI, Part I , 150, 180, 181, 221 Shaw, Charlotte, 49, 85, 96, 111, 131, 147, 149, 154, 214, 232 Shaw, George Bernard books Common Sense About the War, 33, 40, 43, 51, 80, 93, 98, 116, 118, 142, 150, 158, 175, 267 The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, 2, 7, 9, 40,

INDEX

107, 180, 231, 232, 245, 247, 269, 275, 277 The Quintessence of Ibsenism, 2, 60, 135 War Issues for Irishmen, 5, 49, 53, 59, 89, 91, 92, 100, 116, 157, 240, 267 journalism “Easter Week Executions”, 69, 70, 80, 97, 168, 173 “The Eve of Civil War”, 131 “The Last Spring of the Old Lion”, 40, 70 “Neglected Morals of the Irish Rising”, 69, 176, 232 lectures/speeches “The Crime of Poverty”, 157 “Mad Dogs in Uniform”, 25, 90, 185, 238 “The Poor Law and Irish Destitution”, 14, 124 “University Socialism”, 13, 48 plays Androcles and the Lion, 113, 222 Annajanska, 5, 83, 85, 86 Arms and the Man, 4, 11, 12, 27, 50, 61, 93, 128, 192, 216, 222, 271 Back to Methuselah, 5, 113, 114, 120, 141, 151, 266 Candida, 271 The Devil’s Disciple, 51, 60, 94 Getting Married, 235 Heartbreak House, 111, 112, 151, 266 John Bull’s Other Island, 2–4, 11, 14, 17, 27, 40, 45, 48, 49, 51, 61, 94, 124, 139, 149, 151, 183, 204, 211, 222, 224, 265, 270

285

Man and Superman, 48, 189, 222 O’Flaherty, V. C., 4, 7, 8, 43–47, 53, 59, 61–63, 83, 100, 148, 149, 184, 190, 194, 195, 199, 200, 202, 218, 240, 248–251, 254, 258, 266 Saint Joan, 2, 6–8, 85, 141, 147–151, 153–156, 158, 165, 168, 173, 177–181, 189–192, 202, 216, 220, 221, 265, 266, 270, 275 The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet , 2, 11, 48, 50, 148, 181, 200, 222 The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, 5, 113–116, 120, 140, 201, 260 the Bolshevik Empress , 5, 83–86 stories “The Miraculous Revenge”, 91 Sheehy-Skeffington, Francis, 42, 63, 64, 67, 77, 98, 99, 214, 239 Sheehy-Skeffington, Hanna, 42, 180, 214, 215, 237 Singer Sewing Machine Company, 12, 33, 128, 177 Sinn Fein, 68, 69, 80, 82, 87, 96, 101, 109, 110, 112, 126, 142, 215, 262 Skinnider, Margaret, 159, 183, 212 Starkie,Walter, 263, 265 St. Petersburgh/Petrograd, 23 St. Vincent’s Hospital, 41, 71, 255, 264 Synge, John Millington plays In the Shadow of the Glen, 43, 101, 148, 184, 224 Riders to the Sea, 137, 143

286

INDEX

The Playboy of the Western World, 2, 43, 101, 123, 141, 148, 205 T The Worker, 40, 70 The Workers’ Republic, 40, 53, 59, 183, 217 Thorndike, Sybil, 151 Tobin, Richard, 5, 6, 71, 72, 97, 176, 177, 180, 182, 185, 219, 255, 271 Trafalgar Square, 25, 26, 50, 201 V Vane, Sir Francis, 67, 96 Voice of Labour, 123, 129, 130, 194, 217 W War of Independence, 110, 134, 139, 183, 270 Webb, Beatrice, 13, 14, 33, 48, 117 Webb, Sidney, 13, 117, 238, 239 White, Jack, 26, 27, 92, 221

Wilson, A. Patrick, 19–21, 37, 39, 42, 113, 199 plays The Slough, 37–39, 52, 113, 143, 194, 199 Victims , 19 Wolfe Tone, Theobald, 31, 92, 101 Women’s and Children’s Relief Fund, 24 Women’s Death Battalion, 152, 155, 159, 182 Wylie, William, 173, 184

Y Yeats, William Butler Autobiographies (Trembling of the Veil), 94, 128, 129, 140 plays Kathleen Ni Houlihan, 14, 101, 137, 143, 148, 215 The Land of Heart’s Desire, 4, 11, 128 poems “The Second Coming”, 113, 114, 116, 260 “September 1913”, 48, 49