Cock-A-Doodle Dandy

by Seán O'Casey

Bound in publisher's original cloth with the spine stamped in gilt.

Genres: Plays, Fiction

117 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Sean O'Casey was born in 1880 and lived through a bitterly hard boyhood in a Dublin tenement house. He never went to school but received most of his education in the streets of Dublin, and taught himself to read at the age of fourteen. He was successively a newspaper-seller, docker, stone-breaker, railway-worker and builders' labourer. In 1913 he helped to organise the Irish Citizen Army which fought in the streets of Dublin, and at the same time he was learning his dramatic technique by reading Shakespeare and watching the plays of Dion Boucicault. His early works were performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and Lady Gregory made him welcome at Coole, but disagreement followed and after visiting America in the late thirties O'Casey settled in Devonshire. He lived there until his death in 1964, though still drawing the themes of many of his plays from the life he knew so well on the banks of the Liffey. Out of the ceaseless dramatic experimenting in his plays O'Casey created a flamboyance and versatility that sustain the impression of bigness of mind that is inseparable from his tragi-comic vision of life.

He was a major Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

Reviews

[Valentina Κιαγ. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dont speak nor read irish.

[Edward Cheer · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an Irish descendant, I was surprised that I had never been introduced to Sean O'Casey, but that I had to discover his plays myself. The title of "Cock-a-Doodle Dandy" made me curious enough to read O'Casey's work, and I was pleasantly satisfied.

O'Casey writes a Tartuffe-esque poke at extreme religion and how it can be harmful in unhealthy doses, such as Michael and Sailor Mahan take too the thought of birds being demonic far too seriously. However, while the idea itself is both clever and witty, I didn't laugh a lot of times at the comedy. Some of it hit well (such as when Mahan sits on the chair, it breaks, and Michael responds with "Don't notice it! Act as if nothing happened!"), but the majority of the play felt like it was going for comedy, or maybe it wasn't and I misinterpreted the play. But at least it's guaranteed a second read from me in the future.

[Angela Randall]

We actually own this as an omnibus: 0140480544