Sean O’Casey’s mastery of stage-craft is particularly well demonstrated in The Plough and the Stars, and not least in its unobstrusive artistry. There is a seemingly haphazard arrangement of scenes and an arbitrary choice of details within the four-act structure. The narrative has the casual formlessness of life. People come and go in the public house in Act II; leave and then return to the tenement block in Act III. One influential early critic complained that the play’s form was “embodied in a jumbled memory of rather confused events”. (J. W. Krutch, The Nation, CXXV, 21 Dec. 1927, p.718.) Exactly; such an impression was deliberately sought by O’Casey, though he also intended - and, I think, successfully realised - a definite moral pattern, a coherent attitude to emerge from the chaos. The clash of personalities and of ideas, the reversal of values, the balance and juxtaposition of dialogue and scenes: all are carefully orchestrated into a symphony in four movements. [...] (p.73.)
[...]
[After quoting Krutch at some length - as infra:] The play, in other words, fails on even a documentary level. This strange criticism deserves refutation in some detail, for any detailed analysis on these lines demonstrates the brilliance of the work on the primary level of narrative, of stage presentation of historical events. We tend to take for granted the way O’Casey entertainingly yet purposefully manipulates well-known national events - putting them at one time in the foreground and at another in the background of the drama - and dovetails them into his own fictional narrative, the story of the Clitheroe household and their tenement neighbours. [74]
Mrs. Gogan: Oh, here’s th’ Covey an’ oul’ Pether hurryin’ along. God Almighty, sthrange things is happenin’ when them two is pullin’ together ... . (to the two men) Were yous far up th’ town? ... . How is things lookin’? I hear they’re blazin’ away out o’ th’ G.P.O. That th’ Tommies is sthretched in heaps around Nelson’s Pillar an’ th’ Parnell Statue, an’ that th’ pavin’ sets in O’Connell Street is nearly covered be pools o’blood ... .
The Covey: ... You can’t stick your nose into O’Connell Street, an’ Tyler’s is on fire.
Peter: An’ we seen th’ Lancers -
Covey: (interrupting) Throttin’ along, heads in th’ air; spurs an’ sabres jinglin’, an’ lances quiverin’, an’ lookin’ as if they were assin’ themselves, “Where’s these blighters, till we get a prod at them,” when there was a volley from th’ Post Office that sthretched half o’ them, an’ sent th’ rest gallopin’ away wonderin’ how far they’d have to go before they’d feel safe.
Peter: (rubbing his hands): “Damn it,” says I to meself, “this looks like business.”
Covey: An’ then out comes General Pearse an’ his staff, an’, standin’ in th’ middle o’ th’ street, he reads th’ Proclamation.
Mrs. Gogan: What proclamation?
Peter: Declarin’ an Irish Republic.
Mrs. Gogan: Go to God!
Peter: The gunboat Helga’s shellin’ Liberty Hall, an’ I hear th’ people livin’ on the quays had to crawl on their bellies to Mass with th’ bullets that were flyin’ around from Boland’s Mills.
Mrs. Gogan: God bless us, what’s goin’ to be th’ end of it all! [CP, 1949, pp.216-18.]
The terrifying encroachment of violent, impersonal forces upon the everyday lives [83] and loves of the tenement-dwellers is a theme sustained throughout the play, imposing a coherent pattern upon the four acts, and building up the action to a climax that is appallingly realistic and yet symbolic at the same time. (pp.83-84.)
[...]
The curtain scene, like that of Juno and the Paycock, contains distinctly symbolic overtones, embodying in concrete terms an experience of universal tragic significance: the all-pervasive power of the lifedenying forces in society and the triumph of anarchy and irrationality. Mollser asks early in the drama, “Is there any [84] body goin’, Mrs. Clitheroe, with a titther o’ sense?”; the play’s finale leaves no doubt of the answer. Those few who did show signs of trying to stem the advance of madness are now dead or insane themselves. Moreover, the effect of the final scene is not limited to criticism of the brutality of the British troops, who are only a part, albeit a powerful and official part, of a social system that inevitably promotes waste and devastation and incites blind anarchy and rebellion by way of reaction. O’Casey’s criticism extends to the destructive elements that accompany poverty and disease - symbolised in the coffin of Mollser that is removed from the stage very shortly before the end of the play - and to the nihilism that has been seen to influence the idealistic motives of the revolutionaries: the Platform Orator of Act II, for instance, on the evidence of his speeches might be content with the extent of the destruction by the end of the drama, for it certainly fulfills his demands for blood-sacrifice on a large scale. Yet the final effect is not confined to satire alone: indeed, the more closely one studies the play the more one appreciates the complexity of the emotional and intellectual responses that are invoked throughout its four acts. Here, from an analysis of stagecraft and documentary features, one may stress once again the range of vision and the depth of human feeling which make it such a powerful play and a fitting climax to the first important phase of O’Casey’s drama. (pp.84-85; end.]
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