Abstract
Seán O’Casey’s play The Plough and the Stars presents audiences with a view of life in Dublin’s poverty-stricken tenements during the 1916 Easter Rising. Critical consensus holds that it is a play primarily concerned with the Easter Rising set against a backdrop of tenement life. This paper argues instead that this is a play about tuberculosis in Ireland set against the backdrop of the 1916 Easter Rising. The characters in the play place far more importance on tuberculosis and their impoverished state than on politics or even the violence erupting in the streets. The fears and concerns regarding this infectious disease and its impact on poor communities appear in contrast to the characters’ annoyance and dismissal of the political events leading up to and including the Rising.
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This article would not have been possible without the generous support of the patient and helpful Librarians in the Beeghly Library and the National Library of Ireland Manuscripts Reading Room.
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The Heidelberg University Aigler Research Grant, the Office of the Provost Research Travel Grant, and the Heidelberg University English Department.
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Endnotes
1The entirety of Act II is a revision of an earlier one-act play called The Cooing of Doves that O’Casey wrote prior to Ireland’s first independent national election in 1923. The Abbey Theatre rejected the play, so O’Casey adapted this scene set in a pub to the historical and political situation of Plough (Murray 2007, 327–334). This play is described in more detail below.
2The total number of deaths from HIV/AIDS in 2021 was 650,000 (WHO 2022). The total deaths from malaria for 2020 was 627,000, was used (WHO 2021).
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Devine, B. A Subject of Deepest Dread: Seán O’Casey, The Easter Rising, and Tuberculosis. J Med Humanit 44, 61–71 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-022-09765-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-022-09765-y