from Part I - Key Places and Events
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2025
O’Casey was a great writer of war, and he wrote a great deal during the Second World War when he lived in England, although much of this work has failed to find a place in the theatrical repertoire. This chapter focuses on the two wartime plays set during the war: the comic Purple Dust (1940), about two Englishmen moving to Ireland to escape the conflict; and the tragic Oak Leaves and Lavender (1946), set during the Battle of Britain. This chapter shows how the geopolitics of the Second World War, combined with O’Casey’s complex political affiliations and a heightened anxiety about Irish masculinity, placed O’Casey in a position from which he found it difficult to speak.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.