THE FIRST thing I try to do is to make a play live: live as a part of life, and live in its own right as a work of drama. Every character, every life, however minor, to have something to say, comic or serious, and to say it well. Not an easy thing to do. These are the commonest things around us. We see them everywhere we go; see what they do, hear what they say; often laugh, sometimes wonder. But there are other parts, phases of life, and these, to my mind, should be prominent in the play.
Above all, there is the imagination of man and that of the playwright; the comic, the serious, and the poetical imagination; and, to my mind, these too should flash from any play worthy of an appearance on the stage; the comic imagination as in The Frogs: the sad imagination as in A Dream Play. Blake thought imagination to be the soul; Shaw thought it to be the Holy Ghost, and perhaps they weren’t far out; for it is the most beautiful part of life whether it be on its knees in prayer or gallivanting about with a girl.
To me what is called naturalism, or even realism, isn’t enough. They usually show life at its meanest and commonest, as if life never had time for a dance, a laugh, or a song. I always thought that life had a lot of time for these things, for each was a part of life itself; and so I broke away from realism into the chant of the second act of the The Silver Tassie. But one scene in as a chant or a work of musical action and dialogue was not enough, so I set about trying to do this in an entire play, and brought forth Cock-a-Doodle-Dandy. It is my favorite play; I think it is my best play—a personal opinion; the minds of others, linked with time, must decide whether I’m wrong or right.
The play is symbolical in more ways than one. The action manifests itself in Ireland, the mouths that speak are Irish mouths; but the spirit is to be found in action everywhere: the fight made by many to drive the joy of life from the hearts of men; the fight against this fight to vindicate the right of the joy of life to live courageously in the hearts of men. It isn’t the clergy alone who boo and bluster against this joy of life in living, in dance, song, and story (many clerics, even bishops, are fair, broad-minded, and help the arts; like the Catholic Bishop of Ferns and Leighlin, who is the worthy patron of the Wexford Opera Festival); who interfere in the free flow of thought from man to man. Playwrights and poets have had, are having, a share in squeezing the mind of man into visions of woe and lamentations. Not only is there none who doeth good; no, not one, with them; but also they seem determined to deny the right of man to a laugh. They labor hard to get us all down.
Joyce said that “God may be a cry in the street,” and O’Casey says now that He may be a laugh or a song in the street, too. Political fellas, too, in the United States, in the Soviet Union, in England and especially, in Ireland—everywhere in fact—political fellas run out and shout down any new effort made to give a more modern slant or a newer sign to any kind of artistic thought or imagination; menacing any unfamiliar thing appearing in picture, song, poem, or play. They are fools, but they are menacing fools, and should be fought everywhere they shake a fist, be they priest, peasant, prime minister, or proletarian. To discuss and argue about these things is fine and, if the discussion be sincere, can but lead to a wider knowledge of all things; but when hateful ignorance rushes out and tries to down the artist with a bawl, it is high time to cry a halt!
The Cock, of course, is the joyful, active spirit of life as it weaves a way through the Irish scene (for, like Joyce, it is only through an Irish scene that my imagination can weave a way, within the Irish shadows or out in the Irish sunshine, if it is to have a full, or at least a fair, chance to play).
In spite of the fanciful nature of the play, almost all the incidents are factual—the priest that struck the blow; the rough fellows manhandling the young, gay girl; the bitter opposition to any sign of the strange ways of a man with a maid; the old, menacing fool, full of false piety, going round inflicting fear of evil things on all who listen to him; and, above all, through the piety, through the fear, the never-ending quest for money. In spite, too, of the fantasy and the fear, there is courage, reason, and laughter in the play, and I hope that with its shape and form, and all that is within them, those who see it may have a gay and a thoughtful time.
So, to end this explanation, I leave the play in the hands of actors, director, designer, and in yours, dear playgoers, turning my last words into a question from the poet Yeats:
Lift up the head
And clap the wings,
Red Cock, and crow!
1 Sean O’Casey: “O’Casey’s Credo,” the New York Times, November 9, 1958, Drama Section. Reprinted by permission of the author.