Jürgen Kamm
Sive; Sharon’s Grave;Many Young Men of Twenty; The Field; The Rain at the End of the Summer; Big Maggie; Moll; The Change in Mame Fadden; The Crazy Wall; Values; The Chastitute
Introduction
John Brendan Keane was born in Listowel, County Kerry, on 21 July 1928. After his training as a chemist’s assistant he took on several jobs as a labourer in England – an experience reflected in some of his later plays – and returned in 1955 to his native Listowel, where he opened up a public house which he ran until his death on 30 May 2002.Much of the raw material for his writing was delivered by his customers, and Keane listened carefully to the stories exchanged in his bar over pints of porter, usually taking notes and making sketches after closing time. In his early autobiography, Self-Portrait (1964), Keane writes about his way of working:
After two years in the pub I started to write again. I would begin at twelve o’clock at night when all the customers had departed. I’d fill a pint and draw the table near to the fire. I started with short stories and poems and I would write till three or four o’clock in the morning, writing a thousand words an hour and drinking a pint every hour, maybe boiling three or four hardboiled eggs if the hunger was prodding me..
This immediacy of writing lends his entire work an astounding degree of authenticity, especially since it is paired with a shrewd sense of observation and the courage to address even unpalatable subjects. Keane himself firmly believed that all a writer needs is ‘heart, guts, courage, and never to be ashamed of himself or of his own people’. Keane demonstrated his audacity in different literary genres, notably in poems, satiric essays and in his much-acclaimed novels The Bodhrán Makers (1986) and Durango (1992), but he is certainly best remembered for his dramatic writings in which he openly addressed a number of pressing social problems such as rural poverty, emigration, gender issues and the concerns of women, the attachment to land, human relationships and the loss of love. Such topics were stimulated by the comprehensive changes that have put their stamp on Ireland and its society since the late 1950s. Keane addressed these various concerns in ‘plays set in rural Ireland, but an Ireland torn apart by new psychological growing pains’.1
Keane’s talents as a writer were widely recognised during his lifetime. He received a Doctorate of Honours from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1977 and a Doctorate of Fine Arts from Marymount College, Manhattan, in 1984. In addition, Keane served as president of Irish PEN and was awarded the title of Honorary Life Member of the Royal Dublin Society in 1991. He was a founding member of the Society of Irish Playwrights, amember of Aosdána, the affiliation of creative artists in Ireland, and an outspoken member of the Fine Gael Party.
The Plays
Sive (1959)
Most of Keane’s plays, and arguably his best ones, are informed by the conflict between the characters’ desires, ambitions and dreams on the one hand, and their eventual frustration on the other, frequently resulting in agony and torture. These thematic preoccupations can be discerned in his debut play Sive, a domestic tragedy set in an isolated farmhouse in the Irish countryside in the late 1950s. The play centres on the eponymous Sive, a young girl aged eighteen, whose mother died when she was an infant and whose father was, so the story goes, killed in a mining accident in England. Having been born out of wedlock and being uncertain of her parentage and identity, Sive is at the mercy of her uncle Mike and her aunt Mena who have raised their niece. However, the domestic atmosphere is far from harmonious since Mena, in her early forties and as yet childless, would like to have the house to herself and would gladly be rid of Sive and her grandmother Nanna. A solution seems to suggest itself when Thomasheen, the local matchmaker, brings news that the old, but rich farmer Sean Dóta has fallen in love with Sive and offers a reward of £200 once the match is concluded. Mena is not willing to forgo this singular chance of marrying off the illegitimate girl and of finally refurbishing her own household comfortably with Sean’s money. Despite the protests of her husband and the fierce opposition of her mother-in-law, Mena pursues her stratagem with single-minded determination, and the second act opens with the preparations for the wedding. If Mike has sympathy with Sive, his mother Nanna is even more determined to protect her granddaughter, and with the help of the minstrel-tinkers Pats and Carthalawn she concocts a plan for Sive to elope with her youthful boyfriend Liam Scub, but the design is thwarted by the watchful Thomasheen who does not wish to lose his reward. As Sean appears to pay his respects to his bride, Sive’s room is found empty, and soon afterwards Liam carries the girl’s dead body on to the stage: she has drowned herself in desperation. The play closes with Anna silently weeping over the dead body of her grandchild and the tinkers mourning the death of Sive.
The tinkers are interesting characters, representing mythical lore as minstrels, poets and travellers, but also serving as chorus figures. Towards the end of the play, Pats acts as both a character from mythology and a shrewd sociologist who comments on the social changes in the country, which has come increasingly into the grasp of a ruthless materialism and where ‘Money will be a-plenty’. These social changes affect the characters in different ways. Sive is the tragic heroine who, much like Shakespeare’s Ophelia, drowns herself because she cannot solve the conflict between her own desire for emotional fulfilment and the materialistic demands of those surrounding her. The suicide of the orphaned girl, however, also destroys the hope of constructing an individual identity for the representatives of the younger generation. Moreover, the tragic conflict is partly fuelled by the characters’ resistance to honesty. ‘Thou shalt not lie’ is a commandment which is disobeyed by the representatives of both the old and the new generation. In this way, Sive may be seen as the tragic victim of two generations of Catholic liars who pursue their individual interests.
Sharon’s Grave (1960)
Materialism, gender conflicts, the quest for love and its frequent loss are topics to which Keane returns in the following plays. Sharon’s Grave is set ‘in a small farmhouse on an isolated headland on the south-western seaboard of Ireland’. In its reliance on Irish mythology the play is rather indebted to the tradition of Irish stagecraft as advocated by W. B. Yeats and as exemplified in plays such as Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902).
Sharon’s Grave opens with old Donal Conlee on his deathbed, mourned by his daughter Trassie and his mentally retarded son Neelus. Donal’s impending death opens up three interwoven plot lines. The first of these deals with the love affair between Trassie and the itinerant thatcher Peadar Minogue. The second plot line concerns the fate of Neelus, who has the reputation of being popular with the ladies and who has always been fascinated by the mythical tale of the young and beautiful princess Sharon who, as the legend has it, travelled south to meet her future husband, a handsome chieftain, for their marriage. At the centre of the third plot line are the dying Donal’s nephews, the deformed and depraved Dinzie Conlee and his submissive brother Jack. Immediately after Donal’s death Dinzie attempts to evict his cousins by threatening them with physical and psychological violence. However, his destructive force returns on Dinzie with a vengeance as Neelus, towards the end of the play, carries him off on his shoulders, drowning himself and Dinzie in a deep hole near the coast, the eponymous Sharon’s Grave – a ritual death which restores liberty to the legendary characters and, at the same time, sets Trassie and Peadar free to marry and to enjoy both property and sexuality in their own home.
Many Young Men of Twenty (1961)
The topics of emigration and exile touched upon in The Highest House on the Mountain (1961) are more thoroughly explored in the following play. Many Young Men of Twenty offers a serious criticism of Irish politics, especially with a view to the slackening economy and growing emigration, but it does so, curiously, in the format of the musical, the action being interspersed with numerous songs and recitals. The play is set in the backroom of a public house in the small town of Keelty in southern Ireland run by Seelie Hannigan and her brother Tom. Their maid Peg Finnerty struggles to earn a meagre income for herself and her child since her lover has abandoned her. At the beginning of the play the woeful sons Kevin and Dinny are shipped off by their parents to England. Before Kevin takes his leave he talks to Peg, to whom he is attracted, and he promises to write to her from England. The action in the second act takes place exactly one year later as the boys are expected to return from England for a short holiday. The young Dinny brings his newly married English wife with him, and his brother Kevin continues to court Peg, although she never answered his letters. Meanwhile Peg also receives the advances of Maurice Browne, the new teacher at the local school who is thoroughly disgusted with the way the country is run. He talks himself into a fearful rage which culminates in a sweeping criticism of Irish politics and of political corruption in the 1960s:
We’re sick to death of hypocrisy and the glories of the past. Keep the Irish Language and find jobs for the lads that have to go to England. Forget about the Six Counties and straighten out the twenty-six first.
Towards the end of the play, the majority of the characters decide to leave Ireland for England since there is simply no decent future for them in their own country. In the end, Maurice also offers Peg a future across the Irish Sea, but Peg implores him to stay in Ireland with her and work for a brighter future there. As the last curtain falls ‘Maurice Brown and Peg Finnerty embrace’ and their union radiates a faint glimmer of hope in an otherwise dark and depressing scene of emigration and exile.
The Field (1965)
If The Year of the Hiker (1963) is concerned with parental irresponsibility and the neglect of land, The Field, beyond doubt one of Keane’s most distinguished plays, offers an impressive analysis of the hunger for land and the desire for survival in a rapidly changing and industrialised Ireland. Keane’s international reputation increased significantly when the play was turned into a highly acclaimed movie in 1990, directed by Jim Sheridan and starring Richard Harris as Bull McCabe and Sean Bean as his son Tadgh. The eponymous field belongs to a local widow who would like to sell it to top up her meagre pension. Mick Flanagan, local publican and auctioneer, promises that he will strike a good bargain, but there is bound to be trouble because ‘The Bull’ McCabe has used the field for the past five years and is desperate to buy it now. Problems arise with the appearance of William Dee. Born in Ireland, he moved with his Irish wife to England, where he made a successful business career; he has arrived to make a bid for the field himself. While the Bull wants to use the field for pasture, William is keen to invest his capital in order to expand his business by building a factory producing blocks of concrete. Bull and William stand for two diametrically opposed concepts of land use, and the auction develops into a fierce struggle between the representatives of agriculture and of industry, with William eventually offering the higher bid. The Bull is not prepared to accept his defeat. With his son Tadgh he concocts the plan to give William a sound beating in order to frighten him away, while the villagers are intimidated by physical threats into providing an alibi for father and son. However, what was intended as a mild pounding ends up in murder as William dies from the injuries received at the hands of father and son McCabe. From this point on, the play develops into a whodunit with a well-informed audience watching the Bull and Tadgh cleverly shifting the blame on to others.
Unlike in the classic whodunit, the culprits escape scot-free in this case so that, from the point of view of the audience, ‘the law is law no more’. The Bull’s idea of the law is the law of the land and the law of the individual fighting for survival in a rapidly changing world where the likes of William Dee buy land for industrial, rather than for agricultural purposes. The Bull’s idea of law and land dates back to an earlier, pre-industrial age when man and land formed a closely knit unit and when landowners took the law into their own hands. However, social and economic conditions in the country were changing in the 1960s. William’s death can hardly be read in symbolic terms, since industrialisation began to sweep over Ireland during the decade and not even murder could prevent the growth of industries which would eventually spell out the downfall of the likes of the Bull McCabe, hanging on ruthlessly, if tragically, to an older order.
The Rain at the End of the Summer (1967)
These changes are also reflected in the development of Keane’s thematic interests. The Field is the last play which deals with issues of land and which is firmly set in a rural farming community, and it concludes the first phase of his dramatic writings. In the five plays which follow, the lonely cottage is frequently replaced by the suburban villa, and instead of farmers struggling for survival, Keane presents the psychological pains of middle-class characters struggling to adapt to a new set of norms and values. This new direction in his dramatic writing is immediately evident in The Rain at the End of the Summer. Joss O’Brien had to face the most serious crisis in his life when his wife died nine years ago and he started to drink heavily. However, he managed to overcome his difficulties, largely with the help of his housekeeper Kate, with whomhe conducts a clandestine love affair. At the beginning of the play, Joss has arranged his life as a widower and is rather pleased by his smug, bourgeois lifestyle. His eldest son Toddy is a respected solicitor while his younger son Jamesy has taken over the father’s prospering business, and his daughter Ellie, the youngest of the family, works as a secretary in the most successful company in the city. This façade of middle-class complacency and respectability is soon demolished as Ellie announces her decision to become a nun and to join the Salutation Order, thus destroying Joss’s aspirations to grand fatherhood. While the father still believes that his youthful daughter will change her mind once the right man crosses her path, he is even more shocked by Jamesy’s confession of having fathered a child on a young woman who is not even his girlfriend. Joss tries to convince his son that he must show responsibility, marry the pregnant girl and give a name to his yet unborn child, but Jamesy plans to send her to England and to have the baby reared by adoptive parents.
The clash between generations representing different sets of values in the rapidly changing Ireland of the 1960s becomes evident in the diverging attitudes towards the problem assumed by father and son. While Joss, despite Kate’s fervent pleas not to ruin the boy’s future, firmly insists on James marrying the pregnant girl, the representatives of the younger generation display a significantly more tolerant approach to sexuality and parenthood. If these representatives are characterised by a more lenient attitude to morals, their response to Joss’s announcement of his impending marriage with Kate indicates that such tolerance does not necessarily encompass the parental generation. The conflicts between the characters come to a head in the final act as Joss hits the whiskey bottle again, much to the dismay of Kate, who eventually leaves the house and puts a stop to their previous wedding plans. Instead, Joss, in a state of serious intoxication, reveals to his children his grand proposal to solve all their problems: he is prepared to sacrifice himself by marrying the pregnant girl so that the child will have a home in its own family. However, he is then informed that the girl has been happily shipped off – a notion of happiness which collides with the father’s more traditional idea of moral responsibility. In a furious state of excitement he orders his sons out of his house and, indeed, out of his life. The play closes with the stage direction, ‘(His right hand stiffens as if he were about to suffer a stroke)’, indicating that the traditional set of moral standards as embodied in the character of Joss is no longer fit to survive in the tolerant climate of the 1960s.
Big Maggie (1969)
The titular hero of Big Maggie is the female opposite to the father-figure in The Rain at the End of the Summer. At the age of sixty-one Walter Poplin died, leaving behind his wife Maggie, his sons Maurice and Mick and his daughters Katie and Gert. The late Walter, once handsome and rich, had the reputation of being a boozer and a womaniser, much to the chagrin of his wife Maggie, who is quite happy to see him buried. Walter left his family financially well settled, and his widowed wife is determined to run the shop and the farm as a proper businesswoman with an iron fist.
Mick, who had hoped that the farm would be divided between himself and his brother Maurice, bids his family farewell and leaves for England. Katie, her late father’s favourite child, is punished for her pampered upbringing and her lax morals in the past. Since Maggie fears that her daughter might be pregnant, Katie is forced into an unhappy marriage with an older man to shield her from public shame. Katie’s younger sister Gert is treated in a similar fashion and decides to join her brother in England. With two of her children in enforced exile and Katie tamed into a loveless marriage, Maurice, her elder son, is the last of her children to learn his lesson. His wish to marry the penniless Mary Madden meets with ill-disguised hostility on the part of his mother, who expects a significant dowry from a daughter-in-law. When Maurice tells his mother that for him it is either marriage or exile in England with his brother and sister, Maggie remains unmoved. Finally, the humbled and pregnant Mary pays a visit to Maggie, who takes no pity on the girl because she believes that Mary took the risk of pregnancy deliberately in order to coax Maurice into marriage and to turn her out of her house. Maggie is her own mistress for the first time in her life and she does not intend to lose her independence. She can afford neither pity nor compassion for her children, who will survive only if they are hardened to cope with the cruel, money-grubbing world outside. If Joss in The Rain at the End of the Summer despairs at the thought of his unborn grandchild being reared by adoptive parents in England, Big Maggie feels no compunction about pushing her children into exile. In her own way Maggie does care about her children and grandchildren, but this care is alloyed with a cruelty and heartlessness that her embittered life and changing social circumstances have forced on her.
Moll (1971)
Moll again features a strong-minded female character but otherwise has little in common with Big Maggie. Moll is a comedy set in the presbytery of Ballast, County Cork, where Cannon Pratt and his two curates are desperate to find a new housekeeper. Eventually they settle on Miss Maureen (Mollie) Kettle, who has previous experience of housekeeping for priests. The play spans four years, during which Moll gradually takes charge of the place until she is eventually in full command. Getting rid of Moll becomes impossible after the bishop is full of praise for the exemplary state of the parish and the progress which his priests seem to have achieved. The play’s overall comic note cannot entirely disguise the mild satire on the Church, whose representatives are criticised for being too complacent and too far removed from ordinary life to tackle the problems of a changing society with resolution and modern strategies.
The Change in Mame Fadden (1971)
A distinctly more serious note is struck in The Change in Mame Fadden, yet another play set in a middle-class milieu and which again centres on a heroine. It is a domestic tragedy which contrasts questions of social class and public reputation with the human longing for love, tenderness and understanding. Mame Fadden, an attractive woman in her mid-forties, feels that her life is disintegrating around her. Not only does she feel neglected and humiliated by her husband; to make matters worse, she has lost contact with her two sons, Jack and Jim, because ‘their precious wives are ashamed of me’. In order to find a bit of silence and repose, she regularly visits the quayside along the river at night. Mame’s husband Edward and his sons are deeply worried because Mame has been acting in very strange ways lately and insulting the neighbours. Father and sons are afraid that Mame’s condition might ruin their reputation in the community, affecting their professional standing and, more importantly, destroying Edward’s lifelong wish to be accepted as a member of the Royal Atlantic Golf Club. Mame admits that she feels lonely and that she has no one to talk to. Also she complains that Edward has always kept her short and that she has never been able to enjoy any luxuries. To escape from her mid-life crisis she suggests that they do something crazy, spend money and enjoy themselves. But it is not just the money Mame has missed in her life, and she speaks very openly about her emotional and, indeed, sexual neglect. If she has experienced anything in her life, it is loneliness, and she is afraid of being lonely in old age. She now yearns for a change of atmosphere, but all her suggestions to spice up their lives are sternly refused by her ill-humoured husband, who also forbids her nightly ramblings. To solve his marital problems Edward seeks advice from Canon Doodle, who married the couple twenty-five years ago. When Mame returns home the Canon proves to be knowledgeable in the ways of married couples, gives them a mild lecture, proposes a second honeymoon and finally makes both of them promise that they will be kind to one another from now on. Despite a moment of brief tenderness, the tensions between them soon flare up again as Edward continues to criticise his wife for her irresponsible behaviour. Now bereft of any hope for an emotionally gratifying future, Mame goes for a final walk at night and, like Sive before her, drowns herself in frustration.
The Crazy Wall (1973)
Conflicts between generations and frustrated aspirations also dominate The Crazy Wall, another domestic drama set in a middle-class milieu, but with fewer tragic dimensions. The play is set in the small town of Lolinn in the South of Ireland and it opens with a scene in 1963 when the members of the Barnett family have come together for the funeral of their father, Michael Barnett. In the style of epic drama the four brothers Tony, Tom, Lelum and Paddy Barnett, introduce the audience to the setting and the plot and they explain that the last time they were together in their parents’ back garden was in 1943 when their father was trying to build a crazy wall. In the second scene of the first act the clock is turned back by twenty years. At this time, Tony serves in the Irish Army, Tom and Paddy attend school, and Lelum whiles away his time doing nothing. In order to keep his family usefully employed Michael has decided to build a wall around his garden, which is regularly used by trespassers and neighbours. What he wants is a bit of privacy for himself and his family, but his friend Jack warns him that other people will want to build walls themselves and that soon the entire street will be walled in. Moreover, building a wall does not only mean keeping people out but also walling oneself in. Not heeding such warnings, Michael is ready to start with the construction of his wall on the following day when bad news arrives: his son Tom has been caught with girls in a neighbouring shed and the school’s headmaster has complained about his misconduct.
Michael’s wife Mary is furious, but Michael insists on his tolerance in matters of education: he wants his sons to be different from the other boys of their generation, to become observant and sensitive to life. Mary, however, believes that her husband’s pretended tolerance is nothing less than an escape from reality: ‘When things get difficult you go and build a wall’. Consequently, she forces Michael to face the fact that their servant maid Lilly is pregnant and that their son Tom is the most likely candidate as father of the child. Michael must learn the bitter lesson that his sons might all be failures by his own standards: Tony has preferred to remain a private soldier rather than being promoted to officer, Lelum wants to become an actor, Tom is a fornicator, and Paddy a failed poet. With his family life crumbling away, Michael, in a gesture of final fury, grasps a sledgehammer and desperately attacks the wall. Twenty years later, on the occasion of Michael’s funeral, the wall is in ruins. However, in 1963, Tony wears the uniform of an army officer and his brothers also seem to have done well for themselves. If the ruined wall appears to symbolise Michael’s futile attempt at mastering life, his sons’ fond memories of their father and their successful careers indicate that Michael’s tolerant education was not entirely fruitless in the end.
Values (1973)
The Crazy Wall shows a slackening of Keane’s creative energy. The play also marks the end of the second phase of his dramatic art, and his final plays are, both thematically and technically, inferior to his earlier works. This is immediately evident from Values, a collection of three one-act plays with modest literary merit. ‘The Spraying of John Dorey’ is a farcical examination of the dangers involved in exaggerated environmental care in the future, while ‘The Pure at Heart’ offers an ironic comment on the aggressiveness of male sexuality. ‘Backwater’, the third play in the collection, is somewhat more successful because Keane returns to what he knows best: village life in the south west of Ireland.
The Chastitute (1981)
The Chastitute is Keane’s last play and it is by no means easy to stage. Slightly reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), Keane’s play offers the monologue of John Bosco McLaine, a Kerry farmer in his fifties, who laments his unhappy and unfulfilled love life. Interspersed into the narrator’s account are scenes from his past, and several of the characters appear as ghostly visions which haunt John. This is especially true for the spectres of the missionaries who put the fear of sexuality into John when he was a boy and who continue to visit him regularly. Men like John have been so thoroughly deformed by the teachings of the Catholic Church that a happy and fulfilled love life is out of their reach.
Summary
John B. Keane’s dramatic works have met with differing assessments. While critics such as Christopher Morash find praise for his early plays because they first introduced to the Irish stage the ‘clash of values that would be one of the defining features of Irish culture over the next couple of decades’,2 other histories of Irish drama barely mention Keane’s name.3 One reason for such critical reservation, if not downright hostility, is Keane’s affinity for melodrama4 and his ‘familiar, and at times sentimental, style’.5 In addition, critics have drawn attention to the restrictions imposed by the choice of provincial settings and by Keane’s intellectual constraints.6 Conversely, his concentration on village life and rural predicaments as well as his admirable use of the Kerry idiom have been identified as Keane’s particular strengths.7 Moreover, as the present survey of his plays has shown, it is quite unjustified to pigeonhole Keane as a simple-minded and naïve farmhouse dramatist. In fact, his development as a playwright mirrors many of the tendencies observable in Irish drama of the twentieth century, especially the expansion of the interest from rural and working-class settings to an urban and middle-classmilieu. As a consequence, there are echoes from Boucicault’s melodramatic art in Many Young Men of Twenty, of Yeats’s and Synge’s blending of the social with the mythical in Sive, and of O’Casey’s fascination with strong female characters, as is immediately evident from the similarities between Juno Boyle in O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock (1924) and Keane’s Big Maggie.
Unlike these earlier dramatists and, indeed, unlike some contemporary playwrights such as Brian Friel and Tom Murphy, Keane cannot be ranked as a technical innovator.
He was arguably at his best in his earlier plays, written in a period of tension and conflict when Ireland was torn apart by an older system of traditions, values and norms on the one hand, and by the social and economic transformation of a predominantly agrarian to an increasingly industrial country on the other. Keane managed to convert these pressures into deeply moving plays with downright tragic dimensions. Sive is the first tragic victim who falls prey to the process of transformation, and in his debut work Keane perfectly struck the balance between old and new orders, between mythical background and social observation, between a particularly Irish and yet universal subject matter. While many of his later plays may pass into oblivion, his early works – Sive, Sharon’s Grave, and especially The Field – have stood the test of time and deserve a firm place in the canon of twentieth-century Irish drama.
Primary Sources
Works by John B. Keane
Big Maggie (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1978).
The Buds of Ballybunion (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1979).
The Change in Mame Fadden (Cork and Dublin: Mercier Press, 1973).
The Chastitute (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1981).
The Crazy Wall (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1974).
The Field (Dublin and Cork: Mercier Press, 1980).
The Highest House on the Mountain (Dublin: Progress House Publications, 1961).
Hut 42 (Dixon, CA: Proscenium Press, 1968).
The Man from Clare, ed. Ben Barnes (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1992).
Many Young Men of Twenty (Dublin: Progress House Publications, 1973).
Moll (Cork: Mercier Press, 1971).
The Rain at the End of the Summer (Dublin: Progress House, 1968).
Sharon’s Grave, in Sharon’s Grave and Other Plays (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1995), pp. 7–97.
Sive, in Ben Barnes (ed.), Three Plays: ‘Sive’, ‘The Field’, ‘Big Maggie’ (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1990), pp. 9–89.
Values. Three One-Act Plays: ‘The Spraying of John Dorey’, ‘Backwater’, ‘The Pure of Heart’ (Dublin: Mercier Press, 1973).
The Year of the Hiker (Cork: Mercier Press, 1969).
Secondary Sources
Achilles, Jochen and Rüdiger Imhof (eds), Irische Dramatiker der Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996).
Fitzmaurice, Gabriel (ed.), ‘Come all Good Men and True’. Essays from the John B. Keane Symposium (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004).
Fitzpatrick, David, ‘Ireland Since 1870’, in R. F. Foster (ed.), The Oxford History of Ireland (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992), pp. 174–229.
Foster, R. F. (ed.), The Oxford History of Ireland (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002).
Friel, Brian, ‘Plays Peasant and Unpeasant’, Times Literary Supplement (17 March 1972), pp. 305–6.
Kamm, Jürgen (ed.), Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama in English. Festschrift for Heinz Kosok on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Trier: WVT, 1999).
Kealy, Sr,Marie Hubert, ‘Spirit of Place. A Context for Social Criticism in John B. Keane’s The Field and Big Maggie’, Irish University Review, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1989), pp. 287–301.
—, Kerry Playwright: Sense of Place in the Plays of John B. Keane (Cranbury, NJ: Associated UP, 1993).
Keane, John B., Self-Portrait (Cork: Mercier Press, 1964).
Kosok, Heinz, Geschichte der anglo-irischen Literatur (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1990).
Mahoney, Christina H., Contemporary Irish Literature. Transforming Tradition (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1998).
Morash, Christopher, A History of Irish Theatre 1601–2000 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002).
Murray, Christopher, ‘Irish Drama Since the Seventeenth Century’, in Jürgen Kamm (ed.), Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama in English. Festschrift for Heinz Kosok on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Trier: WVT, 1999), pp. 383–405.
O’Toole, Fintan, ‘John B. Keane and the Ireland of His Time’, in Gabriel Fitzmaurice (ed.), ‘Come All Good Men and True’: Essays from the John B. Keane Symposium (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004), pp. 28–59.
Pilkington, Lionel, ‘The Abbey Theatre and the Irish State’, in Shaun Richards (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004), pp. 231–43.
Richards, Shaun (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004).
Rix, Walter T., ‘John B. Keane’, in Jochen Achilles and Rüdiger Imhof (eds), Irische Dramatiker der Gegenwart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), pp. 19–37.
Scott, Michael, ‘John B. Keane, Society, Country, Culture and Language: The Lonely Heart’, in Gabriel Fitzmaurice (ed.), ‘Come All Good Men and True’: Essays from the John B. Keane Symposium (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004), pp. 86–117.
Smith, Gus and Des Hickey, John B: The Real Keane (Cork: Mercier Press, 1992).
Sternlicht, Stanford, Masterpieces of Modern British and Irish Drama (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005).
Welch, Robert (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001).
Notes
1. Christopher Murray, ‘Irish Drama’, p. 399.
2. Christopher Morash, A History, p. 213.
3. Shaun Richards (ed.), The Cambridge Companion, p. 241.
4. See Robert Welch (ed.), The Oxford Companion, p. 284.
5. Christina Mahoney, Contemporary Irish Literature, p. 119.
6. See Heinz Kosok, Geschichte der anglo-irischen Literatur, p. 183.
7. See Marie H. Kealy, ‘Spirit of Place’ and Sense of Place; and Michael Scott, ‘John B. Keane’.