Sean O'Casey was born John Casey on March 31, 1880, the youngest of a large family living in a Dublin slum. He suffered all his life from painful, ulcerated eyeballs and could not read or write until he was 13, having been forced to begin lessons by an interested Irish clergyman.

Not until O'Casey had experienced life as a political rebel, poet, laborer, and fighter for Irish independence did he finally discover his true profession as a playwright. His first three attempts at drama were rejected by the Abbey Theatre, but his fourth, The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), was an immediate success. His later plays, Cathleen Listens In (1923) and the tragicomic masterpiece Juno and the Paycock (1924), saved the Abbey from near bankruptcy and placed it on a secure financial footing.

His juxtaposition of various techniques and genres in one play—farce, realistic comedy, satire, melodrama, expressionism, tragedy—was aimed at breaking down the forms and conventions of dramatic realism.

Source: Sean O'Casey." Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 11, Gale, 2004, pp. 459-460. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Accessed 12 Mar. 2019.