Juno and the Paycock

Juno and the Paycock, tragicomedy in three acts by Sean O’Casey, produced in 1924 and published the following year. Set in the grim slums of Dublin during the Irish civil war of 1922–23, the play chronicles the fortunes of the impoverished Boyle family, into which O’Casey pours all of the strengths and shortcomings of Irish character. A violent death and the grim realities of tenement life throw into relief the swagger and inflated rhetoric of the men struggling for Irish independence.