Juno and the Paycock Reading Order

Complete Juno & the Paycock Book List

1. 1

   Juno and the Paycock

   Sean O'Casey·1924·The great Irish urban tragedy — Juno Boyle, Captain Boyle, Joxer Daly, the inheritance, and the Dublin tenement during the Irish Civil War. First performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1924; Yeats and Lady Gregory immediately recognized it as a masterpiece; the first night of The Plough and the Stars (1926) famously caused riots
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2. 2

   The Plough and the Stars

   Sean O'Casey·1926·The companion O'Casey play — the Dublin tenement during the Easter Rising of 1916. The Plough and the Stars and Juno and the Paycock are the two O'Casey masterworks: both are set in Dublin tenements, both focus on the women who hold families together while the men pursue fantasies of glory, and both are organized around the gap between the rhetoric of revolution and the reality of what revolution does to ordinary people
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3. 3

   Playboy of the Western World

   J.M. Synge·1907·Synge's companion in the tradition of the Irish play that caused riots at the Abbey Theatre — Christy Mahon's arrival in a Mayo village with the story of having killed his father. The Playboy of the Western World and Juno and the Paycock are the two Abbey Theatre plays that caused the most controversy: Synge's in 1907 for its depiction of Mayo rural life; O'Casey's (specifically The Plough and the Stars) in 1926 for its depiction of the Easter Rising
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4. 4

   Translations

   Brian Friel·1980·Friel's 1980 companion in the tradition of the great Irish play about language, colonialism, and loss — the hedgerow schoolmaster Hugh Mór O'Donnell and the British cartographers remaking Baile Beag into 'Ballybeg.' Translations and Juno and the Paycock are companion investigations of what colonialism does to a people: O'Casey shows the domestic consequences of the political violence; Friel shows the cultural consequences of the colonial project
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5. 5

   At Swim-Two-Birds

   Flann O'Brien·1939·O'Brien's companion in the tradition of the great Irish modernist work organized around the gap between the fantasies people construct and the reality they are trying to escape — the student's novel-within-a-novel-within-a-novel. Both Juno and the Paycock and At Swim-Two-Birds are organized around characters (Captain Boyle; the student's fictional characters) who pursue fantasies at the expense of the people around them
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6. 6

   Dubliners

   James Joyce·1914·Joyce's companion in the tradition of the Dublin literary investigation — the fifteen stories of middle-class Dublin paralysis. Dubliners and Juno and the Paycock are companion investigations of Dublin: Joyce's stories are organized around middle-class paralysis; O'Casey's play is organized around working-class catastrophe. Both show Dublin as a city whose people are trapped between a past that constrains them and a future that seems unavailable
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7. 7

   The Shadow of a Gunman

   Sean O'Casey·1923·The earlier companion O'Casey play — the Dublin tenement in 1920 during the War of Independence. The Shadow of a Gunman is the first of O'Casey's Dublin trilogy and shows the development of his major themes: the gap between the rhetoric of the revolutionary struggle and the reality of what it does to ordinary people, and the women who suffer while the men indulge their fantasies
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8. 8

   The Cherry Orchard

   Anton Chekhov·1904·Chekhov's companion in the tradition of the play organized around a family's inability to face the reality of its situation — the Ranevskaya family's inability to save the cherry orchard. Juno and the Paycock and The Cherry Orchard are companion plays about families who cannot prevent the disaster that is coming because the central male figure (Captain Boyle; Gayev) is incapable of the practical action that would prevent it
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