Notes

I ofen looked up at the sky an’ assed meself the question – what is the moon, what is the stars?

Homer and Virgil were the two great masters of the Classical epic. Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid have invariably served as models for all writers of the classical epic. Milton was a great classical scholar and he sought to write an epic. He dreamt of immortality and he aspired to be one with Homer and

Like Ibsen and Shaw, Sean O’Casey is also a feminist playwright. His play “End of the Beginning”, “The Shadow of the Gunman” and “Juno and the Paycock” are the three extreme examples of feminism. The reason of his feministic approach is O’Casey’s great admiration for his mother. He led a very miserable life with is

Sean O’Casey was born in 1880 and died in 1964. So it makes him a contemporary of T. S. Eliot. The play has been written on the background of Irish Civil War, which has been going for centuries. There are many faction involved in the play:

Bertrand Russell is one of the greatest masters of English Prose. He revolutionized not only the subject matter but also the mode of expression. He has in him a happy blend of greatest philosopher and a great writer.

Aristotle devotes great attention to the nature, structure and basic elements of the ideal tragic plot. Tragedy is the depiction of action consisting of incidents and events. Plot is the arrangement of these incident and events. It contains the kernel of the action. Aristotle says that plot is the first principle, the soul of tragedy.

Werle: Some people in this world only need to get a couple of slugs in them and they go plunging right down to the depths, and they never come up again.

O’Casey is not only a great dramatist but also a great humane. Irish characters and Irish civilization constitute basic themes in his plays. O’Casey was committed throughout his life to the liberation of individualism. Being a humanist, O’Casey could never reconcile with the idea of jingoistic patriotism.

Bacon challenged the basic beliefs of man e.g. truth, love, friendship, honesty, secrecy and reshaped them. He challenged the most established norm and ideals of mankind.

Lytton Strachey, an English biographer, critic and essayist, is best known for his ironic attitude towards the subject of his biographical studies. Strachey’s targets of irony were evangelicalism, liberalism, humanitarianism, education and imperialism. Strachey proposed to write lives with brevity which excludes everything that is redundant and nothing that is significant. He is best known