“That’s the Irish People all over – they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.” — Seán O’Casey, Shadow of a Gunman

“That’s the Irish People all over – they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.” — Seán O’Casey, Shadow of a Gunman

“You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.” — Seán O’Casey, The Death of Thomas Ashe (1918). Irish playwright Seán O’Casey was born on this day in 1880. He was the first major Irish playwright to deal with slum life and the Dublin poor. He grew up working-class in a family …