Assignment of Paper 110A: History of English Literature – From 1900 to 2000
Topic : Modern Drama as Social Critique: The Plays of Shaw, Synge, O’Casey, and Osborne
Table of Contents
- Personal Information
- Assignment Details
- Abstract
- Keywords
- Introduction: The Birth of Modern Drama and Its Critical Voice
- George Bernard Shaw – Exposing Hypocrisy and Capitalist Exploitation
- J.M. Synge – Myth, Violence, and the Social Mirror of Irish Life
- Seán O’Casey – Revolution, Poverty, and the Voice of the Forgotten
- John Osborne – Class Conflict and the Anger of a New Generation
- Comparative Analysis: Continuities in Protest and Form
- Conclusion: Theatre as Resistance
- References
Personal Information:-
- Name:- Rutvi Pal
- Batch :- M.A. Sem 2 (2024-2026)
- Enrollment Number :- 5108240025
- E-mail Address :-rutvipal4@gmail.com
- Roll Number :- 23
Assignment Details:-
- Topic : Modern Drama as Social Critique: The Plays of Shaw, Synge, O’Casey, and Osborne
- Paper & subject code :-110A -History of English Literature – From 1900 to 2000- 22403
- Submitted to :- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar
- Date of Submission :- 17 April , 2025
1. Abstract
Modern drama, as developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, serves not merely as entertainment but as a critical lens through which societal inequities, political ideologies, and cultural myths are examined and often dismantled. This assignment explores how four key playwrights—George Bernard Shaw, J.M. Synge, Seán O’Casey, and John Osborne—used the stage to dramatize the tensions of their time. Through selected plays, including Mrs. Warren’s Profession, The Playboy of the Western World, The Plough and the Stars, and Look Back in Anger, the essay investigates how these dramatists gave voice to the silenced, critiqued dominant ideologies, and reframed the role of theatre as a site of political resistance and moral introspection.
- Keywords:
Modern Drama, Social Critique, Class Conflict, Political Theatre, Realism, National Identity, Gender Roles, Revolutionary Theatre, Working-Class Voices, Anti-Romanticism.
2. Introduction: The Birth of Modern Drama and Its Critical Voice
The transition from traditional theatre to modern drama represents not just a stylistic revolution but a radical shift in the cultural function of performance. Where earlier dramatic traditions emphasized aristocratic heroes, divine fate, or domestic melodrama, modern drama embedded itself in the socio-political crises of the real world. In the aftermath of industrialization, colonial unrest, class inequality, and world wars, playwrights began to use the stage as a forum for social intervention and critique.
George Bernard Shaw, for instance, emerged from a context where Victorian ideals had begun to crack under the weight of industrial capitalism and social hypocrisy. Writing with the acerbic wit of a Fabian socialist, Shaw exposed the moral contradictions of a society that condemned prostitution while profiting from it—as seen in Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Around the same period, in the Irish Literary Revival, J.M. Synge used The Playboy of the Western World to puncture nationalist idealism and the romanticization of rural life, foregrounding instead the violence and absurdity woven into communal myth-making.
This trajectory deepened with Seán O’Casey, whose socialist realism presented the plight of Dublin’s poor not as background scenery but as the central tragedy of modern Irish life. With The Plough and the Stars, O’Casey deflated the romantic myth of the Easter Rising, replacing it with a harrowing depiction of war’s effect on working-class families. John Osborne, writing in the post-WWII British context, captured the spiritual emptiness and class rage of a new generation in Look Back in Anger, a play that arguably redefined what theatre could and should do.
Each of these playwrights, in different national and historical contexts, chose to critique rather than console, to interrogate rather than entertain. Their works transcend specific political commentary; they reveal structural inequalities, moral contradictions, and psychological scars. As Raymond Williams argues in Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, modern drama "has been more persistently and consciously political than any other form of art". Whether confronting empire, patriarchy, capitalism, or class, these dramatists transformed the theatre into a space of confrontation and resistance.
3. George Bernard Shaw – Exposing Hypocrisy and Capitalist Exploitation
George Bernard Shaw’s drama is inseparable from his political convictions. As a committed Fabian socialist, he viewed the stage as a weapon of ideological warfare, not mere diversion. Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), banned from public performance until 1902, stands as a blistering indictment of the capitalist morality that punishes the poor for surviving within the constraints it imposes. Through the relationship between Vivie Warren and her mother, Shaw unpacks the hypocrisy of a society that criminalizes prostitution while depending on it economically.
- Economic Systems and Social Morality
Mrs. Warren’s “profession” is not portrayed as a personal moral failure, but rather as a rational decision within an exploitative capitalist framework. Her success in running a chain of brothels across Europe is juxtaposed against the limited options for poor women in Victorian society. As she declares:
“It’s easy for you, Vivie, to talk about your ideals. You had your school and college and your friends and your amusements. I had only my wits.” (Act II)
This line underscores a central Shavian argument: moral judgment is often a luxury of the privileged. Shaw exposes the hollowness of bourgeois respectability, suggesting that the real obscenity lies not in sex work but in a system that leaves women no alternative.
- Vivie Warren and the New Woman
Vivie represents a new generation of women unafraid to assert intellectual and moral autonomy. She rejects both her mother’s capitalist pragmatism and her suitor Frank Gardner’s flippant romanticism. Her decision to pursue a career in actuarial work—a male-dominated field—symbolizes a break from both traditional femininity and maternal legacy. According to Sally Peters in her article on Shaw’s women characters, “Vivie is the embodiment of Shaw’s ideal New Woman: economically independent, emotionally detached, and intellectually self-possessed” .
- Shaw’s Stagecraft and Political Irony
Shaw’s use of inversion and irony is crucial to his critique. He turns expectations upside down: the prostitute becomes the capitalist entrepreneur; the clergyman figure is revealed as morally weak; and the daughter, traditionally dependent, becomes the rational judge. The didacticism of Shaw’s theatre—often criticized as overly polemical—serves his purpose of forcing audiences into uncomfortable introspection.
In his 1898 preface to Plays Unpleasant, Shaw declared that he wanted to “force the public to face its own conscience.” This reflects a core belief that the dramatist is a kind of social surgeon, cutting through illusions to reveal systemic disease. As scholar Christopher Wixson argues:
“Shaw’s theatre was designed to make its viewers think, not feel—arguably the most radical aesthetic position in an age of sentimental drama.”
- Legacy and Influence
Mrs. Warren’s Profession marked a foundational moment in socially critical drama. Shaw’s blend of realism, satire, and dialectical dialogue influenced not just his contemporaries but later playwrights like Brecht, who also saw theatre as a site of ideological struggle.
4. J.M. Synge – Myth, Violence, and the Social Mirror of Irish Life
J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World (1907) stands as one of the most paradoxical and subversive plays in modern Irish drama. Premiering during the Irish Literary Revival—a movement charged with reviving national identity and pride—Synge delivered a play that exposed the dark underbelly of that very cultural project. Rather than romanticize rural life, Synge offered an unsettling vision: a community that mythologizes violence, celebrates illusion, and turns murder into spectacle.
- Myth-Making and Violence
At the heart of the play lies Christy Mahon, a young man who claims to have killed his tyrannical father. Far from being shunned, he is revered by the villagers as a hero, a “playboy.” His patricide becomes a badge of valor. The townspeople, especially the women, are fascinated by his daring:
“It’s the poets are the boys. We’re all wild here with divilment this hour of the day.”
What Synge unmasks here is not just the absurdity of myth-making but also the collective psychological need for romanticized violence. As Declan Kiberd argues, “Christy’s transformation is less about who he is than what the people need him to be—a symbol of rebellion, power, and charm”.
- Pegeen Mike and Feminine Disillusionment
Pegeen Mike’s character reflects the collision between fantasy and reality. Initially seduced by Christy’s tale, she too participates in his mythologizing—projecting strength, glamour, and escape onto him. However, when the real father reappears and Christy’s story collapses, Pegeen’s romantic fantasy disintegrates:
“Oh my grief, I’ve lost him surely. I’ve lost the only playboy of the western world.”
Her final lament is not just for Christy, but for the myth itself—for the illusion that something, or someone, could lift her out of provincial stagnation.
- Language, Comedy, and the Subversion of Nationalism
Synge’s language is musical, poetic, and heavily influenced by the Hiberno-English rhythms he encountered in the Aran Islands. This linguistic texture both beautifies and undercuts the action. The comedy, far from lighthearted, is a tool of sharp social commentary. As Nicholas Grene puts it:
“Synge’s comedy is laughter through clenched teeth: it exposes the brutality beneath the lyrical surface of Irish peasant life.”
The play’s reception was explosive. Riots broke out during its early performances, driven by nationalist outrage at what they saw as an insulting portrayal of Irish rural life. In truth, Synge was not mocking Ireland but unmasking the contradictions between its heroic myths and its social realities.
- Modern Drama as Cultural Mirror
The Playboy of the Western World critiques not just individuals but entire communal belief systems. By making the audience complicit in the villagers’ adoration of a fraud, Synge holds a mirror to his own society. His play exemplifies how drama can question national myths, dissect collective psychology, and expose the tension between desire and truth.
5. Seán O’Casey – Revolution, Poverty, and the Voice of the Forgotten
Seán O’Casey’s The Plough and the Stars (1926) shattered romantic nationalist narratives by depicting the Easter Rising not as a glorious birth of freedom, but as a tragic and chaotic event that devastated the lives of Dublin’s poor. As a socialist playwright, O’Casey focused not on heroes and martyrs but on the working-class women and men who bore the brunt of violence in the name of abstract ideals.
- Realism and the Working Class
Set in a tenement, the play chronicles the lives of characters such as Nora Clitheroe and Bessie Burgess—ordinary people trying to survive amid political chaos. Nora, who loses both her husband Jack and her unborn child, stands at the emotional center of the play. Her breakdown is not only personal but symbolic—a critique of the nationalistic fervor that sacrifices the living for ideological purity:
“What’s the good of fightin’ for freedom if it leaves us broken and alone?”
This voice of disillusionment is rare in Irish drama of the time. O’Casey gave center stage to the people history ignored.
Anti-Heroism and Social Suffering
Unlike traditional Irish nationalist plays that glorified rebellion, O’Casey’s drama foregrounds the human cost of war. Characters like the Covey (a socialist) and Bessie (a Unionist Protestant) disrupt binary narratives of heroism. Bessie, in particular, transforms from a bigoted outsider into a figure of tragic sacrifice when she dies protecting Nora.
As James Moran writes:
“O’Casey’s refusal to turn his play into propaganda is what makes it so powerful. It is the pain, not the politics, that lingers.”
- O’Casey’s Stage as Political Forum
The use of dialect, realism, and ensemble cast positions The Plough and the Stars within the tradition of modern social drama. The play was met with riots by nationalists who saw it as blasphemy against the Rising. But in retrospect, O’Casey’s work is praised for restoring historical complexity to political myth. He refused to sentimentalize the poor; he gave them agency, voice, and tragedy.
6. John Osborne – Class Conflict and the Anger of a New Generation
Premiering in 1956, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger introduced the “Angry Young Man” to postwar British theatre. Jimmy Porter, the protagonist, is a cauldron of resentment, intellect, and futility. His fury is not aimed at one political party or event, but at the existential stagnation of a class-bound society. The play marks a turning point in British drama, channeling social discontent through raw emotion and psychological realism.
- Jimmy Porter: The Voice of Disenfranchisement
Jimmy rages against the middle class, the church, and the emptiness of postwar idealism. His wife, Alison, represents the detached, upper-middle-class values he loathes. His monologues—witty, cruel, passionate—are indictments of a system that leaves intelligent people directionless:
“There aren’t any good, brave causes left.”
Osborne articulates the disillusionment of a generation promised a better future after WWII, only to be handed dull jobs and emotional inertia.
- Emotional Realism and Domestic Space
The domestic setting—cramped, cluttered, and claustrophobic—reflects the emotional entrapment of the characters. Unlike the epic scale of earlier social dramas, Osborne zooms in on interior life. This microscopic view of anger becomes a macro critique of British society.
According to Dan Rebellato:
“Osborne didn’t just bring working-class characters to the stage. He brought their fury, their vernacular, and their broken dreams.”
- New Theatre, New Politics
Osborne’s play was part of a wider theatrical revolution. Along with Harold Pinter and Arnold Wesker, he helped dismantle the genteel drawing-room drama. His work was confrontational, honest, and unafraid of ugliness.
7. Comparative Analysis: Continuities in Protest and Form
Despite differing national contexts and stylistic modes, Shaw, Synge, O’Casey, and Osborne share a commitment to exposing dominant ideologies and amplifying the voices of the marginalized. Shaw and Osborne rely on verbal dynamism and argument; Synge and O’Casey deploy irony and realism. Each dramatist transforms the stage into a site of resistance, interrogating myths—whether national, romantic, or capitalist.
They also subvert dramatic form itself: Shaw’s discursive scenes challenge narrative closure; Synge’s lyrical realism blurs comedy and tragedy; O’Casey blends political history with domestic pain; Osborne collapses action into pure emotional tension.
Collectively, they shaped modern drama as a force of critique, not consensus.
8. Conclusion: Theatre as Resistance
Modern drama, as demonstrated by these four giants, is not merely an artistic endeavor but a cultural weapon. It challenges comfort, exposes contradiction, and refuses silence. Whether critiquing bourgeois morality (Shaw), exposing nationalist fantasy (Synge), amplifying working-class trauma (O’Casey), or voicing existential rage (Osborne), each playwright shows that drama can be politics by other means. Their legacy endures in every play that dares to speak uncomfortable truths.
9. References
Athanason, Arthur N. “Since Shaw.” The Shaw Review, vol. 16, no. 1, 1973, pp. 37–40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40682290.
Clarke, Amanda. “‘Keepin’ a Home Together’: Performing Domestic Security in Sean O’Casey’s ‘The Plough and the Stars.’” The Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 38, no. 1/2, 2014, pp. 208–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43410729.
Guy, Stéphane. “The Resurgence of Ideology in Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893).” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, no. 72, 2010, [pp. not listed]. OpenEdition Journals, https://journals.openedition.org/cve/3076.
Krause, David. “‘The Plough and the Stars’: Socialism (1913) and Nationalism (1916).” New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua, vol. 1, no. 4, 1997, pp. 28–40. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20557441.
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