User:Mels93/new sandbox

= The Plough and the Stars =

Introduction paragraph
The Plough and the Stars is a four-act play by the Irish writer Seán O'Casey that was first performed on February 8, 1926 at the Abbey Theatre. It is set in Dublin and addresses the 1916 Easter Rising. The play's title references the Starry Plough flag which was used by the Irish Citizen Army.

It is the third play of O'Casey's well-known "Dublin Trilogy" – the other two being The Shadow of a Gunman (1923) and Juno and the Paycock (1924).


 * Will replace the source for the first sentence to the Lowery book since the two references that are there are not valid/working sources.

Act Summaries
Act III

This takes place on Easter Monday, the opening day of the Easter Rising. Peter, Mrs Gogan and the Covey discuss the fighting that is going on and the Covey informs Mrs Gogan that Patrick Pearse came out of the General Post Office with his men to read out the Proclamation of Irish Independence. Bessie gloats about the Rebels' imminent defeat but is ignored by the others. Nora shows up with Fluther after having searched for Jack in the midst of the fighting unsuccessfully. As Mrs Gogan leads her inside to lie down Bessie leaves to get some bread and comes back shortly informing the others that looting has broken out everywhere. A fashionably dressed middle-aged woman enters and asks the men to show her a safe route back to her home in Rathmines because the fighting has made it impossible to find a taxi or tram to take her back. Fluther tells her that any route is as safe as the others and leaves with the Covey to loot a nearby pub without helping her. Peter refuses to help her on the grounds that he might be shot and left with a limp and leaves her alone outside the tenement. Mrs Gogan attempts to leave the house pushing a pram until Bessie rushes after her claiming that the pram's owner left her in charge of it. The argument concludes with the two women agreeing to split the spoils. Brennan and Jack appear with a wounded rebel and Nora rushes to meet with them. She attempts to convince Jack to leave the fight and stay with her, telling him that she had gone out asking for his whereabouts when she hadn't gotten any news. Angered by her actions and the shame they brought upon him Jack ignores Nora's pleas and pushes her away roughly before leaving with his comrades. Nora then goes into labour.

Censorship
When O'Casey first submitted the play to the Abbey Theatre directors objections arose concerning the use of blasphemy and profanities along with the presence of a prostitute in the play. After a board of directors' meeting O'Casey agreed to modify some of the terms used as well as to cut our Rosie Redmond's song in act II that was deemed as being especially offensive. George O'Brien, the government nominee on the Abbey Theatre's board of directors, argued that a theatre that received a state subsidy should reflect the values of the state and that disregarding this could lead to the formation of hostile movements that would make it difficult for the government to continue funding the Abbey. Viewing this as a threat, Lady Gregory wrote to O'Brien stating that "If we have to choose between the subsidy and our freedom, it is our freedom we choose." Yeats agreed with Lady Gregory and argued that removing any part of the play for reasons relating to anything other than dramatic tradition would be denying their traditions.

Riots
The play was first performed in front of a sold out crowd at Abbey Theatre due to the fact that a large portion of the seats had been reserved for government officials. The play was well received on its opening night, although Lennox Robinson wrote to Lady Gregory following the performance stating that the audience had been very excited, which made it a "bad audience to judge a play by".

The first sign of displeasure among the audience occurred during the second act of the second stating of the play when Sighle Humphreys, a member of the Cumann na mBan, started to hiss from the back of the pit. When the curtains rose on February 11th to another full house the presence of Cumann na mBan and Sinn Fein members was hard to ignore. The women representing Cumann na mBan at the performance were all in some way related to men that had lost their lives during the Easter Rising, which created an atmosphere of expectations in the theater surrounding the topic of the Rising from the moment the play started.

The riots began during the play's second act when Rosie Redmond, a prostitute, is seen lounging in the pub awaiting clients as the Figure in the Window, using the words of Patrick Pearse, declares that 'Bloodshed is a cleansing and a sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood'. In contrasting the character of Rosie with the Figure's speech O'Casey compares the ideal dream of the patriots with what W. B. Yeats called the normal grossness of life. Clitheroe, Langon and Brennan then enter the stage in uniforms carrying the tricolour flag of the National Volunteers and the plough-and-stars flag of the Irish Citizen Army, which was perceived as an insult to the men who had died during the Rising. Some of the play's actors attempted to distance themselves from the roles they had played by asking the rioters to distinguish between the actors and the play, which was responded to in kind by a voice from the pit yelling "you have no right to earn your bread by insulting Ireland".

Upon arriving to the theatre as the riots were ongoing, Yeats famously declared to rioters against the play, in reference to the "Playboy Riots" (The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge):  "I thought you had tired of this, which commenced fifteen years ago. But you have disgraced yourselves again. Is this going to be a recurring celebration of Irish genius? Synge first and then O'Casey."

Peer Review Response
- Added some description to the summaries of Act III. Act IV is being worked on by Emerald

- Added part about the censorship of the play, although will expand on this to describe what was agreed to and what wasn't specifically

- Added part about how the Abbey refused to sacrifice artistic freedom for the state subsidy.

- Will work on modifying the introductory paragraph of the page so that it better fits the Wikipedia criteria for an intro section