ABSTRACT
The contrary ideological positions held by Spenser and William. Shakespeare mark the latter as a subversive heterodox thinker on Irish issues which inevitably made his texts available to cultural appropriation by twentieth-century Irish dramatists. Surprisingly perhaps, the female characters in Sean O'Casey's Dublin Trilogy and Shakespeare's Henriad are the imposing agents of order for the other characters. O'Casey and Shakespeare challenge two inherent cultural dichotomies in their respective societies: religion/politics and chaos/order. O'Casey, like Shakespeare, illustrates how the tensions between the political and religious arenas contribute to the overall chaos in his nation, but ultimately suggests a sense of order imposed through a unification of national identities. The debut of O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock at the Abbey Theatre in 1924 met with an enthusiastic reception by its Dublin audience. The founders of the Abbey Theatre hoped to recuperate the stage Irishman to produce naturalistic portrayals of the Irish in Dublin.
