This volume contains the three plays commonly recognized as the height of O'Casey's achievement as a playwright. His tragi-comedy has relevance to the violent politics in the North and the post-nationalist bewilderments in the Republic.

This volume contains the three plays commonly recognized as the height of O'Casey's achievement as a playwright. His tragi-comedy has relevance to the violent politics in the North and the post-nationalist bewilderments in the Republic.

The play focuses on the lives of three sisters, Olga, Masha, and Irina, young women of the Russian gentry who try to fill their days in order to construct a life that feels meaningful while surrounded by an array of military men, servants, husbands, suitors, and lovers, all of whom constitute a distractions from the passage of time and from the sisters' desire to return to their beloved Moscow.

The New York Times describes the play "... as based on a strike in Dublin in 1913-1914 that led to the 'bloody Easter Week Rising of 1916.' But as in all Mr. O'Casey's latter-day plays, the real theme is the life of man-his valor, his joy, his love, his religious devotion, his loyalty and his belief in the future..." --www.doollee.com.