The friendship between Shaw and O’Casey was so personally significant that O’Casey’s widow published an entire book on the subject. This chapter charts the course of that friendship, and examines the influence that Shaw exerted upon O’Casey and vice versa. The chapter begins by examining the way O’Casey knew of Shaw’s work before their first meeting, and traces the contours of their personal relationship after O’Casey moved to London in 1926. The chapter analyses the way that, once the Abbey had rejected The Silver Tassie in 1928, O’Casey turned to Bernard Shaw for friendship and advice, and gives a close reading of the reciprocal influence that can be found in the two men’s playwriting and political viewpoints.

Sean O’Casey based himself in London between 1926 and 1938, and this chapter examines the cultural life of interwar London during O’Casey’s time there. London’s theatre world had long been an important destination for Irish playwrights, and this section of the book establishes the kind of expectations and tastes that O’Casey encountered when he arrived here from Dublin. The chapter explores O’Casey’s interaction with the English capital’s culture and society, and shows how the move to the English capital shaped O’Casey’s social views as well as the subject and form of his writing.