September 18, 1964

On this day in 1964, Irish playwright Sean O’Casey died from a heart attack at the age of 84 in London. Born in Dublin on March 30, O’Casey first developed an interest in playwriting when he and his brother would put on Shakespeare plays for their family. He joined the Gaelic League in 1906 and became very involved with nationalism politics, leading him to Gaelicize his birth name of John Casey to Sean O’Casey. His first accepted play was “The Shadow of A Gunman,” which performed at the Abbey Theater in 1923. Two plays, “Juno and the Paycock” and “The Plough and the Stars,” would follow to make up O’Casey’s “Dublin trilogy.” He met his wife, Eileen Carey while in London and lived there until his death.