Juno and the paycock: set in the grim slums of Dublin during the Irish civil war of 1922û23, the play chronicles the fortunes of the impoverished Boyle family, into which O’Casey pours all of the strengths and shortcomings of Irish character. A violent death and the grim realities of tenement life throw into relief the swagger and inflated rhetoric of the men struggling for Irish independence. The shadow of a gunman: centres on the mistaken identity of a building tenant who is thought to be an IRA assassin. The plough and the stars: set in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916. Among the characters who fight to keep their lives intact despite the war’s destruction are Nora and Jack Clitheroe. Although Nora is pregnant with their first child, Jack ignores her pleas, goes into the streets to fight for the cause, and is killed. When their baby is stillborn, Nora loses her mind. Her condition prompts Bessie Burgess, an embittered Irish Protestant who has lost a son to the rebels, to become Nora’s caretaker. At the play’s end Bessie herself is killed by a sniper’s bullet.

Juno and the paycock --The shadow of a gunman -- The plough and the stars.