BEHAN, Brendan (Francis) 1923-1964

PERSONAL: Born February 9, 1923, in Dublin, Ireland; died of complications from alcoholism, jaundice, and diabetes, March 20, 1964; son of Stephen (a house painter, labor leader, and soldier) and Kathleen (Kearney) Behan; married Beatrice ffrench-Salkeld (a painter), 1955; children: Blanaid (daughter). Education: Attended Irish Catholic schools.

CAREER: Writer. Convicted of possessing explosives and sent to Borstal (a reform school), 1939-41; worked as a house painter, seaman, and freelance journalist, 1946-50; broadcaster for Radio Eireann, 1951-53; Irish Press, Dublin, Ireland, columnist, 1954-55.

MEMBER: Fianna Eireann (youth organization), Irish Republican Army.

AWARDS, HONORS: Obie Award, 1958, Paris Festival Award, 1958, Antoinette Perry ("Tony") Award nomination for best play, 1961, and French Critics' Award, 1962, all for The Hostage.

WRITINGS:

Moving Out (radio play; also see below), first broadcast on Radio Eireann, 1952.

A Garden Party (radio play; also see below), first broadcast on Radio Eireann, 1952.

The Scarperer (novel; published serially in the IrishPress, October-November, 1953), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1964.

The Quare Fellow: A Comedy-Drama (three-act play; first produced in Dublin, Ireland, at Pike Theatre Club, November 19, 1954; produced in London, England, at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, for Theatre Workshop, May 24, 1956; produced in New York, NY, at the Circle Theatre, November 23, 1958), Grove (New York, NY), 1956.

The Big House (play), first broadcast on BBC Radio Third Programme, 1957, first produced in Dublin, Ireland, at Pike Theatre Club, May 6, 1958.

The New House (play), first produced in Dublin, Ireland, at Pike Theatre Club, May 6, 1958.

An Giall (play; first produced in Dublin, Ireland, at Damer Hall, St. Stephen's Green, June, 1958; also see below), An Chomhairle Náisiúnta Drámaíochta (Dublin, Ireland), c. 1958, translated and revised as The Hostage (produced in Stratford, England, at Theatre Royale, October, 1958; also see below), Grove (New York, NY), 1959, third edition, Methuen (New York, NY), 1962.

Borstal Boy (autobiography), Hutchinson (London, England), 1958, Knopf (New York, NY), 1959.

Brendan Behan Sings Irish Folksongs and Ballads (sound recording), Spoken Arts, 1959.

Brendan Behan on Joyce: Lecture Delivered before the James Joyce Society at the Gotham Book Mart in New York, New York (sound recording), Folk-ways Records, 1962.

Brendan Behan's Island: An Irish Sketch-Book, Bernard Geis (New York, NY), 1962.

Hold Your Hour and Have Another (collected articles), illustrated by wife, Beatrice Behan, Hutchinson (London, England), 1963, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1964.

Brendan Behan's New York, Bernard Geis (New York, NY), 1964.

The Quare Fellow and The Hostage: Two Plays, Grove (New York, NY), 1964.

Confessions of an Irish Rebel (autobiography), Bernard Geis (New York, NY), 1966.

Moving Out and A Garden Party: Two Plays, edited by Robert Hogan, Proscenium Press (Dixon, CA), 1967.

The Wit of Brendan Behan, compiled by Seann Mc-Cann, Frewin (London, England), 1968.

Richard's Cork Leg (play; first produced in Dublin, Ireland, at Peacock Theatre, March 14, 1972), edited by Alan Simpson, Eyre Methuen (London, England), 1973, Grove (New York, NY), 1974. (Translator) Ulick O'Connor, Life Styles: Poems, Dolmen Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1973.

Poems and Stories, edited by Denis Cotter, Liffey Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1978,

The Complete Plays, introduction by Alan Simpson, Grove (New York, NY), 1978.

Poems and a Play in Irish (includes An Giall), Gallery Books (Dublin, Ireland), 1981.

After the Wake: Twenty-one Prose Works IncludingPreviously Unpublished Material, edited by Peter Fallon, O'Brien Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1981.

An Giall [and] The Hostage, translated and edited by Richard Wall, Catholic University of America Press (Washington, DC), 1987.

The Letters of Brendan Behan, edited by E. H. Mikhail, Macmillan (London, England), 1992.

The King of Ireland's Son (folk tale), illustrated by P. J. Lynch, Orchard Books, 1996.

The Dubbalin Man, foreword by Anthony Cronin, A. & A. Farmer (Dublin, Ireland), 1997.

Contributor to Drury's Guide to Best Plays (includes The Hostage and The Quare Fellow); author of foreword to The Howards: A Play by Séamus de Búrca, Bourke (Dublin, Ireland), 1960. Behan's writings have been translated into Danish, Italian, French, German, Hebrew, Dutch, Japanese, and Polish.

ADAPTATIONS: Frank McMahon adapted Borstal Boy for the stage; the play was published as Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy, Random House (New York, NY), 1971. Shay Duffin adapted Behan's works for the play "Shay Duffin Is Brendan Behan: Confessions of an Irish Rebel" in the early 1970s. Movie adaptations were filmed of The Quare Fellow, 1962, The Hostage, and Borstal Boy, 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Once characterized as "a professional young Irishman," Brendan Behan, in both his life and work, took the role to heart. Even before his early death in 1964 from diabetes brought on by alcoholism, he had become a legend. Stories of his drunken antics and of his youthful "terrorist" activities for the Irish Republican Army (IRA) prevailed in the media over mention of his literary creations. His work was often dismissed as the careless outpouring of a sensation-hungry revolutionary without a revolution.

But serious connections have been drawn between the content of Behan's writing, particularly his major plays The Quare Fellow: A Comedy-Drama and The Hostage, his politics, and his self-destructive drinking. In his work, as in his life, laughter and the despair of dying are commingled with intoxicating effect. Behan himself once said that he possessed "a sense of humor that would cause me to laugh at a funeral, providing it wasn't my own." About his comedies, critic Alfred Kazin stated in Contemporaries, "There is the constant suggestion in Behan's work that the laughter which supports despair does not always hide despair. But Behan's is the despair of an authentic predicament, of the actualities of life at the present time." Ted Boyle, writing in his Brendan Behan, commented, "A good deal of the comedy in Behan's plays portrays the hysteria which overcomes the human being caught in a situation over which he has no control." Behan's work is also characterized by his talent for realistic dialogue, the gift of his "tape-recorder ear." His later works, in fact, were taken down on tape, transcribed, and then edited by others. But even in his earlier writing there is the same fidelity to common speech patterns.

Behan's early life was closely tied to the Irish Republican cause. His father, Stephen, was involved with the Republicans and had been imprisoned for his involvement in the Civil War; his mother, Kathleen, was also a staunch supporter and was the sister of Paedar Kearney, who wrote the Irish national anthem. The family home was filled with books by Irish writers ranging from William Butler Yeats to Sean O'Casey, who also became strong influences on the young Behan. Joining the Irish Republican Army in 1937, Behan was sent to a reform school (called a Borstal school) two years later for his political activities. He later wrote of his experiences there in his first autobiography, Borstal Boy, which became an international bestseller that was later adapted as a play and a film. In 1942 he was again convicted of crimes involving his IRA activities and imprisoned until 1945.

A few years after being released from prison, Behan got a job working for Radio Eireann and began to turn his energies to writing, beginning with the radio plays Moving Out and A Garden Party. These were short works that showcased Behan's talent for comedy. "His plays for radio," commented Stephen Lacey in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, "demonstrate one of his main strengths as a writer, his ability to recognize the shape of everyday occurrences and turn them into good stories." Humor would also become a common aspect of all Behan's writing, even in his plays with more serious themes, including The Quare Fellow and The Hostage. The former first appeared at the small Pike Theatre Club in Dublin because more prestigious venues such as the Abbey Theatre were reticent to produce a play about prison life.

The Quare Fellow is a unique drama in which several characters express their thoughts and emotions about the impending hanging of a man found guilty of killing an English policeman. While the guilt of the condemned man is never in question, the interest in the story lies in how his fate affects those around him, including the character Regan, a prison guard who enjoys the "soft" nature of his job but feels deeply guilty for playing a part in the executions. A writer for the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography commented, "It is tempting to view The Quare Fellow simply as a protest against capital punishment, but Behan never confined any of his plays to so narrow a target. Actually the death penalty is seen in the play mainly as the most obvious example of the brutality built into a system that punishes men for the very brutality that the system engenders. Behan's relentless attacks on the absurdity of the penal system, and the larger social system that it represents, are effective because the play's black humor builds in the audience a sense of horror even as the audience laughs at joke after joke."

The Quare Fellow proved to be a great success for Behan, and the play was later produced in London and New York City. It was followed a few years later by Behan's other major play, The Hostage, which was originally written in Gaelic as An Giall. The Hostage concerns the kidnapping of a British soldier by the IRA and was based on events that were occurring at that time in Ireland. Behan heard about a group of British troops who had been ambushed and killed by IRA soldiers. As quoted by Lacey, the playwright later said, "At the time I heard this story, I thought it was tragic. . . . I mean, the fellows who shot them had nothing in particular against the people who were shooting them. But that's war. It's only the generals and politicians that are actively interested in it." The resulting play, in which the hostage character dies not directly at the hands of the IRA but in a tragic accident, marked a shift in Behan's feelings about the violence in his country. "The romantic heroism that infuses much of the literature of Irish nationalism finds no echo in this play," wrote Lacey. Lacey also commented that the play "is a reevaluation of Irish republicanism from a detached, almost pacifist, position."

The realism of his plays and his interest in giving working-class people a voice caused Behan to be associated with the "Angry Young Men," or "New Wave" writers, a movement concerned with the changing social structure of British society. However, while other writers in this movement soon found themselves welcomed into the literary establishment, Behan remained on the outside. After enjoying initial popularity with The Quare Fellow and The Hostage, the playwright found it impossible to duplicate his success and began to drown his sorrows in alcohol until his drinking eventually led to his death. His later works include the unfinished play Richard's Cork Leg, some poems and humorous nonfiction, and his second autobiography, Confessions of an Irish Rebel, which, according to Lacey, "explored further his ambivalent relationship with the Irish Republican movement."

Summing up Behan's contributions, Kazin commented, "What Behan has done, coming in too late to participate in the Irish literary renaissance, is to identify himself not with the abstract cause of art but with the profane and explosive speech of the streets, the saloons, the prisons." "Although he wrote only two notable plays," concluded the writer for the Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, "even that achievement entitles Behan to a place of some significance in the modern Irish theater. At a time when the only substantial Irish playwrights were emigres Sean O'Casey and Samuel Beckett, Behan helped to revitalize the theater in Ireland, largely by producing two plays that have more than a parochial interest, and by using realistic speech in combination with Brechtian music-hall effects. His public rebelliousness, combined with the consistently antiestablishment tone of his plays, has earned him comparison with John Osborne. Other critics have seen a relationship between Behan's method and the absurdist plays of Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, and Beckett. However, Behan might best be compared to John Millington Synge and O'Casey, who experimented boldly, offended Irish nationalists with their irreverence, and gave Ireland plays that later generations were to recognize as masterpieces."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Arthurs, Peter, With Brendan Behan: A Personal Memoir, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1981.

Atkinson, Brooks, Tuesdays and Fridays, Random House (New York, NY), 1963.

Behan, Beatrice, Des Hickey, and Gus Smith, My Life with Brendan, Frewin (London, England), 1973.

Behan, Dominic, My Brother Brendan, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1966.

Boyle, Ted E., Brendan Behan, Twayne (New York, NY), 1969.

Burgess, Anthony, Urgent Copy: Literary Studies, Norton (New York, NY), 1968.

Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, Volume 7: Writers after World War II, 1945-1960, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1991.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 1, 1973, Volume 8, 1978, Volume 11, 1979, Volume 15, 1980, Volume 79, 1994.

De Burca, Seamus, Brendan Behan: A Memoir, Proscenium Press, 1971.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 233: British and Irish Dramatists since World War II, Second Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2001.

Gerdes, Peter Rene, The Major Works of Brendan Behan, Herbert Lang, 1973.

Goorney, Howard, The Theatre Workshop Story, Eyre Methuen (London, England), 1981.

Jeffs, Rae, Brendan Behan: Man and Showman, World Publishing, 1968.

Kazin, Alfred, Contemporaries, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1959.

Kearney, Colbert, The Writings of Brendan Behan, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1977.

Lumley, Frederick, New Trends in Twentieth-CenturyDrama, Oxford University Press, 1967.

McCann, Sean, The World of Brendan Behan, Frewin (London, England), 1966.

Mikhail, E. H., editor, The Art of Brendan Behan, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1979.

Mikhail, E. H., Brendan Behan: An Annotated Bibliography of Criticism, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1980.

Mikhail, E. H., editor, Brendan Behan: Interviews andRecollections, two volumes, Barnes & Noble (Totowa, NJ), 1982.

O'Connor, Ulick, Brendan, Prentice-Hall (New York, NY), 1970.

O'Sullivan, Michael, Brendan Behan: A Life, Black-water Press, 1997.

Porter, Raymond J., Brendan Behan, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1973.

Rosen, Carol, Plays of Impasse: Contemporary DramaSet in Confining Situations, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1983.

Simpson, Alan, Beckett and Behan and a Theatre inDublin, Routledge & Kegan Paul (London, England), 1962.

PERIODICALS

Anglo-Irish Studies, number 3, 1977.

Atlantic Monthly, October, 1957; January, 1961.

Books Abroad, spring, 1967.

Chicago Tribune, March 12, 1982.

Christian Science Monitor, April 8, 1970.

Educational Theatre Journal, Number 22, 1970.

Eire-Ireland, winter, 1969; summer, 1985.

Entertainment Weekly, March 15, 2002, Lisa Schwarzbaum, "Behan Alive: Borstal Boy Recounts a Troubled Irish Writer's Reform School Days," p. 48.

Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, number 24, 1971.

Hollins Critic, February, 1965.

Library Journal, December, 2000, Nancy Pearl, "Beyond the McCourts: Irish Memoirs," p. 224.

Modern British Literature, fall, 1978.

Modern Drama, number 18, 1975.

New Statesman, March 27, 1964; December 6, 1999, Malcolm Muggeridge, "1964: Brendan Behan at Lime Grove," p. 41.

New York Times, October 23, 1962; November 4, 1983.

Publishers Weekly, March 17, 1997, "The King of Ireland's Son," p. 84.

Spectator, February 19, 1983.

Times (London, England), October 15, 1986.

Times Literary Supplement, October 12, 1962; April 26, 1974; April 22, 1983.

Washington Post Book World, July 4, 1982.*