What happens in Act II of The Plough and the Stars?
Act II of Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars takes us to a pub next to a meeting hall hosting a nationalist rally. Fluther Good, Peter Flynn, and the Covey drink and argue as outside, the Figure in the Window — never fully visible — passionately speaks about blood sacrifice and national pride. Rosie Redmond, a barmaid, tries to attract customers from the distracted men. The Covey and Peter engage in their usual petty squabbles, while Fluther swings between aggression and boastfulness. Brennan and Langon enter, swept up in the excitement of the speeches, and Clitheroe arrives, clearly moved by the rhetoric. The tricolour and the Plough-and-Stars flag are brought into the pub — a provocative moment — as the men start pledging themselves to the Citizen Army and the Volunteers. Nora's absence in this scene creates a structural silence; the domestic sphere she embodies is entirely overshadowed by the pub's masculine, political atmosphere. The act ends with the men leaving for the rally, leaving Rosie and Fluther alone in a bar now filled only with hunger and irony.
Analysis
O'Casey’s craft in Act II is fundamentally contrapuntal. He contrasts the unseen orator’s rhetoric — grandiose, obsessed with death, and almost directly lifted from Pádraig Pearse’s actual speeches — with the squabbling, drinking, and flirting happening in the foreground. This technique deliberately undercuts the grandeur: every lofty phrase about blood being "a cleansing and sanctifying thing" falls in a room where men are bickering over who knocked into whose pint. This ironic juxtaposition formalizes O'Casey's central political argument.
The pub itself serves as an anti-heroic space. While nationalist drama of the time typically portrayed sacrifice openly or at home, O'Casey places the moment of political awakening in a setting of commerce, alcohol, and sex work. Rosie Redmond is not just a background character; her presence emphasizes that the city’s underclass — those whom the revolution claims to liberate — are already navigating survival in the shadows of the larger cause.
The image of flags entering the pub is the act's most striking moment. Sacred national symbols brought into a drinking establishment: O'Casey blurs the line between the sacred and the profane, not to mock the flags but to question what these flags truly signify for the people carrying them. The tone shifts noticeably here — the arguments pause, and the men become quiet and serious — allowing the moment its genuine emotional weight before irony returns. This refusal to slip into pure satire is what creates the play's enduring tension.
Key quotes from Act II
“Th' blood of the sons of Ireland is th' most sacred thing in th' world.”
The Voice of the Figure in the Window declaims from offstage, its rhetoric floating into the pub and landing amid the clatter of glasses and petty argument.
“There's only one way to deal with th' likes of you — an' that's to shove a bayonet through your guts!”
The Covey and Peter Flynn's running feud escalates to this explosion, undercutting any sense of working-class solidarity just as nationalist fervour peaks outside.
“When I think of what th' country'll be when she's free, I think I see a sight that'd make th' angels in heaven cry for joy.”
Clitheroe speaks with unguarded idealism after the rally speeches, a moment O'Casey frames with quiet irony given what the audience already knows of Nora's dread at home.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Act II
- sacred
- Treated as holy and deserving the highest reverence; here used in a nationalist, quasi-religious sense to elevate the shedding of Irish blood in battle to something spiritually precious.
- blood sacrifice
- The idea, drawn from nationalist rhetoric of the period, that dying in armed rebellion is a noble, almost religious act that redeems and purifies the nation.
- bayonet
- A long blade fixed to the end of a rifle, used as a stabbing weapon in close combat; here used as a violent threat to silence an opponent.
- th' likes of you
- A dismissive idiom meaning 'someone of your sort' or 'people like you,' expressing contempt for the person being addressed.
- guts
- The intestines or belly; used here in a blunt, violent way to mean the abdomen, emphasising the brutality of the threat being made.
- rally
- A large public meeting held to stir up enthusiasm and support for a political or military cause; here the nationalist gathering taking place offstage in the meeting hall.