Analysis: on the centenary of his birth, the Dubliner's legacy is as much wrapped up in his persona as the unquestionable genius of his work
Born on February 9th 1923, Brendan Behan was raised on Russell Street in Dublin's north inner city. He achieved notoriety and global celebrity owing to his talent and wit as a writer and journalist, but tragically also for his reputation as an international cause celebre, which inevitably forced Behan’s irreversible downfall. As the centenary of Brendan Behan’s birth approaches, how do we remember one of Dublin’s greatest if not also complex literary figures? Can we separate the person from the persona and appreciate the literary legacies of Behan’s unquestionable genius?
Behan was educated by the Sisters of Charity and the Christian Brothers on Dublin’s Northside in the 1920s and 1930s. While learning the trade of a housepainter, Behan joined the IRA in 1937. By 1939, he was arrested in Liverpool for IRA bomb activity and served time in a borstal institution in England and later time in prison back in Ireland. Behan later moved between Dublin and various locations, including Paris. He married Beatrice Ffrench-Salkeld in 1955 and they would have one daughter, Blanaid, born in 1963.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Doc On One, Brendan Behan, The Writer, The Rebel and The Rollicking Boy tells the story of Behan by the people who knew him (first broadcast in 1974)
Behan’s stories were first published in Envoy magazine in Dublin by John Ryan and his early writing for the stage provoked a hard-working and fastidious response. A play, The Landlady, was written when still in Mountjoy prison in 1942/43 and depicted Behan’s grandmother. Séamus De Búrca offered Behan comments on the play and he re-worked the play extensively. In a letter to De Burca in 1943, Behan described the play as having "an old flush of Synge" in its language. A manuscript of an Irish language translation, An Bean Ciosa, is today within the Abbey Theatre Digital Archive at University of Galway Library Archives.
His literary ambition coupled with rogue-ish charm saw Behan write to Ernest Blythe at the Abbey Theatre enquiring about the Oireachtas competition for new novels. "I have no novel written", Behan told the theatre's then managing director, "but for a hundred pounds I could translate Finnegan’s Wake into Irish".
Behan’s first major play, The Quare Fellow, was produced at Dublin's Pike Theatre in 1954, depicting the unseen condemned titular character in a critique of both capital punishment and the growing capitalist Irish society. Arthur Dreifuss directed a film version of The Quare Fellow, which was filmed at Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol in 1961. Behan’s success was to provide a point of political witnessing, not a soapbox lecture on the injustice of capital punishment to all in society.
In 1958, An Giall was performed at An Damer theatre in the city. Later, The Hostage, Behan’s English language adaptation of An Giall, met with great success internationally, following Joan Littlewood's production in London in 1958. The play is a tragedy about a young English soldier, Leslie, kept prisoner in a Dublin boarding house frequented by sailors, whores, policemen and the IRA,
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From RTÉ Archives, 1970 episode of Féach reports on Brendan Behan's 'Borstal Boy’, directed by Tomás MacAnna and starring Niall Tóibín opening at the Lyceum Theatre in New York.
Borstal Boy, Behan's autobiographical and deeply affective novel, was also published in 1958 and was later being adapted for the stage, directed by Tomás McAnna and starring Niall Toibín. Produced at the Lyceum Theatre in New York in 1970, the play would win the Tony Award for Best Play.
Speaking to RTÉ in early 1964, and in what was likely one of Behan’s last public interviews, he speaks slowly but thoughtfully on the recent news of the abolition of capital punishment. Behan states that: "It is not my usual form to praise the Minister for Justice . . . but this recent move shows a good heart, an Irish heart. Nobody who was inside [in prison] before likes going to the gallows, saying those who swung often did so for an hour and if they were a Catholic, a priest would slit the hood and anoint them as they hung."
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From RTÉ Archives, clip of Brendan Behan in 1964 speaking about the abolition of capital punishment in Ireland
Behan’s early plays in the mid-1950s, from The Quare Fellow to the Hostage, were championed in Ireland and in England largely by women producers and directors, from Carolyn Swift at Dublin’s Pike to Joan Littlewood at Stratford East. Swift edited the manuscript of The Quare Fellow, helping the play find its form and ultimately the tragedy of Behan’s resounding criticism of capital punishment, before Swift’s husband, Alan Simpson, directed the play at Pike. Littlewood described Behan as being "very shy" when she first him in London, but his plays stirred strong reaction from audiences, critics and authorities in both cities in the late 1950s.
It is important to put in context how Irish plays, such Behan’s The Hostage, or others such as J.P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man (1959), which both had première productions in London before transferring to Dublin, were seen as a means of antagonising the forces of censorship in Ireland. These forces considered such plays as indecent and unsuitable for consumption in a conservative society.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Myles Dungan looks back at the brief life of Brendan Behan
Fr Gerard Nolan S.J. wrote to John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin, in October 1960 to forewarn him of the impending transfer from London of Behan’s The Hostage to Dublin’s Olympia Theatre: "The play is entirely unsuitable for the Dublin public, from every standpoint that matters. It is an utterly amoral piece, in part obscene, in context degenerate, and at times blasphemous and so totally devoid of any artistic value, as to be worthless. . .
"I have told [the directors of the Olympia Theatre] that even with cuts, the play can only soil their theatre and their own reputation for discretion and prudence in programming, and will probably result in considerable worries for the, at the civic level."
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From RTÉ Archives, Brendan Behan and Jim Downey talk about reaction to The Hostage in New York
Notwithstanding such a damning report, the theatre critic at The Sunday Times, Harold Hobson, declared that The Hostage and The Ginger Man as being the "two modern plays in London through which blows the winds of genius".
Behan’s genius was undeniable. The tragedy of his young if not untimely death was in both its predictability and its avoidability. Behan suffered greatly at the hands of his celebrity and fame, coupled with his crippling addiction to alcohol, diabetes, and own insecurities. He was ably supported in his drinking by a baying clique of followers and hangers-on. Seán O’Casey wrote to Behan’s brother, Dominic, in 1961 saying "I amnt preaching when I say that the jolly lads who cheer Brendan on don’t give a damn about him, and he just hurts himself".
Behan was trapped. He was a victim of the success of his works internationally, but also of the image of the Stage-Irishman made-real, a heavy drinker and raconteur who also suffered from chronic diabetes. Brief interventions of medical care towards the end did nothing to stop the march of Behan’s physical and creative decline. During one of his stays in a nursing home in London in his later years, Behan wrote to ‘Darling Pet’, his wife, Beatrice, stating that "I can write no more except to say I love you and hope to see you soon – Also I miss you. Mo grá thu".
Behan died in Dublin’s Meath Hospital on March 20th 1964, aged just 41. His coffin, draped in the Irish tricolour, was brought through crowded Dublin streets to the Church of the Sacred Heart in Donnybrook before burial in Glasnevin Cemetery.
Despite his relatively short life and flourishes of true literary ability, wit, and empathy, Behan left behind no small body of accomplished work. In Irish cultural history, 1964 is the year most associated with the breakthrough success of Brian Friel's play, Philadelphia, Here I Come! But the greatest significance of all may be what was lost rather than gained in 1964. OIne such loss was the death of playwright Seán O’Casey, but the greatest of all may be the loss of what remained unwritten by his death in March that year of Behan.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
