Riders to the Sea
4.5/5
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Reviews for Riders to the Sea
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54 stars for the full cast LibriVox recording (the last play in a collection of one act plays found here).I read this extremely short one act play (contained in the book "Five Great Modern Irish Plays") while listening to the LibriVox recording. The Irish voices of the cast helped bring the play to life for me. The play itself is very sad, about a woman who loses her last remaining son to an accidental drowning just the day after another son's body has been identified.… This play stands up well to reading (as opposed to seeing a performance).
Book preview
Riders to the Sea - J. M. (John Millington) Synge
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Riders to the Sea, by J. M. Synge
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Riders to the Sea
Author: J. M. Synge
Release Date: August 3, 2008 [EBook #994]
Last Updated: January 9, 2013
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RIDERS TO THE SEA ***
Produced by Judith Boss
RIDERS TO THE SEA
A PLAY IN ONE ACT
By J. M. Synge
Contents
INTRODUCTION
It must have been on Synge's second visit to the Aran Islands that he had the experience out of which was wrought what many believe to be his greatest play. The scene of Riders to the Sea
is laid in a cottage on Inishmaan, the middle and most interesting island of the Aran group. While Synge was on Inishmaan, the story came to him of a man whose body had been washed up on the far away coast of Donegal, and who, by reason of certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island. In due course, he was recognised as a native of Inishmaan, in exactly the manner described in the play, and perhaps one of the most poignantly vivid passages in Synge's book on The Aran Islands
relates the incident of his burial.
The other element in the story which Synge introduces into the play is equally true. Many tales of second sight
are to be heard among Celtic races. In fact, they are so common as to arouse little or no wonder in the minds of the people. It is just such a tale, which there seems no valid reason for doubting, that Synge heard, and that gave the title, Riders to the Sea
, to his play.
It is the dramatist's high distinction that he has simply taken the materials which lay ready to his hand, and by the power of sympathy woven them, with little modification, into a tragedy which, for dramatic irony and noble pity, has no equal among its contemporaries. Great tragedy, it is frequently claimed with some show of justice, has perforce departed with the advance of modern life and its complicated tangle of interests and