The Playboy Of The Western World

By J.M. Synge

In 1896 JM Synge met W. B. Yeats, who encouraged Synge to live for a while in the Aran Islands and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work. In 1897 Synge suffered his first attack of Hodgkin's disease, a form of untreatable cancer at the time, and also had an enlarged gland removed from his neck. In 1898, he spent his first summer on the Aran Islands and then continued for the next five collecting stories and folklore and perfecting his Irish but continued to live in Paris for the rest of the year. During this period, Synge wrote his first play, When The Moon Has Set. In 1903, Synge left Paris and moved to London. He had written two one-act plays, Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen the previous year. The Shadow of the Glen was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903. Riders to the Sea was performed at the same venue in February the following year. The play widely regarded as his masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, was first performed in the Abbey on 26 January 1907. The comedy attracted a hostile reaction from the Irish public and thereafter a riot ensued. Described as "an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men, and worse still upon Irish girlhood". Yeats returned from Scotland to address the crowd on the second night, and decided to call in the police. Press opinion soon turned against the rioters and the protests petered out. Synge died of Hodgkin’s disease just weeks short of his 38th birthday on March 24th 1909 trying to complete his last play, Deirdre Of The Sorrows. He was buried in Mount Jerome Graveyard, Dublin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A Word To The Wise
• Release date: Oct 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781780008677

Book preview

THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS By J. M. SYNGE

Edmund John Millington Synge was born on April 16th 1871 born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, County Dublin on 16 April 1871 the youngest son of eight children.

Synge was educated privately at schools in Dublin and Bray, and was later to study piano, flute, violin, music theory and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.

After graduating, Synge, with plans to be a professional musician went to Germany. He stayed at Coblenz during 1893 before moving to Würzburg in January 1894.  He then abandoned music due to self doubt and a shyness in performing in public and decided to pursue his literary interests, returning to Ireland in June 1894, and thence to Paris the following January to study literature and languages at the Sorbonne.

During summer holidays with his family in Dublin, he met and fell in love with Cherrie Matheson, a friend of his cousin and a member of the Plymouth Brethren. He proposed to her in 1895 and again the next year, but she turned him down on both occasions because of their differing religious viewpoints. The rejection was crushing and he determined to spend as much time away from Ireland as possible.

In 1896 he visited Italy before returning to Paris. Later that year he met W. B. Yeats, who encouraged Synge to live for a while in the Aran Islands and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work.

That same year he joined with Yeats, Lady Gregory, and George William Russell to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which later would become the Abbey Theatre.

In 1897 Synge suffered his first attack of Hodgkin's disease, a form of untreatable cancer at the time, and also had an enlarged gland removed from his neck.

In 1898, he spent his first summer on the Aran Islands and then continued for the next five collecting stories and folklore and perfecting his Irish but continued to live in Paris for the rest of the year. During this period, Synge wrote his first play, When The Moon Has Set.

In 1903, Synge left Paris and moved to London. He had written two one-act plays, Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen the previous year.

The Shadow of the Glen was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903. Riders to the Sea was performed at the same venue in February the following year

The play widely regarded as his masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, was first performed in the Abbey on 26 January 1907. The comedy attracted a hostile reaction from the Irish public and thereafter a riot ensued. Described as an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men, and worse still upon Irish girlhood.

Yeats returned from Scotland to address the crowd on the second night, and decided to call in the police. Press opinion soon turned against the rioters and the protests petered out.

Synge died of Hodgkin’s disease just weeks short of his 38th birthday on March 24th 1909 trying to complete his last play, Deirdre Of The Sorrows. He was buried in Mount Jerome Graveyard, Harolds Cross, Dublin 6.

Many samples of his work can be found at our youtube channel   http://www.youtube.com/user/PortablePoetry?feature=mhee   Many of these poems are in an audiobook by our sister company and can be purchased from iTunes, Amazon and other digital stores. 

PREFACE

In writing THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, as in my other plays, I have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the country people of

Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers.  A

certain number of the phrases I employ I have heard also from herds and

fishermen along the coast from Kerry to Mayo, or from beggar-women and

balladsingers nearer Dublin; and I am glad to acknowledge how much I owe to

the folk imagination of these fine people.  Anyone who has lived in real

intimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideas

in this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any

little hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay.  All art is a

collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature,

striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story-teller's or the

playwright's hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time.  It is probable

that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat down to his work

he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat at dinner, from his

mother or his children.  In Ireland, those of us who know the people have the

same privilege.  When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen, some years ago,

I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor

of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being

said by the servant girls in the kitchen.  This matter, I think, is of

importance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and the

language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich

and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is

the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form.  In the modern

literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose

poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound

and common interests of life.  One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans

producing this literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the

reality of life in joyless and pallid words.  On the stage one must have

reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama

has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy,

that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb

and wild in reality.  In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured

as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written