Riders to the Sea: The Shadow of the Glen ; The Tinker's Wedding ; The Well of the Saints ; The Playboy of the Western World ; Deirdre of the Sorrows

John Millington Synge

Oxford University Press, 1998 - Drama - 213 pages

J M Synge was one of the key dramatists in the flourishing world of Irish literature at the turn of the century. This volume offers all of Synge's plays, which range from racy comedy to stark tragedy, all sharing a memorable lyricism. The introduction sets Synge's work in the context of the Irish literary movement, with special attention to his role as one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre and his work alongside W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. Includes: Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker's Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Play of the Western World; Deirdre of the Sorrows

Contents

• THE TINKERS WEDDING: 27
• THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD: 95
• Explanatory Notes: 188
• Glossary: 212

About the author

After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, Synge left for Europe to write poetry. If W. B. Yeats had not discovered him in Paris and persuaded him to return to Ireland and absorb its native traditions, the Irish renaissance might have lost its best playwright. As it was, Synge's poetry of Celtic romanticism was rather more tempered with a European realism than Yeats and his renaissance had anticipated. Yeats sent Synge to the West of Ireland to get to know the peasants there. The result was, in addition to the journal The Aran Islands (1907), two short plays for the Abbey: The Shadow of the Glen (1903), in which a comic resurrection interrupts a widow's marriage bargaining, and Riders to the Sea (1904), about a mother's loss of her last son, a perfect condensed tragedy and probably the finest one-act play. The poorly received The Well of the Saints (1905), whose characters vehemently reject reality for comfortable illusion, offered the Abbey audience a warning of what was to come. This was Synge's masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World (1907), which touched off rioting at the theater. The playboy is Christy Mahon, a lout who becomes a hero among the Mayo peasantry when he boasts he has murdered his father. Satire on Irish romanticism conceals a parable of the poet's development and estrangement from his public. But Dublin nationalists heard only the people slandered, and Dublin prudery heard only the forbidden word "shifts" on Christy's lips. Playboy was the last play Synge saw staged. He died of cancer at age 37, never having completed Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910), his only work in the Celtic legendary mode.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Riders to the Sea: The Shadow of the Glen ; The Tinker's Wedding ; The Well of the Saints ; The Playboy of the Western World ; Deirdre of the Sorrows; Oxford English drama; Oxford world's classics, ISSN 2755-4058; Oxford world's classics: Oxford English drama; World's classics
• Author: John Millington Synge
• Editor: Ann Saddlemyer
• Contributor: Ann Saddlemyer
• Edition: illustrated, reprint, reissue, revised
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998
• ISBN: 0192834487, 9780192834485
• Length: 213 pages
• Subjects: Drama / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Drama / General