Synge is the most highly esteemed playwright of the Irish literary renaissance, the movement in which such literary figures as William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory made their mark at the turn of the twentieth century.

1. The Playboy of the
Western World
John Millington Synge:
Synge is the most highly esteemed
playwright of the Irish literary
renaissance, the movement in which
such literary figures as William Butler
Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory
made their mark at the turn of the
twentieth century.

2. Playwright, 1871–1909
• Born near Dublin on April 16, 1871, Synge
was the youngest of five children in an
upper-class Protestant family.
• Synge attended private schools for four
years, beginning at the age of ten, but ill
health prevented his regular attendance,
and his mother hired a private tutor to
instruct him at home.
• His primary ambition was music, and
because of his studies of violin, theory, and
composition, he won a scholarship from the
Royal Irish Academy of Music for advanced
study in counterpoint. At this time Synge had
also begun to write poetry.

3. Playwright
• Synge's early religious skepticism and his
unorthodox career aspirations made life
difficult for him in his mother's home, where
he lived until 1893.
• In that year he went to Germany to study
music, but was dissuaded by his
nervousness about performing. In the
summer of 1894 he moved to Paris to study
language and literature at the Sorbonne.
• He was writing poems and literary criticism
and supporting himself by giving English
lessons. In the autumn of 1895 he began
studying Italian in Italy, and in December,
1896, he returned to the Sorbonne. These
years of travel and study were punctuated
by vacation visits to Ireland, during which he
pursued Cherry Matheson, a young woman
from a devout Protestant family. The issue
of religious skepticism intruded once again,
and Cherry refused Synge's marriage
proposal in 1896.

4. Playwright
• On December 21, 1896, at the Hotel
Corneille in Paris, Synge met poet and
dramatistWilliam Yeats. During the
meeting, Yeats recommended that
Synge leave Paris and move to the
Aran Islands off the west coast of
Ireland. In Yeats' own words, as set
forth in his preface to The Well of the
Saints, he said, "'Give up Paris. ... Go
to the Aran Islands. Live there as if
you were one of the people
themselves; express a life that has
never found expression.'"
• He continued to winter in Paris,
but the study of Irish life and
literature became central to his
work. On the rocky, isolated
islands, Synge took photographs
and notes. He listened to the
speech of the islanders, a musical,
old-fashioned, Irish-flavored
dialect of English. He conversed
with them in Irish and English,
listened to stories, and learned the
impact that the sounds of words
could have apart from their
meaning.

5. Other Works
• Synge uses the islanders as raw
material for the creation of "images
and values ... which point towards the
importance of reviving, and
maintaining, a particular sensibility in
order to make sense of the
predicament of humanity."
• In 1901, Synge wrote his first
play, When the Moon Has Set, a full-
length drama which he later
condensed into one act. It tells the
story of a young, landowning atheist
who falls in love with a nun. Warned in
advance by a paralleled, unhappy
experience of a madwoman, the nun
gives up her vows and marries the
man. This play was unproduceable in
Ireland at the time for ideological
reasons.

7. Other Works
• In the summer of 1902 Synge
achieved a new level of
accomplishment. Staying at his
mother's rented house in Wicklow, he
drafted three plays: Riders to the
Sea, In the Shadow of the
Glen, and The Tinker's Wedding. In
these plays are found the rich spoken
language of the Irish peasant
characters who dominate Synge's
mature works.
• The first of the three plays to be
produced was In the Shadow of the
Glen. An ironic comedy set in Wicklow,
its plot is based on a story Synge first
heard on the Aran Islands and
narrated in his book The Aran Islands.
• A tramp seeks shelter in the house of
Nora Burke, whom he finds keeping
watch over her "dead" husband. When
the wife goes out, the husband
revives, and reveals to the tramp that
he has been faking his death in order
to catch Nora at adultery.

9. The Playboy of the Western World
• The play are found the rich spoken language
of the Irish peasant characters who
dominate Synge's mature works.
• In the preface to The Playboy of the
Western World, Synge described how he
learned the provincial dialect by listening to
the conversations of his mother's servant
girls "from a chink in the floor."
• " Presumably, if they had known Synge was
listening, the servants would have spoken a
more "correct" English; therefore,
eavesdropping enabled him to hear their
spontaneous cadences. From this
experience, he wrote in the same preface, "I
got more aid than any learning could have
given me."
• Early in 1906, Synge was traveling
with the Irish National Theatre Society
when he fell in love with one of the
actresses, Molly Allgood (stage name
Maire O'Neill), who was fifteen years
his junior and had only a grade-school
education. Allgood played the starring
role of Pegeen Mike in Synge's next
play, The Playboy of the Western
World,which is often called his
masterpiece.

10. The Playboy of the Western World
•
The premiere of The
Playboy of the Western
World brought the most
violent audience
response in the history of
Dublin theater. Hisses
began during the third act
and increased to a high
volume by curtain time.
• The plot, featuring an
idealization of
parricide and an
unhappy ending, was
one source of
audience hostility.

11. Characters within play
• The play is the story of Christy Mahon, a hapless but likeable young man
who believes he has murdered his tyrannical father and who, for telling the
tale, is welcomed as a hero by a group of country people. His romantic
yarns make him sought-after by Pegeen Mike, the thirtyish Widow Quin, and
other local women. Later, Old Mahon, the father, shows up with a bandaged
head, looking for his son. After yet another murder attempt, the two are
ultimately reconciled when Christy turns the tables on his bullying father,
who approves of Christy's newfound machismo. They wander off together,
leaving the country women disappointed.

12. Themes
DARKNESS
• All the characters realize that in
darkness lies a litany of threats,
including: ghosts, drunken farmhands
and violent militiamen. The real threat,
however, lies just outside in a
ditch: Christy Mahon.
• Offering shelter to this stranger invites
a different and more profound
darkness: the darkness of the human
capacity for violent, subconscious
desire.
RELIGION
• Religion in The Playboy serves as the
reigning moral order of village life. However,
Synge's depiction of it is quite nuanced,
since characters frequently subvert religious
expectation for the sake of self-interest.
• Shawn Keogh prefers to leave Pegeen
alone in the dead of night with a madman.
• Meanwhile, these 'religious' villagers
immediately celebrate Christy for his horrific
patricide.
• Though Synge never makes an explicit
attack on religion in the play, it is posed as
something antithetical to human freedom
and individuality, and this conflict forms the
center of the story.

13. Quotes and Analysis
• Oh, it’s a hard case to be an orphan and not to have your father that you’re used to,
and you’d easily kill and make yourself a hero in the sight of all.
Shawn, Act II, p. 141
The irony is certainly humorous, since Shawn uses his lack of family as excuse for his
lack of courage, but it also touches on some main themes. First, the audience
remembers that Shawn does have a surrogate father in Father Reilly, whom he
refuses to counter. The stifling nature of social and religious expectations is clear in
this irony. Secondly, it shows us that even Shawn is noticing the importance of
storytelling towards determining an identity. One becomes a "hero" by telling stories
as much as by committing action.

14. Themes
FATHER
• The theme of fathers is reflected
everywhere in [The Playboy]. In
general, fathers are presented in terms
of authority. They demand obedience,
which then poses a challenge to their
children: do they obey, or revolt?
There are three “fathers” within the
play: Michael James (Pegeen’s
father), Old Mahon (Christy’s father)
and Father Reilly, the village priest.
Each of these men is defined by the
obedience he demands of his children
(whether literal or figurative).
SOCIAL EXPECTATION
• Christy’s murder of his father incites
the action of The Playboy. This murder
is both literal and metaphorical - in
terms of the former, Christy does
actually (try to) kill his father; in terms
of the latter, he is celebrated not for
striking an old man, but for
representing an act of rebellion against
social expectation in general.

15. Quotes and Analysis
• ...he after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and going out into the
yard as naked as an ash-tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visage of the stars
till he put the fear of death into the banhbs and the screeching sows.
Christy, Act I, p. 127
What this image does is both raise the nature of his story to a mythic struggle, and doubly stress
Christy’s power in having vanquished this mythic figure. The figure he describes here possesses
terrible power, triggered by weeks of binge drinking.

16. Quotes and Analysis
• Well, it’s a clean bed and soft with it, and it’s great luck and company I’ve
won me in the end of time - two fine women fighting for the likes of me - till
I’m thinking this night wasn’t I a foolish fellow not to kill my father in years
gone by.
Christy, Act I, p. 131

17. Quotes and Analysis
• [in a low and intense voice] Shut your yelling, for if you’re after making a mighty man
of me this day by the power of a lie, you’re setting me now to think if it’s a poor thing
to be lonesome it’s worse, maybe, go mixing with the fools of the earth.
Christy, Act III, p. 162
• Christy’s low and intense voice augurs the incarnation of the new man, the new self,
that he summons by the end of the play. He recognizes for the first time that the
“mighty man” he has become — the athlete, the poet, the lover — is but a reflection
of crowd’s lies and stories. Christy wonders here whether he would be better off
without his dependance on their stories, as he was at the top of the play. Following
this moment, he rejects Pegeen, marking his final step towards self-reliance in a life
of heroic strength.

18. Themes
POETRY
• In many ways, what
distinguishes Christy as a
hero is less his actions
and more his ability to
represent those actions
through language.
Throughout the play,
Pegeen and company are
struck by Christy's verbal
brilliance.
THE PLAYBOY
• The Playboy is initially
understood as a flirtatious man
who attracts women. This
aptitude is largely based on his
mastery of language.
Therefore, a playboy is one
who can 'play' with words. And
yet Christy drives this concept
into a greater place, as his
language and storytelling
inflate his self-image.

19. Quotes and Analysis
• You should have had great people in your family, I’m thinking, with
the little, small feet you have, and you with a kind of quality name,
the like of what you’d find on the great powers and potentates of
France and Spain...and you a fine, handsome young fellow with a
noble brow...it’s the poets are your like—fine, fiery fellows with great
rages when their temper’s aroused.
Pegeen Mike, Act I, pp. 124-125

20. Quotes and Analysis
• ...but I was lonesome all times, and born lonesome, I’m thinking, as the moon of
dawn...my heart’s scalded this day, and I going off stretching out the earth between
us, the way I’ll not be waking near you another dawn of the year till the two of us arise
to hope or judgment with the saints of God...
Christy, Act II, p.139
Christy, preparing to flee the pub from fear of capture by the police, summons a
poetic voice to lament his loss of Pegeen. The poetry lies not so much in the imagery
as in the scale of his loss, which arcs from birth to death and beyond, to judgment
even. This passage marks a step along the way of Christy’s transformation

21. Quotes and Analysis
• [Putting her shawl over her head and breaking out into wild lamentations] Oh, my
grief, I’ve lost him surely; I’ve lost the only Playboy of the Western World.
Pegeen Mike, Act III, p. 166
• Pegeen’s grief closes the play. Christy may have fallen from her imagination, but she
did not anticipate the effect this would have upon him. In effect, he truly becomes the
heroic figure she imagined him to be, precisely and ironically because he repudiates
that imagining. The departure of the emancipated Christy marks the departure of her
own dream of liberation. She recognizes that she does not have the strength to re-
make herself.