John Millington Synge

When young Christy Mahon flees from his family’s farm and tells the townspeople he killed his father, they respond in a way he did not expect. After an intense fight with his father, young Christy Mahon flees from his family’s farm to tell the townspeople what he had done. When Christy claims that he killed his own father, the townspeople are surprisingly more interested in the story rather than condemning his immoral actions. Reluctantly, Christy recounts the story of the disagreement that eventually led to Christy hitting his father in the head with a heavy farming tool. The townspeople are transfixed, and deem Christy to be a bold and impressive man. As continues with his story, Christy captures the attention of a beautiful barmaid named Pegeen. Though Pegeen is betrothed to another man, she begins flirting with Christy, who appreciates the attention. However, amid the town’s celebration of Christy’s bold act, a surprise visitor comes into town, and is not as enchanted by Christy’s actions as the others. Angry and hurt, the visitor challenges Christy’s actions, risking his newfound position of a celebrated figure, and forcing Christy to desperate measures. Separated into three acts, John Millington Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World, examines the human tendency to worship the sensationalized without regard to morals. When The Playboy of the Western World first premiered in the famed Abbey Theatre in Dublin, Ireland in 1907, it elicited an extreme reaction from its audience. Scandalized and enraged by the portrayal of the townspeople, riots broke out. Critics also detested the work, feeling just as insulted as the other Irish people. Despite the outrage of its initial release, The Playboy of the Western World is now considered John Millington Synge’s masterpiece, and is celebrated for its lyrical beauty. The play has also since been adapted into a musical and film, serving as a testament to the play’s genius and compelling content. This edition of The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge is now presented in an easy-to-read font and features a new, eye-catching cover design. With these accommodations, The Playboy of the Western World is restored to modern standards while preserving the original mastery and lyricism of John Millington Synge.

This revised edition of the play is published alongside commentary and notes by Christopher Collins, Assistant Professor of Drama at the University of Nottingham, UK. It includes information for today's students on the play's context; themes; dramatic devices; production history; critical reception; academic debate; and ideas for further study. It also includes interviews with practitioners involved in major recent productions of the play.Described by J.M. Synge as "a comedy, an extravaganza, made to use", The Playboy of the Western World is one of the most iconic plays to have come out of Ireland in the 20th century and is today recognised as a staple of the dramatic canon. It is published as a new Student Edition, which offers a 21st century lens on a play over 100 years old. When it was first performed in 1907 at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, Synge's play provoked uproar and was interrupted more than once by the police. Today, we recognise its importance in making Irish drama the force it became in the early 20th century.

Edmund John Millington Synge 16 April 1871 - 24 March 1909) was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre. Although he came from a privileged Anglo-Irish background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view. Synge developed Hodgkin's disease, a metastatic cancer that was then untreatable. He died several weeks short of his 38th birthday as he was trying to complete his last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows.Synge was born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, on 16 April 1871. 1] He was the youngest son in a family of eight children. His parents were members of the Protestant upper middle class. his father, John Hatch Synge, who was a barrister, came from a family of landed gentry in Glanmore Castle, County Wicklow. He was the uncle of brothers, mathematician John Lighton Synge and optical microscopy pioneer Edward Hutchinson Synge. Synge's paternal grandfather, also named John Synge, was an evangelical Christian involved in the movement that became the Plymouth Brethren and his maternal grandfather, Robert Traill, had been a Church of Ireland rector in Schull, County Cork, who died in 1847 during the Great Irish Famine. Synge's father contracted smallpox and died in 1872 at the age of 49. Synge's mother moved the family to the house next door to her mother's house in Rathgar, County Dublin. Synge, although often ill, had a happy childhood there. He developed an interest in bird-watching along the banks of the River Dodder and during family holidays at the seaside resort of Greystones, County Wicklow, and the family estate at Glanmore. Synge was educated privately at schools in Dublin and Bray, and later studied piano, flute, violin, music theory and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He travelled to the continent to study music, but changed his mind and decided to focus on literature. 1] He was a talented student and won a scholarship in counterpoint in 1891. The family moved to the suburb of Kingstown (now D n Laoghaire) in 1888, and Synge entered Trinity College, Dublin, the following year. He graduated with a BA in 1892, having studied Irish and Hebrew, as well as continuing his music studies and playing with the Academy Orchestra in the Antient Concert Rooms. Between November 1889 and 1894 he took private music lessons with Robert Prescott Stewart

John Millington Synge, a leading figure in the Irish literary renaissance and one of Ireland's most celebrated writers, powerfully and poetically describes the harsh rural life on the West Coast of Ireland in his six plays: In the Shadow of the GlenRiders to the SeaThe Well of the SaintsThe Playboy of the Western WorldThe Tinker's WeddingDeirdre of the Sorrows.This hardback edition of the collected plays is the perfect way to appreciate Synge's powerful passionate drama.

A masterpiece by J.M. Synge, The Playboy of The Western World is set up in an Irish background during the late nineteenth century and led to riots after it was first staged in Dublin. Christy Mahon, a young man claims to kill his father. The villagers are upset at his arrival but nevertheless they enjoy his story about how he drove a loy through his father's head. Mahon emerges into a heroic figure and the barmaid Pegeen falls in love with him, to the dismay of her betrothed, Shawn. The controversial tragicomic play has received a large critical appreciation and still sustains its influential hold over the Irish theatre, even after a century of its first premier.