John Millington Synge (1871- 1909)

 

Synge’s plays have had several aspects of realism while also incorporating lyrical qualities. As a result, his plays evolved into a complicated mash-up of old genres organized in interesting ways. In her introduction to Oxford’s collection of Synge’s plays. Ann Saddlemyer writes that Synge’s study of the Aran Inhabitantants resulted in an “appreciation of their increased awareness to the ability to adapt of nature and the extreme conditions they experienced,” which helped him progress “his own aesthetic, a fusion of romantic belief system and iconic realism”.
Synge says in the prologue to” The Playboy of the Western World” that he criticized Ibsen and Zola’s realism, arguing that they “dealt with the essence of existence in the joyless and colorless term”.
Synge had heard stories on the Islands about a young man from Connaught who killed his father with a spade. The boy then escaped to Aran, where he asked the locals to take him in.
This narrative became the storyline of Synge’s play. The playboy of the Western World, which was performed in Dublin in 1907.
Synge integrated his insights of Irish society into his play, revealing what Robin Skelton calls the islands’ “heroic ideals” and “knowledge of global myth” in his The Writings of J.M. Synge. Skelton further concludes that Synge was able to produce “pictures and ideals…. That hint towards the imperative of restoring, and sustaining, a specific sensibility in order to make sense of humanity’s dilemma” through his research.
The Playboy of The Western World (1907)
In his prologue to the play, Synge refers to the “special sensibility” that he artistically recreates in The Playboy of the Western World as “public imagination in Ireland that is fiery, majestic and delicate.” Synge analyses the appeal of mythologizing as well as its ultimate confrontation with reality, focusing on the Irish proclivity for engaging the imagination in the construction of myth.
The characters in the play look simple and unsentimental at first. The independent, strong-willed Pegeen, in particular, is known for her ability to perceive other clearly. Despite the fact that she has consented to marry Shawn, she is aware of his flaws. She observes his conservatism and chastises him for it.
Shawn, on the other hand, has a poet’s touch, at least in the first scene, when he says, “I could hear the cows breathing, and moaning in the silence of the air” as he stands outside her door. This lyrical statement foreshadows the entrance of Christy, the more linguistically gifted man who would take Pegeen’s heart with his literary efforts. Shawn will be the peasants’ voice of reality, even if they pay little attention to him.
When Christy enters, the sentimentalism process begins. The town’s people love of storytelling is clear shortly after Christy’s arrival, as they question the young man about who he is and why he has come to their town. When Christy inquires whether the police frequently stop at the bar, their attention is instantly awakened. As Christy is hesitant to reveal the genuine cause for his terror of the authorities, everyone in the pub begins to concoct their own versions of his narrative. Pegeen believes he “followed after a young woman on a lonely night.” The others believe that he is being pursued by bailiffs or landlords, or that he has created silver coinage or married more than one woman. Their interest in him grows as time passes.
Their interest in him grows as they concoct scenario after scenario that Christy refutes until Pegeen concludes that the scared child” did nothing at all. “He’s a “soft guy,” she says, who “wouldn’t cut the throat of a shrieking swine”. Christy’s reply is prompted by her honest portrayal of his weak character, and he declares that he murdered his father.
Everyone is immediately engaged in the play of the event, even Pegeen, who is astounded by this courageous effort. They would not let Christy rest until he has completed telling the full story, and when he has, they all agree that he is a courageous and fearless young man who should be given the task of watching over Pegeen when she works at night at the bar. When Shawn says,” That'd be a strange type to bring into a respectable peaceful family with the likes of Pegeen.” He is the voice of sanity in the scenario. The others ignore him, preoccupied with their idea of the hero in their own.
Synge’s choice of language in Playboy was particularly influential from the beginning. In Poet Lore, Louis Untermeyer wrote about the play in 1908, saying, “Wild poetry itself is in his speech because while Mr. Synge works wholly in prose, his sentence is so steeped in Similes of the heavens that his even commonplaces are filled and colored with all the subtleties of rhythms. “The sunshine flows through his lines, casting a spell of scenic grandeur throughout his whole body of work.”