J M Synge

J M Synge was born in 1871 in Rathfarnham, County Dublin and wrote plays, poetry and prose.  He was also interested in folklore and spent a lot of time researching it.  He is probably best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots on its opening night at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

Synge was educated at Trinity College and had initially wanted to take up a career in music and went to Germany in 1893 to study music.  He didn't enjoy performing in public and decided to pursue a literary career.  After a brief return to Ireland he moved to Paris in 1894 to study literature and languages at the Sorbonne.  In 1896 he met W B Yeats who encouraged him to spend some time in the Aran Islands to study the language and the people.

While in Paris Synge spent time in Maud Gonne's circle and wrote some literary criticism for her Irlande Libre and other journals.  Synge spent the summer of 1898 on the Aran Islands, as well as spending time at Lady Gregory's Coole Park near Gort in County Galway and while there he met Yeats and Edward Martyn.  He spend the next five summers on the Aran Islands, learning Irish and collecting tales and folklore, he also made regular visits to Brittany.

Synge sent his first play The Moon has Set to Lady Gregory for the Irish Literary Theatre, but she rejected it and it was not published until it appeared in The Collected Works in the 1960s.  Synge's first description on life on the Aran Islands was published in the New Ireland Review in 1898 and his journal The Aran Islands was published in 1907 with illustrations by Jack Butler Yeats.  Synge put forward the theory that although the Aran Islanders were staunch Catholics that if you dig beneath the surface you can detect older, pagan beliefs and this influenced many of the plays he wrote about Irish peasants and fishing communities.

Synge finally had his first play Shadow of the Glen performed at the Molesworth Theatre in October 1903 and this play was also on the bill for the opening night of the Abbey Theatre.  Synge was appointed literary adviser to the Abbey and was made one of the directors together with Yeats and Lady Gregory.

Synge's best known play The Playboy of the Western World was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in 1907.  There was a riot on the opening night as many of the audience thought that the play was a libel upon Irish peasant men and Irish girlhood.  The second night was no better and W B Yeats, just returned from Scotland, called in the police.

Synge died at the untimely age of 37 of Hodgkin's disease in a Dublin Nursing home.  His unfinished final play Deidre of the Sorrows was completed by W B Yeats and Molly Allgood, to whom Synge had recently become engaged.  It was performed at the Abbey Theatre in January 1910 with Molly Allgood in the lead role.