John Millington Synge: References & Notes

References
Dictionary of National Biography (2nd Supplement, Vol. III), entry on J. M. Synge written by John Masefield.

Maunsel & Co.: The list of Maunsel publications appended to the ‘popular edition’ of St. John Ervine, Mrs. Martin’s Man [1914] (Dublin & London: Maunsel 1915) include the following from the publishers: The Dramatic Works of J. M. Synge, in one vol., with portrait, Cloth, gilt (6s.), first issue in one vol., works of this great Irish playwright whose work has been translated into so many languages and is known all over the world. / His universal appeal so rapidly made is now assured, and this issue of his Plays in one volume at a popular price brings his principal work within the reach of all.’ Sundry critics are then cited, viz., ‘It is difficult to see any name among those of our youngest contemporaries more likely to endure than that of Synge’ (Edmund Gosse, in the Morning Post); ‘As definite a place in literature, as enviable a place in memory, as any man of his age and day’ (Westminster Gazette); ‘His work will live, for he has accomplished in playwrighting something which had not been accomplished for centuries’ (Times Literary Supplement); ‘Indisputably among the artists of this century’ (Pall Mall Gazette); the greatest dramatist that Modern Ireland has produced’ (R. A. Scott-James, in Daily News); ‘The works of a genius’ (‘A.P.’, in Evening Standard and St. James Gazette); ‘His work had qualities which made it universal. … A new influence, strongly individual, wonderfully expressive, in its rich and glowing idiom, full of vitality and passion’ (Spectator); ‘Synge is greater than any living dramatist, and he will survive when most of our popular mediocrities have perished’ (James Douglas, The Star); ‘One of the greatest men of our time (Manchester Guardian); ‘The biggest contribution to literature made by any Irishman in our time’ (New York Sun); ‘that truly original poet and dramatist’ (Lord Dunsany, Saturday Review). [For further details of edn., see under Works, supra.]

Stephen Brown, in his Guide to Books on Ireland (1912), Appendix, gives an account of Frank Hugh O’Donnell’s attack on Synge in the pamphlet Souls for Gold (1899) [see also Cardinal Logue, q.v.].

D. J. Doherty & J. E. Hickey, eds., A Chronology of Irish History since 1500 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1989), cites Pearse on Synge, firstly in 1904, ‘a sinister and unholy gospel ...’; later in 1913: [...] one of the two or three men who have in our time made Ireland considerable in the eyes of the world.’ Note that the second quote is amplified in Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland (Cape 1996): ‘Ireland, in our day as in the past, has excommunicated some of those who have served her best […’; &c., as infra].

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, selects In the Shadow of the Glen, and The Playboy of the Western World, [629-45]; ‘Prelude’, ‘To the Oaks of Glencree’, ‘A Question’, ‘Winter’, ‘The Curse’; from Poems, ‘Abroad’, ‘In Dream’, ‘In a Dream’ from Poems and Translations (1909) [749-50]; When the Moon Has Set [898-915]. 717, BIOG [as above]. FDA3 selects Autobiography [399-405], and Aran Islands [405-06]; REFS & REMS; 2 [self-conscious virtuosity of language]; 127 [bibl. Corkery]; 131 [ed., Terence Brown: esp. drew Paddy Kavanagh’s ire, ‘His peasants are picturesque conventions; the language he invented for them did a disservice to letters in this country by drawing our attention away from the common speech whose delightfulness comes from its very ordinariness’]; 174-5 [influence on Paul Vincent Carroll]; 244 [Beckett’s kinship to Synge not obscured by his commitment to Joyce]; 380 [Synge full of subtle mutations, ed., Deane]; 422 [commemorated in Yeats’s Autobiographies, esp. The Death of Synge and Other Passages from an Old Diary, 1928]; 484 [Kavanagh, ‘Ireland, as patented by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge, a spiritual entity’, Self-Portrait, 1964]; 496, 548, 562, 571 [?index errs.]; 611 imagining history as a version of personality, acc. Deane, Celtic Revivals, 1985]; 613 [a Yeats hero, in ibid.]; 634-35 [David Lloyd quotes Corkery on the perpetual state of ‘expatriation’ common to Synge and the Anglo-Irish writers]; 655 [In their 1906 pamphlet Irish Plays, Yeats, Synge and Lady Gregory were quick to see Irish life as the life of the peasants, acc. Fintan O’Toole, in ‘Going West’, The Crane Bag, 1985]; 668 [Synge’s Aran Islands had a (unique government subvented) fishery industry using large trawlers from the east coast and linked to the London markets [W. J. McCormack, ed.]; 670 [Irish master of mod. ‘Brit.’ drama, Sean Golden, Crane Bag, 1979]; 686 [Horace Plunkett’s critique compared with Synge’s and Joyce’s]; 895-6 [Máirtín Ó Díreáin, ‘Omós do John Millington Synge’/’Homage to John Millington Synge’: ‘the impulse that brought you to my people ...’]; 1137 [ed. essay, ‘contemporary drama 1953-86’]; 1143 [Michael J. Molly, compared]; 1312 [Lennox Robinson’s reconciliation of ‘poetry of speech’ with ‘humdrum fact’ clearly refers to Synge , acc. Kiberd, ed.]; 1314 [bridging the schism [of Irish culture] by injecting toxins of Gaelic syntax and imagery into [his] writing, acc. idem.]; 1362n [slight allusion in Kennelly’s Cromwell, ‘Reading Aloud’].

Paul M. Levitt, J. M. Synge: A Bibliography of Published Criticism (Dublin: Irish University Press 1974), lists references to Synge in Yeats’s autobiographical and introductory writings: Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (NY: Macmillan 1938), pp.185, 266, 292-95, 322, 323, 356, 374, 375, 376, 385, 403-04, 412, 416, 417, 421, 422, 431, 432-36, 437-38, 441, 442-44, 446-48, 451, 470. The Cutting of an Agate (NY: Macmillan 1912; London: 1919), pp. 114-22, 126-29, 152-54, 168-69, 170, 171 [including ‘The Tragic Theatre’ pp. 25-35, ‘Preface to the First Edition of The Well of The Saints’, pp. 111-22, ‘Preface to the First Edition of John M. Synge’s Poems and Translations’, pp. 123-29, and ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, pp. 130-76]. The Death of Synge, and Other Passages from an Old Diary (Dublin: Cuala Press 1928) [first printed as ‘The Death of Synge and Other Pages ... &c.]’ in The Dial [Chicago], April 1928, pp.271-88; rep. as ‘... and Other Passages ... (&c.), in The London Mercury, XVII, April 1928, pp.637-52], pp.10, 11-12, 12-13, 14-15, 15-16, 17, 18-19, 23-24, 26-28, 30-32, 33-34. Dramatis Personae, 1896-1902, Estrangement, The Death of Synge, The Bounty of Sweden (London: Macmillan 1936) , pp.34, 56, 57, 59, 69, 75, 90-91, 100, 101, 105, 106, 111, 112, 124-29, 130, 131-32, 135-36, 137-38, 141-43, 149, 171, 182, 184, 185-86, 187-88, 189; and Do . (NY: Macmillan 1936), pp.36, 60, 61, 62-63, 74, 80, 97-98, 108, 109, 113, 114, 120, 121, 133-37, 139, 140-41, 144-45, 146-47, 150-52, 157, 181 192 194-95 196-98 199. Essays (London & NY: Macmillan 1924), pp.294-96, 369-78, 379-84, 385-24, 488-89 [including ‘The Tragic Theatre’, pp. 294-96; ‘Preface to the First Edition of The Well of the Saints’, pp. 369-78; ‘Preface to the First Edition of John M. Synge’s Poems and Translations, pp.379-84; ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, pp.385-424]. Essays and Introductions (New York & London: Macmillan 1961), pp.238-39, 298-05, 306-10, 311-42, 515, 527, 528, 529 [including ‘Preface to the First Edition of The Well of the Saints’, pp. 298-305; ‘Preface to the First Edition of John M. Synge’s Poems and Translations’, pp. 306-10; ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, pp. 311-42]. Explorations:Selected by Mrs. W. B. Yeats (London and NY: Macmillan 1962), pp.106, 114, 137-38, 143-44, 157, 182, 183, 184, 188 192, 225-26, 226-28, 229-30, 234, 248, 249, 252, 253-54, 254-55. The Hour Glass, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, The Golden Helmet, The Irish Dramatic Movement (Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare Head Press 1908), pp.112, 120, 142, 147-48, 186, 187, 188 191-92 196, 227-28, 228-30, 231-32. . [including ‘The Controversy over The Playboy of the Western World’, pp. 227-28; ‘From Mr. Yeats’ Opening Speech in the Debate on February 4 1907, at the Abbey Theatre’, pp.228-30; and ‘On Taking The Playboy to London’, pp. 231-32]. ‘Introduction: Mr. Synge and His Plays’, in The Well of the Saints by J. M. Synge: Being Volume Four of Plays for an Irish Theatre (London: A. H. Bullen 1905). ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, The Forum (New York), XLVI (August 1911), pp.179-200. Allan Wade, ed., The Letters of W. B. Yeats (NY: Macmillan 1955) [page references not listed]. Plays and Controversies (London: Macmillan 1923; NY: Macmillan 1924), pp.44, 54, 83, 84, 90-91, 120, 139-40, 141, 142, 146-47, 152 192-93 194-96 197-98, 205, 209, 210-11, 212. Synge and the Ireland of His Time by William Butler Yeats with a Note Concerning a Walk through Connemara zvith Him by Jack Butler Yeats (Churchtown, Dundrum: Cuala Press 1911). A. Norman Jeffares, ed., W. B. Yeats: Selected Criticism (London: Macmillan 1964), pp. 132, 144, 167, 185, 188, 189-90 199, 201-05, 260.

See also under ‘Biography: Books and Periodicals, pp.17-18, citing ‘J. M. Synge and the Ireland of His Time’, in The Forum, XLVI [New York] (August 1911), pp.179-200; W. B. Yeats, ‘The Death of Synge and Other Pages from an Old Diary’, in The Dial [Chicago], April 1928, pp.271-88; Do ., rep. as ‘... and Other Passages ... (&c.), in The London Mercury, XVII, April 1928, pp.637-52; Do., rep. as The Death of Synge, and Other Passages from an Old Diary (Churchtown, Dundrum [Dublin]: Cuala Press 1928); ‘More Memories’, in The Dial, LXXIII [Chicago] (Sept. 1922), pp.283-302 [incl. his description of the meeting with Synge in Paris, pp.298-301], Do ., rep. in The Trembling of the Veil 1922), and in Autobiographies (1926); ‘A Poeple’s Theatre: A Letter to Lady Gregory, The Dial [Chicago], LXVIII (April 1920), pp.458-68].

Kevin Rockett, et al., eds., Cinema & Ireland (1988), Playboy of the Western World, The, [17, 27, 111, Synge’s stage version]; [Robert Mitchum, the most glaring and crude miscasting in the role of Christy in Brian Desmond Hurst’s Playboy, 1962], 114 [co-produced by Lord Killanin] 123, n19 [IFFC investment in], 217 [‘no savagery or fine words in him at all’ - Pegeen Mike rebukes Shawn Keogh]. ALSO Riders to the Sea, 59 [Hurst made 40-min. version in 1935, funded by English star Gracie Fields, with Sara Allgood, Denis Johnston, Kevin Guthrie, Ria Mooney, and Shelah Richards], 105 [mixed reception that Riders to the Sea (1936) received dampened Abbey enthusiasm for such productions]. See also under Siobhan MacKenna, who acted Pegeen Mike. NOTE that the film was revived on 7 Jan. 1997 at IFC (Dublin).

Helena Sheehan, Irish Television Drama, A Society and Its Stories (RTE 1987), RTE films, In the Shadow of the Glen, 91, 99, Synge/Louis Lentin (1964); John Synge Comes Next, comp. Maurice Good/Chloe Gibson; Riders to the Sea, 155, J. M. Synge/Shelah Richards (1971); The Heart’s a Wonder, Synge’s Playboy, adpt. Maureen & Nuala O’Farrell/Laurence Bourne (1978); Well of the Saints, The, 91, 92, Synge/Michael Hayes (1962).

[ top ]

Libraries & Booksellers

Libraries
Belfast Central Public Library holds Dramatic Works, 4 vols. (Maunsel 1915).

Hyland Catalogue, No. 219 (1995), lists Samuel Synge, Letters to my Daughter (1st end. 1931). Hyland Cat. No. 224 (Dec. 1996) lists The Playboy of the Western World (Dublin: Maunsel 1907), J. B. Yeats port., copy incl. signatures of yeats and Synge pasted on title page, with 8 autographs on reverse of port. , incl. O’Neill, Allgood, Kerrigan, Sinclair O’Rourke, and Wright of orig. cast.; Aran Island, pocket edn. (1921); In Wicklow and West Kerry [1st edn.] (1912); In Wicklow, West Kerry, and Connemara (Maunsel 1919) [first edn. without ills.], and Do., another edn. (Aleen & Unwin 1929); Poems and Translations (Maunsel 1920); E. Coxhead, J. M. Synge and Lady Gregory (1962), ports., 35pp.

[ top ]

Notes
When the Moon is Set (1901): The play is set in c.1900. When it opens Columb Sweeney has just rushed back from Paris to be at the bedside of his uncle, the owner of a ‘big house’ who has just died. While staying in the house, Columb falls in love with his cousin Sister Eileen, a Catholic nun who has been nursing the dying man in his final illness. For most of the play Columb attempts to persuade her to marry him, telling her that she is denying her sexual and maternal instincts by remaining a nun. Eileen, after witnessing troubling events involving the family of one of the house servants, finally relents. In the last scene they under-go an unofficial pagan/Christian wedding ceremony. In September 1901 J. M. Synge stopped off at Lady Gregory’s Coole Park in Gort, Co. Galway, en route for the Aran Islands on his fourth sojourn. There he presented Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats with the manuscript hoping that they would accept it for performance at the Irish Literary Theatre. The founders of that theatre rejected the play but encouraged its author to continue writing drama. (Adapted from David Clare, ‘Compiling a new Composite Draft of J. M.Synge's When the Moon is Set, in Navigating Ireland's Theatre Archive: Theory, Practice, Performance, ed. Barry Houlihan [Reimagining Ireland Ser.; Vol. 87] (Peter Lang 2019), Chap. 14 - online; accessed 03.06.2019; see extract under Quotations - as supra.)

Riders to the Sea (1904): the original cast on 25 Feb. 1904 was MAURYA (an old woman) - Honor Lavelle; BARTLEY (her son) - W. G. Fay; CATHLEEN (her daughter) - Sarah Allgood; NORA (a younger daughter) - Emma Vernon; Men and Women. (See digital copy of 1911 edition with an Introduction by Edward O’Brien at Gutenberg Project - online; also a copy in RICORSO - in this frame or new window.)

The Abbey Theatre Archive records early Playboy venues as 20, 22-27 Jan. 1906 with cast - Annie Allgood as Woman; Sara Allgood as Maurya; Eva Dillon as Woman; William Fay as Bartley; Brigit O'Dempsey as Nora; Maire (Molly) O'Neill as Cathleen; Ambrose Peter as Men; Sam Whann as Men; Udolphus Wright as Men. (See Abbey online.)

Riders to the Sea: The celebrated last phrases of Riders to the Sea - ‘... and we must be satisfied ...’ - were taken from a letter of Martin McDonough, an Aran friend, to Synge: ‘It happened that my brother’s wife, Shawneen, died. And she was visiting the last Sunday in December, and now isn’t it a sad story to tell? but at the same time we have to be satisfied because a person cannot live always.’ (David Greene and Edward Stephens, ‘Coole Park: Beginings of the Literary Theatre. Paris: Brittany [&] Second Visit to Aran., in J. M. Synge, 1871-1909, NY: Macmillan 1959, p.105; cited by Angela Cushley, UUC 3rd Yr Diss., p.23).

There is a video recording of the last scene of the 1985 production with Mick Lally and Sean McGinley at Daily Motion - online; accessed 09.06.2019.

The Shadow of the Glen (1903): A tramp seeking shelter in the Burkes’ isolated farmhouse finds Nora tending to the corpse of Dan. Nora goes out to find Michael, and Dan reveals to the tramp that his death is a mere ruse. He plays dead again when Nora and Michael return, but leaps up in protest when Michael proposes to Nora. Dan kicks Nora out to wander the roads and she leaves with the tramp, who promises her a life of freedom. The play is set in an isolated cottage in County Wicklow in what was then the present day. Premiered on 8 Oct. [sic] 1903 in the Molesworth Hall, Dublin and billed as In the Shadow of the Glen. (See Amazon notice for The Tinkers’ Wedding [with Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen] (CreateSpace Edn., 46pp. - online; accessed 07.06.2019.)

[ top ]

The Tinker’s Wedding, rough-drafted 1902; orig. titled ‘The Movements of May’, later writing to the publisher Elkin Matthews, that the central scene where a priest is tied up in a sack seemed likely to displease ‘a good many of our Dublin friends’ (letter of 1905); completed, using material from Hyde’s Love Songs of Connacht, 1907; performed London 1909; not played in Dublin until 1971; revived by Druid Theatre Co. in Dublin as part of DruidSynge Project, Oct. 2004, with Gary Lydon and Nora Sheahan as the title-characters, and Marie Mullen - Druid founder with Mick Lally - as the drunken mother.

Plot notes: Sarah Casey convinces the reluctant Michael Byrne to marry her by threatening to run off with another man. She accosts a local priest, and convinces him to wed them for ten shillings and a tin can. Michael’s mother shows up drunk and harasses the priest, then steals the can to exchange it for more drink. The next morning Sarah and Michael go to the chapel to be wed, but when the priest finds that the can is missing he refuses to perform the ceremony. Sarah protests and a fight breaks out that ends with the priest tied up in a sack. The tinkers free him after he swears not to set the police after them and he curses them in God's name as they flee in mock terror. (See Amazon notice for The Tinkers’ Wedding [with Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen] (CreateSpace Edn., 46pp. - online; accessed 07.06.2019.)

The Playboy Riots (Feb. 1907) - 1: Yeats telegrammed Lady Gregory: ‘audience broke up in disorder at the word shift’, in reference to the line: ‘If all the girls in Mayo were standing before me in their shifts [alone]’.

The Playboy Riots (Feb. 1907) - 2: Audience reacted violently on third use of the word “shift”; the word had been used without offence in Douglas Hyde’s Love Songs of Connacht (in Irish as léine), as Synge pointed out in an interview. See Stephen Tifft, ‘The Parracidal Phantams: Irish Nationalism and the Playboy Riots’, in Nationalism and Sexualities, ed. Andrew Parker, et al., NY: Routledge, 1992, pp.313-32; Declan Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, Harvard UP 1996 [all cited in Gregory Castle, Modernism and the Celtic Revival, Cambridge UP 2001, p.165.]

The Playboy was revived at the Old Vic (London) in Sept. 1911 dir. by John Crowley with Robert Sheehan, Ruth Negga, Niamh Cusack, et al. (See Other Playboys incl. Willie Fay (1907); Maeliosa Stafford (Druid, 1982-83); Cillian Murphy (Druid, 2004). Among other revivals is that directed by Kate Canning at the Dundrum Mill Theatre over 23rd-25th August 2018.

[ top ]

The Playboy in cinema

The Playboy of the Western World (1962), a 100-min. film based on The Playboy of the Western World, to a screenplay by Brian Desmond Hurst (dir.), and Roland Kibbee. The cast consisted of the English actor Gary Raymond (Christy) with Siobhán McKenna (Pegeen Mike) and Elspeth March (Widow Quinn), Irish-born Niall MacGinnis (Old Mahon),and Abbey actors Michael O’Brian (peasant), Liam Redmond (Michael James), Brendan Cauldwell (), and John Welsh. It was produced by the Four Provinces company created in 1952 by Hurst and Michael Morris (3rd Baron Killanin) who had previously produced John Ford’s The Rising of the Moon and Gideon's Day The listed producers were Killanin, Denis O’Dell and Brendan Smith, and it was distributed Janus Films. The film was shot on Inch Strand, Co. Kerry, during July and August 1961. The screen-music is by Seán Ó Riada.

[ top ]

French trans.: A French version of The Playboy of the Western World, translated by Maurice Bourgeois was first seen at Théâtre Antoine, on 13 December 1913, being performed by Lugné-Poe’s ‘Théâtre subventionné de l’Oeuvre’, to be greeted with a mixed reception. The translation was published [with preface and notes] in Grande Revue 82 (25 Nov. 1913), pp.228-47 & Do. (10 Dec. 1913), pp.463-502. (Quoted in K. P. S. Jochum, ‘Maud Gonne on Synge’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 4, Winter 1971, pp.65-70.)

Rev. Mr. Synge: Synge recounts the story told him by an old man on Aran about the service done to him by his [the playwright’s] uncle, the one-time Anglican pastor on Aran who gave the boy a book in Irish when he visited the Rev. Synge in Dublin on instructions, with some other men, on their way to joining up as sailors [i.e, the British Navy]. The old man showed inordinate pride in his study and retention of Irish through the use of this book, so that Synge writes: ‘I could see all through his talk that the sense of superiority which his scholarship in this little-known language gave him above the ordinary seaman, had influenced his whole personality and been the central interest of his life.’ (The Aran Islands, Pt. III; in Collected Works, II [Prose], p.?

[ top ]

James Joyce & Synge Joyce met Synge in Paris on 1903 on Yeats’s introduction and borrowed the manuscript of Riders to the Sea which he then criticised for its lack of Aristotelian unities. Buck Mulligan [a char. based on Oliver St. John Gogarty], in James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), remarks of Synge: ‘The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He’s out in pampooties to murder you.’ ‘Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature. [...] Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint-André-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle, C’est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i’ the forest.’ (Bodley Edn., 1963, p.256.) Ulysses annotated: the Synge family’s address was 31 Croswaithe Tce., Dun Laoghaire [Glasthule], where Synge lived before moving to 15 Maxwell Rd., Rathmines, ‘but not before 10 October’ according to Don Gifford’s note on the passage (Ulysses Annotated, Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses, Gifford with Robert J. Seidman [rev. & exp. edn.] California UP 1989, 2001, p.226 - available online; accessed 11.12.2011.) Joyce’s Trieste Library held copies of The Aran Islands (Dublin: Maunsel 1907) and The Playboy of the Western World (Dublin: Maunsel 1907), both purchased in Trieste; also The Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea (London: Elkin Mathews 1907), The Tinker’s Wedding (Dublin: Maunsel 1907), and The Well of the Saints (Dublin: Maunsel 1907). (See Richard Ellmann, The Consciousness of James Joyce, Faber, p.129-30 [Appendix]. Joyce’s wife Nora played Maura in Riders to the Sea when her husband produced the play in wartime-Zürich in 1916.

[ top ]

Hodgkins disease: Dr. Oliver St. John Gogarty met Synge on a Dublin street in August 1907 and, seeing enlarged glands on his neck, recognised that Synge was suffering from Hodgkins disease, a diagnosis which he did not share with Synge. (See David H. Greene, ‘J. M. Synge: A Centenary Appraisal’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 4, Winter 1971, pp.71-86; p.74.) Note: David Kiely writes in his 1994 biography of Synge that Gogarty was the first to diagnose the disease in Synge.

James Carney, The Playboy and the Yellow Lady (Dublin: Poolbeg Press 1986) [var. 1987], gives an account of the assault of land-agent James Lynchehaun, on an English landowner Agnes MacDonnell in 1894, his capture, and his escape to America; a person and event alluded to in the context of ‘agrarian’ [crime] in Lady Gregory’s Spreading the News [’sure he might give them the slip yet, the same as Lynchehaun’.

Art Mac Uidhir wrote of Synge in a review of 1910, ‘Gaedhealighe go mór ... ná Eoghan Ruadh Ó Suilleabháin ... Aon-fhuil do Cholum Cille agus Synge [far more Gaelic than Owen Roe O’Sullivan ... Synge and Columcille are of the same blood]’.

Arthur Griffith & The Playboy: Eward Stephens calls Griffith ‘Synge’s nemesis’ and records that Joseph Holloway, D. J. O’Donoghue, and W. J. Lawrence, ‘all huddled at the back of the auditorium on Tuesday night and concurred in hating it’ (Edward Stephens & David Greene, J. M. Synge, 1959. p.245).

Estyn Evans - quotes Synge: ‘[F]rom the moment a roof is taken in hand there is a whirl of laughter and talk till it is ended, and, as the man whose house is being covered is a host instead of an employer, he lays himself out to please the men who work with him.’ (Aran Islands, p.156; Evans, Irish Folk Ways, 1957, pp.57-58.)

[ top ]

Parricide, Gregory Allen, ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, Irish Times (31 Jan. 1997): A certain William Maley killed his father Patrick Maley with a spade on 28 Jan. 1873 [1872] at Calla, in the barony of Ballinahinch, parish of Ballindoon, police sub-district of Errismore, Co. Galway; RIC papers recording the case was discovered in the barracks by Fr. John Fitzgerald, including copies of Hue & Cry for 1850 to 1890; further reports Eamonn Keane’s information that the culprit hid in a hole in the ground in Aranmore [Arainn Mór; Aran Islands], where the inhabitants protected him until he could make his way to America. He had married three years earlier. Allen also recounts the story of a parricide that Synge heard from Pat Dirane as recounted by Robin Skelton, and gives details of the 1962 film of The Playboy produced by Lord Killanin and shot in Kerry with Siobhán McKenna as Pegeen Mike and Gary Raymond as Christy Mahon. [See also under Quotations, infra.]

Murder is no crime: In On Local Disturbances in Ireland, George Cornewall Lewis (1836) makes reference to the sympathy elicited by an out-of-work labourer who pretends that he has committed a murder. (See Lewis, On Local Disturbances in Ireland, London: B. Fellowes 1836, pp.251-52 - quoted at some length in Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture, Field Day/Cork UP 1996, p.35.)

Irish tutors: The peasant girls from whom Synge began to learn Irish-English [i.e., Hiberno-English]] speech in Wicklow were Ellen, the family cook, and Florence Massey, the household maid, both raised in a Protestant orphanage.

Edward Stephens, Synge’s nephew and biographer, was a civil servant and distinguished lawyer in the Free State, having accompanied Michael Collins to London at the time of the Treaty negotiations. He inherited the papers of his uncle J. M. Synge in 1939 and compiled a typescript of fourteen volumes amounting to 250,000 words containing minute records of the Synge family and all available biographical information about the playwright. After his death, this was made available to David Greene through the good offices of Edward’s widow Lilo, who lived on at lived at 2 Harcourt Tce. The result was the biography published in 1959, with Greene and Edwards as its co-authors. Later the typescript was edited down to 200 pages by Andrew Carpenter (My Uncle John, 197[4]). Lilo Stephens herself arranged and introduced My Wallet of Photographs (1971) and later donated the Synge archive to Trinity College, Dublin. In tanks for her assistance in securing David Greene as the first editor of his husband’s work, she gave her friend Sybil le Brocquy a holograph letter written by Synge to his mother from London in 1903. (In it he gives an account of his fellow-boarders and asks for money.) A copy of that letter is reproduced on this website - as attached.

League Gaelic: Synge lashed out against ‘the incoherent twaddle passed off as Irish’ by the League and its ‘wilful nationalism’. (Quoted in Robin Skelton, ed., The Writings of J. M. Synge, 1971, p.107; cited in Louis Dieltjens, ‘The Abbey Theatre as a Cultural Formation’, in History and Violence in Anglo-Irish Literature, Joris Duytschaever and Geert Lernout [Conference of 9 April 1986; Costerus Ser. Vol. 71] Amsterdam: Rodopi 1988, pp.47-65; p.48.)

Portraits: Various portraits by John Butler Yeats: study in oil, held in the Municipal Gallery, Dublin (see Brian O’Doherty, The Irish Imagination 1959-1971 [Rosc Exhib. Cat.], 1971; also Anne Crookshank, Irish Portraits Exhibition, Ulster Mus. 1965); a pencil drawing, signed Jan. 1905, held in the National Gallery of Ireland; pencil sketch of Synge by J. B. Yeats “Synge at Rehearsal”. J. M. Synge, oil by James Sleator, copy in collection at Dublin Writers Museum.

New York!: The Playboy was greeted in New York by a riot on 27 Nov. 1911 which was considered the greatest of those it encountered. The Gaelic American wrote in advance of the performance: ‘If the Ireland of today is that pictured in The Playboy of the Western World, we may well pray that an earthquake shall soon swallow up the cliffs of Moher, and the pure waters of the Atlantic may cover the hillsides and glens, where once dwelled a sane, pureminded and spiritual people,’, and ended with a call ‘The [Abbey] company might properly be given forcible hint in the way of a shower of rotten eggs and decayed felines!’. The riot in the theatre was triggered by Christy (Arthur Sinclair declaring “I killed my father,” and both he and Ethney McGee, playing Pegeen Mike, were hit by flying vegetables. Between 75 and 100 policemen entered the theatre to quell the riot and fines were issued for nine of the rioters arrested at the scene. (See The New York Times, 14 Nov. 1976 - online; accessed 0.06.2019.)

1962 Film: The film was produced by Lord Killanin and shot in Kerry with Siobhán McKenna as Pegeen Mike and Gary Raymond as Christy Mahon. (See Gregory Allen in ‘Irishman’s Diary’ , Irish Times, 31 Jan. 1997; Allen recounts the story of a parricide that Synge heard from Pat Dirane as recounted by Robin Skelton.)

[ top ]

DruidSynge (1) is the full-canon 8½-hour production of Synge’s plays directed by Gary Hynes for the Druid Company, with Marie Mullen and others incl. Eamon Morrissey, Aaron Mullen, et al., opening in Galway during the Theatre Fesival in July 2005 and reaching Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College in New York in July 2006 having played the Olympia (Dublin), the Edinburgh Festival and other venues incl. Inis Meán and sundry open-air settings in Ireland during the interim. The production was feted by Fintan O’Toole as one of Irish theatre’s finest achievements. Works produced were Riders to the Sea, The Tinker’s Wedding, The Well of the Saints, In the Shadow of the Glen, The Playboy of the Western World, and Deirdre of the Sorrows. There is an article on DruidSynge in Wikipedia [online].

DruidSynge (2) David Finkle, calls the New York production ‘must-see, if decidedly uneven’: ‘[...] While the lone figure is a striking convention, it is also a giveaway to a problem that occasionally mars DruidSynge. Hynes is essentially implying that we’re witnessing something iconic; and the unwanted (and unverbalized) response from some spectators may be, “We’ll be the judges of that.”’ (See TheatreMania [online] and Finkle’s review [online].) There is a boxed set of CDs from the RTE television based on the pre-opening night production in Galway on 16 July 2005.

Steven Spielberg?: In 2009 Spiellburg visited the Aran Islands for a day with his wife Kate Capshaw and their teenage son, staying at Ballyvaughan country holiday home before moving to the East coast. Officials dampened down rumours that the Oscar-winning director is scouting the country for a movie location. The holiday in Clare included a walk on Inis Mór where he visited the hilltop ruins at Dun Aonghas. (See Aran Islands, online; accessed 12.10.2009.)

[ top ]

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi: The press was set up by John Synge in order to print Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s works about his educational experiments in Yverdon. References to the press are contained in The Irish Book Lover, I, 4 (Nov. 1909), p.37. The information below was supplied to RICORSO by Marie Vergnon - with notes on her own copies. (See further details attached.)

The Pope’s Visit: 1968 the Abbey Theatre Company presented Pope John-Paul II with a rare edition of The Playboy of the Western World at the time of his visit to Ireland. (See James Kilroy, The Playboy Riots , OUP 1971, p.97.)

Old Vic: The Playboy of the Western World was revived at the Old Vic (London), drected by John Crowley, with Robert Sheehan as Christy Mahon, Ruth Negga as Pegeen Mike and Niamh Cusack as Widow Quinn with Gwendolen Chatfield, Karen Cogan, John Cormack, Drew Dillon, Christopher Doyle, Diarmuid de Faoite, James Greene, Gráinne Keenan, Frank Laverty, Gary Lydon, Bronagh Taggart and Kevin Trainor. Opening 27 Sept. 2011. (See Playbill - online.)

[ top ]