John Millington Synge
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Chapter 5: Modern European Drama and Theater: Backgrounds and Beginnings John Millington Synge |
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John Millington Synge |
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John Millington Synge was born in 1871 in Rathfarnham, a suburb of Dublin, to a moderately well-to-do family. John was a sickly child, and after attending several private schools he ultimately had to be tutored at home. He went on to earn his B.A. at Dublin Trinity College, where he won awards for expertise in Hebrew and Irish language. At the same, he studied violin and piano at the Irish Royal Academy, and after graduating from Trinity in 1892, he traveled to Germany to undertake a career as a musician. In 1894, he apparently had a change of heart and turned his attention to the study of literature, enrolling at the Sorbonne in Paris. There he fell in with the rather Bohemian Irish exile community and developed an interest in socialism, Irish nationalism, and feminism. The turning point for Synge came in 1896, when he met the Irish poet William Butler Yeats . Yeats was one of the leading figures of the Irish Renaissance, which chose traditional Irish folkways as its themes. Yeats encouraged Synge to spend some time living in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, where the Irish language was still spoken. Synge made a series of five visits to the islands between 1898 and 1902, and the desolate settings and the rhythmical dialect of the local inhabitants would serve as the essential elements of Synge's drama. His first play, In the Shadow of the Glen, opened in 1903. The Irish audiences of the time were used to melodrama and nostalgic period pieces and were shocked by Synge's realism - the heroine's deserting her husband for a tramp, which some saw as an insult to chaste Irish womanhood. Riders to the Sea, performed in 1904, was published along with the earlier play in a single volume in 1905, during which year The Well of the Saints opened at the Abbey Theatre, the home of the new Irish National Theatre, of whom Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, and Synge were the first directors. The Playboy of the Western World caused rioting in the streets when it opened in 1907, apparently due to a reference to women's underwear in the script. Lady Gregory had to arrange for a police guard for subsequent performances, and when the play toured in the United States, the players were jailed for a time in Philadelphia. All this time, Synge was suffering from Hodgkin's disease and undergoing periodic operations. In 1907, he became engaged to the actress Maire O'Neill, who played Pegeen in Playboy and was known by the stage name Molly Allgood. His next play, The Tinker's Wedding, contained such biting satire against the Catholic Church that the Abbey Theatre decided to open it in London rather than Dublin, where it was performed until 1963. Synge had abdominal surgery in 1909, during which doctors discovered an inoperable tumor, a discovery they kept from Synge. He died in 1909 at the age of twenty-nine, while working on a play based on the traditional Irish story of Dierdre, entitled Dierdre of the Sorrows. Yeats and Lady Gregory staged the play at the Abbey in 1910, with Molly playing Dierdre. Author Links
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Riders to the Sea   
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