The Playboy of the Western World [with Biographical Intro...
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Product Description
Product Description
The best known of all Irish plays.
About the Author
John Millington Synge was born in 1871, of Anglo-Irish Protestant land owning stock. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and then spent a few years wandering on the continent. Synge went to the Aran Islands in 1898, and subsequently revisited them several times. In the Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea were both completed in the summer of 1902, and both were taken from material he had collected on the islands. The Playboy of the Western World, in which a young man lies about the death of his father offended audiences when first produced in 1907, on account of its 'immodest' references to Irish womanhood and aroused a prolonged and bitter controversy, which lasted until the author's death in 1909. His other works include a few poems and two books of travels The Aran Islands. Deirdre of the Sorrows was published posthumously.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
"I'm thinking of my luck today, for she will wed me surely, and I a proven hero in the end of all."
21 Mar 2009
Format:Paperback
When this play was produced for the first time in 1907 at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the Irish Independent noted that "a mob of howling devils" rioted at the end of Act I because Synge had used the word "shift," meaning "petticoat." The rioting continued on successive nights for a week, because the focus of the action is Christy Mahon, a fugitive, who ironically gains the adulation of the village because he claims to have killed his father. Every newspaper in Dublin abhorred the play and the Dublin Evening Mail was appalled at its "libeling" of "the saintly Irish peasant." (Quotations from newspapers of the day are widely available and provide a fascinating commentary on the period.) Today, a hundred years later, the play is not dated, feeling completely fresh and completely modern. Our modern fascination with misdeeds and miscreants appears to be so universal that this wryly satiric play is considered Synge's comic masterpiece.
The plot is well known by now. Christy Mahon arrives at a small country inn in a panic, believing that the peelers are tracking him for the murder of his father. The locals at the inn's bar, instead of being horrified by his actions, admire his courage in taking on his father, and give the meek and timid Christy a feeling of accomplishment that he has never had at home. Pegeen Mike, daughter of the owner, hires him to work at the inn, where he becomes the focus of the town's women, both young and old, as he tells, again and again, the story of his (increasingly brave) fight with his slave-driving father. Christy, however, has eyes only for Pegeen.
The contrast between Christy and Shawn Keogh, the devout man to whom Pegeen is pledged, is hilarious, with Christy, depicted as attractive and intriguing, while the traditional and saintly Shawn is shown to be boring and stuffy. Admiring Christy's "poetic" and passionate nature, Pegeen is soon in love with him. The appearance if Christy's father in the village leads to the play's turning point, as the populace, embarrassed by their fawning adulation, turns against Christy.
Lively, satiric, and supremely ironic, the play is broadly farcical, and no modern audience would see it as disrespectful of any particular populace--these characters are typical of humankind with its voyeuristic fascination with criminals and criminality, and the plot line and the general themes are universal. Synge's razor sharp dialogue and his use of local dialect certainly gives a sense of "Irishness" to the play, which creates local color and charm by putting the author's ideas into a specific context. The conflicts between the generations, between father and son, between the morality of the church and the immorality of real life, between passion and reason, and ultimately between love and hate make this play a rich dramatic experience, one which some might consider equal to the classic comedies of Aristophanes. n Mary Whipple
Riders to the Sea
The Shadow of the Glen
The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays: Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker's Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Playboy ... of the Sorrows" (Oxford World's Classics)
The plot is well known by now. Christy Mahon arrives at a small country inn in a panic, believing that the peelers are tracking him for the murder of his father. The locals at the inn's bar, instead of being horrified by his actions, admire his courage in taking on his father, and give the meek and timid Christy a feeling of accomplishment that he has never had at home. Pegeen Mike, daughter of the owner, hires him to work at the inn, where he becomes the focus of the town's women, both young and old, as he tells, again and again, the story of his (increasingly brave) fight with his slave-driving father. Christy, however, has eyes only for Pegeen.
The contrast between Christy and Shawn Keogh, the devout man to whom Pegeen is pledged, is hilarious, with Christy, depicted as attractive and intriguing, while the traditional and saintly Shawn is shown to be boring and stuffy. Admiring Christy's "poetic" and passionate nature, Pegeen is soon in love with him. The appearance if Christy's father in the village leads to the play's turning point, as the populace, embarrassed by their fawning adulation, turns against Christy.
Lively, satiric, and supremely ironic, the play is broadly farcical, and no modern audience would see it as disrespectful of any particular populace--these characters are typical of humankind with its voyeuristic fascination with criminals and criminality, and the plot line and the general themes are universal. Synge's razor sharp dialogue and his use of local dialect certainly gives a sense of "Irishness" to the play, which creates local color and charm by putting the author's ideas into a specific context. The conflicts between the generations, between father and son, between the morality of the church and the immorality of real life, between passion and reason, and ultimately between love and hate make this play a rich dramatic experience, one which some might consider equal to the classic comedies of Aristophanes. n Mary Whipple
Riders to the Sea
The Shadow of the Glen
The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays: Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker's Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Playboy ... of the Sorrows" (Oxford World's Classics)
Format:Audio CD
Simply brilliant.
Wonderful cast and the acting outstanding to my ears.
It may not suit some who have preconceptions of the play, however I had only heard it once before on the radio. I found it absorbing and it has that magical use of language that suits a radio style production so well.
Purists may not agree.
Wonderful cast and the acting outstanding to my ears.
It may not suit some who have preconceptions of the play, however I had only heard it once before on the radio. I found it absorbing and it has that magical use of language that suits a radio style production so well.
Purists may not agree.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
JUST SAW THE PLAY
14 Mar 1999
Format:Paperback
It is a wild, woolly, farcical, slapstick, poetic-philosophical comedy, which deserves a reading, as the Irish accents can be largely non-understandable. The play had the feel of a classic, although it helps to know the times and the Irish reaction to it, historically.
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