Complete Plays: In the Shadow of the Glen / Riders to the Sea / the Tinker's Wedding / the Well of the Saints / the Playboy of the Western World / Deirdre of the Sorrows (Methuen World Classics)

A re-issue of the collected plays by one of Ireland's most celebrated writers



In The Shadow of the Glen an old man tests his wife's commitment by feigning death; Riders to the Sea is inspired by Synge's stay on the Aran Islands and shadows the death of a way of life as a mother sees her sons die before her eyes; The Tinker's Wedding is about a woman's desire for marriage to her tinker husband and is full of Synge's fascination for the tinker breed who had freed themselves from govenment and conventions while giving way to instincts of sexual promsicuity, fighting and drinking; The Well of Saints is set near a holy well known for its cures of blindness and epilepsy and centres on the figure of Martin Doul, who is blind and has two illusions - the first, that he and his wife Mary are a handsome couple and the second, that the visible world is full of wonder and delight; 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; Deirdre of the Sorrows is Synge's last play, published posthumously and tells the story of a young and beautiful girl, destined to be the bride of an ageing king who elopes with a younger man and after the magical seven years returns only to bring with her the destruction of a city.

John Millington Synge (1871-1909) is widely regarded as the greatest ever Irish dramatist. Born in Dublin in 1871, he trained first as a musician and composer, but after a meeting with W. B. Yeats in Paris, came to focus on literature, giving voice for the first time to those communities on the West Coast of Ireland. Capturing their dialect and energising their stories, the lives of the people of Connemara, and the Aran Islands were brought to life through his six great plays: In The Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), The Playboy of the Western World (1907), The Tinkers' Wedding (1908), and his unfinished mythological drama Deirdre of the Sorrows (performed posthumously in 1910); as well as his travel journal of his time off the coast of Ireland entitled simply The Aran Islands (1907).

A strong advocate and contributor to the nascent Abbey Theatre, Synge, along with Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats, was its leading light. His premature death from Hodgkin's disease left the Irish theatre bereft of its first great genius.