John Millington Synge

John Millington Synge was born in 1871 in Rathfarnham, County Dublin. He showed a higher intelligence at an early age and even cultivated such refined interests as “violin and music theory.”
The promising young mind headed to Dublin’s Trinity College in 1889. He studied music along with Irish and Hebrew. Upon graduating, he went to Germany to make a career of music. However, his timid nature was not conducive to the performing arts, and he eventually forsook such ambitions to pursue a life of letters.
The new vocation led him to Paris, where he found enlightenment at the prestigious Sorbonne University. He then published a few works of literary criticism and composed some verses in the “decadent” style in vogue at the time.
These poems went unpublished and Synge’s work was largely unrecognized, though his talent was evident to fellow countryman William Butler Years, who convinced him to return to Ireland and absorb the rustic peasant life for inspiration. Yeats’ advice proved first-rate, and Synge found his muse in the Aran Islands, where he wandered about, chatting with locals and recording his experiences.
Synge published a book about his life on the islands, which would serve as inspiration for future plays as Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen. Another play for which he drew on this rural experience was his acclaimed masterpiece, Playboy of the Western World.
Synge’s Playboy is a dark comedy in three acts about a young man who arrives at a country pub claiming he just killed his father. This recent “murderer” tells the story with panache and immediately becomes an object of respect among men and a magnet of seduction for women, both of whom see such violence as glamorous.
Though some of Synge’s previous works had drawn censure for perceived subversive content, the reaction to Playboy was downright explosive. On its opening night at the Abbey Theatre, the audience began to riot and set the place ablaze.
Clearly a controversial playwright, Synge’s personality is one of the most enigmatic of any Celtic Scribe. It was said that even his immediate kin were hard-pressed to comprehend the man. Most acquaintances regarded him as “quiet” and “strange.” Yeats commented on his “meditative” ways.
It may seem ironic that the mild-mannered, contemplative Synge could cause an audience to set fire to a theatre. However, as Yeats observed, his dramatist friend was drawn to “all that had edge, all that heightened the emotions.”
Synge’s emotions were aroused by actress Molly Allgood, with whom he pursued a blissful courtship, eventually resulting in a formal engagement. However, their passion was ill-fated, as Synge, who had first encountered Hodgkin’s disease in his mid-twenties, saw his ailment return with an untreatable vengeance.
The dramatist succumbed in 1909 at age 37. Determined Irishwoman that she was, Allgood worked with Yeats to help finish Synge’s last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, in which she performed the leading role.
Premature as his demise was, Synge’s work has endured. He is seen as having played a major role in the Irish Literary Revival, and his influence has been attributed to the making of such prominent Irish playwrights as Sean O’Casey and Nobel laureate Samuel Beckett.
A highly remarkable and unfortunate fact about Synge is that he had such few years to practice his art, having begun writing plays at age 31, only to exit this world six years later. There have been other eminent writers who died younger than Synge, but almost (if not) all of them took to their craft much earlier. As critic Richard Ellmann said, “Synge started late, finished early, and had little time to flower.”

Ray Cavanaugh