playboy of the western world by jm synge

Synge's relation with nationalists had always been uneasy. The Oxford English Dictionary says: 'In the 17th century, 'smock' began to be displaced by 'shift' as a more 'delicate' expression: in the 19th century the latter has, from the same motive, given place to 'chemise'.' Perhaps if Synge had used the historically incorrect 'chemise', the riots would never have occurred.Even before the opening night of Saturday 26 January 1907, trouble was brewing.

It also suggested the problem was not so much the play but its staging at the Abbey: 'It was not for the purpose of lessening Ireland's self-respect and holding her people up to the ridicule of the world that the 'National Theatre' was established.' On January 31, an Irish Independent editorial noted that while 'the staging of the piece was an act of inexplicable stupidity' on the part of 'that rather tiresome chatterer and poseur, Mr William Butler Yeats', the rioting was 'unpardonable'. In court, Justice Wall proclaimed the rights of an audience to 'cry down a play' - but fined them anyway. Synge, wrote a friend, 'sat motionless through the dumb-show of his play' while rioters cried: 'Kill the author!' By Thursday, the Abbey had padded the floors with felt, which, said Fay, 'frustrated the rhythmic stamping'. People hissed, booed, played bugles and had coughing fits. He called the police, which made things worse: 'Not content with libelling the saintly Irish people, we had actually called in the tyrant Saxon's myrmidons to silence their righteous indignation.' Technically considered, perhaps they were not gods they were confined mostly to the left-hand side of the upper end of the house but they were all-powerful.' Fay begged the protestors to leave and get their money back. 'As it was impossible for any of us to be heard,' Fay said later, 'I arranged with the cast that we should simply walk through the play.' A critic from the Dublin Evening Mail arrived, hoping 'to see that vexatious play. How, one wonders, would she ask for a shift in a shop?īy Monday, the play opened to an audience ready to riot. It published a letter from 'A Western Girl' who objected to the use of 'a word indicating an essential item of female attire, which the lady would probably never utter in ordinary circumstances, even to herself'.

To the Evening Mail, it was 'absurd and un-Irish', while the Freeman's Journal found it 'an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men and, worse still, upon Irish peasant girlhood'. The tale of an Irish village idolising a man who has killed his own father was, wrote Arthur Griffiths, editor of the United Irishman, 'a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language'.

The Irish Independent dubbed the riots 'a tribute to the good taste and common sense of the audience'.

Playboy of the western world by jm synge