John Millington Synge

John Millington Synge (April 16, 1871 - March 24, 1909) was an Irish dramatist, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for the play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey.

The Aran Islands

Synge suffered his first attack of Hodgkins disease in 1897 and also had an enlarged gland removed from his neck. The following year he spent the summer on the Aran Islands, paying a visit to Lady Gregory's Coole Park home where he met Yeats and Edward Martyn. He spent the next five summers on the islands collecting stories and folklore and perfecting his Irish, while continuing to live in Paris for most of the rest of the year. He also visited Brittany regularly. During this period, Synge wrote his first play, When the Moon has Set. He sent it to Lady Gregory for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1900, but she rejected it and the play was not published until it appeared in the Collected Works.

Related Topics:
1897 - Lady Gregory - Edward Martyn - Brittany - Irish Literary Theatre - 1900

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His first account of life on the islands was published in the New Ireland Review in 1898 and his book-length journal, The Aran Islands, was completed in 1901 and published in 1907 with illustrations by Jack Yeats. This book is a slow-paced reflection of life on the islands and reflects Synge's belief that beneath the Catholicism of the islanders it was possible to detect a substratum of the older pagan beliefs of their ancestors. His experiences on Aran were to form the basis for many of the plays of Irish peasant and fishing community life that Synge went on to write.

Related Topics:
1898 - 1901 - 1907 - Jack Yeats - Catholicism

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