Synge, J(ohn) M(illington) (1871–1909)

Irish dramatist and leading figure in the Irish literary revival of the early 20th century, born in Rathfarnham, County Dublin. His six plays, which include In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), and The Playboy of the Western World (1907), reflect the speech patterns of the Aran Islands and western Ireland. The Playboy of the Western World, Synge's best-known work, caused violent disturbances at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, when it was first performed.

In the Shadow of the Glen, in which a woman prefers a wandering life with a tramp over security with an old husband or even lover, contains echoes of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. Synge's next play, Riders to the Sea, evokes the threats of the sea and the hardship of a family on the Aran Islands. In The Playboy of the Western World the protagonist, Christy Mahon, arrives in a little town in County Mayo and is received as a hero when he boasts that he has murdered his father. Synge's other plays are The Well of the Saints (1905), The Tinker's Wedding (1908), and the unfinished Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Synge's breakthrough, achieved in part through some early translations from classic Gaelic prose and poetry, was to forge a distinctive linguistic style and tragicomic vision for the Irish stage. His ambivalent representation of rural life in western Ireland proved unpalatable to audiences expecting an unproblematically positive contribution to nationalism.

Although Synge was raised in a strongly religious family, he rejected all religion early in his life. He took a degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and spent some time in France. He was fascinated by the Irish language and rural life, and spent time in County Wicklow and the Aran Islands. Hodgkin's disease caused his death before he was able to finish Deirdre of the Sorrows.