The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays: Riders to the Sea; The Shadow of the Glen; The Tinker's Wedding; The Well of the Saints; The Playboy

You really lose nothing in going for a used copy of the eleven year old edition, as it is exactly page for page, word for word the same all the way through, and with the same high quality one expects from the Oxford World Classics series. Only the cover design is altered, but with the same painting in detail from Sean Keating's Dun Aengus. Most lamentably and most cruelly and most incomprehensibly, this series remains entitled not only Oxford World's Classics, but also Oxford ENGLISH Drama. This is not English Drama, but Irish National Art, written for the Irish National Theatre directed by Mr. WB Yeats himself, with Lady Gregory in the Irish Renaissance of one hundred years ago. Upon these plays the Abbey Theatre thrived, and everyone involved, and all of the audience, all arise as one body to protest this misnomer. This is not English Drama; 'tis Irish through and through. This slander is like including Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney in an anthology of British Poetry. But let that not dissuade you from this book, this National treasure, ably edited by Ann Saddlemyer in 1995. Her learned fourteen page introduction is comprehensive without being wearisome, and provides fully the background of these great plays. The note on the text indicates the plays are drawn from Ms. Saddlemyer's 1968 Oxford University Press edition, which she crafted from a close examination of every available draft and worksheet. In the present edition (originally of 1995) she adds Explanatory Notes based most notably on Nicholas Grene's study of an Abbey Theatre promptbook and typescript presented in his 1982 CUA edition of the Synge play Well of the Saints, as well as other sources. We have here therefore perhaps the most authoritative text now available of Mr. Synge's plays: Riders of the Sea, Shadow of the Glen, The Tinker's Wedding, The Well of the Saints, The Playboy of the Western World and Deifre of the Sorrows. Ms. Saddlemyer includes in her introduction ample background material for understanding the provenance of these powerful plays, and her generous explanatory notes well describe the main cultural aspects their lines imply. Every student of Mr. Synge does very well to study this book. Every child of Ireland does very well to study Synge. Each human being hears herein their own heart. Read this book well, alone, out loud, with friends, in any way you can, but read this book. Saddlemyer, by the way, is the one who rented Synge's cottage to Poet Laureate Seamus Heaney while his family fled to exile from Belfast to Wicklow, in this cottage where Heaney crafted some of his greatest poetry.

At one point in Ulysses, during a discussion of Shakespeare, Malachi Mulligan asks if Shakespeare isn't the fellow who sounds like John Millington Synge. That's a jab, but a friendly one. I don't think it's intended to be far off from the truth either. I agree that reading these plays aloud is wonderful. In a class I took, we read extended portions of "Playboy of the Western World". The class was busting, tearing up with laughter. The play is fall-over funny even if you're reading to yourself. I just have to say though, that the plays are for performing. A friend of mine and I did a scene as an acting exercise for a class she was taking--it was one of the scenes in which Christy courts Pegeen Mike--from "Playboy of the Western World". The audience--about 15 people--were spellbound. We looked out at dropped jaws. This friend of mine and I did a competent job of acting. What blew the class away, really, was the ecstatic language and the infatuation one feels for the characters, their solidity, and the dramatic electricity between them... Lines from this bit come back to me, what? 20 years later? It's like music! The action goes from high tragedy to knockabout. Well, it's what makes the Irish the Irish. And the play's been just as good when others did it. "Riders to the Sea" is like a religious ceremony, similar to the way that the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles are. They use choruses to much the same effect. The action is ritualized and repetitive. Idealized characters utter formula phrases. "Riders" sounds out some elemental terrain: it packs a deep sort of wallop. I'd love to see this performed. Marvelous English theater!

At one point in Ulysses, during a discussion of Shakespeare, Malachi Mulligan asks if Shakespeare isn't the fellow who sounds like John Millington Synge. That's a jab, but a friendly one. I don't think it's intended to be far off from the truth either. I agree that reading these plays aloud is wonderful. In a class I took, we read extended portions of "Playboy of the Western World". The class was busting, tearing up with laughter. The play is fall-over funny even if you're reading to yourself. I just have to say though, that the plays are for performing. A friend of mine and I did a scene as an acting exercise for a class she was taking--it was one of the scenes in which Christy courts Pegeen Mike--from "Playboy of the Western World". The audience--about 15 people--were spellbound. We looked out at dropped jaws. This friend of mine and I did a competent job of acting. What blew the class away, really, was the ecstatic language and the infatuation one feels for the characters, their solidity, and the dramatic electricity between them... Lines from this bit come back to me, what? 20 years later? It's like music! The action goes from high tragedy to knockabout. Well, it's what makes the Irish the Irish. And the play's been just as good when others did it. "Riders to the Sea" is like a religious ceremony, similar to the way that the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles are. They use choruses to much the same effect. The action is ritualized and repetitive. Idealized characters utter formula phrases. "Riders" sounds out some elemental terrain: it packs a deep sort of wallop. I'd love to see this performed.

These are classic plays by Irish playwrite and poet John Millilngton Synge, with the attention to language and folklore that is typical of Synge. Best enjoyed by reading the plays aloud.