The Playboy of the Western World is a story about conformity and rebellion towards the law. In the play, Shawn Keogh is the ultra-conservative figure who bows towards the law with deference and meekness. At the other extreme, Christy Mahon is the...

Writing from the late 1880s to the dawn of modern Ireland in the first two decades of the 20th century, Yeats and Synge penned their works during a period of national liminality; or what critic Seamus Deane refers to as “the long process of its...

J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World is a three-act play which follows Christy Mahon’s escape to a rural community of Western Ireland after striking and presumably killing his father. In the small Mayo village, authority presents itself...

Prior to the release of Synge’s work Playboy of the Western World, Ireland was typically depicted as an orderly and civilized nation in its prized literature. What made Synge’s play stand out from other theatrical productions was its portrayal of...

W. B. Yeats, whose advice J. M. Synge has followed in exploring the Aran Islands in the remote northwestern corner of Ireland in 1898, mentions that in Riders to the Sea one finds “first to last the presence of the sea”. The impression of the vast...

In the tragic spectacle of Riders to the Sea, John Millington Synge explores an essentially Pagan situation. There is a degree of deliberation in the choice of the title and its application is both literal and metaphorical since it is an extended...