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The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea
Edited by William E Hart, this edition contains The Playboy of the Western World with Synge's own 'Preface' and Riders to the Sea in one volume. Intended for performance and study, the plays are well annotated and the introduction includes discussions of the play's riotous reception and 'The Irish Dramatic Movement'. Also included are a list of principal dates in the life of J M Synge and a bibliography.
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First published January 1, 1907
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About the author
J.M. Synge
408 books99 followersEdmund John Millington Synge (pronounced /sɪŋ/) was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He 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 during its opening run at the Abbey theatre. Synge wrote many well known plays, including "Riders to the Sea", which is often considered to be his strongest literary work.
Although he came from an Anglo-Irish background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view.
Although he came from an Anglo-Irish background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
March 17, 2020
Perfect reading on St Patrick’s Day
August 31, 2020
I couldn't think higher of J.M. Synge if he were to slay his own father.
August 22, 2014
its a nerve tearing effort that these islanders make , the sea is their life they are supposed to depend upon it for their survival , but its their enemy as well they lose their lives in the struggle to live.
i found Synge an amazing writer he depicts the lives of his characters very realistically.especially in 'riders to the sea'
the mother who has lost all of male members to the sea keeps on praying for the life of the only living son of hers and says
' what is the price of ten thousand horses in front of a son and only one living son'..... i loved the sisters they bravely hide truth of the death of their brother just because they do not want to hurt their mother and there remains reality they remain unable to change....
but reality is known and the mother's reaction is completely opposite to the reader's expectations, she remains calm and thanks god that she is left with nothing..... as she had to wake up to say her prayers for the life of her son but since he is dead she will sleep a calm sleep now.
the play is about the stoic resignation of a mother.
i found Synge an amazing writer he depicts the lives of his characters very realistically.especially in 'riders to the sea'
the mother who has lost all of male members to the sea keeps on praying for the life of the only living son of hers and says
' what is the price of ten thousand horses in front of a son and only one living son'..... i loved the sisters they bravely hide truth of the death of their brother just because they do not want to hurt their mother and there remains reality they remain unable to change....
but reality is known and the mother's reaction is completely opposite to the reader's expectations, she remains calm and thanks god that she is left with nothing..... as she had to wake up to say her prayers for the life of her son but since he is dead she will sleep a calm sleep now.
the play is about the stoic resignation of a mother.
March 18, 2020
Yesterday for St. Patrick's Day I read these two classic early 20th-century dramas by the Irish playwright J. M. Synge. The texts I used were from the first edition of the Norton Critical Modern Irish Drama, and all quotations from critical and contextual sources below come from materials in that book unless otherwise noted.
Synge was a member of the Protestant middle classes, but in the nationalist ferment leading to Irish independence, he developed a fascination with the life and culture of the Catholic peasantry in the West of Ireland, which formed the basis of his drama. Irish modernist literature, with its anti- and postcolonial themes, its meditations on nature, language, and culture, was in the vanguard of a decolonizing century's world literature; so Synge's plays of the primordial "West"—and their controversial reception—anticipate debates that continue to this day about the relation of culture to literature and about the censorship of representations that fall short of the one-dimensionally triumphal. Even readers indifferent to these questions, though, will revel in Synge's explosively inventive language, which he claimed to derive from the voices he heard around him in the West:
Readers familiar with later developments in 20th-century literature will hear a premonition in these words of writers as diverse as Wole Soyinka, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, all of whom sought to preserve some form of folk orature in their literary works against an encroaching capitalist metropolitan modernity. There are dangers in this theory—when it shades into Romantic nationalism or even fascist primitivism—and I myself don't believe in "folk art" or "folk imagination" but simply art and imagination, which may be found anywhere. Nevertheless, the point about great literature requiring a lively social language, not one determined by elites or by the petrified consensus of mass media, is probably truer than we want to admit in our time of a hopelessly mannered MFA literary culture cut off from the profligate coinages of the digital wilderness.
Here is a taste of Synge's dramatic language, from a toast proposed about midway through The Playboy:
Into this shebeen—whose owner's daughter, Pegeen, is shortly to marry a pious milquetoast named Shawn Keogh—enters Christy Mahon, a young wanderer bearing a tale of how he murdered his father with a spade in an outdoor dispute. This feat of masculine prowess quickly wins him the affection of Pegeen and of all the other women in the neighborhood and, coupled with his sporting prowess, makes him the toast of the countryside. For his part, Christy only has eyes for Pegeen, despite her own reputation as a sharp-tongued and brawling barkeep. While Shawn Keogh schemes to keep Christy from his betrothed, along with the Widow Quin, who wants the handsome parricide for herself, Christy's supposedly dead father comes around seeking vengeance on his son for the painful (but non-fatal) clout delivered to his head.
The play is at once a celebration of and a satire on the violent ways of the West. The people's near-unanimous celebration of parricide as an admirable and erotically appealing show of manly spirit verges on farce. But Synge exposes the error in celebrating violence as such with the nearly bestial wrestling between Christy and the people, and between Christy and his father, at the play's conclusion. Pegeen at first rejects her cowardly Catholic beau Shawn (whom she refers to in the diminutive as "Shaneen") with cutting words:
The play's initial audience at the Abbey Theater didn't see it in so beautiful a light, however. They found Synge's drama squalid and his language obscene. Nationalists hoping for a theater that would revivify Ireland's suppressed culture with idealized portraits, especially of pure womanhood and not of amorous pub girls, they shouted the play down. As Yeats said in a debate about the controversy:
Synge's one-act drama, Riders to the Sea, would not inspire such controversy, and it may be read as a riposte to Yeats's own Romantic nationalism. The critic Robin Skelton compares it to Greek tragedy, both in form—a single-setting play with messengers reporting offstage catastrophes—and function—a ritual lament.
This play concerns the women of a fishing family on a Western island who are waiting to see if the body of the family's next-to-last son, drowned at sea, can be recovered, even as they fear that their last son will be drowned. "There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea," one of the sisters remarks, the matter-of-fact understatement, the vernacular comfort with elemental and existential realities, commending the stoicism of the West to the anxious metropolitan. Synge seems to want to say that these people live closer to the gods. Of the brother lost before the play's opening, his sister cries,
Synge was a sick man most of his life and died at 37. The poet John Masefield, according to Wikipedia, observed, "His relish of the savagery made me feel that he was a dying man clutching at life, and clutching most wildly at violent life, as the sick man does." If this has been a mere praise of violence and domination—as it sometimes threatens to become in that other modern sick man, Nietzsche—it wouldn't be worth much. But because Synge poured his longing into language that riots with memorable formulations, lush alliterations, transporting allusions, crisp aphorisms, and startling images, his plays are among the best of their century. That this achievement was met with literal riots by an uncomprehending public tells us what a fickle and false friend "the people" can be for a poet.
Synge was a member of the Protestant middle classes, but in the nationalist ferment leading to Irish independence, he developed a fascination with the life and culture of the Catholic peasantry in the West of Ireland, which formed the basis of his drama. Irish modernist literature, with its anti- and postcolonial themes, its meditations on nature, language, and culture, was in the vanguard of a decolonizing century's world literature; so Synge's plays of the primordial "West"—and their controversial reception—anticipate debates that continue to this day about the relation of culture to literature and about the censorship of representations that fall short of the one-dimensionally triumphal. Even readers indifferent to these questions, though, will revel in Synge's explosively inventive language, which he claimed to derive from the voices he heard around him in the West:
[I]n countries where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarmé and Huysmans producing this literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the reality of life in joyless and pallid words. (Preface to The Playboy of the Western World)In other words, a living oral tradition enhances literature by raising the general level of language in society nearer to poetry. Without this vital everyday language, writers seeking poetry must flee from common life, while writers of the common life must do without poetry—as the symbolist and naturalist extremes of modern European literature demonstrate in Synge's examples. Synge associates urbanization ("the modern literature of towns") with the loss of a modern folk language and extolls instead the rural populace, whose language and traditions might be said to come from the earth.
Readers familiar with later developments in 20th-century literature will hear a premonition in these words of writers as diverse as Wole Soyinka, Gabriel García Márquez, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Walcott, all of whom sought to preserve some form of folk orature in their literary works against an encroaching capitalist metropolitan modernity. There are dangers in this theory—when it shades into Romantic nationalism or even fascist primitivism—and I myself don't believe in "folk art" or "folk imagination" but simply art and imagination, which may be found anywhere. Nevertheless, the point about great literature requiring a lively social language, not one determined by elites or by the petrified consensus of mass media, is probably truer than we want to admit in our time of a hopelessly mannered MFA literary culture cut off from the profligate coinages of the digital wilderness.
Here is a taste of Synge's dramatic language, from a toast proposed about midway through The Playboy:
Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law.Not all of these wonders appear in the play ("poteen-makers" are those who distill alcohol illicitly; "peelers" are the oppressive Royal Irish Constabulary, founded by Robert Peel), but they form its backdrop. Synge labeled the play a "comedy," but it's perhaps more properly seen as what the late Harold Bloom would call a "tragic farce." It observes the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, set in a shebeen in County Mayo over the course of less than 48 hours.
Into this shebeen—whose owner's daughter, Pegeen, is shortly to marry a pious milquetoast named Shawn Keogh—enters Christy Mahon, a young wanderer bearing a tale of how he murdered his father with a spade in an outdoor dispute. This feat of masculine prowess quickly wins him the affection of Pegeen and of all the other women in the neighborhood and, coupled with his sporting prowess, makes him the toast of the countryside. For his part, Christy only has eyes for Pegeen, despite her own reputation as a sharp-tongued and brawling barkeep. While Shawn Keogh schemes to keep Christy from his betrothed, along with the Widow Quin, who wants the handsome parricide for herself, Christy's supposedly dead father comes around seeking vengeance on his son for the painful (but non-fatal) clout delivered to his head.
The play is at once a celebration of and a satire on the violent ways of the West. The people's near-unanimous celebration of parricide as an admirable and erotically appealing show of manly spirit verges on farce. But Synge exposes the error in celebrating violence as such with the nearly bestial wrestling between Christy and the people, and between Christy and his father, at the play's conclusion. Pegeen at first rejects her cowardly Catholic beau Shawn (whom she refers to in the diminutive as "Shaneen") with cutting words:
Aye. Wouldn’t it be a bitter thing for a girl to go marrying the like of Shaneen, and he a middling kind of a scarecrow, with no savagery or fine words in him at all?But the previously starstruck young woman tells Christy something different after she actually witnesses him strike his father:
I’ll say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but what’s a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there’s a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed.This mock-heroic suggests proto-Joycean pacifism. As in Joyce—who admired Synge—the drama's real hero is not violence but language, "fine words" and "mighty talk." Christy's lyrical flights over Pegeen's charms are not lessened by their being, as the Widow Quin points out, rather Quixotic:
CHRISTY [in despair and grief]. Amn’t I after seeing the love-light of the star of knowledge shining from her brow, and hearing words would put you thinking on the holy Brigid speaking to the infant saints, and now she’ll be turning again, and speaking hard words to me, like an old woman with a spavindy ass she’d have, urging on a hill.And his duets with Pegeen herself are even better as they lavish praise on each other, he with manifold reference to religious and mythical imagery:
WIDOW QUIN. There’s poetry talk for a girl you’d see itching and scratching, and she with a stale stink of poteen on her from selling in the shop.
CHRISTY [with rapture]. If the mitred bishops seen you that time, they’d be the like of the holy prophets, I’m thinking, do be straining the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on the Lady Helen of Troy, and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl.According to Christy's rather zany and possible mad father, Christy spent his youth as a fool and a physical coward; the young man, driven out of the neighborhood, exits the play declaring himself "master of all fights from now." But, like Odysseus before him and Leopold Bloom after him, his real prowess and gallantry lies in verbal contention.
PEGEEN [with real tenderness]. And what is it I have, Christy Mahon, to make me fitting entertainment for the like of you, that has such poet’s talking, and such bravery of heart?
The play's initial audience at the Abbey Theater didn't see it in so beautiful a light, however. They found Synge's drama squalid and his language obscene. Nationalists hoping for a theater that would revivify Ireland's suppressed culture with idealized portraits, especially of pure womanhood and not of amorous pub girls, they shouted the play down. As Yeats said in a debate about the controversy:
These young men made the mistake of the newly enfranchised everywhere: they fought for causes worthy in themselves with the unworthy instruments of tyranny and violence.A judicious response to the most disgusting sight an artist qua artist can behold: a crowd rising up to quash art. I will leave the relevance of Yeats's remark to the last decade's worth of left-wing censoriousness in the English-speaking world to your imagination.
Synge's one-act drama, Riders to the Sea, would not inspire such controversy, and it may be read as a riposte to Yeats's own Romantic nationalism. The critic Robin Skelton compares it to Greek tragedy, both in form—a single-setting play with messengers reporting offstage catastrophes—and function—a ritual lament.
This play concerns the women of a fishing family on a Western island who are waiting to see if the body of the family's next-to-last son, drowned at sea, can be recovered, even as they fear that their last son will be drowned. "There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea," one of the sisters remarks, the matter-of-fact understatement, the vernacular comfort with elemental and existential realities, commending the stoicism of the West to the anxious metropolitan. Synge seems to want to say that these people live closer to the gods. Of the brother lost before the play's opening, his sister cries,
Ah, Nora, isn't it a bitter thing to think of him floating that way to the far north, and no one to keen him but the black hags that do be flying on the sea?Skelton suggest the family's aged matriarch serves as an image of bereft Irish motherhood less idealized than Yeats's and Lady Gregory's mytho-political allegory of Cathleen ni Houlihan, whose eponymous otherworldly visitor demands the young men of Ireland sacrifice themselves for her in lines Yeats himself later regretted. By contrast, Synge's poor old woman concludes in an aphorism that looks past Joyce to Beckett, if it does not recall Sophocles, urging not political violence but cosmic quietude: "No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied."
Synge was a sick man most of his life and died at 37. The poet John Masefield, according to Wikipedia, observed, "His relish of the savagery made me feel that he was a dying man clutching at life, and clutching most wildly at violent life, as the sick man does." If this has been a mere praise of violence and domination—as it sometimes threatens to become in that other modern sick man, Nietzsche—it wouldn't be worth much. But because Synge poured his longing into language that riots with memorable formulations, lush alliterations, transporting allusions, crisp aphorisms, and startling images, his plays are among the best of their century. That this achievement was met with literal riots by an uncomprehending public tells us what a fickle and false friend "the people" can be for a poet.
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October 9, 2024W have the 1967 Avon edition.
October 21, 2023
this guy tried to kill his dad THREE TIMES and his dad came back stronger each and every time
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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December 27, 2020Notes:
●Is the language be uses an authentic representation of the Irish of that time? I seem to notice inconsistent use of syntactic structures.
●Extravagant use of symbols, especially in the second play (keep alert).
●Is the language be uses an authentic representation of the Irish of that time? I seem to notice inconsistent use of syntactic structures.
●Extravagant use of symbols, especially in the second play (keep alert).
August 9, 2018
Two and a half stars, rounding up to three. There are a couple of plays here from the Irish dramatist J.M. Synge, and one was far better than the other I thought. The Playboy of the Western World is Synge's most famous play, as I understand it, and it's also the one I liked least. I get the feeling it's meant to be funny, but this story of a big-talking brat who never quite manages to murder his father, and the community that falls for and spurns him on a dime, just inches too far into farce for me to take it seriously. There are some amusing bits but it's too silly for me to really enjoy, and it felt dragged out over three acts. It gets two stars from me. Far more compelling was the one-act Riders to the Sea, a sad little piece based on life on the Aran Islands, and the death of a family's final son by drowning. Three stars for that one, it's short and affecting and evocative.
September 4, 2022
This is a great play to see and read. It's completely nuts and what can only be described as farsical.
I feel like, as was the case when the play was first put on, that it is most outrageous to those who are not from a setting like the play is set in itself. Myself, I come from a place in Ireland just as backward as this in present day, with only the addition of modern technology. People really can be just as looney and set in their ways as presented here, getting a rise out of all sorts of miserable things, preying on the downfall of their neighbours for no other reason other than to "get one up" on them. If you try to imagine yourself in this environment you will certainly get a bit more fun out of the play.
No it's not exactly a masterpiece, the whole play doesn't really prove anything, it's a bit silly. I am still glad I studied it in school and remember every detail.
I feel like, as was the case when the play was first put on, that it is most outrageous to those who are not from a setting like the play is set in itself. Myself, I come from a place in Ireland just as backward as this in present day, with only the addition of modern technology. People really can be just as looney and set in their ways as presented here, getting a rise out of all sorts of miserable things, preying on the downfall of their neighbours for no other reason other than to "get one up" on them. If you try to imagine yourself in this environment you will certainly get a bit more fun out of the play.
No it's not exactly a masterpiece, the whole play doesn't really prove anything, it's a bit silly. I am still glad I studied it in school and remember every detail.
January 20, 2020
PWW is a weird window into human nature. Do we value a pious, hardworking man or a man who acts with outstanding violence and mystery? And what happens when we find one of them to be a fraud?
Riders to the Sea is a tiny, heartbreaking look at the cost the sea exacts for livelihood.
Riders to the Sea is a tiny, heartbreaking look at the cost the sea exacts for livelihood.
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August 13, 2024“It's Christy! by the stars of God! I'd know his way of spitting and he astride the moon.”
“Isn't there the light of seven heavens in your heart alone, the way you'll be an angel's lamp to me from this out, and I abroad in the darkness, spearing salmons in the Owen, or the Carrowmore?”
“Isn't there the light of seven heavens in your heart alone, the way you'll be an angel's lamp to me from this out, and I abroad in the darkness, spearing salmons in the Owen, or the Carrowmore?”
October 26, 2017
oh christy *face palm
January 10, 2021
Playboy 3
Riders 4.5
Riders 4.5
March 25, 2021
Intriguinging and different. Both I read in my Irish Lit class and they were unique with other contemporary playwrights. The essence of Ireland is captured in both.
June 10, 2021
uh. read for english class
September 21, 2022
The first one is quite funny and interesting, but I am not sure about the second one.
3/5
3/5
October 13, 2022
Voglia di andare a teatro, voglia di andare in Irlanda, voglia di andare a teatro in Irlanda
March 6, 2023
5 stars for Playboy, 3 stars for Riders. Playboy is brilliant—powerful yet strange. I would love to see it staged, though maybe it’s too old fashioned for modern audiences.
January 1, 2024
Very Irish. Very folklore. Very what's going on.
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October 28, 2024isn't he just though
February 20, 2025
riders to the sea made me sink inside myself. its beautiful, its mundane, its haunting, its household. pbotww makes one laugh with a hint of sorrow, rtts drops one dead on the steps.
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September 20, 2021This is only a 'review' for Playboy since we're not reading Riders for this class.
I don't have a ton to say about this. I know it's meant to be a comedy but the only part I found funny was Widow Quin sowing chaos tryna make ppl think Old Man Mahon was a raving fool. She was easily the best character in this whole play.
Honestly that's it. *shrug*
EDIT 09/20/21: As with all things read for school that I don't entirely vibe with upon my first reading, class discussion of this play has wildly improved my appreciation of it. Still stagnant in my opinion that Widow Quin is the best character, tho we didn't actually discuss her much, I'm writing my entire first paper for this class on dis bish bc we stan.
I don't have a ton to say about this. I know it's meant to be a comedy but the only part I found funny was Widow Quin sowing chaos tryna make ppl think Old Man Mahon was a raving fool. She was easily the best character in this whole play.
Honestly that's it. *shrug*
EDIT 09/20/21: As with all things read for school that I don't entirely vibe with upon my first reading, class discussion of this play has wildly improved my appreciation of it. Still stagnant in my opinion that Widow Quin is the best character, tho we didn't actually discuss her much, I'm writing my entire first paper for this class on dis bish bc we stan.
December 13, 2024
Synge, you’re singeing my patience
November 11, 2011
I love both of these plays (playboy and riders to the sea). I first encountered them as a freshman in college. This time around I found even more to love. In class we discussed the play in terms of the three main offenses of he play, why it got such a strong reaction from its initial audience: sex, geography, and violence. Of course, as a modern reader it seems like such a mellow play, but in a nationalist theatre, where patrons expected either a nationalist allegory or a traditional comedy, this play doesn't fit either mold. We discussed how this play may have parodied Yeats' Cathleen Ni Houlihan (Christy's father), how the Catholic church comes in for a fair amount of critique, and even the presentation of a perversion of the Cuchulain myth. And those are just a few things we touched. There is still the language of the play and the dreaded "shifts" to contend with. And yet the play is still nationalistic in do many ways. How brilliant is J.M. Synge, right? Much love.
December 14, 2008
I'd seen this play once or maybe twice before reading it in Modern Drama this semester. It's been a while since I saw it, but I remember thinking it was totally crazy and nonsensical, and my mom thinking something similar, which is saying something, so it was exciting to read it in an academic setting and find out what the hell it was supposed to be about.
So apparently, it's all about poking fun at the Catholic church, which is painfully obvious once you know (the main character's name is Christy, after all). The play is pretty amusing, considering it's about a village that glorifies a guy for supposedly killing his father. Aside from the humor, the range of language is impressive- mostly grounded in earthy peasant chatter, but also beautifully poetic at times.
Fun to think that this play provoked riots when it was first performed. Too bad people don't riot at the theater any more.
CHRISTY: What did I want crawling forward to scorch my understanding at her flaming brow?
So apparently, it's all about poking fun at the Catholic church, which is painfully obvious once you know (the main character's name is Christy, after all). The play is pretty amusing, considering it's about a village that glorifies a guy for supposedly killing his father. Aside from the humor, the range of language is impressive- mostly grounded in earthy peasant chatter, but also beautifully poetic at times.
Fun to think that this play provoked riots when it was first performed. Too bad people don't riot at the theater any more.
CHRISTY: What did I want crawling forward to scorch my understanding at her flaming brow?
January 5, 2011
Initial / temporary review: Three stars, or four? I'm not sure, but have decided to be generous for the time being, since there is much that I enjoyed in this play. The dialect is brilliantly transporting; I amused myself for the first Act reading aloud in a pathetic excuse for an Irish brogue – but nobody was around to hear me, so it was all good. The characters: over-realistically wrought, if you get my drift. Which means they're classic. Hopeless as people, but excellent as characters. (The Widow Quin is such an astute schemer, and I think she's the only one I could say I like. ) And the circumstances are generally hilarious. Still, toward the end I found myself wondering, if nothing was going to 'tie up,' plot-wise – which it didn't – what alternative point was being made? Basically, I was left hanging on a rather disappointed thread of What the Heck? Thus, I'm relieved that we're studying this one first in my drama course. Maybe my prof can take the heck out of the what.
June 17, 2007
Somehow even though this is a seminal modern play, this modernist didn't end up reading it until this summer! It is dark, funny, and the ending surprised and fascinated me...I wish that I had gotten to see a performance of the play because the texture of the Irish dialogue really loses something (I am sure) being visual rather than aural. Also, I would love to see Stephen Rea perform Christy! (he was pictured on the cover of the edition of the play that I read)
August 27, 2009
A richly crafted drama from one of Ireland's premier playwrights, set in the Western coast of Ireland. The play caused a riot when it was first produced in 1907 after the mention of a petticoat (no, really). According to the newspapers at the time, the mob was only prevented from storming the stage by the call-boy, who had "armed himself with a big axe...and swore by all the saints in the calendar that he would chop off the head of the first lad who came over the footlights." Gotta love it.
July 31, 2011
Short, sweet, and to the point, these plays exemplify in the simplest of terms the life of the Irish experience. Riders to the Sea is a simple examination that the nature of our existence may be predestined to a certain fate, and that cultural and professional folklores are likely to follow us through our experience no matter how hard we try to lessen the magnitude and effect. Not so fascinating, not so interesting, but entirely effective writing.
June 26, 2009
I seem to be reading a higher than usual amount of Irish literature this year, and this play is known as one of the best. This is perhaps the fourth time I have read it. I seem to understand it better as I get older. There is a lot to be said for being yourself, and a lot to be said for finding a community where you can, if you can. Don't want to live up to or down from a lie.
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