The Complete Works of J.M. Synge

by J.M. Synge, Aidan Arrowsmith (editor)

The literary and dramatic work of J.M. Synge is most famous for the riots provoked by his 1907 play The Playboy of the Western World and, indeed, this was neither the first nor the last time that Synge's dramas incited passionate disagreements. But, one hundred years on, it's clear that his writings are amongst Ireland's most brilliant and significant, as well as controversial. Here, for the first time, a single volume collects all of Synge's published plays, including 'Playboy', along with his Poetry and Translations, and the prose works that detail his travels in The Aran Islands, in Wicklow, in Kerry and in Connemara. These are works of lasting and universal value, bringing together the sensibilities of Romanticism and Modernism, and arguing passionately for the freedom of the imagination. At the outset of the twentieth century, they not only gripped audiences with their drama, poetry and humour, they also shaped discussions about the formation of the Irish nation. Now, reading these works together in one volume reveals Synge's value system and shines a penetrating light on a key period in Irish history. A new introduction by Aidan Arrowsmith, of Manchester Metropolitan University, explains Synge s relationship to the intense political turmoil out of which his writing emerged.

Genres: Poetry, Plays, Irish Literature, Drama, Fiction, Classics, Literature

480 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Edmund 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.

Reviews

[Thomas Tibbetts · Rating 3 out of 5]

I, too, sing Ireland.

[Elizabeth Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's recent piece on the Aran Islands in the New York Times, I managed to locate a 1960 reprint of Synge's complete works, which Sullivan mentioned in his piece. I'd already ready all of Synge's plays and wasn't very interested in his poetry, but I was keen to see his travel writing, not just his celebrated "The Aran Islands," but his shorter reportage: "In Wicklow," "In West Kerry," and "In the Congested Districts." Synge visited the west of Ireland to learn Irish from the last of the native speakers, the majority of whom were impoverished peasants living upon some of the most magnificent landscapes found on the planet. In contrast with the well-known memoirs written by some of those Irish peasants, for example Maurice O'Sullivan or Peig Sayers of the Great Blasket, who also depict the lifeway of the rural Irish, Synge brings an outsider's eye, which provides some very interesting telling details. I was especially struck by his repeated mention on the unaffectedness of the people on the most remote of the Aran islands -- their unselfconsciousness which led to natural behaviors that would be unthinkable in more "civilized" locales in the early 1900s. For example, as he passed around photographs, a teenage girl propped an arm on his chair and leaned across his lap for a better view. And despite the magnificence of the landscape, none of the natives remark upon it, though Synge is deeply affected. From the vantage point of the 21st century, we would term the difficult lifeway of the west of Ireland as subsistence -- wresting a minimum existence from the land -- rather than seeing it as a problem of poverty or development. But most Europeans -- and certainly the English -- didn't accept the idea that there were still aboriginal people in Europe in 1900. They're all gone now, of course, and soon after Synge's visits to the "congested districts," so were the English. Ironically, there is not a hint of rebellion in Synge's reportage -- willful blindness, it would seem to me, because his connection with the Yeats boys, Lady Gregory and the Abbey Theater mean he was fully aware of the brewing revolution that arrived a few years later.

[Bernie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already read The Playboy of the Western World and decided to read Synge's complete works because I was interested in his prose on his travels around Connemara and the Arann Islands. I think when it comes to his plays it would be best to see them on stage than in print and I wasn't so keen on the few poems at the end of the book.
His prose on the other hand is a jewel in Irish literature and his style of writing is natural and sympathetic towards the people he was referring to at the time. It could be argued that he romanticised the lives of these people giving them an air of primatism that was very much in vogue with the modernists of the time. But as someone who is actually from Connemara he managed to convey the harshness of life that my ancestors had to endure, living in abject poverty. I think he gave the people he wroth about dignity and showed compassion in how he described their lives. It is a treasure to have these rear accounts of the lives lived in the remotest parts of Ireland at the start of the 20th century and we would be the poorer for it if J.M. Synge did not grace our shores so many years ago.

[Aine · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plays tell the story of so many lonely women - Nora Burke marries too young to an old man, Maurya with all her sons dead from the sea, Mary Doul who chooses to be exiled from her community to be with her husband, Pegeen Mike stuck with only boring young men about, Sarah Casey looked down upon for being a traveller, and then Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Getting a chance to read the prose pieces gives a chance to contextualise how Synge came across the stories (not just specific incidents at her put on stage but how the population felt about the law and the police). And while the plays give a sense that a national theatre must be able to talk about the character of the nation’s inhabitants, the prose shows just how separate (and how above them) Synge felt himself to those without the privileges his life brought him.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

The complete works of J.M. Synge may surprise the reader, who had picked it out of the poetry section of Wordsworth Editions, as the amount of Synge's personal poetry contained within the book equals about 11 pages.
The rest of the book is 186 pages of stage plays, being 'The Shadow Of The Glen' 'Riders To The Sea' 'The Well Of The Saints' 'The Playboy Of The Western World' 'The Tinker's Wedding' 'Deirdre Of The Sorrows'.
And about 240 pages of Prose, which are indeed better described as written accounts of personal travel through the poor regions of Ireland in the very early 1900's.
I must admit I was shuddering to think, desiring to read poetry, I'd instead be reading 400 pages of stage plays and written accounts of Synge's travels.
But I admit, although the first few plays were not exactly my favorite subject matter, the final few were quite good. But even plays on their own do not carry a 5 star review. It is the 240 pages of written accounts that I must acknowledge. Synge writes the most excellent, detailed descriptions of the absolute poverty of the poor, what they must do to make money, and how difficult it had become to survive in rural Ireland in those years. Synge dives deep, socializes with all sorts of folks to learn what they have to say, and in turn, he tells us, the readers about it in fluent description.
I, having travelled well enough in Ireland and by chance have been to many of the locations Synge stayed and wrote of, and yet, I feel if I were to return it would be as if it were a whole new place with all the things I have learnt from Synge's accounts.
It is not just interesting for the sake of learning a new thing, also within his accounts we can clearly see the seeds of creation and inspiration which would later become the very stage plays we read contained in the same book.
In turn, I would say, this collection cannot simply be either stage plays OR written accounts, it must have both, because having both allows the reader to appreciate both the more.
I only wish there were more of his personal poetry. Those ten pages of poetry is some of my favorite I have read.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“... another stretch of lonely roadway, and a heron kept flapping in front of me, rising and lighting again with many lonely cries”. In The Complete Works of J.M. Synge, the short but productive career of a famed Irish playwright, travel writer and sometime poet is laid out for consumption. Beginning with an odd short play in which a man pretends to be dead, ending the ruse only to chastise his wife and send her out on the road with a mysterious talkative tramp, the rest of his plays, which include an ugly blind couple made unhappy as a saint returns their sight, a couple of “tinkers” who accost a snooty priest in their desire to be wed, attempted patricide, the legend of Deirdre, and most arrestingly, a woman grieving the loss of her husband and sons to the water: “They’re all gone now,and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to me.” Then we have Synge’s prose work, namely four series of disparate travelogues, Connemara and Wicklow and West Kerry culminating in a long thoughtful piece of The Aran Islands. Moving from the often-surreal drama to the solid, grounded prose of Synge’s non-fiction travel writing, in which sources of inspiration for the plays manifest, as well as his skill with capturing conversation, on to his nebulous, infrequent poetry, gives us a thorough, varied view of this icon of 20th-century Irish literature.

[Stephen A. Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synge Collection - not complete works

This is a collection of short books (travel diaries - in the Aran Islands, and Wicklow and Kerry) and well known plays. The travel diaries are an interesting collection of stories mostly from the west coast of Ireland and are a document of sorts of the hard lives led by many at the beginning of the 20th Century. The stories/tales had a unique charm but at the same time were highly variable. The plays were definitely entertaining and again speak to and about a specific time in Ireland. I am glad I read these and might dip back in to them if I travel to County Kerry, Dingle Bay Area, and the Aran Islands/Galway.