Synge: The Making of Modern Irish Drama

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• Öffentlichkeit und Privatheit (German Edition);
• The Irish Dramatic Revival 1899-1939.
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In fact, Yeats and Gregory only became interested in Synge's drama after he turned to writing "peasant plays". In these later dramas, Synge uses a consciously-heightened literary dialect of Hiberno-English, which was partially inspired by similar dialects used by Douglas Hyde and Lady Gregory. The curious syntax of Synge's literary dialect was based on the speech of those who think in Irish, while speaking in English, and its ornate, poetic qualities can be related to Synge's love of Elizabethan drama. Synge once wrote that "in a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple"; this is as true of Synge's best work as it is of Shakespeare's.

Synge's early dramas were attacked by narrow-gauge, urban-based Irish Nationalists.

J.M. Synge (1871-1909)

These Nationalists wanted to believe in an idealised picture of the rural tenantry — piously Catholic and mild of temper — and therefore considered Synge's work a misrepresentation of Irish country people. Synge responded by saying that, in the considerable amount of time he had spent in the West of Ireland and rural Wicklow, he had witnessed language and behaviour that was much more "vivid" and colourful than anything to be found in his plays; his Nationalist critics were incensed rather than assuaged by such reassurances.

When Synge, in his masterpiece — The Playboy of the Western World — took aim at what he called the "rampant, double-chinned vulgarity" of the new rural middle classes, the outcome was predictable: Time has demonstrated that these critics and rioters did not understand what they were condemning. Not only were Synge's plays great works of art; they also critiqued genuine quirks in the Irish "national character" many, such as a distrust of "law and order", the result of centuries of unjust colonial rule.