John millington synge biography

Irish writer and accumulator of folklore (1871–1909)

John Millington Synge
John Millington Synge
Born	Edmund Bathroom Millington Synge (1871-04-16)16 April 1871 Rathfarnham, Department Dublin, Ireland
Died	24 March 1909(1909-03-24) (aged 37) Elpis Nursing Home, Dublin, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Occupation(s)	Novelist, quick story writer, playwright, poet, essayist
Known for	Drama, fictional prose
Movement	Folklore Irish Literary Revival

Edmund Trick Millington Synge (; 16 Apr 1871 – 24 March 1909) was an Irish playwright, lyricist, writer, collector of folklore, additional a key figure in loftiness Irish Literary Revival.

His best-known play The Playboy of primacy Western World was poorly common, due to its bleak immoderation, depiction of Irish peasants, ground idealisation of patricide, leading set upon hostile audience reactions and riots in Dublin during its opportunity run at the Abbey Stage show, which he had co-founded work stoppage W.

B. Yeats and Lassie Gregory. His other major complex include In the Shadow worry about the Glen (1903), Riders in close proximity to the Sea (1904), The Spasm of the Saints (1905), skull The Tinker's Wedding (1909).

Synge came from a wealthy Anglo-Irish background who mainly wrote observe working-class Catholics in rural Island, and what he saw rightfully the essential paganism of their worldview.

Owing to his tolerate health, he was schooled spokesperson home. His early interest was in music, leading to straighten up scholarship and degree at Three times as much College Dublin, and he went to Germany in 1893 quick study music. In 1894 soil moved to Paris where unquestionable took up poetry and fictional criticism and met Yeats, unthinkable returned to Ireland.

Synge acceptable from Hodgkin's disease. He athletic aged 37 from Hodgkin's-related carcinoma while writing what became Deirdre of the Sorrows, considered bid some as his masterpiece, despite the fact that unfinished during his lifetime. Culminate relatively few works are away regarded as of high indigenous significance.

Biography

Early life

Synge was dropped on 16 April 1871, pop in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, County Dublin,^[1] the youngest of eight descendants of upper-middle-class Protestant parents.^[1] Empress father John Hatch Synge was a barrister and came stick up a family of landed landed gentry in Glanmore Castle, County Wicklow.

Synge's paternal grandfather, also denominated John Synge, was an enthusiastic Christian involved in the shipment that became the Plymouth Parish, and his maternal grandfather, Parliamentarian Traill, was a Church pale Ireland rector in Schull, Domain Cork, who died in 1847 during the Great Irish Emptiness. He was a descendant find time for Edward Synge, Archbishop of Tuam, and Edward's son Nicholas, representation Bishop of Killaloe.

His nephews included mathematician John Lighton Dramatist and optical microscopy pioneer Prince Hutchinson Synge.^[3]

Synge's father died exaggerate smallpox at the age delightful 49 and was buried have a feeling his son's first birthday. Wreath mother moved the family round off the house next door disrupt her mother's house in Rathgar, County Dublin.

Although often critical, Synge had a happy girlhood. He developed an interest well-off bird-watching along the banks accomplish the River Dodder,^[4] and past family holidays at the sand resort of Greystones, County Wicklow, and the family estate dead even Glanmore.^[5]

He was home-educated at schools in Dublin and Bray,^[6] mount studied piano, flute, violin, meeting theory and counterpoint at prestige Royal Irish Academy of Punishment.

He travelled to the europe to study music but next decided to focus on literature.^[1] He was a talented learner and won a scholarship timetabled counterpoint in 1891. The stock moved to the suburb dominate Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) walk heavily 1888, and Synge entered Leash College, Dublin, the following period. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1892, having upset Irish and Hebrew, as be a smash hit as continuing his music studies and playing with the Establishment Orchestra in the Antient Chorus Rooms.^[7] Between November 1889 boss 1894 he took private descant lessons with Robert Prescott Stewart.^[8]

Synge later developed an interest affluent Irish antiquities and the Aran Islands, and became a adherent of the Irish League go all-out for a year.^[9] He left influence League because, as he resonant Maud Gonne, "my theory time off regeneration for Ireland differs pass up yours ...

I wish to out of a job on my own for righteousness cause of Ireland, and Berserk shall never be able swap over do so if I pretence mixed up with a rebel and semi-military movement."^[10] In 1893 he published his first make something difficult to see work, a poem influenced vulgar Wordsworth, in Kottabos: A School Miscellany.

Early work

After graduating, Poet moved to Germany to lucubrate music. He stayed in Coblenz during 1893 before moving curb Würzburg in January 1894.^[11] In that of his shyness about carrying out in public, coupled with monarch doubt about his own nasty goings-on, he abandoned music to go his literary interests.

He joint to Ireland in June 1894 before moving to Paris get a move on January 1895 to study scholarship and languages at the Sorbonne.^[12] He met Cherrie Matheson over summer breaks with his cover in Dublin. He proposed revivify her in 1895 and turn back the next year, but she turned him down on both occasions because of their disparate views on religion.

The speck greatly affected him and sharp his determination to move abroad.^[13]

In 1896, he visited Italy lay aside study the language before iterative to Paris. He planned grease a career in writing upturn French authors.^[14] That year noteworthy met W. B. Yeats who encouraged him to spend halt in its tracks on the Aran Islands, rear 1 which he returned to Port.

In 1899 he joined Playwright, Augusta, Lady Gregory and Martyr William Russell to form leadership Irish National Theatre Society, which later established the Abbey Theatre.^[15][9] He wrote some pieces personage literary criticism for Gonne's Irlande Libre and other journals, pass for well as unpublished poems paramount prose in a decadent extremity de siècle style.^[16] (These circulars were eventually gathered in grandeur 1960s for his Collected Works.^[17]) He also attended lectures smack of the Sorbonne by the illustrious Celtic scholar Henri d'Arbois cold Jubainville.^[18]

Aran Islands and first plays

In 1897, Synge suffered his be in first place attack of Hodgkin's, after which an enlarged gland was chilled from his neck.^[19] He visited Lady Gregory's home, at Coole Park near Gort, County Port, where he met Yeats adjust and also Edward Martyn.

Without fear spent the following five summers there, collecting stories and lore, perfecting his Irish, but live in Paris for most uphold the rest of each year.^[20] He also visited Brittany regularly.^[21] During this period he wrote his first play, When representation Moon Has Set which unquestionable sent to Lady Gregory sect the Irish Literary Theatre choose by ballot 1900, but she rejected finish.

The play was not obtainable until it appeared in authority Collected Works.^[22]

Synge's first account be in opposition to life on the Aran Islands was published in the New Ireland Review in 1898 skull his book, The Aran Islands, completed in 1901 and publicized in 1907 with illustrations do without Jack Butler Yeats.^[1] Synge held the book "my first mammoth piece of work".^[1] Lady Hildebrand read the manuscript and attend to Synge to remove any point naming of places and collision add more folk stories, nevertheless he declined to do either because he wanted to manufacture something more realistic.^[23] The notebook conveys Synge's belief that the Catholicism of the islanders, it was possible to stick a substratum of the disrespectful beliefs of their ancestors.

King experiences in the Arans biform the basis for the plays about Irish rural life dump Synge went on to write.^[24]

Synge left Paris for London make known 1903. He had written deuce one-act plays, Riders to greatness Sea and The Shadow surrounding the Glen, the previous harvest. These met with Lady Gregory's approval and The Shadow go in for the Glen was performed argue with the Molesworth Hall in Oct 1903.^[25]Riders to the Sea was staged at the same launch in February the following yr.

The Shadow of the Glen, under the title In leadership Shadow of the Glen, consider part of the bill be the opening run of decency Abbey Theatre from 27 Dec 1904 to 3 January 1905.^[25] Both plays were based maintain stories that Synge had undaunted in the Arans, and Poet relied on props from integrity Arana to help set dignity stage for each of them.^[25] He also relied on Hiberno-English, the English dialect of Island, to reinforce its usefulness because a literary language, partly in that he believed that the Hibernian language could not survive.^[26]

The March of the Glen is supported on a story about block unfaithful wife, and was criticised by the Irish nationalist chairman Arthur Griffith as "a insult on Irish womanhood".^[26] Years succeeding Synge wrote: "When I was writing The Shadow of prestige Glen some years ago Raving got more aid than prolific learning could have given province from a chink in decency floor of the old Wicklow house where I was neighbouring, that let me hear what was being said by greatness servant girls in the kitchen."^[27] Griffith's criticism encouraged more attacks alleging that Synge described Green women in an unfair manner.^[26]Riders to the Sea was likewise attacked by nationalists, this span including Patrick Pearse, who decried it because of the author's attitude to God and belief.

Pearse, Griffith and other conservative-minded Catholics claimed Synge had look a disservice to Irish flag-waving by not idealising his characters,^[28] but later critics have affirmed he idealised the Irish populace too much.^[28] A third one-act play, The Tinker's Wedding, was drafted around this time, on the other hand Synge initially made no try to have it performed, expressly because of a scene look which a priest is discomforted up in a sack, which, as he wrote to glory publisher Elkin Mathews in 1905, would probably upset "a trade fair many of our Dublin friends".^[29]

When the Abbey Theatre was established, Synge was appointed academic adviser and became one type the directors, along with Dramatist and Lady Gregory.

He differed from Yeats and Lady Saint on what he believed honourableness Irish theatre should be, primate he wrote to Stephen MacKenna:

I do not believe in glory possibility of "a purely strange, unmodern, ideal, breezy, spring-dayish, Cuchulainoid National Theatre" ... no stage play can grow out of anything other than the fundamental realities of life, which are on no occasion fantastic, are neither modern shadowy unmodern and, as I grasp them, rarely spring-dayish, or blowy or Cuchulanoid.^[30]

Synge's next play, The Well of the Saints, was staged at the Abbey doubtful 1905, again to nationalist criticism, and then in 1906 case the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.^[31] The critic Joseph Holloway dubious that the play combined "lyric and dirt".^[32]

Playboy riots and after

Main article: The Playboy of illustriousness Western World

Synge's widely regarded chef-d'oeuvre, The Playboy of the Make love to World, was first performed inaugurate 26 January 1907, at ethics Abbey Theatre.

A comedy get on with apparent patricide, it attracted unmixed hostile reaction from sections fail the Irish public. The Freeman's Journal described it as "an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Erse peasant men, and worse similar upon Irish girlhood".^[33] Arthur Filmmaker, who believed that the Monastery Theatre was insufficiently politically durable, described the play as "a vile and inhuman story unwritten in the foulest language miracle have ever listened to give birth to a public platform",^[34] and supposed a slight on the morality of Irish womanhood in loftiness line "... a drift of korea females, standing in their shifts ..."^[35] At the time, a relocate was known as a image representing Kitty O'Shea and unite adulterous relationship with Charles Painter Parnell.^[36]

A section of the meeting at the opening rioted, at the rear of the third act to mistrust acted out in dumbshow.^[37] Goodness disturbances continued for a hebdomad, interrupting the following performances.^[38] Life-span later, after a similar uproar at the opening of The Plough and the Stars soak Seán O'Casey, Yeats said authority audience had "disgraced yourselves swot up.

Is this to be break off ever-recurring celebration of the onset of Irish genius? Synge leading and then O'Casey?"^[39][40]

The writing acquisition The Tinker's Wedding began go ashore the same time as Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow of the Glen. It took Synge five period to complete and was sound finished until 1907.^[29]Riders was whole in the Racquet Court playhouse in Galway on 4–8 Jan 1907, but not performed adjust until 1909, and then in London.

The first commentator to respond to the ground was Daniel Corkery, who aforesaid, "One is sorry Synge every time wrote so poor a baggage, and one fails to hairy why it ever should keep been staged anywhere".^[41]

Death

Synge died exotic Hodgkin lymphoma at the Elpis Nursing Home in Dublin statute 24 March 1909, aged 37,^[42][43][44] and was buried in Job Jerome Cemetery, Harold's Cross, Dublin.^[45] A collected volume, Poems spreadsheet Translations, with a preface saturate Yeats, was published by high-mindedness Cuala Press on 8 Apr 1909.

Yeats and actress near one-time fiancée Molly Allgood (Maire O'Neill)^[46] completed Synge's unfinished terminal play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, and it was presented stop the Abbey players on Weekday 13 January 1910, with Good-king-henry as Deirdre.^[28]

Personality

John Masefield, who knew Synge, wrote that he "gave one from the first depiction impression of a strange personality".^[47] Masefield said that Synge's consideration of life originated in authority poor health.

In particular, Poet said "His relish of integrity savagery made me feel ditch he was a dying mortal clutching at life, and clutching most wildly at violent seek, as the sick man does".^[48]

Yeats described Synge as timid tube shy, who "never spoke eminence unkind word" yet his limelight could "fill the streets exchange of ideas rioters".^[49]Richard Ellmann, the biographer exclude Yeats and James Joyce, so-called that Synge "built a groovy drama out of Irish life.^[14]

Yeats described Synge in the rime "In Memory of Major Parliamentarian Gregory":

...And that enquiring workman John Synge comes next,

That dry chose the living world occupy text

And never could have unwearied in the tomb

But that, great travelling, he had come

Towards gloaming upon certain set apart

In copperplate most desolate stony place,

Towards gloaming upon a race

Passionate and unsympathetic like his heart.^[50]

Synge was graceful political radical, immersed in birth socialist literature of William Journeyman, and in his own improvise "wanted to change things station and branch".

John pratts biography

Much to the anxiety of his mother, he went to Paris in 1896 cancel become more involved in elemental politics, and his interest sediment the topic lasted until surmount dying days when he requisite to engage his nurses dominate the topic of feminism.^[51]

Legacy

Yeats uttered that Synge was "the large dramatic genius of Ireland".^[52] Childhood Yeats and Lady Gregory were "the centrepieces of the Green theatrical renaissance, it was Poet ...

who gave the amplify its national quality ..."^[53] Authority plays helped set the reigning style at the Abbey Thespian until the 1940s. The conventionalised realism of his writing was reflected in the training obtain at the theatre's school custom acting, and plays of rustic life were the main being of the repertoire until greatness end of the 1950s.

Sean O'Casey, the next major scriptwriter to write for the Convent, knew Synge's work well boss attempted to do for depiction Dublin working classes what Poet had done for the arcadian poor. Brendan Behan, Brinsley MacNamara, and Lennox Robinson were chic indebted to Synge.^[54]

The Irish legendary critic Vivian Mercier was between the first to recognise Prophet Beckett's debt to Synge.^[55] Playwright was a regular member spot the audience at the Religious house in his youth and uniquely admired the plays of Dramatist, Synge and O'Casey.

Mercier proof out parallels between Synge's casts of tramps, beggars and peasants and many of the vote in Beckett's novels and glowing works.^[56]

Synge's cottage in the Aran Islands has been restored reorganization a tourist attraction. An yearly Synge Summer School has antediluvian held every summer since 1991 in the village of Rathdrum, County Wicklow.^[57] Synge is probity subject of Mac Dara Ó Curraidhín's 1999 documentary film, Synge agus an Domhan Thiar (Synge and the Western World).

Patriarch O'Connor wrote a novel, Ghost Light (2010), loosely based signal Synge's relationship with Molly Allgood.^[58][59]

Synge's correspondence with his cousin, architect Mary Helena Synge, is archived at Trinity College Dublin.

Works

• In the Shadow of the Glen, 1903
• Riders to the Sea, 1904
• The Well of the Saints, 1905
• The Aran Islands, 1907
• The Playboy additional the Western World, 1907
• The Tinker's Wedding, 1908
• Poems and Translations, 1909
• Deirdre of the Sorrows 1910
• In Wicklow and West Kerry, 1912
• Collected Expression of John Millington Synge 4 vols, 1962–1968
  • Volume 1 Poems, 1962
  • Volume 2 Prose, 1966
  • Volumes 3 and 4 Plays, 1968

Notes

References

External links

Works