John Synge and the Drama of His Time

Abstract

IN A PLAY WRITTEN RECENTLY for performance in the United Kingdom the dramatist at one point in his text indicates that the actress taking the part of the chief woman-character should utter, repeatedly and with great force, the most indecent exclamation that the Lord Chamberlain of the time would permit an actress to use in a public place. Although the play was written only some eight years ago, it has thus become, in its small way, an historical document. The Lord Chamberlain has abandoned his privilege of keeping playwrights and actors and theatre-managers in order, and any word, any sound, though not yet any action, is available for you on the stages of London and New York if you are indiscriminate in your play-going. But my immediate concern in referring to this mildly obnoxious play is only incidental in relation to its status as an historical document: much more it interests me because of the playwright's attitude to dramatic language and his effectual abdication as a chooser of words, as a maker whose making, whose "thing" in every sense, depends largely on the putting of words together.