Synge and His Critics

Abstract

AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH IN 1909, John M. Synge's drama was being criticized for the wrong reasons. Scant attention was being paid to the artistic value of his drama in Ireland except by some of his intimate friends such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, AE, and Padraic Colum, all of whom were in the theatre movement. Most of the criticism leveled at Synge's drama was political. Arthur Griffith, editor of the nationalist newspaper, The United Irishman, spear-headed the attack on Synge by other fervent nationalists such as James Connally and Maud Gonne. They supported the Irish National Theatre Society so long as it remained Irish and nationalist, and as long as it was not antithetical to the aims of the Gaelic League and the Irish Nationalists. Some plays, like Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan, were considered worthy of the Irish cause, but Synge's plays, particularly The Shadow of the Glen, The Tinker's Wedding, and The Playboy of the Western World, were blasted as "unwholesome productions." Other critics, along with Griffith, attacked the plays on moral grounds as well as political, because the plays had nothing Irish about them and because they were more characteristic of Continental "decadent" literature than of Irish literature. Synge was labelled a subversive who was undermining the morality and the hallowed customs of the Irish people and defaming the sanctity of the Roman Catholic Church; his plays were considered to be an affront to the dignity of the proud, nationalistic Irishman. Not only did the nationalistic newspapers attack Synge and his drama, but playgoers also hissed, booed, and rioted, not in protest against Synge the dramatist, but because they completely misunderstood his portrayal of the common Irish peasant.