Playboy of the Western World [Paperback]

J. M. Synge (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 31, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0853424063 | ISBN-13: 978-0853424062

Synge's classic work set in Mayo. A mysterious traveller, Christy Mahon, arrives in the village believing he has killed his father. He is looked upon as a hero by the locals and falls in love with one of them, Pegeen Mike, who agrees to marry him. But when Christy's 'murdered' father appears on the scene, Christy's fortune takes a downturn with comic and tragic result.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Comedy in three acts by J.M. Synge, published and produced in 1907. It is a masterpiece of the Irish Literary Renaissance. This most famous of Synge's works fused the patois of ordinary Irish villagers with Synge's sophisticated rhetoric and enraged Irish playgoers with its satire of Irish braggadocio. The play follows the mercurial rise and fall of the character Christy Mahon, whose self-reported murder of his father earns him much admiration until his father shows up alive and in pursuit of his cowardly son. --Merriam Webster Encylcopedia of Literature

About the Author

John Millington Synge was born in 1871, of Anglo-Irish Protestant land owning stock. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and then spent a few years wandering on the continent. Synge went to the Aran Islands in 1898, and subsequently revisited them several times. In the Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea were both completed in the summer of 1902, and both were taken from material he had collected on the islands. The Playboy of the Western World, in which a young man lies about the death of his father offended audiences when first produced in 1907, on account of its 'immodest' references to Irish womanhood and aroused a prolonged and bitter controversy, which lasted until the author's death in 1909. His other works include a few poems and two books of travels The Aran Islands. Deirdre of the Sorrows was published posthumously.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 95 pages
• Publisher: Mercier Press (December 31, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0853424063
• ISBN-13: 978-0853424062
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,408,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars JUST SAW THE PLAY, March 14, 1999

By 

Victor Bloom MD (grosse pointe, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Playboy of the Western World (Paperback)

It is a wild, woolly, farcical, slapstick, poetic-philosophical comedy, which deserves a reading, as the Irish accents can be largely non-understandable. The play had the feel of a classic, although it helps to know the times and the Irish reaction to it, historically.