The Playboy of the Western World
A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS
by J. M. Synge
Contents
| PREFACE |
| PERSONS |
| ACT I. |
| ACT II. |
| ACT III. |
PREFACE
In writing THE PLAYBOY OF THEWESTERN WORLD, as in my other plays, I have usedone or two words only that I have not heard among the country people ofIreland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers. Acertain number of the phrases I employ I have heard also from herds andfishermen along the coast from Kerry to Mayo, or from beggar-women andballad-singers nearer Dublin; and I am glad to acknowledge how much I owe tothe folk imagination of these fine people. Anyone who has lived in realintimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideasin this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in anylittle hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay. All art is acollaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature,striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story-teller’s or theplaywright’s hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time. It isprobable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat down tohis work he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat at dinner, fromhis mother or his children. In Ireland, those of us who know the people havethe same privilege. When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen, someyears ago, I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink inthe floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear whatwas being said by the servant girls in the kitchen. This matter, I think, is ofimportance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and thelanguage they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be richand copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which isthe root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modernliterature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prosepoems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound andcommon interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarmé and Huysmans producingthis literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the reality oflife in joyless and pallid words. On the stage one must have reality, and onemust have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, andpeople have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has beengiven them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild inreality. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut orapple, and such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people whohave shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years more, we have apopular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those ofus who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in placeswhere the springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is amemory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.
J. M. S.
January 21st