J. M. Synge

Biography

John Millington Synge (1871–1909) was an Irish playwright and poet, one of the key figures of the Irish Literary Revival and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. Born near Dublin, Synge studied music in Germany before W.B. Yeats advised him to live on the Aran Islands and find his artistic voice among the Irish-speaking peasantry. The result was a series of plays—The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea, The Well of the Saints—that captured the rhythms, poetry, and dark comedy of rural Irish life. The Playboy provoked riots at the Abbey Theatre in 1907 but is now recognized as one of the greatest plays in the English language. Synge died of cancer at thirty-seven.