Playwright of the Western World

‘WHY MUST EVERYBODY IN IRELAND’, says Sean O'Faolain, in one of his recent flashes of inspiration, ‘live like an express train that starts off for heaven full of beautiful dreams, and marvellous ambitions and, halfway, Bejasus, you switch off the bloody track down some sideline that brings you to exactly where you began?’ Such highly coloured comment might equally well be applied to the characters and situations we find in the plays of that Dublin genius—the centenary of whose birth we are commemorating this year—John Millington Synge. The writings of both authors, incidentally, are characterized by a rueful, amusing, gently self‐mocking tone about Ireland and the Irish. Both adopt a wider, detached, almost continental view of their country. Synge, in particular, refers to Ireland as the furthermost corner of Western Europe and himself as an Irish European.