{\b John Millington Synge}.

{\b Date of Birth}.: 16 April 1871

{\b Date of Death}.: 24 March 1909

{\b Works}.

Irish playwright and poet, best-known for his controversial play The Playboy 
of the Western World (1907), whose boastful hero, claiming to have killed his 
father and exposed as a liar by his father's subsequent arrival, was figured 
as something of a parody of the Irishman's tendency to 'blagging'. His other 
plays include The Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea and The Well of the 
Saints (his first three act play), all of which were published in 1905 and 
performed respectively in 1903, 1904 and 1905. The Tinker's Wedding followed 
in 1908 and his Poems and Translations just one year later in 1909. At the 
time of his death Synge left another unfinished play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, 
which was published and performed posthumously in 1909.

{\b Featured Works}.

'The Playboy of the Western World', 'In Kerry', 'Prelude', 'The Curse', 
'In May', 'In Clencullen', 'The Passing of the Shee', 'Beg-innish'.

{\b General Comment}.

Born near Dublin, Synge lost his father, a barrister, in his youth. He studied 
at Trinity College, Dublin before travelling to Paris and becoming acquainted 
with William Butler Yeats, who persuaded him to go to the Aran Islands. Synge 
was to spend a part of each year, from 1899 until the time of his death in 
1902, in these islands, which also inspired his study The Aran Islands (1907). 
A number of plays followed, including two based on the tales of the islanders: 
The Shadow of the Glen and Riders to the Sea, but fame came with the 
production and publication of  The Playboy of the Western World. This latter 
opened to riot scenes in theatres in both Ireland and the United States and 
remains his most popular and most often staged work. Synge died from a 
lymphatic sarcoma in 1909, just three years after becoming director of the 
Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the theatre at which the majority of his plays had 
been performed.