John Millington Synge

Edmund John Millington Synge (/sɪŋ/; 16 April 1871 – 24 March 1909), popularly known as J. M. Synge, was an Irish playwright, poet, writer, and collector of folklores. As a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival during the early 20th century, he is widely regarded by critics as one of the most influential dramatists of the Edwardian era,^[1][2] and by several of his peers, among them William Butler Yeats, as the most prolific playwright in Irish literature.^[3][4] Synge had a relatively short career (c. 1903 - 1909), but his works continue to be held in high regard due to their cultural and literary significance. He was also one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, along with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory.

His play The Playboy of the Western World (1907), one of his best-known works, was initially poorly received, due to its bleak ending, crude depiction of poor Irish peasants, and the idealisation of patricide, leading to hostile audience reactions and street riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre, which he had co-founded with W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory. His other major works include In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905), and The Tinker's Wedding (1909). Most of his plays were known for their highly realistic depiction of Irish societies and culture, and included plots, themes, landscapes, and settings from places he visited during his travels.^[5]

Synge, from a wealthy Anglo-Irish background, mainly wrote about working-class Catholics in rural Ireland, and what he saw as the essential paganism of their worldview. Owing to his ill health, he was schooled at home. His early interest was in music, leading to a scholarship and degree at Trinity College Dublin, and he went to Germany in 1893 to study music. In 1894, he moved to Paris where he took up poetry and literary criticism and met Yeats, and later returned to Ireland.

Synge suffered from Hodgkin's disease. He died aged 37 from Hodgkin's-related cancer while writing what became Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910),^[6] considered by some as his masterpiece, though it was unfinished during his lifetime. Since his death, Synge has become one of Ireland's most popular and significant playwrights, and his works continue to be studied and discussed in Irish literary circles.