John Millinton Synge and the Aran Isles

by Gary Lehmann
John Millington Synge, later author of The Playboy of the Western World, started out writing competent but prosaic works. Then he met with W.B. Yeats, who told him to go to the Aran Islands to seek inspiration. Once he followed this advice, Synge started immediately writing some of the finest dramas ever written about the traditional people of Ireland, Riders to the Sea and The Well of the Saints.
The decision to go to these remote islands off the western coast of Ireland was not an easy one. Synge came from a long line of Irish Protestants who had been landlords for many years...