



Produced by Judy Boss





THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD

A COMEDY IN THREE ACTS


By J. M. Synge




PREFACE

In writing THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, as in my other plays, I
have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the country
people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the
newspapers. A certain number of the phrases I employ I have heard also
from herds and fishermen along the coast from Kerry to Mayo, or
from beggar-women and ballad-singers nearer Dublin; and I am glad to
acknowledge how much I owe to the folk imagination of these fine people.
Anyone who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry will
know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed,
compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside cabin in
Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay. All art is a collaboration; and
there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking
and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story-teller's or the
playwright's hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time. It is
probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat
down to his work he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat
at dinner, from his mother or his children. In Ireland, those of us who
know the people have the same privilege. When I was writing "The Shadow
of the Glen," some years ago, I got more aid than any learning could
have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where
I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls
in the kitchen. This matter, I think, is of importance, for in countries
where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich
and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his
words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root
of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern
literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or
prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the
profound and common interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarme
and Huysmans producing this literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola
dealing with the reality of life in joy