John Synge: 28 books

Located off the west coast of Ireland, the Aran Islands were considered the country’s pure, uncorrupted heart, the repository of its ancient language, culture, and spiritual values. John Millington Synge visited the Aran Islands during the years 1898 to 1901, gathering folklore and anecdotes that he...

Synge's first play, originally performed in 1903, is a bleak one-act set in an isolated farmhouse in Ireland.  A tramp wanders into what seems a tragic scene—a wife mourning her dead, and considerably older, husband.  But when the wife leaves to find her lover, and the supposedly dead man returns to life, events take an unexpected turn.

First performed in 1910, Deirdre of the Sorrows is based on Irish mythology. It was unfinished at time of the author’s death and completed by the poet William Butler Yeats and Synge’s fiancée, the actress Molly Allgood.  Deirdre, a beautiful young woman, is desired by a powerful but older king, Conchubor, whose pursuit of her leads to tragedy.

Anthologie thématique de textes autour des îles d'Aran qui ont fasciné des créateurs, poètes, voyageurs, cinéastes comme Synge, Joyce, Liam O'Flaherty, Bouvier, mais aussi de moins connus comme Pat Mullen, Lewis, O'Donovan. Ce mélange unique, irlandais, de bravoure, de rudesse, de religion, de...

Here is the story of Christy Mahon, hailed as a hero (and an immediate object of romantic attention) for his claim to have killed his cruel father. However, when he finds out his father survived, Mahon attempts to murder him a second time. Will he succeed? Considered Synge’s masterpiece, this play was viewed as indecent and met with riots when first performed. 

SCENE. — {The last cottage at the head of a long glen in County Wicklow.

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...

Inspired by a medieval French farce, The Well of the Saints depicts a blind married couple who have their sight miraculously restored by a traveling saint, only to discover that their happiness was based on illusions. Their hope of falling back in love depends on losing their sight once again.

The most famous and infamous play by Ireland's best loved (and hated) playwright The Playboy of the Western World, offended audiences when first produced in 1907, on account of its 'immodest' references to Irish womanhood and aroused a prolonged and bitter controversy, which lasted until the...

In a sense this is a book for the beginner in mechanics, but in another sense it is not. From the time we make our first movements, crude ideas on force, mass, and motion take shape in our minds. This body of ideas might be reduced to some order at high school as crude ideas of geometry are reduced...

An evocative one-act tragedy set in the Aran Islands at the home of Maurya, who has lost her husband, father-in-law, and five of her six sons at sea. Her surviving son is preparing to sail to another town, and Maurya, fearing for his life, urges him not to go.

THE WELL OF THE SAINTS was first produced in the Abbey Theatre in February, 1905, by the Irish National Theatre Society, under the direction of W. G. Fay, and with the following cast.

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