Levitt, Paul M.

Playwright and poet J. M. (John Millington) Synge (1871-1909) authored works reflective of his life in the Aran Islands, including In the Shadow of the Glen (1903) and The Playboy of the Western World (1907), the latter of which led to riots among Irish nationalists at the Abbey Theatre. Synge, together with W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory, was instrumental in the founding of the Abbey Theater in Dublin. Anne Saddlemyer (1971), who published letters written by Synge to Yeats and Lady Gregory, notes that "Synge entered Elpis Nursing Home and died there of Hodgkin's Disease on 24 March 1909; he was not quite 38 years old. Norreys Connell and then Lennox Robinson succeeded him as Directors of the Abbey Theatre, but the influence of Synge remained. In January 1920 the company produced his Deirdre of the Sorrows, assembled from the manuscript by Yeats, Lady Gregory and Molly Allgood; the following year while on their first American tour the players were summoned to court on the charge of presenting an "immoral and indecent" play - The Playboy of the Western World ."

Paul M. Levitt, Professor of English at the University of Colorado, is author of such works as Dark Matters (2004) and Bogus U. (2006). Levitt has published works on Synge, including "The Structural Craftsmanship of J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea," Eire-Ireland 4, 1 (Spring 1969): 53-61. Rpt. in John Millington Synge: Riders to the Sea . Ed. David R. Clark. (Charles E. Merrill, 1970); J.M. Synge: A Bibliography of Published Criticism . (Irish Univ. Press, 1974); and "The Two Act Structure of the Playboy of the Western World," Colby Library Quarterly (December 1975): 230-234.