The Playboy of the Western World | Page 3

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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 balladsingers 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 joyless
and pallid words. On the stage one must have reality, and one must
have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and
people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has
been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb
and wild in reality. In a good play every speech should be as fully
flavoured as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by
anyone who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In
Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is
fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us who wish to write
start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the
springtime of the local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a
memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks. J. M. S.
January 21st, 1907.
PERSONS

CHRISTOPHER MAHON. OLD MAHON, his father, a squatter.
MICHAEL JAMES FLAHERTY (called MICHAEL JAMES), a
publican. MARGARET FLAHERTY (called] PEGEEN MIKE), his
daughter. WIDOW QUIN, a woman of about thirty. SHAWN
KEOUGH, her cousin, a young farmer. PHILLY CULLEN AND