THE COURSE MATERIAL IS DESIGNED AND DEVELOPED BY INDIRA GANDHI NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY (IGNOU), NEW DELHI, OSOU HAS BEEN PERMITTED TO USE THE MATERIAL. BESIDES, A FEW REFERENCES ARE ALSO TAKEN FROM SOME OPEN SOURCES THAT HAS BEEN ACKNOWLEGED IN THE TEXT. BACHELOR OF ARTS (HONOURS) IN ENGLISH (BAEG) BEG-7 20th Century British literature Block-4 British Novel: J.M. Synge’s, Ryers to The Sea Unit 1 About J.M Synge Unit 2 Full Text of The One Act Play BLOCK 4 BRITISH NOVEL: J.M. SYNGE’S, RYERS TO THE SEA BLOCK OBJECTIVE The following block is going to help you learn about J.M. Synge and one of his master pieces ‘Ryders to the Sea’. This is a one act play that supposedly has some super-natural assumptions attached to it. Synge has written it in a pure yet naïve form for the readers to understand it better. UNIT 1: ABOUT J.M SYNGE Structure 1.1 Objective 1.2 Introduction 1.3 About the Author 1.4 Synge and Yeats 1.5 Introduction to The Riders To The Sea 1.6 Check Your Progress 1.7 Let Us Sum Up 1.1 OBJECTIVE After going through the text, you will be able to: Know about J M Synge, his life and works Learn about his one act play. Learn about the themes of the play. 1.2 INTRODUCTION Synge was a key figure in the Irish national theatre movement. When the Abbey Theatre opened in 1904, Synge was to be one of its founding directors together with Yeats and Yeats‘s close friend and collaborator Lady Gregory. In fact, as he was the only one of the three directors who actually lived in Dublin – with his mother, having given up his flat in Paris – he often had most to do with the day to day running of the theatre. He was very friendly with W.G. and Frank Fay, the two brothers who led the acting company; he fell in love and became engaged to the young actor Molly Algood, who used the stage name of Maire O‘Neill. While Yeats and Gregory had been instrumental in conceiving and establishing the national theatre movement, Synge was the first major practicing playwright the movement produced. Along with the development of the nationalistic prose-drama or the drama of ideas, the revival of poetic drama also took place. In the beginning of the twelfth century despite the efforts of the major Victorian poets, there is no tradition of poetic drama. By 1920 there is sign of a rebirth, but the atmosphere in which realistic, naturalistic drama throve is uncongenial to poetic drama. At the Abbey theatre for years had been attempted to revive poetry on the stage but lacked the essential qualities of the dramatist. W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot defended poetic plays and waged on war against realistic prose drama of the modern age. 1 The Irish movement, also known as the Celtic Revival began a new brand in Modern drama. This movement was essentially national in character and concentrated on Irish themes and ideas. Irish drama was not intended to expose the cause of realism or naturalism. Its aim is to bring back to drama the mythology, legends and symbols of Irish life. ―The imaginative idealism which has always characterized the Celtic race, the love of passionate and dreamy poetry which has exercised a fascination on the Irish mind, the belief in the fairy world which Irish people have cherished is presented in the plays produced at the Abbey Theatre. The object of the Irish dramatist is not to make people think, but to make them feel; to give the audience an emotional and spiritual uplifting such as they might experience at mass in a cathedral or at the performance of a symphon( Castle 51). The Celtic revival in Ireland is a deliberate attempt by a group of Irishmen to give Dublin a national theatre. Ireland has provided them with stuff for their art. It is same as they have colors but not the paper to draw their thoughts. Although they believe that they are glorifying the Irish past. The Irish Literary Revival, also nicknamed as the ‗Celtic Twilight included Irish writers like William Butler Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory, George William Russell, John Millington Synge and Edward Martyn to stimulate a new appreciation of traditional Irish literature and Irish poetry. The Irish Celtic Revival Movement encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture. This was due to the political need for establishing an individual Irish identity. This difference was kept alive by invoking Ireland‘s historic past, its myths, legends and folklore. There was an attempt to revitalize the native language and religion of Irish Celts. 1.3 ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Millington Synge (April 16, 1871 – March 24, 1909) was an Irish dramatist, poet, prose writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the cofounders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for the play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey. SYNGE, JOHN MILLINGTON (1871–1909), Irish dramatist, born at Newtown Little, near Rathfarnham (a suburban village adjoining Dublin), on 16 April 1871 was youngest child (in a family of one daughter and four sons) of John Hatch Synge, barrister-at-law, by his wife Kathleen, daughter of the Rev. Robert Traill, D.D. (d. 1847), of Schull, county Cork, translator of Josephus. His father dying when he was a year old, his mother moved nearer Dublin to Orwell Park, Rathgar, which was his home until 1890, when he removed with his mother and brother to 31 Crosthwaite Park, Kingstown, which was his family home until shortly before his death. 2 After attending private schools, first in Dublin and then at Bray, he studied with a tutor between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. The main interest of his boyhood was an intimate study of nature. 'He knew the note and plumage of every bird, and when and where they were to be found.' In youth he joined the Dublin Naturalists Field Club, and later took up music, becoming a proficient player of the piano, the flute, and the violin. His summer vacations were spent at Annamoe, co. Wicklow, among the strange people of the glens. On 18 June 1888 he entered Trinity 'College, Dublin, as a pensioner, his college tutor being Dr. Traill (now provost). He passed his little go in Michaelmas term, 1890 (3rd class), obtained prizes in Hebrew and in Irish in Trinity term, 1892, and graduated B.A. with a second class in the pass-examination in December 1892. His name went off the college books six months later (3 June 1893). While at Trinity he studied music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he obtained a scholarship in harmony and counterpoint in 1891. On leaving college he thought of music as a profession, and went to Germany to study that art and to learn the German language. He first visited Coblentz, and (in the spring of 1894) Würzburg. Before the end of 1894 he altered his plans, and, deciding to devote himself to literary work, settled by way of preparation as a student in Paris in January 1895. For the next few years his time was generally divided between France and Ireland, but in 1896 he stayed in Italy long enough to learn Italian. He had a natural gift for languages, and during these years he read much. From 1897 he wrote much tentative work, both prose and verse, in French and English, and contemplated writing a critical study of Racine and a translation from the Italian (either the ’Little Flowers,' or the 'Companions of St. Francis of Assisi'). In May 1898 he first visited the Aran Islands. In 1899, when he was living at the Hôtel Corneille (Rue Corneille), near the Odéon theatre, in Paris, Synge was introduced to Mr. W. B. Yeats, one of the founders and the chief inspiration of the Irish Literary Movement. Mr. Yeats suggested that Synge should give up writing criticism either in French or English and go again to the Aran Islands off Galway, or some other primitive place, to study and write about a way of life not yet expressed in literature. But for this meeting it is likely that Synge would never have discovered a form in which he could express himself; his mind would have continued to brood without vitality upon questions of literary criticism. As a result of this meeting, Synge went again to the Aran Islands (September 1899); the visit was repeated in the autumns of 1900, 1901, and 1902. He lived among the islanders as one of themselves, and was much loved by them; his natural genius for companionship made him always a welcome guest. He took with him his fiddle, his conjuring tricks, his camera and penny whistle, and feared that 'they would get tired of him, if he brought them nothing new.' 3 During his second stay he began a book on the Aran Islands, which was slowly completed in France, Ireland, and London, and published in April 1907, with illustrations by Mr. Jack B. Yeats. Meanwhile he wrote two plays, 'The Shadow of the Glen ' and the 'Riders to the Sea,' both founded on stories heard in Aran, and both finished, but for slight changes, by the winter of 1902-3. 'The Shadow of the Glen' was performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on 8 Oct.