These essays demonstrate the universal appeal of Synge's writings and his influence in the world. They explore not only his drama, poetry and prose, but also examine his life as man and artist.

Edmund John Millington Synge 16 April 1871 - 24 March 1909) was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre. He is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World, which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre. Although he came from a privileged Anglo-Irish background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view. Synge developed Hodgkin's disease, a metastatic cancer that was then untreatable. He died several weeks short of his 38th birthday as he was trying to complete his last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows.Synge was born in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, County Dublin, on 16 April 1871.[1] He was the youngest son in a family of eight children. His parents were members of the Protestant upper middle class. his father, John Hatch Synge, who was a barrister, came from a family of landed gentry in Glanmore Castle, County Wicklow. He was the uncle of brothers, mathematician John Lighton Synge and optical microscopy pioneer Edward Hutchinson Synge. Synge's paternal grandfather, also named John Synge, was an evangelical Christian involved in the movement that became the Plymouth Brethren and his maternal grandfather, Robert Traill, had been a Church of Ireland rector in Schull, County Cork, who died in 1847 during the Great Irish Famine. Synge's father contracted smallpox and died in 1872 at the age of 49. Synge's mother moved the family to the house next door to her mother's house in Rathgar, County Dublin. Synge, although often ill, had a happy childhood there. He developed an interest in bird-watching along the banks of the River Dodder and during family holidays at the seaside resort of Greystones, County Wicklow, and the family estate at Glanmore. Synge was educated privately at schools in Dublin and Bray, and later studied piano, flute, violin, music theory and counterpoint at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He travelled to the continent to study music, but changed his mind and decided to focus on literature.[1] He was a talented student and won a scholarship in counterpoint in 1891. The family moved to the suburb of Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) in 1888, and Synge entered Trinity College, Dublin, the following year. He graduated with a BA in 1892, having studied Irish and Hebrew, as well as continuing his music studies and playing with the Academy Orchestra in the Antient Concert Rooms. Between November 1889 and 1894 he took private music lessons with Robert Prescott Stewart

Yeats recommended that Synge visit the Aran Islands, primitive and absolutely authentic places about which little had yet been written."--BOOK JACKET.

A modern edition of John Synge's work.Martin and Mary Doul are two blind beggars who have been led to believe that they are beautiful by the lies of the townsfolk, when in fact they are old and ugly. A saint cures them of their blindness with water from a holy well, and at first sight they are disgusted by each other. Martin goes to work for Timmy the smith and tries to seduce his betrothed, Molly, but she viciously rejects him, and Timmy sends him away. He and Mary both lose their sight again, and when the saint returns to wed Timmy and Molly, Martin refuses his offer to cure their blindness again. The saint takes offense and the townsfolk banish the couple, who head south in search of kinder neighbors.