Playboy of the Western World

Synge, who came from a middle-class Protestant family near Dublin, created a huge scandal at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, where The Playboy was staged in 1907, because its audience did not take kindly to a comedy that seemed to portray the Irish as violent, superstitious sots and swaggerers. Synge relied on and at the same time mocked the Irish dramatic movement and its ambition to create realisti...