Mick Lally
Born	Michael Lally (1945-11-10)10 November 1945 Tourmakeady, County Mayo, Ireland
Died	31 August 2010(2010-08-31) (aged 64) Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1974–2010

Michael "Mick" Lally (10 November 1945 – 31 August 2010)^[1][2] was an Irish stage, film and television actor. He departed from a teaching career for acting during the 1970s.^[2] Though best known in Ireland for his role as Miley in the television soap Glenroe,^[3] Lally's stage career spanned several decades,^[4] and he was involved in feature films such as Alexander and the Academy Award-nominated The Secret of Kells.^[5] He died in August 2010 after a battle with emphysema.^[6] Many reports cited him as one of Ireland's finest and most recognisable actors.^[2][3][7]

Early life[link]

Born in November 1945 and reared in the Gaeltacht village of Tourmakeady, County Mayo,^[8] Mick (Michael) Lally was the eldest of a family of seven children; five sisters and one brother. He went to the local national school in Tourmakeady and then to St. Mary's College, Galway. After studying at University College Galway he taught history and Irish for six years in Tuam, from 1969 to 1975, but quit teaching to pursue his career as a stage actor.

Career[link]

Mick began his acting career with Taibhdhearc na Gaillimhe (Ireland's national Irish language theatre), and was a founding member of the Druid Theatre Company. Lally received an Irish Times/ESB Theatre Award Nomination for Best Actor for his role in Druid's production of The Dead School.^[4] Lally also became a member of the Field Day Theatre Company, and starred in the company's 1980 premiere of Brian Friel's play Translations. He first played at the Abbey Theatre in 1977 in a production of Wild Oats and went on to perform in many other Abbey productions.^[4]

In 1982, Mick starred in the TV series The Ballroom of Romance alongside Brenda Fricker. From 1983 he played the role of Miley Byrne in the RTÉ soap Glenroe, reprising the character that he played earlier in the Bracken in 1978. In 1979, Lally won a Jacob's Award for his performance as Miley in Bracken. Lally also enjoyed some musical success when "The By-road to Glenroe" went to the top of the Irish charts in 1990. He was also involved in voice-over work - including a noted advertisement for Kilmeaden Cheese during the 1990s.^[9] Other TV appearances included roles in Tales of Kinvarna, The Year of the French and Ballykissangel.

In 1994, Lally played the character Hugh in The Secret of Roan Inish, and in 1995 portrayed Dan Hogan in the film adaptation of Maeve Binchy's Circle Of Friends. Other film roles included: Poitín, Our Boys, The Outcasts, A Man of No Importance and others. In later years, Lally provided the voice of Brother Aidan in the Academy Award-nominated The Secret of Kells - an animated film directed by Tomm Moore.^[10]

Death[link]

Lally died on the morning of 31 August 2010, after a short stay in hospital.^[2] Cause of death was reported as heart failure - arising from an underlying emphysema condition.^[6] His death led to "widespread outpourings of sympathy".^[11]

Taoiseach Brian Cowen led tributes, saying he was "shocked and saddened" by the man's death, and calling him "one of the most loved actors of his generation and will be dearly missed by the public and his colleagues in theatre and television". Minister for Culture Mary Hanafin and Michael D. Higgins TD, former Minister for Arts, Culture & Gaeltacht, were among the other political tributes. Arts Council of Ireland chair Pat Moylan called it "a sad and shocking loss". Lally's screenwife Biddy aka Mary McEvoy said "Mick and I loved each other and we got on really well".^[12]

Lally's funeral took place in Dublin on 2 September 2010.^[13] It was said that the "nation has lost one of its favourite uncles".^[14] Personalities from TV, film, theatre and politics attended, while President of Ireland Mary McAleese sent a letter and Lally received a standing ovation at the end.^[15][16]

Personal life[link]

Lally was married to a nurse, Peige, with whom he celebrated his 30th wedding anniversary the year before his death. Three children resulted: Saileog, Darach and Maghnus. Lally's parents were both alive when he died.^[17]

Lally was a fluent speaker of the Irish language, and his children study in Irish-speaking schools (gaelscoileanna). He appeared in several Irish language productions throughout his career, from Poitín in 1978, through to an appearance in the Irish language soap Ros na Rún in 2008.

He was a supporter of socialist causes,^[18] and canvassed for Socialist Party candidate Joe Higgins in the 1996 Dublin West by-election and the 1997 general election.^{[citation needed]} Lally was an atheist who did not believe in an afterlife, and regarded religion as nonsense and "codology".^[19]

Selected filmography[link]

• The Secret of Kells (2009)
• Middletown (2006)
• Alexander (2004)
• The Halo Effect (2004)
• How to Cheat in the Leaving Certificate (1997)
• Circle of Friends (1995)
• Scarlett (1994)
• The Secret of Roan Inish (1994)
• A Man of No Importance (1994)
• Misteach Baile Ath Cliath (1994)
• Horse (1993)
• Fools of Fortune (1990)
• That's All Right (1989)
• Upon My Word (1989)
• The Fantasist (1986)
• Glenroe (1983)
• The Outcasts (1982)
• The Year of the French (1982)
• The Ballroom of Romance (1982)
• Our Boys (1981)
• Strumpet City (1980)
• Poitín (1978)
• Bracken (1978)

Theatre roles[link]

• Translations, as Manus (1980)
• The Year of the Hiker (1990)
• DruidSynge (2005)
• The Matchmaker (2010)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mick Lally at the Internet Movie Database
• Images of Mick Lally. RTÉ Stills Library.
• Mick Lally funeral photos. Irish Independent.
• Mick Lally. The Irish Times.
• Mick Lally - a man without measure. Galway Advertiser.

Dickie Rock (born Richard Rock, 10 October 1936) is an Irish singer.^[1] He experienced much success on the Irish charts during the 1960s, but has continued on as a popular live act as well as occasionally hitting the charts ever since.

Early fame[link]

Rock was born in Cabra on Dublin's Northside.

Between 1963 and 1972 he was one of the frontmen of the Miami Showband (who were later in the headlines due to the Miami Showband killings incident). He had thirteen top ten hits with the Miami Showband, including seven number ones.^[2] Dickie Rock and the Miami were the first Irish artists to go straight in to the number one spot with "Every Step of the Way" in 1965.^[3] During his time with the Miami Showband, Rock attracted the kind of mass hysteria normally reserved for the Beatles.

In 1966, he sang for Ireland in the 1966 Eurovision Song Contest with the song, "Come Back to Stay". He entered as a solo artist and finished fourth in the Contest.^[4] This song also became a number one hit in Ireland.

Rock was the subject of a well-known Irish catchphrase—"spit on me Dickie", the origin of this being that rebellious young women in the 1960s wanted to be covered in his saliva in a manner similar to American women idolising the hips of Elvis. The phrase took off in Belfast in the 1960s and spread all over Ireland.

Solo years[link]

Rock went solo in 1973, although still performed occasionally with the Miami Showband after this.

Later years[link]

Rock continues to tour at the age of 75 (2011), after a career spanning more than 40 years. Following a third RTÉ documentary (one in the 1960s, another in the 1980s and another in 2006) about Rock and his place at the forefront of the Irish showband scene, Dickie received a lifetime achievement award in October 2009.

Wikipedia controversy[link]

In 2008, an anonymous employee of the stricken financial company Anglo Irish Bank made lewd comments about Dickie Rock on this Wikipedia page. The bank launched an investigation into how this had happened and the incident was reported in the Irish media some months later. Rock himself commented on the incident.^[5]

Discography[link]

• Irish chart singles
• 1963 "There's Always Me" (IR #1)
• 1964 "I'm Yours (#1)
• 1964 "From the Candy Store On the Corner" (#1)
• 1965 "Just for Old Time's Sake" (#2)
• 1965 "Round and Round" (#2)
• 1965 "Every Step of the Way" (#1)
• 1965 "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" (#4)
• 1965 "Wishing it Was You" (#1)
• 1966 "Come Back to Stay" (#1)
• 1966 "Darling I Love You" (#4)
• 1967 "When You Cry" (#7)
• 1967 "Baby I'm Your Man" (#13)
• 1968 "Simon Says" (#1)
• 1968 "Christmas Time and You" (#10)
• 1969 "Emily" (#12)
• 1970 "When My Train Comes In" (#15)
• 1971 "My Heart Keeps Telling Me" (#7)
• 1971 "Cathedral in the Pines" (#15)
• 1972 "Till (Mini Monster)" (#9)
• 1973 "Last Waltz" (#15) - first solo single
• 1973 "Maxi single" (#11)
• 1977 "Back Home Again" (#1)
• 1978 "It's Almost Like a Song" (#18)
• 1980 "Coward of the County" (#11)
• 1982 "When the Swallows Come Back from Capistrano" (#24)
• 1988 "The Wedding" (#18)
• 1989 "I'll Never Stop Wanting You" (#10)
• 1989 "Come Home to Ireland for Christmas" (#25)

References[link]

The Classic (Hangul: 클래식; Keulraesik) is a 2003 South Korean melodrama / romance film directed by Kwak Jae-yong.

Plot[link]

The film tells the parallel love stories of a mother and daughter. The story of the mother is told partially in flashbacks.

The movie starts in the present day. The daughter, Ji-hye (Son Ye-jin), is cleaning-up around her house when she comes across a box full of old letters and a diary that detail the story of her mother, Joo-hee (who is also played by Son Ye-jin). Periodically in the movie, Ji-hye reads one of these letters, which starts a flashback scene in which the story of the mother is told. These flashbacks are intertwined with Ji-hye's own story, in which she falls for a fellow student, Sang-min (Zo In Sung), who is involved with the school theater.

The movie tells the story of both relationships. The mother, Joo-hee, visits the countryside as a student one summer and meets Joon-ha (Jo Seung-woo). Together they explore the countryside, playing near a river which they both will always remember as their special place. When a storm starts they take shelter together under a tree, but not before Joo-hee twists her ankle and is rendered helpless. Joon-ha carries her on his back and they struggle home, only to be confronted by her angry parents. Before they separate, Joo-hee gives him a necklace, which he keeps close as a precious reminder of their time together.

Unfortunately, as often happens in affairs of the heart, a third party prevents any deepening of their relationship. Joo-hee has been promised by her parents as a bride to Tae-soo, Joon-ha's friend. But Tae-soo, a noble friend, finds out about Joo-hee and Joon-ha's attraction for each other and helps the two communicate secretly by letting them use his own name in place of Joon-ha's in their letters. When Tae-soo's father finds this out, however, he beats Tae-soo. Tae-soo tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide so that his two friends can be together.

Meanwhile, in the present, Ji-hye falls for Sang-min in whom her friend Soo-kyeong is also very interested, but he seems not to notice. Then, in a sweet scene, they take shelter from the rain together under the same tree. He uses his coat to cover both of them and escorts her to where she needs to go. The moment, while magical, does not go anywhere as she feels his help was only due to his generous nature and not from any feelings for her on his part.

Back in the past, Joon-ha is guilt-ridden over his friend's attempted suicide and Joo-hee's own guilt. Determined to prevent any more hurt to her, Joon-ha joins the army and goes to Vietnam. There he loses his eyesight while he tries to retrieve the necklace Joo-hee had given him. When he returns to Korea, he meets again with Joo-hee, and, trying to hide his blindness, convinces her he has married in the hope she will move on with her life. Though heart broken that their relationship cannot continue, she does move on and eventually marries Tae-soo, Joon-ha's kind friend. After they have been married for several years and have a young daughter (Ji-hye) Joo-hee is approached by friends of Joon-ha, who relate Joon-ha's last wish: that his ashes be scattered by Joo-hee in the river, now a reservoir, where they first met. She then finds out that Joon-ha hadn't married, but he later did after Tae-soo and Joo-hee were married. She was told that he had a son also. The heart-break is too much and she cries.

In the present, Ji-hye's own story unfolds. Sang-min reveals his true feelings for Ji-hye - feelings that mirror her own. It is also revealed that their taking shelter together during the storm was no accident: he had purposely left his umbrella behind in a shop so that he could join her under the tree. Then, when Ji-hye pensively reveals her mother's story to him, tears stream down his face. Silently he lifts a necklace from around his neck and places it around hers. It is the necklace that Ji-hye's mother, Joo-hee, had given to Joon-ha when they met. The circle is completed: Joo-hee's daughter and Joon-ha's son have fallen in love.

Cast[link]

• Son Ye-jin in dual role as Ji-hye and Joo-hee (Ji-hye's mother)
• Jo Seung-woo as Joon-ha
• Zo In Sung as Sang-min
• Lee Ki-woo as Tae-soo (friend of Joon-ha)
• Lee Soo-in as Soo-kyeong (friend of Ji-hye)
• Seo Yeong-hee as Na-hee (friend of Joo-hee)
• Lim Ye Jin as Shopkeeper

Development[link]

Several of the school scenes were filmed at various universities in Korea. Notably, the library was in Kyung Hee University. There are many parallels between the flashback and present day stories. In the flashbacks, Joon Ha writes letters in the name of his friend Tae-soo to their mutual love interest. In the present day, Ji-hye writes letters in the name of her friend to their mutual love interest. In the flashbacks, Joo-hee has an annoying female friend that Joon-ha is initially set up with. In the present day, Ji-hye also has an annoying friend that interferes with her relationship. Also, Joo-hee and Ji-hye both receive the same poem from the people they love: "When the sun shines...".

Reception[link]

The Classic was nominated at the Hong Kong Film Awards in the category Best Asian Film in 2004.^[3]

Son Ye-jin received several awards for her performance in the film:^[4]

• 2003 40th Daejong sang Awards: Best New Actress (The Classic)
• 2003 39th PaekSang Arts Awards: Best New Actress (The Classic)
• 2003 24th Blue Dragon Film Awards - Most Favourite Star (The Classic, Crazy First Love)
• 2004 9th Moscow International Love Movie Awards: Best Couple (The Classic)

Music[link]

The film relies heavily on music to help convey emotion.

Korean Songs in the film:

• 그랬나봐 ("Geuraetna pwa" - World without love) - performer: Kim Hyung Joong
• 고백 ("Gobaek" - Confession) - performer: Delispice - played during the art gallery scene
• 너에게 난 나에게 넌 ("Neoehgeh nan naehgeh neon" - Me to you, you to me) - performer: Jatanpung - played during both special umbrella scenes
• 너무 아픈 사랑은 사랑이아니었음을 ("Neomu apeun sarangeun sarangee anieosseumeul" - It wasn't love if it hurt so much) - performer: Kim Kwang Suk - played during train and last meeting scenes
• 사랑하면 할수록 ("Saranghamyon halsoorok" - If we are in love, then...) - Played in different instrumental versions throughout the film - always at emotional moments. It is sung in the final scenes by performer Han Song Min. There is also a Mandarin version of this song titled "Hui Se Kong Jian" (灰色空間 in Mandarin) which is sung by Taiwanese singer Show Luo in Taiwanese drama called "The Outsider II".

The piano piece performed by Joo-Hee on stage is Beethoven's Piano Sonata 8, movement 2 Pathetique Sonata.

Pachelbel's Canon in D was also used as the background music. This same music was featured in the director's earlier film, My Sassy Girl.

Some American songs were used as well.

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Classic at the Korean Movie Database
• The Classic at the Internet Movie Database
• The Classic at HanCinema

John Millington Synge
John Millington Synge
Born	(1871-04-16)16 April 1871 Rathfarnham, Dublin, Ireland
Died	24 March 1909(1909-03-24) (aged 37) Elpis Nursing Home, Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	novelist short story writer playwright poet essayist
Nationality	Irish
Genres	Drama, fictional prose
Literary movement	Folklore Irish Literary Revival
Influences W. B. Yeats Seán O'Casey William Wordsworth
Influenced Samuel Beckett Padraig Pearse Peig Sayers Seamus Heaney Mustapha Matura

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 cofounders 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 an 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 suffered from Hodgkin's disease, a form of cancer at the time untreatable. He died just weeks short of his 38th birthday and was at the time trying to complete his last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

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 part of the Protestant middle and upper class:^[1] his family on his father's side were landed gentry from Glanmore Castle, County Wicklow and his maternal grandfather, Robert Traill, had been a Church of Ireland rector in Schull, County Cork and a member of the Schull Relief Committee during the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849). Rathfarnham was then a rural part of the county, and during his childhood he was passionately interested in ornithology. His earliest poems are somewhat Wordsworthian in tone: his first 'literary composition' was a nature diary he made in collaboration with Florence Ross when they were both children.

His grandfather, John Hatch Synge, was an admirer of the educationalist Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and founded an experimental school on the family estate. His father, also named John Hatch Synge, was a barrister but contracted smallpox and died in 1872 at the age of 49. Synge's mother, who had a private income from lands in County Galway, moved the family to the house next door to her mother in Rathgar, Dublin. Synge, although often ill, had a happy childhood here, and developed an interest in ornithology along the banks of the River Dodder^[2] in the grounds of the nearby Rathfarnham Castle, and during family holidays at the seaside resort of Greystones, Wicklow, and the family estate at Glanmore.^[3]

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 traveled to Europe to study music, but changed his mind and decided to focus on literature.^[1] He proved to be a talented student and won a scholarship in counterpoint in 1891. The family moved to the suburb of Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire) in 1888, and Synge entered Trinity College, Dublin the following year, where he graduated with a BA in 1892. While at college, he studied Irish and Hebrew, as well as continuing his music studies and playing with the Academy orchestra in the Antient Concert Rooms.^[4]

He joined the Dublin Naturalists' Field Club and read Charles Darwin.^[1] Synge wrote:

When I was about fourteen I obtained a book of Darwin's .... My studies showed me the force of what I read, [and] the more I put it from me the more it rushed back with new instances and power ... Soon afterwards I turned my attention to works of Christian evidence, reading them at first with pleasure, soon with doubt, and at last in some cases with derision^[5]

He then continued, "Soon after I had relinquished the kingdom of God I began to take up a real interest in the kingdom of Ireland. My politics went round ... to a temperate Nationalism."^[6] He later developed an interest in Irish antiquities and the Aran Islands, and became a member of the Irish League for a year.^[7] He later quit the Irish League because, as he told Maud Gonne, "my theory of regeneration for Ireland differs from yours ... I wish to work on my own for the cause of Ireland, and I shall never be able to do so if I get mixed up with a revolutionary and semi-military movement."^[8] In 1893, he published his first known work, a Wordsworth-influenced poem, in Kottabos: A College Miscellany. His reading of Darwin coincided with a crisis of faith and Synge abandoned the Protestant religion of his upbringing around this time.^[9]

Emerging writer[link]

After graduating, Synge decided that he wanted to be a professional musician and went to Germany to study music. He stayed at Coblenz during 1893 and moved to Würzburg in the January of the following year.^[10] Partly because he was shy about performing in public, and partly because of self-doubt on his ability, Synge decided to abandon music and pursue his literary interests. He returned to Ireland in June 1894, and moved to Paris the following January to study literature and languages at the Sorbonne.^[11]

During summer holidays with his family in Dublin, he met and fell in love with Cherrie Matheson, a friend of his cousin and a member of the Plymouth Brethren. He proposed to her in 1895 and again the next year, but she turned him down on both occasions because of their differing religious viewpoints. This rejection affected Synge greatly and reinforced his determination to spend as much time as possible outside Ireland.^[12]

In 1896 he visited Italy to study the language for a time before returning to Paris. Later that year he met W. B. Yeats, who encouraged Synge to live for a while in the Aran Islands and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work. That year he joined with Yeats, Augusta, Lady Gregory, and George William Russell to form the Irish National Theatre Society, which later would establish the Abbey Theatre.^[7] He also wrote an amount of literary criticism for Gonne's Irlande Libre and other journals as well as unpublished poems and prose in a decadent, fin de siècle style.^[13] These writings were eventually gathered together in the 1960s for his Collected Works.^[14] He also attended lectures at the Sorbonne by the noted Celtic scholar Henri d'Arbois de Jubainville.^[15]

Aran Islands and first plays[link]

The cottage where Synge lodged on Inis Meáin, now turned into the Teach Synge museum

Synge suffered his first attack of Hodgkin's disease in 1897 and also had an enlarged gland removed from his neck.^[16] The following year, he spent the summer on the Aran Islands.^[17] He spent the next five summers on the islands, collecting stories and folklore and perfecting his Irish, while continuing to live in Paris for most of the rest of the year.^[18] He also visited Brittany regularly.^[19] During this period, Synge wrote his first play, When the Moon has Set. He sent it to Lady Gregory for the Irish Literary Theatre in 1900, but she rejected it and the play was not published until it appeared in the Collected Works.^[20]

His first account of life on the islands was published in the New Ireland Review in 1898 and his book-length journal, The Aran Islands, was completed in 1901 and published in 1907 with illustrations by Jack Butler Yeats.^[1] Synge considered the work "my first serious piece of work".^[1] When Lady Gregory read the book's manuscript, she advised Synge to remove any direct naming of the place and adding more folk stories to it, but he refused to because he wanted to create something more realistic.^[21] The book is a slow-paced reflection of life on the islands and reflects Synge's belief that beneath the Catholicism of the islanders it was possible to detect a substratum of the older pagan beliefs of their ancestors. His experiences on Aran were to form the basis for many of the plays of Irish peasant and fishing community life that Synge went on to write.^[22]

Poster for opening of Abbey Theatre featuring In the Shadow of the Glen

In 1903, Synge left Paris and moved to London. He had written two one-act plays, Riders to the Sea and The Shadow of the Glen the previous year. These met with Lady Gregory's approval and The Shadow of the Glen was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903.^[23] Riders to the Sea was performed at the same venue in February the following year. The Shadow of the Glen, under the title In the Shadow of the Glen, formed part of the bill for the opening run of the Abbey Theatre from 27 December 1904 to 3 January 1905.^[23] Both plays were based on stories Synge had collected on the Aran Islands, and Synge relied on props from the Aran Islands to help set the stage.^[23] He also relied on Hiberno-English, the English dialect of Ireland, in order to reinforce its usefulness as a language; parts of this stemmed from his belief that Gaelic as a language could not survive.^[24]

The Shadow of the Glen was based on a story of an unfaithful wife and it was attacked in print by Irish nationalist leader Arthur Griffith as "a slur on Irish womanhood".^[24] Years later, Synge would write, "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."^[25] This encouraged more critical attacks that alleged that Synge described Irish women in an unfair manner.^[24] Riders to the Sea was also attacked by nationalists, this time Patrick Pearse, who decried it because of the author's attitude to God and religion. Furthermore, Synge's audience felt that he did a disservice to Irish nationalism for not idealizing his characters.^[26] However, later critics would attack Synge for idealizing the Irish peasantry too much.^[26] Despite these attacks, the plays are now part of the canon of English language theatre. A third one-act play, The Tinker’s Wedding was drafted around this time, but Synge initially made no attempt to have it performed, largely because of a scene where a priest is tied up in a sack, which, as he wrote to the publisher Elkin Mathews in 1905, would probably upset "a good many of our Dublin friends".^[27]

When the Abbey was set up, Synge was appointed literary advisor to the theatre and soon became one of the directors of the company, along with Yeats and Lady Gregory. However, he differed from Yeats and Lady Gregory in what he believed the Irish theatre should be, as he wrote to Stephen MacKenna:

I do not believe in the possibility of 'a purely fantastic, unmodern, ideal, breezy, spring-dayish, Cuchulainoid National Theatre'... no drama can grow out of anything other than the fundamental realities of life which are never fantastic, are neither modern nor unmodern and, as I see them, rarely spring-dayish, or breezy or Cuchulanoid.^[28]

His next play, The Well of the Saints was staged at the theatre in 1905, again to nationalist disapproval, and again in 1906 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.^[29] The critic Joseph Holloway claimed the play combined "lyric and dirt".^[30]

[edit] Playboy riots and after

John Millington Synge

The play widely regarded as Synge's masterpiece, The Playboy of the Western World, was first performed in the Abbey on 26 January 1907. The comedy centers on the story of apparent patricide and attracted a wide hostile reaction from the Irish public. The Freeman's Journal described it as "an unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men, and worse still upon Irish girlhood".^[31] Egged on by nationalists, including Arthur Griffith, who believed that the theatre was insufficiently politically active and described it as "a vile and inhuman story told in the foulest language we have ever listened to from a public platform", and with the pretext of a perceived slight on the virtue of Irish womanhood in the line "... a drift of chosen females, standing in their shift ..." At the time a shift was known as a symbol representing Kitty O'Shea and adultery.^[32] However, George Watson explained the real problem with the play when he says, "this heady mixture of English stereotypical images of Irish violence, of Irish resentment of those images, and of Synge's stress on violence, which for him is almost synonymous with vitality, is, far more than the word 'shift', what made The Playboy so explosive."^[33] A significant portion of the crowd rioted, causing the third act of the play to be acted out in dumbshow.^[34]

Yeats returned from Scotland to address the crowd on the second night, and decided to call in the police. Press opinion soon turned against the rioters and the protests petered out. Yeats later referred to this incident in a speech to the Abbey audience in 1926 on the fourth night of Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars, when he declared: "You have disgraced yourselves again. Is this to be an ever-recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius? Synge first and then O'Casey?"^[35]

Although writing of The Tinker's Wedding begun at the same time as Riders to the Sea and In the Shadow of the Glen, it took Synge five years to complete, and was finished in 1907.^[27] 'Riders to the Sea' was performed in the Racquet Court theatre in Galway 4–8 January 1907 and not performed again until 1909, and only then in London. The first critic to respond to the play was Daniel Corkery, who said, "One is sorry Synge ever wrote so poor a thing, and one fails to understand why it ever should have been staged anywhere."^[36] This claim was popularly held by critics for many decades after.^[27] That same year, Synge became engaged to the Abbey actress Maire O'Neill (formerly known as Molly Allgood). He died at the Elpis Nursing Home in Dublin. His Poems and Translations was published by the Cuala Press on 8 April with a preface by Yeats. Yeats and Molly Allgood completed Synge's unfinished final play, Deirdre of the Sorrows, and it was presented by the Abbey players in January 1910 with Allgood in the lead role. Synge died in Dublin on 24 March 1909.^[26] He is buried in Mount Jerome Graveyard, Harolds Cross, Dublin 6.

Personality[link]

Synge is commonly described as an enigma, a person who is hard to read and understand.^[37] John Masefield, Synge's acquaintance, said that he "gave one from the first the impression of a strange personality".^[38] Not even the members of his own family were close enough to understand him. He was quiet and reserved, and Yeats thought that he was "meditative".^[37] However, Synge was open when he would write letters to women, and, according to David H. Greene, he acted like "an ordinary human being but not a particularly eloquent one".^[39] Not all of his letters were kind, especially his letters to Allgood, an actress that Synge wrote to often. Those letters are filled with condescending remarks and by a man who is, as Greene argues, "not only unattractive but also incompatible with the complex personality of the man who wrote the plays".^[40]

Masefield felt that Synge's problems and thoughts about life originated with his poor health. In particular, Masefield claims that "His relish of the savagery made me feel that he was a dying man clutching at life, and clutching most wildly at violent life, as the sick man does".^[41] In stanza IV of Yeats's "In Memory of Major Robert Gregory", he summarizes his view that Synge was unhealthy, sick and in pain throughout his career:^[40]

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,

That dying chose the living world for text

And never could have rested in the tomb

But that, long travelling, he had come

Towards nightfall upon certain set apart

In a most desolate stony place,

Towards nightfall upon a race

Passionate and simple like his heart.

Legacy[link]

Synge's plays helped set the Abbey house style for the following four decades. The stylised realism of his writing was reflected in the training given at the theatre's school of acting, and plays of peasant life were the main staple of the repertoire until the end of the 1950s. Sean O'Casey, the next major dramatist to write for the Abbey, knew Synge's work well and attempted to do for the Dublin working classes what his predecessor had done for the rural poor. However, O'Casey was not the only playwright that Synge influenced; Brendan Behan, Paul Vincent Carroll, Brinsley MacNamara, and Lennox Robinson were all indebted to Synge.^[42]

The critic Vivian Mercier was amongst the first to recognise Samuel Beckett's debt to Synge.^[43] Beckett was a regular audience member at the Abbey in his youth and particularly admired the plays of Yeats, Synge and O'Casey. Mercier points out parallels between Synge's casts of tramps, beggars and peasants and many of the figures in Beckett's novels and dramatic works.^[44]

In recent years, Synge's cottage on the Aran Islands has been restored as a tourist attraction. An annual Synge Summer School has been held every summer since 1991 in the village of Rathdrum in Wicklow.^[45]

Joseph O'Connor has written a novel, Ghost Light, loosely based on Synge's relationship with Molly Allgood. It was published on 3 June 2010.^[46][47]

Selected works[link]

• In the Shadow of the Glen, 1903
• Riders to the Sea, 1904
• The Well of the Saints, 1905
• The Aran Islands, 1907 (The book at wikisource: The Aran Islands)
• The Playboy of the Western World, 1907
• The Tinker’s Wedding, 1908
• Poems and Translations, 1909
• Deirdre of the Sorrows 1910
• In Wicklow and West Kerry, 1912
• Collected Works of John Millington Synge 4 vols., 1962–68
  • Vol. 1: Poems, 1962
  • Vol. 2: Prose, 1966
  • Vols. 3 & 4: Plays, 1968

Further reading[link]

• Irish Writers on Writing featuring John Millington Synge. Edited by Eavan Boland (Trinity University Press, 2007).

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Mary Burke, 'Tinkers': Synge and the Cultural History of the Irish Traveller (Oxford, OUP, 2009).
• Corkery, Daniel. Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature. Cork University Press, 1931.
• Ferriter, Diarmaid (2004). The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000. Profile Books. pp. 94–95. ISBN 1-86197-307-1. 
• Gassner, John & Quinn, Edward. "The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama". Dover Publications, May 2002. ISBN 0-486-42064-7
• Greene, David H. & Stephens, Edward M. "J.M. Synge 1871–1909" (The MacMillan Company New York 1959)
• Greene, David. "J.M. Synge: A Reappraisal" in Critical Essays on John Millington Synge, ed. Daniel J. Casey, 15-27. New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1994.
• Hogan, Robert and O'Neill, Michael. Joseph Holloway's Abbey Theatre. Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1967.
• Isherwood, Charles. "A Seductive Fellow Returns, but in a Darker Mood". New York Times, 28 October 2004.
• Masefield, John. John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections With Biographical Notes, Netchworth: Garden City Press Ltd., 1916.
• Mercier, Vivian. Beckett/Beckett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-19-281269-6
• Price, Alan. "Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama". London: Methuen, 1961.
• Price, Alan. "A Survey of Recent Work on J. M. Synge" in A Centenary Tribute to J. M. Synge 1871-1909. Ed. S. B. Bushrui. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1972. ISBN 389-04567-5.
• Smith, Alison. "Introduction" in Collected Plays, Poems, and The Aran Islands. Edited by Alison Smith. London: Everyman, 1996.
• Synge, John Millington. Collected Works. Edited by Robin Skelton, Alan Price, and Ann Saddlemeyer. Gerrards Cross: Smythe, 1982. ISBN 0-86140-058-5
• Watson, George. Irish Identity and the Literary Revival. London: Croom Helm, 1979.

Print

• Igoe, Vivien. A Literary Guide to Dublin. (Methuen, 1994) ISBN 0-413-69120-9
• Kiely, David M. John Millington Synge: A Biography (New York, St. Martin's Press, 1994) ISBN 0-312-13526-2
• McCormack, W. J. Fool of the Family: A Life of J. M. Synge (New York University Press, 2001) ISBN 0-8147-5652-2
• Ryan, Philip B. The Lost Theatres of Dublin. (The Badger Press, 1998) ISBN 0-9526076-1-1
• Synge, J.M.. The Complete Plays. 1st. New York: Vintage Books, 1935.
• Synge, J.M.; "The Aran Islands" edited with an introduction by Tim Robinson (Penguin 1992) ISBN 0-14-018432-5

Online

• John Millington Synge, Princess Grace Irish Library. Retrieved on 31 August 2007.

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Millington Synge

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John Millington Synge

• Works by John Millington Synge at Project Gutenberg
  • In the Shadow of the Glen
  • Riders to the Sea
  • The Aran Islands
  • The Playboy of the Western World
  • The Tinker’s Wedding
  • In Wicklow and West Kerry
  • Deirdre of the Sorrows
• Archival material relating to John Millington Synge listed at the UK National Register of Archives
• Portraits of John Millington Synge at the National Portrait Gallery, London