The Playboy of the Western World

Two plays by one of the leading figures in the brilliant revival of Irish drama in the early years of this century. Set book for AEB, 1995.
In the stormy years before Ireland at last gained her independence a brilliant revival of Irish drama took place and culminated in the foundation of the Abbey Theatre in 1904. Of those who helped to create it - W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, the Fay brothers, and Miss Horniman - it was J. M. Synge as much as anyone who made the new Irish drama the force it quickly became in the theatres of the world. In his plays, as in the tragedy of classic simplicity, Riders to the Sea , or in his rich, tumbling comedy, The Playboy of the Western World , he succeeds more than any other dramatist in miraculously distilling the Irish spirit.