Synge's Playboy as Mock-Christ

SYNGE'S PLAYBOY AS MOCK-CHRIST EVEN THOUGH CRITICS FREQUENTLY GRANT Riders to the Sea or Deirdre of the Sorrows to be the "greatest" of Synge's plays, Playboy of the Western World has for many the most hearty appeal of all. One may wonder, thoqgh, at reasons for such popularity in view of the profound gulf that separates the two most commonly held interpretations of the Playboy himself: on the one hand he is thought to become a hero in the final act, and on the other a mock-hero. I find little attempt among the critics to justify one view or the other, on the contrary the fundamental understanding of his character usually colors or generates a concept of the play. Alan Price, in the most thorough and recent study of Synge, thinks of Christy as a hero, seeing in this play, in contrast to The Well of the Saints, Synge's fusion of the "dream" and the "actuality,"! watching Christy develop through the action "from weakling to hero."2 Una Ellis-Fermor likewise sees him developing, "not merely into 'a likely man,' but into a poet-hero, 'the only playboy of the western world:"3 H. H. MacLean devotes an article to exploring Christy'S Christ archetype, which makes of Christy a myth-generated hero.4 I have severe doubts about rigorously applying archetypal patterns to the play, but it might be interesting to look at the Christ parallel again to see if Synge has not used the myth to ironic purposes not entirely consistent with MacLean's reading. Even though it seems a minority voice, there certainly exists an ironic interpretation of Christy. Krause sees the "mock-heroic treatment of Christy" as deriving from the Ossian prototype.5 He in addition finds in Synge a "counterpoint of idealism and irony," where "lyric and satiric modes are played against each other." Peacock in the same way proposes a far more subtle comprehension of Synge's vision in the play than that which makes Christy simply a hero: The basis of the comic here is a delicate and capricious mockery at the very idea of fine language, closely related as it is to fine ideas. Synge plays in this comedy with his own discovery. Through 1 Alan Price, Synge and AnglO-Irish Drama (London, 1961), p. 162. 2 Ibid., p. 178. 8 Una Ellis-Fermor, The Irish Dramatic Movement (London, 1939), p. 177. 4 Hugh H. MacLean, "The Hero as Playboy, UKCR, XXI (Fall, 1954), 9-19. 6 David Krause, .. 'The Rageous Ossean': Patron-hero of Synge and o'Casey," MD, IV (1g61), p. 283. 303 304 MODERN DRAMA December his mock-hero Christy Mahon he allows his instrument to elaborate its most splendid ornaments.6 Here, then, is an evasive hero whose similarities to Christ should perhaps be seen in the same light. Christy Proteus-like shifts before our eyes, before his associates' eyes, and before his own. He has always tried to see himself, has not simply begun doing so when we catch him with the mirror at the beginning of Act II. Mahon deprecates his eternal romancing, including "making mugs at his own self in the bit of glass we had hung on the wa11."7 Where he has been seen a hero in general by the Mayo people, Mahon makes him a frightened rabbit, a "looney," which we of course suspected from our first glimpse. There is in the final action the obviously diametrical movement of Christy upward in the eyes of the audience and downward in the eyes of the Mayo people. Yet it is not an unqualified movement. The truth lies not in one pair of eyes, but in the reality of the contradictions that result from the shifting perspective. Surely the antithetical views achieved by Christy himself and Pegeen should leave the spectator a range in which to see the irony of Christy'S self-glorification and Pegeen's disillusion . One of the most fundamental ironies in the play rises from the apotheosis of an ostensible murderer. Christy'S coming strikes fear into the hearts of the folk in the shebeen, especially Shawn, who has heard (or felt) him "groaning wicked...