The Nature of the Tragic Experience in Deirdre of the Sorrows

THE NATURE OF THE TRAGIC EXPERIENCE IN DEIRDRE OF THE SORROfl7S SYNGE'S Deirdre of the Sorrows IS COMMONLY LABELLED a tragedy, but the nature of the tragic experience in the play seems elusive. All too often the question is passed over by a casual use of the generic term tragedy with a lack of discrimination that renders the designation practically meaningless. Where the question has been addressed, the efforts are curiously abbreviated and the results less than satisfactory. Most recently Herbert V. Fackler, having just emphasized the difficulty in demonstrating the essence of the tragedy in Synge's Deirdre~ attempts in one brief paragraph to show that "the true essence of Deirdre's tragic story is in the inability of the major figures to control their will and avert the final destruction of all."l One does not so much disagree with Fackler's definition of the tragedy as desire its thorough development; surely a problem which, as Fackler states, has confused critics for decades cannot be disposed of with a single broad stroke. F. L. Lucas, in an equally brief treatment of the question of Deirdre's tragedy, identifies the playas a tragedy of hubris~ «hubris against the most powerful of gods, whose name is Time,"2 because Deirdre tries to defeat old age by dying young. But Lucas, like Fackler, abandons the subject immediately, having offered only this invocation of Aristotelian terminology to define the tragic experience. A critical approach which threatens even more our understanding of the tragedy is that which uses tragedy to mean little more than "vaguely sad," "regrettable." In recent Synge criticism, Alan Price's Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama3 affords the most prominent example of this imprecision. Price discusses Deirdre in a chapter entitled "Tragedies ," but his view of the play is eminently untragic. He reiterates often his idea of the theme-"that the ultimate actuality is death, and that love is a dream"4-a theme which certainly allows tragic treatment . But the theme is quite different in one of Price's alternate wordings-"death is the ultimate actuality, and love the dream that 1 "J. M. Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows: Beauty Only," Modern Drama, XI (February 1969), 409. 2 The Drama of Chekhov, Synge, Yeats, and Pirandello (London, 1963), p. 234. 3 London, 1961. 4 Price, p. 201. 243 244 MODERN DRAMA September alone can deride death and make life worthwhile."5 With his editorial addition to the theme, Price has purged it of tragic possibility, and his final comment on the play reveals a highly rOlnantic, almost sentimental , response to Deirdre. He concludes: "Life for the old has been a long nightmare; for the young a brief, exquisite dream. They have tried to bind to themselves a joy, and have destroyed it: the young kissed it as it flew, and they live in eternity's sunrise."6 A life in eternity's sunrise hardly provides a tragic end to Deirdre of the Sorrows. Price actually gives little attention to understanding the playas tragedy, for his purpose is to demonstrate his idea of Synge's constant theme, "the tension between dream and actuality." His overt statements on the tragedy in the play are not develop~d far and use the term tragedy too loosely to offer much insight. "The tragedy is that Conchubor fails to see that to break Deirdre in, to make her suitable for palace life with its tainted opulence and intrigue, is to destroy her."7 Here Price hints at the basic tragic irony of th~ play, to be sure, but it is Deirdre's attitude, not Conchubor's, on which the tragedy depends. Several pages later Price again in passing defines the tragedy: "The tragedy is not so much that people like Deirdre and N aisi are crushed by powerful men like Conchubor, but that all earthly beauty, youth and love decay and die."8 But this definition of "the tragedy" is inconsistent with Price's earlier statement that love is "the dream that alone can deride death and make life worthwhile." Jt is doubtful that one can defend the logic of love derides death by decaying and dying. Underdeveloped pronouncements and ambiguous terminology...