Synge and His Critics

Synge and His Critics DONALD M. MICHIE •• AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH IN 1909, John M. Synge's drama was being criticized for the wrong reasons. Scant attention was being paid to the artistic value of his drama in Ireland except by some of his intimate friends such as William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, AE, and Padraic Colum, all of whom were in the theatre movement. Most of the criticism leveled at Synge's drama was political. Arthur Griffith, editor of the nationalist newspaper, The United Irishman, spear-headed the attack on Synge by other fervent nationalists such as James Connally and Maud Gonne. They supported the Irish National Theatre Society so long as it remained Irish and nationalist, and as long as it was not antithetical to the aims of the Gaelic League and the Irish Nationalists. Some plays, like Yeats's Cathleen Ni Houlihan, were considered worthy of the Irish cause, but Synge's plays, particularly The Shadow ofthe Glen, The Tinker's Wedding, and The Playboy of the Western World, were blasted as "unwholesome productions." Other critics, along with Griffith, attacked the plays on moral grounds as well as political, because the plays had nothing Irish about them and because they were more characteristic of Continental "decadent" literature than of Irish literature. Synge was labelled a subversive who was undermining the morality and the hallowed customs of the Irish people and defaming the sanctity of the Roman Catholic Church; his plays were considered to be an affront to the dignity of the proud, nationalistic Irishman. Not only did the nationalistic newspapers attack Synge and his drama, but playgoers also hissed, booed, and rioted, not in protest against Synge the dramatist, but because they completely misunderstood his portrayal of the common Irish peasant. On the other hand, Synge's admirers were possibly too extravagant in their praise of him, particularly Yeats, who compared Synge with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. However, under the circumstances, such praise 427 428 DONALD M. MICHIE from Yeats is understandable. Yeats was striving to defend the theatre against the onslaughts of the fanatical nationalists and to do this, he necessarily had to exaggerate Synge's stature as a dramatist to awaken Synge's enemies to the fact that they had a great artist in their midst. Secondly, Yeats was using the Synge controversy to publicize to the world the Irish theatre and what it was trying to do; the controversy became a testing ground for Yeats's literary movement. He was no doubt sincere in his praise of Synge, but such exaggeration definitely incited the reaction of some critics against Synge a few years after Synge's death. However, other critics, far removed from Dublin and its politics, had already recognized Synge and his accomplishments. When Riders to the Sea was produced in London in 1905, one critic praised it as "a singularly beautiful and pathetic piece of hopeless fatalism." Another found it "intensely pathetic and, in a sense, supremely human." William Archer and Max Beerbohm both praised it elaborately.1 Another Englishman, Sir Walter Raleigh, a scholar of discrimination, had commented on Synge as early as 1905. "There's a man called Synge, a dramatist, who's a jewel. Speaks Irish. Very unlike Yeats; much more to him." Twenty years later Raleigh said: "If you want to read a great living English author, read Thomas Hardy; if you want to read an author of twenty times Bernard Shaw's imagination, who combines truth and poetry in dealing with Ireland, read J. M. Synge.,,2 Leading critics, producers, and scholars elsewhere appreciated Synge's triumphs of drama, notably producers in Germany and Bohemia who requested permission to perform Synge's plays in their countries. Even though the plays were only a moderate success there, Synge's reputation had become international. When Synge died, the political controversy over his plays was still unsettled; the Playboy riots in Dublin had been the culmination of all the past bitterness toward him and of the distrust of him, but at the same time, Synge's merit as an artist had been recognized. G. H. Mair predicted in 1911: "Probably in no single case amongst our contemporaries could...