The Nature of Synge's Dialogue

119 THE NATURE OF SYNGE'S DIALOGUE By Pat Barnett (University of California, Davis) The plays of John Millington Synge have proved a constant source of controversy ever since their production some fifty years ago, and nowhere has the argument been as fierce as on the question of the dialogue. Early critics condemned Synge as a "faker of peasant speech"! Who wrote "a flamboyant dialect of English interspersed with numerous swearwords."2 Only a few, like Yeats, Moore and Eliot,3 appreciated the successful experiment which had at last created a natural dialect, both poetic and dramatic, through which Synge had discovered "great literature in barbarous idiom."^ Later critics gradually came to realize, however, that Synge's dialect was more than a note-book transcription of what he heard in his travels, more than the scrappy and artificial mosaic it had been called. Both from his own prefaces, and from other independent evidences of peasant speech,5 especially those presented in Greene and Stephens' biography, it has been generally established that "except for the linguistic refinement that goes into any work of art, Synge's characters speak a language which must have been very close to that spoken by the Islanders,"« Most critics now appreciate his immense skill in refining and heightening a selection of the living peasant language, and by a conscious artistic choice molding It into the exact imaginative tool for the poetic harmony and subtlety of his plays. The fusion of raw material and personal genius has produced a language for drama which fits perfectly his own Ideal that "In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple."7 The authenticity of his dialogue is by now assumed and accepted in recent books, and the function and variation of his language is seen to be more Important. Synge's dialogue Is on two levels, both provoking much interest: the common everyday speech of peasant conversation, and the passages and phrases of poetic lyricism and rhythm. The first problem is discussed in some detail in Maurice Bourgeois' early book,8 and has since been accepted, with all its ellipses, Gaelic translations, intense compressions and circumlocutions, as a generally characteristic and unified dialect with great force on the stage. But Synge's poetic imagery and bursts of lyricism have given rise - and still do - to wild and stringent criticism. This lyric imagery has been called false, strained, lacking In taste and propriety, unreal, violent, and (inevitably) artificial. All these faults occur at one time or another, but they «re never consistent or obvious. Daniel Corkery, in a marvellously bad book which stimulates by the passion it arouses, can seriously state that he doubts "if lyricism apart from the function of relief has any place in drama."9 On this statement he bases his 120 condemnation of Synge's poetic language, accusing him of gratifying "thelust of his imagination" by deliberately sprinkling his plays with obvious and harmful lyric passages. This is an extreme view, but Synge's language still raises vital questions on the functions of lyricism, characterization and symbolism in his dramatic speech. When one studies the plays in detail, the careful use he makes of his dialogue can be seen. Rarely can the lyric passages be dismissed as mere decorative appendages, when in all the plays the dominant atmosphere and tone is created and conveyed mainly by the vivid and evocative poetry. In Iji the Shadow of the Glen, for example, the "fine bit of talk" which Nora admires in the Tramp represents the whole life of the outside world, of freedom and nature and adventure, which she would never know in her life with either her husband Dan or the weak Michael. It is the Tramp's lyricism, which she can appreciate and equal in her own speech (as on p. 90), which inspires her to break away from the hope of dull old age with her husband or lover, and to folow his exciting vision: "It's not my blather you'll be hearing only, but you'll be hearing the herons crying out over the black lakes, and you'll be hearing the grouse and the owls...