J. M. Synge's Letters

442 8. J. M. SYNGE'S LETTERS Ann Saddlemyer, ed. The Collected Letters of John Millington Synge. Volume I, 1871-1907; Volume Two, 1907-1909. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983, 1984. $63.00 Each When Synge's Playboy of the Western World opened at the Abbey Theatre on Saturday, 26 January 1907, it was received with a burst of riotous anger from the audience. The play continued to receive loud and angry responses from the audience for days afterward. In an effort to quell violence, Yeats set up a public debate on "The Freedom of the Theatre." In a letter to Molly Allgood, Synge says: "I think the debate was a mistake. Yeats forgets that our opponents are low ruffians not men of intellect and intelligence with whom one can reason." Despite the bad reception the play continued to receive during his lifetime, Synge was confident that this play was his best work. But he did not deceive himself about its effect on the Abbey. He writes to a journalist friend: "The 'Playboy' affair brought so much unpopularity on my friends Lady Gregory, Mr. Yeats and the individual players of our company that I am placed in a rather delicate position." His confidence in his own work, his sensitivity, his concern for the company, his dedication to the principles on which the Abbey Theatre was established and, despite his debilitating illness, his involvement and exhausting work as director and playwright are vividly evoked in these letters. In a letter to Molly he asserts that despite the bad reception and some bad reviews and the Company's decision not to take P1ayboy on its intended American tour, "I don't think it is wise to leave me out the way they have done, but let them take the responsibility, my plays will get their chance in the long run." In a letter to his German translator, Max Meyerfeld, he says, "I got very ill after the shows of the Playboy in January. . . ." To his friend Stephen MacKenna he writes of an incident involving the Theatre charwoman and Lady Gregory. Being asked what she thought of the use of the word "shift" in the play, the charwoman replied that she would not mention the garment at all, "but if she did she hoped she would say 'chemise' even if she was alone! Then she went down on the stage and met the stage carpenter. 'Ah' says she, 'isn't Mr. Synge a bloody snot to write such a play!' There's Dublin delicasy!" As in this quotation, Synge frequently misspelled words. His most frequent misspellings were "changely," one of his favorite names for Molly and "dissappointed," a word he often used in commenting on her behavior, especially when she was late in writing him. Not surprisingly he was often unhappy about her attentions to other men, particularly the actor Adolphus Wright, who often put his arm around Molly. Synge was very sensitive about strangers by chance reading his or 443 Molly's letters, principally as a result of Molly's failure to write a legible address on her letters to him and her failure to give him a specific enough address for him to write her when she was on tour. In addition to revealing such sensitivities, his letters , on occasion, capture the verbal music of his plays when he speaks of nature: "There is nearly a half moon, and I have been picturing in my mind how all our nooks and glens and rivers would look, if we were out among them as we should be! Do you ever think of them? Ever think of them and I mean not as places that you've been to, but as places that are still, with the little moon shining, and the rivers running, and the thrushes singing, while you and I, God help us, are far away from them." Being Molly's mentor, he coached her in her acting, directed her reading, commented on her behavior and encouraged her to improve her writing. He congratulates her on her improvement in all these, especially her acting and her letter-writing: "It is extraordinary how you have 'come on' in the whole turn and ease...