The Playboy of the Western World, by John Millington Synge, at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, January 28, 1907
Seldom has any theatre anywhere seen anything like it. John Millington Synge’s play had just been denounced in a nationalist paper as an “unmitigated libel on Irish peasant men and, worse, on Irish peasant girlhood”. That night there was such stamping, booing, striking of seats with sticks, cries of “Sinn Fein for ever” and even “kill the author” that the performance came to a stop and the police arrived.
Why? Well, Synge’s play was provocative, as he knew, having reacted to the failure of his The Well of the Saints by promising that “the next one I write I will