The Short Plays of J. M. Synge

These one-act plays capture the world J. M. Synge found among the fishermen and cottagers of rural Ireland, whose speech he transcribed almost as music. Riders to the Sea condenses a mother’s grief into a single unbearable hour as the ocean takes the last of her sons off the Aran Islands, while In the Shadow of the Glen turns a loveless Wicklow marriage into dark comedy when a husband fakes his own death to test his wife. Short, stark, and written in the rhythmic Anglo-Irish dialect Synge made famous, they helped define the Abbey Theatre and the Irish Literary Revival. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available for readers and students of modern drama.