About The Playboy of the Western World and Two Other Irish Plays
The plays that helped make modern Ireland
Riots greeted the first performance of The Playboy of the Western World at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre on 26 January 1907. Eggs, potatoes and even a slice of fruit cake were hurled at the actors during subsequent performances, and it seems unlikely that much of the actual play could have been heard in the uproar. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, with the two other plays in this volume, Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen (1892) and O’Casey’s Cock-a-doodle Dandy (1949), mark vital stages in the rich explosion of Irish drama that first made itself heard at the turn of the century and gathered momentum during the Easter Rising of 1916 and the Civil War.
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John Millington Synge was born in 1871 into an old Anglo-Irish family. Due to ill health he was educated mainly by… More about J. M. Synge
About William Butler Yeats
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) was born in Dublin. Yeats was educated in London and in Dublin, but he spent his summers… More about William Butler Yeats
About Sean O’Casey
Sean O’Casey was born in Dublin in 1880. In 1926 he moved to England. He discouraged any professional performances of… More about Sean O’Casey
