Talk:John Millington Synge

older entries
Is this copyrighted? This is just a copy of: http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc26.html


 * I used that text as a start and added some info from other sources. -- Viajero 16:43, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

This was the text before I started a rewrite:

John Millington Synge (born April 16, 1871, died March 24, 1909) was an Irish writer, best known for the play The Playboy of the Western World.

Synge was born in Rathfarnham, County Dublin. He received his degree from Trinity College, Dublin, then went to Germany to study music. He then travelled on foot through Germany, Italy and France and then went to Paris, where he lived for several years writing literary criticism. Here, in 1899, he met a compatriot, William Butler Yeats, who persuaded Synge to live for a while in the Aran Islands and then return to Dublin and devote himself to creative work. The Aran Islands (1907) is the journal of Synge's retreat. His subsequent work reflected the bleak and tragic lives of Irish peasants and fisherfolk. The plays on which his fame rests were written in the last six years of his life. The first two one-act plays, In the Shadow of the Glen, (1903), a comedy, and Riders to the Sea (1904), were produced by the Irish National Theatre Society. This group, with Synge, Yeats and Lady Gregory as co-directors, organized in 1904 the Abbey Theatre. Two comedies, The Well of the Saints (1905) and The Playboy of the Western World (1907), were presented by the Abbey players. The latter play created an uproar among Irish patriots stung by Synge's bitter humor.

Synge's later works included The Tinker's Wedding, published in 1908 but not produced for fear of further riots, and Deirdre of the Sorrows, a tragedy unfinished at the time of his death but presented by the Abbey players in 1910.

External link

 * Internet Broadway Database entry for Synge

Britannica
This article has some sort of citation here, in Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Anyone know what's going on?--Shtove 08:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Ben Affleck
That picture looks amusingly like Ben Affleck with a fake moustache. 61.69.200.71 05:05, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Is it a featured article ? --Miwanya 14:43, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

"Contradict" tag
From the text:
 * Yeats returned from Scotland to address the crowd on the second night [of the performance of The Playboy of the Western World, 1907], famously declaring "You have disgraced yourself again, is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?"

Later: So which was it? -- 131.111.8.99 21:58, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The above quote 'You have disgraced yourself again, is this to be the recurring celebration of the arrival of Irish genius?' is quoted from a speech by Yeats to the Abbey audience in 1926 on the fourth night of Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars.

HatNote "Redirect" Dab
I placed a HatNote

which produces

and a colleague removed it, summarizing simply
 * unnessary

Unfortunate, like most things, it's not that simple. As it says, the HatNote was there bcz of the Rdr, and the Rdr is still there. Since it is obvious the removal was made out ignorance, i am reverting it, without prejudice to a proper removal, whereby the HatNote would go, and the Rdr at Synge would be changed to point to Synge (surname). So the question is, what do you think a user who asks for an article entitled "Synge" would be looking for? I think they want, in 4 out 5 of cases, the famous playwright, and not the Nobel Prize winner (let alone a list of the minor notables who also bear the surname and have WP articles). If you agree, you want the Rdr to come to the accompanying article and the HatNote at its top. If you think they are anywhere near as likely to want either the mathematician, or to be shown the full extent of the glorious pursuits of the world's Synges, you want the Rdr expunged, and Synge (surname) to be moved back to that title, and, of course, the HatNote to be removed. You have my opinion, but as the colleague presumably agrees, mine is no more relevant than any other well-informed editor's, and in fact i've really "got no skin in this game". Figure out which route to go, and if you do want the HatNote, i'd be glad to be the admin who makes it possible to move the surname page back to the title currently occupied by the Rdr. --Jerzy•t 01:08, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Personality
"Synge was open when he would write letters to women, and instead of being reticent, he was acted like "an ordinary human being but not a particularly eloquent one".[39] However, his letters to Allgood, an actress that Synge wrote to often, are filled with condescending remarks and as a man who is "not only unattractive but also incompatible with the complex personality of the man who wrote the plays"."

These sentences are so distorted as to be almost incomprehensible. Perhaps someone who knows what they are meant to say could rewrite them in grammatical English.218.14.49.121 (talk) 02:20, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Pronunciation
Sing, not singe, right? &mdash;JerryFriedman (Talk) 22:49, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

MB Synge
According to footnotes in a collection of Synge's letters, at least, one of Synge's cousins, Margaret B Synge (1861-1939) was a notable children's author, by the way. Schissel | Sound the Note! 02:31, 23 June 2016 (UTC)

Relationship with Stephen MacKenna
I just revamped the page for Stephen MacKenna and as I was researching, I discovered some references to the relationship between Synge and MacKenna. Specifically,

"In 1896, [MacKenna] turned to journalism, had a wretchedly paid post as reporter in Paris and there came into contact with characters like Maud Gonne, Arthur Lynch and J. M. Synge. They became his intimate friends, and Lynch was to write much later that 'the man who knew Synge best was Stephen MacKenna, and Synge's first book bears evident marks of MacKenna's influence or, as I should say perhaps, MacKenna's active help.'"

The citation that Murray gives for this quotation is simply: Irish Statesman, October 20, 1928.

If this can be further corroborated, it should likely be included in Synge's, should it not? I would assume that his most intimate friend who had an impact on his writing would make the cut of being included. -- Tkbrett (talk) (contrib) 3:53, 24 December 2017 (UTC)


 * I found another source corroborating his close friendship with MacKenna:


 * "A contingent of Irish nationalists gathered in and around the Hotel Corneille: there [Synge] met W.B. Yeats and Maud Gonne for the first time. But also, no less importantly, Synge met Stephen MacKenna, who would become his closest friend and sounding post; and Arthur Lynch, who was soon to go off to fight for the Boers."


 * --Tkbrett (talk) 18:50, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Synge and politics
Our article contains a paragraph on Synge's political nature and asserts that he had radical beliefs, sourced exclusively to Declan Kiberd. The text is an accurate statement of Kiberd's views.

A similar (but perhaps more moderate) take appears to be Skelton, Robin; "The Politics of J. M. Synge". The Massachusetts Review 18, no. 1 (1977): 7-22.

But Yeats held that Synge was essentially apolitical. "He was the man that we needed, because he was the only man I have ever known incapable of a political thought or of a humanitarian purpose." Yeats, The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, pp. 352-53; and "Synge has described, through an exaggerated symbolism, a reality which he loved precisely because he loved all reality. So far from being, as they thought, a politician working in the interests of England, he was so little a politician that the world merely amused him and touched his pity". Id., pp. 385-86.

Perhaps this is a case (to quote Auden on Yeats) where "the words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living." Kablammo (talk) 02:09, 3 January 2021 (UTC)