Playboy of the Western World, The, is a comedy-drama by the Irish playwright John Millington Synge. The play opened at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1907 and immediately aroused enormous controversy.
The Playboy of the Western World is set in a village pub (tavern) on the coast of County Mayo in Ireland. The central female character is Pegeen Mike, the fiery daughter of the pub owner. A young stranger named Christy Mahon stumbles into the pub, claiming that he killed his bullying father with a blow to the head. The customers in the pub treat the young man as a hero for his daring act.
In the second act, Mahon’s father enters the pub. The young man had merely knocked the older man unconscious, and now the father is angrily seeking his son. Pegeen Mike then turns on Christy, and after he knocks his father out again, she helps tie him up to turn him over to the police. But the father releases his son and the two men leave the pub with new respect for each other while criticizing the narrow-mindedness of the villagers.
During the earliest performances of the play, audience members disrupted the action because they were offended by language they considered vulgar. Irish nationalists also claimed that the drama slandered the Irish people in its portraits of the characters who would applaud a man killing his father. The play also led to demonstrations, sometimes violent, when it toured the United States.
Today, The Playboy of the Western World is considered a masterpiece of Irish drama. Christy’s ritual slaying of his father has been seen as a rebellion against the oppressive authorities of church and state. Critics have praised Synge’s vigorous poetic dialogue and the play’s gallery of vivid characters.
See also Irish literature (The Irish literary revival); Synge, John Millington.
