40. The Well-Made Play

Is a dramatic genre from the 19^th century theatre. It had already entered into common use as a derogatory term. The plot is based on a secret that reveals at the climate of the action. Battles of wise people, centre upon stage prop, letter, fan.

41. The Irish Renaissance

Irish Humour

Irish humor developed out of the oral tradition (the telling of jokes and stories in Irish pubs). Irish humor developed out of pain and tragedy that came from the Irish diaspora. Irish humor contains much wordplay, and much of Irish wordplay is bilingual and/or bicultural, relating to both the Gaelic/Celtic and to the English language and culture. There are many Irish people around the world who are trying to reestablish their roots, and it is the humor in Irish written and oral literature that is helping them do so.

Folklore

County Mayo in the Gaeltacht is remote from tourism. “There are the remains of prehistoric forests and fairy mounds in the peat-bogs (tőzeg-láp). People talk of ancestors as if they were neighbors, and of three-hundred-year-old events as if they happened yesterday.”

Irish Blarney

Irishmen have the “gift of gab (fecsegés).” This comes from kissing the Blarney stone at Blarney Castle in County Cork. It is said that Queen Elizabeth tried to get Cormac MacCarthymore (occupier of Blarney Castle at the time) to surrender his castle to the English. He said he would do so, but he kept giving her reasons that he couldn’t do it yet. The queen is said to have exclaimed, “It’s all Blarney—he says he will do it, but he never means to do what he says.”

Kissing the Blarney Stone

To kiss the Blarney stone you must climb to the top of Blarney Castle. In order to kiss the Blarney stone, the visitor has to lie on his back and be lowered head downwards over the edge of the wall. Someone has to hold onto the ankles of the visitor so that they won’t slip off the edge of the castle. It’s hard to know whether kissing the stone gives someone the gift of eloquence, the entire process is “a bit of the blarney.”

42. John Millington Synge. Riders to the Sea.

J.M. Synge is one of the most famous Irish playwrights, and one of the founders of that nation's Abbey Theatre. Edmund John Millington (J.M.) Synge was born April 10, 1871, in rural Rathfarnham, outside Dublin, Ireland. He was the youngest of five children, and never knew his father John Hatch, a barrister who died of smallpox when Synge was a year old. Hatch’s death left mother Kathleen to raise the family, which she did following the example of her own strict and insular Irish Protestant upbringing. Synge attended private school for four years. He was a shy boy, often in ill health. His sick days interfered with his schoolwork, so his mother engaged a home tutor for him. Without the company of other boys, Synge roamed the surrounding countryside and became an avid naturalist. At the age of 16, he snuck Darwin’s Origin of Species into his bedroom, and lost his Christian faith upon reading of evolution. Synge felt this loss of faith as a shameful betrayal of his mother. Synge did share a love of music with his mother, however. Both she and her son Samuel played the piano and concertina. Inspired by their example, Synge began violin lessons, discovering a natural ability and an excellent ear. From 1888-1892, he enrolled at both the Royal Irish Academy of Music and Trinity College, Dublin. He did not enjoy university life, as his upbringing had ill-prepared him for so much socializing. He graduated from Trinity with a focus on languages, and received music scholarships from the Academy. Synge then traveled to Germany to continue playing the violin. It was in Germany that Synge realized he wished to pursue writing over music. In 1896, Synge moved to Paris to study languages. While there, he met fellow Irishman and poet William Butler Yeats. Synge’s relationship with Yeats would prove to be one of the most influential of his life. Yeats saw in Synge a kindred imaginative spirit, someone passionate not only about literature, but most essentially about Irish literature. Yeats and Synge met regularly with Maud Gonne, the incendiary Irish revolutionary figure, and Lady Augusta Gregory. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Synge would later form The Abbey Theatre in Dublin.In the meantime, Yeats encouraged Synge to travel to the Aran Islands in order to learn the Gaelic language and acquaint himself with Irish folk. Prior to taking the trip, Synge was diagnosed with Hodgkins disease and underwent an operation to remove a neck tumor. Sickly but inspired, Synge then took the trip and gathered the material for the majority of his canon. The terrain, the sea, the area’s history, the villagers’ stories and most of all, the villagers’ language — whether Gaelic or their own strand of English — set Synge’s imagination alight. In 1902, Synge joined W.B. Yeats and Lady Gregory in forming the Irish National Theatre Society in Dublin. In 1904, it was renamed The Abbey Theatre. The Abbey produced all of Synge’s plays: In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), Riders to the Sea (1904), The Well of the Saints (1905) and Playboy of the Western World (1907). None of his plays received particularly good reviews, and The Playboy of the Western World was largely reviled, sparking riots and arrests during its one-week run. Synge’s plays, with their colorful, profane imagery and their violent subject matter, offended the sensibilities of Protestant elite and Catholic Nationalists alike. During this period, Synge courted The Abbey's lead actress, Molly Allgood, who starred as Pegeen Mike in The Playboy. The two were engaged, but Synge’s health took a fatal turn in 1908. He underwent another operation to remove a tumor, but died on March 24, 1909 in Dublin, at the age of 37. 1910 saw the publication of Synge’s Collected Works, featuring both his produced plays and the unfinished Deidre of the Sorrows.

Riders to the Sea

It is a one-act tragedy, that tells of a mother, Maurya, who loses her husband and six sons to the sea. Set in the Aran Islands. The play begins with Mauyra, who has fallen into a fitful sleep. She is certain that her son, Michael, has drowned, even though she has no proof, and has been constantly grieving for nine days. Cathleen, her daughter, is doing household chores when Nora, another daughter arrives. She quietly slips into the kitchen with a bundle that had been given to her by a young priest. In the bundle are clothes taken from the body of a man who drowned in the far north. They were sent to Maurya's home, hoping that she would be able to identify the body.Maurya begins to look as if she is going to wake up soon, so the daughters hide the bundle until a time when they are alone. Maurya awakes, and her fear for losing her only remaining son Bartley intensifies her grieving for Michael. Keep in mind, she has already lost five sons and a husband to the sea. The priest claims that "insatiable tyrant" will not take her sixth. However, Bartley proclaims that he is going to venture over to the mainland that same day, in order to sell a horse at the fair, despite knowing of the high winds and seas.Maurya begs Bartley not to go, yet he insists despite her pleas. In a flustered state of irritation, Maurya bids him gone without her blessing. Upon seeing these events unfold, the sisters tell Maurya, that she should go out and search for Bartley in order to give him the lunch that they he had forgotten to bring, and while at it, give him her blessing.Maurya agrees to go, and once she is gone, the girls open the bundle. They find that they were indeed Michael's clothes, but at least they have the comfort of knowing he got a respectable Christian burial where he washed up in the north. At this point, Maurya returns even more flustered and terrified before. She has seen a vision of Michael riding on the lead horse behind Bartley. Because of this, she is sure Bartley is doomed to die at sea. The girls then show her Michael's clothes, and she exclaims that the nice white boards she had bought for Michael's coffin may now be used for Bartley's instead.As she says this, the neighbors (women) enter, their voices raised in what the play calls a "keen", or wailing lament for the dead. Men follow the women, who bring in the body of Bartley, who, sure enough, is dead. He has been knocked off a cliff into the surf below by the horse he was leading. The play ends with Maurya's fatal submission as she says, "They're all gone now and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me."This play resulted in the public having an interesting outlook to the sea. Whereas beforehand the sea was always mysterious and adventurous, it now became melodramatic and depressing. This had a somewhat similar effect to "Jaws" in the mid 70s, changing peoples' views of water and the ocean, but on a lesser scale.