THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD - THE PLAYBOY OF THE...

THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
By J. M. Synge
PREFACE
In writing THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD, as in my other plays, I have used one or two words only
that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the
newspapers. A certain number of the phrases I employ I have heard also from herds and fishermen along the coast
from Kerry to Mayo, or from beggar-women and ballad-singers nearer Dublin; and I am glad to acknowledge how
much I owe to the folk imagination of these fine people. Anyone who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish
peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one
may hear in any little hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay. All art is a collaboration; and there is
little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the story-teller's or the
playwright's hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time. It is probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took
his ink-horn and sat down to his work he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat at dinner, from his
mother or his children. In Ireland, those of us who know the people have the same privilege. When I was writing
"The Shadow of the Glen," some years ago, I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in
the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls in
the kitchen. This matter, I think, is of importance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and the
language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same
time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern literature
of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far
away from the profound and common interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans producing this
literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the reality of life in joyless and pallid words. On the stage
one must have reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and people
have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only
in what is superb and wild in reality. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and
such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland,
for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender; so that those of us
who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to writers in places where the springtime of the local life has
been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks. J. M. S. January 21st,
1907.