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The Playboy of the Western World? As a Tragi-Comedy

Jemima Daniel

Ever since the playboy was staged, hot controversy has raged among critics as to the class of plays to which it belongs. It has been called a 'Pleasant Play' i.e. A play which deals with the life and suffering, joys and sorrows, of the peasants inhabiting the western part of Ireland. There is, no doubt, that it has "peasant quality', it deals with the simple life of the rural dwellers, of a particular region. But it is not a mere regional play. No doubt Synge has depicted faithfully the rural life of a particular region, but by concentrating on the elemental human passions, he has imparted universality to the regional and the particular. A merely "peasant play" has thus been imparted the glory and greatness of universal art.