The Playboy of the Western World

J.M. Synge

The Playboy of the Western World

Dublin

Maunsel

1907

Inscribed to Karel Musek “with cordial remembrances, from J.M. Synge, April 10, 1907.”

No Abbey Theatre play received more notoriety than Synge’s Playboy, which on its first performance on January 26, 1907, caused riots in the theater by Irish and Catholic nationalists, who thought the play demeaned Irish morality. The uproar brought to the stage an angry Yeats, who defended it and later wrote a poem, “On Those That Hated ‘The Playboy of the Western World.’” More rioting occurred on the play’s opening in other cities, even resulting in the cast’s arrest during a production in Philadelphia in 1912. This rare presentation copy was for the man who first brought Synge’s work to the Continent.