J. M. Synge is the most highly regarded dramatist of the modern Irish literary movement. His reputation as a major twentieth-century playwright was established by six plays, written in the last seven years of his life. Although Synge's early career showed few signs of what were to be his ultimate accomplishments, his plays with their distinctive blend of poetry and realism, both characteristically Irish and uniquely his own, are the most powerful of that remarkable dramatic movement led by William Butler Yeats in Dublin at the turn of the century.

Born on 16 April 1871 near Dublin, Edmund John Millington Synge was the youngest of five children. His father died the following year. The family was Protestant upper class, and Synge, his three brothers, and his sister were brought up by a fervently religious mother in comfortable financial circumstances. Beginning at age ten, he attended private schools for four years...