( John Millington Synge 1871–1909)
an Irish writer of plays. W B Yeats persuaded him to write about the life of Irish peasants (= poor farmers). His plays use the language of ordinary country people in a dramatic way. His best-known work, The Playboy of the Western World (1907), is the story of a man who arrives in a small community and pretends that he has killed his father. Many Irish people were angry at the idea that Irish peasants would welcome a murderer and treat him with respect. There were protests when the play was first performed at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin , but it is now considered one of the greatest plays in Irish literature.