No reader can put the book down without the feeling that he, too, has actually been present upon those lonely Atlantic rocks, cried over by the gulls, among the passionate, strange people whose ways are described here, with so tender a charity.—Daily News.
Nothing written by the author of "The Playboy of the Western World" can be uninteresting or unimportant ... A fine achievement, and only a sympathetically gifted man would and could have done it.—The Times.
A charming book.—W.L. Courtney (Daily Telegraph).
American Press Opinions of Mr. Synge's Work.
"Mr. Synge's plays are the biggest contribution to Literature made by any Irishman in out time.... If there is any man living and writing for the stage with youth on his side and the future before him, it is John Synge, whose four plays.... represent accomplishment of the highest order. It is true that these dramas do deal only with peasants, but they are handled in the universal way that Ibsen used when he made the bourgeois of slow Norwegian towns representative of the human race everywhere.... it is not only in the avoidance of joyless and pallid words that Mr. Synge has chosen the better part. He has experienced the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality; and so it was just because 'The Playboy' was so true in its presentation of the weaknesses—if weaknesses they can be called—as well as the strength of his men and women, that a furore was raised against it as a sort of satire.... The sympathy of the dramatist with his people makes itself felt in spite of his ability to stand apart detachment from them."—New York "Evening Sun."
"'The Aran Islands'.... of vast importance as throwing a light on this curious development.... is like no other book we have ever read. This is not because the people described in it are unique. With the most artful simplicity Mr. Synge gives you first a just idea of the alternate beauty and bleakness of that wonderful coast, and then makes you see the inhabitants in their daily struggle for existence.... This book, with its sympathetic insight, is the best possible return that Mr. Synge could have made to his friends on the island."—New York "Evening Sun."
"Synge is so real it is impossible to resist him. He seems to have the masterful quality of taking a few scattered peasant families, and giving to them a universal import.... His plays are alive. They are real plays in real persons, and not the least of their charm lies in the dialogue.... He is tilling what is practically virgin soil, and already he has demonstrated he is a skilled and sympathetic workman."—New York Press.
Second Edition now ready.
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD.
A Comedy in Three Acts. By J.M. SYNGE. Cr. 8vo. Cloth, with preface and portrait of the Author, 2s. net.