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Guys, I have a great surprise for you this Saturday and Sunday. Every day at six, it’s going to be a blast. Be with me at 6:00 PM this Saturday and this Sunday. It is a surprise; I won’t tell you what it is now. Come and see for yourself every day at six, Saturday and Sunday this week. [Music]
Hello, hello. This video is on two very important Irish writers of the 20th century. Well, Ireland was in a very great turmoil at the beginning of the 20th century because of the Irish revolutionary war and also the Irish literary revival, which was a part of the Celtic Twilights. Ireland had been ruled by England for a long time. Irish people were farmers; they were Catholics; they suffered a lot because of the Protestant English rule, and there was a lot of division in Ireland also regarding all this. We have already seen some of this in the works of W.B. Yeats. Ireland was to get independence only in the 1920s. So, as a part of the Irish literary revival, there was the coming of new theater, Irish Dramatic Society, and later Abbey Theatre from the 1890s. These developments were there, and associated with all this were two important playwrights: J.M. Synge and Sean O’Casey. You already know there’s another Irish playwright we have talked about; he is George Bernard Shaw. The Victorian stage in England was largely melodramatic, exclusive emotions, upper-class life, not much discussion of serious issues. This completely changed because of Irish writers like Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and Sean O’Casey and J.M. Synge.
J.M. Synge was not only a playwright; he was also a poet, prose writer, and a co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. Abbey Theatre was founded by a group of people: W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and J.M. Synge. You might all have heard of J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea, a small play, a short play, one-act play, but a very powerful play. Also, you might have studied or heard of The Playboy of the Western World; that was a play that was very controversial. The Playboy of the Western World is a very funny play which makes fun of Irish revolutionaries and Irish culture to some extent; that is why it was controversial. I will talk to you in detail about it.
Ireland is a big island, but there are some small, small islands near Ireland, and there is an island, a group of islands called the Aran Islands. It is very tough life there. The fishermen, the farmers there, they struggle to make their living; they’re very poor but very strong Catholics, staunch Catholics, and life in Aran Islands is like a metaphor for the struggles of the times. James Synge, because of the inspiration of W.B. Yeats, went and lived in Aran Islands for some time, and he wrote about it; that is Riders to the Sea. I’ve traveled to Ireland to visit the places associated with writers, and I, when I went to Galway, I wanted to visit Aran Islands. I inquired with tour companies, and I found that even today, weather might change once you get there; you may not be able to return immediately. Still, life there is difficult, and I couldn’t visit because I didn’t have time. If only you have like two days to spend to travel there and come back, then only it is possible. Anyway, so Aran Islands is brought alive in literature by J.M. Synge. If you want all these details, you have it in our encyclopedia. Volume 3 is on 20th century; Volume 2 is on 19th century; Volume 1 is up to 19th century. Just giving you information.
So I was saying that J.M. Synge has already written; he has written about the Catholics of Ireland, the peasantry of Ireland; that is, in fact, the main focus of all of James Synge’s works. And he wrote a number of plays like In the Shadow of the Glen, Riders to the Sea—I talked to you about it, I mentioned it, I will talk to you about it—then The Well of the Saints, The Aran Islands, The Playboy of the Western World, The Tinker’s Wedding, and the last play, Deirdre of the Sorrows. He was writing that play when he passed away; he was suffering from Hodgkin’s disease.
So let us talk about Riders to the Sea. It’s a 1904 play; it’s a one-act play depicting a small family: Maurya, a Maurya, a woman, and her two daughters, Nora and Kathleen. Actually, Maurya is how it is written—M-A-U-R-Y-A—but in Irish, it is pronounced Moira. Okay, now Moira was uh the leader, the head of a big family. Actually, she had a husband; husband’s father was there; there are six sons, but one by one, most of them have died; only two sons remain: Michael and Bartley. All the others have died: husband, husband’s father, four sons. Now this is very uh usual, common in those islands because people go fishing; they try to go to the mainland to buy something, to sell something, and they die because this is a very rocky sea; the boats get crushed on the rocks very easily. And the son Michael, who is now at sea, is missing; we don’t know, probably he’s dead. The second, the last son, the second one who remains, Bartley, wants to go and sell their pony, and this is the situation at home. Nora and Kathleen, the daughters, have got a set of clothes that has been washed ashore; the body, they did not get; body has already been eaten by the sea, the fishes; only the clothes. And these clothes, they are wondering if it is Michael’s. So what happens in the play is Bartley is going to the sea; Moira is going after him to bring him back, to say goodbye. Actually, she doesn’t want him to go; she wants to bring him back, but he is going anyway. She wants to go and say goodbye and give him a piece of stale bread that is left, but she doesn’t see Bartley; instead, she sees second sight; that means when a man is going to die, his close relatives will see a vision of him. Moira sees Michael, and when she gets back home without meeting Bartley, the daughters have already found out that these clothes are Michael’s; his body is lost, as he has had a clean burial at sea, and Moira gets to know, okay, Michael is not coming back; he has died. And immediately then, do you know what happens? Bartley’s body also gets uh he also dies, and his body is washed ashore; his body is brought back home. So both sons are dead; no more men remain; it means that the women are slowly going to starve and die. At this point, Moira, until then, was very sensitive and upset, and when she knows that no more men remain in her family, everyone has died, you will be surprised to see how strong she has become. She doesn’t cry; she’s resigned to the fate; she knows that it’s only a matter of time before she and her daughters also die. She becomes very stoic, and she prays for humanity, and that strong woman, and you know that she has become at the end; that is the beauty of the play Riders to the Sea.
The other play, The Playboy of the Western World, that I want to talk to you about is very different because it’s a funny play. In a small village, County Mayo in Ireland, there is a pub, Flaherty’s Pub; Flaherty is the owner; his daughter, Pegeen, is running the pub, and to the pub or tavern comes Christy Mahon. Christy has come from somewhere else, and he comes and tells Pegeen and later other villagers also that he is running away from the police because he has come after killing his father. We are like, what? But Pegeen and the other villagers are like, wow, you killed your father? Then you must have some real good reason for doing that; tell us the story; how did you kill your father? We want to know about it; you’re such a hero. The audience is like, this is so unusual; this is so unexpected. And you know what, Christy Mahon becomes a hero; everybody begins to come and listen to his story. This happens one day. At the end, you know, while he is telling his story and amusing everyone, and he’s also engaged in a donkey ride, he’s winning the race with the slowest horse—sorry, not house—donkey; he’s winning the race with the slowest donkey; that means he must have tortured the donkey so much. At that time, you know what happens? Christy’s father, who’s supposed to be dead, has been hit in the head with a loy or plow, and he has a bandage on his head, and he comes to the tavern looking for Christy. When people know this is Christy’s father, they are, oh, you are a liar; you didn’t kill your father after all. And no longer is Christy a hero; Christy misses his heroic stature. So you know what he does? He goes and off stage; he beats his father and kills him once again, and he says, I’ve killed my father; now make me the hero that I was. And the people are shocked; they are saying, what? You kill your father? You criminal; we’re gonna hang you. The same people who appreciated him first for killing his father are now going to hang him for killing his father. Things have gone bad for Christy. And you know what happens? His father was not dead; he comes crawling, bloodied all over. Christy, where are you? Let’s go. And Christy and uh his father leave the stage; they leave the village; they are going on other exploits. Now you are wondering what is happening; what is the story about? Understand this is an allegory; it is making fun of the people of Ireland who are killing their fatherland; perhaps it is making fun of Irish culture, and Irish people are like father killers. So the Irish revolutionaries, the Irish people did not like the play, even though it is a great play. In 1907, there were Dublin riots against Abbey Theatre, against Playboy of the Western World, and there was big trouble for J.M. Synge. I have discussed all that here. The Playboy riots; they occurred in January 1907. It was stirred up by Irish nationalists who viewed the contents of the play as an offense. So it became very controversial and later very famous. Did you like that?
Now there is one more playwright I need to talk to you about: J.M. Synge. One more thing, guys, before I talk about J.M. Synge, you are wondering two things: one is why is it called Playboy of the Western World, and secondly, you might have wondered—I don’t know if you wonder, but I wondered when I read, heard about the play first—how is it written? Is Irish plays different from English plays? Is it a different style? Yes, it is, because uh they used, I mean, James induced the Irish dialect a lot. Playboy of the Western World; the title means playboy usually means a womanizer, a man who plays with women, but that’s not the meaning here; a man who plays with his identity, who creates his identity through language, through narration, in other words. Now what is the reality of Ireland? It is all a word play; it is all just a play of words; you know that is the indication, the suggestion.
And then there is Sean O’Casey. Sean O’Casey, Irish playwrights, was involved with the Irish Theatre; actually, the Abbey Theatre made a lot of money with his Dublin Trilogy. Three Dublin plays are there; they are The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. You might have heard these titles before, eh? So these plays are set during the Irish War of Independence, about the working class, depicting the realities of Irish society and culture in profound ways. The last of these plays, The Plough and the Stars, is set during the Easter 1916 uprising. So now you know, right? W.B. Yeats also wrote about it, Easter 1916. And you know what happened? Abbey Theatre made a lot of money; everything was going well when Sean O’Casey, who did not like realism, he wrote in an experimental style, in an expressionistic style. His fourth play, which is The Silver Tassie, is expressionistic, and it is an attack on imperialistic wars. It talks in very poignant ways about the suffering and trauma cost about caused by the war; it was anti-imperialistic, and W.B. Yeats did not like the expressionistic element; he did not appreciate it, and he rejected Silver Tassie; it was not accepted for performance in the Abbey. Sean O’Casey is so indignant; his play is good, and he had contributed significantly to Abbey Theatre before. He was so angry with W.B. Yeats and Abbey Theatre; he left Ireland; he’d left Dublin and Ireland, and he never returned to his home country after that. Wow, so angry; that is The Silver Tassie. And why did he use expressionism? Because he did not want to be limited by the tradition of dramatic realism; expressionism gave him more freedom to explore his themes. Sean O’Casey has left Ireland; he’s living in England, but he continues his preoccupation with Ireland in later plays also. Many of his uh Irish plays talk about the church and its impact on the people of Ireland. So that is about Sean O’Casey.
Now, guys, I want to tell you a couple of things about Irish literature. Irish literature is a very significant literature; there are many important Irish writers. In the chapter on 20th century, I have given a whole section on Irish writers here, 20 20th century, but we should understand one thing that British literature has dominated over Irish literature and kind of silenced it to some extent. Irish literature is not part of our syllabi very much. When we talk about the literature of the United Kingdom, we don’t talk about Irish literature much except for a few writers like Bernard Shaw or James Joyce. So Irish literature is a very important area. You can apply postcolonial concerns in Irish literature; you can find authors and topics for research in Irish literature and try to give some visibility to uh risk to Irish literature through research um in India. So we are all looking for research topics; we are looking for areas that have not worked upon more very, very much. So for unworked-on areas, a good suggestion that I can give you is Irish literature, and interestingly, it has a lot of postcolonial concerns also. Uh, I hope you are reading on your own; it is very important that you read plays; you read on your own because that will give you first-hand understanding of the style and themes; it will give you tremendous knowledge. Do that, please. And I have restarted the YouTube shorts and reels; I hope you have been following them, and we are posting the answers regularly so that it will benefit you. Please let us know what you think about all these things, and I’m not getting to reply to your comments immediately, but I personally read your comments, and I learned from your comments. All your suggestions and criticism actually helps me a lot also. So feel free to interact and comment. If you have any queries if you regarding books or notes or courses, we have courses running on British literature and non-British literatures; after that, literary theory, criticism, everything is coming up one by one. If you’re interested to know details of any of these, feel free to contact us in our office number, which is 93878-39871. So thank you very much for your support and enthusiasm. I’m learning with you; we are all doing wonderful work together. Thank you very much, everyone. Until the next video, bye-bye.