RIDERS TO THE SEA[41] By JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE
Reading edition
RIDERS TO THE SEA[41] By JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE
"He was of a dark type of Irishman, though not black-haired. Something in his air gave one the fancy that his face was dark from gravity. Gravity filled the face and haunted it, as though the man behind were forever listening to life's case before passing judgment.... When someone spoke to him he answered with grave Irish courtesy. When the talk became general he was silent.... His manner was that of a man too much interested in the life about him to wish to be more than a spectator. His interest was in life, not in ideas." In these words, John Masefield gives his first impressions of John Millington Synge, whom he met at a friend's house, in London, in January, 1903.
Synge's book, The Aran Islands, which is a record of his various visits to these three islands lying about thirty miles off the coast of County Galway, is full of material that throws light on the setting and characterization of Riders to the Sea. The central incident in this play was suggested to Synge while he was sojourning on Inishmaan, the middle island of the Aran group, by a tale that he heard of a man whose body had been washed up on a distant coast, and who had been identified as belonging to the Islands, because of his characteristic garments. When on Inishmaan, Synge himself lived in just such a cottage as that which is the background for the tragedy of Maurya's sons. He wrote of this cottage, "The kitchen itself, where I will spend most of my time, is full of beauty and distinction. The red dresses of the women who cluster round the fire on their stools give a glow of almost Eastern richness, and the walls have been toned by the surf-smoke to a soft brown that blends with the gray earth-color of the floor. Many sorts of fishing-tackle, and the nets and oilskins of the men, are hung up on the walls or among the open rafters." And the following passage from his Aran Islands is an eloquent description of the atmosphere there: "A week of smoking fog has passed over and given me a strange sense of exile and desolation. I walk round the island nearly every day, yet I can see nothing anywhere but a mass of wet rock, a strip of surf, and then a tumult of waves.
"The slaty limestone has grown black with the water that is dripping on it, and wherever I turn there is the same gray obsession twining and wreathing itself among the narrow fields, and the same wail from the wind that shrieks and whistles in the loose rubble of the walls."
Mr. Masefield, in his recollections of Synge, reports also the following conversation between himself and the Irish playwright: Synge saying, "They [the islanders] asked me to fiddle to them so that they might dance," and Mr. Masefield asking, "Do you play, then?" and Synge answering, "I fiddle a little. I try to learn something different for them every time. The last time I learned to do conjuring tricks. They'd get tired of me if I didn't bring something new. I'm thinking of learning the penny whistle before I go again."
The Drama Calendar of December 13, 1920, offers the following suggestion for a musical setting for the play: "The attention of Little Theatre directors is called to a musical prelude to Synge's Riders to the Sea, arranged by Henry F. Gilbert from the Symphonic Prologue, which was played at the Worcester Musical Festival this fall. This original arrangement of the material is intended to build the mood which the play sustains, and is simply orchestrated for seven instruments. Every Little Theatre should be able to gather such an orchestra. Here is an opportunity to give continuity to a program of one-acts; music answers a question which is one of the hardest the director has to solve: how a mood which is to be created and sustained in the brief space of twenty minutes shall not be too fleeting."