over Naisi! In the creation of character, as in style, and in
technique of drama, Synge has done what he would. In only one of his
plays, in "Riders to the Sea," are his leading characters representative
Irish peasants; and even Maurya and her children, not only because of
the isolation of their home in Aran, but because of the fate which has
marked her mankind for death at sea, are somewhat apart from the
fisher-people of the west coast. In all his four other plays of modern
life, Synge has chosen characters who are, in his own words, "variations
from the ordinary types of manhood,"--chosen them because of his
deep-seated love of the unconventional. In "In the Shadow of the Glen,"
Michael Dara, the herd, is a common type, and Dan Burke, the old sheep
farmer, not an uncommon type, but the tramp and Nora, the one by his
wandering and the other by her brooding, are "variations," though very
human both. Of the cottager class, too, are Timmy the Smith, Molly
Byrne, and the "villagers" of "The Well of the Saints," as are, too, the
girls and men of "The Playboy of the Western World" other than the
Mahons and Michael James. Shawn Keogh, indeed, is a cut above cottagers,
being almost a strong farmer, and Michael James himself was, no doubt,
of a similar cottager respectability before he took to shebeen-keeping.
Almost all the other characters of these modern plays are, with the
exception of the priest of "The Tinker's Wedding" and the saint of "The
Well of the Saints," squatters, beggars, and tinkers. Among them, few as
they are all told, are very differing personalities--Christy the Playboy
and his father, "a dirty man, God forgive him, and he getting old and
crusty"; Martin Doul, a "shabby stump of a man," "of queer talk,"
middle-aged and blind and a beggar; Michael Byrne, the hardy, thieving,
unimaginative tinker; and the romancing young tramp who gallants Nora
when her own husband turns her out on the road;--"variations" all,
perhaps, but human, and compelling, all of them, our interest, and
greater or less sympathy. And the women! Nora, whom we leave as
road-woman, I have likened to Hedda Gabler, and Sarah Casey in externals
to Isopel Berners, but I do not know to whom to compare the others save
Mary Byrne, as slightly suggestive of Villon's old woman. Mary Doul,
blind Martin's blind wife, has a general likeness to some old witch out
of a fairy tale, but she is far from being a witch; and Widow Quinn the
incomparable might b