The Vision of Riders to the Sea

Abstract

We carry in our minds models of a writer’s development — graphs on which we trace parabolas of gradual change with marked stages for juvenilia, increasingly successful experimentation, maturity and decline. In the case of Riders to the Sea, the graphs have to be scrapped altogether. It was written in the summer of 1902, at the very beginning of Synge’s career as a working dramatist, and therefore it ought to have been an apprentice-work, in which Synge could be seen learning his trade. It is, of course, no such thing; to many people’s way of thinking it is Synge’s most perfect play, literally a masterpiece, the first accomplished work of a master craftsman. It is one of the two plays by which Synge’s name is known, and it is performed perhaps even more often than The Playboy. Not only in technique, but in mood and theme, it seems an extraordinarily mature work to come from a novice.