The Playboy as Poet

Abstract

In The Playboy of the Western World Synge portrays the successive stages in the artistic growth of a poet. Christy Mahon develops markedly from the time when he shyly and tersely answers questions on his crime. Gradually, his flat statements give way to more daring and assertive speech so that others remark on his poetic power. Their praise generates further poetic attempts, and Christy's speech becomes both more concrete in diction and more deliberately imaginative. But when he discovers that his poetry was not based on actual fact, his speech changes distinctly: it temporarily becomes self-conscious and hollow. Inevitably the crowd turns on him, but the playboy rises above them and their objections; the very audience which nurtured the growing poet eventually threatens him in his maturity, and must be disregarded by the poet, since it cannot understand the imaginative truth of his statements. The artistic growth of the main character is signified by a variety of styles; thus the play supplies examples of Synge's best poetry, but also deliberate exaggerations of poetic expression.