The Tinker's Wedding, a Revaluation

Extract

The Tinker's Wedding is the most unattractive of the plays of J. M. Synge. This unruly little farce, the only two-act play Synge attempted, has been generally labelled an ugly duckling. But the manuscript drafts of the play tell an interesting story which, if it does not cause us to revise our estimate of the play, assigns it a proper place in the Synge canon and partly explains its deficiencies. The manuscripts show, for instance, that The Tinker's Wedding was the dramatist's first attempt to break away from the one-act form and that possibly Synge's only mistake was in publishing the results of his experiment. They afford an interesting insight into Synge's method; and they include, in an earlier version of the preface to the play an apology to the Irish clergy. They also throw light on Synge's development toward the mastery of the full, three-act play.