The Playboy of the Western World
Playboy of the Western World, The,a comedy by Synge , performed and published 1907 .
Christy Mahon, ‘a slight young man, very tired and frightened’, arrives at a village in Mayo. He gives out that he is a fugitive from justice, who in a quarrel has killed his bullying father, splitting him to the chin with a single blow. He is hospitably entertained, and his character as a dare-devil gives him a great advantage with the women (notably Pegeen Mike and Widow Quin) over the milder-spirited lads of the place. But admiration gives place to angry contempt when the father himself arrives in pursuit of the fugitive, who has merely given him a crack on the head and run away. The implication that Irish peasants would condone a murder and the frankness of some of the language (Christy speaks of ‘all the girls in Mayo…standing before me in their shifts’) caused outrage and riots when the play was first performed at the Abbey Theatre ....
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