Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)/Synge, John Millington

SYNGE, JOHN MILLINGTON, an Irish dramatist and poet, born in 1871. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1892, and for 10 years following studied languages and music in Germany, France, and Italy. He finally settled in Paris and devoted himself to the study of French literature. During the period of his stay on the continent, he annually made trips to the Arran Islands, in order to write of the primitive life of its inhabitants. In 1893 he settled in Ireland and devoted himself to writing for the Abbey Theater, in Dublin. He was considered to be the most talented of the dramatists of the Irish Literary Revival. His plays, which were produced in the United States with considerable success, included “The Shadow of the Glen” (1903); “Riders to the Sea” (1904); “The Well of the Saints” (1905); “The Tinker's Wedding” (1909); and “Playboy of the Western World” (1907). He died in 1909.