The Power of Language Theme Analysis

The Playboy of the Western World is a rich and evocative-sounding play that seeks to highlight the poetry and musicality of Irish English (also known as Hiberno-English)—its rhythms, cadences, and capacity for simile and metaphor. J.M. Synge was committed to rendering Irish English in a way that would do it justice and be considered authentic, an intention that is clear in The Playboy of the Western World. This was part of an overall trend among artists in Ireland to portray their country with realism, spearheaded by the poet W.B. Yeats. Yeats famously told Synge to “give up Paris”—where the two had met—and instead spend time on the Aran Islands (off the west coast of Ireland) to find the poetry undiscovered in rural Irish life. Ultimately, The Playboy of the Western World is a manifestation of two dual impulses in J.M. Synge’s work: firstly, to create art specific to Ireland and its people, and secondly to do justice to Irish English by distilling its living, breathing richness into poetic and dramatic forms. Thus, The Playboy of the Western World reveals the power of words to represent, entertain, and enrich people.

Synge is careful throughout The Playboy of the Western World to render the speech of its coastal community as faithfully as possible. He expressly states this aim in the preface, saying, “I have used one or two words only, that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland.” He views his art as being a “collaboration” between the artist and the “folk-imagination,” stating that the “wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed compared with the fancies one might hear in any little hillside cabin in Geesala, or Carraroe, or Dingle Bay” (all rural Irish communities). Synge’s play thus depends on an element of trust between the artist and society—the claim that the former can truly represent the latter. This is especially interesting in Synge’s case, as he did not have a rural upbringing.

Whatever opinion audience members have on this question of authentic representation, the play is undoubtedly populated with distinctly Irish English ways of speaking. As one example among many, the play makes frequent use of “I’m after” to indicate “I have just”—this is known as the “hot news perfect” in Irish English. Widow Quin, when she arrives at the pub, says, “I’m after meeting Shawn Keogh and Father Reilly below,” indicating that this has just happened moments ago. By advocating this approach to the language of a given community, Synge attempts to draw the audience’s attention to the power of language to shape and capture reality. The lives of those involved with the pub, he seems to say, are intertwined with the way in which they talk to one another.

But faithful representation of the community and the rendering of real life are not the only argument for the power of language in the play. Synge grants Christy Mahon with a lyrical gift in his speech—a command of the sensory elements of language and the accomplished use of imagery. This helps him win over the villager’s affections—in particular Pegeen Mike’s—and stands as an analogy for Synge’s desire for his audience to buy into the beauty and power of the rural Irish English way of speaking (though there is, of course, not one single definitive “way”). As Christy grows in confidence throughout the play, so too does his willingness to speak in a lyrical way; when he first arrives, his speech is more disjointed and abrupt. This, combined with his aura of heroism, has a powerful effect on Pegeen Mike, who falls under the spell of his words. Sensing his own verbal power, Christy asks Pegeen, “Isn’t there the light of seven heavens in your heart alone, the way you’ll be an angel’s lamp to me from this out.” This is the moment at which she agrees to marry him, saying that “any girl would walk her heart out before she’d meet a young man was your like for eloquence or talk at all.” Talking, here, functions as a kind of seduction that reminds the viewer of “the gift of the gab,” a phrase denoting eloquence and skill with speaking. This is especially associated—sometimes to the point of stereotype—with Ireland and the Irish people. Whether the viewer agrees with this association or not, Synge makes the link between the rural Irish and the power of words. On that note, it’s worth remembering that Christy is not an educated man. He has spent most of his life wandering fields with his father, doing menial work. His gift for language, then, is presented as a kind of innate quality, again reinforcing this association between rural Irish life and lyricism.

The Playboy of the Western World is a beautiful-sounding play that is a deliberate attempt on Synge’s part to draw his audience’s attention to the artistic possibilities of Irish English. This is part of a wider argument that insists on the multi-layered power of language. If the play is effective in its intentions—that is, if it captivates its audience—then it too becomes an analogy for the argument contained within: that words are a powerful representation of the community that uses them. This approach wasn’t without controversy, however, as some of the play’s nationalist observers objected in its first performances that Irish English—as opposed to Gaelic Irish—could only ever be the language of Ireland’s English oppressors, rather than a true embodiment of something authentically Irish.