John Millington Synge was an Irish writer, poet, playwright. He was born on 16th April 1871 in Newton Villas, Rathfarnham, Dublin. He was the youngest among all the eight children in their house. His father was a barrister who came from a family of landed gentry in Glanmore Castle, Country Wicklow. His father died at the age of 49 due to smallpox.
Synge was educated in Dublin privately. He learnt piano, flute, violin, music theory at Royal Irish academy of music. Later he changed his mind and decided to switch to Literature. Synge won a scholarship in the year 1891 in counterpoint. He along with his whole family shifted to suburb of Kingstown in 1888. He entered the Trinity college in the following year and graduated in the year 1892 with a Bachelor’s degree having studied Irish and Hebrew. He continued learning music studies and even played with the Academy Orchestra.
He visited Italy to learn language in the year 1896. In the same year he met W.B. Yeasts, and he encouraged him to stay in the Aran Islands for some time. In the same year he joined Yeasts, George William Russell, and Lady Gregory to form the Irish National Theatre society. He wrote many pieces of literary works and there are even many unpublished poems and prose.
In the year 1900, he wrote his first play When the Moon has set and sent it to Lady Gregory for the Irish Literary Theatre. But this play got rejected by her. His first account of life was published in the Aran Islands and was published in the year 1898 in the New Orleans Review. The Aran Islands was completed in the year 1901, but was published in the year 1907. In 1903 he shifted to Paris. But in the previous year he wrote Riders to the Sea and the Shadow of the Glen. Out of these two, the Shadow of the Glen was performed at the Molesworth Hall in October 1903 with the approval of Lady Gregory. Both these stories were collected by him from the Aran Islands.
He died on 24th March 1909 at the of just 37 in Dublin. Some of his famous works were Riders to the Sea(1904), In the Shadow of the Glen (1903), The Well of the Saints (1905), The Aran Islands (1907), The Playboy of the Western World (1907) and many more.
