A translation is no translation, he said, unless it will give you the music of a poem along with the words of it.

Not even the members of his own family were close enough to understand him. The comedy centers on the story of apparent patricide and attracted a wide hostile reaction from the Irish public.

He is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World which caused riots in Dublin during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre. Synge suffered from Hodgkin's disease a form of cancer at the time untreatable.