The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island.

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.