John Millington Synge

John Millington Synge was born on 16 April 1871 in Rathfarnham, near Dublin, into a Protestant family; his father died the following year. He studied music, took his degree at Trinity College in 1892, gave up a musical career in Germany, then settled in Paris in 1895. William Butler Yeats, whom he met there, urged him to go to the Aran Islands, where he spent five summers from 1898. A co-founder and director of the Abbey Theatre, he was engaged to the actress Molly Allgood when he died in Dublin on 24 March 1909, aged thirty-seven.

In the catalogue 1

• TheatreThe Playboy of the Western WorldJohn Millington Synge · 1907Literature