![]() Organized protesters showed up at the theater to disrupt the proceedings each night, sometimes clashing with supporters of Synge and the Abbey. The play fared no better over the next several days of its week-long run. limited edition of The Playboy of the Western World (ZSR Library copy) The real problem was that the play took deadly satirical aim at many things that Irish nationalists held most dear-Catholicism, Gaelic hero tales, and the general nobility of the Irish peasant class. But in fact Synge’s conjuring of nearly-naked maidens was just the last straw. ![]() The apparent trigger for the playgoers’ wrath was an indelicate reference to “a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts ”-which prompted Abbey playwright and patron Lady Gregory’s famous telegraph to William Butler Yeats: “Play broke up in disorder at the word ‘shift’”. The Abbey Row was a satirical take on the Playboy furor, published in January 1907 by Maunsel & Co. Halfway through Act 3, a group of audience members broke out in a near riot, storming the stage and threatening the life of the author. ![]() But the actors on that first night never made it to the end of the play. John Millington Synge’s drama The Playboy of the Western Worldhad its premiere at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on January 26, 1907. The Abbey Row (Dublin: Maunsel & Co., 1907) ![]()
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