W.B. Yeats' "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" is very clearly a nationalistic play: it explores the possibility of the ordinary man rising to immortality via the national myth by sacrificing himself for Ireland. The play exhorts its viewers to shed their trivial, mundane lives in service of Ireland's national pride.
Such evident didactic nationalism is absent from J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World". While "Cathleen" asks the Irish to shift their focus from the unimportant everyday concerns to large national values, "Playboy" seems to mock not only common concerns, but the larger Irish values as well. Throughout much of the play Christy Mahon is held in view as a hero by the other characters for what should be a detestable act - patricide. When it turns out that he had failed to kill his father - failed twice by the end of the play - he falls from favor of the other characters. This of course mocks the Irish longing for heroes, which we've noted in both "Cathleen" and "Pot of Broth", by showing one such small-town "hero" as a cowardly and thoroughly false man.
Synge also mocks the value placed by the Irish on the family. This is accomplished by having the characters in the play - all supposed to be everyday Irishmen - honor Christy for patricide: "There's great temptation in a man did slay his da," Patricide: an act which the viewers - actual everyday Irishmen - would vehemently condemn. The "Irish family" ideal is further mocked when A) Pegeen decides to leave her betrothed for the wandering murderer, and B) when we discover that Widow Quin not only killed her own husband, but that most everyone seems to know and not care much.
Further more, Synge mocks the strong national faith of Irish Catholicism. While the Irish did historically have a love/hate, devotion/defiance relationship with the Catholic church, lines such as "'A daring fellow is the jewel of the world, and a man did split his father's middle with a single clout, should have the bravery of ten, so may God and Mary and St. Patrick bless you, and increase you from this mortal day.' 'Amen, O Lord'" would surely have not sat well with Irish audiences.
It is possible Synge simply "went too far" in his humor, but I find it more likely that he knew exactly the kind of outrage that "The Playboy of the Western World" would garner. Thus, the play could be in fact very nationalist: a sort of reverse psychology to push the Irish people to anger and thus realization of just how important their national identity was to them by mocking that very same conception of Ireland.
Really insightful...especially the focus on the larger critique of the play.
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