ABSTRACT
When the curtain first rose on J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on Saturday, January 26, 1907, the directors of the Theatre-W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Synge-had been sufficiently schooled by previous spasms of nationalist discontent with the Abbey’s overly aestheticized political outlook to anticipate an uneasy reception. Yet few could have foreseen the tumult that greeted the play, and only grew more furious during its week-long run. Even in the first, relatively quiet perfor mance, the groaning and hissing of the audience gathered force and finally erupted in a riot that obliterated most of the last act. The play was ferociously denounced in the press, and word of the outrage spread so quickly that the disturbances of opening night proved to be a mere dumbshow to the hectic events that followed. Monday’s performance was interrupted within minutes by choirs of chanting, thumping demonstrators, many of whom had come equipped with tin trumpets. “Now, ” reports the Freeman’s Journal, “the uproar assumed gigantic dimensions, stamping, boohing, vociferations in Gaelic, and
the striking of seats with sticks were universal in the gallery and pit.”1 Some spectators, apparently unwilling to sink to new depths of depravity, shouted, “What would not be tolerated in America will not be allowed here!” From time to time the curtain was lowered, and W. G. Fay, the Abbey's Manager and leading actor, advanced to the footlights to appeal for a fair hearing and offer refunds to the dissatisfied, but he was shouted down. The audience drowned out the play with Gaelic songs and patriotic anthems. The second act got underway at 10 o'clock; it proved to be as inaudible as the first, and the company resigned themselves to performing the rest of the play in pantomime.
