Evaluation of the Playboy of the Western World as a satirical comedy.

 The Playboy of the Western World is a three-demonstration play composed by Irish writer John Millington Synge and first performed at the Abbey Theater, Dublin, on 26 January 1907. It is set in Michael James Flaherty's open house in County Mayo [on the west shore of Ireland] during the mid 1900s. It recounts to the account of Christy Mahon, a youngster fleeing from his homestead, asserting he executed his dad. 

 

     Synge’s satiric view is constantly focused, with more or less directness, towards certain aspects of the peculiar blend of paganism and Roman Catholicism that he saw in the West.           The Playboy of the western world both illustrates and satirizes the Irish national tendency towards the making of myths. During his visit to the Aran Islands in 1898, Synge heard the story of how a Connemara man killed his father with a spade in a fit of anger and was concealed by the islanders of Irishman because they associated the police with the hated English government to which they were hostile.  

 

A Satirical Attack on Religious Narrow-Mindedness: The playboy contains also a subtle attack on religious narrow-mindedness and on false piety. Shawn is so "virtuous" and “pious” that he refuses to spend a night alone with an unmarried girl in a shebeen even to protect her. He may thus appear to be a model of moral rectitude. But this overscrupulous attitude makes him appear absurd and the audience would no doubt roar with laughter at his refusal to spend the night with Pegeen because of the objections that Father Reilly might afterwards raise. The comedy of this Situation is heightened by Shawn's managing to sli away from Michael's hold and running out of the shebeen, leaving his Coat in the hands of Michael. Shawn's behavior at this time is most funny and Michael makes us laugh still more when he points Out to Pegeen the absurdity of Shawn by assuring her that, when she is married to that fellow, she would not have to keep a watch on his conduct even if he spends a lot of his time in the company of young girls. What Michael means is that Shawn is the kind of man who will never prove unfaithful to his wife. Indeed, Shawn’s subservience to Father Reilly is made to appear extremely preposterous and highly comic. About a dozen times Shawn names the priest, invoking his authority and exhibiting his reverence for the Church. All this devotion of the part on Shawn to the priest, and his compliance with the priest's moral injunctions, are made to appear comic and contemptible. In this way Synge makes fun of excessive religiosity and exaggerated piety. A Satire on Excessive Drinking Synge seems also to be attacking, again in a comic manner, the evil of excessive drinking. We have a number of heavy drunkards in the play. They are Michael James, Philly, Jimmy, and Old Mahon. The chief reason why Michael and his friends are keen to attend the wake is that plenty of free liquor flows there. Next morning Jimmy and Philly, who are already semi-drunk, are seen 

searching for some more liquor in the cupboards of the shebeen, and Michael comes home singing in a state of intoxication. Towards the end, when Jimmy and Philly feel afraid of handling Christy, Shawn scolds them for their, feeling nervous in going near Christy. On this occasion, he again invokes the authority of Father Reilly, so that his remark becomes comic even though it has much sense in it. Says he: “Isn't it true for Father Reilly that all drink's a curse that has the lot of you so shaky and uncertain now?” This remark has considerable truth in it, because excessive drinking certainly makes a man shaky and uncertain. Then there is Old Mahon about whom Christy says that he used to drink for weeks and then, getting up at dawn, used to go out into the yard "as naked as an ash-tree in the moon of May", in order to throw clods at the stars in the sky. Old Mahon himself tells Widow Quin that on one occasion he drank so much in the company of the Limerick girls that he had almost become a paralytic. Both Christy's account of his father's drunkenness and Old Mahon's own account of this drunkenness are a satire on the evil of drinking. 

 

A Satirical Attack on the Attitude to English Policemen Synge also seems to be making fun of the attitude of the Irish people towards the English policemen who were in charge of law and order in Ireland of the time to which this play pertains. Pegeen describes the "peelers” or the police constables in very contemptuous terms, and so does Michael. Speaking to Christy, Michael says that the peelers in this place are decent, thirsty, poor fellows who would not touch even "a cur dog", much less arrest a dangerous murderer like Christy. Maybe, Synge shared this attitude of contempt towards the English policemen who were regarded as aliens and foreigners by the Irish and to whom the people at large were bitterly hostile. 

 

Widow Quin's Murder of Her Husband Finally, there are satirical touches in the portrayal of Widow Quin who is believed to have murdered her husband and who, on Several occasions, admits that she had "destroyed" her man and buried her children. Now this insistence on Widow Quin’s criminal action might have some purpose behind it. Widow Quin herself shows no sense of guilt at all. In fact, she refers unashamedly to her action in having killed her husband. The village girls are also quite tolerant towards her. It is only Pegeen who condemns her but perhaps even Pegeen does so because Widow Quin has become her rival for Christy's affections. Perhaps Synge seems to imply that Widow Quin's action in attacking her husband was not, after all, very reprehensible because the fault might have been that of the husband. Under certain circumstances, if a woman hits her husband, she may be justified. There is nothing to show that Widow Quin's intention in hitting her man was to murder him.   

 

Conclusion:  

In spite of all this, The Playboy is a comedy, but the author has ridiculed the West world in a humorous way. A play which amuses us at every step and makes us laugh again and again but   in the midst of laughter, Western World has been ridiculed in a very subtle way. All of the above I have tried to evaluate of “The Playboy of the Western World” as a satirical comedy drama.