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Overview
The Playboy of the Western World is a three-act play written by the Irish playwright and folklorist John Millington Synge in 1907
. Set in a pub in western Ireland in the early 1900s, the play tells the story of a young man who attains a hero-like status among the local villagers by telling a rousing story about having murdered his father. He relates his story in an engaging style using an Irish dialect known as Hiberno-English. When the play premiered at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin on January 26, 1907, riots broke out as some felt the plot was immoral and offensive to Ireland. Even so, the play remains an influential work in Irish literary history.Read the full play summary, the full play analysis, and explanations of important quotes from The Playboy of the Western World.
