Riders to the Sea as a Tragedy According to Aristotle, “Tragedy” is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude… through pity and fear affecting the proper purgation (catharsis) of these emotions.” Tragedy is a form of poetry or a type of play that deals with a serious topic … Read more
Introduction William Butler Yeats commented that Edmund John Millington Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1903) is “written out of a deep knowledge of the life of the people… He has gone every summer for some years past to the Aran Islands and live there in the house of the fishers, speaking their language and living … Read more
W.B. Yeats said that to him, Riders to the Sea is “the finest piece of tragic work done in Ireland of late years”. On the popularity of the play, Synge himself commented that “It is a curious thing that Riders to the Sea succeeds with an English but not with an Irish audience and “The … Read more