A PLAY IN ONE ACT
First performed on 25 February 1904 at Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theater Society with Helen Laird playing Maurya, this one-act tragedy is set in the Aran Islands, Inishmaan, and like all of Synge’s plays, it is noted for capturing the poetic dialogue of rural Ireland. The plot is based on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal, butrelentless cruelty of the sea. In 1897, Synge had been encouraged by his friend and fellow author W . B. Yeats tovisit the Aran Islands. He went on to stay there every summer from 1898 to 1903. While there, he was intrigued by the story of a man from Inishmaan whose body washed up on the shore of an island of County Donegal, inspiring the plot for R i d ers t o t h e S ea.
The drama introduces the grief-stricken widow and mother of eight children Maurya, who has lost her husband and five sons to the sea. Nora and her elder daughter Cathleen receive word from the priest that a body, believed to be the son Michael, has washed up on shore in Donegal, on the Irish mainland north of their home island of Inishmaan. The younger son Bartley is planning to sail to Connemara to sell a horse and ignores Maurya’s pleas to stay. Maurya predicts that by nightfall she will have no living sons and her daughters chide her for sending Bartley off with an ill word. Maurya goes after Bartley to bless his voyage, and Nora and Cathleen receive clothing from the drowned corpse that confirms it is Michael. Maurya returnshome claiming to have seen the ghost of Michael riding behind Bartley and laments the loss of the men in her family to the sea, after which several villagers bring in the corpse of Bartley, who has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned.
Riders to the Sea is written in the Hiberno-English dialect of the Aran Islands. Synge’s use of phrasing from the Irish language is part of the Irish Literary Revival, a period when Irish literature looked to encourage pride and nationalism in Ireland.
A pervading theme of the drama is the subtle paganism of the people of rural Ireland. Following his dismissal of Christianity, Synge found that the predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland still held on to many folk tales and superstitions inspired by the old Celtic paganism. R i d ers t o t h e S ea explores this idea, as a set of deeply religious characters find themselves at odds with an invincible force of nature — the sea. While the family is clearly Catholic, they still find themselves wary of the supernatural characteristics of natural elements.
Another main theme of the play is the tension between the traditional and modern worlds in Ireland at the time. While Maurya, representative of the older Irish generation, is immovably tied to the traditional world and inward-looking, Nora, representative of the younger generation is willing to change with the outside world and therefore outward-looking. Cathleen, the eldest daughter struggles to bridge these two worlds and hold both in balance.
Fatalism is central to the theme of this play. The characters of the play are at all times in contact with and accepting of the reality of death, the sea and drowning especially being a constant threat. They are caught between the dual realities of the sea as a source of livelihood and a fatal threat. The objects and culture of death in the form of coffins, keening, and mourning are prevalent in the play and are closely based on Synge’s observations of the culture of the Aran Island.
