Bartleby Weekly: April 17, 2000

Bartleby Weekly

Volume I, Issue 5. April 17, 2000

Celebrate Synge with a Reading of The Playboy of the Western World

Born on April 16, 1871 in Newtown Villas, Rathfarnham, Ireland, Synge grew up to be one of the most distinguished Irish playwrights and, along with W. B. Yeats, an instrumental member of the Irish Literary Renaissance. A powerful if not driving force on his writing was his experiences on the Aran Islands where he was introduced to a people and culture that, while primitive in many ways, opened up a new world to Synge. The influence of his Aran experience can be seen in his famous yet controversial play “Playboy of the Western World,” which was received with unprecedented rage and controversy. While the script was agonized over by Synge, the audience was not prepared for the changes in convention his writing contained. Now considered a masterpiece, read Synge’s masterpieces on Bartleby.com:

The Playboy of the Western World

Read Poems of Springtime on Bartleby.com

Spring is perhaps the most joyous season, its beauty inspiring poetry the world over. William Blake compares Spring to an angel in To Spring, Thomas Nashe calls Spring “The year’s pleasant King” in Spring, and to Percy Bysshe Shelley, Spring is an unborn baby in The Invitation.

Springtime also brings for many the celebration of Easter. Named after the spring goddess Eastre, Easter is celebrated on the Sunday following the full moon that occurs on or next after March 21. While Easter is full of happy memories of Easter egg hunts and hot cross buns (and Fannie Farmers’s French Easter Cream!), the significance of Easter lies much deeper, as evidenced in Edmund Spenser’s poem Easter: “Most glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day, / Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin” and George Herbert’s Easter: “Teach it to sing Thy praise this day, / And then this day my life shall date.”

Read these poems and many more in Bartleby.com’s The Oxford Book of English Verse.

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