ENGLISH THEATRE OF 19th AND 20th CENTURIES GROUP A
SURNAME: Giarratana NAME:
Melania
J.M. SYNGE
THE SHADOW OF THE
GLEN
A PLAY IN ONE ACT
First performed at the Molesworth Hall, 8th October 1903, Dublin
There are four
characters in this play: Dan Burke, a farmer and shepherd, his wife Nora, Micheal Dara, a young shepherd
and a tramp. They are all poor and ignorant; they speak a non-learned language
and behave according to their social status.
Dan Burke is an old
man that pretends to be dead to see what his wife does when he is not with her.
The play starts with him lying on the bed covered by a sheet and his wife
preparing the table as if somebody should arrive, during a cold and rainy
evening. In the meanwhile, a tramp arrives to ask for a bed and something to
eat and Nora lets him come in. They chat for a while and then Nora goes out for
a matter and leaves the tramp with Dan, who gets up and tells him that Nora is
a bad wife and obliges the tramp to keep the secret. Nora goes back home with Michael,
a younger shepherd that was on the path of the tramp while he was going to Nora’s
house. Michael begins to eat and drink and in the meanwhile talks with Nora
about her life with Dan. She confesses that she has married Dan just because he
had some properties in order to live comfortable but she has been feeling very
lonely. She also admits that she had been receiving other men in her house. When
Micheal stands up to embrace Nora after having
proposed to her, Dan gets up quickly and tries to hit Michael with a stick; Dan
throw Nora and the tramp out of his house and repudiates her. Micheal follows Nora and the tramp, but Dan stops him and
invites him to sit and drink, saying that he is a good fellow and he is not
angry with him. The play finishes with a toast between Dan and Michael.
The language has an
important rule in this play, because the author made an unfaithful translation
of the dialogues from Irish to English in order to keep the mystery in the
atmosphere; in fact, the changes made by the author with the English grammar
could be easily misunderstood as ignorance, but it is
not. He was in love with his language and above all, he knew that a complete
translation of any single word would have made the text loose its rhythm and its
peculiarity, since his stories deriving from the anecdotes told by the people
he met on his journeys. (Tim Robinson introduction to the 1992 Penguin Edition
of Synge’s “The Aran Islands”; Eugene Benson “J.M.
Synge”. http://www.samk.demon.co.uk/syngebi.htm .01/23/2006)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J.M. Synge “The shadow of the glen”
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Academic year 2005/2006
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés
López
© Melania Giarratana
megia@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia
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