The Playboy of the Western World

Drama Classics: The World's Great Plays at a Great Little Price

J.M. Synge's best-known play, about a young man who turns up in a public house in the West of Ireland in the early 1900s, claiming he has killed his father.

A stranger, Christy Mahon, arrives in a village bar in County Mayo claiming to have killed his father. The locals are impressed â" some can even directly relate to the deed â" and Christy is lauded as a folk hero. He can't believe his luck, and confidently pursues the affections of the barmaid Pegeen, until the arrival of his not-so-dead father takes the winds out of Christy's sails...

The Playboy of the Western World was first performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in January 1907, causing riots across the city.

This edition is introduced by Margaret Llewllyn Jones.