John Masefield

“ He brought into Irish literature the gifts of detachment from topic and a wild vitality of tragedy. The ironical laughter of his comedy is always most mocking when it covers a tragic intention. He died when his powers were only beginning to show themselves. ”

“ W. B. Yeats, one of the founders and the chief inspiration of the Irish Literary Movement. Mr. Yeats suggested that Synge should give up writing criticism either in French or English and go again to the Aran Islands off Galway, or some other primitive place, to study and write about a way of life not yet expressed in literature. But for this meeting it is likely that Synge would never have discovered a form in which he could express himself; his mind would have continued to brood without vitality upon questions of literary criticism. ”

“ During his last years Synge lived almost wholly in Ireland, mostly in Dublin. His health, never very robust, was beginning to trouble him. His last months of life, 1908-9, were spent in writing and rewriting the unfinished three-act play 'Deirdre of the Sorrows,' which was posthumously published at Miss Yeats's Cuala Press, on 5 July 1910, and was acted at the Abbey Theatre on 13 Jan. ”