Introduction

Two telegrams convey the whole story of the opening night of J.M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, on January 26, 1907. Both were sent to author William Butler Yeats by Lady Augusta Gregory, who had helped him establish the Irish National Theatre four years earlier. At the close of the first act she wrote: “Play a great success.” Two acts later, she sent a second: “Play broke up in disorder at the word ‘shift.’”