Riders to the Sea

Riders to the Sea is a play written by Irish Literary Renaissance playwright John Millington Synge. It was first performed on 25 February 1904 at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theater Society. A one-act tragedy, the play is set in the Aran Islands, Inishmaan, and like all of Synge's plays it is noted for capturing the poetic dialogue of rural Ireland. The plot is based not on the traditional conflict of human wills but on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal but relentless cruelty of the sea.

J.M. Synge's Riders to the Sea (1904) is a brief, one-act play, and its action is starkly straightforward. Synge's play is short and mysterious, like a fairy tale. It engages the reader with questions of how forces as big as historical change and as intimate as grief affect individuals and families. The sea is significant throughout the play; the family is dependent on it for their livelihood. The sea has also brought death; Maurya, the mother, has lost her husband and six sons to it.

In an island cottage off the coast of Ireland, three women wait for news. Maurya is resting in an inner room. Her daughters, Cathleen and Nora, work on household tasks. Michael, their brother, has been missing for days. As readers learn from Nora, Michael is only the latest of Maurya's sons to be lost to the sea that also claimed her husband. Cathleen and Nora identify a drowned man's clothes as Michael's but hesitate to tell their mother the dark truth.

When their only surviving brother, Bartley, enters the cottage, it is to announce that he will be sailing that night. Bartley is determined to go to the horse fair in Connemara despite the bad weather. Maurya is anxious, asking him, 'What is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?' Bartley, however, continues to prepare for his journey. When he leaves, Maurya will not give him her blessing.

Cathleen and Nora are both distressed in the wake of Bartley's departure. Maurya's sending him off in anger is thought to be unlucky; also, they've forgotten to give him a cake to eat. They manage to convince their mother to go to meet Bartley to give him the cake and her blessing.

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