Play: Deirdre of the Sorrows

Overview
John Millington Synge's Deirdre of the Sorrows (1910) is a tragic verse drama drawn from the old Irish legend of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna. Synge shapes the tale into a spare, lyrical tragedy that emphasizes destiny, passionate intensity, and the corrosive effects of political jealousy. The language evokes an archaic, mythic world where human longing collides with the demands of kingship and the inexorable pull of fate.

Characters and Setting
The play centers on Deirdre, a woman prophesied to bring sorrow through her beauty; Naoise, the warrior who becomes her lover and refuge; and Conchobar, the powerful and jealous king whose claim over Deirdre fuels the central conflict. The action moves between remote, windswept coasts and royal halls, with the landscape and sea rendered almost as characters, vast, elemental forces that mirror the drama's emotional extremes.

Plot Summary
Deirdre grows up under a shadow of prophecy: her beauty will doom those who possess her. To shield the kingdom from that danger, she is reared away from court. Yet once her beauty and spirit emerge, Conchobar insists on possessing her as his queen. Fearful of the consequences, Deirdre flees with Naoise and his brothers, seeking exile across the sea and a life of love and freedom.
The lovers find a brief, luminous respite in exile, where ordinary joys sharpen the tragedy to come. Their devotion and the domestic peace they forge stand in stark contrast to the courtly ambition and calculating power left behind. Conchobar, though outwardly magnanimous, cannot tolerate the loss of what he has claimed; his public posture masks a private, consuming jealousy. He lures the fugitives back with promises of safety, blending royal dignity and political cunning.
Betrayal and violence follow. The sanctuary the exile sought dissolves as Conchobar's schemes take effect: Naoise and his brothers fall under treachery and are killed. Deirdre is brought back to the king's court, where the gulf between her inner life and Conchobar's authoritarian world becomes unbearably clear. Stripped of the possibility of love and autonomy, she chooses death rather than submission, a final act that seals the prophecy and leaves the court haunted by the sorrows her presence once foretold.

Themes and Style
Synge frames the narrative as a collision between private passion and dynastic politics, where human desire confronts the imperatives of power. Fate and prophecy hang over every decision, yet Synge avoids fatalism as mere inevitability; characters act with urgency and moral weight, making the tragedy feel both mythic and painfully immediate. The play interrogates ownership, of women, of honor, of kingdoms, and shows how possession transforms admiration into violence.
Stylistically, Synge employs heightened, poetic diction, drawing on Gaelic rhythms and biblical cadence to give the dialogue a ritual quality. Nature imagery, the sea, the winter landscape, the relentless horizon, infuses the verse with a sense of inevitability and grandeur. Moments of stark, colloquial speech break through the rhetoric, lending characters vivid humanity amid the ceremonial language.

Production and Legacy
Published and first staged after Synge's death, the play affirmed his reputation as a dramatist who could fuse folkloric material with modern theatrical sensibility. Early productions at the Abbey Theatre emphasized the play's stark visual and vocal demands, highlighting its austere beauty and emotional intensity. Deirdre of the Sorrows remains a cornerstone of Irish dramatic literature, admired for its austere lyricism, its moral complexity, and its haunting depiction of love crushed by power.