Edmund John Millington (J.M.) Synge, one of Ireland's most famous playwrights, was born April 10, 1871, in rural Rathfarnham, outside Dublin. The youngest of five children, J.M.'s father died from smallpox when he was just a year old, leaivng his mother to raise the family under the strict and insular doctrine of Irish Protestantism.
As a young boy, Synge was often sick, forcing him to spend a great deal of time at home. Without the company of other boys, Synge roamed the surrounding countryside and became an avid naturalist. At the age of 16, he snuck Darwin’s Origin of Species into his bedroom, and lost his Christian faith upon reading of evolution. Synge felt this loss of faith as a...
