daughter and four sons) of John Hatch Synge, barrister-at-law, by his wife Kathleen, daughter of the Rev. Robert Traill, D.D. (d. 1847), of Schull, county Cork, translator of Josephus.
His father dying when he was a year old, his mother moved nearer Dublin to Orwell Park, Rathgar, which was his home until 1890, when he removed with his mother and brother to 31 Crosthwaite Park, Kingstown, which was his family home until shortly before his death.
After attending private schools, first in Dublin and then at Bray, he studied with a tutor between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. The main interest of his boyhood was an intimate study of nature. 'He knew the note and plumage of every bird, and when and where they were to be found.' In youth he joined the Dublin Naturalists Field Club, and later took up music, becoming a proficient player of the piano, the flute, and the violin. His summer vacations were spent at Annamoe, co. Wicklow, among the strange people of the glens.
On 18 June 1888 he entered Trinity 'College, Dublin, as a pensioner, his college tutor being Dr. Traill (now provost). He passed his little go in Michaelmas term, 1890 (3rd class), obtained prizes in Hebrew and in Irish in Trinity term, 1892, and graduated B.A. with a second class in the pass-examination in December 1892. His name went off the college books six months later (3 June 1893).
While at Trinity he studied music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he obtained a scholarship in harmony and counterpoint in 1891. On leaving college he thought of music as a profession, and went to Germany to study that art and to learn the German language. He first visited Coblentz, and (in the spring of 1894) Würzburg. Before the end of 1894 he altered his plans, and, deciding to devote himself to literary work, settled by way of preparation as a student in Paris in January 1895. For the next few years his time was generally divided between France and Ireland, but in 1896 he stayed in Italy long enough to learn Italian. He had a natural gift for languages, and during these years he read much. From 1897 he wrote much tentative work, both prose and verse, in French and English, and contemplated writing a critical study of Racine and a translation from the Italian (either the ’Little Flowers,' or the 'Companions of St. Francis of Assisi'). In May 1898 he first visited the Aran Islands.
In 1899, when he was living at the Hôtel Corneille (Rue Corneille), near the Odéon theatre, in Paris, Synge was introduced to Mr. 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. As a result of this meeting, Synge went again to the Aran Islands (September 1899); the visit was repeated in the autumns of 1900, 1901, and 1902. He lived among the islanders as one of themselves, and was much loved by them; his natural genius for companionship made him always a welcome guest. He took with him his fiddle, his conjuring tricks, his camera and penny whistle, and feared that 'they would get tired of him, if he brought them nothing new.'
During his second stay he began a book on the Aran Islands, which was slowly completed in France, Ireland, and London, and published in April 1907, with illustrations by Mr. Jack B. Yeats.
Meanwhile he wrote two plays, 'The Shadow of the Glen ' and the 'Riders to the Sea,' both founded on stories heard in Aran, and both finished, but for slight changes, by the winter of 1902-3. 'The Shadow of the Glen' was performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on 8 Oct. 1903. 'Riders to the Sea' was performed at the same place on 25 Feb. 1904. They were published in a single volume in May 1905. 'Riders to the Sea' is the deepest and the tenderest of his plays. 'The Shadow of the Glen' is the first example of the kind of tragically hearted farce which is Synge's main contribution to the theatre. Of two other tragic farces of the same period, 'The Tinker's Wedding' (the first drama conceived by him), was begun in 1902, but not finished till 1906, and only published late in 1907; the more beautiful and moving 'The Well of the Saints' was written in 1903-4. 'The Tinker's Wedding,' the only play by Synge not publicly acted in Ireland, was produced after his death at His Majesty's Theatre, by the Afternoon Theatre, on 11 Nov. 1909.
In the winter of 1902-3 Synge lived for a few months in London (4 Handel Street,
