Edmund John Millington Synge (1871-1909) was an Irish playwright, poet, prose writer, travel writer, and collector of folklore. He was a key figure in the Irish Literary Revival and one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. He is best known for his play The Playboy of the Western World which caused riots during its opening run at the Abbey Theatre. Despite coming from a privileged Anglo-Irish background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view. This three-act play was first performed at the Abbey Theatre by the Irish National Theatre Society in 1910. The play is based on Irish mythology, in particular the myths concerning Deirdre, Naoise, and Conchobar. The work was unfinished at the time of the author's death in 1909 but was completed by William Butler Yeats and Synge's fiancée, Molly Algood.