On those that hated 'The Playboy of the Western World', 1907

W. B. Yeatsfirst published 1912from Responsibilities6 lines

Earlier titled "The Attack on 'The Playboy of the Western World,' 1907", "The Attack on the "Play Boy""

Once, when midnight smote the air,Eunuchs ran through Hell and metOn every crowded street to stareUpon great Juan riding by:Even like these to rail and sweatStaring upon his sinewy thigh.

Text: Poetry, by W. B. Yeats (Standard Ebooks, 2024), from the collected editions of 1908 to 1928. Public domain.

In brief

Summary

Synge's attackers pictured as envious eunuchs staring at Don Juan in Hell.

A six-line attack on the people who shouted down J. M. Synge's play. Yeats describes a scene in Hell at midnight: eunuchs run through the crowded streets to stare at "great Juan riding by", the legendary lover. The critics of the Playboy, he says, are "Even like these", railing and sweating as they stare. The insult is precise: those who condemn the play's vitality are shown as impotent men envying a strength they lack.

Lines to remember

Upon great Juan riding by:

Line by line

Lines 1 to 4Midnight in Hell
At the stroke of midnight, eunuchs rush through Hell's streets "to stare / Upon great Juan riding by". Hell is imagined as a crowded city, and Don Juan passes through it like a hero on horseback while the unmanned crowd gathers to gawp.
Lines 5 to 6Like these
The comparison lands in two lines: the Playboy's enemies "rail and sweat" just like the eunuchs. The last line fixes their eyes on Juan's "sinewy thigh", so their outrage becomes a kind of jealous fascination with the power they cannot share.

Themes

Envy and impotence

The poem's charge is that hatred of vital art comes from envy. The eunuchs cannot be what Juan is, so they stare and "rail". By choosing this image Yeats suggests that the Playboy's attackers, however moral they sounded, were driven by their own lack of the energy the play celebrated.

Art and its enemies

Yeats defended the Abbey's writers against Dublin audiences more than once, and this is his fiercest short statement. The artist, like "great Juan", rides past; the crowd "On every crowded street" can only watch. The poem refuses to argue with the critics: it simply shows them in a humiliating light.

Context

J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World opened at the Abbey Theatre in January 1907 and was met with riots, as some of the audience took it as a slur on Irish country people. Yeats, a director of the theatre, kept the play on and faced down the protesters.

The poem first appeared in a book in The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1912) as "The Attack on the 'Play Boy'", and was retitled for Responsibilities (1914 and 1916) as "The Attack on The Playboy of the Western World, 1907" before taking its present title.

Form

A single six-line sentence in tetrameter, rhyming ABACBC ("air", "met", "stare", "by", "sweat", "thigh"). The rhymes on "stare" and "sweat" carry the scorn. Holding back the comparison until line 5 makes the reader picture Hell first and only then see who belongs in it.

Titled 'The Attack on the "Play Boy"' (1912) and 'The Attack on The Playboy of the Western World, 1907' (1914, 1916).