One of the important points that the plays of J. M. Synge demonstrate is that, even when adapted to the modern stage, storytelling, keening and the performance practices associated with Irish peasant culture retain the ability to unsettle or at least challenge our western conception of mimesis and representation. By juxtaposing heterogeneous modes of performance without attempting to subsume their differences, Synge’s plays manifest a self-awareness of their own performativity and theatricality and also of the complex relation of theatrical performance to other forms of performances, including ritual or social performance. Thus, from a study primarily concerned with Synge’s plays and the theatrical culture for which they were written, the book evolved into a study of the plays ‘as’ performance. Modern and comptemporary theatre is overtly preoccupied with performance, which it problematizes; and one of the aims of the book has been to discern incipient traces of the complex relation of performance to theatre and representation in the work of a dramatist usually considered to be a realist.