<P> Riders to the Sea is a play written by Irish Literary Renaissance playwright John Millington Synge . It was first performed on 25 February 1904 at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, by the Irish National Theater Society . A one - act tragedy, the play is set in the Aran Islands, Inishmaan, and like all of Synge's plays it is noted for capturing the poetic dialogue of rural Ireland . The plot is based not on the traditional conflict of human wills but on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal but relentless cruelty of the sea . </P> <P> In 1897, J.M. Synge was encouraged by his friend and colleague William Butler Yeats to visit the Aran Islands . He went on to spend the summers from 1898 to 1903 there . While on the Aran island of Inishmaan, Synge heard the story of a man from Inishmaan whose body washed up on the shore of an island of County Donegal, which inspired Riders to the Sea . </P>

Background of the play riders to the sea
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