I remember asking him what sensations an author had when his play
was being performed for the first time. "I sit still in my box,"
he said "and curse the actors." He was in a very gay mood that
afternoon, though his health was fast failing. He spoke with his
usual merry malice about his throat. With the trouble in his
throat he could not tell when he would be in England again. He was
only in England once more. That was in late May or early June,
1907, when the Irish players gave a few performances at the
Kingsway Theatre. I met him in the foyer of the theatre just
before the first London performance of _The Playboy of the Western
World_.

I had some talk with him then. During the performance I saw him in
his box, "sitting still," as he said, watching with the singular
grave intensity with which he watched life. It struck me then that
he was the only person there sufficiently simple to be really
interested in living people; and that it was this simplicity which
gave him his charm. He found the life in a man very well worth
wonder, even though the man were a fool, or a knave, or just down
from Oxford. At the end of the play I saw him standing in his box,
gravely watching the actors as the curtain rose and again rose
during the applause. Presently he turned away to speak to the lady
who had read his plays on the night of his first success. The play
was loudly applauded. Some people behind me--a youth and a
girl--began to hiss. I remember thinking that they resembled the
bird they imitated. I only saw Synge on two other occasions. I
met him at a dinner party, but had no talk with him, and I called
upon him at his old lodgings in Handel Street. He said:--

"Doesn't it seem queer to you to be coming back here?"