This collection is made up of four plays written by Irish Literary Renaissance playwright John Millington Synge. The plays are: - Riders to the Sea. - In the Shadow of the Glen. - Deirdre of the Sorrows. - The Well of the Saints. Riders to the Sea is a one-act tragedy. It was first performed in 1904. 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. In the Shadow of the Glen, also known as The Shadow of the Glen, is a one-act play. It was first performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on October 8, 1903. It was the first of Synge's plays to be performed on stage. It is set in an isolated cottage in County Wicklow in what was then the present day (c. 1903). Deirdre of the Sorrows is a three-act play. It 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 and Conchobar. The Well of the Saints is a three-act play. It was first performed at the Abbey Theatre by the Irish National Theatre Society in February 1905. The setting is specified as "some lonely mountainous district in the east of Ireland one or more centuries ago."