What do you mean by a one-act play? What features of a one-act play do you find in Riders to the Sea?

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What do you mean by a one-act play? What features of a one-act play do you find in Riders to the Sea? 

Ans: A 'one-act play', as the name itself signifies, is self-evidently a dramatic work confined within a single act. Very often a 'one-act play is also a 'one-scene play'. It is a distinctively 20th century phenomenon which perfectly accords with the temperament of modern people who have very little time to stare and spare. By virtue of compactness and integrity of the materials in a one act play, the dramatist  directly expresses the crux of the problem without having any room for digression. Synge's "Riders to the Sea" has been unanimously accepted by critics as the best 20th century one-act tragedy because all the dominant features of the genre are conspicuously present in the play.

Perhaps the most important feature of a one-act play is its small canvas where the playwright concentrates his view on a single aspect of life. There is no room for admixture of different elements here and the dramatist creates only one situation. Synge's canvas is very small in his one-act play, "Riders to the Sea". The play is based on the life of the Irish peasantry of Aran, but it is concerned with only the tragic aspect of this life. The theme is the tragedy that the sea enacts upon the lives of the simple peasant people of islands off the west coast of Ireland.

While in a full-length play the dramatist introduces many characters in a vast canvas, the characters in a one-act play are essentially limited in number. Maurya, Bartley, Cathleen, Nora and some of the neighbours form the dramatic personages in "Riders to the Sea". Among them Maurya, no doubt, holds the focal point of interest. Her heroic struggle impresses us even when she is left desolate after Bartley's death. Though the other characters are somewhat sketchy, Synge shows remarkable skill in the exposition of personality. Within the brief compass of the play the characters of Nora and Cathleen are sharply differentiated and individualized.

In conformity with the ancient Greek dramatists, the one-act playwrights observe the three unities of drama -----the unity of action, the unity of place and the unity of time. "Riders to the Sea" deals with the fortunes of two 'riders' to the sea - Michael and Bartley. It opens with the shadow of Michael's death on the household of Maurya and closes with the death of Bartley. The whole play is concerned with the tragic experience of the old mother and so there is unity of action in the drama. The outer room of Maurya's cottage is the scene of the whole dramatic action. Though Bartley dies outside the cottage, his dead body is carried into the outer room by the neighbours. The single scene presented in the play does not require any time interval at all. One hour is sufficient for the production of the play and the dramatic action does not cover more than twelve hours.

The atmosphere of "Riders to the Sea", in the fashion of other one-act dramas, remains the same throughout. The grim tragic tale is never once relieved by comic note or tragic relief. At the very beginning we find some white boards, kept ready for the burial of Michael's corpse. The play ends with the arrangement for another burial - the burial of the last surviving son of Maurya in the form of Bartley. Synge is able to create an atmosphere of tension and horror by the effective use of some hints and forebodings which are capable of awakening a spine-chilling sensation in the mind of the reader constantly. 

Economy in the use of materials and language is a necessary virtue in a good one-act play. In "Riders to the Sea", Synge's material is reduced to the utmost degree of concentration. Here every detail contributes something. All the characters are involved in the dramatic action. Every sentence that is spoken either carries forward the action or reveals some aspect of character or contributes to the atmosphere.

Another notable characteristic is that the one-act play is written in a dialect actually used by the characters dealt with in the play. It is the Aran Irish dialect which is used by Synge in "Riders to the Sea". The use of dialects in modern one-act plays points to the fact that these plays are extremely realistic in the treatment of life, society, human relations and their problems and prospects