Although I had never heard of John Synge or his plays until taking Dr. Doggett’s ENGL 458: Major Authors: Yeats and Heaney, I have been listening to Blake Shelton for years. It took me by surprise when I was playing his album in entirety, to find a song titled “Playboys of the Southwestern World.” The title is derived from Synge’s play “Playboy of the Western World,” but upon listening to the song, I did not see a clear connection between the song and the play. It is fascinating to think about the allusions to art and literature that we miss in daily life, only to discover them later in order to view the piece (in this case, a song) through a different lens.