《下海的騎士》在約翰‧辛恩的所有劇作中算是較不具爭議性的，例如與引發觀眾暴動的《西方世界的花花公子》相比，此劇的主題似乎十分溫和得體。然而，從辛恩其他劇作所涉入的國族主義論戰的觀點來看，《下海的騎士》的確有更進一步解讀的空間。本研究以十九世紀末、二十世紀初的愛爾蘭文藝復興運動關於愛爾蘭性的辯論為背景，將《下海的騎士》置於愛爾蘭的「窮老太婆」文學傳統中檢視，該傳統慣用「窮老太婆」的角色作為愛爾蘭的象徵，藉此將她的故事提升到國族寓言的層次，以此觀之，劇中的母親莫利亞就是所謂的窮老太婆，而《下海的騎士》則成為辛恩的愛爾蘭國族寓言。本研究將對比同時期另一齣使用窮老太婆主題的戲劇，即辛恩在劇場運動的同事威廉‧葉慈所著的《胡拉洪之女凱瑟琳》，藉此檢視辛恩如何採用並改編傳統的手法來呈現愛爾蘭性，希望能發現《下海的騎士》之前被忽略的面向，亦即此劇展示了辛恩對愛爾蘭性的理解，雖然不如葉慈在《胡拉洪之女凱瑟琳》中所做的那樣清楚明白。辛恩不只借用葉慈劇中所用的窮老太婆傳統意象，更加以改寫，創造出更有力的愛爾蘭性。因此，這種較為「國族式」的閱讀能將《下海的騎士》與辛恩的其它劇作相連結，他們都試圖探索與解釋關於愛爾蘭性的各種可能。

Riders to the Sea is one of the less “controversial” plays in John Millington Synge’s dramatic oeuvre. It seems quite moderate in its themes as compared with, say, Playboy of the Western World, which is famous for the riot it aroused. However, Riders does have the potential to be further elaborated in terms of the larger nationalist controversy in which Synge and his other plays found themselves. Situating this study within the debate of Irishness during the Revival period in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century, I would like to place Riders to the Sea in the tradition of “Poor Old Woman” in Irish literature, which uses the figure of “Poor Old Woman” as the symbol for Ireland and thereby elevates her story to the level of national allegory. In this light, Maurya the mother can be read as the Poor Old Woman figure, and Riders to the Sea as Synge’s Irish national allegory. This will be done by aligning Riders to the Sea with another Revival play in this tradition, Cathleen Ni Houlihan by William Butler Yeats, Synge’s contemporary and colleague in the Literary Theatre Movement. By comparing and contrasting these two plays, I will examine how Synge adopts and adapts traditional device to present his own version of Irishness, in the hope of uncovering the previously neglected aspect of Riders to the Sea that it offers Synge’s notion of Irishness, albeit in a far less explicit way than what Yeats would have in Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Synge not only borrows the trope from the Poor Old Woman tradition represented by Yeats’s Cathleen, but also takes it a step further by rewriting the literary tradition to produce an empowered and empowering vision of Irishness. Therefore, the more “national” aspects of the play would serve as a means to connect Rides to the Sea to Synge’s other plays, as they all set out to explore, if not to define, possibilities of Irishness.