The Western tradition of literary theory and criticism essentially derives from the Greeks, and there is a sense in which Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus mark out positions and debates that are still being played out today. At a moment when… Read More ›
Aristotle‘s Poetics, the first major text of Western drama theory, defined the terms of much subsequent discussion. Unlike such classical Eastern theoretical works on drama as the Sanskrit Natyasastra or Zeami Motokiyo’s writings on Noh, it makes only minor passing… Read More ›
Orpheus Descending (1957) is set in Two Rivers County, Mississippi. The action takes place in the Torrance Mercantile Store, owned and run by Jabe and Lady Torrance. It is a two-story building with the store in the lower portion and… Read More ›
Unlike all of his earlier plays except Camino Real, The Night of the Iguana (1959) is set outside the United States and does not in any significant sense concern southerners. It also differs from almost all the plays after The… Read More ›
One of Williams’s more famous works and his personal favorite, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955. This three-act play is set in the Pollitts’ stately home, a Southern plantation in the fertile… Read More ›
Tennessee Williams‘s (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983) A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), is generally regarded as his best. Initial reaction was mixed, but there would be little argument now that it is one of the most powerful plays… Read More ›
Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944) was regarded when first produced as highly unusual; one of the play’s four characters serves as commentator as well as participant; the play itself represents the memories of the commentator years later, and hence,… Read More ›
Audiences confront much that is disturbing in Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape, beginning with the title itself—and as the play moves forward, we are hard-pressed to find any evidence of the “comedy” O’Neill promises in its subtitle. When it was… Read More ›
Eugene O’Neill’s greatest play up to this point in his career and the finest American tragedy to be written until then, Desire Under the Elms premiered on November 11, 1924, at the Greenwich Village Theatre in New York City. O’Neill… Read More ›
On July 1, 1932, Eugene O’Neill visited his boyhood home, Monte Cristo Cottage in New London, Connecticut. It looked smaller than he remembered and poorly maintained. He wished he had never gone. Two months later, however, on the morning of… Read More ›
Eugene O’Neill began writing Mourning Becomes Electra, one of his most revered dramas, in France at Chateau du Plessis near Tours in the Loire Valley. Recovering from the debacle of Dynamo, which O’Neill believed failed critically because he released it… Read More ›
Eugene O’Neill’s reputation as the United States’ “master of the misbegotten” culminates in his late masterpiece The Iceman Cometh. The action takes place in a downtown Manhattan saloon and “Raines-Law” hotel called Harry Hope’s and covers two days in the… Read More ›
Eugene O’Neill’s full-length masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night is widely considered the finest play in American theater history. Perhaps the most startling facet of O’Neill’s greatest achievement is the ghostly presence of its author, a revelation to audience members… Read More ›
Tragedy presupposes guilt, despair, moderation, lucidity, vision, a sense of responsibility. In the Punch-and-Judy show of our century . . . there are no more guilty and also, no responsible men. It is always, “We couldn’t help it” and “We… Read More ›
His plays are concerned with expressing his own feeling of helplessness and solitude when confronted with the despair and loneliness of man caught in the hall of mirrors of the human condition, inexorably trapped by an endless progression of images… Read More ›
Eliot first published the essay Hamlet and His Problems in Athenaeum on September 26, 1919, and subsequently the piece was collected in The Sacred Wood in 1920. SYNOPSIS In the essay, Eliot was ostensibly reviewing two recent books on William… Read More ›
In a period of just over thirty years (1663-1694), John Dryden (August 9, 1631 – May 12, 1700) wrote or coauthored twenty-eight plays, an output that made him the most prolific dramatist of his day. His amplitude remains even more remarkable… Read More ›
William Congreve’s (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) first play, The Old Bachelor, was an instant success; its initial run of fourteen days made it the most popular play since Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved (pr., pb. 1682). The Double-Dealer… Read More ›
During his first period of playwriting (1963-1972), Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937 – March 24, 2011) struggled to learn his trade—mainly in the convivial atmosphere of Off-Off-Broadway, where it did not matter if sometimes audiences did not show up. His… Read More ›
Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) has been acclaimed as one of the most distinguished American dramatists since Eugene O’Neill, the father of modern American drama. Because of his direct engagement with political issues and with the… Read More ›