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Complete Plays #3
Eugene O'Neill: Complete Plays 1932–1943
The third and final volume of the first complete collection of Eugene O’Neill’s dramatic writings (available exclusively from The Library of America) contains eight plays written between 1932 and 1943, when illness forced him to stop writing. They represent the crowning achievements of his career.
O’Neill described Ah, Wilderness! as “the way I would have liked my boyhood to have been.” Set in the summer of 1906, it affectionately depicts the warm, close family of 16-year-old Richard Miller and the innocence with which he faces the trials of first love, strong drink, and sexual temptation.
John Loving, hero of Days Without End, is split by his lack of faith into two selves: John and his Mephistophelian double Loving, who wears John’s death mask and plots his destruction. Burdened by guilt but desperately wanting to love, John struggles with Loving’s nihilistic hatred in what O’Neill termed his “modern miracle play.”
In A Touch of the Poet, Irish tavern-keeper Con Melody is drawn by his proud past as a Byronic cavalry hero of the Napoleonic Wars toward a fatal confrontation with his wealthy Yankee neighbors, the Harfords.
Throughout More Stately Mansions, the idealistic yet cunning Simon Harford, his wife, Sara Melody Harford, and his mother, Deborah, continually shift roles and alliances as they engage in an eerie psychological and sexual battle for possession of each other and their own maddeningly elusive dreams. This volume presents the never-before-published complete text of the revised typescript for this unfinished play.
The derelict inhabitants of Harry Hope’s saloon in The Iceman Cometh find solace in their comradeship until their drifting calm is destroyed by the visiting salesman Theodore Hickey, who insists that they abandon all “pipe dreams” and face the truth about their lives. O’Neill carefully orchestrates the voices of over a dozen characters to form a chorus of overwhelming despair and surprising compassion.
Hughie is a one-act dialogue between a reminiscing gambler and a weary hotel night clerk about the promise and loneliness of city life.
Long Day’s Journey into Night unsparingly dissects the pain, rage, guilt, and love that drive a wounded family apart and bind it together. In their summer home the four Tyrones—James, a proud actor haunted by poverty, his devout, morphine-addicted wife, Mary, and their sons, Jamie, a cynical drunkard, and Edmund, an aspiring poet—slowly unveil the truth about their lives until they can no longer hope either to save or to escape one another. Published and produced posthumously, it won O’Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize.
In its elegiac coda, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Jamie Tyrone seeks the peace that has long eluded him in the arms of sharp-tongued Josie Hogan.
The volume concludes with “Tomorrow” (1917), O’Neill’s only published short story.
O’Neill described Ah, Wilderness! as “the way I would have liked my boyhood to have been.” Set in the summer of 1906, it affectionately depicts the warm, close family of 16-year-old Richard Miller and the innocence with which he faces the trials of first love, strong drink, and sexual temptation.
John Loving, hero of Days Without End, is split by his lack of faith into two selves: John and his Mephistophelian double Loving, who wears John’s death mask and plots his destruction. Burdened by guilt but desperately wanting to love, John struggles with Loving’s nihilistic hatred in what O’Neill termed his “modern miracle play.”
In A Touch of the Poet, Irish tavern-keeper Con Melody is drawn by his proud past as a Byronic cavalry hero of the Napoleonic Wars toward a fatal confrontation with his wealthy Yankee neighbors, the Harfords.
Throughout More Stately Mansions, the idealistic yet cunning Simon Harford, his wife, Sara Melody Harford, and his mother, Deborah, continually shift roles and alliances as they engage in an eerie psychological and sexual battle for possession of each other and their own maddeningly elusive dreams. This volume presents the never-before-published complete text of the revised typescript for this unfinished play.
The derelict inhabitants of Harry Hope’s saloon in The Iceman Cometh find solace in their comradeship until their drifting calm is destroyed by the visiting salesman Theodore Hickey, who insists that they abandon all “pipe dreams” and face the truth about their lives. O’Neill carefully orchestrates the voices of over a dozen characters to form a chorus of overwhelming despair and surprising compassion.
Hughie is a one-act dialogue between a reminiscing gambler and a weary hotel night clerk about the promise and loneliness of city life.
Long Day’s Journey into Night unsparingly dissects the pain, rage, guilt, and love that drive a wounded family apart and bind it together. In their summer home the four Tyrones—James, a proud actor haunted by poverty, his devout, morphine-addicted wife, Mary, and their sons, Jamie, a cynical drunkard, and Edmund, an aspiring poet—slowly unveil the truth about their lives until they can no longer hope either to save or to escape one another. Published and produced posthumously, it won O’Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize.
In its elegiac coda, A Moon for the Misbegotten, Jamie Tyrone seeks the peace that has long eluded him in the arms of sharp-tongued Josie Hogan.
The volume concludes with “Tomorrow” (1917), O’Neill’s only published short story.
1007 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1988
7 people are currently reading
359 people want to read
About the author
Eugene O'Neill
530 books1,242 followersAmerican playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored
Mourning Becomes Electra
in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for
Long Day's Journey into Night
, produced in 1956.
He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 17, 2019
It's been a while since I've read any O'Neill - and I've missed it. He was one of the first playwrights I read of my own accord, and I think there was something about the overtly literary quality to his plays that teenage-me really responded to. Now I'm a bit older, I'm far more interested in O'Neill as a craftsman, how he not only was creating a new version of the dramatic form for an America that had never seen anything of the sort other than Shakespeare.
This volume collects his work from 1932-1943: the last pieces he wrote before his health meant he had to stop writing. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, the only American dramatist to be so honoured. Hilariously, it was only after 1936 that he write his best work. It was as if the security of a home and fame (which feels like an oxymoron) as well as the knowledge that the increasing shake in his hand was a ticking bomb collided to allow him to return to his younger self, and write those titanic pieces of autobiography.
It's not a simple trajectory, in between his success with Ah, Wilderness! and the critical slating of Days Without End, and those final, great plays, was his attempt at an epic cycle - all that is exists is A Touch of the Poet and the horrendously unwieldy More Stately Mansions. It's interesting watching a writer wrestle with what he is actually capable of, what he has time to finish, watching him fail even after being so celebrated.
I still have the first two volumes to read!
This volume collects his work from 1932-1943: the last pieces he wrote before his health meant he had to stop writing. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, the only American dramatist to be so honoured. Hilariously, it was only after 1936 that he write his best work. It was as if the security of a home and fame (which feels like an oxymoron) as well as the knowledge that the increasing shake in his hand was a ticking bomb collided to allow him to return to his younger self, and write those titanic pieces of autobiography.
It's not a simple trajectory, in between his success with Ah, Wilderness! and the critical slating of Days Without End, and those final, great plays, was his attempt at an epic cycle - all that is exists is A Touch of the Poet and the horrendously unwieldy More Stately Mansions. It's interesting watching a writer wrestle with what he is actually capable of, what he has time to finish, watching him fail even after being so celebrated.
I still have the first two volumes to read!
January 24, 2011
O'Neill's brilliance and his place as America's foremost playwright locks into place, if it hadn't already, with this third volume of plays from the last decade of his writing life. Three of the plays presented here (The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten) are utter masterpieces, works of art so powerful that they rank among the great accomplishments in English letters. Two other plays (Ah, Wilderness! and A Touch of the Poet) are great plays. A third (More Stately Mansions) is the one great failure of O'Neill's career, I believe, an endless epic back-and-forth set of soulful arguments that could have been (and sometimes was) better played in an infinitely shorter play. But it's my belief that no American playwright has ever come within miles of capturing O'Neill's ability to see the pain at the heart of human beings and to encapsulate so perfectly the pity which the lost heart yearns for and requires.
August 21, 2017
This covers O'Neill's last decade of production, eight plays in all with a much earlier short story thrown in for good measure. I'm giving five stars on the basis of "Ah, Wilderness!", "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey into Night", all of which were excellent. Most of the other plays here were not nearly that quality and most didn't appear during O'Neill's lifetime, but were all well worth reading with the exception of the unfinished "More Stately Mansions".
February 26, 2020
The Iceman Cometh – O’Neil (9/10)
May 9, 2025
Read:
A Touch of the Poet
The Iceman Cometh
LDJiN
Ah, Wilderness!
Hughie
A Touch of the Poet
The Iceman Cometh
LDJiN
Ah, Wilderness!
Hughie
March 9, 2017
I purchased this book at my local used book store, for $17.50. That's a few dollars more than a new trade paperback costs these days. I think it was money well spent.
This volume consists of Eugene O'Neil's most recognizable plays: "Ah, Wilderness", "The Iceman Cometh" and "A Long Day's Journey Into Night", amongst others.
Of these classic plays, "Ah, Wilderness" seems very dated, yet it still has charm to it. This play probably resonates with people 50 and older more than it would resonate with teens / young adults. This play just doesn't pack the punch it did for people of my mother's generation. This shows how taboos surrounding sexuality and sexual expression have changed. Younger people would say, "What's the Big Deal???" or WTF??? when reading this play.
The other two plays mentioned still pack a punch.
This volume consists of Eugene O'Neil's most recognizable plays: "Ah, Wilderness", "The Iceman Cometh" and "A Long Day's Journey Into Night", amongst others.
Of these classic plays, "Ah, Wilderness" seems very dated, yet it still has charm to it. This play probably resonates with people 50 and older more than it would resonate with teens / young adults. This play just doesn't pack the punch it did for people of my mother's generation. This shows how taboos surrounding sexuality and sexual expression have changed. Younger people would say, "What's the Big Deal???" or WTF??? when reading this play.
The other two plays mentioned still pack a punch.
May 22, 2015
After some 3,000 pages, 50 plays and a short story, I have finished the three volume: O'Neill, Complete Plays. It has been 33 years since I first read O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night. These two plays still stand out as master pieces. I would add A Moon for the Misbegotten to those two as a work which goes far to touch basic human experience.
O'Neill's works are much reviewed so I will not look at the works separately. What I have gained by reading through the three volumes is an appreciation for how far O'Neill came in his development as a playwright. He started out as a writer with weak story ideas, a will to create profound stories and a strong sense of an artistic approach to theatre. As he developed, each one of these aspects changed as his skills developed and he started to write more from his deepest feelings and less from ideas and ideals. Technique gave way to realism. The three plays that I have mentioned, although still marked by the struggle of individuals to find their way in a somewhat nihilistic, in the Nietzschean sense, world where failure almost certainly leads to death, all turn finally on human relationships. O'Neill seems to have eventually believed that people need each other in a world otherwise without sense. Without that, we are doomed to, not only meaninglessness, but also to loneliness.
O'Neill's works are much reviewed so I will not look at the works separately. What I have gained by reading through the three volumes is an appreciation for how far O'Neill came in his development as a playwright. He started out as a writer with weak story ideas, a will to create profound stories and a strong sense of an artistic approach to theatre. As he developed, each one of these aspects changed as his skills developed and he started to write more from his deepest feelings and less from ideas and ideals. Technique gave way to realism. The three plays that I have mentioned, although still marked by the struggle of individuals to find their way in a somewhat nihilistic, in the Nietzschean sense, world where failure almost certainly leads to death, all turn finally on human relationships. O'Neill seems to have eventually believed that people need each other in a world otherwise without sense. Without that, we are doomed to, not only meaninglessness, but also to loneliness.
December 24, 2020
I found these plays disappointing. The good part: he carefully set up each scene with a very detailed layout of furniture, etc. Not so good: I think he described actors instructions which seemed very difficult to act out. This not a good example but shows the extent to which O'Neil tries to prescribe the acting: "His manner is groping and awkwardly self-conscious, but stubbornly, almost sullenly, determined". The pretty bad: All too often a character ignores what the last character said. Well, who knows, that might be what real people do. The bad: moods change mercurially. Within a single paragraph one goes from combative to apologetic and back again, sometimes 5 or 10 times over. A very bumpy ride for the reader. And finally, I got tired of the the length of the plays. More Stately Mansions was way too long. Because of that I skipped The Iceman Cometh (I had seen the movie recently as well) A Long Day's Journey Into Night, was indeed long. And the ending ... (spoiler excluded). After Long Journey I stopped reading.
September 14, 2019
I found it difficult to engage myself in most of these plays. The plots or themes of most of them seemed too contrived to suspend my disbelief. One example of this is The Iceman Cometh that seemed particularly forced in its final 'plot twist'.
Other plays, particularly, of course, the unfinished More Stately Mansions, just go on and on, and again, the characters and their actions seemed to me completely unbelievable.
I once read a piece of advice related to screen writing, that each character should have a unique voice. One should be able to read a piece of dialog and immediately be able to tell, without stage instructions or labels, who speaks that line.
This rule is more often than not violated here. I had to deliberately look at the name label of each line of dialogue to remind myself who'd be speaking.
I was neither entertained nor moved by any of the plays, nor do I feel that I learned much.
Other plays, particularly, of course, the unfinished More Stately Mansions, just go on and on, and again, the characters and their actions seemed to me completely unbelievable.
I once read a piece of advice related to screen writing, that each character should have a unique voice. One should be able to read a piece of dialog and immediately be able to tell, without stage instructions or labels, who speaks that line.
This rule is more often than not violated here. I had to deliberately look at the name label of each line of dialogue to remind myself who'd be speaking.
I was neither entertained nor moved by any of the plays, nor do I feel that I learned much.
January 3, 2020
Ah, Wilderness - finished 11/01/12
Days Without End - finished 05/05/13
A Touch of the Poet - finished 03/28/14
More Stately Mansions - finished 04/24/15
The Iceman Cometh - finished 02/18/16
Long Day's Journey Into Night - finished 02/19/17
Hughie - finished 01/03/18
Moon for the Misbegotten - finished 02/08/19
Tomorrow - finished 01/02/20
Days Without End - finished 05/05/13
A Touch of the Poet - finished 03/28/14
More Stately Mansions - finished 04/24/15
The Iceman Cometh - finished 02/18/16
Long Day's Journey Into Night - finished 02/19/17
Hughie - finished 01/03/18
Moon for the Misbegotten - finished 02/08/19
Tomorrow - finished 01/02/20
April 5, 2011
I never get tired of Eugene O'Neill. My favorite is Long Day's Journey Into Night. I love the irony in it of addiction. However, this time reading The Iceman Cometh I found it a little boring. Maybe because I've read it before, I don't know. But I love his plays!
June 21, 2007
every play he wrote in a sweet durable edition. i don't think it gets much better than this.
November 20, 2008
Looking for hints of Louise Bryant, John Reed, Provincetown...
a big fat book of plays and I returned it to the library but I intend to read more so stays put yea
a big fat book of plays and I returned it to the library but I intend to read more so stays put yea
September 28, 2011
Sept 11: Long Day's Journey Into Night, 5 of 5
April 7, 2012
Don't have the Library of America edition; replace your old one with this.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews