Early Plays

by Eugene O'Neill, Jeffrey H. Richards (Introduction)

Now collected for the first time in a single volume, this selection of Eugene O'Neill's seminal early work was written between 1914 and 1921 and produced for the stage between 1916 and 1922.

The majority of the plays gathered here are heavily influenced by Freud, Nietzsche, Strindberg, German expressionism, and the radical leftist politics O'Neill was involved in during his youth. Included in this unique collection is the little-known and underappreciated play The Straw, which draws on O'Neill's confinement in the Gaylord Farm Sanatorium. This edition includes an illuminating critical introduction by Jeffrey H. Richards.

Genres: Plays

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

American 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.

Reviews

[Elijah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Eugene O'Neill's "Early Plays" lets the reader observe his development as a playwright. Starting with some of his first published plays (where he already had much practice at writing), the stories get fuller, longer, and more developed as the years progressed. In "The Long Voyage Home," O'Neill tells a tragic story of sailors returning home after a long time out at sea. All the seamen go out and get drunk to celebrate except for Olsen, the Swede, who is staying sober that night in preparation to get to his homeland to purchase a farm. Well, as is similar to many of the stories in "Early Plays," a tragic end comes to Olsen. Later in the collection, "Beyond the Horizon" centers around a misguided young love that leads the participants down an ill-fated path.

In "Early Plays," Eugene O'Neill shows us his talent in writing about the human missteps, mishaps, and tragedies that result in broken dreams. He was a writer that excelled in depicting the painful side of life. Considered to be America's first great playwright, Eugene O'Neill makes a very compelling case for that title in this book.

[Paul O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine collection of O'Neill's early plays. Many are one act. Some are worth a quick pass by. Others may linger beyond their first reading, like The Rope did for me with its dark comic irony, or Ile with its creeping despair. Most of the one acts deal with themes of sailoring and life lived on the sea. O'Neill drew from his own personal seafaring experiences. The theme of being a manly man with the freedom to satisfy cravings of wanderlust through struggle with the merciless sea usually gets a Nietzschean tinge from most commentators. Quite frankly, what stood out for me as being even more Nietzschean was the heroic solitude many of O'Neil's characters are forced to endure, or break apart accordingly. Beyond the Horizon, perhaps the best play of the bunch, is about chosen solitude against one's dreams endured until culminating in ultimate tragedy. The longer plays display the young O'Neill at his most developed and innovative. The Emperor Jones reads awkwardly today, to say the least, for its racism, but taken in its historic period for what it is one can admire its innovative features. Magical realism clearly finds its origins in this peculiar and unsettling play. This collection finishes with the disturbing protest play, The Hairy Ape. Yank is the most tragic of solitary figures: one who imagines he fits in, when in fact he doesn't. Merely used and discarded without thought or care by the world he once foolishly imagined he owned, in the end not even rude nature, much less human society, offers him any relief of bonhomie or a kind turn. As you read through this collection, you can feel O'Neil develop his social conscience as a writer as he moves away from the struggles of solitary figures and begins to engage in larger, more important questions. One needs, however, to open O'Neill with an ample resource of good humor. By the time you close him, you'll be drawing on that resource, to be sure.

[Stephanie]

Read in conjunction with the Goodman O'Neill Festival. Not rated, because it's silly to rate a collection of diverse plays.

[Natalie Newell · Rating 4 out of 5]

His work is depressing but intense and eye-opening. My favorite so far has got to be Beyond the Horizon.