Bernice: A Play in Three Acts

by Susan Glaspell

Hailed as a “masterpiece” when it was first produced and acclaimed as the “significant dramatic offering of the season,” Susan Glaspell’s play BERNICE explores the social criticism of its time. Glaspell examines the lives of a bohemian couple who have rejected Victorian morality and how their lives are drastically changed as they come to terms with the mystery and the unanswered questions surrounding the death of Bernice. A Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Susan Glaspell was a founding member of the influential Provincetown Players and credited with a significant role in the development of modern drama in the United States.

38 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2015

About the author

Susan Keating Glaspell (July 1, 1876 – July 27, 1948) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, actress, director, novelist, biographer and poet. She was a founding member of the Provincetown Players, one of the most important collaboratives in the development of modern drama in the United States. She also served in the Works Progress Administration as Midwest Bureau Director of the Federal Theater Project.
Her novels and plays are committed to developing deep, sympathetic characters, to understanding 'life' in its complexity. Though realism was the medium of her fiction, she was also greatly interested in philosophy and religion. Many of her characters make principled stands.
As part of the Provincetown Players, she arranged for the first ever reading of a play by Eugene O'Neill.