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Winterset
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72 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1935
3 people are currently reading
80 people want to read
About the author
Maxwell Anderson
139 books12 followersMaxwell Anderson was an American playwright, poet, and journalist. He won a Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1933, for Both Your Houses, and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for both Winterset and High Tor.
Several of his plays were adapted into successful movies, including Anne of the Thousand Days and Key Largo.
Several of his plays were adapted into successful movies, including Anne of the Thousand Days and Key Largo.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 21, 2010
An interesting little piece of stage noire, the New York slum setting and lower than working class characters still have Anderson's trade-mark nobility and pre-occupation with such high minded matters as justice and legacy. If the actions get a little melo-dramatic in places, it never founders into the maudlin and the ending, both surprising and satisfying, features some excellent poetry and character moments for actors and readers alike.
November 11, 2018
It's not too surprising that this play won awards when it was written and first performed, as this play appears to be precisely the sort of play that was and remains award bait as a drama. The play is a tragedy, it has a heavily Jewish cast of characters and strongly political themes, and it allows the reader or viewer to engage in virtue signalling by supporting an underdog and feeling a sense of outrage at the perceived injustices of American society. The original writing and performance of the play in the 1930's, during a period of particularly strong socialist and Communist influence in the United States, is the sort of approach that one would imagine being popular among contemporary voters of the Tony Awards and Drama Circle Awards and related awards shows. And while this play's political sense and my own are quite different and even hostile, and the playwright's approach altogether too mawkishly sentimental for my own tastes, it is not as if this play is a terrible one either. It certainly manages to convey certain aspects of violence well and has a complex view of its characters that prevents the play from being merely propaganda for all its serious flaws.
In terms of its structure, this play somewhat unconventionally has a three act structure. Most of the time, in dramas we are used to two act structures while the three act structure is more noted for screenplays, which is perhaps the reason why the author is best known as the writer whose work became films like Key Largo. Indeed, this play is very cinematic in terms of its approach, well suited to film adaptation. In the first act, we see Trock, a violent hoodlum, bully those who witnessed a crime they were all apart of in the fear that justice will catch up to him, and we see a judge whose opinion of his own rectitude and his involvement in the original murder trial that condemned an "innocent" political radical (although there is no such thing in reality), with a cliffhanger ending. In the second act, we see a mock trial of sorts where the son of the dead radical seeks to condemn the Trock and finds himself falling in love mutually with the sister of one of Trock's accomplices, who is himself the son of an elderly and not particularly ethical Jewish man. The third act then ends tragically with (spoiler alert) both the idealistic young man and his beloved young woman dead as a result of Truck's submachine gun violence.
It is obvious why this play was regarded so highly upon its release and only mysterious why it hasn't been revived often and successfully to those of the author's ilk who still love this sort of material. The play is sentimental, featuring doomed love, people caught in ethical dilemmas, violence, social critique, sympathetic portrayals of liberal Judaism, and the ability of leftist audiences to relish in their self-hatred of American society. On most of those grounds there are plenty of reasons for me to dislike a drama like this, and while I do, I must at least admit that the play is well-constructed and the author certainly knows what he is about. If that makes this play better or worse than it would be incompetently done, I will leave for the reader to judge for themselves. I certainly would not write a play like this one myself, nor would I pay money to watch a play like this one, nor would I be remiss in finding excuses not to see it if I was invited to see it for free, but there is an audience for this sort of thing even now.
In terms of its structure, this play somewhat unconventionally has a three act structure. Most of the time, in dramas we are used to two act structures while the three act structure is more noted for screenplays, which is perhaps the reason why the author is best known as the writer whose work became films like Key Largo. Indeed, this play is very cinematic in terms of its approach, well suited to film adaptation. In the first act, we see Trock, a violent hoodlum, bully those who witnessed a crime they were all apart of in the fear that justice will catch up to him, and we see a judge whose opinion of his own rectitude and his involvement in the original murder trial that condemned an "innocent" political radical (although there is no such thing in reality), with a cliffhanger ending. In the second act, we see a mock trial of sorts where the son of the dead radical seeks to condemn the Trock and finds himself falling in love mutually with the sister of one of Trock's accomplices, who is himself the son of an elderly and not particularly ethical Jewish man. The third act then ends tragically with (spoiler alert) both the idealistic young man and his beloved young woman dead as a result of Truck's submachine gun violence.
It is obvious why this play was regarded so highly upon its release and only mysterious why it hasn't been revived often and successfully to those of the author's ilk who still love this sort of material. The play is sentimental, featuring doomed love, people caught in ethical dilemmas, violence, social critique, sympathetic portrayals of liberal Judaism, and the ability of leftist audiences to relish in their self-hatred of American society. On most of those grounds there are plenty of reasons for me to dislike a drama like this, and while I do, I must at least admit that the play is well-constructed and the author certainly knows what he is about. If that makes this play better or worse than it would be incompetently done, I will leave for the reader to judge for themselves. I certainly would not write a play like this one myself, nor would I pay money to watch a play like this one, nor would I be remiss in finding excuses not to see it if I was invited to see it for free, but there is an audience for this sort of thing even now.
June 21, 2024
“There’s no guilt under heaven,
just as there’s no heaven, till men believe it—“
[1.ii]
Trock: “ I see you /
And even you may not live as long as you think.”
[1.i]
“Scene 2. Scene: A cellar apartment under the apartment building, floored with cement and roofed with huge boa constrictor pipes that run slantwise…dwarfing the room.”
Shadow: “it’s beginning to look
as if you’d feel safer with everybody dead,
the whole god-damn world.”
[1.ii]
Esdras: “when we’re young
we have faith in what is seen, but when we’re old
we know what is seen is traced in air
and built on water. There’s no guilt under heaven,
just as there’s no heaven, till men believe it—
no earth, till men have seen it, and have a word
to say this is the earth.”
[1.ii]
Esdras: “The days go by like film,
like a long written scroll, a figured veil
unrolling out of darkness into fire
and utterly consumed. And on this veil,
running in sounds and symbols of men’s minds
reflected back, life flickers and is shadow
going toward flame. Only what men can see
exists in that shadow. Why must you rise and cry out:
That was I, there in the ravelled tapestry…
Let the wind
and fire take that hour to ashes out of time
and out of mind! This thing men call justice,
this blind snake that strikes men down in the dark,
mindless with fury, keep your hand back from it,
pass by in silence—let it be forgotten, forgotten!”
[1.ii]
{xref: see Macbeth’s soliloquy, Act V}
“Last time I saw you you couldn’t think of anything
you wanted to do except curse God and pass out…”
[1.iii]. {Xref: Book of Job}
“Talk about the Lost Generation…”
[1.iii]
Mio: “might as well die one death as another.”
Carr: “They say chronic alcoholism is nice but expensive.” [1.iii]
Carr: “it’s something you can buy. In fact, at the moment I don’t think of anything you can’t buy, including life, honor, virtue, glory, public office, conjugal affection, and all kinds of justice, from the traffic court to the immortal nine. Go out and make yourself a pot of money and you can buy all the justice you want. Convictions obtained, convictions averted. Lowest rate in years.”
[1.iii]
{Sheesh…what year was this written? I could have been in the past 18 months…}
Mio: “there now, that’s better! That’s in the best police tradition. Incite a riot yourself then accuse the crowd.”
{Again, I ask: what year is it?}
Mio: “…you see those lights,
along the river, cutting across the rain —?
those are the hearths of Brooklyn, and up this way
the love-nests of Manhattan—they turn their points
like knives against me—outcast of the world,
snake in the streets…”
Mio; “…When I first saw you,
not a half-hour ago, I heard myself saying,
this is the face that launches ships for me…”
Miriamne: “oh, Mio, Mio
in all the unwanted places and waste lands…”
Mio; “Bartolomeo Romagna”
(Bartolomeo=Romeo)
Gaunt: “I ask this for yourself truly, not for the dignity of the law nor the maintenance of precedent. Be gentle with them when their threats are childish—be tolerant while you can—for your least harsh word will return on you in the night—return in a storm of cries!” [1.iii]
Esdras:
I have had twenty years to read on and on
and end with Ecclesiasties. Names of names,
evanid* days, evanid nights and days
and words that shrift their meaning. space is time,
that which was us now —the men of tomorrow
live, and this is their yesterday…”
[*evanescent; faint; illusory]
[2.i]
Gaunt: “You will hear it said that an old man makes a good judge / being calm, clear-eyed, without passion. But this is not true. Only the young love truth and justice. The old are savage, wary, violent, swayed by manic desires, cynical of friendship or love, open to bribery and the temptations of lust, corrupt and dastardly to the heart. I know these old men. What have they left to believe, what have they left to lose? Whorers of daughters, lickers of girls’ shoes, contrivers of nastiness in the night, purveyors of perversion, worshippers of possession! Death is the only radical. He comes late, but he comes at last to put away the old men and give the young their places.”
The Hobo: “He, he, he!” [like the Fool in King Lear]
Gaunt: “Justice once rendered in a clear burst of anger, righteously, upon a very common laborer,
confessed an anarchist, the verdict found
and the precise machinery of law
invoked to know him guilty…”
Esdras: “but the weight
of what men are and have, rests heavy on
the graves of those who lost. They’ll not rise again,
and their causes lie there with them.”
[2.i]
Gaunt (to Mio): “is it not true wherever you walk…
still walking by your side, and sleeping only
when you too sleep, a shadow not your own
follows, pleading and holding out its hands
to be delivered from shame?”
[2.i]
Mio: “it’s like a chess game…” [3.1][again, homage to T.S. Eliot]
Mio (to Miriamne): “How many pomegranate seeds did you eat, Persephone?”
[Ovid: seeds bound her to Hades, but her mother negioated with Zeus to allow Persophone to return to live with her mother each spring and summer (6 seeds, 6 months)
What an amazing play - one I’d never heard of, never heard of the playwright either. And chock full of references to Ovid, Shakespeare, TS Eliot
So recently I’ve been reading Bulgakov (Master and Margarita; Diaboliad; The Heart of the Dog); and Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago, and poetry of Anna Akhmatova, and now this, Winterset, written on a different continent, by a speaker of a different language, a different culture…yet so many similarities, parallels; what a time of turmoil worldwide the 1930s were
Lynne’s 2024 JHU class at Gertrude’s:
And in this play, the young, star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet, but also about faith, truth, justice, and duty. (And poverty- it was the Depression; and lack of mental health care)
Closing speech by Esdras, an elder, just like the closing of a Shakespeare play.
Mio & Miriamne bond over names like name issues in R&J. Though Miriamne breaks the Juliet mold and sides with her brother over Mio.
#1 play on Broadway in 1936
Song lyrics in West Side Story were taken from Winterset.
The movie, starring a young Burgess Meredith, focuses not on the love story but on the crime aspect, like a good 1930’s black and white film noir should.
just as there’s no heaven, till men believe it—“
[1.ii]
Trock: “ I see you /
And even you may not live as long as you think.”
[1.i]
“Scene 2. Scene: A cellar apartment under the apartment building, floored with cement and roofed with huge boa constrictor pipes that run slantwise…dwarfing the room.”
Shadow: “it’s beginning to look
as if you’d feel safer with everybody dead,
the whole god-damn world.”
[1.ii]
Esdras: “when we’re young
we have faith in what is seen, but when we’re old
we know what is seen is traced in air
and built on water. There’s no guilt under heaven,
just as there’s no heaven, till men believe it—
no earth, till men have seen it, and have a word
to say this is the earth.”
[1.ii]
Esdras: “The days go by like film,
like a long written scroll, a figured veil
unrolling out of darkness into fire
and utterly consumed. And on this veil,
running in sounds and symbols of men’s minds
reflected back, life flickers and is shadow
going toward flame. Only what men can see
exists in that shadow. Why must you rise and cry out:
That was I, there in the ravelled tapestry…
Let the wind
and fire take that hour to ashes out of time
and out of mind! This thing men call justice,
this blind snake that strikes men down in the dark,
mindless with fury, keep your hand back from it,
pass by in silence—let it be forgotten, forgotten!”
[1.ii]
{xref: see Macbeth’s soliloquy, Act V}
“Last time I saw you you couldn’t think of anything
you wanted to do except curse God and pass out…”
[1.iii]. {Xref: Book of Job}
“Talk about the Lost Generation…”
[1.iii]
Mio: “might as well die one death as another.”
Carr: “They say chronic alcoholism is nice but expensive.” [1.iii]
Carr: “it’s something you can buy. In fact, at the moment I don’t think of anything you can’t buy, including life, honor, virtue, glory, public office, conjugal affection, and all kinds of justice, from the traffic court to the immortal nine. Go out and make yourself a pot of money and you can buy all the justice you want. Convictions obtained, convictions averted. Lowest rate in years.”
[1.iii]
{Sheesh…what year was this written? I could have been in the past 18 months…}
Mio: “there now, that’s better! That’s in the best police tradition. Incite a riot yourself then accuse the crowd.”
{Again, I ask: what year is it?}
Mio: “…you see those lights,
along the river, cutting across the rain —?
those are the hearths of Brooklyn, and up this way
the love-nests of Manhattan—they turn their points
like knives against me—outcast of the world,
snake in the streets…”
Mio; “…When I first saw you,
not a half-hour ago, I heard myself saying,
this is the face that launches ships for me…”
Miriamne: “oh, Mio, Mio
in all the unwanted places and waste lands…”
Mio; “Bartolomeo Romagna”
(Bartolomeo=Romeo)
Gaunt: “I ask this for yourself truly, not for the dignity of the law nor the maintenance of precedent. Be gentle with them when their threats are childish—be tolerant while you can—for your least harsh word will return on you in the night—return in a storm of cries!” [1.iii]
Esdras:
I have had twenty years to read on and on
and end with Ecclesiasties. Names of names,
evanid* days, evanid nights and days
and words that shrift their meaning. space is time,
that which was us now —the men of tomorrow
live, and this is their yesterday…”
[*evanescent; faint; illusory]
[2.i]
Gaunt: “You will hear it said that an old man makes a good judge / being calm, clear-eyed, without passion. But this is not true. Only the young love truth and justice. The old are savage, wary, violent, swayed by manic desires, cynical of friendship or love, open to bribery and the temptations of lust, corrupt and dastardly to the heart. I know these old men. What have they left to believe, what have they left to lose? Whorers of daughters, lickers of girls’ shoes, contrivers of nastiness in the night, purveyors of perversion, worshippers of possession! Death is the only radical. He comes late, but he comes at last to put away the old men and give the young their places.”
The Hobo: “He, he, he!” [like the Fool in King Lear]
Gaunt: “Justice once rendered in a clear burst of anger, righteously, upon a very common laborer,
confessed an anarchist, the verdict found
and the precise machinery of law
invoked to know him guilty…”
Esdras: “but the weight
of what men are and have, rests heavy on
the graves of those who lost. They’ll not rise again,
and their causes lie there with them.”
[2.i]
Gaunt (to Mio): “is it not true wherever you walk…
still walking by your side, and sleeping only
when you too sleep, a shadow not your own
follows, pleading and holding out its hands
to be delivered from shame?”
[2.i]
Mio: “it’s like a chess game…” [3.1][again, homage to T.S. Eliot]
Mio (to Miriamne): “How many pomegranate seeds did you eat, Persephone?”
[Ovid: seeds bound her to Hades, but her mother negioated with Zeus to allow Persophone to return to live with her mother each spring and summer (6 seeds, 6 months)
What an amazing play - one I’d never heard of, never heard of the playwright either. And chock full of references to Ovid, Shakespeare, TS Eliot
So recently I’ve been reading Bulgakov (Master and Margarita; Diaboliad; The Heart of the Dog); and Pasternak’s Dr Zhivago, and poetry of Anna Akhmatova, and now this, Winterset, written on a different continent, by a speaker of a different language, a different culture…yet so many similarities, parallels; what a time of turmoil worldwide the 1930s were
Lynne’s 2024 JHU class at Gertrude’s:
And in this play, the young, star-crossed lovers like Romeo and Juliet, but also about faith, truth, justice, and duty. (And poverty- it was the Depression; and lack of mental health care)
Closing speech by Esdras, an elder, just like the closing of a Shakespeare play.
Mio & Miriamne bond over names like name issues in R&J. Though Miriamne breaks the Juliet mold and sides with her brother over Mio.
#1 play on Broadway in 1936
Song lyrics in West Side Story were taken from Winterset.
The movie, starring a young Burgess Meredith, focuses not on the love story but on the crime aspect, like a good 1930’s black and white film noir should.
June 27, 2016
"I have steeped too long/ in this thing. It's in my teeth and bones. I can't/ let go or forget. And I'll not add my lie/ to the lies that cumber his ground. We live our days/ in a storm of lies that drifts the truth too deep/ for path or shovel; but I've set my foot on a truth/ for once, and I'll trail it down!"
October 9, 2012
I procrastinated finishing this joy of a journey, I loved it so much. The language tastes good! I found myself reading it aloud just to enjoy it to the fullest. Some beautiful monologues, not sure if there are any for Miriamne herself though- double check.
December 24, 2015
I reread this after a reunion with some college theater friends. It was one of the first plays I worked on as a Freshman. It was a wonderful experience to read imagining old friends in the parts. An American classic.
July 15, 2020
I have started this play numerous times. The language was a stumbling block. For me, personally, I find that it is not that rare for a book to evade me simply because my mind is not in the right frame in order to understand what I am reading. So, after several attempts to read Maxwell Anderson's 1935 play, Winterset, I finally opened it up to read and I fell into the cadence of the language. I'm glad I persevered.
Winterset is an intelligently written play composed in blank verse. However, the blank verse can prove to be problematic for readers not used to this style of writing. The play is a crime drama that finds its inspiration from the Sacco-Vanzetti case, a controversial murder trial in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1921. Anderson explores the concepts of justice, duty and truth throughout the play. I found the language daunting at first but then I became mesmerized by how eloquent and thought-provoking the dialogue was. While the play is political, I never felt I was being force fed an ideology.
Winterset can be a challenge for some readers. It was for me at first. But, don't give up on this play. Once you get into the atmosphere of the language, you will be treated to such an intellectual debate concerning very important issues that are still being questioned today, almost a hundred years later. I highly recommend this play.
Winterset is an intelligently written play composed in blank verse. However, the blank verse can prove to be problematic for readers not used to this style of writing. The play is a crime drama that finds its inspiration from the Sacco-Vanzetti case, a controversial murder trial in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1921. Anderson explores the concepts of justice, duty and truth throughout the play. I found the language daunting at first but then I became mesmerized by how eloquent and thought-provoking the dialogue was. While the play is political, I never felt I was being force fed an ideology.
Winterset can be a challenge for some readers. It was for me at first. But, don't give up on this play. Once you get into the atmosphere of the language, you will be treated to such an intellectual debate concerning very important issues that are still being questioned today, almost a hundred years later. I highly recommend this play.
March 15, 2020
When I was a kid, we read Anderson in school. He was considered the great American playwright, greater than O’Neill or Miller or Williams. I haven’t read this play since tenth grade, when I read it in a book that contained this and Romeo and Juliet, meant for high school students. Recently, I asked four high school teachers how often they taught Anderson, and none of them had ever heard of him at all. Things change.
As I recall, in high school I thought this was a bit sentimental and unrealistic—falling in love at first sight and all the shooting. Now, I get what Anderson was doing and the play seems much better to me—I’m most so attached to realism in drama anymore. Shame we’ve forgotten this great playwright of the mid-century.
As I recall, in high school I thought this was a bit sentimental and unrealistic—falling in love at first sight and all the shooting. Now, I get what Anderson was doing and the play seems much better to me—I’m most so attached to realism in drama anymore. Shame we’ve forgotten this great playwright of the mid-century.
February 7, 2024
I mean some solid monologues I will be using one for my transfer audition to Tisch but overall meh. The second act falls into some dramatic tropes and weak writing that just kills the play even though the third act is significantly better. The Shakespeare references and 20th century verse writing is interesting
August 15, 2025
Winterset is a neglected masterpiece of the American stage. It is a hothouse of purple patches of poetry and is rife with dramatic tension from the very start. Maxwell Anderson was a worthy contemporary of Eugene O'Neill, Clifford Odets, and Jonathan Wilder.
May 29, 2014
Winterset is a class American drama told in poetic verse form. It is also historical, in that it follows the Sacco-Vanzetti case. The story revolves around the two Italian men with radical beliefs who are executed for a murder/robbery they were innocent of, and of the son’s determination to prove that innocence. In Scene III, there is a remarkable piece of wisdom, and foreshadowing doom.
GAUNT [taking the policeman’s arm, but shaken off roughly]. I ask this for yourself, truly, not for the dignity of the law nor the maintenance of precedent. Be gentle with them when their threats are childish—be tolerant while you can—for your least harsh word will return on you in the night—return in a storm of cries!
In short, do not resort to popular demand. Exercise the law with the professionalism it demands. When that does not happen, tragedies occur. I was not piqued by the Miramne Esdras love story included, and would have preferred Anderson focus on the central case itself.
GAUNT [taking the policeman’s arm, but shaken off roughly]. I ask this for yourself, truly, not for the dignity of the law nor the maintenance of precedent. Be gentle with them when their threats are childish—be tolerant while you can—for your least harsh word will return on you in the night—return in a storm of cries!
In short, do not resort to popular demand. Exercise the law with the professionalism it demands. When that does not happen, tragedies occur. I was not piqued by the Miramne Esdras love story included, and would have preferred Anderson focus on the central case itself.
February 23, 2014
It's like having love poetry read to you by a robot with Gilbert Gottfried's voice.
You want my opinion?
This was crap.
You want my opinion?
This was crap.
November 18, 2015
Some passages were poignant and captivating, but overall I was distracted while reading "Winterset" and had to re-read passages several times. I think it had to do with it being written in verse while it doesn't "sound" like verse or quite read like it, it was really distracting.
October 5, 2019
Quizá esperaba mucho más de este texto teatral, pero aún así, su mezcla de elementos simbolistas, naturalistas, expresionistas y de literatura popular, tal vez con el influjo de Brecht, tienen mucho de aprovechable
March 16, 2016
Must have read for school (grade 11)
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews