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The Marionettes
Boxed facsimile edition (1979 issue) of Faulkner's 1920 self-published one-act play, illustrated with pen-and-ink sketches by the author.
106 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 1978
31 people want to read
About the author
William Faulkner
1,376 books10.7k followersWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer. He is best known for his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in for Lafayette County where he spent most of his life. A Nobel laureate, Faulkner is one of the most celebrated writers of American literature and often is considered the greatest writer of Southern literature.
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi, and raised in Oxford, Mississippi. During World War I, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, but did not serve in combat. Returning to Oxford, he attended the University of Mississippi for three semesters before dropping out. He moved to New Orleans, where he wrote his first novel Soldiers' Pay (1925). He went back to Oxford and wrote Sartoris (1927), his first work set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County. In 1929, he published The Sound and the Fury. The following year, he wrote As I Lay Dying. Later that decade, he wrote Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! and The Wild Palms. He also worked as a screenwriter, contributing to Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, adapted from Raymond Chandler's novel. The former film, adapted from Ernest Hemingway's novel, is the only film with contributions by two Nobel laureates.
Faulkner's reputation grew following publication of Malcolm Cowley's The Portable Faulkner, and he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his powerful and unique contribution to the modern American novel." He is the only Mississippi-born Nobel laureate. Two of his works, A Fable (1954) and The Reivers (1962), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Faulkner died from a heart attack on July 6, 1962, following a fall from his horse the month before. Ralph Ellison called him "the greatest artist the South has produced".
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 27, 2025
*** This slight, early work by Faulkner, written when he was a university student, is highly reminiscent of Wilde’s great play, Salome. It has the strange formality and flowing similes of that piece. In every way, it is a poetic and timeless work, telling a story of seduction and beauty and time. (Interestingly, this was done while Yeats was doing his ethereal Noh dramas.) The art deco drawings done by Faulkner are quite captivating, too.
While not a consequential piece, The Marionettes is a beautifully craft. I would love to hear a performance. I certainly recommend it for Faulkner completists and drama enthusiasts, but for the rest there is probably little draw.
While not a consequential piece, The Marionettes is a beautifully craft. I would love to hear a performance. I certainly recommend it for Faulkner completists and drama enthusiasts, but for the rest there is probably little draw.
July 30, 2011
***Spoiler Alert***
In the fall of 1920, William Faulkner wrote, hand-lettered, -decorated, and –bound a one-act play called The Marionettes. The play, an interesting combination of black-and-white figurative illustrations and text, is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it bears a close relationship to the poetry Faulkner had been writing. Second, The Marionettes was heavily influenced by the work of the French Symbolists, and it features themes and literary structures that Faulkner would explore throughout his career: sexuality, time, nature, and a counterpointed plot. Third, The Marionettes shows the numerous literary sources that influenced Faulkner; it is, in a sense, a summary of Faulkner’s reading up to that point. In particular, a 1909 play by Laurence Houseman and H. Granville-Barker called Prunella, or Love in a Dutch Garden, is speculated to have been a major influence on Faulkner’s play. Like The Marionettes, Prunella’s action takes place in a garden. Prunella, similar to Marietta, the narcissistic, sex-starved heroine of The Marionettes, is the illegitimate child of a mother who has been seduced and abandoned, and both characters are reared by three maiden aunts. One important difference, however, is that Prunella is a much lighter work than The Marionettes. Prunella and Pierrot are reunited after their troubles, but Marietta dies at The Marionettes’s conclusion.
I don’t consider The Marionettes a strong literary work, and apparently, Faulkner himself found the play forgettable. When he was asked about The Marionettes in 1932, Faulkner wrote, “It was long ago and I don’t remember.” Indeed, the play’s language is flowery and repetitive. The connections between nature and the feminine body are interesting but overused and often silly: “The Moon is like a disembodied breast upon the floor of a silent sea, the moon is like the bloated face of a scorned woman who has drowned herself.” Most of the play’s dialogue consists of elongated similes, many of which concern breasts. Therefore, this book, like most of Faulkner’s early works, will be interesting primarily to Faulkner scholars.
I am writing specifically about a 1977 edition of The Marionettes that Noel Polk edited. Polk’s introduction analyzes the play in great depth and shows how the play’s themes influenced Faulkner’s major works. Following the play, Polk performs a line-by-line analysis that compares this edition, called the Virginia Copy, with two earlier editions. To the average reader, the differences are insignificant. The drawings in the Virginia Copy are more detailed. The pagination and bindings are not exactly the same. To Polk, however, the differences---words, punctuation, etc.---are crucial because these revisions will shape the later works of one of the most significant twentieth-century writers. I’ve always respected literary scholars who focus on one specific author, especially those academics who study the works that are usually overlooked or considered of a lesser importance. If you are not a Faulkner scholar, then I can still recommend reading Polk’s thorough introduction. Like Judith L. Sensibar’s introduction to Faulkner’s book of poetry Vision in Spring, Polk’s introduction might contain more literary merit than the play itself.
In the fall of 1920, William Faulkner wrote, hand-lettered, -decorated, and –bound a one-act play called The Marionettes. The play, an interesting combination of black-and-white figurative illustrations and text, is noteworthy for several reasons. First, it bears a close relationship to the poetry Faulkner had been writing. Second, The Marionettes was heavily influenced by the work of the French Symbolists, and it features themes and literary structures that Faulkner would explore throughout his career: sexuality, time, nature, and a counterpointed plot. Third, The Marionettes shows the numerous literary sources that influenced Faulkner; it is, in a sense, a summary of Faulkner’s reading up to that point. In particular, a 1909 play by Laurence Houseman and H. Granville-Barker called Prunella, or Love in a Dutch Garden, is speculated to have been a major influence on Faulkner’s play. Like The Marionettes, Prunella’s action takes place in a garden. Prunella, similar to Marietta, the narcissistic, sex-starved heroine of The Marionettes, is the illegitimate child of a mother who has been seduced and abandoned, and both characters are reared by three maiden aunts. One important difference, however, is that Prunella is a much lighter work than The Marionettes. Prunella and Pierrot are reunited after their troubles, but Marietta dies at The Marionettes’s conclusion.
I don’t consider The Marionettes a strong literary work, and apparently, Faulkner himself found the play forgettable. When he was asked about The Marionettes in 1932, Faulkner wrote, “It was long ago and I don’t remember.” Indeed, the play’s language is flowery and repetitive. The connections between nature and the feminine body are interesting but overused and often silly: “The Moon is like a disembodied breast upon the floor of a silent sea, the moon is like the bloated face of a scorned woman who has drowned herself.” Most of the play’s dialogue consists of elongated similes, many of which concern breasts. Therefore, this book, like most of Faulkner’s early works, will be interesting primarily to Faulkner scholars.
I am writing specifically about a 1977 edition of The Marionettes that Noel Polk edited. Polk’s introduction analyzes the play in great depth and shows how the play’s themes influenced Faulkner’s major works. Following the play, Polk performs a line-by-line analysis that compares this edition, called the Virginia Copy, with two earlier editions. To the average reader, the differences are insignificant. The drawings in the Virginia Copy are more detailed. The pagination and bindings are not exactly the same. To Polk, however, the differences---words, punctuation, etc.---are crucial because these revisions will shape the later works of one of the most significant twentieth-century writers. I’ve always respected literary scholars who focus on one specific author, especially those academics who study the works that are usually overlooked or considered of a lesser importance. If you are not a Faulkner scholar, then I can still recommend reading Polk’s thorough introduction. Like Judith L. Sensibar’s introduction to Faulkner’s book of poetry Vision in Spring, Polk’s introduction might contain more literary merit than the play itself.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews