In1920 his first full-length play, Beyond the Horizon, was professionally produced on Broadway. It quickly became popular,and won the Pulitzer Prize, and the name of O’Neill became known throughout the country.
II. Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)
Introduction Literary Career Characteristics Comment
A. Introduction
Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in New York City on October 16, 1888. O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, and Pulitzer Prizes for four of his plays: Beyond the Horizon (1920); Anna Christie (1922); Strange Interlude (1928); and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1957). O'Neill is credited with raising American dramatic theater from its narrow origins to an art form respected around the world. He is regarded as America's premier playwright.
American Literature Diversified:
from 1945 – the 21st Century
Drama in the Modern Era
I. American Drama
A. Beginning
The American dramatic tradition began with Ye Bare and Ye Cubb (1665) by William Darby and other two author-performers. Native American drama began to gather some momentum in the 18th century. The first American comedy to be staged was The Contrast written by Royall Tyler(1757-1826), and first played in New York City in 1787.
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C. Drama in the 20th century
At the turn of the 20th century American drama pointed the way from a separation from the 19th century theatricality. It made its tentative attempt to place realistic plays on the American stage. During the 1920s the extravagant spending and general license of the boom period encouraged the use of the Broadway theater as upper class entertainment. The most famous of the little theaters were the Washington Square Players which was formed in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1914 and the Provincetown Players which was formed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1915.
B. Drama in the 19th century
In the 19th century, along with the western expansion between 1814 and 1824 appeared such plays as She would be a solider (1819) by Mordecai Noah; or , The Plains of Chippewa (1819) by James Nelson Barker. Poetic plays were very popular in the first half of the 19th century. The most significant theatrical development from the Civil War to 1900 was the move in the direction of realism from domestic melodrama.
B. Literary Career
O’Neill worked on a variety of one-act plays describing the way an individual willfully connives at his or her own doom.
During 1913-1914 he wrote nine one-act plays,then he attended George Pierce Baker’s “47 Workshop”at Harvard University from 1914 to 1915. He wrote six more one-act plays during 1916-1917,and four in 1918.