Eugene O’Neill
Nine
Plays Selected by the Author
1932 Nobel Prize Edition
The
Emperor Jones, 1920;The Hairy Ape, 1922;All
God's Chillun Got Wings, 1924; Desire Under the Elms,
1925; Marco Millions 1923-25; The Great God Brown,
1926; Strange Interlude, 1928 (Pulitzer Prize);
Mourning Becomes Electra (Trilogy - Homecoming, The
Hunted, The Haunted) 1929-1932.
Eugene
Gladstone O'Neill (1888 – 1953) was an American
playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are
among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques
of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov,
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August
Strindberg.
They
were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular
and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging
in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their
hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment
and despair.
O'Neill
wrote only one well-known comedy - Ah, Wilderness! -
.Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy
and personal pessimism.
After
suffering from multiple health problems (including depression
and alcoholism) over many years, O'Neill ultimately faced
a severe Parkinsons-like tremor in his hands which made it
impossible for him to write during the last ten years of his
life. He had tried using dictation but found himself unable
to compose in that way
Despite
critical acclaim for his work, his personal life was steeped
in tragedy. In 1943, O'Neill disowned his daughter Oona for
marrying Charlie Chaplin when she was 18 and Chaplin was 54.
He never saw Oona again. He also had distant relationships
with his sons, Eugene, Jr., a Yale classicist who suffered
from alcoholism, and committed suicide in 1950 at the age
of 40, and Shane O'Neill, a heroin addict who also committed
suicide.
As
his health worsened, O’Neill lost inspiration for the
project and wrote the three large autobiographical plays,
The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and
A Moon for the Misbegotten. He managed to complete
Moon for the Misbegotten in 1943, just before losing his
ability to write.
Although
his written instructions had stipulated that it not be made
public until 25 years after his death, in 1956, his widow
Carlotta arranged for his autobiographical masterpiece
Long Day's Journey Into Night to be published, and produced
on stage to tremendous critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer
Prize in 1957.
O'Neill
was born in a Broadway hotel room in Times Square and died
in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston,
on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he,
in a barely audible whisper, said, "I knew it. Born in
a hotel room, and damn it, dying in a hotel room."
Source
- Wikipedia
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