Ten "Lost" Plays

by Eugene O'Neill

A Wife for a Life, The Movie Man, The Sniper, Abortion, Thirst, The Web, Warnings, Fog, Recklessness and Servitude.

Genres: Plays, Drama

320 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1995

About the author

American playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored Mourning Becomes Electra in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Long Day's Journey into Night , produced in 1956.

He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.

His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every play in this volume -- nine one-acts and a full-length -- came out in a period of three years: 1913-15; and there is a kind of fervor behind the work as if the 20-something playwright were tackling intense passions month after month, ranging from botched abortions ("Abortion") to prostitution ("The Web") to religion and war ("The Sniper") to corrupt Hollywood (the leaden comedy "The Movie Man"). His influences are also pretty clear here with nods to Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People" ("Warnings") and Shaw's "Pygmalion" ("Servitude"). Is "Recklessness" an homage to Strindberg? It could be. My favorite scripts were the two set upon rafts: "Thirst" and "Fog." Stripping the action down to three survivors afloat on lifeboats with no help or land in sight, the young Eugene O'Neill gets his most existential. You can easily excuse the philosophical monologues because what else are these characters going to do? None of the plays rises to the greatness of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" or "The Iceman Cometh" but they've got an undeniable energy to them, even if "A Wife for a Life" isn't exactly dying to be staged. I, for one, find myself glad these plays were "found."

[Elibardo Villegas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dramatic and emotional read. This is how O'Neill always dealt with the darkest feelings of the human being.

[Brett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty great stuff, but I can't help but like it in a slightly ironic way considering how wildly intense/depressing/melodramatic the majority of these one-acts are. Lots of suicides by revolvers and utterly ruined lives.