O'Neill, Eugene (Gladstone)

Playwright. Born October 16, 1888, in New York City. A Beloved American Dramatist. Often considered Americas capitalest playwright, Eugene ONeill is credited with changing American frolic from popular entertainment to serious literature. The only American dramatist to win a Nobel Prize for literature, he worked in a variety of styles, including realism, expressionism, and myth. He borrowed freely from other dramatic traditions, reworking classical tragedies, using masks from non-Western drama, and learning from the European avant-garde. But he is, at heart, one of his nations most American dramatists. His plays are as carefully plotted as those of the popular theater he renounced. His borrowings mine his sources for their relevance to American history and issues. Most importantly, his words is undecomposable and direct: so simple that some critics have impeach him of bad writing. But his dialogue is written in the day-after-day language spoken by real Americans, and bringing that language to the stage is an important part of his legacy to the American theater.

Influenced by Fathers Career Eugene ONeill was born into the theater: his Irish father, James ONeill, had great promise as a Shakespearean actor until he had the great fortune--and misfortune--of buying the rights to Charles Fechters The Count of Monte Cristo, a dramatic adventure play adapted from Alexandre Dumass novel.



James ONeill played the school principal in this sensational spectacle over 6,000 times, becoming rich and famous, tho losing his artistic promise. This legacy, like many details about his family, would haunt Eugene ONeill in liveness and in his plays. Although he fervently rejected the dramatic tradition represented by his fathers career, his own drama was determine by it in very deep ways. In fact all of his work can be read as an extended autobiographical meditation on a life that often seems like a melodrama itself.

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