Reviews for Early Plays

The average rating for Early Plays based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-06-13 00:00:00 Joanne Applegate Loved it. Eugene O'Neill's "Early Plays" lets the reader observe his development as a playwright. Starting with some of his first published plays (where he already had much practice at writing), the stories get fuller, longer, and more developed as the years progressed. In "The Long Voyage Home," O'Neill tells a tragic story of sailors returning home after a long time out at sea. All the seamen go out and get drunk to celebrate except for Olsen, the Swede, who is staying sober that night in preparation to get to his homeland to purchase a farm. Well, as is similar to many of the stories in "Early Plays," a tragic end comes to Olsen. Later in the collection, "Beyond the Horizon" centers around a misguided young love that leads the participants down an ill-fated path. In "Early Plays," Eugene O'Neill shows us his talent in writing about the human missteps, mishaps, and tragedies that result in broken dreams. He was a writer that excelled in depicting the painful side of life. Considered to be America's first great playwright, Eugene O'Neill makes a very compelling case for that title in this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-06 00:00:00 Jason Butler This is a fine collection of O'Neill's early plays. Many are one act. Some are worth a quick pass by. Others may linger beyond their first reading, like The Rope did for me with its dark comic irony, or Ile with its creeping despair. Most of the one acts deal with themes of sailoring and life lived on the sea. O'Neill drew from his own personal seafaring experiences. The theme of being a manly man with the freedom to satisfy cravings of wanderlust through struggle with the merciless sea usually gets a Nietzschean tinge from most commentators. Quite frankly, what stood out for me as being even more Nietzschean was the heroic solitude many of O'Neil's characters are forced to endure, or break apart accordingly. Beyond the Horizon, perhaps the best play of the bunch, is about chosen solitude against one's dreams endured until culminating in ultimate tragedy. The longer plays display the young O'Neill at his most developed and innovative. The Emperor Jones reads awkwardly today, to say the least, for its racism, but taken in its historic period for what it is one can admire its innovative features. Magical realism clearly finds its origins in this peculiar and unsettling play. This collection finishes with the disturbing protest play, The Hairy Ape. Yank is the most tragic of solitary figures: one who imagines he fits in, when in fact he doesn't. Merely used and discarded without thought or care by the world he once foolishly imagined he owned, in the end not even rude nature, much less human society, offers him any relief of bonhomie or a kind turn. As you read through this collection, you can feel O'Neil develop his social conscience as a writer as he moves away from the struggles of solitary figures and begins to engage in larger, more important questions. One needs, however, to open O'Neill with an ample resource of good humor. By the time you close him, you'll be drawing on that resource, to be sure.