Best Plays by the Playwright Eugene O Neil

You guys must have heard about the world-famous dramatist William Shakespeare who is known for his marvelous plays and his plays are still widely performed in the theatre across the village. Well, there is indeed no other dramatist like Shakespeare and never had been in the history of English literature but there are many playwrights who wrote outstanding plays and mastered the art with their plays and among those writers, the name of Eugene o Neil, was an American playwright stands tall. He was born on October 16th, 1888 in New York. He also won a Nobel Prize in literature in 1936. He has written so many plays that deal with several issues of his time such as lonely sailors and their boring lives and God’s injustice to man, he has written his plays from an intensely personal point of view. If you also love to watch drama in theatre and looking for the best ones, written by the best writers then this article might be helpful for you because I will give short summaries of some of his plays in my article and if you like any of them then you can order the texts from the online platform such as eBay alternatives.

1) Anna Christie- this is the most celebrated play of Neil which was produced in 1921 and published in 1922 and won the Pulitzer prize. The play revolves around the central character Anna Christie who is separated from her bargemaster father and later reunited with him in adulthood. She became a prostitute and that’s how they met, her father comes with a seaman who has been smitten by her. However, Anna does not expect much from her father because she has been treated badly for most of her life and when Anna tells about her past then his father and the seaman leave her and go their separate ways on the distant voyages. This play ends with a bittersweet note that you have to find.

2) Desire Under the Elms – this drama was produced in 1924 and published in 1925. This is a naturalistic play and the first one where he created the starkness of Greek tragedy this play tells about the story of farm people who are involved in farming. In this play, Ephraim Cabot leaves his farm and his three sons who hate him. Ephraim has three sons Simeon, and Peter, and the youngest one Eben who can be considered as the main character of this play This play is filled with family drama and a polygamist father. Basically, this play showcases the family conflict and Freudian treatment of sexual themes of his own family.

3) The Great God Brown- this drama is in four acts and was published in 1926. Neil experiments with expressionistic theatre in this play. This play is filled with tragedy and disillusionment. This play has two central characters William and Dion who are in love with Margaret. Margaret chooses Dion over William. After some time, Margaret starts to repulse when she sees the true side of Dion as sad and insecure. Dion which makes him sad and he dies very soon. This play explores the theme of identity and the pursuit of American dreams with straightforward and experimental theatre techniques. The characters use masks to hide their real identities and make them pursue what is not relevant to them.

4) Mourning Becomes Electra- It was published in 1931. this play has a trilogy that consists of Homecoming, the Haunted, and the Hunted and it was modeled on the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus. This trilogy depicts the decline of a prominent family in New England named the Mannons after the American Civil War.

These are not the only masterpieces which are written by him and I shall talk about the rest of the plays in my other article, till then you can watch these plays and read the texts.