Complete Plays: 1913-20 (Library of America) [Hardcover]

This is a tremendous source work, providing a sequential study of O'Neill's development as a dramatist. While not all of the plays are particularly successful, they reveal themes and settings that would provide the foundation for the later O'Neill masterworks. And there are many wonderful early dramas, such as the four S.S. Glencairn plays, his first broadway success "Beyond the Horizon," and the daring "Anna Christie," all of which tested and expanded the dramatic form in America. A wonderful collection!

Volume 1 of Library of America's edition of Eugene O'Neill's plays covers his early years until 1920. Some of the 29 plays included here are not really worth preserving. Many are clearly apprentice work, but none of them is boring or uninteresting. Many are just unimportant and forgettable. Many contain the nucleus of something larger, but remain immature.
O'Neill was a white spot on my personal literary map. I don't think I ever watched any of his plays. I knew that he had a Nobel Prize in 1936, but that had not motivated me yet to find out more about him. Now I am happy that I let the Ace talk me into giving O'Neill a try.

O'Neill's first book was a collection of 5 plays published by his father under the name `Thirst' in 1916. Some of them were staged, mostly in Provincetown. They are apprentice work and deal with O'Neill's personal agenda: drinking, tuberculosis, suicide, the sea, unstable relations, father and son conflicts.

In 1950, a publisher assembled the 5 plays of `Thirst' plus 5 others written in the 1910s under the title "Ten `Lost' Plays by Eugene O'Neill". Two of the plays were quite promising (`The Movie Man' has a Hollywood firm pay for exclusive rights to battles and executions in a Mexican uprising; `Servitude' has a woman believing naively that her favorite writer means and lives what he writes).

O'Neill became more substantial with `The Personal Equation': a four act play about a group of radicals in the time before WW1. They want to stir up the proletariat to stand together for international solidarity. (That was not to happen, as we know. Instead, when the war began, the proletarians of all nations all flogged to their respective flags.)
The radical group plans an act of sabotage against a shipping line, which is supposed to be followed by a general strike. The idea fails, as personal relations and entanglements of the designated saboteur intervene, such as a love affair and a father in the opposite camp.
The play was first produced in New York in 2000.
I would have expected that stuff like this could have caused trouble with Joe McCarthy. I don't know enough about O'Neill to know if he did have such trouble.

Another collection of early plays was `The Moon of the Caribbees', which united 7 plays in a book, mainly sea stories. These were all produced either in Provincetown or in New York. They are short stories adjusted to the stage. They might have been better as short stories, but they are not uninteresting.

`Before Breakfast': an eminently playable short piece about a drinking woman, a one-person play insofar as the husband is only `talked' to or nagged at.

`Now I ask you': a comedy that seems to start with a suicide, about a confused young upper class woman who believes that she believes in free love. Rather silly and not worth reviving.

`Beyond the Horizon' was his breakthrough to Broadway and Pulitzer, in 1920. It is a depressed story of bad choices, irreparable consequences, and endless regrets.

`Shell Shock' is a strong one-act play about WW1 soldiers; it suffers from an all too miraculous healing of the title problem.

`The Dreamy Kid' is a short play with an all-black cast. The title hero is a young gangster who should run from the police, but can't, as he must stay with his dying grandmother, who put a curse on him in case he leaves her alone. This was used as libretto for a (jazz?-) opera by J.P. Johnson, which might be more interesting than the play itself.

`The Straw' is a strong play about 2 young people who meet in a lung sanatorium. It has autobiographical elements and can be seen as an attempt at atoning for past misdeeds.

`Chris Christophersen' has a Swedish sailor working as a coal barge skipper along the US east coast; he meets his neglected daughter after years. A bit lame.

`Gold' is a stretch version of `Where the Cross is Made', which was included in the `Moon of the Caribbees' collection. A retired sailor has infected his son with the same obsession that clouds his own mind.

`Anna Christie' won O'Neill his second drama Pulitzer in 1922. It is a reworking of the earlier `Chris Christophersen'. The Swede's story is turned towards the daughter's perspective. She meets her father after so many years and hides her life in prostitution from him and her new suitor.

The volume closes with tom-toms and the majestic play `The Emperor Jones'. O'Neill left his accustomed realm of realism and went for the heart of darkness.

It isn't clear who would be apt to read this volume of early plays by O'Neill. These days, drama departments seem to assign new plays by unknown playwrights, as though the professors were in the pay of the publishers. Why order books by dead writers? These plays, however, are much more useful, I should think, for the aspiring playwright because they are exercises of a young dramatic master in his early stage of apprenticeship. He is learning his craft and writing his way to mastery. They are marvelous models of an immature writer. They are not perfect specimens, not intimidating masterworks, but slight, flawed works that any playwright might feel inspired by. They are awkward, rough, even stale, but each seeks to perform a dramatic task. O'Neill was very conscious of what he sought to do. These are not entertainments. Read them, learn from them, learn not to write this badly, and you'll be on your way.