The Emperor Jones, Diff'rent, The Straw

1921. O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, and Pulitzer Prizes for four of his plays. O'Neill is credited with raising American dramatic theater from its narrow origins to an art form respected around the world. He is regarded as America's premier playwright. O'Neill's career as a playwright consisted of three periods. His early realist plays utilize his own experiences, especially as a seaman. In the 1920s he rejected realism in an effort to capture on the stage the forces behind human life. His expressionistic plays during this period were influenced by the ideas of philosopher Freidrich Nietzsche, psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. During his final period O'Neill returned to realism. These later works, which most critics consider his best, depend on his life experiences for their story lines and themes. This volume contains three of his plays. Due to the age and scarcity of the original we reproduced, some pages may be spotty or faded.