Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953)

O'Neill's brilliance and his place as America's foremost playwright locks into place, if it hadn't already, with this third volume of plays from the last decade of his writing life. Three of the plays presented here (The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten) are utter masterpieces, works of art so powerful that they rank among the great accomplishments in English letters. Two other plays (Ah, Wilderness! and A Touch of the Poet) are great plays. A third (More Stately Mansions) is the one great failure of O'Neill's career, I believe, an endless epic back-and-forth set of soulful arguments that could have been (and sometimes was) better played in an infinitely shorter play. But it's my belief that no American playwright has ever come within miles of capturing O'Neill's ability to see the pain at the heart of human beings and to encapsulate so perfectly the pity which the lost heart yearns for and requires.… (mere)