Evolution or Revolution? Recurring themes, ideas and conventions in the dramas of Ibsen, O'Neill and Shepard.
Throughout the history of drama, playwrights have appropriated the ideas of their predecessors for their own use, sometimes building on them and making the idea their own. American drama is no exception. American drama has its roots firmly entrenched in modern European drama, this is illustrated through the influence of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen on American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill once wrote, "Not long ago I read all of Ibsen's plays again. The same living truth is there. Only to fools with a superficial eye cocked to detect the incidental can they have anything dated or outworn about them. As dramas revealing the souls of men and women they are as great to-day as they will be a hundred years from now." (Manheim p.24). O'Neill and his contemporaries, in turn, influenced a new generation of American playwrights, exemplified by Sam Shepard who, according to Henry I. Schvey, "Like O'Neill, who for decades rejected psychological realism as 'holding the family Kodak up to ill-nature,' then embraced it in his greatest works such as Long Day's Journey, Shepard has moved toward a new realism which owes much to the family drama of O'Neill" (Modern Drama p.18). This should illustrate how European conventions were replicated, built on or even subverted to create what we know today as American drama.
Egil Tornqvist writes, in the critical essay 'O'Neill: Philosophical and Literary paragons', "Paradoxically, O'Neill is never closer to Ibsen than at the peak of his artistry and integrity, when he is able to use the old master's tools, notably his retrospective technique, with perfectio...
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I decided to write on my essay on Eugene O’ Neill because he has contributed so much to the field of theatre. Eugene O'Neill's greatest plays, was presented by the National Theatre in 2003 celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the playwright's death. A reworking of the “Oresteia” trilogy by Aeschylus and the Electra tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, O’Neill’s epic American tragedy of hatred, passion, jealousy and greed is set in New England after the Civil War. Using Freud’s theories, as O’Neill had done earlier in “Strange Interlude,” he now views classical drama (as had Freud) as a rich field for exploration of character motivation.