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The first of O'Neill's three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, «Beyond the Horizon» was written in 1918. The drama revolves around two brothers, Robert and Andy, who live on their family's farm and both love the same woman, Ruth. While Robert longs to escape the farm and experience a long sea voyage, Andy wishes to remain on the Mayo farm and remain close to the land. Neither of these men realize their wishes, however, for Ruth's choice of husband begins the tragic downward spiral of the entire family. A story at once about the conflict of dreams and responsibility, choices and happiness, «Beyond the Horizon» is the innovative play of a dramatist destined to become one of America's greatest playwrights.

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Contained within this volume are some of the best of O’Neill’s early one-act plays, which foreshadowed the longer plays that have given this dramatist his most enduring fame. “Beyond the Horizon” was the first of O’Neill’s three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. It follows the disappointed dreams of two brothers on their family farm. “The Emperor Jones” is an expressionistic transformation of a black man named Brutus Jones. In fleeing from his rebelling subjects in the West Indies, Jones is taken back to his racial past and undergoes a night of personal destruction. In “Anna Christie”, we find a drama focusing on the relationship of a young woman and her sailor father, who has not seen her for twenty years. As their story unfolds, Anna’s troubled romantic past comes to light, and the hardships of women during that time period become as apparent as the power of forgiveness and love. In the final play in this collection, “The Hairy Ape”, a ship’s fireman becomes disillusioned concerning the work he performs in a society that is quickly industrializing and taking a heavy human toll. This edition includes a biographical afterword.

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Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature and four Pulitzer prizes, Eugene O'Neill is generally acknowledged as America's greatest playwright. This volume includes three of the writer’s early, influential works:The Emperor Jones presents a forceful powerful psychological portrayal of brute power, fear, and madness as it traces events in the life of the self-proclaimed ruler of a West Indian island, who attempts to flee both his angry countrymen and personal demons.The Hairy Ape combines elements of class struggle and surreal tragedy as it explores the dehumanization of a crew member on a transatlantic liner.Anna Christie displays O'Neill's skills of character development as he focuses on the relationship of a sailor and his long-lost daughter, who reveals an unsavory secret about her past.Essential reading for students of theater and literature, this collection will appeal to anyone interested in the seminal work of a writer who became one of the most vital forces in the American theater.

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Widely known as the play that gave the American dramatist Eugene O'Neill international acclaim, «The Emperor Jones» is a one-act play that follows the complete disintegration of Brutus Jones. This protagonist, formerly a Pullman porter in the United States, has escaped his criminal activity there by establishing himself as a ruler in the West Indies. O'Neill, in an experiment with Expressionism, then leads Jones through a series of hallucinations in a forest when he attempts to escape his rebellious subjects. This highly symbolic nocturnal expedition leads Jones to confront his racially black past, as well as his own personal destruction from a man of self-confidence to a cowering shadow of his previous being. O'Neill's originality was as readily apparent in 1920 as it is today, for he insisted on the first racially integrated Broadway cast, particularly with an African American actor in the lead role, in the United States; O'Neill's amazing depiction of change and transformation in «The Emperor Jones» still endures.

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Eugene O'Neill's 1922 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, «Anna Christie,» is the story of a young woman who following an illness decides to visit and spend some time with her father, a coal barge captain who she hardly knows. During this time she meets a sailor, Mat, who is looking to settle down, and the two fall in love. «Anna Christie» is a gripping drama of a woman torn between the expectations of two men, her father and her lover, and the shocking confession of her past life that this conflict evokes.

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Experimental O'Neill compiles in a single volume six of Eugene O'Neill's early plays: The Hairy Ape, The Emperor Jones, and what are often referred to as “The S.S. Glencairn Plays,” four related one-acts. With extensive companion essays and critical analysis, this indispensable volume brings together some of O'Neill's often overlooked and still highly controversial works. Exploring themes of race, capitalism, and isolation, these plays use a mix of realism and expressionism to highlight the human condition in groundbreaking drama that is at once thematically evocative of its era and fundamentally ahead of its time.

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