Plays

Overview & Synopsis

This Edition of Theodore Dreiser’s Plays reveals one of the foremost chroniclers of American modernity at his most “modernist” and formally experimental, while deepening and complicating our understanding of the realism for which he is renowned. It also helps to document the “Little Theater” movement of the nineteen-teens. From 1913 to 1920, Dreiser wrote a series of plays, in forms ranging from the penetrating realism for which his novels were already famous, to highly “experimental” modernism, to symbolist and expressionist dramas that were among the first of their kind in America. His one-act plays are often filled with mysticism, and characters often rely on “supernatural” and spiritual forces to guide their decisions and behaviors. Such theatre troupes as the Washington Square Players and the Provincetown Players staged Dreiser’s probingly realistic dramas, and for this they met with much critical controversy. His four-act tragedy, The Hand of the Potter, was regarded as shockingly lurid by some; for others it was a trail-blazing attempt to understand “deviancy” and the effects of sexual violence. Even though Dreiser is not particularly well known for his plays, his plays and expressionist vision had an enormous impact on playwrights who followed after him, including Thornton Wilder. For this volume in the Dreiser Edition, Keith Newlin and Frederick Rusch’s The Collected Plays of Theodore Dreiser (2000) has been revised and expanded. Newlin, Rusch and Davies present authoritative texts of the plays, supported by a full textual commentary and record of emendations. Their Introduction and Appendices delineate the compositional, artistic, personal, and historical contexts of the plays, drawing on extensive archival research. Further historical documentation, and many additional illustrations, provide an insight into the aesthetic and literary context of the plays, while a new appendix lists contemporary reviews.