Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1932-1943 (Library of America)

A collection of plays from the last period of his writing career. These plays are very personal, many of them dealing with his own childhood. Several of them were published posthumously, and one of them, More Stately Mansions, he left instructions to destroy the manuscript. This should have been

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done. That play pulls down the entire body of work, and I was quite surprised to find it had ever been performed on stage. At over 300 pages, it is a novel, not a play. The other truly weak work in the group is Days Without End. It starts out incredibly strong, with an interesting premise, but devolves into a church basement play at the end; O'Neill was at his weakest when he was writing religious plays. Overall, a decent collection, including some of his most famous plays. Long Days Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh would be enough in themselves to make it worth the time.

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