Eugene O Neill's Contribution To The National Theatre

Context of The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet [IMAGE] Likely the most influential writer in all of English literature and certainly the most important playwright of the English Renaissance, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, England. The son of a successful middle-class glove-maker, Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his formal education proceeded no further. In 1582, he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590, he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical acclaim quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater.

These two plays are his two most auto-biographical plays, Long Day's Journey dramatizing his family, and Ah, Wilderness! paralleling it. Born in a Broadway hotel room on October 16th, 1888, Eugene O'Neill was the second child of James and Ella O'Neill. Both Irish immigrants and devout Catholics, James was an actor most famous for his portrayal of Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo, a production that ran over 6,000 performances. He later complained that "this long enslavement to one role had kept him from binding his name to Hamlet in the memory of mankind" (Durant, 49).

His intense suffering infused the novel with imaginative energy, leading him to describe it as the "hell-fired story." On February 3, 1850, Hawthorne read the final pages to his wife. He wrote, "It broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success.

The result was an Academy Award nomination for Bolt's script. Throughout the decade, Bolt would specialize in adapting literature to the screen. He would not have an original script produced until Lean directed Bolt's Ryan's Daughter (1970). Unfortunately, the film bombed at the box-office. After that, Bolt spent a while working on his playwrighting career and found success with Vivat!

Seeking prestige with his plays, Shakespeare joined an acting troupe called the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Even at this early stage in his carreer, he was a success. In 1597, he managed to buy New Place, the second largest house in Stanford, and secured a coat of arms for his family. When the lease ran out on his Theatre however, Shakespeare and his crew were forced to travel from production to production. They did this until 1599, when the now famous Globe theatre opened with the play Julius Ceaser.

Shakespeare was born in 1564 in England, and lived a life span of fifty two years, passing away in 1616. While Shakespeare was born near the end of the Renaissance era, and was the first to bring about the time’s core value’s to stage, he also composed a series of sonnets, even having his own sonnet known as the Shakespearean Sonnet. Love was a focal point, any poet who was a great poet wrote about love, and falsely compared it to perfection in the eye of the composer. Shakespeare himself wrote about perfection in the features of his lover; however in Sonnet 130, he explores a different, deeper truer side to love. Despite his mistress’s physical flaws, he loves her incomparably.

Biography of Eugene O'Neil Eugene O'neill Through poverty and fame, "An artist or nothing"(Miller p6), was the motto of a man named Eugene O'Neill, who wrote from his soul in an attempt to find salvation. In the year 1888, the Barrett House hotel in Time Square, New York saw the birth of a man who would be called the greatest American playwright. His father James, was an actor, and was famous across the United Sates for his role in the popular play Monte Cristo. Eugene's mother was a beautiful woman named Ellen who was also gifted with a great artistic talent. Through out his life, he would travel all over the world, marry three women, have three children, and write some of the best American Drama that would ever be written.

He began writing poetry in 1660 in the form of Neoclassical (Wasserman 40). That same year, he was granted a couple of patents from Charles II for a theatre. However, the plays were not too successful. Two years later, the theater was closed by the Puritans (Britannica 1). Dryden published Astraea Reddux in 1660 which was the most successful and prominent of all his poems.

Jerome Kern (1885-1945), one of the most important American Composers in the 20th century, came up with the idea of adapting Edna Ferber’s novel “Show Boat” into a musical with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (1895-1960). When he approached Ziegfeld to produce Show Boat, Ziegfeld agreed to work on the show. This was unexpected since it was nothing like his legendary Follies, which were vaudeville shows. In the first part of the 20th century, musical theatre consisted of vaudeville and minstrel shows.... ... middle of paper ... ... an act of injustice whereas in Hairspray they make a statement about it. This was because of the different times they were written in.

Initially, the notorious Bard lived during the Elizabethan era and, courting Anne Hathaway, had three children, Susanna and twins, Hamnet and Judith. Shakespeare was extremely talented with language, voice, and fluidity of writing to the point where many theorized he stole the plays from a more educated playwright. His being in poverty created a misconception that he was uneducated; however he attended a grammar school known as the King’s New School (Alchin). Born in April 1564, and he died on his birthday fifty-two years later. His first play was written and published in 1589, The Comedy of Errors (Johnson).