Eugene O'Neill: The Face and the Mask

When Mr. Eugene O'Neill last November received the Nobel prize for literature, he modestly remarked that it was "a symbol of the coming of age of the American theatre," thus dividing the honours with his contemporaries, many of whom no longer considered him artistically contemporaneous. For there has been in recent dramatic literature no more interesting example of an early flowering and—though the point is disputable—a premature fading: the explosion of a dynamic force that spent itself within its decade. There is ample justification for seeing in the awarding of the Nobel prize a belated crowning of Eugene O'Neill's early promise rather than of his later and grosser success. The prize consecrates his historic position in the American theatre, but is capable of exaggerating his importance to the drama of the 1930's. In a word, if in O'Neill the American theatre came of age, it is going on to maturity in other hands.