Editing Eugene O'Neill (section)

==Career==
After returning to New York and living in poverty, O'Neill attempted suicide in 1912 in his room at Jimmy-the-Priest's boarding house and saloon, which — together with the Hell Hole — would one day become the setting for his play ''[[The Iceman Cometh]]''. That same year, he and his first wife Kathleen divorced, and he contracted [[tuberculosis]]. It was during his recovery at a [[sanatorium]] — which he came to regard as his "rebirth" — that he determined he would become a playwright. "I want to be an artist or nothing," he said.

After recovering from tuberculosis, he decided to devote himself full-time to writing plays (the events immediately prior to going to the sanatorium are dramatized in his masterpiece, ''[[Long Day's Journey into Night]]'').<ref name=Dowling/> O'Neill had previously been employed by the ''New London Telegraph'', writing poetry as well as reporting. In the fall of 1914, O'Neill studied at [[Harvard University]] with [[George Pierce Baker]], who ran a famous course called “Workshop 47” that taught the fundamentals of playwriting, but left after one year.<ref name=Dowling/>

During the 1910s, O'Neill was a regular on the [[Greenwich Village]] literary scene, where he also befriended many radicals, most notably [[Communist Labor Party of America]] founder [[John Reed (journalist)|John Reed]]. O'Neill also had a brief romantic relationship with Reed's wife, writer [[Louise Bryant]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Dearborn|first=Mary V.|title=Queen of Bohemia: The Life of Louise Bryant|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/queenofbohemiali00dear/page/52 52]|year=1996|isbn=978-0-395-68396-5|url=https://archive.org/details/queenofbohemiali00dear|url-access=registration}}</ref> O'Neill was portrayed by [[Jack Nicholson]] in the 1981 film ''[[Reds (film)|Reds]]'', about the life of John Reed; Louise Bryant was portrayed by [[Diane Keaton]].
His involvement with the [[Provincetown Players]] began in mid-1916. Terry Carlin reported that O'Neill arrived for the summer in Provincetown with "a trunk full of plays", but this was an exaggeration.<ref name=Dowling/> [[Susan Glaspell]] describes a reading of ''Bound East for Cardiff'' that took place in the living room of Glaspell and her husband [[George Cram Cook]]'s home on Commercial Street, adjacent to the wharf (pictured) that was used by the Players for their theater: "So Gene took ''Bound East for Cardiff'' out of his trunk, and Freddie Burt read it to us, Gene staying out in the dining-room while reading went on. He was not left alone in the dining-room when the reading had finished."<ref>{{cite book|first=Susan|last=Glaspell|orig-year=1927|title=The Road to the Temple|publisher=Frederick A. Stokes|location=New York|edition=2nd|year=1941|page=255}}</ref> The Provincetown Players performed many of O'Neill's early works in their theaters both in Provincetown and on MacDougal Street in [[Greenwich Village]]. Some of these early plays, such as ''The Emperor Jones'', began downtown and then moved to Broadway.<ref name=Dowling/>

[[File:Lewis_Wharf.jpg|thumb|left|O'Neill's first play, ''Bound East for Cardiff'', premiered at this theatre on a wharf in [[Provincetown, Massachusetts]].]]

In an early one-act play, ''The Web'', written in 1913, O'Neill first explored the darker themes that he later thrived on. <!--not a mistake--> Here he focused on the brothel world and the lives of prostitutes, which also play a role in some fourteen of his later plays.<ref>"The Web by Eugene O'Neill."[https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt20p57f7.5 ''Sex for Sale: Six Progressive-Era Brothel Dramas''], by Katie N. Johnson, University of Iowa Press, IOWA CITY, 2015, pp. 15–29. ''JSTOR''.</ref> In particular, he memorably included the birth of an infant into the world of prostitution. At the time, such themes constituted a huge innovation, as these sides of life had never before been presented with such success.

O'Neill's first published play, ''[[Beyond the Horizon (play)|Beyond the Horizon]]'', opened on [[Broadway theatre|Broadway]] in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize for Drama]]. His first major hit was ''[[The Emperor Jones]]'', which ran on Broadway in 1920 and obliquely commented on the [[U.S. occupation of Haiti]] that was a topic of debate in that year's presidential election.<ref>{{cite book | last=Renda | first=Mary | title=Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism| url=https://archive.org/details/takinghaiti00mary | url-access=registration | pages=[https://archive.org/details/takinghaiti00mary/page/198 198–212]| location=Chapel Hill| publisher=University of North Carolina Press | year=2001| isbn=0-8078-4938-3}}</ref>  His best-known plays include ''[[Anna Christie]]'' (Pulitzer Prize 1922), ''[[Desire Under the Elms]]'' (1924), ''[[Strange Interlude]]'' (Pulitzer Prize 1928), ''[[Mourning Becomes Electra]]'' (1931), and his only well-known comedy, ''[[Ah, Wilderness!]]'',<ref name="ReferenceA"/><ref>{{cite news|first=Lawrence|last=van Gelder|newspaper=The New York Times|date=August 25, 2003| author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.-->|title=Arts Briefing|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/25/theater/arts-briefing.html|access-date=November 8, 2016}}</ref> a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been.{{cn|date=July 2024}}

O'Neill was elected to the [[American Philosophical Society]] in 1935.<ref>{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=Eugene+O%27Neill&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2023-06-07 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref> In 1936, O'Neill received the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] after he had been nominated that year by [[Henrik Schück]], member of the [[Swedish Academy]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show.php?id=8113|title=Nomination Database|publisher=Nobelprize.org|access-date=November 8, 2016}}</ref> O'Neill was profoundly influenced by the work of Swedish writer [[August Strindberg]],<ref>{{Cite book |last=O'Neill |first=Eugene |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZsvCAgAAQBAJ&dq=o%27neill+%22profoundly+influenced%22+strindberg&pg=PA2 |title=The Emperor Jones |date=2013-02-20 |publisher=Courier Corporation |isbn=978-0-486-15960-7 |language=en}}</ref> and upon receiving the Nobel Prize, dedicated much of his acceptance speech to describing Strindberg's influence on his work.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1936/oneill-speech.html |title= Banquet Speech |author= Eugene O'Neill |date= 10 December 1936 | publisher =The Nobel Foundation |access-date=12 July 2010}}</ref> In conversation with [[Russel Crouse]], O'Neill said that "the Strindberg part of the speech is no 'telling tale' to please the Swedes with a polite gesture. It is absolutely sincere. [...] And it's absolutely true that I am proud of the opportunity to acknowledge my debt to Strindberg thus publicly to his people".<ref name="Törnqvist">{{Cite book |last=Törnqvist |first=Egil |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=g1whggReJx4C&dq=strindberg+o%27neill+immortality&pg=PA67 |title=Eugene O'Neill: A Playwright's Theatre |date=2004-01-14 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=978-0-7864-1713-1 |language=en}}</ref> Before the speech was sent to [[Stockholm]], O'Neill read it to his friend [[Sophus Keith Winther]]. As he was reading, he suddenly interrupted himself with the comment: "I wish immortality were a fact, for then some day I would meet Strindberg". When Winther objected that "that would scarcely be enough to justify immortality", O'Neill answered quickly and firmly: "It would be enough for me".<ref name="Törnqvist"/>

After a ten-year pause, O'Neill's now-renowned play ''[[The Iceman Cometh]]'' was produced in 1946. The following year's ''[[A Moon for the Misbegotten]]'' failed, and it was decades before coming to be considered as among his best works.{{Citation needed|date=November 2016}}

[[File:TIMEMagazine17Mar1924.jpg|thumb|''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' cover, March 17, 1924]]

He was also part of the modern movement to partially revive the classical heroic [[mask]] from [[Theatre of ancient Greece|ancient Greek theatre]] and Japanese [[Noh]] theatre in some of his plays, such as ''[[The Great God Brown]]'' and ''[[Lazarus Laughed]].''<ref>{{cite book | last=Smith | first=Susan Harris | title=Masks in Modern Drama | pages=66–70, 106–08, 131–36, index S124 | location=Berkeley | publisher=University of California Press | year=1984 | isbn=0-520-05095-9}}</ref>