H.L. Mencken cut his satirical teeth on drama and theatre, as the excellent new anthology, The Collected Drama of H.L. Mencken: Plays and Criticism, edited by S.T. Joshi and published by Scarecrow Press, attests.... Theatre historians will need to turn to this volume to study the early reception of modern dramatists like Ibsen and Strindberg on the American stage.
... Read moreSuperfluities Redux
Best known as a newspaperman and a commentator, H. L Mencken was also a respected author of several dramatic works, including several one-act plays and one full-length play. He did not shy away from controversy and his plays often reflect his unorthodox views of the time, including a strong cynicism of marriage and his scorn for Christianity. This book provides reprinted material on seven of Mencken's dramatic works, including his full-length play, Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery in Three Acts. The last section of the book provides articles and commentary written by Mencken on the topic of dramatic work. This section includes an article on George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, new dramatic literature, and the revival of the printed play, just to name a few. This is a very niche topic that will appeal to those researching and studying theater history, dramatic writing of the early twentieth century, and those studying the writings of H. L. Mencken specifically.
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Though not among Mencken's enduring work, his plays are evidence of his abundant creativity and his love of drama
to which he devoted a book on Shaw (George Bernard Shaw: His Plays,1905), introductions to (and translations of) Ibsen's plays, and numerous reviews. Drama was an early love, however, and remains a minor genre in his large body of work. Joshi has collected Menken's six one-act plays and the three-act Heliogabalus, co-written with George Jean Nathan. All are farces that satirize familiar butts of Mencken's humor
American anti-intellectualism, marriage, popular sex hygiene, Christian fundamentalism. The second part of the book presents some of Mencken's writing on drama, much published during his editorship of The Smart Set. The essays display his famous, idiosyncratic "prejudices," as well as a broad knowledge of the substance and craft of more serious dramatic writers than himself, from Shakespeare to the avant-garde European dramatists admired in his day, e.g., Hauptmann, Wilde, Yeats, Synge, Strindberg, Sudermann, and Pinero. The volume will be useful to historians of theater and of American humor, and perhaps to biographers, who heretofore have had little to say on the subject. Joshi's helpful introduction and notes provide historical context and a good starting point for further study. Summing Up: Recommended.
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