Christopher Marlowe led perhaps the most widely unconfirmed life of any major writer. The numerous ascriptions that have met him over time – petty thief, secret agent, homosexual, general sybarite – are the cream of the crop among the tame many that are given to practically all t
In a 1909 essay called "How to Write a Play," George Bernard Shaw argued that the great playwright must "pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant, thus changing us from bewildered spectators of a m
If American drama was to recognize one fictional clan as first family, the Tyrones would win the title. (Granted, it would be a neck-and-neck race with the Lomans of "Death of a Salesman.") Eugene O'Neill's 1956 masterpiece, "Long Day's Journey into Night," established them as the dark alter ego of t