Sidney Howard and the Social Drama of the Twenties

Abstract

UNDERLYING A GREAT PORTION of the American plays written after the turn of the twentieth century there is a social consciousness and a concern for realism that distinguishes a trend in American drama. At its beginning it was a dual and almost parallel movement, the most significant in late 19th century American drama: the development of a social comedy, and the Rise of Realism in the drama. Numerous plays began to caricature aspects of society and also to reflect the literary interest in realism. Later, after the shock resulting from the American production of Ibsen's Ghosts in 1889, Ibsenism lent a certain unifying force to these trends. But it was not until the 1920's that social drama became a serious and dominant trend, part of a national growth in American drama which was reflected in the plays of Maxwell Anderson, Philip Barry, Paul Green, Rachael Crothers, Eugene O'Neill, S. N. Behrnan, Elmer Rice, and Sidney Howard. Of these dramatists, only Sidney Howard produced his most significant plays during the twenties. During this decade which is now remembered mainly for the work of the Provincetown Players and the plays of Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard emerged as the first major writer of social drama in a long line of development that leads from James A. Heme to Tennessee Williams.