Winterset: A Modern Revenge Tragedy

Abstract

MAXWELL ANDERSON'S recognition of Elizabethan England and the drama of that period needs little emphasis; to him the Age of Elizabeth was one of the "few mountain peaks of achievement," sharing this distinction with the Periclean Age and the Italian Renaissance. As a critic, especially in Off Broadway, a collection of critical essays, his major points of reference were the classics; and he consistently used the Elizabethans, especially Marlowe and Shakespeare, as touch• stones of greatness. And just as Elizabethan drama was a criteria for his critical opinions, so was the Elizabethan scene an influence on much of his creative writing: for the return to poetic form in Winterset; for his following the Elizabethan practice of using the past to reflect universal concepts, as Joan at Lorraine deals with the character of heroism and The Masque of Kings with the idealist in revolutionary movements; and for the subject matter of the Tudor trilogy—Anne at A Thousand Days, Mary at Scotland, and Elizabeth the Queen. Anderson's dramatic fundamentals were derived from the Greek and Elizabethan classics, and Winterset is a result of an application of some of these classical fundamentals to a modern play.