The Eugene O'Neill Universe Quiz

Question: Which play, inspired by Greek tragedy, is a family drama that features infanticide, incest, and revenge?

Answer: O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms (1924) is a family drama inspired by Greek tragedy that features infanticide, incest, and revenge. Because of the sparseness of its style, its avoidance of melodrama, and its total honesty of emotion, the play was acclaimed immediately as a powerful tragedy and has continued to rank among the great American plays of the 20th century.

Question: Which Eugene O’Neill play was produced posthumously?

Answer: Long Day’s Journey into Night, which many regard as O’Neill’s masterpiece, was produced posthumously in 1956.

Question: Which play was based on the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus?

Answer: O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) was based on the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. Set in Civil War-era New England, O’Neill’s play still retained tragic Greek conventions: the heroic leader returning from war; his adulterous wife, who murders him; his jealous, repressed daughter, who avenges him through the murder of her mother; and his weak, incestuous son, who is goaded by his sister first to matricide and then to suicide.

Question: Which play broke theatrical conventions by having characters speak in asides that revealed their hidden thoughts to the audience?

Answer: Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude (1928) broke theatrical conventions at the time by having characters speak in asides that revealed their hidden thoughts to the audience. The work’s complicated plot is the story of a woman in her roles as daughter, wife, mistress, mother, and friend. 

Question: Which play, critiqued for its depictions of race, follows a Pullman porter’s journey to becoming a dictator of a tropical island?

Answer: Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, critiqued for its depictions of race, follows a Pullman porter’s journey to becoming the dictator of a tropical island.

Question: Which play, featuring a young woman’s reunion with her bargemaster father, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1928?

Answer: Anna Christie, a play featuring a young woman’s reunion with her absent bargemaster father, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1928.

Question: Which was Eugene O’Neill’s only comedy?

Answer: Ah, Wilderness! was Eugene O’Neill’s only comedy. The work was inspired in part by the playwright’s mischievous desire to demonstrate that he could portray the comic as well as the tragic side of life. 

Question: Which play, perhaps the most complex of O’Neill’s tragedies, is set entirely in a tavern?

Answer: The Iceman Cometh, perhaps the most complex of O’Neill’s tragedies, is set entirely in a tavern.