Throughout his career as a literary critic, H. L. Mencken was
intent on elevating the bold, the daring, and the innovative over
the hackneyed, the trite, and the superficial, and his drama
criticism exhibits this tendency to the fullest. Though known
primarily as a newspaperman and commentator, Mencken also wrote
several one-act plays, as well as a full-length work. In The
Collected Drama of H. L. Mencken: Plays and Criticism, S. T. Joshi
has assembled for the first time Mencken s dramatic works,
comprising six one-act plays and the lengthy three-act play
Heliogabalus. These plays, which have never been reprinted since
their original appearances in newspapers or in Mencken s early
volume A Book of Burlesques (1916), exhibit Mencken s penchant for
satire and ridicule. Several of the plays, such as In the Vestry
Room and The Wedding: A Stage Direction, display Mencken s
oft-expressed cynicism about the institution of marriage. Another
related play is Asepsis, a satire on exaggerated concerns about
sexual health in young married couples. Other plays take aim at the
cultural deficiencies of the common people, such as Death: A
Philosophical Discussion, which relays the hackneyed reactions of a
group of mourners over the death of a friend. Mencken s most
significant play by far is Heliogabalus, a play he co-wrote with
his frequent collaborator, George Jean Nathan, in which Mencken
expresses his scorn of the Christian religion. The second half of
this book features a selection of Mencken s early writings (1905
17) on drama, most of which have never been reprinted. Various
essays on Shakespeare, Shaw, Synge, Strindberg, Ibsen, and others
exhibit Mencken s keenness as a literary critic and his
understanding of the aesthetic possibilities of the drama. With an
introduction by the editor who provides an overview of Mencken s
work as a dramatist and drama critic, this collection will be of
interest to amateur and even professional drama companies, theatre
historians, and of course, anyone interested in the writings of
Mencken.
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