![]() Professor of English, Georgian Court University The time is long overdue for Edith Wharton to take her bow on stage. Several of her works were later dramatized by others, including The Age of Innocence (1928) starring Katharine Cornell, and The Old Maid, for which Zoe Atkins won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1935. She collaborated with Clyde Fitch to stage The House of Mirth in 1906, claiming to her friend Robert Grant that even if the play was not a success, she would not regret the experience. While Wharton moved on to a successful career, she never lost interest in dramatic form. Why neither play debuted remains a mystery. When Marlowe withdrew from the performance, Elsie de Wolfe was thought to step into the role of Manon after The Shadow of a Doubt was cancelled. In The Shadow of A Doubt, she incorporates elements of the “problem play” and the “well-made play” influenced by Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, but with the wit of Oscar Wilde.Īround the same time as The Shadow of a Doubt, Wharton adapted Abbe Prévost’s novel Manon Lescaut (1901) into a play starring Julia Marlowe, which nearly made it to the stage in the weeks before The Shadow of a Doubt. Women playwrights were beginning to be noticed, and Frohman actively encouraged several of them, including Wharton. American dramatists such as Clyde Fitch both entertained and pushed the boundaries of American taste, especially with regards to roles for women. Kate Treddenis’ station has risen with her marriage to her late best friend’s widower, John Derwent, but her good fortune seems precarious even as she embraces her new role as wife and step-mother to Sylvia.ĭrama in the late nineteenth century was in transition from farce, melodrama, and spectacle to a more realistic or “natural” style. The women’s roles are especially strong, with bonds formed across social class and life situation. The Shadow of a Doubt showcases Wharton’s skill with witty repartee, dramatic tension and superb characterization. Some of these ideas were later reworked in her best-selling novel, The House of Mirth (1905) as well as in the lesser known novel, The Fruit of the Tree (1907), albeit transferred to an American setting. ![]() The Shadow of a Doubt, set at the turn of the twentieth century in London, explores issues of the day, such as social position, remarriage, the roles of women, and euthanasia. ![]() The Shadow of a Doubt, produced by Charles Frohman, represented by talent agent Elizabeth Marbury, and starring Elsie de Wolfe, was intended as a matinee for The American Academy at the Dramatic Arts and Empire Theatre Dramatic School. Wharton was an adept playwright and worked with the best talent on Broadway. Patrick Campbell brought her residuals for years, to Wharton’s surprise. Her translation of Hermann Suderman’s Es Lebe das Leben (The Joy of Living) for actress Mrs. Several works she called brief “dialogues,” such as “Copy” and “The Twilight of the God.” But she also wrote full length plays, including The Tightrope, now lost. The period 1899-1906 remains especially fruitful. A working manuscript also resides at the Billy Rose Theater Division of The New York Public Library.Īlthough renowned for her fiction in multiple literary genres, Wharton also wrote a series of plays, long forgotten, during her career. The Shadow of a Doubt (1901), an unknown, original three act play by Edith Wharton, was recovered in 2016 in the Playscripts and Promptbooks Collection (Performing Arts) at the Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin.
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