Susan Keating Glaspell, The Verge: A Play in Three Acts

Barbara Ozieblo (Universidad de Malaga)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.3: American (US) Writing and Culture: The Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: J. Michael Duvall (College of Charleston), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Tony Papanikolas (San Jose State University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1921

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Play

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Recommended Reading

The Verge

is Susan Glaspell’s most avant-garde and modernist play and, in the words of C. W. E. Bigsby, attempts “a radical revisioning of all aspects of theatre” so profound in its implications that “few writers, before or since” have dared embark on a comparable experiment (

Intro Plays

19). It is a play that affects audiences in extreme ways; both in 1921 when the play was first performed by the Provincetown Players in New York and in 1996 when it was last revived in England spectators and critics were divided into those who admired the play unconditionally and those who damned it, equally unconditionally. In

The Verge

, Glaspell, as she did in all her writing, placed a woman centre-stage, but this time her protagonist broke all the accepted taboos. Claire Archer’s…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3452 words

Citation: Ozieblo, Barbara. "The Verge: A Play in Three Acts". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 11 January 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16003, accessed 09 May 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article