Autograph manuscript, with drawings, of “The Marionettes” by William Faulkner. 1920.

Successful Authors -- Unsuccessful Playwrights II

William Faulkner

In his youth, William Faulkner sporadically attended The University of Mississippi. There he became involved with a theatre group called the Marionettes. In 1920, Faulkner wrote a one-act play that he entitled The Marionettes and submitted it to the group as a possible performance piece. Faulkner hand-lettered and bound six copies of this play, illustrating them with drawings in the Art Nouveau style, reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley. Heavily influenced by the French Symbolist poets, pantomime, and commedia dell’arte, the melancholy play centered on a dream in a garden. The male character, Pierrot, sleeps through the entire performance, while the dream unfolds, acted by the “Shade of Pierrot,” who seduces and then abandons the maiden Marietta. The Ole Miss theatre group declined to stage the play, finding it too difficult to produce. Faulkner, of course, went on to answer the call of fiction writing, leaving behind his brief career as a playwright.

The University of Virginia’s copy was given by Faulkner to his friend, Ben Wasson, whose ownership signature is on the first blank leaf.

Typed manuscript, with autograph corrections, of “The Moon Is a Gong” (also entitled “The Garbage Man: A Ballet of Shouting”) by John Dos Passos. No date.

From the Papers of John Dos Passos.

John Dos Passos

Early in his writing career, John Dos Passos attempted playwriting, intrigued by experimental expressionistic drama. He completed his first play, The Moon Is a Gong (later renamed The Garbage Man), in 1923, and the Harvard Dramatic Club initially produced it in 1925. Set in New York City, The Moon Is a Gong explored the struggles of the working-class individual in American society. In 1926, the play was staged at the Cherry Lane Playhouse in Greenwich Village, but unsuccessful, it ran for only eighteen performances. Not to be deterred by its failure, Dos Passos launched himself actively into the world of theatre. He received the invitation to become one of the directors of the New Playwrights Theatre. To Ernest Hemingway, Dos Passos wrote:

I’m deeper and deeper in the drahma [sic] every moment…I do a lot of (against union rules) carrying about & painting of scenery and switching on and off of lights which is very entertaining—but I don’t feel its my life work, quite. Anyway it keeps me from writing or worrying and I’m merry as a cricket.

Typed manuscript, with autograph corrections, of “The Moon Is a Gong” (also entitled “The Garbage Man: A Ballet of Shouting”) by John Dos Passos. No date.

From the Papers of John Dos Passos.

Dos Passos produced two more plays, Airways (1928) and Fortune Heights (1933), neither commercially or critically successful. In a letter to his friend, Robert Hillyer, Dos Passos lamented, “Robert, don’t you ever write any plays—believe me there’s nutten in it, kid—except worry and the loss of hair and hours and wishes causing dyspepsia after midnight.”

From the Papers of John Dos Passos.

At right: John Dos Passos membership cards for The Dramatists’ Guild. 1928 and 1929.

At right: United Press International photograph of John Dos Passos (right), with his first wife, Katy, and brother-in-law, Bill Smith. [Provincetown, MA, 1932].

Autograph play notebook, containing notes on “Mrs. Border’s Resignation,” “Two Ghosts,” “A Missing Person,” and “A Father and a Son.” No date.

From the Papers of Peter Taylor.

Peter Taylor

Award-winning novelist and outstanding short-story writer, Peter Taylor also pursued playwriting as a form of literary expression. Taylor loved the theatre and early in his writing career focused on drama. In a letter to his friend, Robie Macauley, dated October 31, 1947, Taylor wrote while teaching at the University of North Carolina, “This fall I have gone to bed with the new darling of my heart, playwriting, and I barely manage to drag myself out of it to meet my classes.” Taylor continued to write plays for the rest of his life, with a few finding their way to the stage. Although many of his plays were published in book form, the strength of his writing lay in his short stories and novels dealing with the American South.

From the Papers of Peter Taylor.

At right: Photograph of Peter Taylor by Wright Langley. [Key West], no date.