For my high school February play we want to do some short stories of Edgar Allen Poe, but I can't find any of the play wrights. Do you know of a site that might be helpful to where i can find them?

-- Anonymous, December 04, 2002

Answers

Politian. Go to www.eapoe.org or a full anthology of Poe's writings at your library. The play was based on a real Kentucky incident, but uses a far off past Euro setting. The usual problems for people writing plays at that time. Perhaps the lkanguage had become too extreme and two ordinary in a split that ruined the harmony of past eras. Everyone loved Shakespeare for different reasons than the wholistic nature of Elizabethan audiences. There was no grand synthesis but a creative disjunction going on. Modern drama I suppose finally moves high language back into conjunction by surrendering totally to contemporary reality(or seeming to). Anyway putting on plays was a risky, grand enterprise for someone in Poe's state with much to lose in credibility as a critic himself. That his parents were actors may have influenced him, but he was a writer first and last and probably inherited his father's devastating stage fright. Worth reading to get more perspective on Poe and see echos of other writings and themes.

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2002

Forgot to mention it is included usually with his poetry.

-- Anonymous, December 05, 2002