This thesis explains the concept and history of "new stagecraft" and investigates certain presentational plays of Eugene O'Neill, including those which are expressionistic and those which are a combination of expressionism, symbolism, and naturalism. In particular, the investigation will be so arranged as to view the technical problems which result from the suggestions O'Neill makes in his plays.

Even before he became a playwright, Maxwell Anderson developed a belief in the right of the individual to determine his own fate, and a hatred for anything that hampered that right. He never faltered in that belief. Thus, most of his plays have themes concerned with the evils of the abuse of governmental power and the social injustice that is the result of such abuse. It is the purpose of this thesis to study those beliefs as they were developed throughout severl preceding plays and as they were finally expressed in both Anderson's musicals, Knickerbocker Holiday (1938) and Lost in the Stars (1949).