Arsenic and Old Lace | Topics for Further Study
• Some scholars suggest that Kesselring wrote the play as a thriller and then was prompted to turn it into a farce. Would the play work as a thriller? Propose a general outline of the play as a thriller and rewrite in detail a key scene that would illustrate this genre.
• Compare and contrast the Broadway hit Sweeney Todd, another play in the comic/thriller genre, with Arsenic and Old Lace.
• Research the treatment of the mentally ill in America in the 1930s and 1940s. Were there ‘‘Happy Dales’’ then that provided comfortable living...
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