Home > Mourning Becomes Electra Summary & Study Guide > Essays and Criticism > "More Shakespeare and Less Aeschylus in Eugene O'Neill 's Mourning Becomes Electra"

Mourning Becomes Electra | "More Shakespeare and Less Aeschylus in Eugene O'Neill 's Mourning Becomes Electra"

In the following essay, Frenz and Mueller argue that Hamlet and Mourning Becomes Electra "show similarities in plot wherever there are plot differences between Hamlet and the Oresteia’’

There has been general critical agreement that Mourning Becomes Electra was modeled on the Oresteia, and the publication of O'Neill's work diary has strengthened this assumption. On closer investigation, however, the similarities between the two plays are superficial, and more fundamental parallels may be found in O'Neill's trilogy and Shakespeare' s Hamlet. The latter play shares its basic plot with Mourning Becomes Electra, and it can be shown that in other ways, too, O'Neill owes more to Shakespeare and less to...

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