Strange Interlude was published by Boni & Liveright in 1928 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. At nine acts and approximately five hours in performance (with a dinner intermission), it was O’Neill’s most formally audacious work of the 1920s: characters speak their thoughts aloud in “interior monologues” that the other characters cannot hear, creating a double layer of action — what people say versus what they think.
Nina Leeds is devastated by the death of her fiancé Gordon Shaw in World War I — devastated specifically because she never slept with him. She spends twenty-five years trying to reconstruct the perfect love she lost, using three men: Charles Marsden (a repressed novelist who loves her platonically), Sam Evans (a cheerful businessman she marries), and Edmund Darrell (a doctor with whom she has an affair and a child — Sam’s hereditary insanity makes her unwilling to bear his biological offspring).
The novel-like scope — covering a quarter century — allows O’Neill to trace the arc of desire from desperate youth through compromise to weary acceptance. Nina’s final line — “Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!” — gives the play its title and its cosmically bleak thesis.
Collecting Strange Interlude
First edition (Boni & Liveright, New York, 1928): Boards with dust jacket. Also issued in a limited signed edition of 775 copies.
Market values:
- Trade first edition, fine in jacket: $100–$300
- Limited signed edition: $300–$800
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation.
The Nine-Act Play
Strange Interlude (1928) won O’Neill his third Pulitzer Prize and was the most commercially successful serious play of its era. Running nine acts over five hours (with a dinner break), it follows Nina Leeds through twenty-five years of her life — her multiple romantic entanglements, her manipulation of the men around her, and her gradual acceptance of loss. O’Neill’s signature innovation was the use of spoken interior monologues: characters speak their thoughts aloud, then resume normal dialogue, creating a double layer of communication. The Boni & Liveright limited signed edition is a prime O’Neill collectible.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this still performed? Rarely in its full length. The interior monologue technique, revolutionary in 1928, now feels laborious to some audiences, and the play’s length is daunting. But it contains some of O’Neill’s most psychologically penetrating writing.