The Tooth of Crime was first produced at the Open Space Theatre in London in 1972 and published by Grove Press in 1974 (in the collection The Tooth of Crime and Geography of a Horse Dreamer). It is Shepard’s most formally radical major play — a work that invents its own language, its own theatrical rules, and its own genre: part rock opera, part gunfight, part chess match, part ritual murder.
Hoss is a “marker” — a rock star, a gunfighter, a gang boss — who has reached the top of an unspecified hierarchy through a combination of talent, violence, and style. He controls “turf” (territory measured in cultural rather than physical space). The rules (enforced by unseen referees and a system of “charts”) determine who rises and who falls. Into Hoss’s territory comes Crow: young, alien, speaking a language Hoss cannot quite follow, fighting with a style Hoss cannot counter because it operates by different rules.
The play’s central duel is conducted not with weapons but with words: Hoss and Crow “cut” each other with language, each attempting to impose his style on the encounter. Hoss’s idiom is rooted in the blues, in James Dean, in 1950s cool — a language of authenticity, of suffering earned and expressed. Crow’s idiom is post-authentic: a slippery, referential, ironic mode that cannot be defeated because it claims nothing, commits to nothing, and therefore cannot be contradicted.
Shepard wrote the play during his years in London (1971–1974) while deeply involved in rock music (he played drums with the Holy Modal Rounders), and the play’s structure is musical: it has songs, it has rhythm changes, it builds and releases tension in the pattern of a rock performance rather than conventional dramatic action. It anticipates punk by years: Crow is essentially a punk — destroying through style rather than substance, through attitude rather than accomplishment.
Collecting The Tooth of Crime
First edition (Grove Press, New York, 1974): In The Tooth of Crime and Geography of a Horse Dreamer. Paperback original.
Market values:
- Grove Press first edition: $20–$50
- Signed copies: $75–$200
- Seven Plays collection (Bantam, 1981): $15–$40
Shepard’s most critically acclaimed pre-Buried Child play. Its difficulty (the invented language, the absence of naturalistic reference) makes it less frequently produced than True West but more valued by scholars and collectors of experimental theater.