Paper Doll Matinee: Thomas Wolfe's Theatre (Thomas Wolfe Student Essay Prize in Honor of Richard S. Kennedy, 2008) (Critical Essay‪)‬

If one attempts a conversation about Thomas Wolfe with an individual unfamiliar with Wolfe's work, the condensed biography will most likely include the term "failed playwright." By 1922 Wolfe aspired to become a professional dramatist (Mitchell 40). Unfortunately, his only plays that did not provoke audience and critic diatribe occurred at the University of North Carolina, during his salad days as a student playwright. However, allowing the charge of "failed" to go unchallenged discredits the techniques Wolfe honed while writing plays: depicting reality as he understood it; basing fictional settings on his environment; using dialogue to legitimize characters; and developing complex plots and subplots for each character, establishing them as living beings. Wolfe's journey to dramatic writer began with the influence of his father, William Oliver Wolfe, who had a fondness for poetry and theatre and who often quoted lines--an influence noticeable in Thomas Wolfe's early fiction (Idol 14-15). Equally as important as W. O. Wolfe's performances at home, Margaret Hines Roberts, one of Wolfe's teachers at the North State School in Asheville, reinforced the written word, reading literature by "Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, and Stevenson," and helping Wolfe develop his "enthusiasm ... for nineteenth-century English romantic poetry" (Donald 24, 25). Her involvement also led to Wolfe's participation in a pageant venerating the "tercentenary of Shakespeare's death" (Mitchell 18). With his father's performances at home and Mrs. Roberts's support and direction, Wolfe developed a youthful taste for plays.