Him

Him is a three-act play written by poet E.E. Cummings. The play was first published in November 1927 and premiered in New York during the spring of 1928. Him is sometimes called a precursor to Theatre of the Absurd but has also been described as being surrealistic and in the German expressionist tradition. It is heavily influenced by Freudian psychology as well as popular culture of the 1920s. Background Cummings wrote Him in Paris and New York. He said of Him, that "the book was probably published soon after the play had finished itself." Cummings had been living in France on and off for most of the 1920s; his time in Paris inspired Act III, Scene III of Him, which takes place at the Parisian restaurant, Au Père Tranquille (Les Halles). Him began as a play about a woman named Anna, a playwright named Edward, and Jan, a man who in earliest drafts of the play was a janitor. Around 1926, the play became Him as it exists in its current form. Inspiration and sources Him is stylistically indebted to vaudeville, circus, burlesque, German expressionism, surrealism, cubism, satire, and Dada. The face-in-the-hole board that reoccurs in the Ms. Weird scenes is a vaudeville device. Just before writing Him, Cummings read Sigmund Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis and Totem and Taboo. Him is heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis.