CIVIL WAR DRAMA

   A number of modernist plays used the Civil War as the backdrop to a sentimental or melodramatic action, but they seldom treated specific issues related to the war. With the Union having won, the South could be safely romanticized on the stage, and plays depicting antebellum plantation life were popular on the road. Among the most successful of the Civil War dramas were Shenandoah (1889) by Bronson Howard, Alabama (1891) and The Copperhead (1918) by Augustus Thomas, May Blossom (1884) and The Heart of Maryland (1895) by David Belasco, Held by the Enemy (1886) and Secret Service (1896) by William Gillette, A Grand Army Man (1907) by Belasco, Pauline Phelps, and Marion Short, and The Warrens of Virginia (1907) by William C. deMille.