The Scarlet Letter

(Applause Books). Leslie Fiedler pronounced it the first American tragedy. F.O. Mathiessen considered it the "Puritan Faust." Until now, it appeared that Nathaniel Hawthorne's haunting drama of judgement, alienation, and redemption would be forever confined to the page. Now comes the stage version to do it justice. DeMaiolo's brooding choruses of superstition and doubt hover like the furies hungry for vengeance on the "voluptuous Oriental" woman whose fate would commingle with every life in Salem. The audience joins the chorus as they weigh the American contract of freedom against the fine print of convention and taboo. Performance rights available from Applause.

Leslie Fiedler pronounced it the first American tragedy. F.O. Mathiessen considered it the "Puritan Faust." Until now, it appeared that Nathaniel Hawthorne's haunting drama of judgement, alienation, and redemption would be forever confined to the page. Now comes the stage version to do it justice. DeMaiolo's brooding choruses of superstition and doubt hover like the furies hungry for vengeance on the "voluptuous Oriental" woman whose fate would commingle with every life in Salem. The audience joins the chorus as they weigh the American contract of freedom against the fine print of convention and taboo. Performance rights available from Applause.

"Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them," Nathaniel Hawthorne once reflected. Hawthorne's own words indeed had an undeniable power. Author of The Scarlet Letter and originator of the American short story, Hawthorne left an indelible impression on literature that would influence his fellow writers into the next century.