SOURCE: Morace, Robert A. “The Life and Times of Death and the Maiden.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 42, no. 2 (summer 2000): 135-53.

In the following essay, Morace traces the initial success and eventual decline in popularity of Death and the Maiden, arguing that the several celebrity-driven adaptations of the play have ultimately lessened the work's dramatic and emotional impact.

The rise and fall of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden is a subject worthy of close scrutiny, particularly now, following the arrest of Augusto Pinochet in Britain on 16 October 1998 at the request of the Spanish judiciary. How did a play that addresses a specific Chilean political issue become one of the most celebrated dramas of its time? How was the play's critical and commercial success the result of a fragile conjunction of forces at a point of historical time as well as theatrical space? How was this singularly...