El Dorado by Edgar Allan Poe

Susan Glaspell worked as a legislative reporter for Des Moines Daily News between 1899 and 1901, during which time she witnessed and covered the trial of Margaret Hossack, accused of attacking and murdering her husband. Glaspell kept files that recorded the entire investigation throughout several months and wrote Trifles 15 years later. The play has only one act and there are five characters altogether, three men and two women. The central figures in the play -- John and Minnie Wright -- are only referred to.

At the turn of the century, realism had already established itself as a promising direction that rejected the artificialities of romanticism to depict experiences and stories of people rooted in everyday life and relating to the mundane. When Glaspell witnessed the murder trial, as well as when she wrote the play, that was still a time when women's role...
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