A Long Essay on Shel Silverstein's Short Plays

This essay encourages scholars to pay more attention to Shel Silverstein's unfortunately neglected short plays. Arguing that Silverstein's plays are a particularly queer subset of Silverstein's oeuvre, both formally and thematically, one that offers a profound articulation of Silverstein's bohemian critique of our dominant, heterosexist institutions and ideologies, particularly our bourgeois constructions of the family and the family's concomitant ideology of futurity as embodied in the image of the child. Finally, the essay suggests that the ideological and aesthetic work of Silverstein's plays hinges upon the audience's familiarity with his popular persona, Uncle Shelby, the playful playground raconteur behind The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends. Shel Silverstein's short plays are a key part of his conceptual continuity. We ought to be more mindful of them.