Romulus Linney (playwright)

Romulus Zachariah Linney IV (September 21, 1930 – January 15, 2011) was an American playwright and novelist.

Life and career

Linney was born in Philadelphia, the son of Maitland (née Thompson) Linney and physician Romulus Zachariah Linney III. His great-grandfather was Romulus Zachariah Linney, a prominent North Carolinian who served the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War and was a U.S. Congressman. Linney grew up in the town of Madison, Tennessee where his father was an M.D. He also lived with his extended family for a few years during the Great Depression in the Linney/Coffey homestead in Boone, North Carolina and returned to the homestead to visit his favorite cousins, the Coffeys, throughout his life. Linney recalled that his mother "was a very good amateur actress" and when she starred in the Nashville Community Theatre's 1940 production of Our Town as Mrs. Gibbs, he was deeply moved by her performance, particularly by her character's death. "I became really connected to my mother and it was the first time I was really shattered by a play. And in many ways that was the beginning. It, in a very visceral way, showed me the profound impact theater can have... Music might give you exultation or something else equally profound, but theater at a great stroke can just shatter you, can break you." Linney's father died of throat cancer when Linney was 13 years old. Linney said about his father's death, "I've never gotten over it.