On 2 October 2005 August Wilson died at the Swedish Medical Centre in Seattle. It was just eight months after the death of another American playwright, Arthur Miller. They came out of different worlds. Miller was descended from immigrants on both sides of the family, Jews who went to America to escape persecution and seek their fortune. And if they subsequently lost the fortune they made, they nonetheless never lost belief in the system that had redeemed them from a far worse fate. To be sure, they encountered prejudice, but even so they slid with some ease into an America which swiftly bore the impress of European Jews as they emerged as entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and intellectuals surprisingly ready to interpret America to itself.

For some, particularly those in middle age at the moment of immigration, the maintenance of the old ways was a priority. For others, the trading of a previous identity was a small price to be paid for the acquisition of a new one. If Jewishness was perceived as a problem, it could be wished away, literally or symbolically. Names could be changed. Miller abandoned his grandparents' god, and though he continued to write works in which Jewish characters were confronted with the implications of their identities, this was not his subject.