DRAMA for Students
National Advisory Board Susan Allison: Head Librarian, Lewiston High School, Lewiston, Maine. Standards Committee Chairperson for Maine School Library (MASL) Programs. Board member, Julia Adams Morse Memorial Library, Greene, Maine. Advisor to Lewiston Public Library Planning Process. Jennifer Hood: Young Adult/Reference Librarian, Cumberland Public Library, Cumberland, Rhode Island. Certified teacher, Rhode Island. Member of the New England Library Association, Rhode Island Library Association, and the Rhode Island Educational Media Association. Ann Kearney: Head Librarian and Media Specialist, Christopher Columbus High School, Miami, Florida, 1982–2002. Thirty-two years as Librarian in various educational institutions ranging from grade schools through graduate programs. Library positions at MiamiDade Community College, the University of Miami’s Medical School Library, and
Carrollton School in Coconut Grove, Florida. B.A. from University of Detroit, 1967 (magna cum laude); M.L.S., University of Missouri– Columbia, l974. Volunteer Project Leader for a school in rural Jamaica; volunteer with Adult Literacy programs. Laurie St. Laurent: Head of Adult and Children’s Services, East Lansing Public Library, East Lansing, Michigan, 1994–. M.L.S. from Western Michigan University. Chair of Michigan Library Association’s 1998 Michigan Summer Reading Program; Chair of the Children’s Services Division in 2000–2001; and Vice-President of the Association in 2002–2003. Board member of several regional early childhood literacy organizations and member of the Library of Michigan Youth Services Advisory Committee. Heidi Stohs: Instructor in Language Arts, grades 10–12, Solomon High School, Solomon, Kansas. Received B.S. from Kansas State University; M.A. from Fort Hays State University.
PDF Not Available Due to Copyright Terms
PDF Not Available Due to Copyright Terms
Table of Contents GUEST FOREWORD
“The Study of Drama” Carole L. Hamilton . . . . . . . . . vii INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . .
ix
LITERARY CHRONOLOGY . . . . . . . xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . . CONTRIBUTORS
xv
. . . . . . . . . . xvii
CALM DOWN MOTHER
Megan Terry . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 A CHASTE MAID IN CHEAPSIDE
Thomas Middleton . . . . . . . . .
18
THE DESERTER
Norman Beim
. . . . . . . . . .
50
Samuel Beckett . . . . . . . . . .
63
ENDGAME
I’M NOT RAPPAPORT
Herb Gardner . . . . . . . . . . .
88
LOST IN YONKERS
Neil Simon
. . . . . . . . . . . 106
MULATTO
Langston Hughes
. . . . . . . . . 133
THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD
J. M. Synge
. . . . . . . . . . . 162
v
T a b l e
o f
C o n t e n t s
THE SQUARE ROOT OF WONDERFUL
THE ROSE TATTOO
Tennessee Williams . . . . . . . .
176
THE SOUND OF A VOICE
David Henry Hwang . . . . . . . .
Carson McCullers
. . . . . . . .
224
Molière . . . . . . . . . . . .
243
TARTUFFE
207
THE VERGE
Susan Glaspell . . . . . . . . . .
276
GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS . . . .
305
.
339
NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY INDEX . . .
345
. . . . . .
349
CUMULATIVE AUTHOR/TITLE INDEX
SUBJECT/THEME INDEX
v i
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
The Study of Drama We study drama in order to learn what meaning others have made of life, to comprehend what it takes to produce a work of art, and to glean some understanding of ourselves. Drama produces in a separate, aesthetic world, a moment of being for the audience to experience, while maintaining the detachment of a reflective observer. Drama is a representational art, a visible and audible narrative presenting virtual, fictional characters within a virtual, fictional universe. Dramatic realizations may pretend to approximate reality or else stubbornly defy, distort, and deform reality into an artistic statement. From this separate universe that is obviously not “real life” we expect a valid reflection upon reality, yet drama never is mistaken for reality—the methods of theater are integral to its form and meaning. Theater is art, and art’s appeal lies in its ability both to approximate life and to depart from it. For in intruding its distorted version of life into our consciousness, art gives us a new perspective and appreciation of life and reality. Although all aesthetic experiences perform this service, theater does it most effectively by creating a separate, cohesive universe that freely acknowledges its status as an art form. And what is the purpose of the aesthetic universe of drama? The potential answers to such a question are nearly as many and varied as there are plays written, performed, and enjoyed. Dramatic texts can be problems posed, answers asserted, or moments portrayed. Dramas (tragedies as well as
comedies) may serve strictly “to ease the anguish of a torturing hour” (as stated in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream)—to divert and entertain–or aspire to move the viewer to action with social issues. Whether to entertain or to instruct, affirm or influence, pacify or shock, dramatic art wraps us in the spell of its imaginary world for the length of the work and then dispenses us back to the real world, entertained, purged, as Aristotle said, of pity and fear, and edified—or at least weary enough to sleep peacefully. It is commonly thought that theater, being an art of performance, must be experienced—seen—in order to be appreciated fully. However, to view a production of a dramatic text is to be limited to a single interpretation of that text—all other interpretations are for the moment closed off, inaccessible. In the process of producing a play, the director, stage designer, and performers interpret and transform the script into a work of art that always departs in some measure from the author’s original conception. Novelist and critic Umberto Eco, in his The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Indiana University Press, 1979), explained, “In short, we can say that every performance offers us a complete and satisfying version of the work, but at the same time makes it incomplete for us, because it cannot simultaneously give all the other artistic solutions which the work may admit.” Thus Laurence Olivier’s coldly formal and neurotic film presentation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet
v i i
T h e
S t u d y
o f
D r a m a
(in which he played the title character as well as directed) shows marked differences from subsequent adaptations. While Olivier’s Hamlet is clearly entangled in a Freudian relationship with his mother Gertrude, he would be incapable of shushing her with the impassioned kiss that Mel Gibson’s mercurial Hamlet (in director Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film) does. Although each of performances rings true to Shakespeare’s text, each is also a mutually exclusive work of art. Also important to consider are the time periods in which each of these films was produced: Olivier made his film in 1948, a time in which overt references to sexuality (especially incest) were frowned upon. Gibson and Zeffirelli made their film in a culture more relaxed and comfortable with these issues. Just as actors and directors can influence the presentation of drama, so too can the time period of the production affect what the audience will see. A play script is an open text from which an infinity of specific realizations may be derived. Dramatic scripts that are more open to interpretive creativity (such as those of Ntozake Shange and Tomson Highway) actually require the creative improvisation of the production troupe in order to complete the text. Even the most prescriptive scripts (those of Neil Simon, Lillian Hellman, and Robert Bolt, for example), can never fully control the actualization of live performance, and circumstantial events, including the attitude and receptivity of the audience, make every performance a unique event. Thus, while it is important to view a production of a dramatic piece, if one wants to understand a drama fully it is equally important to read the original dramatic text. The reader of a dramatic text or script is not limited by either the specific interpretation of a given production or by the unstoppable action of a moving spectacle. The reader of a dramatic text may discover the nuances of the play’s language, struc-
ture, and events at their own pace. Yet studied alone, the author’s blueprint for artistic production does not tell the whole story of a play’s life and significance. One also needs to assess the play’s critical reviews to discover how it resonated to cultural themes at the time of its debut and how the shifting tides of cultural interest have revised its interpretation and impact on audiences. And to do this, one needs to know a little about the culture of the times which produced the play as well as the author who penned it. Drama for Students supplies this material in a useful compendium for the student of dramatic theater. Covering a range of dramatic works that span from 442 BC to the 1990s, this book focuses on significant theatrical works whose themes and form transcend the uncertainty of dramatic fads. These are plays that have proven to be both memorable and teachable. Drama for Students seeks to enhance appreciation of these dramatic texts by providing scholarly materials written with the secondary and college/university student in mind. It provides for each play a concise summary of the plot and characters as well as a detailed explanation of its themes. In addition, background material on the historical context of the play, its critical reception, and the author’s life help the student to understand the work’s position in the chronicle of dramatic history. For each play entry a new work of scholarly criticism is also included, as well as segments of other significant critical works for handy reference. A thorough bibliography provides a starting point for further research. This series offers comprehensive educational resources for students of drama. Drama for Students is a vital book for dramatic interpretation and a valuable addition to any reference library. Source: Eco, Umberto, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Indiana University Press, 1979.
Carole L. Hamilton Author and Instructor of English Cary Academy Cary, North Carolina
v i i i
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Introduction Purpose of the Book The purpose of Drama for Students (DfS) is to provide readers with a guide to understanding, enjoying, and studying dramas by giving them easy access to information about the work. Part of Gale’s “For Students” literature line, DfS is specifically designed to meet the curricular needs of high school and undergraduate college students and their teachers, as well as the interests of general readers and researchers considering specific plays. While each volume contains entries on “classic” dramas frequently studied in classrooms, there are also entries containing hard-to-find information on contemporary plays, including works by multicultural, international, and women playwrights. The information covered in each entry includes an introduction to the play and the work’s author; a plot summary, to help readers unravel and understand the events in a drama; descriptions of important characters, including explanation of a given character’s role in the drama as well as discussion about that character’s relationship to other characters in the play; analysis of important themes in the drama; and an explanation of important literary techniques and movements as they are demonstrated in the play. In addition to this material, which helps the readers analyze the play itself, students are also provided with important information on the literary and historical background informing each work. This includes a historical context essay, a box
comparing the time or place the drama was written to modern Western culture, a critical essay, and excerpts from critical essays on the play. A unique feature of DfS is a specially commissioned critical essay on each drama, targeted toward the student reader. To further aid the student in studying and enjoying each play, information on media adaptations is provided (if available), as well as reading suggestions for works of fiction and nonfiction on similar themes and topics. Classroom aids include ideas for research papers and lists of critical sources that provide additional material on each drama.
Selection Criteria The titles for each volume of DfS were selected by surveying numerous sources on teaching literature and analyzing course curricula for various school districts. Some of the sources surveyed included: literature anthologies; Reading Lists for College-Bound Students: The Books Most Recommended by America’s Top Colleges; textbooks on teaching dramas; a College Board survey of plays commonly studied in high schools; a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) survey of plays commonly studied in high schools; St. James Press’s International Dictionary of Theatre; and Arthur Applebee’s 1993 study Literature in the Secondary School: Studies of Curriculum and Instruction in the United States.
i x
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Input was also solicited from our advisory board, as well as from educators from various areas. From these discussions, it was determined that each volume should have a mix of “classic” dramas (those works commonly taught in literature classes) and contemporary dramas for which information is often hard to find. Because of the interest in expanding the canon of literature, an emphasis was also placed on including works by international, multicultural, and women playwrights. Our advisory board members—educational professionals— helped pare down the list for each volume. If a work was not selected for the present volume, it was often noted as a possibility for a future volume. As always, the editor welcomes suggestions for titles to be included in future volumes.
How Each Entry Is Organized Each entry, or chapter, in DfS focuses on one play. Each entry heading lists the full name of the play, the author’s name, and the date of the play’s publication. The following elements are contained in each entry: • Introduction: a brief overview of the drama which provides information about its first appearance, its literary standing, any controversies surrounding the work, and major conflicts or themes within the work. • Author Biography: this section includes basic facts about the author’s life, and focuses on events and times in the author’s life that inspired the drama in question. • Plot Summary: a description of the major events in the play. Subheads demarcate the play’s various acts or scenes. • Characters: an alphabetical listing of major characters in the play. Each character name is followed by a brief to an extensive description of the character’s role in the play, as well as discussion of the character’s actions, relationships, and possible motivation. Characters are listed alphabetically by last name. If a character is unnamed—for instance, the Stage Manager in Our Town—the character is listed as “The Stage Manager” and alphabetized as “Stage Manager.” If a character’s first name is the only one given, the name will appear alphabetically by the name. Variant names are also included for each character. Thus, the nickname “Babe” would head the listing for a character in Crimes of the Heart, but below that listing would
x
be her less-mentioned married name “Rebecca Botrelle.” • Themes: a thorough overview of how the major topics, themes, and issues are addressed within the play. Each theme discussed appears in a separate subhead, and is easily accessed through the boldface entries in the Subject/Theme Index. • Style: this section addresses important style elements of the drama, such as setting, point of view, and narration; important literary devices used, such as imagery, foreshadowing, symbolism; and, if applicable, genres to which the work might have belonged, such as Gothicism or Romanticism. Literary terms are explained within the entry, but can also be found in the Glossary. • Historical Context: this section outlines the social, political, and cultural climate in which the author lived and the play was created. This section may include descriptions of related historical events, pertinent aspects of daily life in the culture, and the artistic and literary sensibilities of the time in which the work was written. If the play is a historical work, information regarding the time in which the play is set is also included. Each section is broken down with helpful subheads. • Critical Overview: this section provides background on the critical reputation of the play, including bannings or any other public controversies surrounding the work. For older plays, this section includes a history of how the drama was first received and how perceptions of it may have changed over the years; for more recent plays, direct quotes from early reviews may also be included. • Criticism: an essay commissioned by DfS which specifically deals with the play and is written specifically for the student audience, as well as excerpts from previously published criticism on the work (if available). • Sources: an alphabetical list of critical material used in compiling the entry, with full bibliographical information. • Further Reading: an alphabetical list of other critical sources which may prove useful for the student. It includes full bibliographical information and a brief annotation.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I n t r o d u c t i o n
In addition, each entry contains the following highlighted sections, set apart from the main text as sidebars: • Media Adaptations: if available, a list of important film and television adaptations of the play, including source information. The list may also include such variations on the work as audio recordings, musical adaptations, and other stage interpretations. • Topics for Further Study: a list of potential study questions or research topics dealing with the play. This section includes questions related to other disciplines the student may be studying, such as American history, world history, science, math, government, business, geography, economics, psychology, etc. • Compare and Contrast: an “at-a-glance” comparison of the cultural and historical differences between the author’s time and culture and late twentieth century or early twenty-first century Western culture. This box includes pertinent parallels between the major scientific, political, and cultural movements of the time or place the drama was written, the time or place the play was set (if a historical work), and modern Western culture. Works written after 1990 may not have this box. • What Do I Read Next?: a list of works that might complement the featured play or serve as a contrast to it. This includes works by the same author and others, works of fiction and nonfiction, and works from various genres, cultures, and eras.
Other Features DfS includes “The Study of Drama,” a foreword by Carole Hamilton, an educator and author who specializes in dramatic works. This essay examines the basis for drama in societies and what drives people to study such work. The essay also discusses how Drama for Students can help teachers show students how to enrich their own reading/ viewing experiences. A Cumulative Author/Title Index lists the authors and titles covered in each volume of the DfS series. A Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index breaks down the authors and titles covered in each volume of the DfS series by nationality and ethnicity.
V o l u m e
1 8
A Subject/Theme Index, specific to each volume, provides easy reference for users who may be studying a particular subject or theme rather than a single work. Significant subjects from events to broad themes are included, and the entries pointing to the specific theme discussions in each entry are indicated in boldface. Each entry may include illustrations, including photo of the author, stills from stage productions, and stills from film adaptations, if available.
Citing Drama for Students When writing papers, students who quote directly from any volume of Drama for Students may use the following general forms. These examples are based on MLA style; teachers may request that students adhere to a different style, so the following examples may be adapted as needed. When citing text from DfS that is not attributed to a particular author (i.e., the Themes, Style, Historical Context sections, etc.), the following format should be used in the bibliography section: “Our Town.” Drama for Students. Eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 227–30.
When quoting the specially commissioned essay from DfS (usually the first piece under the “Criticism” subhead), the following format should be used: Fiero, John. Critical Essay on Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Drama for Students. Eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 247–49.
When quoting a journal or newspaper essay that is reprinted in a volume of DfS, the following form may be used: Rich, Frank. “Theatre: A Mamet Play, Glengarry Glen Ross.” New York Theatre Critics’ Review Vol. 45, No. 4 (March 5, 1984), 5–7; excerpted and reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 2, eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato (Detroit: Gale, 1998), pp. 51–53.
When quoting material reprinted from a book that appears in a volume of DfS, the following form may be used: Kerr, Walter. “The Miracle Worker,” in The Theatre in Spite of Itself. Simon & Schuster, 1963. 255–57; excerpted and reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 2, eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato (Detroit: Gale, 1998), pp. 123–24.
x i
I n t r o d u c t i o n
We Welcome Your Suggestions The editor of Drama for Students welcomes your comments and ideas. Readers who wish to suggest dramas to appear in future volumes, or who have other suggestions, are cordially invited to contact the editor. You may contact the editor via Email at:
[email protected]. Or write to the editor at: Editor, Drama for Students The Gale Group 27500 Drake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48331–3535
x i i
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Literary Chronology 1580: Thomas Middleton is born in London, England. 1611: Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is first produced in London at the Swan Theater.
1917: Carson McCullers is born Lula Carson Smith on February 19 in Columbus, Georgia. 1921: Susan Glaspell’s The Verge is first performed at the Provincetown Playhouse on November 14.
1622: Molière is born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin on January 13 in Paris, France.
1923: Norman Beim is born on October 2 in Newark, New Jersey.
1627: Thomas Middleton dies on July 4 in Newington Butts, Surrey, England.
1927: Neil Simon is born on July 4 in Bronx, New York.
1664: Molière’s Tartuffe is first produced in Versailles, France, at the Château de Versailles on May 12.
1932: Megan Terry is born Marguerite Duffy on July 22 in Seattle, Washington.
1673: Molière dies on February 17. 1871: J. M. Synge is born on April 16 in the Dublin suburb of Newton Little. 1882: Susan Glaspell is born on July 1 in Davenport, Iowa. 1902: Langston Hughes is born on February 1 in Joplin, Missouri. 1906: Samuel Barclay Beckett is born on April 13 in Foxrock County, Dublin, Ireland. 1907: J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World is first produced in Dublin, Ireland, on January 26 at the Abbey Theatre. 1909: J. M. Synge dies on March 24 in Dublin. 1911: Tennessee Williams is born on March 26 in Columbus, Mississippi.
1934: Herb Gardner is born on December 28 in Brooklyn, New York. 1935: Langston Hughes’s Mulatto is first produced in New York at the Vanderbilt Theatre on October 24. 1948: Susan Glaspell dies on July 27. 1950: Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo is first produced in New York at the Martin Beck Theatre on February 3. 1957: Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is first produced in London at the Royal Court Theatre on April 3. 1957: David Henry Hwang is born on August 11 in Los Angeles, California. 1957: Carson McCullers’s The Square Root of Wonderful is first produced in New York at the National Theatre on October 30.
x i i i
L i t e r a r y
C h r o n o l o g y
1965: Megan Terry’s Calm Down Mother is first produced in New York at the Sheridan Square Playhouse March 29. 1967: Langston Hughes dies on May 22 in New York of congestive heart failure. 1967: Carson McCullers dies on September 29 in Nyack, New York, following a stroke. 1969: Samuel Beckett is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1978: Norman Beim’s The Deserter is first produced Off-Off Broadway at the Troupe Theatre on April 17. 1983: Tennessee Williams dies on February 24 in New York City from choking.
x i v
1983: David Henry Hwang’s The Sound of a Voice is first produced in New York at the Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre on November 6. 1985: Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport is first produced. 1989: Samuel Beckett dies on December 22; he is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. 1991: Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers is first produced in New York at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on February 21. 1991: Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank the copyright holders of the excerpted criticism included in this volume and the permissions managers of many book and magazine publishing companies for assisting us in securing reproduction rights. We are also grateful to the staffs of the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Detroit Mercy Library, Wayne State University Purdy/Kresge Library Complex, and the University of Michigan Libraries for making their resources available to us. Following is a list of the copyright holders who have granted us permission to reproduce material in this volume of Drama for Students (DfS). Every effort has been made to trace copyright, but if omissions have been made, please let us know. COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN DfS, VOLUME 18, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING PERIODICALS: African American Review, v. 26, summer 1992. Copyright © 1992 by the author. Reproduced by permission.—Comparative Drama, v. 3, spring 1969. © copyright 1969, by the Editors of Comparative Drama. Reproduced by permission.—Great Lakes Review: A Journal of Midwest Culture, v. 6, summer 1979. Reproduced by permission.—Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, v. 15, fall 2000 for “Susan Glaspell’s The Verge: A Socratic Quest to Reinvent Form and Escape Plato’s Cave” by Julia Galbus. Reproduced by permission of the author.— Markham Review, v. 5, winter 1976. Reproduced by permission.—Modern Drama, February 1970.
Reproduced by permission.—Modern Language Notes, v. 90, April 4, 1975. © The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reproduced by permission.—Review of English Studies, v. 16, February 1965. Reproduced by permission.—Studies in American Drama, 1945–Present, v. 2, 1987 for “Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool Dry Place: Megan Terry’s Transformational Drama and the Possibilities of Self” by June Schlueter; v. 6, 1991 for an interview with Neil Simon by Jackson R. Bryer. Reproduced by permission of the respective authors.—Theatre Topics, v. 8, September 1998. © The Johns Hopkins University Press. Reproduced by permission.—Times Literary Supplement, v. 4348, August 1, 1986. © Times Literary Supplement, 1986. Reproduced by permission. COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN DfS, VOLUME 18, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: Barksdale, Richard K. From “Miscegenation on Broadway: Hughes’s Mulatto and Edward Sheldon’s ‘The Nigger’,” in Critical Essays on Langston Hughes. Edited by Edward J. Mullen. G. K. Hall and Co., 1986. Copyright © 1986 by Edward J. Mullen. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Carr, Virginia Spencer. From “The Square Root of Wonderful,” in Understanding Carson McCullers. University of Southern Carolina Press, 1990. Copyright © 1990 by University of Southern Carolina. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Chatterji, Ruby. From “Theme, Imagery,
x v
A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s
and Unity in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside,” in Renaissance Drama VIII. Edited by S. Schoenbaum. Northwestern University Press, 1965. Copyright © 1965 by Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Fletcher, John, and John Spurling. From “Son of Oedipus,” in Beckett: The Playwright. Hill and Wang, 1985. Chronology, Chapters 3, 5, 7, 8, 11 copyright © 1972 by John Fletcher. Chapters 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10 copyright © 1972 by John Spurling. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.—Homan, Sidney. From “Endgame: The Playwright Completes Himself,” in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Copyright © 1988 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Chelsea House Educational Communications, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Sidney Homan.—Kenner, Hugh. From “Life in the Box,” in Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Copyright © 1988 by Chelsea House Publishers, a division of Chelsea House Educational Communications, Inc. Reproduced by permission of Hugh Kenner.—Keyssar, Helene. “Megan Terry: Mother of American Feminist Drama,” in Feminist Theatre. Macmillan Press, 1984. Reproduced by permission of Macmillan, London and Basingstoke.—Kolin, Philip C. From “‘Sentiment and Humor in Equal Measure’: Comic Forms in The Rose Tattoo,” in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute. Edited by Jac Tharpe. University of Mississippi, 1977. Copyright © 1977 by University of Mississippi. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Walker, Hallam. From Molière. Twayne Publishers, 1990. The Gale Group. Reproduced by permission of the Gale Group. PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS APPEARING IN DfS, VOLUME 18, WERE RECEIVED FROM THE FOLLOWING SOURCES:
x v i
Beckett, Samuel, photograph by Jerry Bauer. © by Jerry Bauer. Reproduced by permission.— Gardner, Herb, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Glaspell, Susan, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Hughes, Langston, photograph. The Bettmann Archive/Newsphotos, Inc./CorbisBettmann. Reproduced by permission.—Hwang, David Henry, 1988, photograph by Rick Maiman. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—McCullers, Carson, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.— Middleton, Thomas, engraving. Archive Photos, Inc. Reproduced by permission.—Molière, engraving. The Library of Congress.—Muel, Jean-Paul, in a scene from the Ramatuelle Festival production of Molière’s play Le Tartuffe, directed by Jean-Claude Brialy, Ramatuelle, Provence Cote d’Azur, France, August 9, 2001, photograph. © Roncen Patrick/Co. Reproduced by permission.—Scene from the play Endgame by Samuel Beckett, performed by students performing at the Playhouse Theatre on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, October 1986, photograph by Jim Sugar. Jim Sugar Photography/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.— Scene from the play Tartuffe by Molière, performance at the Theatre Antoine, Paris, France, September 6, 1994, photograph. Cardinale Stephane/Corbis Sygma. Reproduced by permission.—Simon, Neil, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Stewart, William, Frances Cuka, and Jack Shepard, 1966, photograph. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.— Synge, John Millington, drawing. Irish Tourist Board.—Williams, Tennessee, 1955, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Woman holding broom over her head, scene from a stage adaptation of Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge, photograph by John Springer. Corbis. Reproduced by permission.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Contributors Liz Brent: Brent holds a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan and is a freelance writer and editor. Entry on Tartuffe. Original essays on The Deserter and Tartuffe.
Daryl McDaniel: McDaniel is a writer with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. Entry on Endgame. Original essay on Endgame.
Carol Dell’Amico: Dell’Amico is an instructor of English literature and composition. Entry on The Rose Tattoo. Original essays on Mulatto and The Rose Tattoo.
Sheri E. Metzger: Metzger has a doctorate in English Renaissance literature and teaches literature and drama at the University of New Mexico as an adjunct professor in the university honors program. Original essay on Lost In Yonkers.
Sheldon Goldfarb: Goldfarb has a Ph.D. in English and has published two books on the Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray. Original essay on The Square Root of Wonderful. Joyce Hart: Hart has degrees in English literature and creative writing and focuses her published writing on literary themes. Entries on Calm Down Mother and The Sound of a Voice. Original essays on Calm Down Mother, I’m Not Rappaport, and The Sound of a Voice. Beth Kattelman: Kattelman is a freelance writer and researcher and holds a Ph.D. in theater from Ohio State University. Entry on The Verge. Original essay on The Verge. Lois Kerschen: Kerschen is a freelance writer and a researcher in education. Original essay on Lost in Yonkers.
Candyce Norvell: Norvell is an independent educational writer who specializes in English and literature. Entry on The Square Root of Wonderful. Original essay on The Square Root of Wonderful. David Partikian: Partikian is a freelance writer and English instructor. Original essay on Tartuffe. Wendy Perkins: Perkins is a professor of English and American literature and film. Entry on The Playboy of the Western World. Original essays on I’m Not Rappaport and The Playboy of the Western World. Doreen Piano: Piano teaches literature and writing at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Original essay on The Sound of a Voice. Ryan D. Poquette: Poquette has a bachelor’s de-
x v i i
C o n t r i b u t o r s
gree in English and specializes in writing about literature. Entries on A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, The Deserter, I’m Not Rappaport, Lost in Yonkers, and Mulatto. Original essays on A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, The Deserter, I’m Not Rappaport, Lost in Yonkers, and Mulatto. Carey Wallace: Wallace is a freelance writer and poet. Original essay on A Chaste Maid in Cheapside.
x v i i i
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Calm Down Mother Megan Terry’s Calm Down Mother (referred to as a transformation play) demonstrates various aspects of relationships between women, first espousing the most optimal situations that a woman can strive for and then showing how women, as well as their society, place restraints on their achievement of their most favorable growth. The work is considered one of Terry’s most popular one-act plays and was first produced by Open Theatre on a double bill with Terry’s play Keep Tightly Closed (a transformation play for men) on March 29, 1965, at the Sheridan Square Playhouse in New York City.
MEGAN TERRY 1965
Terry uses only three women and minimum props for Calm Down Mother despite the fact that there are, in essence, multiple characters and blocs that make up this play. Over the course of the production, the three women take on different relationships to one another as they change from middle-aged shop owners to old women in a nursing home, to young prostitutes, sisters, friends, and mothers and daughters. In each section of the play, the characters explore what it means to be female, how society views them, and what tools they have to improve themselves. Although the play was written and produced at the height of the feminist movement in the 1960s, it discusses topics that remain relevant to contemporary women as they pursue answers to their relationships with other women and society. Terry’s play,
1
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
popular in experimental theater in the middle of the century, continues to be staged in college and small theater productions across the United States today.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Megan Terry, an internationally recognized playwright and prolific writer who has created over sixty plays, is often referred to as the Mother of American Feminist Drama. She has been involved in the theater since childhood and has so devoted herself to her art that in 1994 she was elected to lifetime membership in the College of Fellows of the American Theatre for her distinguished service to the profession on a national scope. Terry, who was born in Seattle, Washington, on July 22, 1932, as Marguerite Duffy, fell in love with the stage at the early age of seven. Her parents, Marguerite and Harold Duffy, often took their daughter to local theatrical productions; and when she was not witnessing a live professional performance, Terry was known, throughout her childhood, to produce many of her own backyard plays. As a teen, she wrote, created the sets for, and acted in school plays. When her parents divorced in her senior year of high school, she moved in with her grandparents who lived only a few blocks from the Seattle Repertory Playhouse, where she would eventually spend most of her time. While enrolled at the University of Washington, Terry continued her activities at the Playhouse, where she wrote plays and built sets until 1951, when, in the throes of McCarthyism, a state committee accused the theatrical group of unAmerican activities and closed them down. This event made Terry realize the power of theater, and it ignited her passions further. For her sophomore year, Terry transferred to the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, where she discovered that of all her experiences in theater, from acting to building sets, it was writing that most inspired her. The following year, she returned to Seattle and the University of Washington and became involved with the Cornish School of Allied Arts, where she established a community playhouse and premiered several of her first published plays. Feeling somewhat stymied by the cultural acceptance of her plays in the Pacific Northwest, Terry moved to New York City in the late 1950s. It was also around this time that she changed her name. By the early 1960s, she had written several
2
more plays but was discontent with the direction of commercial theater in New York. In 1963, together with several other producers, writers, and actors, she helped establish the Open Theater, where a series of her plays, including Calm Down Mother (1966), premiered. The techniques that Terry employed in some of her plays of this period would define experimental theater. A couple of her innovations were including rock music in musical comedies and involving the audience in the performance, something that had never been done before. Her anti-war musical Viet Rock (1966) remains one of the classic pieces from that era and is enjoying a contemporary revival. Terry’s works have been translated and performed in many different countries. She has earned an Obie Award (for Approaching Simone in 1970), the Dramatists Guild Annual Award, the ATA Silver Medal, and several fellowships, including a Guggenheim, a National Endowment for the Arts, and a grant from Yale. She has lived in Omaha, Nebraska, since 1974, where she is involved in the Magic Theater, a company of artists dedicated to creating new American musical plays, and where she continues to write and to conduct writing workshops.
PLOT SUMMARY Section 1 Megan Terry’s play Calm Down Mother consists of only one act, but it is separated by different sections, during which the three female characters change roles. In the first section, the three woman are clustered, so as ‘‘to suggest a plant form,’’ the stage directions dictate. They are listening to a tape, which recounts the beginning of life outside of the oceans. Woman One states that she is Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), a nineteenth-century transcendentalist who has been credited with beginning the feminist movement in the United States. Woman One declares that she accepts the universe. The two remaining women respond that she had better for ‘‘Carlyle said that you had better,’’ making a reference possibly, to Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), a Scottish historian and critic who promoted a strict and authoritarian form of government. Woman One declares that her father supported her ‘‘not as a living plaything, but as a mind’’; and the other two women remind her that
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
she had better ‘‘grab the universe’’ while she can. This section then ends with the women going into a ‘‘brief freeze.’’
Section 2 In the next section, the three women are in a store setting. Woman One becomes Sophie and Woman Three becomes Esther. They are sisters, and both of them work at the store. Woman Two is a young female customer, who is trying to buy a sixpack of beer. Sophie becomes entranced with the young girl’s hair, which reminds her of her mother’s hair. Sophie wants to touch it and tells the young woman about how she used to comb her mother’s hair. She also recounts that she too used to have hair like that, but she has had so many surgeries that her hair has changed. Esther complains that her sister Sophie had become obsessed with her hair when they were younger. Sophie asks if she can comb the young woman’s hair. She also admires the young woman’s skin. As she continues, Sophie laments the loss of her mother and of her own youth while Esther and the young girl ‘‘begin a mournful hum.’’ Sophie eventually joins them, and the hum builds to a crescendo, at which point the young girl ‘‘flings the other Two Women away.’’
D o w n
M o t h e r
movie in which a mother sacrifices everything for her daughter. In Nancy’s case, however, she has sacrificed a lot for everyone, including her mother, who has just been diagnosed with cancer, a circumstance that Nancy can do nothing about except wait for her mother’s imminent death. Nancy is also angry with her father, who is an alcoholic. Nancy believes that her father is faking a heart attack in order to grab attention away from his wife. The women embrace and freeze.
Section 4 Woman Three, who has been lying on the stage floor throughout the preceding section, rises. She is in a nursing home. Women One and Two are residents there. Their names become Mrs. Tweed and Mrs. Watermellon. They discuss the passing of time; and Mrs. Watermellon declares that the sunrise begins in the heart, but no one ever believes her. She then explains time by making reference to her menstrual cycle, which Mrs. Tweed believes is absurd. The two women call one another names, and Mrs. Tweed threatens to call Mrs. Watermellon’s family and have her committed. Mrs. Watermellon reminds her that she already is.
The young woman tells the audience that she wants to learn how to throw away the depression and anger that other people try to impose on her. She goes up to Woman One and throws her feelings on her. Then Woman One begins a monologue in which she states that she feels like she wants to hit someone; but these feelings are only coming from one side of her, as if she has suffered a stroke and that side is consumed with rage. Then there is another freeze.
The third woman is now a nurse, and she approaches them with food, which the other two refuse to eat. The nurse is very mechanical in her responses to the women. The two patients make fun of her, calling the food worms, then calling the nurse a worm. When the nurse tries to get away from them, the two patients turn into subway doors, chanting ‘‘Please keep your hands off the doors.’’ When the woman finally breaks through, all three women become ‘‘call-girls,’’ or prostitutes, preparing to begin their night. Their names are now Momo, Felicia, and Inez.
Section 3
Section 5
Woman Three tells the audience that everyone must write the details of their lives with the ‘‘absurd conviction they are talking to or will contact someone.’’ The two other women approach her and beat her down to the ground, where she remains throughout the third section. One of the women becomes Nancy, who has just arrived at her sister Sally’s newly rented New York apartment. Sally has just recently divorced an abusive husband. Nancy tells Sally that she is falling apart, to which Sally reacts by calling her ‘‘Stella Dallas,’’ a reference to a 1937 Barbara Stanwyck
V o l u m e
1 8
Momo and Felicia are arguing, trying to upstage one another. Inez tells them to ‘‘shut up,’’ or they will be late for the party. The women are preparing themselves for what appears to be an orgy. The women talk to one another in very combative tones, threatening to cause harm, calling one another offensive names. In the middle of the argument, Felicia pulls out a ‘‘roll of bills,’’ which reportedly belongs to Momo, who has apparently not been giving her share to Ricky, the madam of the house. Momo is the newest one of the group, and Inez tells her she has a lot to learn. Felicia refers to
3
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
Inez as ‘‘mommie,’’ asks her forgiveness for all the arguing and suggests that Inez spank her. Momo does the same. Then the three women huddle and chant: ‘‘Have confidence. You’ve been found.’’
who tends to criticize her sister for being obsessed with her looks. She joins with the young girl in a mournful hum to lament the passage of time and the onslaught of old age.
Section 6
Felicia
The women continue to repeat their chant, but, instead of statements, they begin questioning themselves: ‘‘You’ve been found? . . . No, I’ve been found.’’ The women are now living in a tenement, washing dishes. Their names are Sue, Sak, and Ma.
Felicia is a prostitute who continually argues with Momo. She is the one who says ‘‘Calm down, mother,’’ referring to Inez, an older prostitute. Felicia discovers money that Momo has stashed away and threatens to tell the madam of the house. She also tells Inez to spank her for being bad.
Sue begins by talking about birth control. She is angry about a magazine article that states that it is wrong to use contraceptives. Sak goes along with Ma, who does not believe in birth control. Sue points out that, technically, she could create a baby every month for the next thirty years of her life. To prove her point, she states that every woman who does not create a baby out of every one of her eggs is, in some way, practicing some kind of birth control. She then criticizes her sister and mother for sitting in church every week and listening to the men preaching about birth control, a subject they do not even fully understand. Sak, who is a true believer, warns that Sue will burn in hell for what she has just said. Sue responds, ‘‘They’ll make me a saint! A thousand years from now they’ll award me a medal for not contributing to the population!’’ Ma tells Sue to pack her things and move out of their home. Sue tries to tell her that she has ‘‘been born out of my time.’’ She calls her mother and sister ‘‘empty bottles of holy water,’’ then says she does not need to pack. ‘‘I’ve got everything I need right here in my belly.’’ The three women then face the audience and end the play with a chant about their bellies and their ‘‘eggies’’ being enough. The last line is a question: ‘‘Are they?’’
CHARACTERS
4
Girl Girl is the young woman who tries to buy a sixpack of beer in the grocery store section. Her hair reminds Sophie of her mother’s hair. She allows Sophie to touch her hair and suggests that maybe Sophie was allergic to the anesthetic the doctors gave her. She joins with Esther in a mournful hum until she cannot stand it any more and pushes Sophie and Esther away.
Inez Inez is an older prostitute who is responsible for Felicia and Momo. Felicia refers to her as ‘‘mother,’’ but it is unclear if there really is a blood relationship between them.
Ma Ma is the mother of Sue and Sak in the last section of the play. She is conservative and a true believer in her faith, which disallows the use of contraception. She sides with her daughter Sak when Sue makes known that she is on the pill, then she tells Sue to leave.
Momo Momo is the least experienced of the three prostitutes. She argues with Felicia. She also has stashed away money without paying the ‘‘house’’ because she says she needs a vacation. In the end, she joins Felicia in telling Inez to spank her for being bad.
Esther
Nancy
Esther appears in the grocery store section. She is the sister of Sophie. She is a middle-aged woman
Nancy is a Midwestern woman who arrives at her sister’s New York apartment to help her cele-
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
brate her new independence. Nancy has previously helped Sally get out of a bad marriage. Nancy refers to herself as the ‘‘old bulwark of the family.’’ She is the calm one in the midst of family crises, but with her mother’s imminent death, Nancy fears that she is falling apart.
Nurse Nurse appears in the section with Mrs. Tweed and Mrs. Watermellon, two patients at a nursing home. Nurse is very mechanical in her care of the two elderly women and is made fun of because of her lack of compassion.
M o t h e r
want to have any children. She claims that every woman practices birth control in one form or another because no woman gives birth to every egg that she carries in her ovaries.
Mrs. Tweed Mrs. Tweed is a patient in a nursing home. When Mrs. Watermellon refers to her menstrual cycle, Mrs. Tweed tells her that she should not talk of such things and threatens to call her family and have her committed. She also ridicules the nurse, referring to the cereal she is eating as consisting of worms.
Mrs. Watermellon
Sak Sak appears in the last section of the play. She is Sue’s sister. She is conservative like her mother and a bit naïve about sexuality. She tells her mother that Sue has been having sex and is thus responsible for Sue being told to leave the house.
Sally Sally has just moved into a new apartment after having left an abusive husband. She is Nancy’s sister and acknowledges that she could not have gained her freedom without her sister’s help. Nancy describes Sally as soft. She often gives in to men, even if they have hurt her. Sally also gives her father the benefit of the doubt when her sister states that their father has faked a heart attack.
Sophie Sophie works at a grocery store and is stunned by a customer who comes in to buy some beer. The young woman has hair just like Sophie’s mother, and Sophie laments the loss not only of her mother but also of her own youthful beauty. Sophie’s sister, Esther, refers to her as having been previously arrogant about her looks.
Sue Sue claims that she has been born out of her time, in contrast to her mother and her sister Sak, whom she says are three hundred years behind the times. Sue practices birth control despite the dictates of her church and magazine articles she reads written by men. She is sexually active and does not
V o l u m e
D o w n
1 8
Mrs. Watermellon is an outspoken elderly woman who lives in a nursing home. She tells Mrs. Tweed that she knows the secret of the beginning of each day, a secret that exists in her heart. When Mrs. Tweed says she is going to call her family and have Mrs. Watermellon committed, Mrs. Watermellon reminds her that she already is committed.
Woman One Woman One plays various roles, taking on other named characters at times. She is only specifically pointed out in the beginning when she announces that she is Margaret Fuller, a reference to an early pioneer of the feminist movement; and again, later in the play, when she tells the audience that she wants to hit something; and, intermittently, as part of a chorus.
Woman Two Like the other nondescript women, Woman Two plays many different roles. Under the title of Woman Two, she makes a reference to Carlyle in the opening of the play, announcing that Woman One had better accept the universe. Later, she talks to the audience and tells them that she wants to get to the point where she can throw negative emotions back to the people who try to put them on her. She often joins the other two women in chorus.
Woman Three Woman Three also plays various roles and is only identified as Woman Three when she tells the audience that they should list every detail of their lives in the hope that they will eventually make
5
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
contact with someone. She is then knocked down on the floor and remains there through one of the sections, then rises and chants about her girlhood being all flowers. She often takes part in chorus with the other two women.
THEMES Birth Control When Calm Down Mother was written and first produced in the 1960s, birth control devices, other than prophylactics, were just beginning to be massproduced. A hormonal birth control pill had been introduced in the 1950s, but it was used as a regulator of the menstrual cycle, not as a way of preventing birth. Such was the social, political, and religious environment at the time of the original staging of the play. Thus, in choosing to develop a theme of birth control in her play, Terry was stepping on very controversial territory. Although there is a reference in the scene between the three prostitutes when Felicia tells Momo that she will ‘‘stick holes in your diaphragm,’’ Terry elaborates on birth control fully only at the end of her play and brings it up mainly in relationship to the opposition of the religious beliefs of her family. In the 1960s, many of the Christian churches preached that if a woman did not want to conceive, she should practice abstinence from sex. In the Catholic Church, women were told to monitor their menstrual cycles so they would know when they were ovulating. This practice was referred to as the rhythm method. Sue, in the final scene of the play, points out that rhythm was just as much a form of birth control as taking a pill. According to Sue, unless every woman brought to fruition every egg in her ovaries, she was practicing birth control.
Women’s Relationship with Men Terry brings out the topic of men only obliquely in her play. When she does mention them, they often are referred to in a not-so-positive light. First, she mentions Carlyle, which one can assume is Thomas Carlyle, a philosopher who believed in strict patriarchal control of society. Then, she refers to the abusive husband of Sally, a naive woman who was too soft with men. She let them take advantage of her. Terry also brings up the fact that Sally’s father, an alcoholic, has faked a heart attack in order
6
to compete with the attention that Sally’s mother is receiving because she has cancer. She relegates men to customers in the scene with the prostitutes; and, in the final scene, she condemns male authors of magazine articles and male priests for preaching against birth control, a serious matter that does not concern men because they do not know what they are talking about. ‘‘Who the hell are all these guys on platforms to say you can’t take pills, you can’t use rubbers, down with vaseline, out with diaphragms, who the hell then are they?’’ In other words, men are one of women’s biggest hindrances in their struggle to liberate themselves.
Aging The topic of aging first appears in the scene in the grocery store when Sophie becomes enthralled with the young female customer’s hair. Sophie reminisces about her mother’s hair and how Sophie used to comb it. Then, she slips into memories of her youth and laments the fact that her hair no longer contains the luster and health that it did in her youth, a part of her appearance that used to make her proud. She also regrets that her skin no longer is soft and smooth and white. High blood pressure and several surgeries brought on by old age have robbed her of her youth, Sophie states. Age is also an apparent topic in the scene in the nursing home, where Mrs. Tweed and Mrs. Watermellon have been left to the care of a coldhearted nurse. Mrs. Watermellon points out to Mrs. Tweed that they have been committed to the place as one might be committed to an asylum for misfits.
Motherhood Since the word mother is included in the title of Terry’s play, one must suspect that motherhood plays a dominant role. However, this role weaves its way through Terry’s work rather subtly. The figures that represent motherhood are varied, and the message delivered is a bit confusing. Motherhood figures prominently in Terry’s discussion of birth control, in that with its use, a woman can more fully choose when and if she wants to become a mother. There is also the oblique reference to motherhood albeit mockingly, in the scene of the prostitutes in which Inez, an older, more experienced call girl is referred to as mother because she is responsible for the other two younger women. It is actually from a line of dialogue in this scene that gives the play its title.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Contraception is a topic that is discussed in the last section of Terry’s play Calm Down Mother. Research the history of contraception, explaining the various types of devices used over time as well as the general acceptance of these items. Remark on the reactions to these developments as viewed by women, men, religious organizations, government, and various ethnic groups. • Create a scene between two obviously disparate characters from Terry’s play, such as Sak, the naive sister in the last part of the play, and the young prostitute Inez. Focus on a particular issue such as religion or sexuality, then write a dialogue that might ensue between the two characters. Find a partner and act out the scene in front of the class.
Motherhood is also discussed in the beginning of the play when Sophie recalls having brushed her mother’s hair and helped her with her bath. In the next scene with Nancy and Sally, Nancy refers to her mother as the ‘‘fighter,’’ the strength of the family. Nancy’s mother is also her role model. In the scene in the nursing home, it is implied that Mrs. Watermellon is a mother when Mrs. Tweed tells her that she is going to call her son and have her committed. A mother figure is also included in the final scene with Sue and Sak. The definition of motherhood, however, varies quite widely throughout the play. Sophie remembers her mother with love and longs to touch the young girl’s hair in order to stir her memories of having cared for her mother. In the following scene, Nancy also speaks about her mother with love as she mourns her mother’s imminent death to cancer. The image changes, though, in the nursing home scene, during which motherhood is depicted in a quite different attitude. The fact that Mrs. Watermellon refers to herself as having been committed, as well as the non-nurturing service of the nurse who is responsible for her care, suggests that the mother
V o l u m e
1 8
• Write a paper about Margaret Fuller. What was her role in the feminist movement? Find reviews of her books. Research the political climate of her times. Are her beliefs still relevant today? • Read Terry’s play Keep Tightly Closed, which was often staged in a double billing with Calm Down Mother. Find three women and three men to take on the roles of these plays, only transpose Terry’s original concepts. Have the men read the lines of Calm Down Mother and the women read Keep Tightly Closed. Then direct a discussion at the end of the readings. Were there any significant contradictions in switching gender roles? What were the issues in either of the plays that could not be transposed?
(Mrs. Watermellon) has been abandoned. The prostitute scene mocks motherhood as well. The three women (including the mother figure) are, after all, preparing themselves for an orgy. Finally, in the last scene, the mother is pictured as having few thoughts of her own, and her daughter tells her that she is three-hundred years behind the times.
STYLE There are only three characters on stage at all times during this play. Three women are first introduced only as Woman One, Woman Two, and Woman Three. However, throughout the play the women take on different roles and different names as they work through various mini-scenes. Sometimes the women are sisters; sometimes they are mother and child. At one point, one of the women spends the entire scene on the floor. The actresses often change and move in and out of the play through their dialogue. There are mo-
7
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
ments when they say their lines to one another. There are also times when they speak directly to the audience. There are various monologues by an individual; and there are also group chants. To help define the ambiguity that might surround the play because of the constant changing of roles, stage directions suggest that the actresses ‘‘freeze’’ in between the different sections of the play. This marker warns the audience that the actresses are stepping out of their previous characters and moving on to new ones. With each new scenario, the women’s names change, not only on the program but also in the dialogue, providing yet another marker for the audience. ‘‘She wants ale, Sophie,’’ Esther announces, cueing the audience into the new identities. Since there are few props provided, Terry has one of the women describe the scene in the bloc in which Nancy visits her sister Sally’s new apartment. ‘‘Why it’s very . . . it’s really very charming. It really is. Downright Greenwich Village, the clean West Side, that is.’’ In the scene with the prostitutes, Felicia states, ‘‘I can’t see in that mirror,’’ to explain that the women are dressing for a party, trying to apply their makeup.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT 1960s American Experimental Theater The cultural revolution of the 1960s influenced many aspects of American society, as well as the American theater. The revolution sparked a keen interest in innovative drama, and that innovation, in turn, had a strong and penetrating affect on American culture as a whole. Although cultural revolutions were taking place all over the entire Western world, the changes in theater were mostly an American invention. Theatrical groups such as Living Theatre, Bread and Puppet, as well as the group that Megan Terry belonged to, Open Theatre, sprung up in the early 1960s. Most of these troupes included young people—actors, playwrights, directors, and set designers—who were interested in critiquing their society, whether the focus was a statement on the overall values of society, on civil rights, on sexual
8
relationships, on the Vietnam War, or on the burgeoning struggle to create new definitions for women’s roles in society. Among some of the more influential theater people during this time was Joseph Papp (1921–1991), who used commercially successful plays and musicals (one of his later and most famous ones was Chorus Line in 1974) to help support experimental off-Broadway productions. Other names included Tom O’Horgan (originally a producer with the experimental theater group La Mama), who went on to create the successful rock musical Hair (1968); and Amiri Baraka, also known as LeRoi Jones, who founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem and wrote the critically acclaimed play Dutchman (1964). Experimental theater, however, was not limited to off-Broadway productions. Experimental plays were performed all over the country. A common thread that ran through most of the plays was that most were very revolutionary and therefore very shocking. Nudity and sexuality that had never been displayed on stage (such as homosexual acts), vilification of high-ranking officials and American foreign policies, and the denigration of established religions were some of the major themes. The most interesting factor, though, was not just that these plays were being written and performed but that the people who were buying the tickets and watching the performances came from the middle and upper classes of the population. It was the first time, during the birth and heyday of experimental theater, that the so-called counterculture, or alternative culture, had such a heavy influence on the general populace. Cutting-edge ideas became the topic of conversation out in the suburbs as well as in the heart of the city; revolutionary concepts were discussed at cocktail parties as well as after rock concerts because experimental theater was getting its message out and making people from all walks of life question the status quo of their society. Experimental theater with a bent toward feminist theory was even more successful. Two major feminists groups, Women’s Experimental Theatre and the Wilma Theatre, were established, but works by feminists were not restricted to these venues. Not only were plays with feminist messages popular but women suddenly found that the roles of playwright and director were also open to them. One of the more successful small theaters during this time was La Mama Experimental Theatre,
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1960s: Experimental theater is born in the United States, influencing the mass culture with its productions that shock middle-class Americans who are concerned about the war in Vietnam, civil rights, and the feminist movement. Today: Experimental theater remains alive and thriving all over the United States and has broadened its scope to include international themes of multiculturalism and gay rights. • 1960s: Large and loud demonstrations against the war in Vietnam gain the attention of the media and U.S. politicians as thousands of young men are drafted into the military services. Today: Demonstrations and protests opposing the U.S. and British war in Iraq are held around the world. • 1960s: A so-called second wave of feminism sweeps the country as women march in the streets. They have the right to vote, but now they are demanding the right to work outside the home and to choose whether or not they want to sustain pregnancies.
successful musicals: Hello Dolly (1964), Funny Girl (1964), Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Man of LaMancha (1965), Mame (1966), and Cabaret (1966). With the introduction of rock music, however, these types of musicals are quickly classified as old-fashioned and are replaced with rock and roll ventures such as Hair (1968) and Oh, Calcutta! (1969). Today: At the turn of the century, Broadway is heavily influenced by what are referred to as corporate musicals, hugely profitable productions such as Beauty and the Beast (1994) and The Lion King (1997), but the trend is changing as Broadway experiences a revival of the standard musical with the productions of Urinetown (2001) and Thoroughly Modern Millie (2002). • 1960s: U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the sale of oral pills for contraception. By the late 1960s, it is estimated that 13 million women around the world use the pill. Pope Paul IV reissues a statement reinforcing the Catholic Church’s position against practicing birth control.
• 1960s: Broadway entices people with a burst of
Today: U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the sale of a pill that causes an abortion. Planned Parenthood facilities are threatened with protests and bombings; and President George W. Bush reimposes a ‘‘global gag rule’’ which restricts funding of international family planning programs. It is estimated that 96 percent of Catholic women in the U.S. practice birth control.
which began as a small basement theater in 1961 under the direction of playwright Ellen Stewart. It was typical of like-minded theaters throughout the country with a mission to nurture and present new, original works by people from a wide range of backgrounds. The work presented by La Mama was experimental not only in the writing but also in the collaboration that they fostered by incorporating music into their dramas. Many of the best playwrights of the 1960s had one or more of their plays
produced at La Mama, including Terry, who saw her Magic Realists, Three Clowns, and Viet Rock all staged there in 1966, and People v. Ranchman (1967), Changes and Keep Tightly Closed in a Cool, Dark Place both in 1968, as well as her most successful play Approaching Simone, which was presented at La Mama in 1970. Other well-known playwrights who had their early plays produced at La Mama include Sam Sheppard, Bruce Kessler, Tom Eyen, and Lanford Wilson.
Today: The third wave of feminism is gaining momentum as young women grow dissatisfied with their role in society. They have gained access to education and jobs, but now they want equal pay and advancement in relation to their male counterparts.
V o l u m e
1 8
9
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Although Terry is credited with being one of the first American feminist playwrights, and her plays have inspired many other dramatists to broaden their imaginations and to create dynamic and innovative experimental works, there is little critical analysis of her play Calm Down Mother. It was produced off-off-Broadway in a small but eventually influential theater group called Open Theatre to small audiences and few critical write-ups. However, in the inner circle of playwrights and academics who study drama, there are many tributes to her creations. Helene Keyssar, for instance, points out in Feminist Theatre that Terry’s writing is revolutionary but subtly so. It is not radical in itself and does not demand sweeping reforms, but rather calls attention to possibilities that Terry perceives in women’s nature. Her plays encourage women to transform themselves by demonstrating the changes that Terry herself envisions. She also inspires other writers and her audiences, it is suggested, because she shows how women can create enormous amounts of energy by working together instead of competing with one another. Terry herself reinforced this concept in an interview published in Kathleen Betsko’s Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights. Terry stated that one of the main reasons that she writes is to present the potential she perceives in women in dealing with life and all its challenges. She encourages women, through her writing, to take action as she herself takes action through her creative endeavors. She loves pushing herself, she says, to the edges of what is possible. Many critics agree that Terry’s plays expose hypocrisy in American culture, but she does so not by merely pointing her fingers at particular institutions or by accusing any one group of people; rather, she does so by showing her audiences what they can do to break free of the confinements that society often places on people, or, specifically, on women. In her essay ‘‘Megan Terry,’’ which appeared in Speaking on Stage, Felicia Hardiwon Londre recalled seeing Terry’s early plays in the 1960s and feeling privileged to have done so. The experience left a strong impression on her that has lasted over the years. She believes that there will soon be a reevaluation of Terry’s work that will honor the impact it has made. June Schlueter, in her Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, probably
1 0
would agree with this assessment, as she defined Terry’s work by referring to it as an ‘‘experience of discovery.’’
CRITICISM Joyce Hart Hart has degrees in English literature and creative writing and focuses her published writing on literary themes. In this essay, Hart explores the suggested transformation of the three women in Terry’s play in an attempt to discover the deeper meaning behind the brief scenarios. The subtitle to Megan Terry’s play is A Transformation for Three Women. If Terry is true to her title, then there must be a pattern to each short scenario, each change of character, and each relationship that she demonstrates in this play. In order to find the pattern, readers must ask questions such as why did Terry start her play with a tape recording of the first signs of life outside the great oceans? How does she use sisterhood? Why is the title of her play contained in the scene with the prostitutes? Although answers to these questions are subjective and, at the most, speculative, they can add depth to this brief play in which characters change identities, scenes appear random, and no obvious (at least at first sight) answers are provided. By digging into possible motives for creating such an arbitrary play, readers become more active in the process. Terry does not hand out her philosophy as a college professor might offer in a lecture. She is one of the pioneers in feminist experimental theater, and one of her main goals was to engage her audience in the process. She offers a scheme or an outline. It is up to the audience to fill in the missing pieces. Terry begins her play with a curious tape recording that recounts the beginning of life on land. There are three one-celled creatures, giving the reader a hint that Terry is setting up a theme for the play since there are also three female actresses throughout. As these three one-celled creatures make their way to the shore, they are constantly being washed toward the beach and then drawn back into the ocean. Not until they join forces are they eventually pushed far enough up the beach that they are able to avoid the action of the next wave. Their challenge is not yet over, however, as two are torn away by a tornado. Only one remains, and it ‘‘stretches toward the sun.’’
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Megan Terry’s hit play Viet Rock (1966) came about after an exploration of emotions about the Vietnam War that Terry conducted with some of the participants in an improvisational workshop she created. It is considered the first rock musical produced in the United States and the first play on the topic of the bloodshed in Vietnam. • Playwright Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles (1988) relates the story of Heidi Holland from her childhood in the 1960s through the 1980s, illustrating the influence of feminism on her life and the lives of her friends. Both men and women congregate in consciousness-raising sessions to discuss what women need to do to truly be empowered in the future. • Actress Lily Tomlin starred in the one-woman play The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985) written by Jane Wagner. The play examines the relationships between many different women. One of the more powerful scenes has Tomlin’s character reflecting on an old journal she finds, one that she wrote during the 1970s when she was involved in the women’s movement. •
Jane Martin’s Keely and Du (1993) involves the issue of abortion. Keely is pregnant and must confront a segment of the religious right that tries to keep her from getting the abortion. In the process, she is befriended by Du, who supports
Following this opening, Terry writes various scenarios that include three women. Each of the situations that she presents could be likened to the attempts of the three one-celled creatures as they attempt to reach shore. First, there are the sisters Sophie and Esther, the shop owners, and their young customer who has come in to buy some beer. The connections between these three women are tenuous at best. Sophie wants to touch the young woman’s hair, a very personal experience. She admires the young woman, but not so much for the woman’s
V o l u m e
1 8
her decision despite her own philosophical reasoning. • The relationships between mothers and daughters are examined in Charlotte Keatley’s play My Mother Said I Never Should (1988). Four different generations are represented in this fourwoman play, which explores four historical definitions of family. During several breaks in the normal time frames, the four women are transformed into children. It is in these scenes that they are able to break through the barriers that separate them and find the common ground that binds them. • Susan Glaspell’s Trifles (1916) investigates the sisterhood that many women share. The play revolves around two housewives, who discuss the case of a woman who has been accused of murdering her husband. • Women are unable to solve their problems in Pam Gems’s play Dusa, Fish, Stas, and Vi (1972), and one of the four characters ends up committing suicide. The four women are overwhelmed by the effects of divorce, anorexia, the loss of children, and other debilitating challenges that they must face. • Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls (1982) contrasts the lives of professional women who have found success in business with those who have not.
sake but rather for her own. The young woman reminds her first of her mother and then of herself; and it is in that longing for her youth that Sophie reaches out and touches the young woman. Her gestures are personal, but her motives for touching are anything but personal. The young woman is an object, a phantom of Sophie’s youth. The young woman might just as well have been a mannequin. Sophie asks nothing about the young girl’s life or her feelings. All Sophie does is tell the young girl of her troubles, her fears, her sorrows. Esther does not
1 1
C a l m
D o w n
M o t h e r
IT WOULD SEEM MORE LOGICAL, THEN, THAT SUE SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO QUOTE THE TITLE OF THE PLAY. HER FINAL WORDS, AS WELL AS THE FINAL STATEMENT OF THE PLAY, MIGHT HAVE BEEN: ‘CALM DOWN, MOTHER. TIMES ARE CHANGING.’’’
share Sophie’s feelings; as a matter of fact, she tends to make fun of them. She remembers Sophie’s youth in contempt, recounting how she used to spend so much time combing her hair and admiring herself in the mirror. Esther and the young woman join in a mournful lament at the end, mocking Sophie’s pain. At this point, the women lose their identities. The young girl returns to being Woman Two, and she admits that she hates it when people try to bring her down. She wants to throw off their emotions rather than absorb them. Sophie goes back to being Woman One, and she displays her anger by stating that she wants to hit something. Woman Three, trying to make sense of it all, tells the audience that everyone needs to write down the details of their lives so they will not feel so small. ‘‘A lot of people must start writing with the absurd conviction they are talking to or will contact someone,’’ she tells them. In comparison with the opening section of this play, this scene points out that these women are not connected. It was only when the three one-celled creatures came together in the opening scene, that they finally were pushed high enough on the beach that the waves could not recall them to the sea. In the above scenario, Sophie is hurting, yet neither of the women can or want to empathize with her. Despite her family connection, Esther displays jealousy toward her sister. The young girl cannot relate to Sophie’s loss of youth. Each woman lives in a separate and isolated unit. They cannot see beyond their own needs and therefore cannot find the soil upon which they must sink their roots in order to grow. Woman One and Woman Two then beat Woman Three down to the ground while she is talking to the
1 2
audience about ‘‘contacting’’ someone. Woman Three remains in her prone position throughout the next scene, in which Women One and Two are transformed into a new sisterhood, that of Nancy and Sally. These women are much more supportive of one another. As a matter of fact, all their relationships with women are positive. It is the men in their lives who bring them down. Sally has just divorced an abusive husband, and Nancy has issues with her father who, in her mind, is attempting to upstage her mother who is dying of cancer. This part of Terry’s work reenacts the wave motion of the ocean. The three one-celled organisms were constantly washed ashore only to be pulled back by the waves. The scene between Nancy and Sally defines how a healthy relationship between sisters can help create benefit for both. However, Nancy and Sally are not yet secured on the beach. The wave that pulls them off the soil is their relationship with men. Nancy states that her sister Sally is soft when it comes to dealing with men, implying that she allows them to take advantage of her. Nancy in turn, is suspicious of men even to the point of accusing her father of faking a heart attack. Terry appears to be implying that a good relationship with women is a step toward growth, but women must also resolve their conflicts with men. Whereas in this scene, Nancy honors her mother by referring to her as a good role model, in the next section of the play, two elderly women (one of whom is a mother) have been ‘‘committed’’ to a nursing home. They are taken care of by a nurse who tends to them mechanically. Although they appear to be companions for one another, Mrs. Tweed and Mrs. Watermellon do not get along very well. Mrs. Tweed tells Mrs. Watermellon that she should not be thinking of herself as a woman anymore when the latter refers to her menses: ‘‘You shouldn’t think of such things. Woman a’ yore age.’’ The two women then lambaste one another with insults, demonstrating the shallowness of their friendship. This scene is reflective of the one that Sophie and Esther played out, in which none of the women exhibited compassion toward one another. This scene is also a statement of how society treats old people, in particular old women. Not only society at large but families in general tend to want to shut them away, as exhibited with the refrain at the end of this scene: ‘‘Please keep your hands off the doors.’’ The scenario that follows the nursing home section involves three prostitutes, and it is a bit
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
puzzling. Prostitution, of course, represents another kind of relationship with men; not one, readers can assume, that Terry promotes because she portrays the three women as being constantly at one another’s throats. Right from the opening lines, Momo and Felicia are harshly criticizing one another. Terry also sets up this scene to make it look as if Momo and Felicia are the children of Inez, the third character. It is Felicia who states: ‘‘Calm down, Mother,’’ the title of the play. It is possible that Terry thought the relationships in this scene were the worst depictions that she could think of for women, as they prepare themselves for a forthcoming orgy. Everything in this scene is either upside down or totally wrong. For one thing, Inez, more than likely, is not really the mother of Momo and Felicia; for another, the women constantly bicker among themselves as they compete for the attention of men and their money; and to top it off, Momo is a cheat. To further extend the absurdity of this scene, Terry has Momo and Felicia asking Inez to spank them for being ‘‘bad girls.’’ The three women represent the epitome of commercialized womanhood—a bad mixture of sexuality and cash. They have become objects without a soul. They are the one-celled organisms that are torn out of the sand, unable to set their roots. The play ends with a discussion of birth control, an issue that remains as controversial in contemporary times as it was at mid-century when Terry’s play was staged. In the previous scene, the prostitutes’ bodies did not belong to the women, as they sold their sexuality as a commodity in order to earn a living. Sexuality, in their case, had nothing to do with sensuality, let alone the idea of creating a child. However, to stay in their profession, the prostitutes had to be careful to avoid getting pregnant. In the 1960s, most religious organizations not only preached against having sex before marriage, but some, such as the Catholic Church, taught that it was a sin to think about sex. Sex was a biological drive meant only to procreate. Pleasure in sex was never discussed. Some women, therefore, believed that it was their duty to have sex with their husbands without considering any pleasure in the act. Understanding this mentality helps to enlighten the final scene of Terry’s play. The mother of Sue is shocked that her daughter would go against the church and practice birth control. First of all, Sue was not even supposed to be having sex since she was not married. Secondly, why would any woman want to have sex except to get pregnant? Thus, Sue’s mother is horrified.
V o l u m e
1 8
D o w n
M o t h e r
Sue counters, however, with the fact that every woman practices some form of birth control because it is impossible for all of her eggs to be fertilized in her lifetime. Some of those eggs will be cast ‘‘upon the ground,’’ which, according to Sue’s mother, is contrary to biblical teachings. In this scene, Sue not only stands up for her rights to enjoy sex, to control the number of babies that she brings into the world, to control what happens to her body, and to the old conservative notions of her mother’s generation, she also stands up to men. She shouts back at the priests and the male magazine writers who condemn birth control. She is the only female in the play who makes a stand, who is strong enough to fight for her rights despite the pressures that are applied against her. Sue is the one-celled organism who, in the beginning of the play ‘‘stretches toward the sun.’’ She is the character who ‘‘walks toward the audience and smiles at them in joyous wonder.’’ She is Margaret Fuller, as mentioned in the first scene, one of the first American feminists, who states, ‘‘‘From the time I could speak and go alone, my father addressed me not as a plaything, but as a living mind.’’’ It would seem more logical, then, that Sue should have been the one to quote the title of the play. Her final words, as well as the final statement of the play, might have been: ‘‘Calm down, mother. Times are changing.’’ Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on Calm Down Mother, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
1 3
C a l m
1 4
D o w n
M o t h e r
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
V o l u m e
1 8
D o w n
M o t h e r
1 5
C a l m
1 6
D o w n
M o t h e r
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
C a l m
SOURCES
M o t h e r
tre, The Wooster Group, and Open Theatre) in an attempt to discover why, at the turn of the century, these theaters have declined.
Betsko, Kathleen, and Rachel Koenig, Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, Beech Tree Books, 1987. Keyssar, Helene, Feminist Theatre, Macmillan Publishers, 1984. Londre, Felicia Hardison, ‘‘Megan Terry,’’ in Speaking on Stage, University of Alabama Press, 1996. Schlueter, June, Modern American Drama: The Female Canon, Associated University Presses, 1990.
FURTHER READING Aronson, Arnold, American Avant-Garde Theatre, Routledge, 2000. Aronson, who teaches theater at Columbia University, explores some of the more popular and more successful avant-garde theaters (such as Living Thea-
V o l u m e
D o w n
1 8
Heywood, Leslie, and Jennifer Drake, eds., Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Heywood and Drake have collected essays written by women born between 1964 and 1973 who discuss feminism and what it means to them. Kershaw, Baz, The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention, Routledge, 1992. Kershaw presents a detailed analysis of radical theater and its effect on political and cultural practices. Roose-Evans, James, Experimental Theatre: From Stanislavsky to Peter Brook, Routledge, 1997. Roose-Evans, one of Britain’s most innovative directors, explores the history of avant-garde theater in search of its influence on social and political history. Thompson, Denise, Radical Feminism Today, Sage, 2001. Thompson reexamines feminism by looking at the definitions that feminism has previously offered women and questioning the limitations that they have imposed.
1 7
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside THOMAS MIDDLETON c. 1611
1 8
Most scholars believe that Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside was first performed sometime between 1611 and 1613, although it was not published until 1630, when it was published in a quarto edition in England. This play, like many of Middleton’s other works, details several plots carried out by unscrupulous people in search of wealth, marriage, or sex—and sometimes all three. The chaste maid of the title would have been a joke for Middleton’s audiences since Cheapside was infamous at the time for its prostitutes and other lascivious people, and a chaste maid would have been hard to find. Middleton was born into London’s prosperous middle class and had some exposure to most other classes as well. As a result, his plays include characters from all social levels, offering an accurate portrayal of what life was like in London at this time. In fact, some critics have gone so far as to call Middleton a realist, since he, above many other playwrights of the time, was so adept at exposing the harsh, unromanticized reality of human vice and corruption. The play is intricately plotted and consists of several stories about many families which are ultimately resolved at the same time. Because of this masterful plotting and because the play was so audacious in its exploration of the depths of human depravity—which Middleton exploited for comic purposes—many critics consider the play to be one of his finest works. A current copy of the play can be found in the paperback edition of Five Plays, which was published by Penguin USA in 1988.
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Middleton was born in 1580 in London, England. Although most scholars list April 18 as his christening date, most are unable to confirm his actual birth date. The playwright began writing at an early age, publishing at least three nondramatic pieces as a teenager. He attended Queen’s College, Oxford, starting in 1598, but apparently left without a degree after two years. The first record of his dramatic work comes in 1602 with Caesar’s Fall or The Two Shapes, which he wrote with Anthony Munday, John Webster, and Michael Drayton. Especially in the early part of his career, Middleton often collaborated with other playwrights as part of his work for the famous producer Philip Henslowe. Because of his collaborations, some of Middleton’s plays have only been fully attributed to him since the 1970s, when Middleton scholarship increased significantly. These include The Puritan (1607); The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607); and A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608). Middleton’s plays often feature a cast of characters who try to connive or deceive each other, as they do in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, which Middleton most likely wrote sometime between 1611 to 1613, and which was first published in 1630. Other well-known comedies include Michaelmas Term (1607) and A Trick to Catch the Old One (1608). However, while Middleton’s comedies have been enjoyed by many, two of his tragedies—Women Beware Women (performed in 1621) and The Changeling (performed in 1621 and written by Middleton and William Rowley)—are often considered his two masterpieces.
Thomas Middleton
PLOT SUMMARY
latter is very critical of her daughter saying that she is not very feminine and that she should feel lucky that she is getting married. Mr. Yellowhammer, a goldsmith, comes in announcing the arrival of Sir Walter, an older knight who is Moll’s intended husband. At the same time, the Yellowhammers receive a letter from their son Tim who is returning from college. In return for giving Sir Walter Moll’s hand in marriage, Walter is bringing a woman to marry Tim. The Yellowhammers believe that this woman is Sir Walter’s landed niece, a Welsh gentlewoman, but she is in fact a prostitute. The Yellowhammers present Moll to Sir Walter, who initially tries to flee, afraid of her impending marriage. Touchwood Junior, a young man who is in love with Moll, dupes Yellowhammer into making him a wedding ring. When Yellowhammer asks how big the intended bride’s finger is, Touchwood Junior says that it is the same size as Moll’s. He also says that he needs the ring quickly, as he is trying to steal his bride away from her father. Yellowhammer does not see through this speech to realize that Touchwood Junior means Moll.
Act 1, Scene 1
Act 1, Scene 2
A Chaste Maid in Cheapside starts out during the season of Lent with a conversation between Moll Yellowhammer and her mother, Maudlin. The
Davy, Sir Walter’s poor relative and personal valet, comes across Mr. Allwit whose wife is expecting a baby. Allwit delivers a lengthy monologue
Middleton wrote his plays during the lateElizabethan period and was a contemporary of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, two playwrights with whom he is often compared. In his time, Middleton was an extremely popular playwright and was often commissioned to write and produce plays for noble or political clients. In 1620, Middleton started serving as city chronologer, a post he held until his death. Middleton died on July 4, 1627, in Newington Butts, Surrey, England.
V o l u m e
1 8
1 9
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
that describes how Sir Walter has taken care of the Allwits for many years. He alludes to the fact that Sir Walter has had a long-standing affair with Mrs. Allwit and that Sir Walter is the father of their children. Sir Walter enters and asks Mr. Allwit and two servants if anybody else has slept with Mrs. Allwit including Mr. Allwit. They all deny it and Sir Walter says that if anybody else does sleep with her, he will marry somebody else and leave them all without money. At this point the Allwits do not know about Sir Walter’s intended marriage to Moll. Allwit tells the audience that he will fight to keep Sir Walter single, so that the knight continues to feel compelled to sleep with Mrs. Allwit and pay for all of the Allwits’ expenses. Two of Sir Walter’s sons by Mrs. Allwit, Wat and Nick, come in to say hello, and Sir Walter makes plans to get rid of them before his marriage by sending them off to be apprentices.
or witnesses at the baby girl’s christening, Sir Walter says that he will serve as one himself to prevent the suspicion that Sir Walter is the father. Allwit offers to get Touchwood Junior, whom Sir Walter does not know, to serve as another witness. Allwit spies two promoters, authorities who were given the power to take meat from citizens who were not supposed to be eating it during Lent. Allwit insults them. The promoters are upset but return to their watching and soon confiscate some meat from one man. Another man works for somebody who pays off the promoters so they let him go. Finally, the woman with the child from the previous scene walks by the promoters, blatantly carrying a basket of meat with the baby hidden underneath. When the promoters take the basket and the woman leaves, they realize that they have been had and that the woman has dumped her unwanted child on them.
Act 2, Scene 1
Act 2, Scene 3
Touchwood Senior, the older brother of Touchwood Junior, enters with his wife. They talk about the fact that they must live separately because Touchwood Senior is so fertile that his wife keeps having babies which they cannot afford to raise. Touchwood Senior’s wife leaves and another woman, carrying a child enters. She says that it is Touchwood’s bastard child and she threatens to announce this fact. Touchwood Senior gives her some money, and she leaves him alone. While Sir Oliver Kix and his wife—relatives of Sir Walter— watch from afar, Touchwood Junior comes to ask for his older brother’s help in buying a marriage license for his desired marriage to Moll. They both exit and the Kixes note that while Touchwood Senior is financially poor, he is rich in children. They on the other hand, are rich but have been unable to conceive, a fact that makes both of them bitter and causes them to fight because they need an heir to claim the property that will otherwise go to Sir Walter. A maid breaks up their fight, saying that Touchwood Senior has a fertility water that he drinks, which could make Lady Kix pregnant. The maid says that if Sir Kix is willing to pay Touchwood Senior a lot of money, he will give them some of the fertility water.
Act 3, Scene 1
Act 2, Scene 2 Allwit and Sir Walter talk about Mrs. Allwit’s new baby girl. While Allwit refers to it as Sir Walter’s when they are alone, when others come in, such as the wet nurse, they refer to it as Allwit’s child. In fact, when it comes time to choose gossips
2 0
Allwit and Davy get ready for the christening of Mrs. Allwit’s child. The various witnesses including Puritan women, arrive on the scene and get ready to go inside to the christening. Meanwhile, Touchwood Junior has picked up the ring that he had Yellowhammer make and he and Moll make plans to steal away and be secretly married. Sir Walter enters and is introduced to Touchwood Junior, who is supposed to serve as one of the witnesses. The women squabble over their line order for going into the christening.
Meanwhile, Touchwood Junior sneaks away and joins with a parson, who is going to marry Touchwood Junior and Moll in secret. Moll arrives with Touchwood Senior and the secret ceremony begins but is broken up by Yellowhammer and Sir Walter. Yellowhammer leaves with Moll whom, he says, he is going to lock up. Sir Walter disavows any friendship with Touchwood Junior since he tried to steal Moll away from him.
Act 3, Scene 2 During the christening, the various women remark how much the large child looks like its father, meaning Allwit. They also note how gallant Sir Walter looks when compared to Mr. Allwit. Sir Walter gives Mrs. Allwit a very generous gift which the various women remark on, saying it is too rich. The nurse comes in bringing sweets and wine and Allwit notices that some of the women take more than their share. He also notes that if he were paying
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
for all of this, he would be broke from the Puritan women’s obvious excess. However, since Sir Walter is footing the bill, Allwit has nothing to worry about. The men leave and the nurse lets Mrs. Allwit know that her son Tim has arrived. Tim comes into the room, sees all of the married women and leaves. The nurse drags him back in. Mrs. Allwit calls for Tim’s tutor who has arrived with him from college. Tim suffers welcoming kisses from all of the married women. In a private conversation, Davy tells Allwit that Sir Walter is intending to marry Moll. Allwit vows to stop the marriage.
Act 3, Scene 3 Touchwood Junior tells his older brother about his plan to steal Moll away from Yellowhammer. Touchwood Junior also encourages his virile older brother to get Lady Kix pregnant so that Touchwood Senior can claim that it was due to the fertility water and make money out of the deal. Sir Kix and his wife enter, fighting about their inability to conceive. Touchwood Senior sells Kix the fertility water, which is really just almond milk, then tells the knight that he must ride for five hours to shake up the elixir and make it work. Sir Oliver gives Touchwood Senior one hundred pounds and then promises to give him another hundred when his wife gets pregnant, a third hundred when she is bedridden and a fourth hundred when she actually has the child. Sir Oliver leaves for his five-hour journey, and Touchwood Senior and Lady Kix go to her coach so that he can impregnate her.
Act 4, Scene 1 Tim and his tutor get in a semantic argument in Latin which is broken up by Maudlin Yellowhammer. Tim says he can prove anything by logic and says that he will prove a prostitute to be an honest woman. Maudlin sends the Welsh gentlewoman in to Tim, hoping to strike up a love affair between them while Maudlin and the tutor leave. Tim tries to speak to the woman in Latin, but she does not understand it and she thinks that he does not understand English. As a result, she tries to speak to him in Welsh, but Tim does not understand. Maudlin comes in and realizes that Tim’s use of Latin has caused the confusion. Tim has heard that the Welsh gentlewoman can sing and asks her to do so in order to see all of his wife’s qualities before he marries her. She sings and Tim is impressed. They all leave and Yellowhammer and Allwit have a private conference in which Allwit claims to be a relative. He also tells Yellowhammer that Sir Walter is a ladies
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
man who has been sleeping with the wife of a man named Allwit for seven years. Since Yellowhammer does not know who Allwit is, he does not realize that Allwit is talking to him. Although Yellowhammer tells Allwit that he will not let Sir Walter marry his daughter, secretly, he says he will, since Yellowhammer himself has also kept mistresses. Maudlin comes in and says that Moll has escaped.
Act 4, Scene 2 Touchwood Junior and Moll attempt to escape across the river, but Maudlin jumps in the water and drags Moll back to land. Yellowhammer tells Sir Walter that they should be married first thing in the morning to prevent her from escaping again. In his grief over losing Moll again, Touchwood Junior draws his sword on Sir Walter and they fight.
Act 5, Scene 1 Davy goes to the Allwits, telling them that he thinks that Sir Walter’s wounds from the fight may kill him. Sir Walter arrives, obviously hurt. Although Allwit first tries to help him, Sir Walter will have none of it and keeps accusing him and Mrs. Allwit of being his undoing. He says that they are the cause of his sin and that they have encouraged it. Now he wants only to repent and they keep showing him signs of his sin, such as three of the bastard children—Wat, Nick, and the baby girl—that he had by Mrs. Allwit. Allwit brings Sir Walter so that he can make his will, and Sir Walter savagely bequeaths curses, plagues, and other miseries to the Allwits. A servant enters and says that Touchwood Junior is dead, killed from the wounds given to him by Sir Walter. The Allwits suddenly change their tune and refuse to harbor Sir Walter now that he is wanted by the law as a murderer and can no longer be of any financial use to them. In addition, both of the Allwits refuse to acknowledge the fact that he has slept with Mrs. Allwit. Sir Walter leaves and the Allwits resolve to use the riches that they have acquired over the years from Sir Walter to get a house in the Strand, the most fashionable part of London.
Act 5, Scene 2 The Yellowhammers nervously attend to Moll who appears to be on her deathbed from a sickness she got while being dragged out of the water by her mother. Touchwood Senior enters with a letter from his younger brother, whom he says is dead. Moll appears to die and is carried out. Yellowhammer
2 1
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
suggests that they miss Moll’s funeral, so that they can go have Tim married to the Welsh gentlewoman. By doing this, they believe that they will get the riches that Sir Walter promised while not having to marry their daughter to Sir Walter, since he is wanted by the law.
Act 5, Scene 3 Sir Oliver speaks with his servants noting that his wife, Lady Kix, is newly pregnant. He instructs the servants to pay Touchwood Senior his next hundred pounds. The servants tell Kix about the impending funeral for Moll and Touchwood Junior.
Act 5, Scene 4 At the funeral, Touchwood Senior asks the assembled crowd if they would have been joyous to see Moll and Touchwood Junior married. The crowd says yes, at which point the two lovers rise from their coffins admitting that they faked their deaths and are married by the parson. Yellowhammer and Maudlin enter too late to stop the marriage. They also note that they have married their son Tim to the Welsh gentlewoman, who is a prostitute—a fact they learned too late. They talk about Sir Walter, who is in the debtor’s prison for failing to pay all of his bills. Sir Kix tells Touchwood Senior that he and his family are free to live with Sir Kix and his wife, and that Sir Kix will support any children that the Touchwoods have. Tim and his new wife enter and Tim is upset that he has married a prostitute. However, Maudlin reminds him that he once said he could prove a prostitute to be an honest woman and now he has his chance. All of the guests retire to dinner where they will celebrate both new marriages.
CHARACTERS Mr. Allwit Mr. Allwit knowingly lets his wife have an affair with Sir Walter Whorehound and in return, Sir Walter covers all of the Allwits’ living expenses. Allwit is an example of a willing cuckold known as a wittol. For Allwit and for his wife, their marriage is more like a business arrangement than a traditional, romantic marriage. Allwit allows Sir Walter to be his wife’s lover to the point where Allwit has lost the privilege of sleeping with his wife at all, as a scene with the jealous Sir Walter indicates. Allwit is also suspicious of Sir Walter, cautious that his
2 2
benefactor may someday try to marry and no longer need Allwit’s wife. When Allwit realizes that Sir Walter has come to town to marry Moll Yellowhammer, he tries to stop it by telling Mr. Yellowhammer that Sir Walter has had mistresses. Despite their strange arrangement, Allwit does genuinely enjoy his children—all of whom are bastards fathered by Sir Walter. When Sir Walter seeks redemption at the end of the play, thinking he is mortally wounded, Allwit tries to comfort him by bringing in two of these bastard children—Wat and Nick. However, when Sir Walter says that he will leave Allwit and his wife only curses in his will and when Allwit hears Sir Walter has killed a man and is a wanted fugitive, Allwit suddenly changes his tune and no longer wants anything to do with Sir Walter. He refuses Sir Walter sanctuary, and Allwit and his wife decide to use the possessions bought for them by Sir Walter to outfit a house in the Strand—the fashionable part of London.
Mrs. Allwit With her husband’s knowledge, Mrs. Allwit has an affair with Sir Walter Whorehound. In return, Sir Walter covers all of the Allwits’ living expenses. Mrs. Allwit’s marriage to her husband is more like a business arrangement than a romantic marriage. When the play begins, Mrs. Allwit is about to give birth to her latest child by Sir Walter. This fact and the event of the new baby’s christening, give the play some of the most humorously ironic scenes—a fact noted by many critics. When Sir Walter seeks redemption at the end of the play, thinking he is mortally wounded, Allwit tries to comfort him by bringing in some of the bastard children that Mrs. Allwit has had by Sir Walter. This only makes Sir Walter more distressed, and he accuses Mrs. Allwit of helping to damn his soul by being his mistress. When Allwit tries to throw Sir Walter out after it is revealed that Sir Walter is a fugitive, Mrs. Allwit tries to intervene on Sir Walter’s behalf at first. Ultimately, Mrs. Allwit sides with her husband. After they kick out Sir Walter, it is Mrs. Allwit who suggests they use their extra possessions to secure a house in the Strand.
Davy Dahanna Davy Dahanna is Sir Walter Whorehound’s poor relative and personal servant. Throughout the play, Dahanna makes many humorous asides to the audience at the expense of Sir Walter and others. Dahanna is the one who notifies Mr. Allwit of Sir Walter’s impending marriage. Dahanna is hoping
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
that if Allwit can stop the marriage and Sir Walter dies childless, Dahanna may gain the inheritance from his distant relation, Sir Kix.
Mrs. Kix Mrs. Kix, wife of Sir Kix, is distraught that they cannot conceive a child so she gets pregnant by Touchwood Senior. The Kixes are related to Sir Walter in an unspecified way, but the play does indicate that if the Kixes do not bear an heir, they will lose their fortune to Sir Walter. For this reason, the Kixes’ childless state becomes a source of strife between them, and Mrs. Kix blames her husband, saying that she never had fertility problems before. After Mrs. Kix and her husband learn of the special fertility drink that Touchwood Senior can sell them, Mrs. Kix encourages her husband to buy it. While her husband drinks the elixir and is sent off on a long horseback ride—which Touchwood Senior says is the only way to make the drink work—the extremely fertile Touchwood Senior impregnates Mrs. Kix in her coach.
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
her out. Finally, the two lovers fake their deaths. For Touchwood Junior, he fakes his by acting like he is mortally wounded in a duel with Sir Walter Whorehound. However, at the funeral for the lovers, Touchwood Junior and Moll rise up out of their coffins and get married before the Yellowhammers can stop them.
Touchwood, Senior Touchwood Senior is an extremely fertile man who has more children than he can support and as a result, he and his wife plan to live apart before they have any more children. Touchwood Senior finds a benefactor for his children when he sells a fake elixir to Sir Oliver Kix, saying that it will make him fertile enough to impregnate his wife. However, while Kix is off taking the elixir, Touchwood Senior impregnates Mrs. Kix himself. Sir Kix is so happy that his wife is pregnant that he agrees to support Touchwood Senior and his family.
The Welsh Gentlewoman Sir Oliver Kix Sir Oliver Kix is related to Sir Walter and the two are in competition to see who can produce the first legitimate heir and thus secure the Kixes’ fortune; Kix unwittingly allows himself to be cuckolded. The Kixes’ childless state becomes a source of strife between them, and Sir Kix blames his wife, saying she is barren—even though Sir Kix is an old man and is more likely culpable for their sterile condition. When Sir Kix hears about Touchwood Senior’s fertility drink, he buys a vial of the drink from the latter. However, Touchwood Senior tells Sir Kix that in order for the drink to work, Sir Kix must take a long horseback ride to properly mix up the elixir. Sir Kix falls for this deception and, while he is gone on his trip, the extremely fertile Touchwood Senior impregnates Mrs. Kix. Sir Kix is so happy when his wife conceives that he offers to feed and house Touchwood Senior and all of his children including any other children that Touchwood Senior might have in the future.
Touchwood, Junior Touchwood Junior is in love with Moll Yellowhammer, but her parents forbid her to marry him. The lovers try to marry in secret, but they are caught before they can be wed. Next, they try to run away together across the river, but Maudlin Yellowhammer jumps in the river, catches Moll, and drags
V o l u m e
1 8
The Welsh Gentlewoman is a prostitute whom Sir Walter Whorehound poses as his niece, who is to be married to Tim Yellowhammer in return for Sir Walter getting to marry Moll Yellowhammer. The Welsh Gentlewoman is married to Tim at the same time as the supposed funeral of Moll Yellowhammer. Although Tim is distraught when he finds out he has married a prostitute, she tells him that marriage makes her honest.
Maudlin Yellowhammer Maudlin Yellowhammer tries to help her husband force their daughter, Moll, to marry Sir Walter Whorehound as an exchange for having their son marry the Welsh Gentlewoman, whom they believe is rich. Although Moll is one of the few chaste characters in the play, Maudlin treats Moll like she is worthless especially when Moll tries on two separate occasions to escape her marriage to Sir Walter. On the second occasion, Maudlin literally drags Moll out of the river by her hair. When Moll uses this incident to fake her own death, Moll’s parents mourn her loss but do not attend the funeral because they are too busy trying to marry their son Tim to the Welsh Gentlewoman before Sir Walter Whorehound finds out that his intended bride is dead. As a result, the Yellowhammers arrive too late to Moll’s funeral—where Moll and Touchwood Junior reveal that they are alive—and are unable to stop Moll and Touchwood Junior from marrying.
2 3
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
Moll Yellowhammer Moll is the chaste maid of the play’s title who wishes to marry Touchwood Junior, but her parents try to force her to marry Sir Walter Whorehound instead. Moll and Touchwood Junior try to marry in secret, but they are caught before they can be wed. Next, they try to run away together across the river, but Maudlin Yellowhammer jumps in the river, catches Moll and drags her out. Moll uses the incident to fake her death by acting as if she caught ill when her mother pulled her out of the river. At the same time, Touchwood Junior fakes his death by acting like he was mortally wounded in a duel with Sir Walter Whorehound. At the funeral for the lovers, Moll and Touchwood Junior rise up out of their coffins and get married before the Yellowhammers can stop them.
result, he tries to use Latin whenever he can, much to the dismay of his mother and the Welsh Gentlewoman who thinks he is insulting her. Tim thinks that logic can solve anything and spends much of his time locked in logical debates with his tutor. Although at first he is apprehensive about his intended union with the Welsh Gentlewoman, he grows to be very fond of her. When he finds out after they are married that she is a prostitute, he is distraught until his mother reminds him that he once said he could use logic to prove a prostitute to be an honest woman— and now he has his chance. Ultimately, Tim accepts his wife when she says that, despite her past, marriage makes her an honest woman.
THEMES Mr. Yellowhammer Yellowhammer is a goldsmith who along with his wife, Maudlin, tries to force his daughter, Moll, to marry Sir Walter Whorehound. Yellowhammer is blind to the fact that Touchwood Junior is having him make a wedding ring with which to steal Moll. However, Yellowhammer arrives in time to stop the two lovers’ first attempt at marriage. When Allwit comes to see Yellowhammer, he poses as a relative who is trying to give Yellowhammer some advice. He tells Yellowhammer that Sir Walter is an adulterer and Yellowhammer tells Allwit that he will not have Sir Walter marry his daughter. However, when Allwit is gone, Yellowhammer notes that he himself has kept mistresses before, and that he still plans on going through with the marriage of Moll and Sir Walter. When Moll fakes her death, her parents mourn her loss but do not attend the funeral because they are too busy trying to marry their son Tim to the Welsh Gentlewoman before Sir Walter Whorehound finds out that his intended bride is dead. As a result, the Yellowhammers arrive too late to Moll’s funeral—where Moll and Touchwood Junior reveal that they are alive—and are unable to stop Moll and Touchwood Junior from marrying. However, Yellowhammer realizes that it could be worse, as he has just married his son to a prostitute and finds comfort in the fact that he only has to pay for one dinner to serve both of his children’s weddings.
Tim Yellowhammer Tim is a university student who is unwittingly led to marry a prostitute posing as the Welsh Gentlewoman. Tim is very dim-witted, but he thinks that his university education makes him smart. As a
2 4
Marriage In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, it seems like everybody is either married or wants to get married. In fact, one marriage in particular, the intended marriage of Sir Walter to Moll Yellowhammer, creates the conflict in the play. Sir Walter has agreed to marry Moll and in return he has agreed to have Tim Yellowhammer marry his niece. This first arrangement also introduces the first deception. While Moll is in fact a chaste maid, as the title indicates, Sir Walter’s niece—who is not his niece at all but a prostitute—is anything but the Welsh gentlewoman she pretends to be. As Sir Walter is riding into Cheapside with the Welsh gentlewoman, he instructs her in her deception. Sir Walter says, ‘‘Here you must pass for a pure virgin.’’ Sir Walter also deceives the Allwits by not telling them that he is planning on getting married. He knows that if the Allwits suspect Sir Walter is getting married, they will try to stop it because, as a single man, he will continue to be their benefactor. When Davy tells Allwit that Sir Walter is intending to marry Moll, Allwit leaves hurriedly saying, ‘‘I have no time to stay, nor scarce to speak, / I’ll stop those wheels, or all the work will break.’’ By this, Allwit refers to all of the hard work that he and his wife have put into making money off of Sir Walter. While Sir Walter intends to marry Moll, she is really in love with Touchwood Junior, whom she wants to marry. Their attempts to marry are thwarted on several occasions. The first time, Touchwood Junior dupes Moll’s father, a goldsmith, by having him make the ring that he intends to place on Moll’s finger. Touchwood Junior is very bold in this ruse,
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
telling Yellowhammer that he intends to use the ring to steal away a man’s daughter. However, Yellowhammer does not suspect that he is that man and so criticizes any father who is so blind. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘And parents blinded so, but they’re served right / That have two eyes, and wear so dull a sight.’’ However, Yellowhammer breaks up the marriage of Moll and Touchwood Junior just in time before the parson can marry them. From this point on the Yellowhammers try to keep Moll under lock and key until she is to be wed to Sir Walter. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘In the meantime, I will lock up this baggage, / As carefully as my gold.’’ With some help, Moll escapes again but is literally dragged back by her mother. Feigning a fatal illness, Moll ‘‘dies.’’ Her parents are so caught up with trying to marry Tim to the Welsh gentlewoman that they do not attend the funeral where Moll and Touchwood Junior rise from their coffins and are happily married. The parson says, ‘‘Hands join now, but hearts for ever, / Which no parent’s mood shall sever.’’ However, the Yellowhammers’s ‘‘mood’’ is surprisingly calm and they support the marriage since Sir Walter has proven to be a debtor and is in prison and because they just found out that they have had Tim married to Sir Walter’s prostitute. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘My poor boy Tim is cast away this morning, / Even before breakfast: married a whore.’’ Tim is also distraught, until his mother reminds him of his own words, saying, ‘‘You told me once, by logic you would prove / A whore an honest woman, prove her so Tim.’’ Tim accepts the challenge, but his new wife beats him to it, saying, ‘‘Sir if your logic cannot prove me honest, / There’s a thing called marriage, and that makes me honest.’’ Thus, both marriages turn out happily.
Sex Besides references to marriage, the play is saturated with sex, most notably extramarital affairs. Many of the male characters in the play have engaged in extramarital affairs and so have some of the women. In the seventeenth century when a man slept with another man’s wife, he was said to have cuckolded the woman’s husband. Cuckoldry, which was depicted by multiple horns on the cuckolded husband’s head, was often used to provide humor in plays like this. In the play, two men, Mr. Allwit and Sir Kix, are cuckolded. Mr. Allwit is aware of his cuckolding and allows it to happen, since Sir Walter
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Read a city comedy from any other playwright during Middleton’s era and compare it to A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. • The story features two knights, Sir Oliver Kix and Sir Walter Whorehound. Research and discuss the methods by which men could become knights in the seventeenth century. Choose another knight from this time period and write a short biography about him. • Many plays from this time period were salacious like A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Find a salacious painting from this era that you think could serve as a companion piece to the play and explain why you chose this painting. • Using historical records, maps, or any other source you can find, draw a map of Cheapside circa 1610. On the map, plot out the major events of the play, using the descriptions in the play as a guide.
pays for all of the Allwits’s expenses in return for the privilege of sleeping with Mrs. Allwit. Allwit says about Sir Walter, ‘‘He gets me all my children, and pays the nurse, / Monthly, or weekly, puts me to nothing.’’ In fact, the affair between Sir Walter and Mrs. Allwit is so strong that Sir Walter is jealous of Allwit. Allwit says, ‘‘I may sit still and play; he’s jealous for me—/ Watches her steps, sets spies—I live at ease.’’ Sir Kix, on the other hand, is unaware of his cuckolding although he unknowingly alludes to it at times. For example, in one passage Touchwood Senior, a very fertile man who plans on impregnating the barren Lady Kix—and attributing her pregnancy to the fake fertility drink that he sells to her husband—asks Sir Oliver if he remembers their deal. Sir Oliver says, ‘‘Or else I had a bad head.’’ This comment, which can refer to Kix’s memory, could also be taken by others to refer to the horns that Sir Oliver is about to gain through his cuckolding.
2 5
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
Money Besides marriage and sex, the characters in the play obsess about money. By marrying Moll, Sir Walter will get two thousand pounds in a dowry. Although it appears that he has enough money, the audience finds out at the end that he has been having a hard time paying his bills. As Yellowhammer notes, Sir Walter ‘‘lies i’th’ knight’s ward now.’’ The knights ward was a special section in debtor’s prison that was devoted to knights. Yellowhammer further notes, ‘‘His creditors are so greedy.’’ So, while in the beginning it appears that Sir Walter is marrying Moll because he is interested only in marrying a virgin, at the end the audience can see that he also needed the dowry money to settle his debts. Many of these debts were probably gained from trying to support the Allwits. Through his long relationship with Mrs. Allwit, Sir Walter pays for the children they have, as well as all of the Allwits’ living expenses. This certainly helps to drain his funds. As for the Allwits, in the end they use the property and possessions that they have gotten from Sir Walter to better their position in life. Allwit says, ‘‘We are richly furnished wife, with household stuff.’’ Mrs. Allwit suggests that they ‘‘let out lodgings then, / And take a house in the Strand.’’ In other words, they are going to rent out their house in Cheapside and use the money to buy a house in the Strand, the fashionable part of London. Touchwood Senior and his wife also worry about money, since his extreme fertility keeps creating children they cannot afford to raise. However, after he dupes Sir Kix into believing that it was his fertility water—and not Touchwood Senior’s affair with his wife—that got Lady Kix pregnant, Sir Kix offers to take care of whatever children Touchwood Senior has. Kix says, ‘‘Be not afraid to go to your business roundly, / Get children, and I’ll keep them.’’ After this point, Touchwood Senior and his family no longer have to worry about money.
STYLE Elizabethan Drama The term Elizabethan period, named for England’s Queen Elizabeth I, has not been defined in any concrete terms. While some only call dramas Elizabethan if they were written from 1558 to 1603, Elizabeth’s actual reign, others call any drama up to 1642—when the theaters were closed—Elizabethan drama. For example, many scholars consider Tho-
2 6
mas Middleton an Elizabethan dramatist even though the majority of his plays were written and performed during the Jacobean era. In any case, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside uses similar conventions as other Elizabethan dramas, and so is often included in this category. Elizabethan dramas were performed on stages that were vastly different from those used in classical and medieval times. Unlike medieval plays, Elizabethan drama used very few props or sets, putting the burden on the actors, the dialogue, and the actors’ movements to communicate what was going on in the play. In addition, the playgoers were expected to pick up on these clues. Therefore, reading a complex Elizabethan drama like A Chaste Maid in Cheapside can be very difficult without footnotes since the reader must often determine from the dialogue alone what is going on.
Double Entendre Plays in the Elizabethan period were also often characterized by double entendres or double meanings. Writers like William Shakespeare, the most famous Elizabethan dramatist, were very adept at inserting these double meanings into the play through dialogue. So was Middleton. In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, as in many of his other plays, Middleton’s double entendres have sexual connotations. These double meanings show up in the very first exchange of the play when Maudlin Yellowhammer is scolding Moll for not taking her dancing lessons seriously. Maudlin remembers her own dancing lessons, saying, ‘‘I was kept at it; I took delight to learn, and he to teach me, pretty brown gentleman, he took pleasure in my company.’’ By this dialogue, one can see that Maudlin was having an affair with her dancing teacher. This is one of the more tame passages in the play. Other more bold references include Touchwood Senior’s warning to Sir Kix at the end of the play. Sir Kix has said that he will pay for any children that Touchwood Senior has. To this, Touchwood Senior responds, ‘‘Take heed how you dare a man, while you live sir, / That has good skill at his weapon.’’ Touchwood Senior’s ‘‘weapon’’ is a reference to his penis. He is skilled at using it because he is so fertile.
Aside In addition to double entendres, which are spoken out loud in dialogue with another character, Middleton also makes use of asides—comments directed at the audience, which the other characters cannot hear. For example, when Sir Walter tells his
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
prostitute that she must pass as a virgin, Sir Walter’s valet, Davy, makes a comment to the audience. Davy says, ‘‘[Aside] Pure Welsh virgin, she lost her maidenhead in Brecknockshire.’’ Davy knows that the woman is a prostitute, so he makes a joke about Sir Walter’s comment saying that, technically, the woman is a Welsh virgin since she lost her virginity inside of Wales. Besides these jokes, Middleton uses asides in the play to apprise the audience about the various deceptions that the characters are playing on each other. For example, in another aside, Touchwood Senior holds up the fake fertility drink, saying to the audience: ‘‘Here’s a little vial of almond-milk / That stood me in some three pence.’’ Although the almond milk only cost a few pence, he is using it to dupe Sir Kix into paying him four hundred pounds. These types of deceptions happen throughout the play and they are often accompanied by asides.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Cheapside in the Early Seventeenth Century Contemporary audiences would have recognized the joke in the play’s title. In the early seventeenth century, the chances of finding a chaste maid in Cheapside were slim. Technically, Cheapside—which was also known at various points as West Cheap or simply, Cheap—was the long, wide street that ran through one of the central sections of London. It served as one of London’s marketplaces where merchants like Mr. Yellowhammer, the goldsmith from the play, peddled their wares. In this area, prostitutes also peddled their wares and the area itself had an unseemly reputation.
Catholicism versus Protestantism The ambiguous morality in Cheapside and of England overall may have been the consequence of an ambiguous and constantly changing religious system. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, England underwent a Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation, huge theological battles between various Christian churches. The Reformation was an attack on the corruption in the Roman Catholic Church by various popes and many clergy members. Two strong Protestant leaders,
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
Martin Luther and John Calvin, led the charge for reform, in the process creating two new Christian denominations, Lutheranism and Calvinism, respectively. In defense, the Catholic Church instituted a number of reforms and embarked on a religious renewal. During this time period, Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage of Henry VIII of England to Catherine of Aragon. In response, Henry passed several acts that established the Church of England as an individual church with Henry as its head. Up until then, the Church in England had been the English division of the Catholic Church and thus had the pope as its head, as other regional Catholic Churches did. Although Henry intended for the Church of England to remain Catholic, his successor, Edward VI, introduced many Protestant reforms during his short reign. Then, to make matters more confusing, Edward’s half-sister, Mary, a Catholic, assumed the throne in 1553 and persecuted Protestants during her short reign. When Elizabeth I became queen in 1558, she restored Protestantism in England, passing several acts that favored Protestants. However, Protestants thought she was not hard enough on Catholics, and Catholics—backed by the pope— thought Elizabeth a heretic. Elizabeth toed the line during her long reign, not willing to endorse either side totally and the religious tension increased. The Puritans were the most zealous Protestants and as their name implied, they sought to be the most pure and to enforce this pure way of life on others. The Puritan movement in the early seventeenth century ultimately led to a series of English Civil Wars from 1642 to 1651 and the establishment of a short-lived Commonwealth (1649–1660), which was abolished when the monarchy’s power was restored in 1660.
Law Enforcement and Prisons Amidst all of this religious strife, London had many legal systems in place that dealt with both religious and civil issues. The play features two examples of the legal system in London at this time. The promoters, hired spies who confiscated meat that was bought illegally during Lent, are one example of a government agency that enforced religious practices. The other major example is the imprisonment of Sir Walter at the end of the play. When Mrs. Allwit asks what has become of Sir Walter, Mr. Yellowhammer notes: ‘‘Who, the knight? / He lies i’th’ knight’s ward now.’’ The knight’s ward was a special section in London prisons that was reserved for knights, to separate them from others who
2 7
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
COMPARE & CONTRAST • Early 1610s: Despite the morally ambiguous lives that many citizens lead in London, they still must keep adultery and other immoral acts hidden from the public eye, for fear that they may lose social or political favor. Today: London is famous for its tabloid newspapers, which frequently root out and publish salacious rumors and facts about others, especially the English royal family. • Early 1610s: Protestants who belong to the Church of England follow the doctrine of The Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles. Today: Although the Church of England still
belonged to different classes. One of Yellowhammer’s other lines, ‘‘His creditors are so greedy,’’ indicates that Sir Walter has been arrested because he spent all of his fortune on the Allwits. As a result, he would have been thrown into one of the debtors’ prisons, the most famous of which was Newgate.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW By the time Middleton wrote the play in the early 1610s, most of his comedies had been performed in front of private audiences. However, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside was written and performed for a popular audience. Charles Barber says in his critical introduction to the University of California Press version of the play, ‘‘This may help to explain the richness and exuberance of the play compared with its predecessors, and the fuller and more sympathetic handling of the romantic lovers.’’ In his own time, Middleton was a popular playwright with audiences, but was not held in as high esteem critically as was William Shakespeare,
2 8
uses The Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles to inform its doctrine, it also relies on other sources, including the Bible. • Early 1610s: English people live in a time of civil and religious unrest, as various political and religious groups vie for power. England is one of the major imperial powers of the time period. Today: English people live in anticipation of war as the result of its alliance with the United States—the driving force in the campaign against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, which United States President George W. Bush claims has weapons of mass destruction. The United States is generally acknowledged as the world’s strongest superpower.
Ben Jonson, and other major playwrights of the Elizabethan and Jacobean time periods. Despite this fact, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside would certainly have been seen as a daring play in its time since it harshly satirized religious hypocrisy among groups such as the Puritans when the Puritan movement was gaining strength. The trend to ignore Middleton as one of the great dramatists of the seventeenth century continued throughout the next two centuries. There were exceptions to this, however. For example, in his 1887 essay on Middleton for The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists, Algernon Charles Swinburne argues that Middleton is a ‘‘genius,’’ and calls A Chaste Maid in Cheapside ‘‘a play of quite exceptional freedom and audacity, and certainly one of the drollest and liveliest that ever broke the bounds of propriety or shook the sides of merriment.’’ In fact, Middleton’s works did not earn a substantial amount of critical attention until this century, and even then his image suffered from the fact that he often collaborated with others. Scholars still debate which of his plays Middleton wrote alone, which ones he wrote in collaboration, and which ones were actually written by others. For the most
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
Catherine Russell, Anna Niland, and Sarah Belcher in a scene from a 2002 theatrical production of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
part, however, modern critics count Middleton as one of the great English dramatists and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside as one of the great English comedies. Many critics cite the play’s deft combination of comedy and tragedy, especially as it serves to highlight humanity’s vices. F. R. Mulryne says in his 1979 entry on Middleton for British Writers, ‘‘The play’s gusto and seriousness, combined, make it one of theater’s richest statements on money, sex, and society.’’ Many critics note the realistic qualities of the play; it gives an astonishingly accurate portrayal of what real life was like for London citizens of the time. However, as Martin W. Sampson notes in his 1915 introduction to Masterpieces of the English Drama: Thomas Middleton, Middleton’s realism differs from the realistic, or naturalistic, movement that took place at the turn of the twentieth century. Sampson says, ‘‘The Elizabethan with utter frankness reveals passions and prejudices, foolish, ignominious, or debasing, but he is free of bitterness and superiority.’’ In fact, the morality of the play—with its many tricks and deceptions—has elicited the most comment from critics. As Dorothy M. Farr notes of the play in her book Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism: A Study of Some of the Representative
V o l u m e
1 8
Plays, ‘‘We often meet greedy tricksters and false brides in Jacobean drama, but few so cleverly placed in relation to one another as these.’’ Critics offer several explanations of the immoral behavior in the play which has sometimes elicited negative comments from critics. In his book Thomas Middleton’s City Comedies, Anthony Covatta sums up the sentiment from these critics. According to Covatta, ‘‘For them the play’s world is a very dark one indeed, its characters completely lacking in moral and religious conviction and in normal human love.’’ Covatta is one of the critics who believes that the characters’ motivations can be traced to a desire to help their families. Covatta says, ‘‘Characters step outside the boundaries of propriety and morality but do so because the real advantages to be gained outweigh the hypothetical benefits of maintaining sterile order.’’
CRITICISM Ryan D. Poquette Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the
2 9
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Unlike A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Middleton’s The Changeling (first performed in 1622), which he co-wrote with William Rowley, is a tragedy. In the story, Beatrice-Joanna, a wealthy, beautiful woman, suddenly becomes attracted to a servant, which leads her into a life of deception, crime, and sin. • In Molière’s play A School for Husbands (first produced in 1661 and first published in 1714), two brothers differ on their methods for how to raise young women. While Ariste believes in being more liberal and giving women freedom, Sganarelle mistrusts women and believes in repressing women. As in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the two young lovers in this play defy the wishes of their elders. • In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, most of the
following essay, Poquette discusses the ambiguous morality that Middleton demonstrates in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Modern readers may walk away from Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside shocked and appalled. The play takes place during Lent, a penitent time in some Christian denominations, but features several acts that are anything but holy. A husband willingly allows his wife to have sex with another man in return for financial security; another unwittingly pays for the opportunity to be cuckolded; and, a bastard child is wittingly donated to royal spies by being disguised as a basket of meat. With incidents such as these, Middleton’s moral intent with the play has been widely discussed and challenged. Middleton was a Christian and has been labeled both a Calvinist and a Puritan by various critics. The latter may seem odd to a modern-day viewer since Middleton satirizes Puritans in the play. However, as Herbert Jack Heller notes in his book Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton’s City Comedies, the outrageously
3 0
characters are unscrupulous and commit a variety of sins without remorse. In The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian, and Classical Reflections on Human Psychology (1997), Solomon Schimmel uses many classical and contemporary sources to discuss sin from both a scientific and philosophical standpoint. The book focuses on the seven deadly sins: lust, greed, envy, anger, pride, gluttony, and sloth. • In William Shakespeare’s play Much Ado about Nothing (circa 1598), the chastity of a maid, Hero, is doubted by her betrothed suitor, Claudio, when another character, Don John, dupes Claudio into believing Hero has been having an affair. Claudio rejects Hero at the altar, but, through the help of several others, Don John’s deceit is revealed.
immoral acts in the play can overshadow any moral message on the part of Middleton. Heller says, ‘‘a critic not sensitive to the religious perspectives of Middleton and his first audiences is likely to conclude that Middleton favors attitudes which he is, in fact, exposing.’’ However, the play does have a moral center, albeit a shaky one, in the form of Moll Yellowhammer and Touchwood Junior. From the very beginning of the play, most characters are depicted as being very immoral. Anthony Covatta says in his book Thomas Middleton’s City Comedies, ‘‘It is beyond doubt that his characters are usually ‘low,’ both morally and socially. They are neither refined nor scrupulous.’’ This is an understatement in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, which starts out immoral and gets worse. When Maudlin speaks to her daughter Moll in the first exchange of dialogue, Maudlin criticizes Moll for not being more like Maudlin was as a maid. However, as a maid, Maudlin was ‘‘lightsome, and quick, two years before I was married.’’ This passage on its own could simply mean that Maudlin was excited and devoted to her feminine studies.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
However, it is soon revealed through the use of double entendre that Maudlin is saying that, when she was young, she was sexually active with her dancing instructor. Right from the start, the play takes on sexual overtones, which remain throughout the work. Certain characters seem to have codes of morality that are conveniently flexible. For example, for both Allwit and Mr. Yellowhammer, it is okay to sell the sex of one of their family members in order to preserve their financial stability. In the case of Allwit, he allows his wife to sleep with Sir Walter in return for having the knight support the couple. Allwit says, ‘‘I thank him, h’as maintained my house this ten years, / Not only keeps my wife, but a keeps me.’’ Likewise, Mr. Yellowhammer thinks nothing of marrying his daughter to Sir Walter even though she is not interested because in return, Tim Yellowhammer will marry the Welsh gentlewoman and inherit her fortune. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘Tis a match of Sir Walter’s own making / To bind us to him, and our heirs for ever.’’ Even when Yellowhammer finds out from Allwit that Sir Walter has been having sexual affairs, he does not change his mind about having Moll marry the knight. Yellowhammer says, ‘‘The knight is rich, he shall be my son-in-law, / No matter so the whore he keeps be wholesome, / My daughter takes no hurt then, so let them wed.’’ By ‘‘wholesome,’’ Yellowhammer means free of venereal disease. In other words, as long as Sir Walter does not have any sexually transmitted diseases, Yellowhammer will overlook the knight’s transgressions. As Dorothy M. Farr notes in her book Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism: A Study of Some of the Representative Plays, Allwit and Yellowhammer have specific moral codes that allow them to commit certain acts. Farr says, ‘‘In the code of both, greed excuses lechery.’’ Other characters have odd codes of morality that allow them to commit one immoral act but not another. One of the most famous examples from the play is the scene with the two promoters. These two hired spies demonstrate that they are willing to take meat away from the poor but will also turn a blind eye to anybody who bribes them enough. The first promoter says to his partner after letting a man sneak some meat by them, ‘‘Tis Mr Beggarland’s man, the wealthy merchant. / That is in fee with us.’’ However, when the country wench dupes them into taking her unwanted child, the two promoters have a moral dilemma since they unwittingly promised to
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
IN THE END, ALL OF THE DISCUSSION OVER HOW MORAL THE PLAY IS OR EVEN WHETHER THE PLAY HAS A MORAL, MAY BE A TOPIC OF INTEREST ONLY TO MODERN READERS AND CRITICS.’’
keep it. Covatta says, ‘‘They are quite willing to use their post for personal profit but feel they cannot break their word.’’ Into this corrupt world, where almost everyone seems a villain, Middleton places two characters who help to balance out the immorality, at least a little bit. Charles Barber says in his critical introduction to the University of California Press version of the play, ‘‘The young lovers. . . . provide, even if sketchily, a norm of human relations by which we can judge the marketeering attitudes of the other characters.’’ Moll Yellowhammer and Touchwood Junior are not entirely innocent of deception. Touchwood Junior at first appears very moral because he believes in chastity. As he remarks to Moll, ‘‘Turn not to me till thou mayst lawfully,’’ meaning that they should wait until after they are married to have sex. Despite his own adherence to a chaste lifestyle, however, Heller notes that this good intention is offset by Junior’s ‘‘active promotion of his senior brother’s arrangement with the Kixes.’’ Likewise, Moll engages in a series of tricks and deceptions to try to escape her upcoming marriage to Sir Walter and get married to Touchwood Junior without her parents’ consent. However, despite the trickery of Moll and Touchwood Junior, their marriage is motivated by love, which makes them seem more moral than other characters. In the end, all of the discussion over how moral the play is or even whether the play has a moral, may be a topic of interest only to modern readers and critics. Moral justification for the acts in the play was probably not an issue for many playgoers in Middleton’s time since Elizabethan audiences found humor in situations that many modern viewers do not. As Martin Sampson notes in his introduction to Masterpieces of the English Drama: Thomas Middleton, ‘‘he who would understand the im-
3 1
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
mense vivacity of Elizabethan drama must come to perceive that our forbears saw the funny side of many things which to us are beneath or above contempt.’’ Likewise, since Middleton’s play has been noted by many critics to be representative of life in London at the time, many of the playgoers may have recognized the moral sacrifices that the characters make in order to survive in the city. As T. H. Howard-Hill notes in his entry on Middleton for Dictionary of Literary Biography, ‘‘There is small security in his comic world for any of them, and even the best, like Touchwood and Moll, can thrive only by their wits.’’ Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Carey Wallace Wallace is a freelance writer and poet. In this essay, Wallace considers Middleton’s deft investigation of truth and artifice. In Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, nothing is quite as it seems. Wives act like whores. Whores pass for wives. Dunces spout Latin to prove their erudition. Middle class parents try desperately to marry their children into an upper class that tries desperately to hide the impending doom of poverty. Even the language Middleton chooses is rife with double meanings. Through all the complicated wordplay and the sometimes bewildering tangle of revelations and protestations, Middleton inexorably explores the difference between what truly is and what can be seen, and the human need for both truth and artifice. Middleton’s Cheapside is crowded with characters who would like to be something other than what they are. The Yellowhammer parents want nothing more than to be considered a step above their current station. Their son, Tim, wants to be considered a learned gentleman. Their daughter, Moll, wishes she were engaged to a different man. Sir Walter Whorehound wishes he possessed the wealth his title suggests he merits. Mistress Allwitt, who has borne him seven illegitimate children, wishes to appear a respectable matron. Touchwood Senior wishes for fewer children, Sir Oliver and Lady Kix for just one of their own. Touchwood Junior longs for the hand of Moll, which is forbidden to him, when the play opens, by the competing ambitions of her parents. Allwitt alone in this mix is happy in his state and, it seems, in touch with reality. As the cuckolded
3 2
husband whose household is entirely paid for by the generosity of his wife’s lover, Allwitt not only fully acknowledges his position, but glories in it: ‘‘I pay for none at all, yet fools think’s mine . . . he’s jealous for me, watches her steps, sets spies; I live at ease, he has both the cost and torment: when the strings of his heart frets, I feed, laugh or sing.’’ Allwitt’s disdain for the fools who are tricked by the shaky artifice of his sham marriage is matched by what could almost be described as a strange zeal for telling the truth. Not only does he horrify Sir Walter with his directness about the reality of their relation, he seems to take glee in telling the truth in other instances as well: he trumps the promoters with the fact of his wife’s childbirth, which exempts him from the penalty they planned to place on him for the crime of having meat during Lent. When it looks as though Moll’s unhappy engagement to Sir Walter might end his comfortable arrangement, Allwit resorts not to artifice, but to truth, going to the girl’s father, Yellowhammer, with the facts of Sir Walter’s domestic situation. Interestingly, Yellowhammer, one of the characters sunk most deeply in both self-deception and machinations to deceive the rest of the world, reacts to the truth with more artifice by pretending to be enraged at the news but actually filing it away as a bargaining chip in his negotiations with Sir Walter for his daughter. In Middleton’s artifice-infested Cheapside, the simple truth can’t seem to survive on its own. In fact, Middleton almost seems to question truth’s usefulness by giving Allwitt, an extremely corrupt character, such concern for it. Why does Middleton give such seeming concern for truth to a character as corrupt as Allwittt? Middleton, whose vision while realistic is also highly moral, surely is not suggesting that lies are better than truth. He may be making a more complicated point: that a man with a conscience might want to hide parts of himself from the world because of his awareness that he has fallen short of his ideals. ‘‘The more slave!’’ Sir Walter exclaims of Allwitt. ‘‘When man turns base, out goes his soul’s pure flame: the fat of ease o’erthrows the eyes of shame.’’ Allwitt, although he seems committed to what is true, has actually lost something far more important: the ability to judge between not just truth and lies, but good and evil. If Allwitt stands on the bottom rung of Middleton’s moral ladder, Moll, the ‘‘chaste maid’’ of the title, and her reasonably virtuous lover, Touchwood Junior, cling somewhat clumsily near
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
the top. The two lovers have done nothing wrong: even Middleton’s loaded sexual language simmers down some in their speeches. The two of them want only to be joined in holy matrimony and are prevented by the avarice and artifice of those around them: Moll’s parents, who want a daughter wed to a knight, and Sir Walter who wants Moll’s parents’ gold. Within this twisted world, the young lovers behave with as much honor as may be realistic: Touchwood properly buys a ring for his beloved and brings in a priest to consecrate their union. But, after two thwarted attempts at marriage, the young lovers resort to fighting artifice with artifice, faking their deaths to gain sympathy from both the public and their parents who are unable to stand against the tide of public opinion when the lovers are ‘‘resurrected’’ in the final scene. Their artifice, however, has a different edge to it than that of their parents, who work to obscure reality by pretending to be other than what they are. Instead, Moll and Touchwood Junior scheme only to reveal the deeper truth of their love. Middleton’s take on the usefulness of truth does not end with a simple preference for artifice over bare facts, however. In fact, although Middleton pairs Allwitt’s zeal for revealing the naked truth with a deeply corrupt soul, Middleton is unsparing with his characters who refuse to see the truth when it stands clearly before them. Touchwood Junior buys Moll’s wedding ring from her unsuspecting father, even telling the old man that he plans to deceive the parents of his intended in order to marry her, but Yellowhammer, blinded by greed at the sale, sees nothing. His blindness is ironically twosided: he is unaware of his daughter’s true value, objectifying her as only a bargaining chip with which to advance in the world, with little to no thought for her happiness beyond concern for her physical well-being. At the same time, although her moodiness leads him to suspect she might love someone other than Sir Walter, Yellowhammer is absolutely unable to conceive of the possibility that she might muster enough spunk to deceive him and follow her heart. Even when Touchwood boldly claims that Moll is almost a perfect copy of his beloved and uses her finger in fitting the ring, Yellowhammer, perhaps blinded by Touchwood’s guarantee of payment, regardless of whether the ring fits or not, remains unseeing. He even adds his own line of mockery to Touchwood’s little farce declaring, ‘‘I wonder things can be so warily carried, and parents blinded so; but they’re served right that have two eyes and wear so dull a sight.’’
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
ALLWITT, ALTHOUGH HE SEEMS COMMITTED TO WHAT IS TRUE, HAS ACTUALLY LOST SOMETHING FAR MORE IMPORTANT: THE ABILITY TO JUDGE BETWEEN NOT JUST TRUTH AND LIES, BUT GOOD AND EVIL.’’
If Middleton punishes those that refuse to see clearly, he also rewards those who are true to themselves, however imperfectly. The purest example of this is the young lovers, who refuse to betray their hearts, against strong odds. Middleton is also kind to Touchwood Senior, who, aware of his legendary fertility, uses his double-edged gift to bless Sir Oliver and Lady Kix with a child. In an absolute world, Touchwood Senior stands on very shaky ground, but Middleton uses him as the instrument to grant the wishes of Lord Oliver and Lady Kix, who then reward Touchwood by promising to provide for him and all his future children. On the other hand, the Yellowhammers, Sir Walter, and Tim, all of whom strive to be something which they are not, are those who are punished most severely, all three losing both money and prestige. Within Middleton’s logic of remaining true to oneself, the Welsh gentlewoman is an interesting aberration. Originally a whore, she passes for a maid and becomes a wife, serving as a foil to Mistress Allwitt who passes for a wife but serves as a whore. Middleton’s insistence that his characters remain true to themselves would seem to necessitate her punishment for pretending to be something which she is not, which her marriage, and it’s attendant rise to respectability, seems to contradict. But Middleton may be using her to make a larger point: that the categories of ‘‘wife’’ and ‘‘whore’’ are not defined by behavior alone, that the Welsh gentlewoman’s true identity may not be completely defined by her past dalliances. But by no stretch of the imagination is she truly pure or honest, and Middleton is not absolutely benevolent with her: her marriage to Tim could be construed either as reward or punishment.
3 3
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
No matter how true or false Middleton’s characters are to themselves, a vast gap remains for all of them between what they do and what they say. Throughout the play, character after character makes beautiful written and morally sound speeches on the way life ought to be—then goes on to belie this, sometimes with their very next act. Touchwood Senior’s speech on marriage at the opening of act 2 is perhaps the best example. In his almost achingly lovely paean to marriage, he praises his wife’s willingness to be separated from him until a time when they can afford the children their desire engenders. ‘‘Honest wife, I thank thee,’’ he says as they part. ‘‘I ne’er knew the perfect treasure thou brought’st with thee more than at this instant moment. A man’s happy when he’s at poorest that has matched his soul as rightly as his body.’’ As soon as Mistress Touchwood exits the scene, Touchwood’s speech turns from praise of her character within half a dozen lines, to bitter ruminations on his inability to enjoy marital or extramarital relations without impregnating his partner—and then to an encounter with a woman who is likely the mother of one of his illegitimate children. Sir Oliver wishes his wife happiness at any price, then descends into recriminations about her fertility within half a page of dialogue. The gossips that attend Mistress Allwitt’s lying-in offer strings of touching blessings on the likely doomed newborn while drinking so heavily they leave staggering. Even the addle-headed student Tim mouths a seemingly prescient nugget of advice on marriage, wondering that his parents ‘‘think I have no more care of my body than to lie with one that I ne’er knew, a mere stranger, one that ne’er went to school with me neither, nor ever play-fellows together’’—but at the close of the drama, he’s managed to marry, not just a stranger, but a whore. What does Middleton mean to say by revealing the ugly ditch between what his characters say and the lives they lead? In the face of the worldly pressures which sympathetic characters like Sir Oliver, Lady Kix, Touchwood Senior, Touchwood Junior, and Moll face—poverty, society, biology— Middleton’s realistic about the fact that it’s almost impossible to live a life of absolutes and survive. Middleton does not seem to judge his characters for their inability to live up to their more noble dreams. He is not willing to give up on them, either. In fact, by linking Allwitt’s corruption with his brash insistence on looking the truth square in the face, Middleton seems to suggest that some artifice may, in fact, be a necessity for the human race. To avoid
3 4
sinking completely into depravity, Middleton’s characters need those lovely speeches. While they can’t live up to them, the fact that they can still speak of better things provides the proof that their human flame is still flickering. Source: Carey Wallace, Critical Essay on A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Arthur F. Marotti In the following essay, Marotti examines how Middleton leveraged the theme of fertility to great comic effect in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. When Thomas Middleton wrote A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611–1613), his finest and most complex comic drama, he was already a practiced and successful private theater playwright. In such plays as Michaelmas Term, A Mad World, My Master, and A Trick to Catch the Old One he had helped to perfect the form of city comedy that was so fashionable in early Jacobean London, reflecting, as it did, the intellectual sophistication, moral scepticism, and taste for irony of its educated audience. In composing A Chaste Maid for the public stage, he faced the problem of turning satiric comedy into popular comedy, or at least of merging the ironic vision of his coterie dramas with the festive spirit of that particular dramatic tradition which a play like Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday epitomizes. His solution was to utilize much of the thematic material he had handled in his earlier works—materialism and avarice, bourgeois pretensions, aristocratic degeneracy, religious hypocrisy, libertinism and prodigality—but also to expand his treatment of human sexuality to lay new stress on the theme of fertility and, hence, make Eros, not Momus, the god of his comic world.
I This new synthesis is anticipated by certain elements in his previous plays, such as the marriages and festivities at the end of A Mad World and A Trick, comedies which avoid the sterner, judgment-scene conclusions of the earlier, more didactic pieces, The Phoenix, Your Five Gallants, and Michaelmas Term. The Family of Love is a particularly interesting case: like A Chaste Maid, it concludes with a celebration of marriage and the family and a clear affirmation of the goodness and power of human sexuality properly used, proclaiming the value of fruitful love in honest physical terms. The
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
William Stewart, Frances Cuka, and Jack Shepard in a 1966 production of A Chaste Maid in Cheapside
love of Gerardine and Maria, the play’s romantic hero and heroine, leads logically and naturally to sexual intercourse; and the child born to them in the course of the action is a symbol of the richness and vitality of their relationship. It is no accident that the play’s loveless couples, the Purges and the Glisters, are childless, and the lecherous gallants, Lipsalve and Gudgeon, comically impotent in their sexual frustration. In any event, this comedy signals an interest on Middleton’s part in the human reproductive powers—not merely because private theater audiences demanded sexual material, but also because he could make of it valid thematic use. This interest in the theme of fertility is a continuing one for Middleton, especially apparent in the unusual number of pregnancies and onstage infants in his later plays. In A Fair Quarrel, a tragicomedy written in collaboration with William Rowley, the Fitzallen-Jane relationship bears a remarkable similarity to the Gerardine-Maria one: despite their use for the creation of some tragicomic responses, Jane’s pregnancy and the onstage infant serve as a promise that the society of this play will once again be harmonious, that the quarrel between the Colonel and Captain Ager, who are unwittingly related because of the young lovers’
V o l u m e
1 8
precontracted marriage, will end ‘‘fairly,’’ with the younger generation of characters enjoying life instead of thwarting it. In More Dissemblers Besides Women, Lactantio’s cast-off mistress, disguised as a page to escape detection by the young hypocrite’s antifeminist uncle, is visibly pregnant onstage before giving birth to their child. Aside from the broad comedy of the scene in which she is forced to improve her ‘‘manly’’ graces by taking dancing lessons which actually induce labor (the kind of farcical treatment of sex Middleton could not resist), she is striking evidence, in this play, of the power of fertile sexuality which the woman-hating Cardinal rejects, to which the widowed Aurelia (like Olivia in Twelfth Night) pretends to be immune, and which ultimately causes the discomfiture of the opportunistic Lactantio himself. In terms of the drama’s festive conclusion, the child born to this anonymous girl is, as in The Family of Love, a sign of a languishing society’s capacity for regeneration. In The Old Law, Agatha, who is sentenced to death under the outrageous edict stipulating that all men over eighty and all women over sixty are to be executed, makes a pathetic attempt at feigning pregnancy by hiding a cushion under her gown in order to be allowed to survive. Here, more obviously than in A Fair Quarrel and More Dissemblers,
3 5
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
IN THIS TISSUE OF DOUBLE ENTENDRES, THERE IS A SPIRIT OF VITALITY AND PLAY THAT DISTRACTS THE AUDIENCE FROM THE POTENTIAL MORAL ISSUES IN SUCH RAMBUNCTIOUS SEXUALITY. MIDDLETON, IN FACT, SEEMS ONLY INTERESTED IN THIS DRAMA IN QUICKENING HIS AUDIENCE’S ETHICAL AWARENESS. . . .’’
pregnancy—even a counterfeit one—is a symbol of the life-force within nature and the human instinct to live. As Shakespeare’s sonnets testify, man’s procreative powers had a more urgent importance in an age of high infant-mortality and short life-expectancy. Jonson’s Hymenaei offers immediate conception as the ideal in human marriage; for fertility, as the conclusion of A Mid-summer Night’s Dream and the wedding masque of The Tempest illustrate, is the greatest blessing a loving married couple can possess. In Much Ado About Nothing, Benedick comically remarks that marriage is a necessary institution because ‘‘the world must be peopled’’— a commandment which is quite serious, considered against the background of all the immanent dangers to life and health in the medically primitive Renaissance. London, for example, lost more than 30,000 people in the plague of 1603–4; and man’s only effective weapon against death was procreation. In Shakespeare’s words to the young man of the sonnets: ‘‘nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defense / Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence’’ (Sonnet XII).
II A Chaste Maid in Cheapside demonstrates that the theme of fertility can find its fullest expression in comedy, the one form of drama which best embodies the élan vital; for this particular play fuses this theme with its basic comic pattern. In its joyous celebration of man’s procreative energies, A Chaste
3 6
Maid is close in spirit to comedy’s origin in phallic song—a virtually prototypical comic drama (in Susanne Langer’s definition of the form), ‘‘erotic, risque, and sensuous if not sensual, impious, and even wicked.’’ If Eros is the ‘‘presiding genius of comedy,’’ he exists here in his properly comic avatar Priapus in the character of Touchwood Sr., who, in his enormous sexual potency, most vividly symbolizes the power of fertility present in Middleton’s dramatic world. Functioning effectively as a life-principle in a world threatened by moral and physical disease and death, he has the incredible—and comically magical—ability of having his every act of intercourse result in a pregnancy. He remarks with genial self-mockery: . . . of all men I am the most unfortunate in that game That ever pleas’d both genders; I ne’er play’d yet Under a bastard; the poor wenches curse me To the pit where’er I come; they were ne’er serv’d so, But us’d to have more words than one to a bargain: I have such a fatal finger in such business, I must forth with’t; chiefly for country wenches, For every harvest I shall hinder haymaking; Enter a wench with a child I had no less than seven lay in last progress, Within three weeks of one another’s time.
In this tissue of double entendres, there is a spirit of vitality and play that distracts the audience from the potential moral issues in such rambunctious sexuality. Middleton, in fact, seems only interested in this drama in quickening his audience’s ethical awareness with reference to such things as avarice and callous selfishness, sins which have a negative, asocial character and which result in the frustration of love and the disruption of families. For him, the forces which aid Thanatos in its battle with Eros are the really dangerous ones. So Touchwood Sr. exists, in his erotic vitality, as a healthy counterbalance to anti-life activities like fanatical and hypocritical religious asceticism, ruthless social-climbing, and the stubborn pursuit of wealth for its own sake. But, in this play’s comic society, his fertility is initially a victim of economic ‘‘necessity’’: he and his wife are forced into a temporary separation because they cannot afford to have more children. As he explains to her in the very first scene in which they appear: . . . our desires Are both too fruitful for our own barren fortunes. How adverse runs the destiny of some creatures, Some only can get riches and no children; We only can get children and no riches . . .
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
. . . every year a child, and some years two . . .
In this action, love must be liberated from the tyranny of money, or at least there must be a reconciliation of Eros and Pecunia, a harmony toward which the play as a whole must move; for the drama’s hero and heroine, Touchwood Jr. and Moll Yellowhammer, face a problem thematically related to that of the Touchwood Seniors’ and the solutions in the two plot lines are causally interrelated. The Touchwood Seniors’ problem finds its answer through an operation of comic accident. Since Middleton builds a farcical symmetry into his play in assigning to Sir Oliver Kix and his wife a problem precisely opposite to theirs (wealth and childlessness), it is inevitable that the two should cancel each other out. Sir Oliver suffers from impotence, as Lady Kix’s insult, ‘‘brevity,’’ implies, and, in spite of his railing against his wife for her supposed barrenness, it is clearly his fault that they are without children. Lady Kix complains: Every one gets before me; there’s my sister Was married but at Bartholomew-eve last And she can have two children at birth; O, one of them, one of them would ha’ serv’d my turn ...
Obsessed with their desire for a family, they are willing to ‘‘give a thousand pound to purchase fruitfulness,’’ an offer tailor-made for Touchwood Sr. In his erotic comedy Mandragola, Macchiavelli uses a fertility potion as a central device for his comic intrigue. Callimaco (who is, like Touchwood Sr., a witty schemer) poses as a doctor with a powerful conception potion derived from the aphrodisiac mandrake plant and persuades Messr. Nicia not only to allow him to administer it to his wife, whom he desires, but to engage the sexual services of an anonymous victim who is supposedly to die from the encounter, a role played by Callimaco himself. In A Chaste Maid, Middleton creates a similar comic action, but he eliminates some of the complexities of the plot Macchiavelli uses, though he utilizes not one, but two fertility potions. In the scene in which the Kixes spend their energies in mutual accusation, a maid tells them about a certain doctor’s miraculous remedy for sterility; and, since this is in the same scene in which Touchwood Sr. has been introduced, the audience is in on the trick from the start: There’s a gentleman, I haply have his name too, that has got Nine children, by one water that he useth; It never misses; they come so fast upon him, He was fain to give it over
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
. . . he’ll undertake, Using that water, within fifteen year, For all your wealth, to make you a poor man, You shall so swarm with children.
Excited by this vision of abundant progeny, the Kixes immediately hire Touchwood Sr. to administer the ‘‘water.’’ In an episode of untroubled farce, Touchwood Sr. gives Sir Oliver a vial of almond milk (totemically, the appropriate color liquid) and sends him out to ride on horseback for five hours to build up his sexual potency. When Lady Kix asks him how she should take her medicine, this ‘‘doctor,’’ who has, incidentally, just finished a meal of aphrodisiac foods, tells her, ‘‘Yours must be taken lying,’’ and leads her off to have intercourse—in her coach, if necessary. When the ‘‘water’’ has worked its magic and Lady Kix’s pregnancy is verified, Sir Oliver thinks that he has sired a child with the help of Touchwood Senior’s medical skills and is so rapturously happy that he proposes, with comic unconsciousness, that their two families live in a kind of symbiotic relationship. He tells his cuckholder-benefactor: . . . I am so endear’d to thee for my wife’s fruitfulness That I charge you both, your wife and thee, To live no more asunder for the world’s frowns; I have purse, and bed, and board for you: Be not afraid to go to your business roundly; Get children, and I’ll keep them.
In the harmony that is reached between need and abundance, the force of fertility is finally liberated. In the play’s other two plots, however, this goal is harder to achieve, for the problems they contain are more serious and complex. In the Sir Walter Whorehound-Allwits plot, the comic action is more obviously satiric, since the fertility theme is subordinated to the moral issue of the bourgeois couple’s adulterous relationship with their degenerate patron. Whereas Touchwood Senior’s motives for his virtually amoral adultery with Lady Kix are healthy in the sense that he brings joy to the Kixes and reunites his own family, Sir Walter’s relationship to the Allwits is a brutalizing one that strikes at the very foundation of marriage and the family. In fact, his ultimate expulsion from the play’s reconstituted society is justified, in large part, by his pretense that his illicit relationship with Mistress Allwit carries with it the rights of a marital one—a mistake which Touchwood Sr., in his indiscriminate swiving, never makes. Middleton calls attention to Sir Walter’s particular moral deformity by attributing to him the kind of thin-skinned jealousy we would expect of the husband, not the cuckolder: he thinks of Mistress Allwit as his right-
3 7
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
ful possession and is tormented because, as he says to the wittol, ‘‘I heard you were once offering to go to bed to her.’’ His selfishness affects all three of the play’s major plots; and so, after he has been wounded in his fight with Touchwood Jr., he justly deserves his virtual exile, becoming, like Dampit of A Trick to Catch the Old One, a scapegoat figure, carrying with him all the moral disgust the audience might feel for any of the play’s other vicious characters.
animality. The women glut themselves on comfits and get ludicrously drunk on the wine offered them, making sexual advances, in their hiccoughing overindulgence, at the first males to come into reach, Tim Yellowhammer and his Cambridge tutor. The infant, which, like the country girl’s child, is a sign of the physical vitality within the world of A Chaste Maid, again occasions the unmasking of the animal appetites of religious hypocrites.
In spite of the satiric material in this particular plot, the point of view of the Touchwood Sr.Kixes’ plot carries over to soften some of the moral outlines. For even here Middleton is able to affirm some aspects of a basically unattractive situation. This is evident in the (apparently) deliberate dramatic parallelism between Sir Walter’s latest child by Mistress Allwit and the infant brought to Touchwood Sr. by the country wench: in each case, Middleton amplifies the theme of procreative vitality and uses the infants, not to condemn male libertinism, but to expose life-denying, anti-carnal religious hypocrisy.
The Sir Walter-Allwits’ plot, then, may raise some serious ethical questions; but, as is evident in the christening party scene and the strong presence of the fertility theme (much is made of Mistress Allwit’s pregnancy and the Allwit household has a total of seven children), there is something comically alive about it. In the Touchwood Jr.-Yellowhammers plot the mood is darker: here Eros is clearly repressed and, as the symbolic deaths of Moll and her lover indicate, the greed and opportunism of the Yellowhammers are more potent antilife forces. Money tyrannizes over love in the Yellowhammers’ insistence that their daughter marry the profligate, but titled, Sir Walter Whorehound against her will. In a scene which is probably intended as a parody of popular theater romantic pathos, Moll is apparently killed by a combination of her parents’ cruel insensitivity to her feelings and the news of her lover’s supposed death. And the audience itself believes the young couple to have died; for it is probably meant to react to their resurrection in the final scene with a joyful surprise, jolted into a comic awareness of the value of life and love.
When the country girl leaves him to fare for herself in Puritan London with his latest bastard (her fifth child), the impoverished Touchwood Sr. remarks to himself: What shift she’ll make now with this piece of flesh In this strict time of Lent, I cannot imagine; Flesh dare not peep abroad now . . .
The pun on the word ‘‘flesh’’ is elaborated dramatically in the subsequent scene in which we witness the corrupt promotors selectively enforcing ‘‘religious wholesome laws.’’ These civil regulations against the consumption of meat in the city during the Lenten season are representative of the pharasaical denial of man’s physicality that must be exposed, as it is, by the very ‘‘flesh’’ it seeks to humble. And this is precisely what happens in the episode in which the promoters, who confiscate meat only from those who have not bribed them, seize upon the girl’s basket, in which the infant is sleeping, but which they think contains only a piece of mutton they covet, and find themselves with a ‘‘piece of flesh’’ they had not expected to gather. The flesh, which they actually serve, but puritanically pretend to despise, has its revenge on them. The christening party scene, at the center of which is another child (the new Allwit baby), is thematically close to this one; for, like the promotors, the Puritan ladies suffer a betrayal by their own appetites. What begins as a display of bourgeois pseudopoliteness becomes an image of comic
3 8
Eros is freed from bondage finally in the context of a conventional but highly theatrical device. After the coffins of the young lovers are brought onstage to file dirgeful music of recorders, attended by the play’s major characters (with the exception of the Yellowhammers, who appear later, and Sir Walter, who is in a hospital recovering from his wounds), Touchwood Sr. delivers a funeral oration to enlist the sympathies of his audience, and then suddenly revives his brother and Moll: ‘‘Up then apace, and take your fortunes, / Make these joyful hearts; Here’s none but friends.’’ In a trick which Jacobean comedy borrows from the commedia dell’arte, the two lovers arise from their coffins and are married on the spot. This transformation of winding-sheets into wedding-sheets makes their caskets into life and fertility symbols: ‘‘Here be your wedding-sheets you brought along with you: you may both go to bed when you please too,’’ Touchwood Sr. tells them, presiding over their
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
resurrection and espousals (as he had over their earlier aborted wedding) like a benevolent fertility god. Even in this plot, love triumphs over all odds; and the double wedding with which the play concludes—Touchwood Jr. and Moll, Tim Yellowhammer and Sir Walter’s Welsh courtesan—converts the mood of the comedy wholly into one of celebration, the avaricious Yellowhammer, despite a comic trace of stinginess, incongruously emerging as a joyful host to the younger generation: So fortune seldom deals two marriages With one hand, and both lucky; the best is, One feast will serve them both: marry, for room, I’ll have the dinner kept in Goldsmiths’ Hall, To which, kind gallants, I invite you all.
This festive conclusion, like that of A Mad World, My Masters, not only regenerates the play’s comic society, but it also ceremoniously reaches out into the world of the audience—a popular one in this case—to offer it the wholesome recreation of the spirits and the psychological cleansing that comic mirth can bring. A Chaste Maid, having exorcised its own narrowly moral concerns along with Sir Walter, whose absence is notable in this last scene, conveys to the spectators what Susanne Langer calls ‘‘the pure sense of life [which] is the underlying feeling of comedy,’’ a feeling which has been implicit all along in the theme of human fertility. Source: Arthur F. Marotti, ‘‘Fertility and Comic Form in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside,’’ in Comparative Drama, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1969, pp. 65–74.
V o l u m e
1 8
3 9
A
4 0
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
4 1
A
4 2
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
4 3
A
4 4
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
4 5
A
4 6
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
4 7
A
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
SOURCES Barber, Charles, ‘‘Critical Introduction,’’ in A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, University of California Press, 1969, pp. 3–4, 6–7. Covatta, Anthony, Thomas Middleton’s City Comedies, Bucknell University Press, 1973, pp. 34, 151–52, 158–59. Farr, Dorothy M., Thomas Middleton and the Drama of Realism: A Study of Some of the Representative Plays, Barnes & Noble, 1973, p. 35.
4 8
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
A
Heller, Herbert Jack, Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton’s City Comedies, University of Delaware Press, 2000, pp. 78, 80. Howard-Hill, T. H., ‘‘Thomas Middleton,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 58, Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists, edited by Fredson Bowers, Gale Research, 1987, pp. 196–222. Middleton, Thomas, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, edited by Alan Brissenden, Ernest Benn, 1968. Mulryne, F. R., ‘‘Thomas Middleton,’’ in British Writers, Vol. 2, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979, pp. 1–23. Sampson, Martin, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Masterpieces of the English Drama: Thomas Middleton, American Book Company, 1915, pp. 3, 9. Swinburne, Algernon Charles, ‘‘Thomas Middleton,’’ in Thomas Middleton, edited by Havelock Ellis, The Mermaid Series: The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists, Scholarly Press, 1969, pp. vii–xiii, originally published in 1887–1890.
FURTHER READING Friedenreich, Kenneth, ed., Accompanying the Players: Essays Celebrating Thomas Middleton, 1580–1980, AMS Press, 1983.
V o l u m e
1 8
C h a s t e
M a i d
i n
C h e a p s i d e
This book offers essays about Middleton from three different centuries, giving readers an overview of Middleton’s critical reception throughout the years. Porter, Roy, London: A Social History, Harvard University Press, 1995. Porter’s one-volume history of London examines the growth of the city from classical times to the present day. Pritchard, R. E., ed. Shakespeare’s England: Life in Elizabethan & Jacobean Times, Sutton Publishing, 1999. In this book, Pritchard assembles a number of writings from Shakespeare’s contemporaries, including excerpts from books, plays, poems, letters, diaries, and pamphlets. These writings detail each writer’s view of what life was like in England in this time period. The book includes a selection from a longtime collaborator with Middleton,Thomas Dekker, who talks about Cheapside. Steen, Sara Jayne, Ambrosia in an Earthen Vessel: Three Centuries of Audience and Reader Response to the Works of Thomas Middleton, AMS Press, 1993. Steen examines how various audiences and readers have received Middleton’s plays throughout the years.
4 9
The Deserter NORMAN BEIM 1978
Norman Beim’s play The Deserter was first produced in the United States in 1978. The play was inspired by The Execution of Private Slovik, a 1974 book by William Bradford Huie. The book exposed the details of the execution of Private Eddie D. Slovik, the only American soldier executed for desertion during World War II. The play was also inspired by Beim’s own experiences as an infantryman during World War II. Like the unnamed soldier in The Deserter, Beim also had qualms about killing enemy soldiers. Like many of Beim’s dramatic works, The Deserter is a short play. Although the critics have not offered much commentary on the play, it earned first place in the 1978 Samuel French competition and continues to be produced throughout the United States. The play’s three main themes—desertion, cowardice, and religious beliefs during war—all combine to create a strong antiwar message. The soldier’s descriptions of the horrors of war, coupled with his open and honest desire to survive and take care of his family, help to justify his actions and condemn war. The antiwar play was timely when it was first performed in 1978, since the United States had withdrawn from the unpopular Vietnam War only five years earlier. During the Vietnam War, various people organized a massive antiwar movement in the United States. During this movement, several American citizens were killed or wounded
5 0
T h e
by American soldiers while trying to protest the war. A current copy of The Deserter can be found in Six Award Winning Plays.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Beim was born on October 2, 1923, in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Ohio State University (1941–1942), intending to be a novelist. However, Beim became interested in theater and began writing his first plays. He left school to serve in the United States Army Field Artillery from 1942 to 1945 during World War II. While he was fighting in Germany, he received second prize in the National Theatre Conference competition for his first one-act play, Inside (first produced in 1951). When he returned from the war, Beim continued writing but also worked as an actor to support himself. Beim was profoundly affected by his experiences in the war, which he explored in some of his plays, including Inside and The Deserter (1979). The Deserter won first prize in the prestigious Samuel French competition (1978). His other works include My Family: The Jewish Immigrants (1997), Plays: At Home and Abroad (1997), Hymie and the Angel (1998), and Giants of the Old Testament (2001).
D e s e r t e r
that he would desert again if he had the chance, since the war is so horrible. He tells his wife to be strong and asks if she will occasionally write to his brother in prison. The second scene begins when a Catholic priest, Father Murray, arrives and the sergeant leaves. The soldier tells Father Murray that he would like to confess, and the priest sets up an impromptu confessional. The soldier confesses to many sins, including his desertion. Father Murray asks him why he ran away, and the soldier says he was afraid. He also tells the priest that his brother is in prison because he was part of a robbery that ended in murder. Since that event, when the soldier’s hometown priest, Father Hart, told him that all murder is wrong, the soldier has been unable to carry a gun. Father Murray tells the soldier that this is not true during war. Father Murray helps the soldier say an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be in penance for his sins, then gives the soldier a communion wafer. They discuss the particulars of the soldier’s execution, then Father Murray tells the soldier to think about the paradise he is about to enter, not the quick death that will bring him there. The sergeant comes back to let them know it is time for the execution. The soldier and the priest walk outside, while the sergeant remains behind in the empty room and has a drink. A number of gunshots are heard before the curtain falls, signaling the death of the soldier.
PLOT SUMMARY The Deserter starts out in a dark room in a European chateau, in early 1945. A soldier and a sergeant enter the room and have a long conversation, which comprises the first scene. As the conversation begins, the dialogue is cryptic, revealing details slowly. The sergeant says that the soldier has about an hour, so the soldier asks if he can write a letter. They discuss the soldier’s criminal record, then wonder whether the soldier’s wife will receive his pension after the soldier is killed by the firing squad. The soldier talks about his wife and the fact that they were just starting to get on their feet when the soldier got drafted. The sergeant talks with the soldier about his desertion and the soldier explains how he got separated from his military unit and tried to leave shortly after being reunited with it. The soldier asks if he can speak to a Catholic priest and the sergeant says that he will be able to soon. The sergeant finds some paper and a pen, and the soldier writes a long letter to his wife. In the letter, he tells her how he is being executed for desertion and notes
V o l u m e
1 8
CHARACTERS Sergeant Garrel Sergeant Garrel is the officer who is initially responsible for the soldier in the last hour before the soldier’s execution. Garrel is referred to simply as ‘‘The Sergeant’’ in the printed play and is not named until the very end. Throughout the first scene, Garrel talks with the soldier about his desertion and about the factors that have caused the soldier to try to run away. Garrel has mixed feelings about the soldier. At several points in their conversation, Garrel tries to be tough. He is a company man and believes in doing what the army tells him to. He criticizes the soldier’s weak behavior, first when the soldier cries and then when the soldier tells him the particulars of his desertion. Garrel says that if the soldier had tried to run away from Garrel’s unit, the sergeant would have shot him immediately. However, Garrel does not hate the soldier; he just thinks the soldier is stupid for
5 1
T h e
D e s e r t e r
throwing away his life. In fact, when he is not criticizing the soldier’s actions, Garrel asks the soldier questions to try to figure out why the soldier decided to run away.
Father Murray Father Murray is the officer who takes responsibility for the soldier during the last half hour before the soldier’s execution. Murray is referred to simply as ‘‘The Priest’’ in the printed play, although the soldier refers to him as ‘‘Father.’’ Although Murray is a priest, he is also a military captain, so he outranks Sergeant Murray. Because of this, Garrel agrees to leave the soldier unshackled while Murray and the soldier have their conversation. Throughout this conversation, which comprises the second scene of the play, Murray takes the soldier’s confession and gives him communion. Also, like the sergeant, the priest tries to ascertain why the soldier deserted his military unit. Although the soldier believes that murder of any kind is a mortal sin, Father Murray says that this is not true during war. Murray also criticizes the soldier for putting his fellow infantrymen in danger. Ultimately, however, Father Murray absolves the soldier of his sins and tells him to concentrate on the paradise that will follow his execution. Murray also asks the soldier to say a prayer for him once the soldier reaches heaven.
The Priest See Father Murray
The Sergeant See Sergeant Garrel
The Soldier The unnamed soldier is executed for the crime of military desertion during World War II. Throughout the play, the soldier speaks with two officers, Sergeant Garrel and Father Murray. During these two conversations, the soldier reveals the reasons why he tried to run away from his military unit. The soldier, an ex-convict, had a rough childhood with alcoholic parents. He and his brother started stealing so that they could get something to eat and this developed into a regular career in crime. His brother ultimately went to prison for taking part in a fatal robbery while the soldier straightened up once he met his wife. Although they did not have much, the soldier and his wife both worked hard and were starting to make a good life together when the soldier got drafted. He tried to tell the military that
5 2
he would not fight, but they did not listen. Ever since his brother’s imprisonment, however, he has been unable to carry a gun and when he is on the battlefield, he is unable to fight. In addition, the soldier is afraid of being killed in battle and leaving his wife alone. The soldier is a Catholic who gives his last confession to a Catholic priest, Father Murray. During his conversation with Murray, the soldier explains that he could not kill German soldiers because he believes that all killing is wrong. He learned this from his hometown priest, Father Hart. However, Father Murray says that killing is not a mortal sin during war. The soldier receives his last rites from Father Murray and goes to his death in peace, knowing that he will soon be in the afterlife. He does, however, feel bad for the rest of the soldiers who have to keep fighting the war and who must live with the anticipation that they may die at any moment.
THEMES Desertion As the title of the play indicates, the main theme is desertion. The unnamed soldier, who was drafted into service in the war, tried to flee from his military unit when he saw an opportunity to do so. ‘‘We got separated from our outfit, this buddy of mine and me. We didn’t know where they were, so we just joined this other outfit.’’ The soldier briefly rejoins his military unit and tries to explain to his captain that he cannot fight, but the officer does not listen to him. The soldier says, ‘‘He told me I gotta stay there . . . and I left.’’ Unfortunately, the soldier is caught and sentenced to be executed. This surprises him since, as the soldier notes, America does not generally execute its soldiers. The soldier says, ‘‘They ain’t never shot anybody before. Not even in the last war.’’ The sergeant notes, ‘‘You thought we were gonna put you in the stockade and take care of you to the end of the war. Didn’t you?’’ The sergeant and the priest, Father Murray, try to explain to the soldier why his crime of desertion deserves death. Although they approach the issue differently, both men essentially tell the soldier that by deserting his post, he is putting his entire military unit in danger of being killed by the Germans. The
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
D e s e r t e r
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research other American soldiers who have deserted their military units in any of the major American wars. Compare the soldiers’ reasons for desertion and their punishment to those of the soldier in The Deserter. • Research the current methods used in the United States to boost morale and prevent desertions. Imagine that you are an American soldier in the army during any of the major wars in which the United States has participated. Write a journal entry that describes your typical day, using your research to support your ideas. • Research any accounts of German soldiers who deserted their military units in World War II. Discuss the reasons behind these desertions and any punishment that these soldiers received. If
you can find no accounts of German desertions, discuss possible reasons why. • Research the number of casualties from the major battles of World War II. Plot the casualty numbers for each of these battles on a large map of the world and write a short description of each battle. • In the play, the soldier writes to his wife, telling her she should try to get access to his pension money, if she can. Research the average pension of an army private during World War II, and compare this to the average pension of an army private today. Use an economical table to convert the dollar amount of the 1945 pension to a current dollar value. Discuss the reasons behind any difference in the values of the pensions.
sergeant says, ‘‘I mean, you heard them shooting at you. They were out to kill you. If you were in my squad, I would have shot you right then and there.’’ The sergeant is mad because the desertion of one soldier weakens the unit and can mean the difference between living and dying when fighting the Germans. Father Murray offers a similar assessment when he scolds the soldier. Father Murray says, ‘‘Did you ever think that they had to do your fighting for you? Did you ever think that some of them might be alive right now, if you had been fighting beside them?’’
even more of a coward. The sergeant says, ‘‘You didn’t even have the guts to run away.’’ However, while this fear plays a part in the soldier’s decision to leave his military unit, the main reason is his fear of killing others. In his letter to his wife, the soldier describes the horrors that he has seen. Writes the soldier, ‘‘When we rolled into Germany the first day, I was sick and I’ve been sick ever since. There were bodies all along the road. It’s not like in the movies.’’
Cowardice
The soldier sees all of this carnage and refuses to fight, which is unacceptable in the military. As the sergeant notes, ‘‘In the army you do what you’re told.’’ Even Father Murray agrees with this: ‘‘In the army you’re supposed to do as you’re told. That’s the only way an army can be run.’’ However, the soldier sees a conflict between his religious beliefs and the military necessity that he kill others. The soldier’s brother is serving time in prison for being an accomplice in a fatal robbery. After this crime happened, the soldier’s priest back home, Father
The sergeant assumes in the beginning that the soldier has deserted his military unit because he is a coward who is afraid of being killed. The sergeant says, ‘‘What was it then? I mean, everybody’s scared. Anybody that’s got any sense.’’ When the soldier is talking to Father Murray, he confirms his cowardice. The soldier says, ‘‘I was afraid, Father. I was afraid of being shot.’’ When the soldier explains how he did not run away after being recaptured by his military unit, the sergeant thinks he is
V o l u m e
1 8
Religious Beliefs versus Military Necessity
5 3
T h e
D e s e r t e r
Hart, told him that all killing is wrong. The soldier says, ‘‘He said there was no excuse for killing anybody. Murder is murder, no matter what reason you had, and it was a mortal sin.’’ As a result, the soldier has developed a mental block that prevents him from firing his rifle: ‘‘when we were attacked, something in me just froze, and I knew it was all wrong.’’ Nevertheless, Father Murray says that murder is justified during wartime. The priest says, ‘‘This is war, boy. God doesn’t want you to sit on your heels and let your enemy destroy you.’’
STYLE One-Act Play Most plays are divided into acts, major divisions of the play’s dramatic action. In turn, acts are often divided into scenes. The Deserter is a one-act play, a unique dramatic structure. In one-act plays, the action takes place in one setting, whereas multiact plays have the capability of changing the setting between acts. The action in one-act plays tends to be continuous and does not feature the same interruptions that often introduce scenes in multi-act plays. However, while the stage directions in the play do not call for any fade-outs or other stage techniques that normally indicate the arrival of a new scene, Beim does divide the action of his play into two distinct scenes. The first scene begins when the sergeant and the soldier walk into the room and begin their conversation. The second scene begins when the priest comes to relieve the sergeant and receive the soldier’s confession.
5 4
traditionally associated with death, so it underscores the tragic qualities of the play. In addition, the deserted chateau where the play takes place seems death-like in its use of props, which include cloth-covered windows and furniture. These props give the setting a dark, dismal appearance, which further underscores the tragedy of the soldier’s death.
Irony Irony is the unique sense of awareness that is produced when someone says something and means another, or when somebody does something and the result is opposite of what was expected. The Deserter’s ending is an example of the second type, situational irony. While irony can often be used to comic effect, the ironic ending of The Deserter is grim. Throughout the story, the soldier talks about his inability to kill anybody, especially with a gun. In his letter to his wife, he notes, ‘‘As I told you, I would never fire my rifle, and I haven’t.’’ Later in the story, when he is talking to Father Murray, the soldier explains that he ‘‘used to carry a gun,’’ but that he stopped doing this after his brother went to prison for being part of a fatal robbery. At this point, the soldier’s hometown priest, Father Hart, tells him that all murder is a mortal sin. The soldier tells Father Murray, ‘‘somehow I got it into my head that it was wrong to carry a gun.’’ The soldier refuses to fight, and ultimately tries to run away. In the end, however, his efforts to avoid rifles and killing lead to his own death by firing squad—a highly ironic ending.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Setting
The Execution of Private Slovik
The play takes place during the final months of World War II. The sergeant notes this fact at one point: ‘‘The war’s almost over. A couple more months. That’s all that’s left.’’ The fact that the soldier is executed so close to the end of a war that has already claimed the lives of countless American servicemen makes the soldier’s death seem like even more of a waste. Since the Germans are almost beaten and the war is almost over, the soldier has a greater chance of surviving the fighting and returning home. However, his death sentence prevents this from happening. The action takes place during winter, which is also important to the play. Winter is
The play is based upon the actual execution of Private Eddie D. Slovik, the only American soldier to be executed for desertion during World War II. The execution of Private Slovik took place on January 31, 1945, during the final months of the war. As the soldier notes in Beim’s play, ‘‘They ain’t never shot anybody before. Not even in the last war. They ain’t never shot anybody.’’ The soldier, who is based on the real-life Slovik, is shocked that he is going to be killed for trying to avoid fighting. While this isolated event was shocking, soldiers in general had faced many other traumatic experiences during the war.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
D e s e r t e r
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1945: The United States enters World Wart II, joining England and the Soviet Union against Germany, Italy, and Japan. Late 1970s: The Cold War develops between the United States and the Soviet Union. Although much of the Cold War period is technically spent in peacetime, the pervasive feeling of suspicion and paranoia generated by this clash of superpowers make many in the United States feel as if they are fighting a war. Today: Many countries are involved in the war on terrorism. Following attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, many American citizens become suspicious and wary of terrorist attacks. • 1945: Many American men are drafted into military service during World War II. For the most part, these men are willing to serve their country against the threat of fascism. Late 1970s: Following the extremely unpopular Vietnam War, in which many American men try to fight or avoid the draft, the selective service system, which provides the administrative infrastructure for the draft is abolished.
Infantrymen during World War II World War II was a harrowing experience for soldiers on both sides of the conflict, but infantrymen often experienced the most emotional and physical anguish. Left out in the open on a battlefield, infantry troops had to dig foxholes to afford themselves some protection from other infantry, attacks by fighter planes, and other horrors. In the preface to his Six Award Winning Plays, Beim notes his own experiences as a young soldier fighting in the war. Beim says, ‘‘Trying to dig a foxhole in the frozen earth. Urinating in our helmets because it was too cold to get up. Wandering lost in the dark in the early hours of the morning.’’ Many soldiers lived in a state of constant anticipation, never knowing when death might come to take them. As the
V o l u m e
1 8
Today: The selective service system exists once again to provide the government with extra military forces, if needed. However, the United States military today relies on a smaller standing army with a large force of volunteer reserves who can be called to active duty, if necessary. • 1945: American soldiers return from World War II as heroes. However, some experience a psychological condition known as shell shock, which results from being in a constant state of anticipation of being killed in battle. Late 1970s: Many American veterans are shunned for their role in fighting the Vietnam War. This negative atmosphere, in addition to shell shock— now known as combat fatigue—helps to create behavioral and drug-abuse problems among many Vietnam veterans. Today: American soldiers returning from their battles in Afghanistan are watched closely by the Pentagon, which has instituted a comprehensive support program for helping veterans transition back to civilian life.
soldier in Beim’s play notes while being led off to his execution, he is finally at peace because he knows when he is going to die. However, he feels sorry for the other infantrymen who must continue to fight the war. The soldier says, ‘‘They’ll never know when they’re gonna get it. It was the waiting and the uncertainty that was the worst of it.’’
The Holocaust In addition to the trauma of the battlefield, some soldiers witnessed unspeakable horrors when they liberated German concentration camps. These efficient death camps had been Nazi Germany’s main tool for attempting to carry out a plan known as The Final Solution, an ethnic cleansing that was
5 5
T h e
D e s e r t e r
intended to wipe out European Jews. They nearly succeeded. In the concentration camps, Jews were shot, sent to gas chambers or otherwise murdered in large numbers. By the time Allied soldiers liberated the camps, Nazi Germany had systematically killed an estimated six million Jews—nearly two-thirds of the European Jewish population.
The Aftermath of the Vietnam War During World War II, the United States government enjoyed widespread support from its citizens for its participation in World War II. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii galvanized America to fight a war that was viewed as a fight against a deadly fascism that could overrun America. Hollywood also gave its support, as filmmakers, actors, and others in show business performed in and produced war propaganda films. However, this patriotic spirit did not permeate the Vietnam War, which sparked a huge antiwar movement. In 1978, when Beim first produced The Deserter, the effects of the Vietnam War (1965–1973) were still being felt by veterans. Vietnam claimed the lives of more than 55,000 American servicemen who fought a guerilla war in jungle conditions that were as harrowing as those faced by World War II soldiers. In addition to those killed, more than 150,000 American soldiers were wounded. However, these and other veterans did not get the welcome reception that World War II veterans had received. As Martin Gilbert notes in his book A History of the Twentieth Century, Volume Three: 1952–1999, ‘‘As the American public turned against the war, it also seemed to turn against the search for adequate provision for the veterans, for adequate recognition of what they had been through.’’
CRITICAL OVERVIEW One searches in vain to find much commentary on The Deserter. The lack of criticism may have something to do with the play’s length; drama critics tend to reserve their comments for longer plays. In fact, this may explain why there is very little criticism on Beim, in general, since the majority of Beim’s works are one- or two-act plays. Many writers tend to address specific topics or themes in their body of work. Beim is no different in that several of his works address the Jewish immigrant experience.
5 6
However, this play, which concerns the execution of a Catholic soldier, is a departure from that theme. Despite this lack of commentary, the play did win first prize in the prestigious Samuel French competition (1978). Also, one can ascertain that the play has enjoyed a popular reception since its first performances in an off-off-Broadway production in 1978. As Beim notes in 1995 in the preface to his Six Award Winning Plays, ‘‘The Deserter continues to be produced around the country.’’
CRITICISM Ryan D. Poquette Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses Beim’s use of people, setting, and props in Beim’s play to underscore the bleak message of war. The Deserter is a depressing play. Within two scenes in one short act, the audience is introduced to a soldier, slowly realizes that this soldier is going to be shot for desertion, and then watches as the soldier is led off stage at the end to die. On the surface, this all appears very simple. In fact, Beim notes the simplicity of the plot in the notes on the play in the preface of his Six Award Winning Plays. Beim says, ‘‘Eddie Slovik, The Soldier, is brought to a deserted chateau in France by a guard, given his last rites by a priest and led off to his execution.’’ Within this deceivingly simple premise, however, Beim carefully uses his characters’ names, his setting, and his props to magnify the ominous mood created by the main character’s impending death. One of the first things that is noticeable about the play is that the soldier has no name. Although Beim admits that the character is based upon the real-life person, Eddie Slovik, the soldier is listed only as ‘‘The Soldier’’ in the printed cast of characters. In addition, the only two characters that the soldier comes in contact with, the sergeant and the priest, never refer to the soldier by name. For example, when the play starts, the soldier asks for a paper and pencil. The sergeant replies, ‘‘The Corporal went to get you some. You want something to eat?’’ For the rest of their discussion, the soldier is referred to only as ‘‘you.’’ Likewise, when the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
D e s e r t e r
John Huston and Richard Crenna on the set of the 1971 film adaptation of The Deserter, directed by Nikola Fulgosi and Burt Kennedy
priest arrives to give the soldier his last rites, he says to the sergeant, ‘‘I’d like to be alone with the prisoner.’’ From this point on, the priest only refers to the soldier with terms like ‘‘you,’’ ‘‘son,’’ or ‘‘boy.’’ While one could argue that Beim does not use names because he is trying to keep his characters talking in an informal fashion, other clues in the story point to Beim’s deliberate use of an anonymous identity for the soldier. Namely, the other two characters, the priest and the sergeant, both have names. When the priest first enters, he tells the sergeant, ‘‘I’m Father Murray.’’ Also, even though the sergeant is not mentioned by name throughout most of the play, at the end the soldier reveals that he does know the sergeant’s name. The soldier says, ‘‘Thank you, Sergeant Garrel.’’ So why does Beim keep the doomed soldier anonymous? His impending death sentence wipes out the necessity for a name. The soldier, who had a name in life, is shortly going to be dead, so his name is not important. By making his soldier anonymous, however, Beim is also suggesting the anonymity of war, specifically the World War II of the setting and the Vietnam War that was recently over when he wrote the play. These two wars resulted in massive casualties, so
V o l u m e
1 8
many that it is sometimes hard to keep track of the names of the lost. This anonymity is one of the horrors of war that Beim hopes to underscore with his play. As a result, Beim uses the anonymity of his character to amplify the mood, or emotional quality, of the play. Besides his deft use of character names, or lack of character names, Beim also underscores the deathly qualities of war through his setting. The play takes place in an empty house, a deserted setting. Emptiness is also commonly used to suggest death, especially when the empty setting is one that should not be empty. In other words, the European country house that the characters are at has obviously been deserted. Given the circumstances of World War II, the inhabitants most likely fled from the Nazi terror or were killed before they could flee. In either case, the owners are long gone, casting an ominous feeling over the place. The coldness of the house underscores this idea. When the soldier and the sergeant first arrive, the soldier says he has a cold, and the sergeant tells him ‘‘there’s no place to light a fire here.’’ The soldier, however, points out the fireplace. The sergeant replies, ‘‘Well, there ain’t no wood. Besides, we ain’t gonna be here long, anyway.’’ The fact that they are not even going to be
5 7
T h e
D e s e r t e r
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Beim’s novel Hymie and the Angel (1998) also has a religious theme, although this work deals with Judaism, not Catholicism. In the story, Hymie, a Polish immigrant during the Great Depression, has not lived a very happy life but still resists when he is visited by Death. An angel comes to Hymie’s rescue, beating Death at a game of cards. However, Hymie must find somebody to take his place in death. • My Family: The Jewish Immigrants (1997), a collection of Beim’s Jewish-plays, deals with the Jewish immigrant experience in America. • Charles Frazier’s novel Cold Mountain (1997) won a National Book Award for its sympathetic portrayal of a Civil War deserter. Inman, a Confederate soldier, is wounded near the end of the war but does not die as expected. He escapes from his Southern hospital bed before he can be
there long enough to light a fire amplifies the mood of impending doom in the play. In addition, the lack of firewood, in a climate that is obviously prone to harsh winters, supports the idea that this house is a dead place that has not been used by anybody in a while. The play takes place in winter, which is another deliberate move on Beim’s part. The real-life Eddie Slovik was also shot in winter, so one could write this off as Beim being true to his historical material. However, just as Beim chose to make his soldier character anonymous for greater effect, he could also have chosen to set the play in a different season if it better suited his purpose. Setting the play in winter makes sense, given the dark mood of the play. The season of winter has strong symbolic meaning. A symbol is a physical object, action, or gesture that also represents an abstract concept, without losing its original identity. Winter is technically just the concrete amount of time that humans measure on a calendar to indicate the season. However, winter has long symbolized death, since it is
5 8
sent back to the front and attempts to return home to North Carolina and the woman he loves. • As Ella Lonn notes in her 1928 book Desertion during the Civil War (reprinted in 1994), many soldiers from both sides left their military units to return to their homes. Lonn’s book analyzes the reasons why these soldiers deserted and discusses the various punishments that they faced. • Jack Todd is an American journalist and soldier who fled to British Columbia during the Vietnam War. In his book Desertion: In the Time of Vietnam (2001), he details his life in Canada among other deserters and expresses regret for his desertion. He also discusses how he renounced his American citizenship, which made him ineligible for the future pardon by President Jimmy Carter and unable to attend his mother’s funeral in America because of fear of prosecution.
the end of the natural cycle for many plant life and animals. Most trees lose their leaves in the fall and remain barren all winter. Certain animals hibernate in a death-like sleep during the winter season and, in general, the natural world appears to die, awaiting spring for its rebirth. Writers, philosophers, and others have traditionally made use of this natural cycle to associate winter with death. Since The Deserter has a grim mood that reflects the soldier’s impending death, it makes sense that Beim chooses to keep the play set in winter. Beim’s choice of props also make sense. At first glance, it appears that the play uses very few props, which is true. However, each prop is used to great effect, further amplifying the grim mood of impending doom. Most of the major props are introduced right away. The first prop being sheets in the room. The stage notes indicate the following: ‘‘The furniture in the room and the French windows are covered with dust cloths.’’ Although it is early morning, these cloths on the windows render the room completely dark. In addition, the fact that the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
furniture is covered means that it has not been used in a while. This further underscores the idea that the house is a dead place that has not been used in a while. The sheet-covered furniture and windows are apparent to the audience even before the soldier and the sergeant enter. When these two characters enter, the next two props, candles and guns, are introduced. Before the first candle is introduced, the room is completely dark. Darkness, like winter, is often used symbolically to suggest death. It appears that this is Beim’s intent. The stage notes indicate the following: ‘‘(A SOLDIER enters the room, handcuffed and unarmed, followed by a SERGEANT, armed with a pistol and a rifle. The SERGEANT carries a lighted candle.)’’ The fact that the soldier enters the room in complete darkness is significant because he is already marked for darkness or death. The sergeant, on the other hand, carries a source of light, which is often used symbolically to suggest death’s opposite— life. Thus, the sergeant, who is not facing a death sentence is allowed to carry the symbol of life. On a similar note, the sergeant’s guns further underscore the idea of the soldier’s impending death, since guns are used to take life. This is especially true since the soldier’s execution is carried out by rifle. The sergeant’s life-giving candle offers the soldier a brief reprieve—‘‘About an hour,’’ as the sergeant notes—but only long enough for the doomed soldier to write his letter to his wife. In fact, the soldier’s letter is another major prop that is used to great effect. Throughout the first scene, Beim has had his soldier explain his reasons for deserting to the sergeant. In the process, the audience starts to feel sorry for the soldier. The letter helps amplify the audience’s sympathy for the soldier. ‘‘There’s only been one good thing in my life and that was you,’’ writes the soldier. ‘‘I never thought I could be so happy on this earth. Your love has made everything worthwhile for me.’’ The letter shows the soldier, a former criminal, to be a good man, who was finally getting his life back on track, but who now is going to be punished for doing what he believes was right. ‘‘I would do it again. This war is a terrible thing,’’ writes the soldier. The letter is also important because it is the soldier’s last. When his wife receives it, her husband will already be dead. Because of this, the letter, like the other props, amplifies the grim mood in the play. In the end, even though Beim’s play is short and simple in concept, it packs a lot of punch by creating a grim mood of impending death. Through
V o l u m e
1 8
D e s e r t e r
THE LETTER IS ALSO IMPORTANT BECAUSE IT IS THE SOLDIER’S LAST. WHEN HIS WIFE RECEIVES IT, HER HUSBAND WILL ALREADY BE DEAD. BECAUSE OF THIS, THE LETTER, LIKE THE OTHER PROPS, AMPLIFIES THE GRIM MOOD IN THE PLAY.’’
its use of character names, setting and props, Beim hooks his audience and forces them to see the horrors of war, something that he experienced himself in World War II. In fact, like Eddie Slovik, and like the soldier character that Beim created to represent Slovik, Beim was unsure about the morality of his role in the war. Beim says in the preface to his Six Award Winning Plays, ‘‘I had qualms about bearing arms and killing my fellow man. ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ the Bible said. How ironic that morality can be twisted to suit the times.’’ In his own time, with the Vietnam War just recently over, Beim wrote The Deserter, which ultimately uses a grim mood to make a statement about this twisting of morality that takes place during times of war. Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on The Deserter, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Liz Brent Brent holds a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan and is a freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Brent asserts that Beim’s play demonstrates the ways in which a variety of societal institutions have failed to accommodate the needs of the individual citizen. Beim’s one-act play The Deserter is set during the final months of World War II and concerns an American soldier who is about to be executed for deserting his unit and refusing to fire his gun at the enemy. With one hour to spare before the execution takes place, the soldier, as he is identified in the play, reveals much about his life history leading up to the act of desertion. He speaks first with the sergeant who keeps guard over him, and then with a military Catholic priest who is brought in to take his
5 9
T h e
D e s e r t e r
last confession. Based on the soldier’s dialogue with these men, as well as the contents of the letter he writes to his wife, the reader is provided with enough information to piece together a basic outline of his life. Through this process of self-revelation, the soldier describes his encounters with various societal institutions, including the nuclear family, the economic system, the Catholic Church, the mass media, and the military. Beim thereby portrays a series of conflicts between the individual and society, as played out in the soldier’s encounters with these institutions. In this condensed dramatic narrative, Beim demonstrates that the soldier’s ‘‘crime’’ of desertion is the result, not of a character defect in the individual, but a failure of society to uphold a morally and ethically consistent system of values and to provide adequately for the needs of individual citizens. Beim thus implies that society has failed the individual through a system of faulty institutions. The first societal institution encountered by the soldier is that of the nuclear family. Through the soldier’s descriptions of his childhood and family life, Beim demonstrates the ways in which the institution of the family has failed to adequately provide for the well-being of the child. The soldier explains that his parents neglected and abused him and his brother when they were children. He tells the sergeant, ‘‘My parents were rotten. They were no good,’’ adding, ‘‘they never cared about me or my brother.’’ He later says that his parents used to drink and fight a lot. The soldier attributes his youthful criminal behavior to these failings on the part of his parents to properly raise and nurture him as a child. Through the soldier’s account of his unfortunate childhood, Beim demonstrates that the societal institution of the nuclear family, purportedly responsible for the care and upbringing of children, fails to account for children whose parents are unwilling or unable to properly raise and nurture them. The soldier’s acts of theft while still a child are attributed to the failure of the economic system, as well as the failure of the nuclear family. He relates a series of robberies, arrests, and incarcerations undergone by himself and his brother. While he indicates that his acts of theft were partly due to neglect on the part of his parents, the soldier also implies that his parents were poor and did not have enough money to feed their children sufficiently. He explains that he and his brother were never adequately fed, as a direct result of which they committed their first acts of robbery. He tells the sergeant, ‘‘My
6 0
brother and I never used to have enough to eat. That’s why we started stealing in the first place. Just to get something to eat.’’ When the sergeant comments that there are other ways of obtaining food besides stealing (such as working to earn a living), the soldier responds by pointing out that, as a child, he was not in a position to earn his own living. Thus, the soldier’s family background of poverty is demonstrated to be in part responsible for his criminal behavior. Beim thereby implies that a societal system of economic inequality and inadequate assistance for the poor, particularly for poor children, is largely to blame for the soldier’s crimes. The failure of the economic system to adequately address the needs of the individual is further indicated by the struggles of the soldier and his wife to maintain financial stability. The soldier tells the sergeant that he and his wife ‘‘ain’t got nothing, and we both worked hard.’’ This admission indicates that even those willing to work hard for their living often find that they are barely able to make ends meet. Further, their financial struggles are exacerbated when he is drafted into the army. He explains that they had finally earned enough money to get a nice apartment and plan to have a child when he got drafted. Because he was not paid enough by the army to maintain their moderate economic gains, his wife was unable to afford their apartment and had to move out. In addition, their furniture, which had not been fully paid for yet, was taken away from them. The failure of the economic system is further indicated by the soldier’s concern about getting a military pension. He hopes that his wife will receive his military pension after he is executed but assumes that the nature of his crime will disqualify her for these benefits. Through these details of the soldier’s financial concerns in regard to his wife, Beim indicates that the economic system often fails to ensure financial stability for many of its citizens. In addition, the economic system fails to account for people such as the soldier’s wife, who is too ill to support herself financially without the assistance of her husband. The soldier relates a series of encounters with the Catholic Church that had a strong effect on his life. As with the family and the economic system, it seems that the church failed to accommodate his individual circumstances in life. He explains that he and his wife were not allowed to get married in a Roman Catholic Church because his parents had baptized him in the wrong church. He comments that he does not know how it happened that his parents did this, but says that the priest refused to
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
marry them because of it. In this instance, the soldier was again failed by his family in ways that were completely beyond his control. He asserts that he has always been a Catholic and that his wife, though not a Catholic, had attended Catholic church with him and agreed to provide their children with a Catholic upbringing. The refusal of the priest to marry them, despite the soldier’s deep religious faith and genuine efforts to live up to the ideals of the church, indicates an institution that places rigid institutional policies above the specific circumstances of the individual. As well as the failure of the nuclear family, the economic system, and the church to adequately address the needs of the individual, the soldier indicates that even the institution of the mass media failed to adequately prepare him for the realities of war. He comments that he and his wife used to go out to the movies several times a week, and that these movies misrepresented the experience of war. In the letter to his wife, the soldier tells her ‘‘This war is a terrible thing.’’ He describes the dead bodies strewn along the road when the Allied troops first rolled into Germany, asserting ‘‘It’s not like in the movies, I’ll tell you that.’’ The soldier further comments to the sergeant that, in movies, a man who is about to be executed is always granted a pardon at the last moment and allowed to live. He realizes, however, that this is not something he can hope for in reality, observing, ‘‘I guess it’s too late for any kind of pardon.’’ By indicating the discrepancy between representations of war in movies and the realities of war, Beim suggests that society fails to provide its citizens with a realistic understanding of war. In addition to the aforementioned institutions, The Deserter explores the ways in which military policy is often in conflict with the concerns of the individual citizen. The soldier fully admits to having failed to fire his gun at the enemy and deserted his unit to avoid participating in combat. But, he struggles in the last hour of his life with conflicts between the values he has been taught by the Catholic Church and those of the military. His deeply held religious values are in conflict with the requirements made upon him by the military. He explains to the sergeant and to the military priest that a priest by the name of Father Hart taught him that killing another human being is wrong, regardless of the circumstance. The military priest contradicts this message when he tells the soldier that God does not want his enemies to win the war, and that, therefore, it is his duty to God and country to obey
V o l u m e
1 8
D e s e r t e r
THROUGH THE SOLDIER’S ACCOUNT OF HIS UNFORTUNATE CHILDHOOD, BEIM DEMONSTRATES THAT THE SOCIETAL INSTITUTION OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, PURPORTEDLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CARE AND UPBRINGING OF CHILDREN, FAILS TO ACCOUNT FOR CHILDREN WHOSE PARENTS ARE UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO PROPERLY RAISE AND NURTURE THEM.’’
the commands of his military superiors. The soldier repeatedly asserts that he is confused by these conflicting messages. Beim contrasts the teaching of one priest, Father Hart, with those of the military priest to demonstrate the failure of both the church and the military to present a consistent system of values and morals according to which the individual citizen may live. Despite his difficult childhood, the soldier maintains a strong system of personal values by which he tries to live. This system of values includes a strong work ethic, loyalty to loved ones, compassion for other people, religious faith, and a prohibition against killing. The soldier’s strong work ethic is indicated by his efforts to work hard so that he and his wife can afford to have a child and support a family. Because of his strong sense of loyalty to his wife, he expresses the utmost concern for her financial, physical, and emotional well being, even as he is being lead off to his own death. His sense of compassion for other people is demonstrated through his sympathy for the sergeant given the unpleasant task of guarding a condemned man, as well as for the twelve men on the firing squad whose duty it is to execute him. His deeply held belief that killing is wrong prevents him from shooting his gun at the German soldiers. The soldier’s Catholic faith remains strong throughout his life, and his last moments are devoted to making a final confession to a Catholic priest before being lead off to execution.
6 1
T h e
D e s e r t e r
Through the character of the soldier, Beim thus demonstrates that the values of the individual, even when noble, are often in conflict with the dictates of societal institutions. In the final moments before his execution, the soldier comes to an understanding that he is being executed as a means of making an example to warn other soldiers against desertion. He comments to the priest, ‘‘I guess they had to make an example of someone and I am an ex-con, so why not me?’’ Beim here suggests that the execution of the soldier represents a failure of society to provide adequate opportunities for individual citizens. Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on The Deserter, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
SOURCES Beim, Norman, The Deserter, in Six Award Winning Plays, New Concept Press, 1995, pp. 233–51. ———, ‘‘Preface,’’ in Six Award Winning Plays, New Concept Press, 1995, pp. viii–x. Gilbert, Martin, A History of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 3, 1952–1999, Perennial, 2000, p. 453.
6 2
FURTHER READING Beevor, Antony, The Fall of Berlin, 1945, Viking Press, 2002. Beever examines the massive advance of Soviet and other Allied troops to Berlin, which ultimately led to the defeat of Germany and the end of the European conflict. The author incorporates several eyewitness accounts and new research from both Soviet and German archives. Beschloss, Michael R., The Conquerors: Roosevelt, Truman and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945, Simon & Schuster, 2002. Beschloss examines the political motivations of the American government and its allies during World War II. Their plan for postwar Germany ultimately led to the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Canfield, Bruce N., U.S. Infantry Weapons of World War II, Andrew Mowbray Publishers, 1996. Canfield gives detailed, technical coverage of all of the portable weapons used by Americans during World War II. Huie, William Bradford, The Execution of Private Slovik, Nuell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1954. Huie’s book was Beim’s main inspiration for writing The Deserter.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Endgame Endgame is Samuel Beckett’s second published play. The plot is continuous, unbroken by separate scenes or acts. Roger Blin first produced this play in France at the Royal Court, in 1957, and later Blin and Georges Devine produced it again in an English production. Both were badly received by almost all London critics. Only after the now famous Paris production of 1964, starring Patrick Magee and Jack Macgowran in the roles of Hamm and Clov, was Endgame recognized as a masterpiece.
SAMUEL BECKETT 1957
As the play opens, Hamm is dying in a world that seems to be coming to an end. Hamm takes satisfaction in knowing that all of existence may fade to nothing. Hamm is confined to a chair, and throughout the play he discards, reluctantly, the continuing prospects of life: food; painkillers; his servant Clov, on whom he is totally dependent; the pole that enables him to move his wheelchair; and holding the dog, on which he lavishes his affection. Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, having lost their legs many years ago in a bicycle accident, live in ashbins from which they occasionally emerge only to be cursed by their son. His mother dies and Hamm, knowing that Clov is leaving him, prepares for his last battle, first to outlive his father and then to face inevitable death without the help of the few objects that have given him comfort in his final days. Hamm soliloquizes in terms of the last moves in chess, a king evading checkmate as long as possible with stern asides on religion, ‘‘Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as
6 3
E n d g a m e
yourself!’’ He echoes Pozzo’s gravedigger aphorism in Waiting for Godot when he says, ‘‘The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.’’ Clov prepares to leave, hating Hamm for past wrongs, yet now without pity for Hamm.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in Foxrock County, Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1906. He was the second of two sons of a Protestant Anglo-Irish couple. As a young boy, he was quite energetic and excelled at sports such as cricket, tennis, and boxing. He studied at Earlsfort House in Dublin and then at Portora Royal School in Enniskillen, the same school Oscar Wilde had attended. It was here that he first began to learn French, one of the two languages in which he would write. He received a degree in romance languages from Trinity College, Dublin. He taught in Belfast before going to Paris as lecteur d’anglais at the École Normale Supérieure; there, in 1928, he met fellow Dubliner James Joyce, with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Beckett was one of Joyce’s assistants in the construction of Work in Progress, later titled Finnegan’s Wake. Inspired by the Parisian literary scene, Beckett began writing. His first published writing was an essay on Joyce (1929). His first story, ‘‘Assumption,’’ appeared in Transition in 1929, and in 1930 he returned as lecturer to Trinity College, Dublin. In 1930, Beckett published his first poem, ‘‘Whoroscope.’’ Shortly thereafter, he published a study of the recently deceased Proust, an author Beckett admired tremendously. Beckett quickly realized the academic life was not for him and left Trinity College to become a full-time writer. He then embarked on five unsettled, solitary years in Germany, France, Ireland, and London before settling permanently in France in 1937. A collection of stories, More Pricks than Kicks (1934) was followed by a number of full-length novels, including the comic novel Murphy (1938) and Watt (1953), both written in English. Walking home late one night with friends, Beckett was stabbed and nearly killed. Recuperating, Beckett received attention from a French acquaintance, Suzanne Deschevaux-Dusmesnil, who would become his life companion and wife, though they would not marry until 1961. Beckett and Suzanne
6 4
worked for the French Resistance, narrowly escaped the Gestapo, and then moved to unoccupied France, where Beckett worked on a farm in exchange for room and board and wrote his novel Watt. Many consider the beginning of his writing in French (1947–1950) his most prolific creative period. Beckett’s trilogy—Molloy (1951), Mallone Dies (1951), and The Unnamable (1953)—were all originally written in French and all three are interior monologues or soliloquies. His first French novel, Mercier et Camier, predicts the form of Waiting for Godot, with its wandering duo, minimalist style and repetition, but was not published until years later. Also in 1947, he wrote his first play, Eleutheria, which he would not allow to be published during his lifetime and which, after his death, became a cause of great controversy when Beckett’s American publisher, Barney Rosset, released an English translation against the wishes of the Beckett estate. In 1948–1949, Beckett wrote En attendant Godot or Waiting for Godot. Beckett’s highly distinctive, despairing, yet curiously exhilarating voice reached a wide audience and won public acclaim with the Paris performance in 1953 of En attendant Godot. Beckett became widely known as a playwright associated with the theater of the absurd, whose use of the stage and of dramatic narrative and symbolism revolutionized drama in England and deeply influenced later playwrights. In the 1950s and 1960s, Beckett’s playwriting continued with a series of masterworks including Endgame, Krapp’s Last Tape, and Happy Days. He wrote his first radio plays and created innovative prose fiction, including How It Is (1961) and The Lost Ones (1970). In the 1970s, Beckett continued to interest himself in the productions of his plays, wrote television plays for the BBC, and began the autobiographical novel Company. In the 1980s, he crafted more prose works (Ill Seen Ill Said and Westward Ho) and more plays (including Rockaby and Ohio Impromptu). His last major work was Stirrings Still (1986). In 1986, Beckett began to suffer from emphysema. After his first hospitalization, he wrote in bed, producing his final work, the poem ‘‘What is the Word.’’ After moving into the nursing home Le Tiers Temps, Beckett’s deteriorating health prevented him from new writing, but he continued to translate previous works. Suzanne died on July 17, 1989, and Beckett died on December 22 of the same year. He is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969 but did not attend the presentation ceremony.
PLOT SUMMARY The play opens by establishing the only mise-enscéne of the play. Clov begins his daily ritual of drawing back the curtains of two windows (first the sea window and then the earth window). He uncovers two ashbins and then Hamm, who is still asleep. Clov delivers the play’s opening soliloquy, setting up the thematic tension between characters that seek an ending, either to life or their habitual lifestyles, and their impotency in activating the means to that end. Clov states, ‘‘I can’t be punished anymore,’’ which reinforces his discontent as Hamm’s servant and expresses his desire to leave Hamm altogether. Hamm delivers his first soliloquy and we are introduced to the master-servant relationship between Hamm and Clov. Hamm addresses his bloodstained handkerchief as ‘‘Old Stancher’’ and is convinced that his suffering is greater than all others and establishes the dual metaphor throughout the play: the rhetoric of chess strategy and drama as game and competition. The play’s dialogue begins with the word ‘‘finished’’ and Hamm expresses his wish to begin the day by going to bed. Hamm is terrified of being left alone and will do anything to keep Clov with him. Hamm asks Clov for his painkiller and Clov denies him. This is the first of six times that Hamm will ask Clov for his painkiller throughout the play. Later, when Hamm asks Clov why he does not kill him, Clov tells him that it is because he does not know the combination of the cupboard where the food supply is stored. Hamm dismisses Clov to the kitchen and then chastises his father, Nagg, who has emerged from one of the ashbins, demanding food. Hamm whistles Clov in to feed Nagg, and then Hamm orders Clov to push Nagg back into the bin and close the lid. Hamm continues to try to draw Clov into conversation but fails. Nell, Hamm’s mother, is now introduced. Both she and Nagg, the two elderly characters of the play, are in ashbins, and although they are confined to these ashbins, they still strive for love and romance: NELL: What is it, my pet? (Pause.) Time for love? NAGG: Were you asleep? NELL: Oh, no! NAGG: Kiss me!
V o l u m e
1 8
Samuel Beckett
NELL: We can’t. NAGG: Try. (Their heads strain towards each other, fail to meet, fall apart again.) NELL: Why this farce, day after day?
Nagg and Nell discuss their loss of sight, hearing, and teeth, raging against Hamm for not providing them with adequate food and a regular change of sawdust in their ashbins. They tell each other jokes and reminisce over their romantic youth. One of the jokes Nagg tells is of an old Jewish tailor who took more than three months to make a decent pair of trousers, the results of which were more satisfactory than God’s six-day effort to create the world. Hamm, annoyed by their nostalgia, interrupts his parents to tell them that he is experiencing physical distress. Nagg chuckles at Hamm’s pain. Nell concedes that ‘‘nothing is truly funnier than unhappiness.’’ Hamm demands silence and pleads for an end to his torment: ‘‘Will this never finish?’’ Nagg disappears into the ashbin, but Nell remains. Hamm shouts, ‘‘My kingdom for a nightman!’’ (a play on Shakepeare’s Richard III’s ‘‘My kingdom for a horse!’’ speech) and beckons Clov to rid him of Nagg and Nell. Next is extended dialogue between Hamm and Clov. Hamm demonstrates that he is the center of attention. Clov again refuses Hamm his painkiller
6 5
E n d g a m e
(for the third time), and Hamm demands that Clov take him for a spin around the room in his armchair, after which he ends up in the exact center of the room. While on the tour, Hamm lays his hand against the wall and says, ‘‘Beyond is the . . . other hell.’’ Hamm tells Clov to observe the weather conditions outside through the earth window and the sea widow via the telescope. What follows could be out of a Charlie Chaplin movie for Beckett inserts slapstick antics in Clov’s confusion about getting the ladder or the telescope first. Hamm demands the weather report, and Clov, moving about with the ladder and telescope at Hamm’s command, is eventually able to inform him that both the earth and sea windows are ‘‘corpsed.’’ This insight confirms Hamm’s worst fears that nothing exists outside their shelter. For Hamm, there is nothing in the world, and the only conclusion is death and extinction. Hamm continues to interrogate Clov, who tries to change the discussion by announcing that he has found a flea in his trousers. This sign of life upsets Hamm, who directs Clov, ‘‘But humanity might start from there all over again! Catch him, for the love of God!’’ Clov continues in a Chaplin-like scenario, trying to rid himself of the flea before they continue: HAMM: Did you get him? CLOV: Looks like it. (He drops the tin and adjusts his trousers.) Unless he’s laying doggo. HAMM: Laying! Lying you mean. Unless he’s lying doggo. . . . Use your head, can’t you. If he was laying we’d be [b——]ed.
While bleak, Beckett combines the elements of tragedy and comedy flawlessly. Hamm and Clov discuss their possibilities of escape from their situation. They discuss the possibility of using a raft to go south through what may be shark-infested waters. Hamm asks Clov for his painkiller for the fourth time, and Clov refuses once again. Hamm tells Clov, ‘‘One day you’ll be blind, like me. You’ll be sitting there, a speck in the void, forever, like me. . . . Yes, one day you’ll know what it is, you’ll be like me, except that you won’t have had pity on anyone and because there won’t be anyone left to pity you.’’ Hamm hopes to discourage Clov’s leaving and reminds him that he took him in when he was a child and took care of him as a father would take care of his own child. While that may be true, Clov again threatens to leave. Hamm asks Clov to fetch him the toy dog that Clov has been making.
6 6
Clov brings out the toy dog, which has only three legs. Like the characters of the play, the toy dog is also crippled. Hamm happily takes the dog. This portion is dominated by discussion of what ‘‘goes on in the end.’’ The next section develops Clov’s rebellion against Hamm. Hamm demands his gaff but is unable to move without Clov’s assistance. Hamm tells a story of a mad painter who, believing the end of the world had come, was assigned to an insane asylum. Hamm would visit him and lead him to the window to show him the bountiful world outside, but the painter would retreat to his corner because ‘‘all he had seen was ashes.’’ Questioned by Hamm whether or not ‘‘this thing has gone on long enough,’’ Clov agrees that it has, and while Hamm is stuck, Clov can leave Hamm. Hamm asks for a good-bye kiss, but Clov refuses. Hamm asks how he will know whether or not Clov has left or died in his kitchen, since the stench of rotting corpses is throughout the place. Clov’s answer is to set the alarm clock: if it rings he has gone, if it does not he is dead. Clov sets the alarm clock up and it rings: CLOV: The end is terrific! HAMM: I prefer the middle.
Hamm, for the fifth time, requests his painkiller and again Clov denies him. Hamm asks Clov to wake up Nagg. Hamm promises Nagg a sugarplum if he will listen to a story Hamm would like to tell. Nagg agrees. Next is a long monologue by Hamm. Hamm recalls a poor man and his baby who on Christmas Eve had once sought Hamm’s kindness. Hamm tells the story with zeal, remembering his eventual agreement to take the man into his service and provide for his son. It becomes clear that the story Hamm is telling is that of Clov’s father and how Clov came to be with Hamm. Hamm relishes his power over the others. Hamm prays to God for salvation. Hamm orders both Clov and Nagg to pray to God, but Hamm cries in agony, ‘‘The bastard! He doesn’t exist!’’ Nagg curses Hamm: ‘‘Yes, I hope I’ll live till then, to hear you calling me like when you were a tiny boy, and were frightened, in the dark, and I was your only hope.’’ Nagg, unable to get Nell to respond to his knocks on her ashbin lid, goes back into his ashbin and closes the lid. Hamm continues to tell his story. Hamm sends Clov to see if Nell is dead. Clov replies, ‘‘Looks like it.’’ Hamm asks Clov to check and see if Nagg is
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
dead. Clov raises Nagg’s ashbin lid and says, ‘‘Doesn’t look like it.’’ Hamm asks what he is doing, and Clov replies, ‘‘He’s crying,’’ to which Hamm says, ‘‘Then he’s living.’’ Hamm goes again for a spin around the room. Again, there is no light from the earth, and the sea is calm. Hamm accepts the world’s condition and asks for his father but receives no response. Clov is sent to see if Nagg has heard either of Hamm’s two calls. Clov reports that Nagg has heard only one call but is not certain if it was Hamm’s first or second call. Hamm asks for a lap rug, which Clov does not provide. Clov refuses to show Hamm any affection when Hamm asks for a kiss. Hamm asks for his toy dog but then changes his mind. Clov goes to the kitchen to kill the rat he has discovered there before it dies. Hamm’s next monologue begins calmly and nostalgically and builds feelings of guilt as well as curiosity about what happens after the end of the play. HAMM: There I’ll be, in the old shelter, alone against my silence and . . . (he hesitates) . . . the stillness. If I can hold my peace, and sit quiet, it will be all over with sound, motion, all over and done with.
Clov was unable to kill the rat in the kitchen and the time for Hamm’s painkiller has finally arrived. Clov now tells Hamm, after all of his requests, that the supply has been depleted. Clov seriously considers leaving Hamm. Hamm tells Clov to look at the world outside ‘‘Since it’s calling you.’’ Clov delivers his final monologue and realizes that he must learn to suffer. He and Hamm debate the state of the outside world and Hamm protests that he does not care what has happened. Clov reminds Hamm that he refused to provide Mother Pegg oil for her lamp and continues to tell Hamm harshly that Mother Pegg died of darkness. And so we believe that Mother Pegg’s death was in part due to Hamm. Hamm asks for the toy dog and Clov hits him on the head with it. Hamm pleads that Clov use an axe or gaff. When Clov announces that there are no more coffins, Hamm says, ‘‘Then let it end!’’ Hamm and Clov end their relationship and agree to go their separate ways. Hamm’s final monologue begins, ‘‘Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with
V o l u m e
1 8
losing.’’ Clov, dressed for his departure, enters and watches Hamm. After his monologue, Hamm calls twice for his father. There is no answer. Hamm then throws away the toy dog and his whistle and calls for Clov, who does not respond. Hamm covers his face with ‘‘Old Stancher,’’ the bloodstained handkerchief. Hamm, blind and paralyzed, seems to have chosen against life. Clov, standing in his travel clothes, is confronted with the choice to remain or walk out and live in an unknown world. Whether this will work out or not, Clov does not know nor does the audience.
CHARACTERS Clov Clov is Hamm’s servant, and he follows his master’s wishes, despite being treated horribly. Crippled but not incapacitated, Clov is capable of leaving the shelter he has known his entire life and of taking his chances in the ‘‘other hell’’ beyond the walls. Clov shows that he is capable of handling tasks and life, and at the end of the play he prepares to leave Hamm and take his chances in the outside world.
Hamm Hamm is dying in a world that seems to be ending. Hamm is blind and confined to a wheelchair. He is selfish and wants always to be the center of attention and considers himself something of a god-like character. He berates his servant Clov, upon whom he is completely dependent. His parents, Nagg and Nell, live in ashbins and occasionally emerge only to be berated by their son. Though the world may be coming to an end, Hamm takes satisfaction in knowing that perhaps all existence may fade to extinction. He hopes to exist long enough only to outlive his father.
Nagg Nagg is Hamm’s father. He and his wife now live in ashbins, having lost their legs in a bicycling accident years ago. Although their current situation is bleak, there are moments in the play where we understand that in their youth, Nagg and Nell had a great and wondrous love. They still reach for that love, despite the horrid conditions and their ungrateful son.
6 7
E n d g a m e
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • Released by Ambrose Video on DVD in 2002, the Beckett on Film DVD set is the first ever cinematic screening of all nineteen of Samuel Beckett’s plays. The acclaimed Beckett on Film project brings together some of the most distinguished directors and actors working today. Directors include Atom Egoyan, Damien Hirst, Neil Jordan, Conor McPherson, Damien O’Donnell, David Mamet, Anthony Minghella, Karel Reisz, and Patricia Rozema. The exceptional acting talent involved includes Michael Gambon, the late Sir John Gielgud, John Hurt, Jeremy Irons, Julianne Moore, Harold Pinter, Alan Rickman, and Kristen Scott-Thomas. Several of the films from the Beckett on Film project have been exhibited at international film festivals around the world including New York, Toronto, and Venice.
Nell Nell is Hamm’s mother. She, like Nagg, lives in an ashbin, also having lost her legs in the bicycling accident years ago. She dies in the play to the great distress of Nagg.
THEMES Live or Die? The characters, trapped in their single room occupy themselves with routines and tasks. Hamm is paralyzed and blind, Nagg and Nell cannot leave their ashbins, and the action of the play occurs in a single room, outside of which life evidently cannot survive. These characters struggle to move on or take action, and the actions they do take are often stagnant and nondescript. Each is dependent upon another for his or her very survival and Hamm questions the benefit of continuing life at all, often pestering nag for the ultimate painkiller—death.
6 8
The existence of God is also questioned and indirectly denied, painting a bleak picture of life as hard and without redemption, directed by the needs of handicapped tyrants like Hamm. When Hamm orders both Clov and Nagg to pray to God, Hamm cries in agony, ‘‘The bastard! He doesn’t exist!’’ Hamm and the other characters, in their stagnant misery and frustrations, lack faith in a benevolent promise of God to reprieve or redeem their anguish. Life seems a merciless cycle of desire and grief, of handicaps and ashbins, and, to these characters, death is no reward for enduring that cycle. The characters of Endgame maneuver through lives of emotional strife that anticipate death, though they lack the means to achieve it on their own.
Interdependence One of the most obvious themes of Endgame is the necessity of interdependence, even if the relationship is one of hate. Clov, for example, depends on Hamm for food since Hamm is the only one who knows the combination to the cupboard. Hamm relies completely on Clov for movement and vision. Critics often compare Endgame to Beckett’s previous drama Waiting for Godot, noting that characters in both plays are grouped in pairs. Endgame is bleaker and more perplexing because it lacks the hope for redemption that Waiting for Godot contains.
Generational Conflict Generational conflict, particularly between father and son, also emerges as a prominent theme. Hamm twice tells a story about a father and son and seems to view parent-child relationships only in terms of power and resentment. Critics have argued that Hamm resents Nagg, his father, for not being kind to him when he was young, whereas Hamm resents Clov, his son, for being young at a time when his own life is in decline. Endgame has also been interpreted as a depiction of humanity’s denial of such life processes as death and procreation.
Artistry Endgame is a self-reflexive work in which the hand of Beckett can often be seen. For example, Hamm’s narration is at once taking its own course in developing his personality while it also comments on the idea of creation, alluding to the creative process of an author. At the end of the story Hamm talks about the difficulty of creation: CLOV: Will it end soon?
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
HAMM: I’m afraid it will. CLOV: Pah! You’ll make up another. HAMM: I don’t know. (Pause.) I feel rather drained. The prolonged creative effort.
The characters make numerous, explicit references throughout Endgame to their roles as characters in a play. Hamm at one-point states: ‘‘I’m warming up for my last soliloquy.’’ Clov, at another instance, announces: ‘‘This is what we call making an exit.’’ Such self-reflexive references to the action of the play are representative of modernism and also suggest humankind’s inclination for dramatization to assign meaning in life and help understand the world.
Humor ‘‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.’’ Though Endgame is dark, there is humor in the play. Clov’s confusion over which items to fetch first and his antics with the ladder could be directly out of a film starring Charlie Chaplin, whom Beckett admired. Commenting on Endgame himself, Beckett identified the phrase ‘‘nothing is funnier than unhappiness’’ as key to the play’s interpretation and performance.
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Beckett is often considered a forerunner to the absurdist movement in theater. Read Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter and David Mamet’s Glengarry, Glen Ross, and write an essay on how you think their writing has been influenced by Samuel Beckett. • Nagg and Nell, Hamm’s parents, are in ashbins throughout the play. What comment does this make on society and our ideas and treatment of the elderly? • Beckett’s plays are filled with rituals. What rituals does Clov perform for Hamm, and what does this say about the master-servant relationship they are in? • Endgame contains several elements of comedy. How do you feel these elements work in regard to the overall tone of the play? Why does Beckett make use of comedy in this manner? What is Beckett saying about life and the nature of comedy?
STYLE Words and Stage Directions Endgame’s visual performance and self-reflexive dialogue constantly remind the audience that they are watching a performance by actors. Hamm broods: ‘‘All kinds of fantasies! That I’m being watched!’’ This tells the audience that they are part of the structure of the play, just as words, physical movement, lighting, whistles, dogs, ladders, windows, and silence play their roles. Beckett uses stage directions to create dynamic relationships between characters and the things they require to live: Hamm needs his armchair, and Nagg and Nell require their ashbins. Beckett creates a vivid physical world to complement the powerful and strippeddown dialogue. Beckett presents the characters’ inability to understand through abstract language and stagnant dramatic structure. Beckett has stripped down and broken apart his words and sentences. Words are
V o l u m e
1 8
able to contradict each other and are often elliptic. Clov utters the first line of the play: ‘‘Finished, it’s finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished.’’ By beginning the play with the word ‘‘Finished,’’ Beckett directs our attention toward endings. As Beckett’s characters search themselves and the world around them, language reflects the precarious balance between understanding and confusion.
Beckett’s Minor Plot Samuel Beckett’s plots are notable for their lack of the classical dramatic structure. The minor plot line of Endgame is that of Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell. It is clear that they had a romantic love in their youth, but they now live in ashbins and are not well-taken-care-of by their son. The end of the play finds both Nagg and Nell dead, without having experienced much satisfaction throughout
6 9
E n d g a m e
the play. Indeed, most of their interactions are attempts to recall their past happiness or to endure their current helpless situation.
Theater of the Absurd Drama known as the theater of the absurd begins in the 1950s. Endgame, Beckett’s first play after Waiting for Godot, continues in the tradition that Waiting for Godot established.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Nuclear Capability Although Beckett does not place the characters and actions of Endgame in a specific time and place, the play’s only set can be viewed as a bomb shelter after a nuclear bomb has detonated and destroyed much, if not all, life outside the shelter. This was certainly a looming fear when Beckett wrote the play and when it was performed in 1957. Although today this fear is still present, in 1957 the fear was at an all-time high, and the likelihood of such an event seemed all too possible and near.
The Cold War The late 1950s and the 1960s were dominated by the cold war, an intense rivalry between the United States and its allies against the Soviet Union. After World War II, Europe was divided into two zones of power, a capitalist west and a socialist east. The rivalry soon became worldwide, and there was always a threat that it could have developed into full-scale nuclear war. The struggle did become violent in 1950 when communist North Korea invaded South Korea, beginning the Korean War, which ended with the country divided.
The Eisenhower Doctrine The Eisenhower Doctrine, announced by United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower on January 5, 1957, pledged military and economic support to any Middle Eastern country needing help in resisting communist aggression. Marking another escalation in the cold war, the doctrine was intended to check the increase of Soviet influence in the Middle East and the increasingly strong Soviet support given the Arab states.
7 0
The Absurdists Of the French writers known as the absurdists, Arthur Adamov, Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett were the most significant. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, writers were trying to overthrow dramatic conventions and wanted to challenge audiences with something new. Antonin Artaud wrote The Theatre and Its Double (1938), which advocated a ‘‘theatre of cruelty,’’ and in 1943 JeanPaul Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness and No Exit, which dramatize Sartre’s existentialist viewpoint. Sartre’s viewpoint, combined with Albert Camus’s writings, provided the building blocks for the absurdist movement, which began to take shape in the early 1950s. In 1952, Ionesco premiered his play The Chairs, which is an excellent example of the theater of the absurd. However, it was not until 1953 and the premiere of En Attendant Godot, or Waiting for Godot, that absurdism reached a popular and international audience. Waiting for Godot is perhaps the best-known work from the absurdist movement. The two-act tragicomedy tells the story of two old men, Vladimir and Estragon, who cannot decide if they should leave or stay and wait for Godot, who may or may not arrive and rescue them from their desperate situation. Endgame takes this struggle to the next level as Hamm and Clov struggle with the meaning, if there is any, of living at all. Beckett’s importance to the absurdist movement is obvious, but saying that he is an absurdist writer is not giving full credit to his wide range of work. Beckett’s writing stands out above the other absurdist works in its ingenuity, universality, and humanity.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW When Endgame opened in 1957, Beckett described the event as ‘‘rather grim, like playing to mahogany, or rather teak.’’ Indeed, most critics found the play bewildering or they disliked it. Kenneth Tynan in the Observer said that Beckett’s new play made it ‘‘clear that his purpose is neither to move nor to help us. For him, man is a pygmy who connives at his own inevitable degradation.’’ Marc Bernard in Nouvelles litteraires said that he constantly had the impression that he was listening to a medieval fantasy or comic poem in which allegorical characters, fake scholasticism, and Aristotelian reasoning
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1950s: The United States and the Soviet Union are split over Middle East loyalties and support. Fear of a nuclear war increases. Today: The United States and England engage in war with Iraq. The United States wages war on terrorism throughout the world. North Korea possesses nuclear weapons, and the potential for nuclear war again seems all too possible.
• 1950s: Eugene O’Neill is posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama for Long Day’s Journey into Night. Today: Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
• 1950s: Russian scientists launch Sputnik into orbit, initiating the space race between the United States and Russia.
• 1950s: Albert Camus receives the Nobel Prize for literature ‘‘for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.’’
Today: Beginning in the 1990s, Russian cosmonauts worked together with American astronauts on the space station Mir. The United States and Russia continue to have cooperative working efforts in space exploration and research.
Today: Imre Kertsz (Hungary) receives the Nobel Prize for literature ‘‘for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.’’
were made into a mixture in which metaphysics suddenly took on a farcical tone. He considered Hamm ‘‘the intellectual, paralysed, blind as talkative as a fourteenth century doctor. He is waited upon by the Common Man, half way between man and beast’’ who ‘‘has been given a simian appearance: long, dangling arms, curved spine. The intellectual’s father and mother are stuffed into two dustbins; from time to time a lid is lifted and one of the parents begins to talk.’’ T. C. Worsley in the Listener said of Waiting for Godot, ‘‘Mr. Beckett’s neurosis and mine were for quite long stretches on the same theme; in Endgame they never tangled. He has, in Endgame, . . . expanded not the public but the private images. He has concentrated not on what is common between his audiences and him but on what is private in himself.’’ When Endgame was produced on Broadway in 1980, directed by Jopseh Chaikin and starring Daniel Setzer as Hamm and Michael Gross as Clov, it had become considered a classic. Mel Gussow, wrote in the New York Times that ‘‘Mr. Chaikin and Mr. Setzer never forget the play’s portent, but neither do they shortchange its mordant humor. The
V o l u m e
1 8
director approaches Endgame as a gem to be played, as a piece to be performed. Mr. Chaikin is an experimental artist who is scrupulous when dealing with classics.’’ He concludes, ‘‘the play is profound. The acting is prodigious.’’
CRITICISM Daryl McDaniel McDaniel is a writer with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan. In the following essay, McDaniel discusses Beckett’s Endgame. Samuel Beckett’s writing can be something of a puzzle. There are no final positions or absolute interpretations. Endgame is, however, a unique masterpiece with an intricate dramatic structure that runs contrary to traditional theatrical structure. Endgame was groundbreaking because it dared not to adhere to accepted dramatic rules. Beckett
7 1
E n d g a m e
Steven Bard, as Nagg, and Darlene Johnson, as Nell, in a scene from a 1999 theatrical production of Endgame, written by Samuel Beckett
uses circular dialogue, refuses to accessorize the play or its characters with anything but the bare minimum, yet he creates a complex fictional and highly theatrical world for his characters to inhabit. Beckett chooses his words carefully, and the nature of the dialogue is circular, for example in Hamm’s opening soliloquy: ‘‘And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to . . . to end. Yes, there it is, it’s time it ended and yet I hesitate to—(he yawns)—to end.’’ The language Beckett uses demonstrates the precarious balance between cognition and bewilderment. The breakdown of language reflects the breakdown of the characters’ ability to perceive the world around them. His use of self-reflexive dialogue informs the audience that they are sitting in a theater watching a play, alluding to the play as a ‘‘game.’’ Just as the words Beckett uses are few, he removes all extraneous material from his play. Endgame’s structure breaks from the theory that shaped centuries of dramas and tragedies. Aristotle wrote that tragedy is ‘‘an imitation of an action.’’ Beckett is not concerned with trying to create and maintain an imitation or illusion of reality. Beckett strips bare all detail except the necessary minimum, and the detail he does provide is often vague. Beckett’s use of dramatic motivation is also minimal. In traditional drama, a character’s motivations are made clear to
7 2
the audience, but the character’s actions in Endgame are peculiar. One may wish to go to the theater to come away with conclusions and answers, but Beckett presents a fictional world as complex as the real world, where conclusions are uncertain and answers not easily defined. Endgame can be seen as the highest sort of theater, where events take place in the midst of the life of the audience, and it is the audience’s responsibility to take what it can from what is presented rather than being force fed easily discernible plots. Despite flying in the face of recognized theatrical devices, there is an innovative dramatist at work, who decides to use chess as a way to play out this human predicament. Beckett uses chess as the play’s controlling metaphor, and he explores the human dilemma, mortality, and God’s existence, without providing simple answers, as his characters, and the audience, move through an uncertain existence. The game of chess becomes the metaphor that gives a seemingly structureless play a dramatic scheme. The characters in Endgame resemble chess pieces. The metaphorical king of Endgame is the center of attention, and the rules of chess apply to the characters, their setting, and their situation. In Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, Anthony Cronin writes:
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Waiting for Godot (1953) is Samuel Beckett’s best-known play about two tramps waiting for the elusive Godot. • The Unnamable (1953) is the third novel of Beckett’s trilogy, including Molloy (1951) and Malone Dies (1951). All three novels, which were originally written in French, are interior monologues containing flashes of dark humor. • Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) is another of Beckett’s stage plays. It consists of a monologue in which the aged Krapp attempts to recapture the intensity of days long passed by listening to recordings of his younger self. • Eugène Ionseco’s play The Chairs (1958) is about a man who had opportunities to lead a great life but led a simple life with his wife instead. After many years, he decides to tell society his secret. The only characters in the play are the old man, the woman, and the person the
When it was produced in Berlin in 1967 Beckett told one of the actors, ‘Hamm is a king in this chess game lost from the start . . . Now at the last he makes a few senseless moves as only a bad player would . . . He is only trying to delay the inevitable end . . . He’s a bad player.’
And the audience can see the moves of the king once the game has been set up. Hamm and Clov can be viewed as king and knight, and Hamm’s parents, Nagg and Nell, function as pawns. Beckett further emphasizes this by using two different colors to describe his characters. When introduced, Hamm and Clov both have a ‘‘very red face.’’ Nagg and Nell both have a ‘‘very white face.’’ Though his characters have two differing colors, they do not perform as contrasting pieces would in a standard game of chess played between two opponents. In chess, each piece is moved according to specific rules and is removed from the board when it is captured by the move of one of the opposing pieces into its square. The king is the focus of the game as
V o l u m e
1 8
old man hires to tell the world his secret. This play is a staple work of the theater of the absurd. • David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross (1983) is an excellent example of the influence Beckett has had on the craft of writing plays. Mamet was highly influenced by Harold Pinter, to whom Glengarry Glenn Ross is dedicated, and Pinter was highly influenced by Beckett. • Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1958) follows Stanley, an out-of-work pianist in a seaside boarding house. Stanley is mysteriously threatened and taken over by two intruders, who present him with a bizarre indictment of unexplained crimes. • Anthony Cronin’s Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist (1997) is an ambitious and well-written biography of Samuel Beckett the writer, artist, and person.
each player tries to checkmate the other player’s king. The king can move one square in any direction but only one square at a time and cannot move into check. Hamm, Endgame’s crippled king, can only move with the aid of Clov, the play’s knight, which ultimately leads to Hamm’s demise. The move of the knight in chess resembles a capital L (two squares vertically followed by one to the side, or two to the side and one up or down). In literary lore, the knight is often the king’s most ardent protector— or deceiver. Beckett uses both of these ideas with Clov, who exists in a master-servant relationship with Hamm. Clov eventually leaves Hamm (if the audience believes Clov does leave at the play’s end), which brings about Hamm’s death. The least valuable of all the chess pieces is the pawn. Pawns can move only one square, straight ahead, except for its first move, which can be two squares straight ahead. It is the only chess piece that may never move backwards. Pawns have special privileges; other pieces do not. Beckett’s pawns are of the sort
7 3
E n d g a m e
BECKETT USES CHESS AS THE PLAY’S CONTROLLING METAPHOR, AND HE EXPLORES THE HUMAN DILEMMA, MORTALITY, AND GOD’S EXISTENCE, WITHOUT PROVIDING SIMPLE ANSWERS, AS HIS CHARACTERS, AND THE AUDIENCE, MOVE THROUGH AN UNCERTAIN EXISTENCE.’’
that is unable to progress in the battlefield that is their shelter. Contained in ashbins, they are powerless to promote their own agenda and are trapped and dependent upon their son, Hamm. Hamm, the king, for the purpose of the drama, is the center of all activity. Hamm is all too aware of his limited mortal power and abilities, and he struggles to survive the chess game by trying to dominate the other characters on stage. Afraid of losing what little control he does have, Hamm tells Clov to take him for a spin around the room in his wheelchair. As Clov, the obedient knight in service of his king, moves him, Hamm complains about the slightest inaccuracy of his desired position and yells to Clov that he has moved him a ‘‘little too far to the left’’ or a ‘‘little too far to the right.’’ Hamm tries to assert his dominance whenever he can. Beckett’s purposeful use of chess as the play’s central metaphor augments the dramatic maneuvers both Hamm and Clov contrive in their daily games with each other as they struggle with the purpose of going on at all. In his desperate requests for painkillers, Hamm creates devices that enable him to continue on for another day. Clov, on the other hand, exercises his love-hate relationship with Hamm by his committed performance of daily routines. Much of their dialogue implies an inner debate of each character vying for control of the other, such as when Clov asks, ‘‘Why do you keep me?’’ and Hamm answers, ‘‘There’s no one else.’’ Clov responds, ‘‘There’s nowhere else.’’ Hamm asserts, ‘‘You’re leaving me all the same.’’ Clov, answers honestly, ‘‘I’m trying.’’ The king, knight, pawn scenario can also be seen at work when Hamm chastises his father, Nagg, when he
7 4
comes out from his ashbin demanding food. Hamm whistles Clov in to feed Nagg, and then Hamm orders Clov to push Nagg back into the bin and close the lid. In the game of chess, pawns are typically the first to lose their lives, and so it is in Endgame. Both Nagg and Nell expire before the king; only the knight survives. The setting of Endgame has similar restrictions in time and space, as does chess. Endgame is set in a single room that may or may not be a bomb shelter after a nuclear war has devastated the earth. Beckett’s characters exist in a world that seems to be coming to an end, and here the audience can see Beckett’s characters’ actions and ideas in comparison to an endgame in chess. P. H. Clarke notes in the translator’s forward to Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge, by Y. Averbakh: Any deficiencies in positional judgment and technique which may have remained unnoticed amidst the complexities of the openings and middlegame are here ruthlessly revealed; errors stand out in greater relief and, what is worse, generally have more serious consequences.
Beckett’s characters know that the world and all of life outside their known shelter may have been destroyed—they are aware of the serious consequences facing them, yet they feel somewhat safe in the small room they inhabit (the game space or game board). Hamm describes the world that exists outside the known shelter as an ‘‘outer hell.’’ Like the king in a chess game, Hamm does not want to be taken off the game board, for if he is, he knows he has lost the battle. Thought and choice are the determining factors in any chess game. For the master player of chess, moves are planned in advance, and it takes time to set up strategy and position. The master player moves beyond tactics to strategy—long-term planning in preparation for later action. None of Beckett’s characters, like most people in real life, are master players. The chess metaphor is not simply an exercise but a way of coherently presenting the incoherent ideas of how humanity reconciles itself to itself. Just as the chess player is plagued by limitations, so are the characters in Endgame. Beckett’s characters search for an understanding of themselves as Beckett explores human limitations and mortality—all the while continuing to move towards the question of a person’s significance in what may be a Godless world. Just as the king in chess can only move one space at a time, Hamm wonders why he is so limited. Through this game of chess Beckett examines the personal strug-
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
gle and often the inability to understand one’s own self. In looking to the future, the characters encounter a complexity of strategy and movement as real in life as it is in chess. Transformation can be difficult to pinpoint. Beckett does not provide easily defined dramatic moments when change does happen, and discernment is slippery at best. Clov describes a change that has occurred without completely understanding what precisely has transpired: Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes. I don’t understand, it dies, or it’s me. I don’t understand, that either. I ask the words that remain—sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say.
Hamm also acknowledges this phenomenon: ‘‘Absent always. It all happened without me. I don’t know what’s happened.’’ Just as a bad player in chess suddenly finds the endgame and potential victory slipping from his grasp, so do Beckett’s characters. As the endgame begins to slip from grasp, the characters’ thoughts fall to mortality. The characters in Endgame realize that they are mortal. The repetitions and routines throughout the play represent the habitual nature of man and imply that these habits are palliative to our awareness that death is certain and life mysterious. The characters discuss what may give life meaning and make it worth living. Experience in life should add up to a meaningful existence. Clov, in the second line of the play, describes what should be the accumulation of experiences that produce meaning: ‘‘Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there’s a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap.’’ This idea is again articulated by Hamm near the end of the play: ‘‘Moment by moment, pattering down like the millet grains of . . . (He hesitates) . . . that Old Greek, and all life long you wait for that to mount up to a life.’’ In examining their lives thus far, the characters, and the audience, must determine their futures. For Clov, the decision is to take his chances in the ‘‘outer hell,’’ leaving the safety of the only playing field he has known. As Clov prepares to leave Hamm, Hamm admits defeat. Hamm throws his worldly possessions towards the audience and places his handkerchief over his face, an act of the king giving up the game.
but Hamm cries in agony, ‘‘The bastard! He doesn’t exist!’’ Hamm and the other characters solemnly question the existence of God. One of the comedic moments of the play is when Nagg and Nell discuss the joke about an Old Jewish tailor who took more than three months to make a decent pair of trousers, the results of which were more satisfactory than God’s six-day effort to create the world. Beckett raises these questions, but he does not provide easy answers. For the believer, perhaps Beckett is saying that only God has complete knowledge of the world and that human ideas are limited. Such is not the case for Hamm, who seriously doubts the existence of God. Hamm says that it would seem impossible for the millions of moments in a lifetime to amount to anything significant. Do any actions or relationships in life bring anything but pain, suffering, and insignificance? In Beckett’s work, one cannot take things at face value. Each person must rise to Beckett’s challenge and search himself or herself for the answers and solutions to these universal and timeless questions. The fact that Beckett finds an unconventional yet successful way to address these weighty questions of life in an hour-and-a-half play is what distinguishes it as great drama. Beckett succeeds by exploding the paradigms of traditional drama. He uses allusions to, and forms resembling, chess in order to create structure where there initially seems to be none. Beckett treats his audience with the utmost respect by investigating the human condition without allowing for the hope of an absolute answer to life’s biggest puzzles. Beckett’s Endgame, though a labyrinth in its complex construction, is an extraordinary work of twentieth-century art. Source: Daryl McDaniel, Critical Essay on Endgame, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Despite his eventual loss, throughout the play Hamm desires personal significance. Beckett’s play culminates in the most universal question of all: is there a God and do we matter to Him? Beckett asks the audience to consider if God does exist or if he is a myth made up by man to allow man to ease his fear of death and his fear of insignificance. In one scene, Hamm orders both Clov and Nagg to pray to God,
V o l u m e
1 8
7 5
E n d g a m e
7 6
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
V o l u m e
1 8
7 7
E n d g a m e
7 8
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
V o l u m e
1 8
7 9
E n d g a m e
8 0
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
V o l u m e
1 8
8 1
E n d g a m e
8 2
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
V o l u m e
1 8
8 3
E n d g a m e
8 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
V o l u m e
1 8
8 5
E n d g a m e
SOURCES Aristotle, ‘‘VI,’’ in Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by S. H. Butcher, Hill and Wang, 1989, p. 61. Bernard, Marc, Review of Endgame, in Nouvelles litteraires, May 5, 1957. Clarke, P. H., ‘‘Translator’s Foreword,’’ in Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge, by Y. Averbakh, Pergamon Press, 1966, p. vii. Cronin, Anthony, ‘‘Chapter Twenty-Nine,’’ in Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist, HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 459–60. Gussow, Mel, ‘‘The Stage: Chaikin Directs Beckett’s Endgame,’’ in the New York Times, January 14, 1980. Tynan, Kenneth, Review of Endgame, in the Observer, April 7, 1957. Worsley, T. C., Review of Endgame, in the Listener, November 4, 1957.
FURTHER READING Abbott, H. Porter, The Fiction of Samuel Beckett: Form and Effect, University of California Press, 1973. This book contains chapters on Beckett’s early short fiction and the relationship between his stories and novels. Bair, Deidre, Samuel Beckett: A Biography, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. This biography about the reclusive Samuel Beckett is broad in scope and understandably flawed. Ben-Zvi, Linda, Samuel Beckett, Twayne Publishers, 1986. Because of the large scope of Beckett’s writings, this study of Beckett’s complete works has necessitated a brief coverage of each work. Bloom, Harold, ed., Samuel Beckett’s ‘‘Endgame,’’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Bloom brings together a representative selection of what many consider to be the best eight critical interpretations of the play. Coe, Richard, Samuel Beckett, Grove Press, 1964. Coe’s study of Beckett focuses on his philosophical background.
8 6
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
E n d g a m e
Cohn, Ruby, Back to Beckett, Princeton University Press, 1973. Cohn presents a detailed study of Beckett’s fiction and drama. Zurbrugg, Nicholas, ‘‘Ill Seen Ill Said and the Sense of an Ending,’’ in Beckett’s Later Fiction and Drama: Texts for
V o l u m e
1 8
Company, edited by James Acheson and Kateryna Arthur, Macmillan Press, 1987. Zurbrugg asserts that Ill Seen Ill Said is not so much a story as a poetic evocation of those rituals by which the living and the dead within Beckett’s fiction endlessly, and quite ineffectively, strive to attain a definitive ‘‘sense of an ending.’’
8 7
I’m Not Rappaport HERB GARDNER 1986
Herb Gardner’s I’m Not Rappaport was first published in 1986 in New York. Gardner first got the idea for the play when he was writing in New York’s Central Park. He witnessed two animated old men, one white and one black, who would alternate between sitting quietly and yelling at each other. This strange friendship intrigued Gardner, who used it as the basis for I’m Not Rappaport’s two main characters, Nat and Midge. The play caused a stir when it was first produced on Broadway. The unique characters of Nat and Midge and their feisty resilience to the world around them, made the play a hit. These unlikely heroes try to mask the horrible realities of aging, mainly through the tall tales and deceptions that Nat creates. The play touched on several contemporary issues when it was produced, including society’s treatment of the elderly and the dangers that lurked in urban areas like New York. Although Gardner has had great success with his many stage plays and screenplays, I’m Not Rappaport is one of his best-known and most popular works. It experienced a revival in New York in 2002, which once again featured Judd Hirsch in his original role as Nat. A current copy of I’m Not Rappaport can be found in Herb Gardner: The Collected Plays, which was published by Applause Theatre Book Publishing in 2000.
8 8
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Gardner was born on December 28, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended New York’s High School of Performing Arts from which he graduated in 1952. The same year, his first play, The Elevator, a one-act play, was produced. Gardner made a name for himself professionally as a cartoonist for the Chicago Tribune in the 1950s. Here, he created the comic The Nebbishes, which was a very lucrative enterprise. Around the same time, he published his first and only novel, A Piece of the Action (1958). Unsatisfied with these creative pursuits, he left cartooning to write plays full-time. His first fulllength play, A Thousand Clowns, was based heavily on Gardner’s own experiences, as it featured a man who abandons a lucrative career. The play was a huge success on Broadway and earned Gardner the ‘‘promising playwright of 1961–62’’ award from the New York Drama Critics. When Gardner adapted the play as a film three years later, it was nominated for an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay. During the next two decades, Gardner wrote three dramatic works: The Goodbye People (produced in 1968, published in 1974); Thieves (produced in 1974, published in 1977); and the book and lyrics for a musical, One Night Stand (produced in 1980). As with A Thousand Clowns, Gardner wrote film adaptations of Thieves (adapted in 1977) and The Goodbye People (adapted in 1986). However, neither adaptation enjoyed the acclaim of A Thousand Clowns. In 1985, Gardner produced his next play, I’m Not Rappaport (published in 1986), which won the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best play (1986). Since then, the play has become one of Gardner’s most popular and critically acclaimed works. In 2002, it experienced a revival in New York, which featured Judd Hirsch in the role of Nat—a role that Hirsch had played in the original 1986 production. Since then, Gardner has written Conversations with My Father (1993) and Herb Gardner: The Collected Plays (2000).
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1 I’m Not Rappaport begins with Nat sitting on a park bench in New York’s Central Park, where all of the action in the play takes place, wondering what he was talking about. His companion on the bench,
V o l u m e
1 8
Herb Gardner
Midge, informs Nat that he has not been listening to anything that Nat was saying. Right away, the cantankerous interplay between these two eightyyear-old characters is established. As Nat and Midge continue their conversation, the audience finds out that Nat has been talking at Midge for a week, telling him stories that Midge thinks are tall tales. The first of these is that Nat is a spy who was chosen by the government to pose as an escaped Cuban terrorist. Despite himself, Midge is impressed by the story and starts to believe it. Nat says that he is in deep cover and that the government is probably planning on sending him on a mission in five years or so. Finally, Midge realizes that he has been had and gets very upset, threatening to beat up Nat. In his youth, Midge was a boxer, and he tries to demonstrate some of his old moves for Nat but ends up falling in the process. While Midge lies on the ground, Nat talks to him and helps him verify that he has not broken any bones. Through their discussion, Midge reveals that he is employed as a superintendent in an apartment complex where he is the only one who knows how to run the building’s ancient furnace. Midge also talks about how he pays off a local thug for protection—from the thug and others. Nat, a former social reformer, refuses to listen to talk like this just
8 9
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
as he refuses to admit that he is old. Midge prepares for a meeting with his supervisor, Danforth, who comes by the park bench to tell Midge that he is being let go. However, Nat intervenes, posing as an attorney for a fake organization called HURTSFOE, which champions human rights. Danforth is frightened by Nat’s convincing speech and agrees to see what he can do about letting Midge keep his job. However, Midge is concerned that Danforth will find out Nat is lying and that Midge will then lose the little severance pay that they were offering him. Midge’s thug, Gilley, arrives expecting his payment in return for walking Midge home. Midge dutifully prepares to do this, but Gilley sees Nat and tells Nat that he has to pay, too. When Nat does not follow Gilley, Gilley comes back and pulls a knife on Nat. Nat tries to fight Gilley but gets beat up instead.
Act 2, Scene 1 Nat gets out of the hospital the next day and arrives back at the park, this time with a walker. Although he is physically slower, he is animated about his encounter with Gilley, which he considers a triumph, thinking that Gilley will not return. Nat’s daughter, Clara, arrives at the park bench, and she is instantly concerned about Nat’s injuries. She also informs Nat that she is not going to be part of his schemes anymore. Nat says that he is concerned Clara is trying to put him in a home. Nat criticizes Clara for betraying her social activist heritage, and they revisit the real-life event that gave Clara her name. Nat met a brave teenager named Clara Lemlich at a union meeting, and her activism inspired him to name his daughter Clara. Clara notes the futility of activism in an apathetic society, and she and Nat argue. Nat tries to smooth it over by beginning an old game involving the phrase, ‘‘I’m Not Rappaport,’’ and Clara is stubborn at first but eventually plays her part. The game calms them down, but Clara is serious. She gives Nat three options for leaving the park and changing his living situation. Nat rejects all of them, and she threatens to take legal action to get him declared incompetent. Nat makes up a story about a fake daughter, whom he says he is going to live with, to stall Clara’s plans for putting Nat in a home. When Clara is gone, Midge criticizes Nat for lying to his own daughter. However, their argument is interrupted by the arrival of the Cowboy, a drug dealer who comes to collect his money from Laurie, a drug user and artist who hangs out near the park bench. When she is unable to produce all of the
9 0
money, the Cowboy beats her up and tells her to have the money by the next night and then leaves. Nat and Midge try to comfort Laurie, and Midge tells her she should leave town. However, Nat has a different idea.
Act 2, Scene 2 The next evening, Nat and Midge sit on the park bench dressed up like the mob members that they are playing. Nat quizzes Midge to make sure he remembers all of the details and when the Cowboy arrives to collect his money from Laurie, Nat plays the part of a mob boss. He tries to act threatening, but it does not work, and the Cowboy sees through the act. He grabs Nat and starts to shake him, but Midge comes to Nat’s rescue, brandishing the knife that Gilley dropped. The Cowboy backs off into the tunnel, where he waits unseen. When Midge goes walking through the tunnel to go home, the Cowboy jumps him.
Act 2, Scene 3 Twelve days later, Nat sits alone on the bench, obviously changed. He is no longer animated and is very much acting like the old man he is. Midge returns from the hospital, and Nat tells him that he has given up telling stories because they are only hurting the people he loves, like his daughter. Midge tells Nat that he lost his job because Danforth found out that there was no HURTSFOE. Nat admits that Gilley has returned and that he has raised his protection fee. Nat is miserable as they discuss how all of his plans have failed. Still, Midge is proud of himself for taking on the Cowboy. Nat rises to leave and apologizes for causing Midge grief. He also tells Midge his real name and says that he has been living at an old person’s hotel. He says that he is a nobody and starts to walk away. Midge accuses him of lying again and goads him into telling another tall tale because Midge obviously likes and needs to hear the interesting stories that Nat tells—the truth is much too painful. Nat takes the bait, sits on the park bench, and launches into another story.
CHARACTERS Midge Carter Midge Carter is an eighty-year-old man who works as a superintendent in an apartment building and spends his days in the park. When he first meets Nat, a week before the play starts, Nat tells Midge a
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
number of tall tales. Midge gets frustrated at all of these false stories and repeatedly says that he is going to leave Nat alone and go somewhere else. However, Nat has a vitality that Midge cannot ignore, and against his better judgment, he stays and listens to Nat. On a certain level, Midge appreciates Nat’s company, even though he does not express this until the end of the play. Nat has many of the same age-driven afflictions that Midge has and so can relate to him when they talk about cataracts, glaucoma, and other maladies. Midge is terrified about losing his job as a superintendent, but he does not want Nat’s help in talking to his supervisor, Danforth. Unfortunately, he does not get a choice. Nat jumps in and poses as Midge’s attorney, threatening to sue the apartment complex for trying to let Midge go. After Danforth leaves, Midge is worried about what will happen when Danforth finds out that Nat is not a lawyer. Ultimately, Danforth does find out he has been had and Midge is fired. Despite this fact, Nat is a good influence on Midge. Without Nat, Midge would be content to wile away his time as an old man. However, Nat’s stories help Midge to forget, at least for a time, how old he is. In addition, Nat’s schemes, which ultimately lead to both of them ending up in the hospital, puts Midge in touch with his more youthful side. Following his fight with the Cowboy, Midge is upset with Nat or so it seems. However, he is also exhilarated that he scared the Cowboy. Midge is a former boxer and after the incident with the Cowboy, he feels some of his old energy return to him. In fact, by the end of the play, when Nat is trying to stop telling stories for fear of hurting anybody else, Midge insists that Nat continue telling stories and providing diversions for them.
Clara Clara is Nat’s daughter, who worries about her father’s mental condition and health. From the moment she arrives, Clara makes it clear that she would rather have her father living with her or in a geriatric home where he will be physically safe. Nat tries to prevent this by creating stories that get him off the hook, but ultimately all of his stories backfire. Clara threatens legal action if Nat does not start coming to the Senior Center on a daily basis, and Nat finally agrees.
The Cowboy The Cowboy is Laurie’s drug dealer. When Laurie fails to pay him his money, he beats her up
V o l u m e
1 8
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • I’m Not Rappaport was adapted as a film in 1996 by Universal Studios. The film was written and directed by Gardner and featured Walter Matthau as Nat and Ossie Davis as Midge. It is available on both DVD and VHS from Universal Studios Home Video.
and threatens her. When he comes back at the appointed time to collect the money, Laurie is not there. Instead, Nat is there, and he acts like he is a mob boss to scare away the Cowboy. Unfortunately, his scheme does not work. When the Cowboy becomes violent, Midge threatens him with Gilley’s knife. However, the Cowboy ultimately beats up Midge, who lands in the hospital for almost two weeks.
Peter Danforth Peter Danforth is Midge’s supervisor, whom Midge has never met in person until the play starts. Danforth hears that the nearsighted Midge has been running into walls while working in his job as an apartment supervisor. He decides that it is time to let Midge go from his job, especially since they are converting the apartment building into a co-op and there is no place for Midge. When Danforth comes to tell this to Midge, Nat jumps in, saying he is a union lawyer. Nat terrifies Danforth with his story in which Nat makes it seem as if Danforth will have a nasty and public lawsuit on his hands if he tries to let Midge go. However, this ruse only works temporarily and eventually Danforth fires Midge.
Gilley Gilley is a sixteen-year-old thug who makes his money by forcing old men to pay him a protection fee. He does this with Midge, but Nat refuses to pay Gilley any money and gets beat up in the process. Although Nat assumes that the fight has de-
9 1
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
terred Gilley from coming around anymore, Gilley does come back eventually and he charges more money now.
Laurie Laurie is a young artist and drug user who tries in vain to get her life back in order. Laurie comes to New York’s Central Park to draw, which is where Nat and Midge see her. They both appreciate the attractive Laurie, especially while they are stoned on marijuana. During this scene, they look up at Laurie and she becomes for them all of the girls that they have loved in their respective lives. When Laurie’s drug dealer, known as the Cowboy, comes to collect money from her, she does not have enough, and he beats her up. Nat tries to help Laurie by posing as a mob boss, but the ruse fails, and Laurie is afraid to show her face in the park again for fear of being killed by the drug dealer.
Nat Moyer Nat Moyer is an eighty-year-old retiree who tries to mask his age by telling elaborate tall tales. He is a good storyteller and is able to draw many different people into his tales. This is most true with Midge Carter, another octogenarian who occupies the same park bench as Nat. Although Midge tries to ignore Nat, Nat is persistent in his efforts to tell Midge stories and to help him through his problems. Nat can relate to Midge, because Nat has many of the same age-driven afflictions as Midge. Nat is a social activist, who was very involved in workers’ rights and other causes as a young man. In fact, he tries to remain involved, but many of his efforts, such as attacking a butcher for his high meat prices, are futile and misguided. In the beginning of the play, Nat is not above duping anybody, even his own daughter, when she threatens to throw him into a geriatric home. Over the course of the play, Nat tries to deceive others, including Midge’s boss and a drug dealer known as the Cowboy, but both of these schemes fail. In fact, all of Nat’s schemes have negative consequences, either for himself or others. Despite this fact, both Nat and Midge need his stories and schemes. Without them, Nat and Midge would be constantly faced with the fact that they are old. At the end of the play, frustrated that his schemes have backfired, Nat resolves to give up telling tall stories. However, Midge insists that Nat continue telling stories and providing diversions for them.
9 2
THEMES The Power of Illusions From the very beginning of the play, Nat reveals himself to be a master of illusions. He is able to make Midge, Midge’s boss, and even his own daughter believe the tall tales that he is telling. Despite himself, Midge gets caught up in these stories because Nat knows how to tell a tall tale without making it seem like one. For example, in his first story, Nat says that he is a spy for the government and that they add money to his social security check every month for doing nothing. Nat says, ‘‘Fact is, I think they got me in what they call ‘deep cover.’’’ Nat gives a long explanation, and Midge starts to believe him: ‘‘MIDGE. (nodding) Yeah. Deep cover. I hearda that.’’ Unfortunately, the power of the illusion does not last long, and Midge soon realizes that he has been had. ‘‘MIDGE. (suddenly) Bullshit! (sits upright) Bullshit. Lord, you done it to me again!’’ Nat repeats this pattern throughout the play.
Age Discrimination Midge is not the only one who is susceptible to Nat’s captivating stories. In a brilliant improvised speech, Nat assumes the identity of a lawyer and takes on Mr. Danforth, Midge’s boss, when Danforth announces that they are going to be letting Midge go from his apartment superintendent position. Midge, whose vision is somewhat impaired, was spotted walking into a wall in the apartment building. During his speech, Nat writes this off as racial imbalance, something that Danforth does not believe at first. Danforth says, ‘‘Racial imbalance? The man was walking into walls. For God’s sake, the man’s an easy eighty.’’ By this comment, Danforth reveals his bias and the fact that he wants to let Midge go because he is too old. Nat says as much: ‘‘What you’d like is for Carter to be nice and cute and quiet and go away. But he won’t.’’ With this convincing act, Nat is able to save Midge’s job, at least temporarily. Nat also repeatedly fools his daughter, Clara, who believes he is too old to be on his own. In fact, the deceptions and tricks that Nat plays on his daughter are a defense against her intentions to restrain him. He tells her that he is especially afraid of her ‘‘test questions to see if I’m too old.’’ As Nat says to her, ‘‘One wrong answer you’ll wrap me in a deck-chair and mail me to Florida; two mistakes you’ll put me in a home for the forgettable.’’ Nat fears losing his freedom and being forced to live in a
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research the various ways that the elderly are discriminated against today. Find at least one organization devoted to supporting the elderly and write a description of this organization, including its mission statement, programs, and services. • Find another culture, from any point in history, in which the elderly were revered. Write a short report about this culture focusing on the ways in which the elderly contributed to their culture. • Find an older man or woman, from any point in history who made a significant contribution to science or technology. Write a short biography
home or with Clara. For Nat, this is age discrimination. He knows that he may have to do this eventually, especially if he does go senile, but in the meantime, he wants to try to pursue his life as he always has.
about this individual, including a detailed description of his or her specific contribution to society. • Research the various forms of geriatric care available today. Find economic figures that show how much Americans spend on these forms of care each year. Plot all of this on a large chart, including a description for each major form of geriatric care. • Research what life is like for the world’s elderly. Imagine that you are an old man or woman. Write a journal entry depicting a typical day in your life, using your research to support your ideas.
incidents like this, in which he is not able to back up his intentions with the physical force that is a hallmark of youth, Nat reluctantly succumbs to living like an old man. However, he still retains some of his old self by continuing to tell stories to Midge.
The Reality of Aging Unfortunately, as the play progresses, Nat loses both his illusions and his freedoms and must come to terms with the fact that he is an old man. In the beginning of the play, when Midge pushes him to tell the truth, Nat does get serious, at least for a minute. Nat says, ‘‘The truth? What’s true is a triple By-Pass last year at Lenox Hill, what’s true is. . . . a Social Security check that wouldn’t pay the rent for a chipmunk.’’ These are some of the harsh facts of aging that Nat tries to ignore by telling stories. He also tries to act in ways that go against his frail condition. When he tries to rationalize with the mugger, Gilley, and it does not work, Gilley threatens Nat with his knife. As the stage directions note, ‘‘(NAT makes a sharp underhand move with his cane, hitting GILLEY’s wrist; Gilley drops the knife, holding his wrist in pain and surprise.)’’ Although this throws Gilley off at first, the thug soon regains his senses and promptly beats up Nat, who has to go to the hospital. By the end of the play,
V o l u m e
1 8
STYLE Setting The story is set in Manhattan’s Central Park, which is essential to the story. The entire play takes place on a park bench that Nat and Midge share. Though Gardner could technically have chosen any park bench in any park, he chose Central Park—and for good reason. Throughout the play, Nat and Midge demonstrate their resilience against a young urban society that includes thugs and drug dealers. During the 1980s especially, New York was often synonymous with drugs and crime in many minds. Gardner knows this and so chooses to set his play in Central Park, where he can realistically expose his main characters to these types of secondary characters.
9 3
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
Dialogue Although the setting is important, it works in a subtle manner. Most audience members will not focus on the setting because the dialogue is much more prevalent. Essentially, the play is a series of conversations between two old men on a park bench, with some dialogue between the two men and other, secondary, characters thrown in. However, if this simple explanation were all the play had to offer, it would not be as popular as it is. The play is noted for the interplay between Nat and Midge, whose cantankerous dialogue is engaging. The play starts out with Midge antagonizing Nat and saying he will not listen to him anymore. When Nat asks Midge why, Midge says, ‘‘Because you’re a . . . liar. I’m not listening to you anymore. Two days now I ain’t been listening.’’ By this comment, Midge reveals that, as much as he does not like to admit it, he has been listening to Nat; otherwise, Midge would not know that Nat has been making up stories. Therein lies the formula that Gardner uses for the rest of the play. Nat does most of the talking and aggravates Midge enough to produce some spirited retorts but not enough to make Midge want to leave.
Foreshadowing Although Nat’s stories and deceptions are entertaining, Gardner gives clues that this cannot possibly last forever. At several points in the play, he foreshadows or predicts events that happen later. For example, when Nat’s daughter, Clara, is introduced, she is upset that she has had to cover for Nat with Danforth. Clara says, ‘‘I came to tell you it’s the last time! No more calls—’’ Without Clara helping Nat by assuming the various identities he pins on her, it is only a matter of time before his many stories start to unravel. In addition, Clara threatens legal action to get Nat restrained. Clara says, ‘‘According to the lawyer I’ve got more than enough evidence to prove that you are both mentally and physically incapable of managing yourself or your affairs.’’ When Clara springs this on Nat, he immediately creates another story, saying that he has another daughter that was conceived during an affair and that she is going to take him with her to Israel. He fabricates this story with the intention of having Laurie, the drug user and artist, pose as his daughter. However, when Nat is unable to deceive Laurie’s volatile drug dealer as he intends, Laurie does not show up as planned, and Nat’s carefully laid plans start to unravel. All of these signs predict
9 4
the ultimate ending, when Nat is forced to abandon many of his freedoms and attend regular meetings at the Senior Center. Nat says, ‘‘The day begins at noon there. I must be prompt; Clara checks up. . . . Also weekends in Great Neck. I am seldom in the park anymore.’’
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Spies and Terrorism In the play, Nat makes up many stories and changes identities frequently. In one such identity, he pretends to be a spy. When Gardner first produced the play, this would have resonated with audiences, who were living through the last years of the cold war. This political conflict between democracy and communism—and more specifically, between the United States and the Soviet Union— lasted more than four decades. Unlike previous wars that featured physical battles, this conflict was highlighted by a nuclear arms race and rapid advances in the methods and technology of military intelligence. Each side recruited spies whose job was to try to gather whatever information they could about intelligence or weapons while both major superpowers remained ready to launch a nuclear Armageddon, if they deemed it necessary. Although much of the period was technically spent in peacetime, the pervasive feeling of suspicion and paranoia that was generated by this clash of superpowers made many feel that they were fighting a war—hence the term ‘‘cold war.’’ American and Soviet spies were not the only political aggressors during this era. The world community also suffered from many politically motivated attacks by terrorists. Terrorist attacks came in many forms—including hijackings, kidnappings, bombings, and murder—and could be perpetrated by any number of terrorist organizations from around the world.
The Mafia Nat also poses as a Mafia boss in one scene in the play. At the time when Gardner was producing the play, the Mafia, especially the New York Mafia, was in the news. On February 26, 1985, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Manhattan’s prosecuting United States
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
COMPARE & CONTRAST • Mid 1980s: During the final years of the cold war, several spies are convicted in high profile cases. One such person, Jerry A. Whitworth, is sentenced to 365 years in prison for his role in a Soviet spy network. Today: Following the end of the cold war and the collapse of the former Soviet Union, the United States becomes the dominant superpower. However, it is still vulnerable to terrorist attacks. In 2001, the United States experiences one of the most devastating terrorist attacks in its history when hijackers use commercial airplanes to destroy New York’s famous World Trade Center towers and also damage the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. • Mid 1980s: The world experiences a rash of
attorney, indicted nine suspected Mafia bosses in a federal court. During the trial, one of the suspects, seventy-year-old ‘‘Big Paul’’ Castellano, reputed to be the head of the Gambino crime family in New York, was assassinated by three gunmen.
Drug Use In the play, Nat and Midge, who get their own highs by smoking some marijuana, also try to help a young woman, Laurie, who has gotten in trouble with a drug dealer known as the Cowboy. She does not have the money that she owes him and he gets very upset. The Cowboy says to Laurie: ‘‘Kept your nose filled and your head happy for a year and a half and look what you do.’’ By this reference to Laurie’s nose, one can tell that Laurie is a cocaine user. In the 1980s, especially in big cities like New York, cocaine use rose. Cocaine is a drug that is made from the coca plant. The most common form until the mid-1980s was cocaine powder, which could be dissolved in water and injected like heroin or snorted in its powder form. The latter method is the one generally associated with cocaine users like Laurie.
V o l u m e
1 8
terrorist acts, including hijackings, bombings, kidnappings, and murder. Today: The United States and its allies attempt to destroy terrorist networks around the world. As part of this effort, many suspected terrorists or terrorist sympathizers are arrested. However, the most high profile terrorist responsible for the 2001 attacks, Osama bin Laden, remains at large. • Mid 1980s: Crack arrives in the New York area. Ecstasy also becomes popular and is put into widespread use at parties and dances known as raves. Today: Crack is still a problem in many urban areas and many feel that America is losing the war on drugs. An aggressive anti-drug ad campaign highlights the negative and potentially fatal effects of the drug ecstasy.
Cocaine is highly addictive and expensive, which limited its use. In the mid 1980s, however, a new form of cocaine called crack cocaine known commonly as crack, was developed. Crack was cocaine that had been processed with ammonia or baking soda so that it formed into chunks, known as rocks, that could be smoked. Crack was cheaper than powdered cocaine, and it quickly became popular in New York. Although law enforcement officers staged several successful raids on crack production facilities in the New York area, use of the drug spread to other cities and suburbs across the United States.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW The initial reviews for I’m Not Rappaport were mixed. ‘‘There is something stealthily attractive and winning about Herb Gardner’s rambunctiously funny play,’’ says Clive Barnes in his review in the New York Post. Barnes says that it is ‘‘precisely the
9 5
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
kind of play, full of middle-brow brilliance and crafty craft, that Broadway needs to survive.’’ Likewise, in his review of the play for Today, David Shannon notes: ‘‘The jabbering of two geriatrics may not sound like electrifying drama. In this case it is.’’ In her review of the play for Sunday Today, Francis Wheen goes so far as to say that, ‘‘Only someone with a heart made of reinforced concrete could fail to be affected.’’ Not every critic was completely enamored of the play, however. Some critics admitted that the play had some admirable qualities but that it was not for them. For example, in Julius Novick’s review of the play in the Village Voice, he notes that the play ‘‘is not what I need or particularly want in my life, but it does no harm. . . . I hope it finds its audience.’’ Other critics are not so nice and, in fact, try to discredit both the play and the critics who find the play good. In his review of the play for New York Magazine, John Simon notes that Gardner’s ‘‘steady formula is as unalive and sticky as ever but has, this time round, a number of reviewers vying to pronounce it viable.’’ The play has fared well in the years since it was first produced. Though performance reviews— including the reviews of the New York revival in 2002—are mixed, the publication of Herb Gardner: The Collected Plays in 2000 met with a warm reception. In his review of the collection for Library Journal, Barry X. Miller notes: ‘‘F-i-n-a-l-l-y— Gardner . . . has been given his theatrical publishing due.’’ Likewise, in his review of the collection for Booklist, Ray Olson notes, ‘‘The five plays and one screenplay in this handsome volume are all moving as well as very funny.’’
CRITICISM Ryan D. Poquette Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses the structure that Gardner uses in his play. When one examines the structure of I’m Not Rappaport, something becomes immediately apparent. Whereas there are three separate scenes in
9 6
the second act, the first act remains unbroken by scenes. It is one long section that runs continuously for nearly half the play. When a playwright makes a structural decision like this, it usually has some significance. In this case, Gardner is using this odd structure to underscore the theme of aging in the play. Gardner uses this structure in two different ways. First, the structure influences the pacing of the play. Pacing refers to the speed at which a literary work unfolds. In the first act, the unbroken action automatically speeds up the performance, because it has no scene changes. Whenever a dramatic production switches scenes, it usually requires a fadeout. It can also require set and costume changes, which inevitably take time. Without these changes, there is nothing other than the dialogue that will slow the play down. In this case, the dialogue is fast-paced and witty, especially the dialogue of Nat, who has several rapid-fire speeches. For example, when Midge is lying on the ground after stumbling and falling, Nat comes to his aid and starts to feel various parts of Midge’s body, making sure there are no broken bones. As he does this, Nat chats incessantly about his near-death experience, during which he says he died and left his body for six minutes. Nat says, ‘‘Meanwhile you’re up on the ceiling, nobody sees you. Not bad for a little while, nice; you meet some other dead guys, everybody smiles, you hear a little music; but mostly boring.’’ Nat has several of these rapid-fire speeches in the first act, much to the disappointment of Midge, who tries to ignore Nat. However, even though Midge could just go to a different place in the park and ignore Nat, he is drawn to Nat and his elaborate stories—just as the audience is. Part of Nat’s charisma comes from his encyclopedic knowledge. He can transform himself into any identity. When he is acting like a spy, he uses youthful slang words like ‘‘Bingos,’’ or dollars, as if they are second nature to him. In this first act, he is particularly adept at creating these stories. As a result, Nat comes off as very youthful, despite his advanced age. Therefore, it is significant that the first act ends with Nat getting beat up by Gilley and having to go to the hospital. Up until this point, Nat has appeared untouchable. He has successfully helped Midge to keep his job as a superintendent, at least temporarily, and has not let anything get him down. However, when Gilley arrives, suddenly Nat is out of his element. The punk tells Nat that he also has to pay Gilley a protection bribe, and Nat appears to agree, at first: ‘‘Nat hesitates; then picks up his briefcase
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
A scene from the 1996 film adaptation of I’m Not Rappaport, featuring Walter Matthau and Ossie Davis
and slowly, obediently rises, his head bowed.’’ However, Nat is not beat yet. He tries to rationalize with Gilley about his bad choice in victims, saying, ‘‘Trouble is, you got the wrong supper here. Me and Midge, you’re noshing on your own. We live in the streets and the parks, we’re dead if we stay home; just like you, Gilley.’’ However, all of this rationalizing only makes Gilley raise his price. When Nat refuses to pay, Gilley beats him up, and the act ends on a negative note.
apparent what Gardner is trying to do. The structure mimics the process of aging. Over the course of his play, Gardner’s characters slowly but surely realize that they are old men, who do not have much time left. When people get older, especially when they are in their eighties like Nat and Midge, they can feel as if they are literally starting to run out of time. By making the scenes increasingly shorter, Gardner underscores this effect, making it seem as if the play itself is running out of time.
In the second act, the structural effects on the pacing are even more apparent. In this act, each new scene is shorter than the previous one. As mentioned before, the first act comprises roughly half of the play. The first scene of the second act is about half the size of the first act. This trend continues until the end. By telescoping the scenes like this, the play literally seems like it starts to run out of time. When the fade-outs of scene changes are far apart, as when two long scenes are juxtaposed next to each other, it is not as noticeable. However, when the fade-outs start to come more frequently, the audience begins to notice it. It gives the play a sense of urgency, since the scenes are coming at the viewer at an increasing rate. In fact, if one reviews this telescoping structure in terms of the aging theme, it becomes
In addition to influencing the pacing, Gardner’s odd structure also highlights Nat’s transformation from a daydreamer to a realist. In the beginning, Nat is totally absorbed in his tall tales. As Clive Barnes says of Nat in his review of the play for the New York Post, he ‘‘chooses to live in a strangely hardedged fantasy world. When we first meet him he is explaining to his new acquaintance . . . that he is an undercover agent posing as a Cuban terrorist.’’ This is one of many identities that Nat decides to adopt. However, just as with the pacing, the shift in structure from one long act to three increasingly shorter scenes also indicates a change in Nat’s views on life. In the first act, he is free to daydream and does so in long speeches in which he tells fake stories such as the one noted above. The only person who chal-
V o l u m e
1 8
9 7
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • If I Live to Be 100: Lessons from the Centenarians (2002), Neenah Ellis discusses several stories from the National Public Radio series One Hundred Years of Stories. Ellis interviewed each of the respondents, all of whom were over one hundred years old. The stories range from men and women resigned to their old age to those who are old in body but refuse to grow old in spirit. • Like Nat and Midge in I’m Not Rappaport, the protagonist in Gardner’s play A Thousand Clowns (1962) undergoes various forms of pressure from a society that wants him to conform to a normal, acceptable lifestyle.
lenges his stories is Midge, and Midge secretly likes Nat’s wild stories. In fact, despite his better judgment, Midge begins to build a friendship with Nat. Just as with the pacing, one of the pivotal events that influence Nat’s transformation is Gilley beating Nat up at the end of the first act. From this point on, Nat starts to become a realist, as he is forced to deal with more realistic situations. Although Nat considers the fight with Gilley a victory, it triggers a reaction from his daughter, Clara, who ramps up her efforts to get Nat into a home or some other safe location. Clara says, ‘‘I’ve been irresponsible. You have to be watched. I’m not letting you out of my sight, Dad.’’ This is the beginning of the end of Nat’s freedom to daydream, even if he does not see it. The next major event, witnessing the Cowboy beat up Laurie, sparks the social activist reflex in Nat, just as Midge’s problem with his boss did. However, for this situation, Nat is way out of his element. Although he has been daydreaming about being a spy, a Cuban terrorist, and other roles, he is not able to pull off the role of a Mafia boss with the Cowboy when it really counts because he has failed to realize that the Cowboy already saw Nat on the park bench the past two days. The Cowboy says, ‘‘I got an antenna picks up all channels, Dad; helps me not to wake up
9 8
• Joan Rattner Heilman’s Unbelievably Good Deals and Great Adventures That You Absolutely Can’t Get unless You’re over 50 (2001) is technically a discount book for seniors. However, it also provides readers with an overview of some of the societal benefits that only come with age. • Marsha Sinetar’s Don’t Call Me Old, I’m Just Awakening!: Spiritual Encouragement for Later Life (2002) sounds like a nonfiction book. However, the book is actually more like a novel, since Sinetar frames her philosophies about old age within a series of letters between two imaginary friends.
dead.’’ The Cowboy is a realist and pays attention to his surroundings, unlike Nat. Although Nat is great at adding the appropriate details into whatever role he is playing—and even tells Midge that ‘‘Details are crucial. I know my business’’—Nat fails to pay attention to the details in the real world around him. He spends his days daydreaming, so he is unprepared when he must face real situations like the one involving the Cowboy. In the last scene, following the failure with the Cowboy and Midge’s trip to the hospital, Nat is very realistic. In this scene, the shortest scene of them all, Nat abandons all daydreams and vows not to tell any more stories or perform any more schemes. Nat says, ‘‘My mouth, a dangerous mouth; it makes you Missouri Jack and almost kills you, makes an Israeli family and breaks my daughter’s heart. I have retired my mouth.’’ Nat takes it one step further. Although he was strong and independent in the beginning of the play, during the strong first act, this final, ultra-short scene reveals his deepest insecurities as he tries to negate everything that he has made up. Nat says, ‘‘In other words, whatever has been said previously, I was, and am now, no one. No one at all.’’ Although Midge is at first glad to hear that Nat will not be coming around the park as much any-
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
more, he is taken aback by Nat’s startlingly honest confession. In fact, although he has denied throughout the play that he likes Nat’s false stories, he now does not accept Nat’s true confession. Instead, he asks Nat to tell him the truth, meaning that he wishes to hear another one of Nat’s tall tales. So, despite the gradual slowing down of the pace and Nat’s steady transformation from a youthful daydreamer to an old realist—two factors that are underscored by the telescoping structure—Nat and Midge are still able to salvage something positive at the end, and the audience is left with the knowledge that, whatever happens, these two will probably not succumb to their old age lightly.
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
ALTHOUGH MIDGE IS AT FIRST GLAD TO HEAR THAT NAT WILL NOT BE COMING AROUND THE PARK AS MUCH ANYMORE, HE IS TAKEN ABACK BY NAT’S STARTLINGLY HONEST CONFESSION. IN FACT, ALTHOUGH HE HAS DENIED THROUGHOUT THE PLAY
Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on I’m Not Rappaport, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
THAT HE LIKES NAT’S FALSE
Joyce Hart
ACCEPT NAT’S TRUE CONFESSION.’’
Hart has degrees in English literature and creative writing and focuses her published writing on literary themes. In this essay, Hart considers the argument of idealism versus realism that underlies Gardner’s play. The first reaction to or description of Herb Gardner’s play, I’m Not Rappaport is that it is a dramatization of what life is like, at least in general, for two senior citizens. Even the recent revival of this play has reportedly been arranged to satisfy a shift in Broadway audiences, which have become in recent times, mostly made up of elderly patrons. However, to only focus on the fact that the two main characters are men in the later years of their lives, men who admit that they have become ghost-like in a society that ‘‘sees’’ only youth, is to miss one of the major themes of this highly successful play. Yes, the men are senior citizens who have a long list of gripes and ailments that have been brought on by their old age, but what gives these two characters life, and what drives this play, is the age-old argument between idealists and realists. Plato was one of the first philosophers to create an argument for the Ideal, a perfected form that underlies every object in this reality. Later, German philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant, continued the discussion, and the term idealism was applied to such philosophical discourses. At the turn of the twentieth century, idealism was interpreted through the arts. In literature, idealism was referred to as romanticism, and stories influenced by this movement usually ended happily. In painting, idealist artists were encouraged to use their imaginations in depicting the world, which they did by recreating
V o l u m e
1 8
STORIES, HE NOW DOES NOT
aesthetically pleasing images rather than painting objects as a photographer might have captured them. Of course, as early as Plato’s time, the opposing argument, that of realism, also developed. One of the arguments of realism stated that to strive for perfection was unrealistic, or worse yet, it was false. In philosophy, realists were considered more objective than idealist. Things of this world existed as fact, not as ideas in someone’s head, they claimed. In literature, realism was manifested in stories that related all the dirty details of life—the failures as well as the victories; and artists who were influenced by realism created images that matched what their eyes could see, not what they could imagine. Generally speaking, for realists, idealists were dreamers who were not dealing with reality. For idealists, realists were too pragmatic and lacked insight. From the opening pages of I’m Not Rappaport, Gardner hints at the theme of romance or idealism of his play, even before either of his male characters speak. The play is set in Central Park, an oasis of nature in the middle of a crowded, concrete city. The only sounds in the background are not those of honking horns and squealing car brakes, but rather the ‘‘distant sound of the Carousel Music.’’ Central Park is an idealist view of New York City. It is in this setting that Gardner introduces his two main characters. Of the two, Nat is obviously the idealist, but he is an idealist with a flaw. His heart is in the right place, but in pursuit of his ideals,
9 9
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
GARDNER TEASES THE AUDIENCE WITH THE IDEA OF HANDING OVER A VICTORY TO THE REALISTS IN THIS PLAY, UNTIL MIDGE THROWS A LIFESAVING ROPE TO NAT, THE DROWNING IDEALIST.’’
he tends to go overboard with huge ambitions. Midge, on the other hand, is a borderline idealist. He has the nature, it first appears, of a realist, but there is an idealist hiding somewhere inside of him. Although he argues with Nat’s philosophy, it is the secondary characters that prove to be Nat’s fiercest opponents. Nat has become a fighter for idealistic goals, and he thinks he is ready for his antagonists. Whereas Midge prefers to hide from confrontation, Nat goes out of his way to find a fight. He lives to fight. He even raised his daughter in his likeness and was most proud of her when she stood up to a policeman and was carted off to jail. For Nat, it is the fight that keeps him alive. It should be pointed out that it is not necessarily the victory of the battle that most inspires him. For Nat, it does not seem to matter if he wins or loses. Conversely, the most obvious realist in this play is Nat’s daughter Clara. Her father may have raised her as an idealist, but she has spent most of her adult life trying to forget that. Clara was not a true idealist. There was a part of her that enjoyed the fight, but Clara, unlike her father, needed victories to authenticate herself, to encourage and inspire the fight. One day, Clara looked around and noticed that despite the hard work trying to realize her idealist dreams, she was not seeing anything changing for the better. Clara was an idealist not for her own sake but for her father’s. She believed in his vision until she discovered that the dream was without a happy ending. As soon as she was old enough to come to her own conclusions, Clara realized that she was a very practical woman. She had practical needs and made a straight line toward satisfying them. Her needs were material. They were something that she could grasp. She no longer related to the abstractions of her father’s idealism, his goal of seeking
1 0 0
perfection. She did not understand what inspired her father to continue, so she stopped and made a dramatic turn in her life. Once she turned, Clara no longer looked up to her father for his visionary philosophy of life. Instead, she saw him as a crazed man, a Don Quixote, searching for imaginary demons. Clara’s new goal in life became the pursuit of saving her father, of bringing him to his senses, of transforming him into a realist. Nat used to be a realist, of sorts, but he now refers to that period as a time when he was dead. He was bored with life and did not have the courage to change it. He worked unproductive jobs and married a woman he did not love. His wife, he claims, was a practical woman, and their relationship generated no passion. When Midge asks Nat when was the last time he made love to a woman, Nat responds with a precise date. When Midge then asks if Nat’s wife was still alive at that time, Nat says: ‘‘I certainly hope so.’’ Then he adds: ‘‘With Ethel it wasn’t always easy to tell.’’ Nat did, however, fall in love once. He was given one opportunity and he did not pass the test. He did not have the courage to speak to the woman for whom his heart called out and it is obvious that his indecision has haunted and affected him ever since. That loss of love was the most significant example of his lack of courage to stand up for something in which he believed. In her death, Hannah Pearlman, the young woman to whom Nat never spoke, became the Ideal Woman. Nat immortalized her in his mind, allowing her to become the perfect lover. She will never yell at Nat. He will never get angry with her. She will never grow old. He will never be tired of her. It could be argued that it was because of Hannah Pearlman and Nat’s inability to realize his dream of love that he became an idealist. He was driven after this experience never to lose courage in battle again. He comes close to stating this premise in a later dialogue with Midge. Unlike Nat, Midge confesses that he was unfaithful in love. He was married several times and always had extramarital affairs. When he tells Nat about this, Midge states that he regrets what he did to his wives. ‘‘I cheated on them all,’’ he tells Nat. ‘‘Damn my cheatin’ soul.’’ In contrast, however, Nat praises him. ‘‘This is the most courageous thing I ever heard about you,’’ Nat tells Midge. ‘‘You dared and did, I yearned and regretted. I envy you. You were always what I have only recently become.’’ When Midge responds to Nat’s praise by putting himself down as ‘‘a dirty old man,’’ Nat
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
counters by calling Midge ‘‘a romanticist.’’ Nat then expounds on his definition of a romanticist; and the definition that he offers has the same characteristics as an idealist, of course. ‘‘A man of hope!’’ He then adds: ‘‘It’s all in the head,’’ referring to the idealist concept that objects in life are defined not by facts but by how they are perceived through the mind. Nat has learned this concept too late to save Hannah; but not too late to save the rest of the world. The important thing about life is the adventure of it all, and Nat, in his later years, plans on having as much adventure as he can find. He was dead before, but since he has embraced the philosophy of idealism, he has come to life.
emphasizes it with italics. Life has to be more than just the details. There has to be a spirit, a dream, a hope that things will one day be better. Life, Gardner appears to be saying, needs its idealists.
By the end of the play, Nat has suffered many failures. He tried to save Midge’s job and ended up making the situation worse. He also tried to save Midge from a young hoodlum, who extorted protection money from him every day, and Nat ends up physically wounded. Later, when Nat tries to protect the young female artist from a drug dealer, he almost gets Midge killed. These pressures of reality make Nat reflect on his philosophy. Maybe his way of thinking is flawed. Maybe he should listen to his realist daughter. Maybe his idealist world is dangerous. What good has it done, anyway? Nat still feels responsible for Hannah’s death. He certainly does not want his idealist principles to cause another one. So, Nat decides that he will give up his fantasies. He will become a realist. He will join the senior citizens’ community just as his daughter has suggested. He will also come clean with Midge. He will tell Midge the truth about himself. He will expose all his flaws. But what happens when he tries to do this? The idealist in Midge will not allow it.
In an interview with Hettie Lynne Hurtes for her article in Back Stage West, Gardner remembers growing up with people who would ‘‘sit and yell about Trotsky and about wars long since fought that were very vivid to them.’’ These men, he recalls, still cared; ‘‘against all evidence to the contrary they had not given up an image of a better world. If they didn’t argue about Lenin, they argued about the egg salad—both with equal passion.’’ Gardner reincarnated these people from his past into the lead character in his play, I’m Not Rappaport, which first appeared on Broadway in 1985. The play focuses on eighty-year-old Nat Moyer who meets Midge Carter, an equally aged black man, every day on a bench in Central Park, where the two continually argue about the reality of their world. Most of their time is dominated by Nat’s ‘‘alterations’’ of the truth of their world. Nat explains, ‘‘I make certain alterations. Sometimes the truth don’t fit; I take in here, I let out there, till it fits.’’ Throughout the play, Nat’s vivid imagination helps him to cling stubbornly to his vision of a better life as a shield against an increasingly harsh and indifferent world that has little use for the elderly.
In I’m Not Rappaport, Gardner explores the opposing worlds of the idealist and the realist. He exposes the strengths as well as the flaws in each philosophy. If he had ended the play with Nat recounting nothing but the facts and raw details of his life, if he had left Nat in the uninspired world of planned community programs for senior citizens, then he would have made the statement that the realist had won the argument. However, Gardner does no such thing. Gardner teases the audience with the idea of handing over a victory to the realists in this play, until Midge throws a lifesaving rope to Nat, the drowning idealist. Midge needs the dreams of the idealist. He needs something bigger than life to look up to. ‘‘You wasn’t just a waiter,’’ he yells at Nat, ‘‘you was more than that!’’ It is the word more that is important here; and that is why Gardner
V o l u m e
1 8
Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on I’m Not Rappaport, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Wendy Perkins Perkins is a professor of English and American literature and film. In this essay, Perkins examines Gardner’s focus on the power of the imagination in the play.
The setting of the play announces the condition of the two old men. They sit on a ‘‘battered’’ bench on an ‘‘isolated’’ path ‘‘at the edge of’’ Central Park. During their daily meetings, they, as Lisa Schwarzaum describes them in a review for Entertainment Weekly, rage ‘‘entertainingly . . . about the betrayals of old age,’’ about the betrayals of their bodies as their eyesight weakens and their steps falter, and about the betrayals of the world as they are no longer regarded as having any value to society. Nat is unemployed and has been eluding his daughter, who has been trying to have him either move in with her so she can keep an eye on him or committed to a nursing home. Midge, whose eye-
1 0 1
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
Walter Matthau, as Nat Moyer, and Ossie Davis, as Midge Carter, in the 1996 film adaptation of I’m Not Rappaport, written and directed by Herb Gardner
sight is failing him, is about to be evicted from his apartment and let go from his position as building superintendent there. The play begins in medias res or right in the middle of one of Nat’s ‘‘alterations,’’ this one about his being hired as an undercover agent for the government and told to pass himself off as Hernando, an escaped Cuban terrorist. Nat often provides himself with alter egos in an effort to prove that he has a purpose in life. His declining mental state becomes evident when he loses his place in the story and asks Midge to help him recall where he left off. Midge,
1 0 2
however, does not appreciate Nat’s fabrications and refuses to help or listen to him any further. Yet, as Nat adds more twists to his story, countering each of Midge’s doubts, Midge finds himself pulled back into the fantasy, almost against his will, for it provides him with an escape from his harsh life. By the end of this alteration, Nat notes his own overwhelming need for escape when he admits, ‘‘That was nice . . . a nice long story, lasted a long time.’’ When Nat’s imaginative visions become too unrealistic for Midge and Midge rails against the other man’s ‘‘lies,’’ Nat proves that he knows the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
difference between illusion and the difficult reality of their lives. Nat insists that what is ‘‘true’’ for him is a triple bypass he underwent the previous year, the ‘‘grade Z’’ cuts of meat he must eat on his Social Security check, and his begging for food at the back door of the Plaza Hotel. His surgery, he determined was his ‘‘last fact.’’ Since then, he combats these dark images of reality with his alterations, becoming an escaped Cuban terrorist or an Iroquois Indian, whose grandfather fought the cavalry. Nat demands of Midge, ‘‘Whatta you got left, five minutes, five months? Is this how you want to spend it? Sitting and staring, once in a while for a thrill falling down?’’ and then insists ‘‘No, wrong; you gotta shake things up, fellah; you gotta make things happen.’’ Nat claims that through Midge’s contact with him, Midge has ‘‘had a taste of revolution and will not be able to return to subjection, to living in an occupied country.’’ Nat’s motive is not just to escape a difficult world, but to improve it. His way of shaking things up is to call on his old oratorical skills as the labor activist he once was when he tries to fend off Midge’s eviction from his home. Passing himself off as Midge’s lawyer, Nat presents a convincing case to the head of the tenant association that if Midge is evicted, the group will face legal action. His fantasy, however, contains important elements of truth. As he upbraids Danforth, he insists, ‘‘There’s nothing, I promise you, easy about eighty.’’ Nat has a clear vision of the younger generation’s attitude toward the elderly when he notes, the ‘‘oldies . . . look like the future and you don’t want to know.’’ He warns the younger man, ‘‘We’re the coming attractions. And as long as you’re afraid of it, you’ll be afraid of us; you will want to hide us or make us hide from you.’’ Nat insists that Danforth can declare Midge ‘‘slow or stupid,’’ but if he tells him that he is unnecessary, ‘‘that is a sin against life.’’ Sometimes, however, Nat’s efforts to relieve the suffering in his world fail. His ruse to help Midge escape eviction soon falls apart when Danforth digs into Nat’s claims, discovers the scam, and Midge is left without the ten months severance pay he had been promised. At other times, Nat puts himself and Midge in harms way when he asserts his right to fight against injustice. When Gilley, the young hoodlum who is forcing Midge to pay him protection money, confronts Nat, insisting that he must also pay, Nat refuses. Midge warns him, ‘‘this kid, you run your mouth on him, he finish you, then finish me sure. . . .
V o l u m e
1 8
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
NAT’S MOTIVE IS NOT JUST TO ESCAPE A DIFFICULT WORLD, BUT TO IMPROVE IT.’’
These kids is crazy; beat up old folks for exercise.’’ Yet Nat will not back down and tries to convince the young punk that ‘‘the city lives by Darwin; this means everybody’s on somebody’s menu . . . . Trouble is, you got the wrong supper here . . . . You’re noshing on your own.’’ Gilley, however, is not persuaded and so attacks him, declaring that Nat does not ‘‘know the rules.’’ Gilley represents the hostile city life Nat and Midge must endure along with others, like the young junkie they try to protect. Nat’s refusal to follow the rules of survival in this atmosphere again endanger his and Midge’s life. Nat tries to convince a drug dealer, who is demanding money from Laurie that she cannot repay, that he is a mob boss and that Laurie is under his protection. He never convinces the dealer, however, who roughs up Nat and sends Midge to the hospital. Nat’s imaginative constructs also hurt his daughter Clara who, after she discovers that he has been attacked by Gilley, insists, ‘‘I can’t let this happen anymore. . . . You have to be watched. I’m not letting you out of my sight.’’ Her inability to appreciate his efforts to help Midge lead to an argument between them, spurred by Nat’s accusation that she has ‘‘forgotten what a principle is.’’ She says that what he has committed is fraud, not principle and complains that she always has to lie for him. She tries to make her father accept the reality that ‘‘the battle is over. . . . Nothing’s happened, nothing’s changed. And the Masses. . . . They don’t give a crap.’’ Nat, however, refuses to accept her position and her insistence that he move in with her, and as a result, concocts a story about fathering a child with another woman, whom, he claims, will take him with her to Israel. After Clara discovers the truth, Nat admits to Midge that his mouth is dangerous: ‘‘it . . . almost kills you; makes an Israeli family and breaks my daughter’s heart’’ and so he determines to ‘‘retire’’ his mouth. By the end of the play, Nat appears defeated. During the two weeks since Midge was placed in the
1 0 3
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
hospital, Clara has relocated Nat to an apartment in the Amsterdam Hotel, subsidized housing for the elderly that even Midge admits is ‘‘ninety percent foolish people’’ and ‘‘the end of the line.’’ When Midge meets Nat again on the bench, Nat ‘‘seems fragile, older—or rather he seems to be his own age, very much like any old man whiling away his morning on a park bench.’’ Nat suggests the course his life has now taken when he tells Midge that his main occupation in his new home ‘‘is to learn more things about tuna fish than God ever intended.’’ During their last conversation, Nat finally reveals his true history to Midge, admitting that he worked for forty-one years as a waiter, concluding, ‘‘whatever has been said previously, I was, and am now, no one. No one at all.’’ Ironically though, Midge refuses to accept this version of Nat’s story. He demands that Nat tell him the truth, that he was ‘‘more’’ than a waiter. So, Nat complies, happy to allow himself to be pulled back into a comforting fantasy. The play closes with Nat noting that he took some time off from his work as a waiter to work a stint in Hollywood, as a movie mogul. The play closes with the two old friends settling back to enjoy another of Nat’s stories. Even though Nat’s fanciful alterations often cause more problems than they fix, he and Midge recognize the value of his reconstruction of reality. They reflect the efforts of an old man, as Marilyn Stasio writes in her review of the play in Variety, ‘‘fighting to assert his identity and maintain his dignity in [a] hostile world.’’ Both men, notes George Meyer in the Sarasota Herald Tribune, give into Nat’s imaginative visions to keep ‘‘a toehold on life when everything around them has made them obsolete.’’ I’m Not Rappaport maintains its relevance for modern audiences with its enduring insights into the aging process and its celebration of the indomitable strength of the human spirit, buoyed by the rejuvenating power of the imagination. Source: Wendy Perkins, Critical Essay on I’m Not Rappaport, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
1 0 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
I ’ m
N o t
R a p p a p o r t
THIS IS HARDLY BECKETT’S GRIM VIEW OF OLD AGE, DESPITE A FEW COMMON ELEMENTS; THOUGH GARDNER’S OLD MEN ARE HALFBLIND AND LAME, THEY ARE NOT CRAWLING TOWARDS DEATH.’’
Simon, John, ‘‘Faking It,’’ in New York Magazine, Vol. 18, No. 25, June 24, 1985, pp. 72–73. Stasio, Marilyn, ‘‘Timing’s Off for Rappaport Revival,’’ in Variety, Vol. 387, No. 11, August 5, 2002, p. 29. Wheen, Francis, Review of I’m Not Rappaport, in Sunday Today, July 13, 1986.
FURTHER READING SOURCES Barnes, Clive, ‘‘Comic Rappaport Takes Illusion Lightly,’’ in the New York Post, June 7, 1985. Gardner, Herb, I’m Not Rappaport, Samuel French, 1987. Hurtes, Hettie Lynne, ‘‘Just Say It,’’ in Back Stage West, Vol. 4, No. 1, January 2, 1997, p. 10. Meyer, George, Review of I’m Not Rappaport, in The Critical Response to Eugene O’Neil, Greenwood Press, 1993, p. 16. Miller, Barry X., Review of The Collected Plays, in Library Journal, Vol. 125, No. 12, July 2000, p. 90. Novick, Julius, ‘‘Herb without Spice,’’ in the Village Voice, Vol. 30, No. 26, June 25, 1985, p. 110. Olson, Ray, Review of The Collected Plays, in Booklist, Vol. 96, No. 18, May 15, 2000, p. 1722. Scheck, Frank, Review of I’m Not Rappaport, in the Hollywood Reporter, Vol. 374, No. 24, July 26, 2002, p. 13. Schwarzbaum, Lisa, Review of I’m Not Rappaport, in Entertainment Weekly, No. 665, August 2, 2002, p. 65. Shannon, David, Review of I’m Not Rappaport, in Today, July 7, 1986.
V o l u m e
1 8
Hales, Michael, 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel from Every Angle, Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2002. Central Park is the main setting in the play. This book offers more than two hundred images of Central Park, helping readers to visualize the events in the play. Lieberman, Trudy, Consumer Reports Complete Guide to Health Services for Seniors, Three Rivers Press, 2000. Lieberman guides consumers through the complicated health-care system that services seniors. It also provides more information for readers who wish to see the flaws in the current system. Thau, Richard D., and Jay S. Heflin, eds., Generations Apart: Xers vs. Boomers vs. the Elderly, Prometheus Books, 1997. Thau and Heflin collect essays by and about members of Generation X, the Baby Boomers, and the elderly. In particular, the essays examine the ways these three generations interact with each other. Torr, James D., ed., The 1980s, America’s Decades series, Greenhaven Press, 2000. This book contains several reprinted essays that address various topics relevant to the 1980s. These topics cover popular culture, politics, and science and technology, among other issues.
1 0 5
Lost in Yonkers NEIL SIMON 1991
Marvin Neil Simon, who generally publishes as Neil Simon, first published Lost in Yonkers in the United States in 1991. The play, like many of Simon’s plays, draws on his experiences growing up in New York City, although many critics think it is not as autobiographical as his other plays. Lost in Yonkers was a critical and popular success and led to a film adaptation in 1993. Although many of Simon’s plays had won major dramatic awards before this, Lost in Yonkers was the first Simon play to win the Pulitzer Prize. Many critics consider the play to be Simon’s best work and the pinnacle of his career. The play was very timely. Although it is set during World War II—a setting that plays an important part in the narrative—Simon published the play as America was entering the Gulf War in the Middle East. As a result, the play’s main themes—including survival, the importance of one’s family, and acceptance—also seem timely, since these themes inevitably arise during any war or other military conflict, when death and other tragedies are likely. Although the play is technically labeled a comedy, it is in fact a hybrid. Critics note both the deep levels of pain that Simon explores in his characters and the humorous dialogue from certain characters, which ultimately helps the play to strike a balance between tragedy and comedy. Lost in Yonkers is available in a paperback version from Plume, which was published in 1993.
1 0 6
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Simon was born on July 4, 1927, in Bronx, New York. Simon attended two universities, New York University (1944–1945) and the University of Denver (1945–1946). While attending the latter, Simon served in the United States Army Air Force Reserve (1945–1946), where he also served as the sports editor for one of the military publications. Simon’s professional writing career also expanded in the 1940s when he started writing radio sketches with his brother Danny. The next decade, the writing duo moved to television where they worked with actors such as Jackie Gleason and writers such as Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. Although Danny left writing to begin directing, Simon continued writing to great acclaim. He earned two Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Awards (Emmys), one for Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows (1957) and one for The Phil Silver’s Show (1959). Simon’s career moved into high gear when he and Danny wrote their first play, Come Blow Your Horn (1961). From this first collaborative effort, Simon moved into writing for the theater full time on his own. Simon became very prolific, eventually churning out one play per year at times. Some of his more notable plays include Barefoot in the Park (1964), The Odd Couple (1966), Last of the Red Hot Lovers (1970), The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1972); Brighton Beach Memoirs (1984), Biloxi Blues (1986), Broadway Bound (1987), and Lost in Yonkers (1991). Simon has won countless dramatic awards, including the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best playwright for The Odd Couple (1965), the Tony Award for best drama for Biloxi Blues (1985), and the Tony Award for best play for Lost in Yonkers (1991). He also won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Lost in Yonkers (1991). His other works include the play 45 Seconds from Broadway (2001); the screenplay Laughter on the 23rd Floor (2001); and a memoir titled The Play Goes On: A Memoir (1999).
Neil Simon
the rooms of the apartment. They soon find out that this is no standard visit and that their father, Eddie, is in debt to a loan shark because he borrowed money to help pay for their dead mother’s hospital bills. Because of this, Eddie is trying to leave Jay and Arty with their grandma while Eddie travels south to work in metal scrapyards that are servicing the war effort. Grandma Kurnitz refuses to let the boys stay there until Bella, who is mentally impaired, threatens to leave Grandma Kurnitz and go stay at a home for the mentally ill if she does not let the boys stay.
Act 1, Scene 2 Jay reads a letter from Eddie, talking about his work experiences and letting them know that he has developed an irregular heartbeat from all of the traveling. Grandma Kurnitz scolds Bella for going to the movies and takes away the movie magazine that Bella has bought.
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 3 Act 1, Scene 1 Lost in Yonkers begins in the apartment above ‘‘Kurnitz’s Kandy Store,’’ where Grandma and Bella Kurnitz live. It is a hot day in August, and Jay and Arty Kurnitz sit waiting for their father in one of
V o l u m e
1 8
Weeks later, the boys receive another letter from Eddie that says he had to take a week off and rest from overexertion. Jay notices a black car that has been hanging around the apartment looking for their uncle Louie. Bella comes home, and after
1 0 7
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
prodding from the two boys, tells Jay and Arty that she is going to get married to a learning-impaired movie usher and have lots of children with him. She says that the usher, Johnny, wants to open a restaurant but that he does not have enough money. She also lets the boys know that Grandma Kurnitz has ten or fifteen thousand dollars that she keeps hidden somewhere in the house and that she changes the hiding place every year. Jay explores the possibility of finding the money, borrowing it, and sending it to their father.
Act 1, Scene 4 A week later, the boys receive another letter from Eddie that says he is having a hard time learning the southern dialect. It is late at night and everybody is sleeping. Jay comes up from the store where he has been searching for Grandma Kurnitz’s hidden money. The boys’ Uncle Louie comes into their bedroom and remarks that he saw Jay looking for the money. Louie is wearing a holstered gun and lies at first, saying it is not his. However, they suspect that he is a henchman for the mob. He pays them five dollars and then says he will give them money each week if they agree to tell the men that are after him that they have not seen him.
Act 2, Scene 1 The boys receive another letter from Eddie that says he was in the hospital, temporarily for exhaustion. Arty is sick, so Grandma Kurnitz has Jay bring him her infamous mustard soup. Jay notes that the men looking for Louie called and left a message with Jay. The boys realize that Louie is doublecrossing the mob. Grandma Kurnitz comes into the room, scolding Jay for taking too long to deliver the soup. Arty refuses to drink the horrid soup until Grandma Kurnitz threatens him with force. She leaves, and Louie comes in, fresh from a nap. He says that Arty has moxie for standing up to Grandma Kurnitz. Louie says he is going to leave that night, before the men looking for him come to get him, and then he goes to take a shower. Jay comes up, fuming that Grandma Kurnitz made him pay for three pretzels that she says some kids stole. Jay says he is going to ask Louie to take Jay with him when he goes so that Jay can make money and help out their father. Bella comes up and says that she is going to announce to the family tonight that she is getting married. She leaves, and Louie comes back into the room. Jay asks Louie if he can go with him when Louie leaves, but Louie refuses and gets mad when
1 0 8
Jay says that he does not want to rob anybody, implying that this is what Louie does for a living. When Jay offers to carry Louie’s mysterious black bag, Louie is furious, thinking that the boys have been snooping around. He tries to force Arty to open the bag and see what is in there, but Jay saves a terrified Arty by standing up to Louie. Louie is impressed at Jay’s moxie but says that there is no work for Jay, since Louie himself is closing up shop and fleeing town. Grandma Kurnitz comes in and tells Louie that he has to stay there for dinner that evening upon Bella’s request. Grandma Kurnitz returns some money that Louie left on her dresser, refusing to take it because she does not approve of the way that Louie earned it.
Act 2, Scene 2 Eddie sends a letter to Grandma Kurnitz and money to cover the boys’ food and Arty’s medicine. After dinner that night, Louie tries to leave, anxious to get out of town, but Bella keeps stalling, trying to find the right moment to spring the news about her intended marriage. Louie gets more anxious and refuses to sit until Grandma Kurnitz yells at him. Bella still does not know how to start, so Jay helps her out by asking her questions. When the line of questions reveals that Bella has been dating the head usher at the movie theater, Louie forgets about leaving and starts to get concerned. Bella finally manages to say that she plans to marry the usher, Johnny, who has a learning impairment, and that they plan on opening a restaurant together. When Louie pesters Bella, she admits that they need five thousand dollars to open their restaurant and that Johnny has lived in a home for the mentally impaired in the past. Everybody is shocked, and Grandma Kurnitz tells Bella to stop talking. However, Bella launches into a speech about how she wants to have her own babies and that they will be happier than the Kurnitz children were because she will not be as rough on them. Grandma Kurnitz gets up and leaves the room.
Act 2, Scene 3 Arty writes a letter to Eddie, letting him know that things have gotten bad around the house. Jay and Arty note that Bella has been gone for two nights. Aunt Gert comes out of Grandma Kurnitz’s room and says that Bella has been staying at Gert’s house but that Grandma Kurnitz does not know this. Gert leaves, and Grandma Kurnitz comes out of her room, obviously shaken by the week’s events. Bella walks in, but Grandma Kurnitz tells her to leave.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
The boys leave, and Bella confronts her mother, who tries to say that Bella’s mental state makes her nothing but a child. However, Bella says she has womanly needs and talks about the sexual affairs she has had with men in an attempt to find the warmth that has been missing from her home life. Bella reveals that Louie gave her the five thousand dollars to open her restaurant, but Bella says she is not going to do that. Bella also mentions Grandma Kurnitz’s two children who died, the event that caused her to close herself off emotionally from her other children. Bella goes to put her things away, moving back in for good, and Grandma Kurnitz tries to hide her emotion.
Act 2, Scene 4 Ten months after Eddie left Arty and Jay with his mother, he returns to pick them up. While Eddie is in talking with his mother, the boys learn that Louie is fighting in the war, in Guadalcanal. Bella comes in and gives a football to Jay and a basketball to Arty. Jay and Arty say their awkward good-byes to Grandma Kurnitz and leave. Bella starts preparing dinner for her mother and herself, saying that she has met a new girlfriend and that this girl has a brother whom Bella would like to have over for dinner sometime. Grandma Kurnitz quietly accepts Bella’s new assertiveness.
CHARACTERS Arthur See Arty Kurnitz
Arty Kurnitz Arty Kurnitz, a thirteen-year-old boy, is Eddie’s youngest boy. Arty is forced to live with his grandma Kurnitz for ten months while his father works off a debt to a loan shark. Arty prefers to go by ‘‘Arty,’’ but his grandma calls him ‘‘Arthur,’’ so he reluctantly accepts this name. Arty gets sick during the play and is forced by his grandma to drink her horrid mustard soup. Arty is afraid of his Uncle Louie, a mob henchman, especially when Louie tries to force Arty to open his mysterious satchel. Jay sticks up for Arty in this instance. By the end of the play, however, Arty misses his Uncle Louie, who has enlisted in the military to avoid some other mob henchmen. Bella confides in Arty and Jay about her marriage plans when she cannot find anybody else to talk to.
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • Lost in Yonkers was adapted as a film by Columbia Pictures in 1993. The film, directed by Martha Coolidge, features Richard Dreyfuss as Uncle Louie, Mercedes Ruehl as Aunt Bella, and Irene Worth as Grandma Kurnitz. It is available on VHS and DVD from Columbia/Tristar Home Video. • Lost in Yonkers was also produced as an audio stage recording in 2002 by L.A. Theatre Works. The audio recording is available in both cassette and CD form. Both feature the voices of Dan Castellanetta as Uncle Louie, Gia Carides as Aunt Gert, Roxanne Hart as Aunt Bella, and Barbara Bain as Grandma Kurnitz.
Aunt Bella Kurnitz Aunt Bella is Grandma Kurnitz’s mentally impaired daughter and the aunt of Jay and Arty Kurnitz. Bella is the most dynamic character in the play. In the beginning, much emphasis is placed on Bella’s mental condition. Bella tends to walk around in a daze, which the audience eventually learns is one of the ways she copes with her dysfunctional home life. Bella is a daydreamer and likes to spend her time at the movie theater. Here, Bella meets an illiterate usher that she wants to marry. She also hopes to start a business with him but needs five thousand dollars to do this. Bella is nervous about bringing this topic up with her family, especially her mother. As a result, Bella invites the whole family to a dinner during which she attempts to spring the news on them. However, she is unable to figure out a way to do this and so must rely on Jay to help her reveal her news, by prompting her with questions. Despite her fear of her mother, Bella stands up to Grandma Kurnitz three times in the play. In the beginning, when Grandma Kurnitz refuses to let Jay and Arty stay with her, Bella threatens to leave her mother if the boys cannot stay. During the dinner, she launches into a speech, asserting her independence and causing her mother to leave the room
1 0 9
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
without saying a word. Finally, at the end of the play, Bella digs up her mother’s painful past—when her mother lost two children. Bella says that she is going to raise her children differently, showering them with love instead of withholding it for fear of losing them and having to deal with heartbreak. At the end of the play, Bella is totally transformed. She has a new friend and a potential date. She talks to her mother very boldly and acts strong and independent.
Eddie Kurnitz Eddie Kurnitz is the son of Grandma Kurnitz and the father of Jay and Arty Kurnitz. He is forced to leave his boys with his mother so that he can go south, take advantage of the need for workers during the war and ultimately pay off a debt that he owes to a loan shark. Eddie gained this debt when he paid for his deceased wife’s hospital bills. Eddie feels that the only way to repay the debt is to work hard, and he works so hard that he makes himself sick. Throughout the play, Eddie sends periodic letters to his boys and his mother, which are read to the audience in voice-over. These letters set the tone for each scene and make Eddie a major character, despite the fact that he is only physically present in the first and last scenes.
Gert Kurnitz Gert is Grandma Kurnitz’s daughter and Arty’s and Jay’s aunt. As the result of her mother’s harsh love, Gert has developed a breathing problem that causes her to start each sentence breathing out and to end the sentence sucking in. This problem is more pronounced when she is visiting her mother. When Bella runs away, Gert houses her for a couple of days without telling her mother.
Grandma Kurnitz Grandma Kurnitz is the mother of Eddie, Bella, Louie, and Gert, and she is the grandmother of Jay and Arty Kurnitz. Grandma Kurnitz is characterized by her tough attitude, which is underscored by her harsh German accent. All of the characters think that Grandma Kurnitz is too tough on them, but it is revealed at the end of the play that she is tough because she lost two of her children. Ever since that day, she has closed herself off emotionally from her children and others. As a result, she has been very
1 1 0
harsh when raising her children, trying above all else to teach them how to survive. In the process, however, each child has developed a defense mechanism to survive, some of which are debilitating, such as Gert’s breathing problems. When Jay and Arty come to live with Grandma Kurnitz, she is hard on them, too. As she has done with her own children, Grandma Kurnitz charges Jay for any items that are missing from her candy store, even when she has taken them herself. Several characters stand up to Grandma Kurnitz, including Arty, but all of them inevitably back down—except for Bella. Grandma Kurnitz tries above all else to protect Bella, who is mentally impaired. She treats Bella like a child and has a hard time accepting the fact that Bella has become a woman and is seeking a mature life with a husband and children. Grandma Kurnitz also has difficulty admitting that she needs others, even though she relies on Bella. By the end of the play, Grandma Kurnitz has reluctantly accepted the fact that Bella is growing up.
Jay Kurnitz Jay Kurnitz, a fifteen-year-old boy, is Eddie’s oldest boy. Jay is forced to live with his Grandma Kurnitz for ten months while his father works off a debt to a loan shark. Jay prefers to go by ‘‘Jay,’’ but his grandma calls him ‘‘Yakob,’’ so he reluctantly accepts this name. Although both Jay and Arty work in their grandma’s store, Jay seems to get harassed more by his grandma. When any pretzels or other items are missing from the store—even if Grandma Kurnitz herself took them—Jay is forced to pay for the missing items. It is Jay’s idea to look for their grandma’s stashed fortune, which Jay hopes to send to their father, Eddie, so that Eddie does not have to work himself into the ground anymore. Jay gets another moneymaking idea, namely going with his uncle Louie into the mob business. However, when he approaches Louie about this idea, Louie is not receptive. In fact, when Louie thinks the boys have been snooping around his mysterious black satchel, he tries to force a frightened Arty to open up the bag, but Jay sticks up for his brother. Bella confides in Jay and Arty about her marriage plans when she cannot find anybody else to talk to. When Aunt Bella gets nervous during the family dinner and cannot figure out how to break the news of her impending marriage, Jay helps her out by prompting her with questions.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
Louie Kurnitz Louie Kurnitz is the son of Grandma Kurnitz and the uncle of Jay and Arty Kurnitz. Louie is the toughest of Grandma Kurnitz’s children and has adopted a career as a henchman for the mob. His whole character, including his dialogue, style of dress, and actions are defined by this role. Louie operates on emotional extremes. He can be very ferocious, as when he suspects that Jay and Arty have been snooping in his mysterious black bag. On these occasions, he explodes. However, he can also be jovial and fun to be around. Throughout the play, Louie prepares to leave town, since he is wanted by the mob. At the end of the play, the audience finds out that Louie enlisted in the army to escape the mob and is fighting in the Battle of Guadalcanal. Louie has earned a lot of money in his illicit dealings, and he tries to share this money with his mother, but she refuses to take it. Also, although he does not approve of Bella’s initial plan to marry an illiterate and open a restaurant, he gives her five thousand dollars to pursue her dream.
Yakob See Jay Kurnitz
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research the various new work opportunities that came about in America as a result of World War II. Discuss the groups that most benefited from these new opportunities. • Locate Yonkers on a map of New York. Write a short description of what life was like in Yonkers in 1942 and what life is like there today. • How would you direct the cataclysmic dinner scene in the second act during which Bella makes her announcement? • In the play, Grandma Kurnitz and Bella run a candy store. Research what candy stores were like in 1942 and create a sample inventory list of the types of foods and drinks that they most likely served. For each item, list the price of the item in both 1942 and 2002 values. • In the play, Louie’s gangster background is touched on but never fully explored. Research the New York gangster world around 1942. Pick a notorious gangster from this era and write a short biography about this person.
THEMES Survival Everybody in the play is trying hard to survive, each in his or her own way. Grandma Kurnitz is the character in the play that influences all of the other characters and forces them to adopt their survival tactics. When Grandma Kurnitz lost two of her children, she closed off the rest of her family emotionally—her way of coping with the loss and surviving. This emotional restriction, as well as Grandma Kurnitz’s harsh ways, is intended to toughen up her children so that they will learn how to survive. Her children have adapted to Grandma Kurnitz’s tough guidance in various ways. For Eddie, survival equates to hard, backbreaking work. He has done what he feels is the right thing by going into debt to ease his wife’s hospital stay. Now, he feels that the only way to make up this debt is to work as hard as possible, sacrificing his own health, if necessary, to make sure that his boys survive. The boys see how hard their father is pushing himself, through his letters. One letter says, ‘‘Dear Boys . . .
V o l u m e
1 8
Sorry I haven’t kept up my letter writing. The truth is, I was in the hospital a few days. Nothing serious. The doctor said it was just exhaustion.’’ For Louie, survival means engaging in lucrative, illegal work that is very dangerous. Louie is constantly on the run because this kind of work has gotten him in trouble with the mob. He is a loner and does not require the approval of others, as Bella and other characters do. Grandma Kurnitz notes Louie’s strength at one point but also notes that she does not approve of his methods. ‘‘You were always the strongest one. The survivor . . . Live—at any cost I taught you, yes. But not when someone else has to pay the price.’’ Bella survives by remaining in a daze most of the time. As Jay and Arty note, Bella seems to wander through life, not knowing where she is going. For example, when Bella first arrives at the apartment, she walks right by it, until Jay calls
1 1 1
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
down to her. ‘‘I walked right by the house, didn’t I? Sometimes I daydream so much, I think I should carry an alarm clock.’’ As the play slowly reveals, Bella’s daze is not due entirely to her mental impairment. Living life in a daze helps her to survive living with her mother. However, by the end of the play, she has decided to survive by fighting, instead of by hiding in a daze. She is strong and independent, and the difference shows in her intelligent comments to her mother.
The Importance of Family Despite the problems caused by the Kurnitz family dysfunctionality, the play still reinforces the idea that everybody needs the love of family to survive. Louie, one of the toughest characters in the play and certainly one of the most independent, still listens to his mother. During the cataclysmic dinner scene when Bella tells them about her boyfriend, Louie refuses to sit because he wants to leave quickly before the mob catches him. He says, ‘‘Louie sit! Louie stand! Louie eat! . . . You don’t scare me anymore, Ma. Maybe everyone else here, but not me. You understand?’’ Despite this independent speech, Louie sits down a few seconds later when his mother asks him to. He still loves his mother, even if the love she gave him was a tough love. Earlier in the play, when Louie first arrives, he remarks on the importance of family to Jay and Arty: ‘‘There’s nothing like family, boys. The one place in the world you’re safe, is with your family. . . . Right?’’ Eddie agrees. When he is forced to leave his boys with Grandma Kurnitz, it is his only choice. However, as he relates in a letter, he is very comfortable with his decision and writes, ‘‘Dear Boys. . . . The one thing that keeps me going is knowing you’re with my family. Thank God you’re in good hands. Love, Pop.’’ Even the hardest character in the story, Grandma Kurnitz, cannot survive without her family. She acts like she does not need anybody or anything, but Bella knows better. In the beginning, Grandma Kurnitz refuses to let Arty and Jay live with them, but Bella steps in, threatening to leave her mother if she does not let the boys stay. Bella says to her mother, ‘‘And if I go, you’ll be all alone. . . . And you’re afraid to be alone, Momma. . . . Nobody else knows that but me.’’
Acceptance Despite each character’s attempt to survive, each of them also comes to a point in the play where
1 1 2
they have to accept something that they do not want to. For Louie, this means accepting the fact that his lifestyle is not healthy and pursuing a normal line of work—in this case, enlisting in the military. Arty and Jay discuss the fate of their uncle when they talk about how Louie finally escaped the two men from the mob: ‘‘You think he’s safer fighting in the South Pacific?’’ Jay asks Arty. For Bella, she must accept the fact that the movie usher does not want to get married and have children. Bella says, ‘‘He wants to live with his parents because he knows that they love him. . . . And that’s enough for him.’’ However, through Bella’s journey in discovering this, she has awakened her mature side and realizes that she can never go back to living in a daze. Bella says, ‘‘It’s too late to go back for me. . . . Maybe I’m still a child but now there’s just enough woman in me to make me miserable.’’ As Bella remarks to her mother, ‘‘We have to learn how to deal with that somehow, you and me.’’ This is the hard fact that Grandma Kurnitz has to accept: Bella has grown up and now wants new things. At the end of the play, Bella casually mentions that she would like to invite a new man over for dinner, and the play ends on Grandma Kurnitz’s quiet gesture of reluctant acceptance: ‘‘GRANDMA watches BELLA, then nods her head as if to say, ‘So it’s come to this . . .’’’).
STYLE Setting The play depends heavily upon its World War II setting. The whole premise of the play, that Eddie is able to find work that will get him out of his debt to the loan shark, would not work as well if it were set during peacetime. Eddie says, ‘‘I hate this war, and God forgive me for saying this, but it’s going to save my life. . . . There are jobs I can get now that I could never get before.’’ In addition, the war setting provides a believable escape for Uncle Louie at the end of the play when he enlists in the military to escape the mob. As Arty remarks, ‘‘You know who I miss? Uncle Louie. . . . I’m glad those two guys never caught him.’’ Says Jay, ‘‘No, but maybe the Japs will.’’ The war also provides a violent backdrop for the volatile emotions that are displayed in the play. In a similar way, the sweltering heat of
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
Yonkers, at least in the beginning of the play, underscores the negative feelings that Jay and Arty associate with their grandma Kurnitz. In fact, when Arty and Jay are talking about their aunt Bella, after going into a lengthy dialogue about why they hate coming to their grandma’s house, Arty says that Bella is ‘‘Nicer than ‘hot house’ Grandma.’’
Dialogue Dialogue plays an important part in any play, since most of the information is communicated to the audience through dialogue. Unlike short stories and novels, which have the ability to let the reader inside the characters’ thoughts, most plays must dramatize thoughts and feelings through dialogue and actions. In Lost in Yonkers, the style of dialogue is particularly important. Grandma Kurnitz has the most distinctive dialogue. Her German accent, which makes her seem even tougher, separates her from the rest of the characters. Grandma Kurnitz’s accent and stilted speech are apparent from her first lines in the play. When she meets Arty, she asks, ‘‘Diss iss the little one?’’ As she launches into her first long speech, her accent gets even thicker: ‘‘So now Grandma vill tell you vy she doesn’t tink you should live vit her.’’ The fact that Simon makes Grandma Kurnitz’s accent German is significant, given the fact that the Germans were one of America’s strongest enemies during the war. This helps to make her seem even more ruthless. Grandma Kurnitz’s style of speech is not the only distinctive dialogue in the play. Uncle Louie, the mob henchman, speaks in a tough, fast style that reflects his gangster status and knowledge of street life. When he is discussing Eddie’s debt problem with the loan sharks, Louie says, ‘‘You think I don’t know what’s going on? The sharks are puttin’ the bite on him, right? He shoulda come to me. There’s lotsa ways of borrowin’ money. Your pop don’t unnerstand that.’’
Voice-Over With rare exception, each scene after Eddie leaves begins with a letter from Eddie to Arty and Jay or to his mother. These letters help to illuminate Eddie’s experiences working down South, but they also underscore the conflicts that are taking place in each scene. For example, in the first scene of the second act, a sick Eddie notes in his letter, which is communicated to the audience in voice-over: ‘‘I remember when I was a boy, if I got sick, my mother
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
used to give me the worst tasting German mustard soup. God, how I hated it.’’ This voice-over helps to establish several things: First, Eddie is sick from pushing himself too hard to pay off his debt and survive; second, Eddie had no choice but to drink the mustard soup as a kid, just as Arty has no choice in the scene when Grandma Kurnitz forces him to drink the soup. In fact, this scene is about the ways in which Grandma Kurnitz taught her children to survive a tough world. By having Eddie introduce the soup, which is Grandma Kurnitz’s way of beating a sickness quickly, it sets the tone for the rest of the scene. This pattern is repeated throughout the many other letters and corresponding voice-overs.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The United States Enters World War II During World War I, the United States did not enter the war until the final years, after Germans sank a number of American ships. The same was true for World War II. During the beginning years of the war, the United States remained officially neutral. Although President Roosevelt attempted to keep the United States out of the war as much as possible, he realized that ultimately this might not be possible. Martin Gilbert says in his A History of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 2, 1933–1951, ‘‘Roosevelt intimated that the concept of perpetual neutrality . . . could not survive the conflicts that were arising across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans.’’ As the war progressed, the United States, still officially neutral, began to provide a greater supply of arms and other aid to its international allies who were actively fighting the war against Germany and the Axis powers. After the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United States declared war on Japan. When Adolf Hitler, overconfident that the Japanese would defeat the United States, declared war on America, the United States was drawn inexorably into the war against the two major Axis powers.
Battle of Guadalcanal At the end of the play, Jay and Arty talk about their uncle Louie, who has enlisted in the military
1 1 3
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
COMPARE & CONTRAST • Early 1940s: The United States enters World War II after a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. 1991: The United States leads the Gulf War against Iraq after Saddam Hussein occupies the neighboring country of Kuwait. Today: The United States leads a massive international war on terrorism following attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., in 2001. • Early 1940s: United States military forces experience harsh resistance from Axis forces in both European and Pacific arenas. However, with the help of other Allied forces, they begin to turn the tide of the war. 1991: United States military forces, under the command of President George Bush, experience little resistance from Iraqi forces. However, Saddam Hussein launches attacks against neighboring nations such as Israel, incurring the wrath of other nations in the Middle East. Today: When United States President George W. Bush announces his intentions to attack Iraq,
and gone to fight in World War II in an effort to get away from the gangsters who have been chasing him. As Arty notes, ‘‘He’s probably the richest guy on Guadalcanal.’’ Arty is referring to the Battle of Guadalcanal, which took place from August 1942 to February 1943. The battle featured some of the war’s most brutal fighting. It was also one of the most one-sided Allied victories. By the battle’s end, casualties included approximately 21,000 Japanese soldiers and approximately 3,000 American and Australian soldiers.
The Persian Gulf War However, this one-sided fight paled in comparison to the lopsided fighting in the Persian Gulf War, which is also commonly referred to as the Gulf
1 1 4
claiming that the country is harboring weapons of mass destruction, Israel is one of Bush’s strongest supporters. However, many other nations in the Middle East, as well as several American allies around the world, are reluctant to give full support to Bush’s plan. • Early 1940s: Nazi Germany continues its systematic annihilation of most of the European Jewish population. Those Jews who can escape flee to other countries in Europe and abroad. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States government authorizes the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in detention camps. 1991: Following the Gulf War, some Iraqis relocate to other countries, including the United States, in an attempt to escape Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime. Today: Following the terrorist attacks in the United States, which are orchestrated by exiled Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, many American citizens of Middle Eastern descent are exposed to racial profiling and aggression.
War. This war began on August 2, 1990, when Saddam Hussein sent his Iraqi forces into Kuwait. The world community suspected that Hussein was trying to acquire Kuwait’s vast oil reserves. The United Nations responded with economic sanctions, but Hussein refused to withdraw. On August 6, the United States and its allies, including other Middle Eastern nations, began to occupy nearby Saudi Arabia, to prevent an attack on the Saudi oil supply. This combined military buildup was known as Operation Desert Shield. On November 29, the United Nations Security Council gave Hussein a withdrawal deadline of January 15, 1991. Hussein ignored the deadline, and on January 18, 1991, the United States and its allies began Operation Desert Storm. This operation, a sustained aerial assault on Iraq, neutralized Iraq’s military forces, government
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
and military installations, transportation and communication networks, and oil refineries. On February 24, the Allies launched Operation Desert Sabre, a ground assault from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait and southern Iraq that faced relatively little resistance. On February 28, President George Bush called a cease-fire.
i n
Y o n k e r s
on Simon for American Writers, when Simon won the Pulitzer Prize for Lost in Yonkers, ‘‘a strategic shift took place in the critical reception of his work. Critics began to take a tone of more uniform praise.’’ Finally, as Susan Koprince notes of Lost in Yonkers in her 2002 entry on Simon for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, ultimately, the play has become ‘‘Both a critical and popular success.’’ Koprince also says that the play ‘‘represents Simon at the pinnacle of his career.’’
CRITICAL OVERVIEW The critical reception of Lost in Yonkers has been mixed since it was first published in 1991. Part of this has to do with Simon’s status as an extremely popular playwright. When a playwright—or any other writer, for that matter—sells a lot of books or performances, some critics tend to view this as a sign that the writer is not artistic. Indeed, Simon received some scathing initial reviews. In his review of the play for the New Leader, Stefan Kanfer says, ‘‘Watching Simon work with this material is like viewing Bob Vila on reruns of This Old House.’’ Kanfer also notes that Simon’s goal is ‘‘To please ticketholders’’ and that he does this by creating ‘‘a situation tragedy’’ and covering it ‘‘in pastel shades.’’ Kanfer was not alone in the negative comments. In her review of the play for the New Yorker, Mimi Kramer says that some of the characters are ‘‘phony’’ and notes that the play ‘‘seems to suffer from a basic confusion about what sorts of things are interesting as truth and what sorts of things are interesting as fiction.’’ However, Simon also had his champions when the play was initially reviewed. In the New York Times Magazine, David Richards calls Simon ‘‘the last Broadway playwright,’’ indicating that all of the other great Broadway playwrights are gone. Richards does note that Simon ‘‘insists—a bit disingenuously—that there is nothing autobiographical about Lost in Yonkers,’’ though Richards sees clear autobiographical links. Other positive comments include the review by James S. Torrens in America. Torrens notes that ‘‘Lost in Yonkers touches all the chords.’’ In the decade since the play was first published, Simon’s reputation in general, and the reputation of Lost in Yonkers in particular, has received favorable criticism. As J. Ellen Gainor notes in her 1996 entry
V o l u m e
1 8
CRITICISM Ryan D. Poquette Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses Simon’s use of humor in his play. Simon started his career writing comedies, first for radio shows, then for television shows, and ultimately for his plays. As David Richards notes in his review of Lost in Yonkers for the New York Times Magazine, during the 1980s, pain ‘‘slowly crept into the comic world of Neil Simon.’’ This is definitely the case with Lost in Yonkers, which takes its characters to painful emotional depths. In fact, as Richards notes, Simon was originally afraid that ‘‘audiences might not find it funny enough.’’ However, as many critics note, Simon strikes an effective balance between tragedy and humor in Lost in Yonkers. Perhaps this is most apparent in the volatile dinner scene where Bella reveals her intentions to marry and start a business. In her entry on Simon for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Susan Koprince notes, ‘‘This scene, which actually begins in a comedic manner, demonstrates Simon’s ability to move his audience from laughter to tears—even within the space of a few minutes.’’ Simon relies on humor not only to offset the play’s tragic qualities but also to emphasize certain aspects about his characters. The humor in the play is transmitted mainly through dialogue. In many cases, this humorous dialogue is uttered by one character at the expense of another. This is most true in the case of Grandma Kurnitz, who becomes the butt of many jokes. Simon has a specific purpose in doing this. He is attempting to emphasize Grandma Kurnitz’s tough-
1 1 5
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
Brad Stoll, as Jay, and Richard Dreyfuss, as Uncle Louie, in a scene from the 1993 film adaptation of Lost in Yonkers
ness. Many of the jokes about her refer to her steellike attitude and demeanor, which frightens Jay and Arty, in particular. These two boys, in an effort to deal with their nervousness about their grandma, crack jokes about her. When they first arrive at their grandma’s apartment in the very beginning of the play, they are obviously not happy about being there. Jay says about their grandma, ‘‘When I was five, I drew a picture of her and called it ‘Frankenstein’s Grandma.’’’ This depiction of Grandma Kurnitz, drawn by Jay when he was a small child, and therefore very honest, is also an accurate depiction of what others think about Grandma Kurnitz in the play. In addition, even before meeting Grandma Kurnitz, the audience has a laugh at her expense and forms a picture of her as a monster. Jay and Arty make several other humorous comments about Grandma Kurnitz’s toughness. For example, when they are trying to find ways to make money to help out their father, Arty says, ‘‘What if one night we cut off Grandma’s braids and sold it to the army for barbed wire?’’ This effect increases as others talk about Grandma Kurnitz’s scariness. For example, when Bella talks about her mother’s effect on one of Gert’s old boyfriends, she is not intending to be
1 1 6
funny, but it is comedic. Bella says, ‘‘My sister, Gert, was once engaged to a man. She brought him over to meet Grandma. The next day he moved to Boston.’’ Once again, comments like this reinforce the idea of Grandma Kurnitz as a horrible monster. Grandma Kurnitz’s long sections of dialogue at the end of the first scene, where she refuses to let Jay and Arty stay with her—even though it could mean the death of Eddie—further underscores her negative qualities. Simon uses humorous dialogue to emphasize the qualities of other characters as well. When the audience first meets Uncle Louie, he arrives on the scene unexpected. The boys, and the audience, are drawn into Louie’s fast-talking, street-style dialogue, which often culminates in jokes. For example, when Jay and Arty are having a hard time concentrating on what Louie is saying because they are focusing on his holstered gun, he puts the gun in his waistband. Jay asks him if it is loaded, and Louie says, ‘‘Gee, I hope not. If it went off, I’d have to become a ballerina.’’ In another instance, Arty is surprised to find that Louie has slipped a five-dollar bill into Arty’s pocket while they were talking. Louie says, ‘‘These fingers were touched by genius. I could have been a concert violinist, but the hand-
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? oirs features a Jewish family, the Jeromes, who face financial crises and relationship issues while living together during the Great Depression.
• Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize–winning, autobiographical play, Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956), features one day in the life of the dysfunctional Tyrone family. The youngest son, Edmond, suffers from tuberculosis and hates his father; the mother is addicted to drugs; and the older son is an alcoholic.
• Simon’s second memoir, The Play Goes On (1999), examines his mature life and career, beginning with the days following the death of his beloved wife, Joan.
• Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (1982) is the first of his so-called autobiographical trilogy, which also includes Biloxi Blues (1984) and Broadway Bound (1986). Brighton Beach Mem-
• Simon’s first memoir, Rewrites: A Memoir (1996), is a critically acclaimed work that examined the beginnings of Simon’s life and career, up to and including the death of his wife.
kerchief kept fallin’ off my neck.’’ Louie’s humor sometimes takes a turn for the lewd, as when he asks Arty to check his pajama bottoms, presumably for any more five-dollar bills. When Arty says, ‘‘There’s nothing there,’’ Louie responds, ‘‘Well, don’t worry. You’re young yet,’’ implying that Arty is not yet sexually mature. After a series of rapid-fire jokes like these, Arty says that ‘‘He’s incredible. It’s like having a James Cagney movie in your own house.’’
Gert is another character that has jokes made at her expense. She suffers from a breathing condition— which she developed during her painful childhood with her mother—where she says the first part of a sentence breathing out and the second part of the sentence sucking in. In the beginning of the play, Jay describes it as follows: ‘‘I once saw her try to blow out a candle and halfway there she sucked it back on.’’ This comment and the other humorous ones like it depict Gert as a weak, sick woman. In fact, in their discussions with their uncle Louie, Jay and Arty find out more about how Gert developed this condition. Louie says, ‘‘Gert used to talk in her sleep and Mom heard her one night sayin’ things she didn’t like. So Gert didn’t get supper that week. Until she learned to sleep holdin’ her breath.’’
Louie’s humor can have a dark edge, too, as when he is discussing his potential death. Louie knows he is wanted by the mob, and he has been living his life on the run. As a result, before he goes to sleep in the same room as Jay and Arty, he says, ‘‘So unless something unforeseen goes wrong, I’ll see you in the morning pals.’’ Although this is not laugh-out-loud funny, it is a sort of dark humor, which further underscores the idea of Louie as a tough gangster type. Louie makes other jokes about grim subjects, such as the war. When he and Arty are discussing the horrid quality of Grandma Kurnitz’s mustard soup—which Arty says he could taste even ‘‘if I didn’t have a tongue’’—Louie references the brutality of the war in an offhand manner. Louie says about the German General Rommel, ‘‘Right now he’s rollin’ across Egypt, cuttin’ through the whole British army. Tough as they come . . . But if Momma wanted him to eat the soup, he would eat the soup.’’
V o l u m e
1 8
However, when it comes to audience perception, Bella is perhaps the character whose image is most affected by jokes. From the beginning, Jay and Arty tell jokes about their aunt Bella, though not in an intentionally mean way. In fact, some of these jokes are not jokes at all, in the sense that they are true. Many jokes are based in fact but inflated to give them an increased comedic quality. In the case of Bella, however, many of the things that the boys or others say about her are not embellished at all. For example, when Jay and Arty are discussing Bella’s education, Arty is surprised to find out that Bella went to high school. As Jay notes, it was only
1 1 7
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
ULTIMATELY, SIMON’S USE OF HUMOR IS AN EFFECTIVE WAY TO TRAP THE AUDIENCE AND REVERSE THEIR EXPECTATIONS. FOR THE ENTIRE PLAY, THE VARIOUS JOKES ABOUT OR BY THE CHARACTERS HELP THE AUDIENCE GROW ACCUSTOMED TO THINKING ABOUT EACH CHARACTER IN A CERTAIN WAY. AT THE END, HOWEVER, SIMON TURNS THE TABLES.’’
with his loads of money he could have chosen to take many other, safer routes. Instead, he chooses to put his life on the line fighting for his country. Gert is depicted throughout the play as a weak, sick individual. However, as the boys find out at the end of the play, she only has her breathing condition when she is at her mother’s house. Other than that, she lives her own life and even risks her mother’s wrath by helping out Bella. Finally, and most important, Bella is depicted throughout the play as a baffled woman who gets confused easily. By the end of the play, Bella has taken the first steps toward maturity, taken on her mother with intelligent and meaningful speeches, and is attempting to move on with her adult life. Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on Lost in Yonkers, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Sheri E. Metzger ‘‘A little. She missed the first year because she couldn’t find it.’’ While this is a humorous comment, it is also true. So is the fact that Grandma Kurnitz used to beat on Bella the most, because Bella was slow to begin with and so got many things wrong. As Jay notes, when Bella got confused and gave a customer more ice cream for the same price, her mother would react violently. Jay says, ‘‘And if Grandma saw it, Whacko! Another couple of IQ points gone.’’ Because these humorous comments about Bella are based in facts that the audience can see for themselves, the audience is led to believe that Bella is slow and cannot do much of anything for herself. Ultimately, Simon’s use of humor is an effective way to trap the audience and reverse their expectations. For the entire play, the various jokes about or by the characters help the audience grow accustomed to thinking about each character in a certain way. At the end, however, Simon turns the tables. Grandma Kurnitz, who is depicted as a monster throughout the play, is shown to be a sad woman who has faced her share of tragedies and developed misguided defense mechanisms as a result. Uncle Louie, who is depicted throughout as an irresponsible gangster who makes jokes about death and only watches out for himself, turns out to be a responsible brother. He gives Bella the money she needs to pursue her dream (even though she chooses not to use it). He also joins the army. Although his enlistment is technically a way of escaping the mob,
1 1 8
Metzger has a doctorate in English Renaissance literature and teaches literature and drama at the University of New Mexico, as an adjunct professor in the university honors program. In this essay, Metzger discusses Simon’s blending of comedy and drama in his play and examines its characterizations and plot movements. It is difficult to discuss Simon’s Lost in Yonkers without focusing on Grandma Kurnitz. All action, whether comedy or drama, is focused on this one women, who is both tyrant and protector, manipulator and mini-dictator. She dominates the play, just as she dominates her stage family. Grandma Kurnitz is not likable, and stage comedy is often dependant on the audience’s ability to like a character, or at least, to identify in some way with a character’s actions or motivations. Simon does not develop Grandma Kurnitz’s personality sufficiently, nor does he provide enough depth to her personality to make her actions understandable. As a result, she emerges as a cruel figure, who is not especially likeable. In an effort to work as much comedy as possible into the script, Simon gives the two young grandsons many of the play’s comedic one-liners, when what really needs more probing and stage time are the reasons for Grandma Kurnitz’s cruelty to her children and grandchildren. When it comes to comedy, American audiences want a happy ending, and so because he has built his reputation on writing comedy, Simon creates an ending for his play that offers some hope for the family’s survival. This ending is the one place in the play, where Simon disappoints.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
In 1991, Lost in Yonkers won both a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, thereby providing some level of validation for Simon’s many years as a playwright. Gary Konas, the editor of Neil Simon: A Casebook, says in his introduction to this collection of essays, that in the past, Simon has enjoyed little respect from theater critics and academics, who think that a serious playwright does not write comedy, nor should a serious playwright enjoy commercial success. Simon, of course, writes comedy very well, and his plays have been hugely popular with American audiences. For many of his works, Simon draws on his background as a Jewish American living in a post-Holocaust world, endeavoring to tell an honest story even though the story is not about his own life. Simon is always aware of his audience’s expectations for comedy, and so he concentrates on providing a tidy ending that leaves the audience feeling good about the play and the characters on stage. Simon also rarely makes his characters religiously Jewish; instead, they are culturally Jewish and thus more easily understood by a nonJewish audience. In this case, Grandma Kurnitz’s Jewishness provides some brief clues to her past. She escaped the Holocaust, but Grandma Kurnitz is still a victim of that same tragedy, and her responses to life are meant to be understood as a response to those events. The audience’s first real knowledge of Grandma Kurnitz comes from the oldest grandson, Jay, who says that, ‘‘When I was five, I drew a picture of her and called it ‘Frankenstein’s Grandmother.’’’ In her essay, ‘‘Beyond Laughter and Forgetting: Echoes of the Holocaust in Lost in Yonkers,’’ Bette Mandl suggests that the reference to ‘‘Frankenstein’s Grandma,’’ is appropriate, since the grandmother ‘‘does take on monstrous proportions during the course of the play, because she becomes identified with the distant horrors that are at the heart of Lost in Yonkers.’’ Simon’s Jewish mothers are usually portrayed on stage as loving and gentle women. Yet, in Lost in Yonkers, the stage directions establish a different sort of Jewish mother, one who is depicted more as a harsh German matron, a stereotype drawn from countless Hollywood films. Simon describes Grandma Kurnitz as a woman for whom, ‘‘authority and discipline seem to be her overriding characteristics.’’ She is someone who ‘‘would command attention in a crowd’’ and who speaks ‘‘with few but carefully chosen words, with a clear German accent.’’ On stage, the playwright must often depend on stereotypes to define his characters since there is little time to really establish an identity. The audi-
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
IN ESSENCE, SIMON DOES EVERYTHING HE CAN TO MAKE GRANDMA KURNITZ CRUEL AND UNLIKABLE. WHAT IS DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND IS WHY.’’
ence must know in only a few moments who and what a character is. In casting Grandma Kurnitz in the mold of the cold unapproachable German matron and less as a loving Jewish mother, Simon raises some interesting questions about this woman’s life. For instance, did the Nazi’s succeed in destroying Grandma Kurnitz’s Jewish culture, her love of family and children and prevail in transforming her into their own ideal? Mandl suggests that in Lost in Yonkers, the German Nazi matron and the Jewish mother/grandmother become conflated and that this conflation is representative of the psychological havoc that Grandma Kurnitz imposes on her American family. Her own misery and unhappiness are so much a part of her life that she cannot find any happiness with the family that remains. At some point in the past, Grandma was that loving Jewish mother that Simon’s audience expect to see in his plays, but because of the Nazi horror taking place in Germany, she has emerged as both a victim of the Nazi terror and a villain in her own family. Grandma cannot distinguish between her life in Germany, her life in America, and her life in Yonkers, any more than she can find her Jewish self amid the harsh German matron who has emerged to control her life. In addition to the image of Grandma Kurnitz as a German matron, the depiction of this strong Germanic woman is unsympathetic for other reasons. Simon is writing Lost in Yonkers more than forty years after the Holocaust ended. In the years immediately after World War II, Jewish Holocaust survivors were urged to forget what had occurred, to create new lives and not dwell on the past. Perhaps it was guilt at not having done enough to help that motivated this desire for silence, or maybe the horror of seeing pictures of so much death and destruction overwhelmed the public, and they just did not want to be reminded that the victims of this horror were individuals, each with their own story of suffering. It would be many years before the
1 1 9
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
world was prepared to hear these stories, but by the time that Simon is writing Lost in Yonkers, the Holocaust has become more visible. Instead of actually dealing with Grandma Kurnitz’s past, Simon provides this explosive character with such throwaway lines as, ‘‘I stopped feeling because I couldn’t stand losing anymore.’’ Simon’s audience is ready to hear about Grandma’s past, but all that Simon provides is an occasional, under-developed hint of loss. Additional detail and character development would have made Grandma Kurnitz more sympathetic and infinitely more interesting. Another problem that gets in the way of sympathizing with Grandma Kurnitz is the thick German accent that only reminds listeners of who it was who perpetrated the Holocaust. It seems like a simple point, but many Jews, especially Jews in America can barely tolerate a German accent. Lost in Yonkers is not autobiographical, and Grandma Kurnitz does not have to be German to be a victim of antiSemitism. Even before the Holocaust, anti-Semitic pogroms devastated families across Europe, and so with only a few changes to the text, she might as easily have been Russian, Czech, Polish, or any one of several other nationalities who fell victim to antiSemitism. It is easy to assume that Grandma Kurnitz is German because the audience is not supposed to sympathize with her. In essence, Simon does everything he can to make Grandma Kurnitz cruel and unlikable. What is difficult to understand is why. Grandma’s family may be safe in America, but in her eyes, they will never be safe from the dangers that all Jews face in an anti-Semitic world. During her meeting with her grandsons as she tells them that she does not want them living with her, Grandma Kurnitz tells the boys, ‘‘You don’t survive in dis vorld vitout being like steel.’’ Grandma Kurnitz rejects her children and grandchildren so that they will learn survival skills; they must learn to survive in a world that does not want them because they are Jewish. She has survived, but she has survived so damaged that she is unable to provide for her children or grandchildren’s emotional needs, nor can she satisfy even their most basic need for love. In Grandma Kurnitz’s world, such needs are unimportant in the face of the need just to survive. Even though her whole focus is on removing all signs of weakness in her children, Grandma Kurnitz fails to recognize that her emotionally stunted children are only existing and not really surviving very well. Mandl says that it is Grandma Kurnitz who makes her grandsons less safe in America even as it is Hitler who puts Jewish children at risk in Europe. In
1 2 0
fact, Louie is the only child who appears to have survived his childhood and his mother without succumbing to her many efforts to crush all evidence of weakness. Instead, his form of rebellion is to put himself at risk in a life devoted to crime. Louie provides a genuine foil to Grandma. He teaches the boys to resist, to fight back, to develop moxie. According to Mandl, when the two boys learn to survive in their grandmother’s house, they are enacting ‘‘a fantasy in which they are ‘armed’ to resist the threat of the war against the Jews that impinges psychologically on life in Yonkers.’’ If they can survive their grandmother’s cruelty, they are strong enough to survive anything that they might experience as Jews. Ironically, through the lessons of living with Grandma Kurnitz, the boys are also being taught to resist the German oppressor who has brought her own oppression to America with her. It is not Hitler whom the boys need to fear; it is their grandmother. At the end of the play, Louie leaves to go to war. It is important that he is leaving to fight the Japanese in the South Pacific, not to fight in the war against the Germans. Louie heads for the Pacific because he has been fighting Germany, in the guise of his mother, his whole life. In a different war, he would rather fight the Japanese. The two boys, Jay and Arty, learn endurance from the months they spend with their grandmother. They do survive her, but children should not have to survive their grandmother. At the end of the play, the boys are leaving to live with their father. Arty is more of a child at thirteen and so he is the one to kiss Grandma Kurnitz goodbye. As the youngest child, he is still hoping to be loved and to share love. He is quicker to forgive and thus, he is the one to kiss her even though she is undeserving of his love or kisses. At 16, Jay sees the time with their grandmother as a test of their ability to endure. Jay says, ‘‘we made it, Arty. Ten months here and we’re still alive. We got through Grandma and we’re alright.’’ Having survived their grandma, they can survive anything. In the final act, the audience also learns that Grandma might have helped Eddie with his money problems, and it would not have been necessary for him to be separated from his sons, just months after his wife’s death. Even in her final scene, Eddie’s mother is unrelenting as she declares that, ‘‘Eddie has to do things for himself.’’ She forced him to survive. It was cruel, but in her eyes it was necessary. In these moments, Simon is creating some honest and fascinating family dynamics, but then he abruptly remembers that he needs a happy ending and suddenly Grandma Kurnitz begins to mellow. She almost
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
jokes with her two grandsons and, in a final moment, abdicates control to her grown daughter Bella, who only months earlier could barely raise the courage to speak to her mother. Mandl questions whether allowances might be made for Simon’s failure to be true to his characters; after all, he is a comic playwright—he is not writing tragedy. But, Simon has created tragic characters in Grandma Kurnitz and her emotionally damaged children, and the audience deserves to see a resolution to their conflicts. Simon appears to lack faith in his own ability as a dramatic playwright, and he cannot resist evoking the comedic elements. William Shakespeare often combined tragedy and comedy, but by the end of Act V, there was never any doubt that a tragic ending would bring resolution to the play. Simon only toys with the audience as he hints at the tragedy of this family. The idea of a destructive mother is not new—consider Euripides’ Medea—but a play that ends without resolution or without the gods punishing those who are responsible for such destructive evil, fails to resound with the audience. Simon never provides a tragic hero and fails to punish the representation of evil. It is not clear whether Grandma Kurnitz’s children love her—perhaps they all do, although for some, they may fear her as much as love her. It is equally not clear that any of them hate her, and to be hated seems somewhat of a necessity at the end of this play. Grandma Kurnitz deserves to be hated. Grandma Kurnitz is not the tragic hero. In a true tragedy, the boys’ father would succumb to his heart ailment, something that Simon teases the audience with throughout the play, and Arty and Jay would be forced to continue their existence with their grandmother. By the final act, the father has returned and the boys are rescued. Still another part of the ending rings false. Bella’s liberation from her destructive mother at play’s end is too pat, too hopeful, and too contradictory to the characterization that has thus far been presented. In the first scene of act 2, Bella could not even tell her mother about her plans to marry a local theater usher unless the rest of the family was present to provide emotional and protective support. They were even required to sit in certain predetermined locations before she could begin to speak, and even then, she needed her siblings and her nephews to help her tell the story. Yet, the audience is to believe that in only three days Bella was able to completely reevaluate and transform her personality to one of strength so that nine months later, the
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
roles have been reversed and Bella is in control. In the past, Bella was able to show only minimal strength when she refused to allow her mother to send the two nephews away. All of Bella’s encounters with men (she suggests there were many) are carefully hidden from her mother to avoid any confrontation. Bella has no history of strength from which to draw, and so, only in an idealized situation could the ending that Simon constructs have any truth. In an interview with Jackson R. Bryer, Simon relates that seeing A Streetcar Named Desire taught him that ‘‘humor could come out of a very different place in a play.’’ The question remains why he thinks there is an obligation to locate humor in his plays. This is especially important because Simon tells Bryer that when he goes to see a play, he would ‘‘much rather see a drama than a comedy.’’ Simon sees himself as writing a drama that happens also to be funny. He thinks that real life is like that, a mixture of drama and the ridiculous, and of course, it is. But, if he wants real life, the ending of this play does not work. Simon remains true to his comedic tradition, but Lost in Yonkers is a play that lacks the tragic identity that Simon might have constructed if he had trusted himself more. A Lost in Yonkers that dealt seriously with a Holocaust survivor might have established Simon as a serious dramatic playwright and left the audience hungry for more. Source: Sheri E. Metzger, Critical Essay on Lost In Yonkers, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Lois Kerschen Kerschen is a freelance writer and a researcher in education. In this essay, Kerschen examines the emotional disabilities of the Kurnitz family, the subject of the play. As a perfect blend of Neil Simon’s signature oneliner comedy and heartfelt emotional drama, Lost in Yonkers explores the dysfunctional lives of the Kurnitz family living through a tumultuous year in 1942. After the death of their mother, Jay and Arty Kurnitz are sent to live with their hardened old grandmother while their father, Eddie, works as a traveling salesman. For the next ten months, they discover the tortured existence that plagues their family–from Aunt Bella’s childlike need for love to Uncle Louie’s thrill-seeking toughness, to Aunt Gert’s choking nervousness. At the center of all this pain is Grandma Kurnitz, a German Jew who has chosen to shut herself off from the world rather than deal with any more emotional trauma.
1 2 1
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
A scene from the 1993 film adaptation of Lost in Yonkers, written by Neil Simon and directed by Martha Coolidge
As J. Kroll says in his Newsweek review ‘‘Going Bonkers in Yonkers,’’ ‘‘Simon gives us a nuclear family that clearly has some photons missing.’’ The boys’ struggle to maintain a normal life in abnormal circumstances, combined with Bella’s insistence on achieving the happiness she has always wanted, forces the entire family to face each other, their fears, and their own individual views on what it means to be truly alive. Though the struggle threatens to break them apart, it ultimately brings some ability to cope, if not to heal, and redefines the relationships of the Kurnitz family. The setting of the play greatly affects and reflects the internal tension of the Kurnitz family. In 1942, as World War II begins to change virtually all aspects of the American scene, life and death are daily issues confronting the entire nation. The pain and shock of Pearl Harbor is still fresh, tens of thousands of young American men are being sent to battle, millions around the world are dying, and being a Jewish German American has taken on a whole new significance. As Eddie says, ‘‘[I]f my mother didn’t come to this country thirty-five years ago, I could have been fighting for the other side . . . Except I don’t think they are putting guns in the hands of Jews over there.’’ Suddenly, being alive is
1 2 2
more than just the natural state of things, it is good fortune, and it is something that could be taken away at any time. This realization may be new to the national consciousness, but it has been the driving fear gripping Grandma Kurnitz for most of her life. For her, the only thing that is really important in life is life itself. She reminds Louie, ‘‘Live—at any cost I taught you’’ and tells Arty, ‘‘It’s only important that you live.’’ Yet anything beyond simply existing has become too difficult for Grandmas Kurnitz to bear. The hardships that she has suffered throughout her life have caused her to steel herself against any kind of emotional attachment or sentimentality. In particular, the deaths of two of her children created such pain and guilt that, as she says, ‘‘I stopped feeling because I couldn’t stand losing anymore.’’ Gerald Weales states in his Commonweal article ‘‘Downstairs, Upstairs’’ that ‘‘the death of a beloved child taught her to wall herself off from all affection that might make her vulnerable to new pain.’’ Grandma Kurnitz’s stony attitude towards life is manifested in the way she raised and continues to treat her children and grandchildren. Her insistence that they be strong has instead emotionally crippled her children to the point that they
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
cannot function as normal adults. Grandma Kurnitz’s perspective on life has sucked the life right out of every one she is supposed to love. Louie Kurnitz seems to be the one who has most taken his mother’s teachings to heart. He, too, has made himself hard against the world, and he engages in a profession that provides him with the only emotions he can still feel—excitement and danger. His involvement with organized crime suggests that he doesn’t really value his life and that ‘‘it’s only fun when there’s a chance a gettin’ caught. Nothin’ sweeter than danger.’’ Louie prides himself on being even tougher than his mother is, but to the extent that the appearance of being tough is more important than life itself. It is worth risking his life to prove that he can take anything that anyone hands him. Even Grandma Kurnitz recognizes that Louie’s twisted hardness is beyond anything that she tried to teach him, and she refuses to accept his ‘‘filthy money.’’ Louie’s view on life has been distorted by his need to be the toughest person he knows, besides his mother. It is the most unlikely member of the Kurnitz family who challenges her mother’s status quo. Bella is described by Jay and Arty as ‘‘closed for repairs’’ because she has the mental capacity of a child. Yet it is her childlike sensibilities that allow her to see through her mother’s emotional iron curtain to a world where life and love are joyful experiences, not painful ones and she desperately craves a life where she can receive as much love as she is willing to give. Bella needs for life to be more than simply existing. She wants to feel all the emotional ups and downs that her mother has been avoiding and from which she has tried to protect Bella. Grandma Kurnitz worries about Bella being around other people and getting ‘‘too excited,’’ but emotional stimulation and expression are exactly what Bella wants. She goes so far as to see the same movie over and over again just so she can be with an usher who says he wants to marry her. She even resorts to emotional blackmail to get what she wants by threatening to move to the Home and leave her mother all alone. The climax of the play occurs when Bella finally confronts her mother with her desire to find love and exposes the reasons behind her mother’s decision to push away all emotion. As David Richards states in The New York Times Magazine article ‘‘The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,’’ Bella gives a ‘‘wrenching plea for the right to love someone who will love you back in a world
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
BELLA’S PURSUIT OF THE EMOTIONAL RICHNESS THAT IS NECESSARY FOR HAPPINESS CHANGES THE FAMILY DYNAMICS.’’
where steelier emotions normally prevail.’’ Bella’s pursuit of the emotional richness that is necessary for happiness changes the family dynamics. Her unwavering resolve to reach beyond her limitations and gain what she needs eventually forces her mother into accepting a broadened life for Bella. Caught in the middle of all this turmoil are Arty and Jay. Having previously been sheltered from their grandmother by their recently deceased mother, the boys are the outside force that sweeps into the Kurnitz home. They notice that ‘‘there’s something wrong with everyone on Pop’s side of the family,’’ and they bring with them a normalcy that their aunts and uncle have never known. Arty and Jay defiantly refuse to be sucked into the emotional void that their grandmother has created and despite the realization that they have to get along for their father’s sake, they fight against their grandmother’s definition of what it means to be strong. Following their own sense of strength, their efforts at self-preservation actually exercise more strength than any other family member has, especially their own father. Eddie is an emotionally and physically weak man, beaten down by years of neglect from his mother. As Eddie says, ‘‘I am the weak one. I am the crybaby . . . Always was.’’ Despite his years of living with a loving wife and trying to forget his past, Eddie still collapses under the weight of his mother’s harshness and is unable to stand up for himself or what he needs in front of her. His sister Gertrude is the same way. She becomes so nervous in her mother’s presence that she actually has trouble breathing. The very air she needs to live is sucked away from her in her mother’s self-imposed void. Yet outside the home she is much better. As Gert says, ‘‘I don’t have it that much. It’s mostly when I come here.’’ Arty and Jay have seen what their grandmother’s lack of love has done to their father, aunts, and uncle, but their understanding of what is really important in life brings them through. ‘‘Ten months here and we’re
1 2 3
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
still alive. We got through Grandma and we’re alright’’ means more than just not physically perishing, it means that their emotional lives are intact as well. Jay and Arty have passed through the gauntlet, learning some important lessons and bringing some hope into the lives of their elders along the way. In his aptly titled article ‘‘Laughter on the Brink of Tears’’ for Time, William A. Henry III describes Lost in Yonkers as a play about ‘‘a mother who was physically and psychologically abusive and four middle-aged children who still suffer the weaknesses she inflicted in teaching them to be strong.’’ On the surface, this description is true. Yet the play is much more; it is also a testimony to the value of life and love, the value of family, and the value of never giving up. Every member of the Kurnitz family has suffered some sort of great loss or tragic death, but it is only through the acceptance of this loss and the continued search for joy and love that any real life can be achieved. Those, like Grandma Kurnitz, who shut themselves off from any emotion become merely glorified ghosts, while those, like Bella, who embrace life’s possibilities are truly living. The true meaning of life is about what is allowed in, not what is kept out. Source: Lois Kerschen, Critical Essay on Lost in Yonkers, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
1 2 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
1 2 5
L o s t
1 2 6
i n
Y o n k e r s
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
1 2 7
L o s t
1 2 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
1 2 9
L o s t
1 3 0
i n
Y o n k e r s
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
L o s t
V o l u m e
1 8
i n
Y o n k e r s
1 3 1
L o s t
i n
Y o n k e r s
Kroll, J., ‘‘Going Bonkers in Yonkers,’’ in Newsweek, Vol. 117, Issue 9, March 4, 1991, p. 60. Mandl, Bette, ‘‘Beyond Laughter and Forgetting: Echoes of the Holocaust in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers,’’ in Neil Simon: A Casebook, edited by Gary Konas, Garland, 1997, pp. 69–77. Richards, David, ‘‘The Last of the Red Hot Lovers,’’ in the New York Times Magazine, February 17, 1991, pp. 30–32, 36, 57, 64. Simon, Neil, Lost in Yonkers, Random House, 1991. Torrens, James S., ‘‘Absent and Lost, Seasonal High Points,’’ in America, Vol. 164, No. 17, May 4, 1991, pp. 496–97. Weales, Gerald, ‘‘Downstairs, Upstairs,’’ in Commonweal, Vol. 118, Issue 9, May 3, 1991, p. 293.
FURTHER READING SOURCES Bryer, Jackson R., ‘‘An Interview with Neil Simon (1994),’’ in Neil Simon: A Casebook, edited by Gary Konas, Garland, 1997, pp. 217–32. Gainor, J. Ellen, ‘‘Neil Simon,’’ in American Writers, Supplement IV, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996, pp. 573–94. Gilbert, Martin, A History of the Twentieth Century, Vol. 2, 1933–1951, Post Road Press, 1998, p. 242. Henry, William A., III, ‘‘Laughter on the Brink of Tears,’’ in Time, Vol. 137, Issue 9, March 4, 1991, p. 70. Kanfer, Stefan, ‘‘Looking Backward,’’ in the New Leader, Vol. 74, No. 3, February 11–25, 1991, pp. 22–23. Konas, Gary, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Neil Simon: A Casebook, edited by Gary Konas, Garland, 1997, pp. 1–9. Koprince, Susan, ‘‘Neil Simon,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 266, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Fourth Series, edited by Christopher J. Wheatley, Gale, 2002, pp. 269–87. Kramer, Mimi, ‘‘Ill-Apportioned Parts,’’ in the New Yorker, Vol. 67, No. 3, March 11, 1991, pp. 75–77.
1 3 2
Bloom, Harold, ed., Neil Simon, Bloom’s Major Dramatists series, Chelsea House Publishers, 2001. This book contains criticism from many scholars, as well as a critical biography, a chronology of Simon’s life, and an introductory essay by Bloom. The book examines many of Simon’s works, including Lost in Yonkers. Frank, Richard B., Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle, Penguin USA, 1992. Guadalcanal is the only major World War II battle mentioned in Lost in Yonkers. However, it was a very important battle, as this book shows. The book draws on both American and Japanese declassified documents to give a complete history of the battle. Johnson, Robert K., Neil Simon, Twayne Publishers, 1983. This critical biography of Simon gives a good overview of the beginning of Simon’s life and career. Although it was written before the publication of Lost in Yonkers, it contains helpful information about many of Simon’s most popular plays. Konas, Gary, ed., Neil Simon: A Casebook, Garland, 1997. This collection of critical essays and interviews explores the recurring themes in Simon’s work, the autobiographical qualities of many of his plays, and Simon’s status as a contemporary playwright.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Mulatto Langson Hughes’s Mulatto: A Play of the Deep South, which is usually referred to by the shorter title of Mulatto, was the writer’s first full-length play. Although it was not published until 1963, when it was published in Five Plays by Langston Hughes, it was written in the early 1930s and first performed on Broadway in 1935. This stage production set a record for the number of performances of a play by an African American but, nevertheless, only hurt Hughes’s image. The play was produced by Martin Jones who dramatically changed the written play by adding a rape scene and other sensational elements to make it sell better on Broadway. The play was so controversial that it was banned in Philadelphia. Like many of Hughes’s works, Mulatto highlights the less than desirable stereotypical qualities of African Americans of the time, such as uneducated speech. Elements like these often provoked harsh criticism of Hughes within the African American community.
LANGSTON HUGHES 1935
Many critics cite the autobiographical elements of the play, which detail the racial conflict between a white plantation owner, Colonel Thomas Norwood, and the mulatto son Robert, whom he refuses to recognize as his own. Hughes’s own father rejected him, an event that deeply affected the course of his life and the themes in his works. Some scholars believe the play was adapted from a short story by Hughes entitled ‘‘Father and Son,’’ since Hughes noted this in some of his story notes; others believe that this is impossible, claiming that ‘‘Father and
1 3 3
M u l a t t o
Son’’ was written later than the play. In any case, the play takes place at the same time it was written, in the depression-era 1930s, when most people were glad to have any form of job. For this reason, Robert’s headstrong refusal to work in his father’s cotton fields would have appeared even more daring to contemporary audiences. In addition to American racism, the world was also witnessing the effects of racial relations on a much grander scale as Hitler and his Nazi party attempted to wipe out the Jewish population of Europe. A current copy of Mulatto can be found in The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Volume 5, The Plays to 1942: Mulatto to The Sun Do Move, which was published by the University of Missouri Press in 2002. One final note: readers should not confuse this play with the poem by the same name, which was written in 1926.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. His African American father left the family to move to Mexico. In addition, his mother left Hughes with his grandparents in Kansas while she tried in vain to pursue a career in the theater. This parental rejection profoundly affected Hughes, who spent most of his time alone reading. His grandmother—whose first husband had fought and died for John Brown, a noted abolitionist—instilled in the young Hughes a desire to achieve social and racial equality. Hughes was an intelligent child who excelled in his classes despite the prejudice that he faced. In the mid-1910s, he moved to Lincoln, Illinois, to live with his mother, who had divorced his father and remarried. Hughes moved again in 1916 to Cleveland, where his writing talent ultimately helped to make him popular enough to be the class poet in his senior year. After high school, he tried living in Mexico for a year with his father, then entered Columbia University in 1921. Due to racial prejudice, Hughes quit school and worked at various odd jobs, including serving on a number of sea vessels. On one voyage, in 1924, he left his post when they reached Paris and stayed in the city for several months. At the same time, he was publishing many pieces of poetry in magazines and in 1926 published his first volume of poetry, The Weary Blues. His second volume of poetry, Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927), elicited harsh commentary from some members of the African American community who did not approve of Hughes’s use of stereotypical Afri-
1 3 4
can American dialects. Nevertheless, this volume helped to establish him as a writer. Hughes and his writings were soon identified with the Harlem Renaissance, an African American literary movement that featured other writers such as Zora Neale Hurston. Hughes continued to travel, and also resumed his schooling at Lincoln University, where he graduated in 1929. The next year, he began writing his play Mulatto, which many critics believe stemmed from Hughes’s own feelings of parental rejection. The play, which was performed on Broadway in 1935, was a success, partly due to the sensational changes that the producer made without Hughes’s consent. Hughes had trouble collecting the royalties from his play and went back to living with his mother in Ohio. Hughes continued to write plays, poetry, and nonfiction for the rest of his life, many of which were radical and advocated social change. In 1940, he published the first volume of his memoirs, The Big Sea: An Autobiography. In 1942, Hughes moved to Harlem, where he began writing a column for the Chicago Defender, an African American newspaper. In 1956, Hughes published his second volume of autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. In the last decade of his life, he wrote several more works, including Ask Your Mama (1961), a book-length poem influenced by jazz; and Tambourines to Glory (1963), a play. Hughes died on May 22, 1967, in New York, of congestive heart failure. A number of works were published posthumously, including two children’s books of poems: The Sweet and Sour Animal Book (1994) and The Block: Poems (1995)
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1 Hughes’s play Mulatto begins in the Big House on a Georgia plantation, a setting that does not change throughout the play. Colonel Thomas Norwood, the white plantation owner is frustrated that Sallie Lewis, the youngest of his mulatto children by his African American housekeeper Cora, has not left yet to catch the train that will take her to school for the semester. He discusses his frustration with Sam, his personal African American servant. Another of Norwood’s mulatto children, Robert, whom Cora calls Bert, is supposed to drive Sallie to the station, but Bert has driven to town to get some
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
radio tubes without Norwood’s permission. Norwood says that Bert should be in the fields picking cotton and threatens to have him whipped. Sallie, a very light-skinned mulatto who could pass for white, comes down to say goodbye to Norwood. She thanks him for sending her to school and he is pleased to hear that she is learning cooking and sewing. She says she wants to become a teacher and Norwood dismisses the idea, saying that he will probably send her north to live with her older sister whom he thinks is a cook. Robert arrives from town and picks up Sallie. At the same time, Fred Higgins, a county politician, arrives and warns Norwood that Robert was causing problems in town. Robert picked up his package of radio tubes, but they had been destroyed in the mail and the post office refused to return his money. When he argued with the white woman behind the counter, the mail clerks threw him out. Higgins is concerned that Robert is going to rile up other African Americans to think they are as good as whites. Higgins tells Norwood that he should marry again instead of just sleeping with Cora. He says that it would be more socially acceptable and that having a white woman around the house would help keep Norwood from being too soft on the African Americans on his plantation. Norwood and Higgins leave to go look at Norwood’s cotton fields; on the way out, Norwood tells Cora that he wants to talk to Robert. Cora notices a doily that Sallie sewed and points it out to William, the oldest of her mulatto children by Norwood. Billy, William’s son, asks if Norwood is his white grandpa and William says that Robert has been broadcasting the fact that Cora’s children are Norwood’s. Cora and William discuss the first time that Norwood beat Robert, when little Robert called him papa in front of a group of important white visitors. They talk about the fact that Robert is going to get himself and the rest of the African Americans on the plantation in trouble if he does not stop his brash behavior. Robert returns to the Big House, calling himself Mr. Norwood. However, he drops his act when he sees his mother crying over the distress he has put her through. Robert says that he is half-white and will act like his white half. He says that his six years at school have shown him that not all African Americans have to yield to white people like they do on the plantation. Robert and William get in a fight and Cora breaks it up, sending William into the kitchen so that she can talk to Robert. She tells
V o l u m e
1 8
Langston Hughes
Robert that she is scared that his behavior is going to hurt them all in the end and she is even more concerned when she hears about Robert’s behavior at the post office that morning. She tells him to be respectful to Norwood when he returns and act like the African American man that he is. Robert tells her that he is not going to work in the cotton fields anymore, and Cora notes that they all have to do things they don’t like, such as lying to the Colonel about the fact that Sallie is really studying typewriting, not cooking and sewing. Norwood arrives in his car and Cora tries to hurry Robert into the kitchen. However, Robert refuses to use any door but the front door, like white people do. As a result, when Norwood comes in through the front door, he almost runs into Robert. Shocked, he threatens Robert with his cane, but Robert stands up to Norwood who drops his cane in fear. Robert stalks proudly out the front door and Norwood, in a rage, grabs his pistol from a drawer. He is too nervous to use it, however.
Act 2, Scene 1 Later that evening, the Colonel requests to see Robert, and Cora tells her son to agree with whatever Norwood says. Robert agrees as long as
1 3 5
M u l a t t o
Norwood does not try to hit him again. Cora returns to her room and Norwood comes into the room to talk to Robert. He asks Robert why he is causing problems, but tells him that before he answers, Robert better speak to him like an African American. Robert says that he is Norwood’s son and Norwood says that Robert has no father. Norwood tells Robert to leave the plantation, and when Robert refuses, Norwood pulls the pistol on him. Robert disarms Norwood and chokes him to death. Cora hears the struggle and comes down, horrified to see Norwood lying on the floor. She tells Robert to escape into the swamps. He grabs the pistol and runs out the front door, narrowly missing two white men who have come to see Norwood. When the two men see that Norwood is dead, they call the sheriff to get a mob of white people to chase Robert. The men leave and Cora talks at Norwood’s body. She criticizes Norwood for lying there when she should be helping Robert, his son. She then says that she knows Norwood is faking, that he is not lying there and that he is really out there running after Robert. By her comments, the audience can see that Cora is insane. Cora goes upstairs to make a hiding spot for Robert under her bed.
Act 2, Scene 2 An hour later, Sam and the undertaker discuss Robert’s fate and the fact that there are only African Americans left on Norwood’s plantation now. The undertaker expresses interest in Cora and has Sam go get her so that they can get some alcohol. However, when Cora comes out, she says that she will only take orders from Norwood and that she is waiting for him to return. The undertaker realizes that Cora has been driven insane. The undertaker leaves and Sam tells Cora she is a fool for acting like that. Then he realizes that with Norwood dead, he is free, and leaves. Livonia, the cook, comes into the room and tells Cora that almost all of the African Americans on the plantation have fled, except for William, who comes to speak with her. William says he is leaving and tries to take his mother with him, but Cora says she is waiting for Robert and Norwood to return. William is frightened at his mother’s crazy talk and leaves. Cora talks to the empty room, remembering how she became Norwood’s mistress when she was fifteen. The mob arrives outside looking for Robert and he runs into the house amidst gunfire. He says that he has one bullet left in his gun and that it is for him. Robert runs upstairs and shoots himself before the white mob can capture and hang him.
1 3 6
CHARACTERS Bert See Robert Lewis
Mr. Fred Higgins Fred Higgins, a local politician, is a friend of Colonel Norwood’s and a man who believes in the racial superiority of whites. Higgins comes to warn Norwood that Robert has been causing trouble in town, and warns Norwood that Robert’s actions might lead to his death. Higgins also criticizes Norwood’s relationship with Cora, saying that it is okay to have sex with her, but that living with her like he has been is a scandal. Unlike Norwood, Higgins rules over his African American workers with an iron fist.
Cora Lewis Cora Lewis is the black housekeeper and mistress of Colonel Tom Norwood, with whom she has four living mulatto children. Cora first met Norwood when she was fifteen years old, when he first had sex with her. When Norwood’s wife died, Cora, who was already pregnant with William, moved into the Big House on Norwood’s plantation, and has been living with him like a wife for thirty years. Cora yields to her new life without a fight and as a result, Norwood is sometimes nicer to her and their mulatto children than he is to other African Americans on his plantation. Because of this, Cora tries even harder to keep the peace in the house, buries her own feelings and does whatever is necessary to earn the best life for her children. While she is able to get most of her children to act the same way, Robert does not. At first, Cora criticizes Robert for his behavior and is worried that Robert’s actions might hurt all of her family in the end. Throughout the play, Cora tries in vain to smooth over the conflict between Robert and Norwood, first by appealing to Norwood to go easy on Robert, then by appealing to Robert to act respectful to Norwood. However, in the end she is unable to stop Robert from killing Norwood. This act, and perhaps the strain of bottling up her own emotions for so long, drives Cora insane. She speaks to Norwood’s corpse as if he is still alive and refuses to believe that he is in the undertaker’s wagon, even when others try in vain to tell her that he is. Even after Norwood’s body has been taken away, Cora
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
believes that he is one of the mob who is chasing after the fleeing Robert. Through her conversations with Norwood’s corpse and then with the thin air, the audience realizes that Cora has never been happy with the fact that Norwood did not admit his paternity, and the fact that he beat their children. She curses the dead man, and wonders why God has forsaken her, since she has always tried to live right. Ultimately, she watches as Robert runs upstairs to kill himself, and tells herself and the mob that arrives that her boy has gone to sleep.
Sallie Lewis
Robert Lewis
William Lewis
Robert Lewis is the youngest mulatto son of Cora Lewis and Colonel Thomas Norwood; his actions cause the conflict in the play and lead to the murder of Norwood and Robert’s own suicide. Since he was a boy, Robert, who Cora calls ‘‘Bert,’’ has shared both the physical characteristics and the headstrong ways of his father, Norwood. As a child, Robert is Norwood’s favorite mulatto child, until Robert calls him his father in front of an important group of white people. Norwood beats the young Robert, a beating that he never forgets. Norwood also sends Robert away to school for six years, so he does not have to be around him. However, this backfires on Norwood. Since Robert has been heavily educated outside of the plantation, when he returns he finds it impossible to be subservient like the other African Americans who work for Norwood.
William Lewis is the oldest mulatto son of Cora Lewis and Colonel Norwood; he is dark-skinned like his mother. At twenty-eight, William has no ambition to be anything more than a field hand. He has a family including a boy, Billy, and wants only to live out his life. As a result, he is concerned and angry at the way that Robert provokes Norwood and causes trouble in town. William and Robert start to get in a fight over this, but Cora breaks it up. At the end of the play, after Robert murders Norwood, William, like many of the other African Americans on the plantation, plans on fleeing to the safety of the local church house or getting out of town altogether.
This sense of personal confidence and selfesteem, which is lacking in many other African Americans, gets Robert into trouble. When a C.O.D. order arrives broken at the town post office, he argues with the white woman at the counter, trying to get his money back. This incident, which is viewed as outrageous by the white community, also helps to put him in direct conflict with Norwood. Robert adds fuel to the fire by refusing to use the back door of the house like the other African Americans, and by driving faster than white men like Higgins. Ultimately, this behavior, which is generated from Robert’s desire to act more like his white half than his African American half, leads to a final confrontation with Norwood. The latter pulls a gun on Robert, but Robert easily overpowers his father, then chokes him to death. When Robert realizes what he has done, he flees the mob that he knows will be sent after him. Ultimately, he is unable to leave town, and so he returns to Norwood’s house, where he shoots himself before the mob can catch him and hang him.
V o l u m e
1 8
Sallie Lewis is the seventeen-year-old mulatto daughter of Cora Lewis and Colonel Norwood; she is so light-skinned that she could pass for white. In the beginning of the play, Sallie leaves to catch her train for her semester at school. Although she wants to be a teacher, Norwood says she will be a cook like her older sister. Sallie, like her mother and the others, lie to Norwood and say that Sallie is learning cooking and sewing at school, when Sallie is really learning how to type.
Colonel Thomas Norwood Colonel Thomas Norwood is a sixty-year-old Southern plantation owner who is also the father of Cora Lewis’s four living mulatto children. Norwood is a widower with a quick temper which he often unleashes on his personal servant, Sam, or his mistress, Cora. For the most part, Sam, Cora, and most of the other African Americans on the plantation fear Norwood. As a result, even though he is harsh, he treats them better than most plantation owners treat their African American workers. This is especially true with his mulatto children. Although he does not acknowledge his paternity, he does try to help them out by sending them to school. However, when it comes to Robert, this is his undoing. An educated Robert refuses to submit to Norwood’s will, which angers Norwood. When Norwood finds out from his friend, Fred Higgins, that Robert has been causing trouble in town, including naming Norwood as his father, Norwood is irate. He is also concerned about his reputation since Cora has been his only lover since his wife’s death—a relationship that is frowned upon in the Southern white society in which he lives. Norwood insists on speaking with Robert. The conversation does not go well, and
1 3 7
M u l a t t o
Norwood eventually pulls a gun on Robert. However, Robert disarms Norwood and chokes him to death.
Sam Sam is Colonel Norwood’s personal servant, who believes in going with the status quo. In the beginning, Sam is one of the ones who notes Robert’s brash behavior, and worries about the effect that Robert’s actions will have on his own life. However, at the end, Sam gets over his fear and realizes that with Norwood dead, Sam is free to leave the plantation.
THEMES Racism and Discrimination Although slavery was technically illegal after the American Civil War, racism and discrimination were still alive in many areas, especially in the American South. The play, which takes place on a Georgia plantation, explores the social roles of African Americans and whites during this time period. Most whites believed that they should be superior to the African Americans, who often worked for them in cotton fields as their grandparents had when they were slaves in the 1800s. For the most part, African Americans accepted their fate because they knew that there could be disastrous consequences if they tried to challenge the status quo. William says it best, when he is speaking to his mother, Cora: ‘‘A nigger’s just got to know his place in de South, that’s all, ain’t he, ma?’’
Interracial Relationships For African American women, their place often meant becoming the mistresses of white men. This is what happens to Cora, whom Norwood chooses when she is just a teenager. She notes this when she is having an imaginary conversation with the dead Norwood and remembering their first meeting. Cora says, ‘‘I’m just fifteen years old. Thirty years ago, you put your hands on me to feel my breasts, and you say, ‘you’re a pretty little piece of flesh, ain’t you?’’’ In this Southern culture, black women like black men were thought of as no more than pieces of flesh that could be molded and used in whatever way suited white people. Norwood’s friend, Fred Higgins, is a perfect example of the Southern white man who felt that black women should be used by white men for sex, but not for relationships. Higgins
1 3 8
says about Cora, ‘‘And living with a nigger woman! Of course, I know we all have ‘em—I didn’t know you could make use of a white girl till I was past twenty.’’ Although Norwood is somewhat better in this regard, because he tries to help his mulatto children by sending them to school, he still possesses this Southern attitude of treating women like property that can be traded or sold. He says to Higgins, ‘‘(Winking) You know I got nice black women in this yard.’’ Perhaps the most callous example of this attitude is at the end of the play. The undertaker and Sam casually discuss the fact that Cora’s son, Robert, will be dead by the end of the night for killing Norwood. Then, without missing a beat, the undertaker expresses sexual interest in Cora, knowing that she is available after Norwood’s death. The undertaker says about Cora, ‘‘(Curiously) I’d like to see how she looks.’’
Mulattoes This interracial sex leads to the birth of many mulatto children. As the play shows, white men generally rejected their paternity when it came to their mulatto children. Although Norwood tries to help out his mulatto children by sending them to school, he refuses to call them his own. Norwood says to Cora when discussing Robert’s behavior, ‘‘Cora, if you want that hard-headed yellow son of yours to get along around here, he’d better listen to me. He’s no more than any other black buck on this plantation.’’ Mulattoes were often called ‘‘yellow’’ since their skin tones were usually lighter than brown and darker than white, a sign of their mixed genetic heritage. Despite the fact that mulattoes had one white parent, it was socially unacceptable for mulattoes to point this out. Robert does this when he is a little boy, calling Norwood ‘‘papa’’ in front of some important white guests. Although Norwood beats Robert, he is also angry with Cora. Cora, remembering the incident while she is talking to William, says, ‘‘And he were mad at me, too, for months. Said I was teachin’ you chilluns who they pappy were.’’ However, while most African Americans and mulattoes on the plantation accept the fact that they are considered inferior to whites, Robert does not, which creates the conflict in the play. Robert is confused and angry about his heritage. He shares many of the white features of his father, Norwood. Cora says to Robert when he is getting ready to speak to Norwood, ‘‘Talk like you was colored, cause you ain’t white.’’ Robert responds, ‘‘(Angrily) And I’m not black, either. Look at me, mama.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
(Rising and throwing up his arms) Don’t I look like my father? Ain’t I as light as he is?’’ Cora even tries to stand up for Robert in the beginning by noting that Robert inherited his attitude from Norwood. Cora says, ‘‘He don’t mean nothin’—just smart and young and kinder careless, Colonel Tom, like ma mother said you used to be when you was eighteen.’’ Despite these genetic links, Norwood denies that he is Robert’s father. Norwood tries to say that Robert is Cora’s son, and tells Robert that ‘‘Nigger women don’t know the fathers. You’re a bastard.’’ While Cora spends most of the play trying to prevent Robert from getting in trouble with Norwood or other white people, she goes insane once Robert kills Norwood. In her insanity as she is speaking to Norwood’s dead corpse, Cora finally stands up for herself and admits that Norwood should accept Robert as his own son. ‘‘Why don’t you get up and stop ‘em? He’s your boy. His eyes is grey—like your eyes. He’s tall like you’s tall. He’s proud like you’s proud.’’
STYLE
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research the social acceptance of mulattoes in the United States today. How have perceptions towards interracial relationships changed since the 1930s? How have they stayed the same? • Research the Civil Rights movement and plot its major events on a timeline, offering a description for each event. • Pick a famous mulatto from any point in history. Write a short biography about this person paying particular attention to how this person was received by their society. • Research the psychology and sociology of racism and discuss the different ways that people develop racial attitudes. Try to find at least three major causes for racism.
Setting The setting is extremely important in the play. Although African Americans were discriminated against in the northern American states, too, it was in the South that they faced the most racism. Robert’s behavior at the post office is astounding to white men like Higgins, who warns Norwood that the white people of the area are not going to put up with behavior like that. Higgins says, ‘‘The white folks at the Junction aren’t intending to put up with him much longer.’’ When Robert claims his heritage as Norwood’s son to the assembled crowd in town, he crosses another line, as Higgins notes to Norwood. Higgins says, ‘‘Now, Tom, you know that don’t go ‘round these parts o’ Georgia, nor nowhere else in the South. A darkie’s got to keep in his place down here.’’ However, as Robert notes, this is not true everywhere in the South. As Robert says to his brother William, he has ‘‘seen people in Atlanta, and Richmond, and Washington where the football team went—real colored people who don’t have to take off their hats to white folks.’’ While racism was still apparent in these cities, African Americans usually experienced the worst racism in rural areas where they had little recourse against the racist
V o l u m e
1 8
behavior of whites. The expected social roles of African Americans and whites in the South were especially enforced on cotton plantations, like the one in the play. During America’s long history of slavery, African Americans were forced to work in cotton fields on plantations like Norwood’s. After the Civil War, some African Americans felt they had no other option but to work in the cotton fields, the only work they knew and so stayed on willingly as hired hands or sharecroppers. Because of this, they did not realize that in certain areas, like the cities that Robert mentions, society was starting to change. Robert says, ‘‘Back here in these woods maybe Sam and Livonia and you and mama and ever’body’s got their places fixed for ‘em, but not me.’’
Language The division between African Americans and whites in the play is due to more than just skin color; the language also separates them. This is apparent from the first exchange of dialogue in the play. Norwood asks Cora, ‘‘I want to know if that child of yours means to leave here this afternoon?’’ This clear form of English differs heavily from the ac-
1 3 9
M u l a t t o
cented form of English used by most African American characters in the play. When Cora responds to Norwood, she says, ‘‘Yes, sir, she’s goin’ directly. I’s gettin’ her ready now, packin’ up an’ all. ‘Course, she wants to tell you goodbye ’fore she leaves.’’ Cora’s response is filled with incomplete words, like ‘‘gettin’’ instead of ‘‘getting.’’ The overall effect is one of heavily accented speech, which many audience members would have recognized as stereotypically African American. This type of speech indicates the lack of education of most African Americans—especially those who worked on plantations. Because of this lack of education, many African Americans picked up English by listening to others instead of being taught. As a result, their accented speech often contained many grammatical errors. For example, in another line of Cora’s dialogue, when she is talking to Norwood about Robert’s trip into town, she says, ‘‘Said he were lookin’ for some tubes or somethin’nother by de mornin’ mail for de radio he’s been riggin’ up out in de shed.’’ In this sentence, Cora incorrectly says ‘‘were’’ instead of the grammatically correct ‘‘was.’’ She also combines several words, ‘‘something or other,’’ into the made-up word, ‘‘somethin’nother.’’ These types of deviations from standard English helped to enforce the division between African Americans and whites. For this reason, Robert becomes a threat to the status quo. Since he has been educated, he talks like a white man does, in clear, grammatically correct English. Robert says in his first lines in the play, ‘‘Hello ma! Your daughter got off, and I’ve come back to keep you company in the parlor! Bring out the cookies and lemonade. Mr. Norwood’s here.’’ By his correct speech and confident actions, Robert tries to act like a white man. However, since he has an African American mother, Robert, like other mulattoes, is expected to act like he is African American. When Norwood asks Robert to talk to him, he says, ‘‘Now, I’m going to let you talk to me, but I want you to talk right.’’ As the resulting dialogue indicates, Norwood is expecting Robert to speak like the other African Americans do. However, Robert refuses, saying, ‘‘Oh! But I’m not a nigger, Mr. Norwood, I’m your son.’’
Foreshadowing Several clues in the story foreshadow or predict, Robert’s murder of Norwood and Robert’s own suicide. Throughout the play the other characters, both African American and white talk about the bitter end that Robert will come to if he keeps on
1 4 0
trying to act like a white man. From the very beginning, Robert’s behavior is associated with his death. When Norwood hears from Sam that Robert has been using the front door of the Big House like a white man, Norwood says, ‘‘Let me catch him and I’ll break his young neck for him.’’ When Higgins comes to visit Norwood, he tells him about Robert’s behavior at the post office, and warns Norwood that Robert might have problems in town in the future. Higgins says, ‘‘It might not be safe for him around there—today, nor no other time.’’’ Cora notes the impending danger to Robert, when she is talking to William. Cora says, ‘‘Colonel Tom has to take him in hand, or these white folks’ll kill him around here.’’ In addition to the characters’ expectations about Robert’s death, Hughes gives the audience other clues, such as Cora’s prophetic dream. Cora says to William, ‘‘I had a bad dream last night, too, and I looked out and seed de moon all red with blood.’’ These clues, as well as the introduction of props like Norwood’s pistol all increasingly indicate the murder of Norwood and Robert’s resulting suicide.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Great Depression The setting notes for the play say that it takes place in the present time, but it takes a little digging to figure out what Hughes means by present time. Although the play was not published until the 1960s, it was first performed in 1935, written in 1930, and copyrighted in 1932. Because of this, Hughes most likely means for the play to take place sometime in the early 1930s. This was a volatile time in America, which was undergoing the devastating financial crisis known as the Great Depression. When the stock market crashed in 1929, the mainly African American population assumed that this was a white problem since African Americans did not typically own stocks. In fact, Norwood alludes to the Great Depression in the play when talking about buying a new car. Norwood says, ‘‘Been thinking about getting a new one myself, but money’s been kinder tight this year, and conditions are none too good yet either. Reckon that’s why everybody’s so restless.’’ However, as it turned out, African Americans, especially those in the cities, were some of the hardest hit since they typically worked in unskilled jobs— positions that were often cut by companies who were looking to tighten budgets and weather the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1930s: America experiences the Great Depression, a huge financial tragedy that many attribute to the recent stock market crash. During the Depression, the unemployment rate rises. Today: America experiences a recession, a financial tragedy that many attribute to the massive drop in stock prices in recent years. Although the government tries to take steps to improve the economy, such as lowering federal interest rates, unemployment remains high and consumer confidence—one indicator of the health of the economy—remains low. • 1930s: Although the Civil War of the 1860s has been over for more than six decades, racist attitudes still remain in many areas of the United States, most notably the American South. This is especially true in rural areas, where whites often punish unruly African Americans with lynch mobs and other forms of small-town, vigilante justice. African Americans often have little recourse against actions like these.
financial storm. For these reasons, African Americans like those on Norwood’s plantation felt grateful to have any kind of a job at all, even if it was working in the hated cotton fields that were a living symbol of their ancestors’ slavery.
Racial Bigotry Many southern whites during this time believed that blacks were racially inferior. Jim Crow laws varied from state to state in the south and had been created to enforce racial segregation in jobs, public schools, parks, restaurants, hotels, trains, and buses. Jim Crow laws were used for more than 60 years. The term ‘‘Jim Crow’’ came from a character frequently found in travelling minstrel shows that portrayed a derogatory image of blacks, thus the term became a racial slur that aided the views of white supremacy. Jim Crow laws gave sufficient support to punish lawbreakers, sometimes by lynch-
V o l u m e
1 8
Today: Although the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s has been over for more than three decades, racist attitudes still remain in the United States. Southern Congressman Trent Lott grabs national headlines after he makes racist comments. In the aftermath of this highly publicized event, the African American community is in an uproar, and Lott ultimately resigns his seat as the Republican majority leader in the United States Senate. • 1930s: America and other Allied nations prepare for World War II. Hitler is viewed as a fascist dictator who must be removed from power if there is to be world peace. Today: America and some of its allies engage in war with Iraq, who they believe is hiding weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s leader, is singled out as a dictator who must be removed from power if there is to be peace.
ing. From 1889–1930, more than 3,700 men and women were hanged in the United States, most of them southern blacks. To fight segregation in the 1930s, the NAACP began a campaign to challenge segregation through the legal system. This case eventually found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954 as the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education. Brown vs. Board of Education essentially overturned the principle of ‘‘separate but equal’’ and made it illegal for public schools to remain segregated.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Mulatto received mixed criticism when it was first produced on Broadway in 1935. As James A. Emanuel notes in his entry on Hughes in Twayne’s United States Authors Series Online, ‘‘Mulatto was widely
1 4 1
M u l a t t o
reviewed. Most critics called it artless, interesting, or sincere.’’ The diversity of criticism was due in part to the fact that the Broadway version of the play was radically different from what Hughes had written. The producer, Martin Jones, changed the play significantly from Hughes’s written version. As Deborah Martinson notes in her 2000 entry on Hughes for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Jones ‘‘rewrote large parts of it, added a gratuitous rape scene, and emphasized sexual aspects to draw a Broadway audience.’’’ Unfortunately, while the play was extremely successful and set a record by running on Broadway for a year—at that time, longer than any other play that had been written by an African American—it did not do much for Hughes’s image. Martinson says, ‘‘This production of Mulatto established Hughes’s reputation as a successful but not a serious or particularly talented playwright.’’ In fact, since the play was not published in the version that Hughes intended until 1963, when Hughes published Five Plays by Langston Hughes, much of this early criticism could be attributed to the changes introduced by Jones. However, even in the 1960s, critics had mixed comments about the play. For example, in his 1968 CLA Journal article, Darwin T. Turner notes that Mulatto ‘‘is an emotionally engaging drama,’’ but says that it is ‘‘marred by melodrama, propaganda, and crudities common to inexperienced playwrights.’’ Turner acknowledges that the play is powerful, but goes on to criticize Hughes at length for the play’s inconsistencies. Since the 1960s, Mulatto has found new respect in many critics’ eyes. Martinson says that, ‘‘While the plot is melodramatic, as some critics complained, its wrenching themes are neither trite nor exaggerated.’’ She also feels, as other critics do, that ‘‘Cora seems most tragic of all the characters, as her life—over which she has had little control—comes tumbling down on her because of societal insistence on racial division and hierarchies.’’ In Arnold Rampersad’s entry on Hughes for African American Writers, he notes the power of the play’s message— the effects of the segregation in the American South. Rampersad says, ‘‘the denial of the humanity of blacks and their essential part in the nation’’ leads to ‘‘the disaster awaiting the republic as a result of that denial.’’ For Rampersad, the death of both Norwood and Robert indicates that there are no winners in segregation, which will ultimately take the lives of both whites and African Americans. Modern-day critics, such as Catherine Daniels Hurst, in her entry
1 4 2
on Hughes for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, also note the ‘‘obvious autobiographical elements’’ of Mulatto.
CRITICISM Ryan D. Poquette Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette discusses Hughes’s message in Mulatto. As many critics have noted, Mulatto is an extremely emotional play. The drama builds throughout the work, highlighting the race-driven conflicts that took place between African Americans and whites in the American South in the 1930s, and culminating in a tragic end. Ultimately, this highly charged drama has a purpose—to demonstrate that whites should accept African Americans as equals, since everybody loses in a race war. All of the conflict in the play at first appears to be caused by Robert, who instigates many fights with Norwood. However, it is Norwood’s genes and contradictory behavior which lead Robert to become who he is. Norwood is sympathetic to African Americans, and even seems to enjoy the exclusive relationship that he has with Cora. The Undertaker notes this at the end of the play, when he talks about the fact that Norwood, unlike Higgins or other white men, did not keep a harem of black women, ‘‘Just this one b—h far’s I know, livin’ with him damn near like a wife. Didn’t even have much company out here.’’ Cora’s relationship with Norwood is unusual for the times because she sleeps in the plantation house with him, whereas other African American mistresses often had to live elsewhere. When Cora is young, and Norwood first expresses interest in her, Cora’s mother tells her that she will not have to work much if she lives with Norwood. As Cora notes in one of her monologues at the end, ‘‘It all come true. Sam and Rufus and ‘Vonia and Lucy did de waitin’ on you, and me, and de washin’ and de cleanin’ and de cookin’.’’ Cora is so much like a white wife that Norwood even tells her his secrets. Cora remembers a time when a white mob hung a black man. She addresses the dead Norwood, saying ‘‘you sent yo’ dogs out to hunt him. Then next day you killed all de dogs. You were kinder soft-hearted. Said you didn’t like that
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
kind o’sport.’’ Although Norwood tries to act tough around his African American servants, he has a hard time dealing with the murder of any African American. In fact, when Robert angers him at the end of the first act, the stage notes indicate that Norwood opens a cabinet, ‘‘takes out a pistol, and starts toward the front door. Suddenly he stops, trembling violently, puts the pistol down on the table, and sinks, ashen, into a big chair.’’ When Norwood gets his gun, he is intending to chase Robert and kill him. However, he is unable to do it, most likely because of his feelings for Robert. While Norwood has betrayed feelings for some of his African American servants, like Cora, he has an especially complex relationship with Robert. When Robert was little, as Cora notes, he was Norwood’s ‘‘favorite little colored chile round here.’’ However, when little Robert calls Norwood his father in front of some important white visitors, Norwood beats him and does not seem to like him anymore. However, as Cora notes, Norwood’s shunning of Robert affects Norwood himself. Cora says, ‘‘He had your ways—and you beat him! After you beat that chile, then you died, Colonel Norwood. You died here in this house, and you been living dead a long time.’’ Cora is saying that Robert is so much like Norwood that, when Norwood denies him, he denies his own happiness. As Deborah Martinson notes in her entry on Hughes for Dictionary of Literary Biography, ‘‘His white privilege and his subsequent ambivalence toward blacks rob him of his pride in his mistress and his children. Thus, racism separates him also from sympathetic human interaction.’’ Norwood is unable to accept the fact that Robert is his son in many ways. Cora says in one of her monologues to Norwood’s corpse, ‘‘He was always yo’ chile. Good-looking, and kind, and headstrong, and strange, and stubborn, and proud like you.’’ In fact, despite himself, when Robert tells Norwood that he liked him until he beat him, Norwood betrays some emotion. Norwood says, ‘‘(A little pleased) So you did, heh?’’ Given the racial politics in the American South at the time, however, Norwood can never admit that he has feelings for Robert, or that Robert is too much like him. As a result, he sends Robert away as a child. Cora says, ‘‘That’s why he sent him off to school so soon to stay, winter and summer, all these years.’’ But this backfires on Norwood, since Robert ends up getting more education than any of the other children. The play emphasizes the fact that many white Southerners viewed the education of African Americans in negative terms. Higgins says about
V o l u m e
1 8
Robert, ‘‘That’s one yellow buck don’t know his place, Tom, and it’s your fault he don’t—sending ‘em off to be educated.’’ Norwood gives many excuses as to why he has sent his mulatto children to school. He tries to pass it off as a favor to Cora, saying that he does not want her children to be as ‘‘dumb as the rest of these no-good darkies—need a dozen of ‘em to chop one row of cotton, or to keep a house clean.’’ However, as Robert notes, Norwood is not doing them any favors if he expects them to fulfill the stereotypical African American roles when they return from school. Robert says, ‘‘No, I’m not going to work in the field. What did he send me away to school for—just to come back here and be his servant, or work in his hills of cotton?’’ In fact, unknown to Norwood, a quiet revolution has been going on amongst his mulatto children. Cora says about Bertha, ‘‘She ain’t workin’ in no kitchen like de Colonel thinks. She’s in a office typewriting. And Sallie’s studyin’ de typewriter, too, at de school, but yo’ pappy don’t know it.’’ So, even though Norwood thinks he has everything under control and knows what is going on, he
1 4 3
M u l a t t o
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • (Harold) Athol Fugard, a white South African who grew up in the 1930s and 1940s, attempted to resist the racism that other white South Africans practiced at this time. However, at one time, Fugard forced his black servants to call him Master Harold and spit in the face of one servant whom he regarded as a close friend. Fugard, who later become one of South Africa’s most vocal writers against the racial segregation known as apartheid, recalled this less-than-proud incident in his life in his play ‘‘Master Harold’’ . . . and the Boys (1982). • Some scholars believe that Mulatto was based on one of Hughes’s short stories entitled ‘‘Father and Son.’’ However, the story, which describes a conflict a mulatto son faces with his white father, did not appear until 1934, when The Ways of White Folks was published—after Hughes wrote Mulatto. The story serves as a good comparison to Mulatto since Hughes is developing a similar theme.
1 4 4
ren face because of their mixed heritage. Unlike in Mulatto, the white parent in The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother, McBride’s mother, accepts the mulatto child, battling racism, poverty, and other factors to do so. • Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) details the problems that Chinese American women face when trying to reconcile both their Chinese and American heritages. Set in San Francisco in the 1980s, the majority of the book is told in flashbacks and is organized into sixteen separate tales that explore what it is like to be Chinese American. All of the stories are narrated by either a Chinese-born mother or her American-born daughter.
• In The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother (1996), James McBride explores the identity crisis that many mulatto child-
• Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940), a classic novel about the challenges faced by African Americans, concerns the story of Bigger Thomas, a young African American man in 1930s Chicago. The racism and poverty that he experiences leads to his unintentional murder of a white woman. After this act, Thomas finds that he has very few options left.
does not realize that some of his mulatto children— and even Cora—are scheming behind his back in an attempt to achieve equality with whites. Robert has seen what this equality can look like since he has witnessed African Americans ‘‘in Atlanta, and Richmond, and Washington where the football team went—real colored people who don’t have to take off their hats to white folks or let ‘em go to bed with their sisters.’’ As a result of being exposed to this more progressive culture through his education, Robert tries to get others to accept him in his hometown, starting with his father. William says to Cora as he is talking about how Robert tried to shake Norwood’s hand, ‘‘Just like white folks! And de Colonel just turns his back and walks off. Can’t blame him. He ain’t used to such doings from
colored folks.’’ At this point, African Americans like William are too afraid to challenge white men like Norwood, or the status quo that keeps them in power. However, Robert is not afraid. Higgins says, ‘‘Comes in my store and if he ain’t waited on as quick as the white folks are, he walks out and tells the clerk his money’s good as a white man’s any day.’’ White men such as Higgins realize that people like Robert can be dangerous because they help inspire other African Americans to want equality with whites. Norwood’s failure to realize this has hurt his reputation and limited his opportunities for advancement in the white community. Higgins says, ‘‘You been too good to your darkies, Norwood. . . . Maybe that’s the reason you didn’t get that nomination for committeeman a few years back.’’
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
Through the act of killing his father, Robert realizes, once and for all, that whites ultimately do not have power over all African Americans. Robert says, ‘‘He didn’t want me to live. Why didn’t he shoot? (Laughing) He was the boss. Telling me what to do. Why didn’t he shoot, then? He was the white man.’’ Robert then realizes that he can steal his father’s weapon, and use it against other whites, and he feels empowered by this. Robert says, ‘‘Niggers are living. He’s dead. (Picks up the pistol) This is what he wanted to kill me with, but he’s dead. I can use it now.’’ While Robert is getting ready to fight, most of the other African American characters are getting ready to flee. William comes to Cora frightened, and she tries to reassure him. ‘‘Ain’t nothin’ gonna hurt you. You never did fight nobody. Neither did I, till tonight. Tried to live right and not hurt a soul, white or colored.’’ However, in the course of trying to reassure William, she realizes that, even though she has lived in peace and tried to do everything right by yielding to the wishes of whites, in the end it has gotten her nothing. Her children are posing as whites to earn a living, working like slaves, or being hunted down. She realizes that African Americans will only stay repressed for so long because, once they realize, as she is now, that submitting can get one nowhere, they may be more apt to fight, like Robert. Cora says, ‘‘White mens, and colored womens, and little bastard chilluns—that’s de old way of de South—but it’s ending now.’’ In fact, other African American characters start to realize that they can break out of their submissive lifestyles. For example, although Sam is terrified and panics at first when Robert kills Norwood, thinking that he is going to be punished, too, Sam eventually realizes that he is free to leave. Sam says, ‘‘I don’t have to stay here tonight, does I? I done locked up de Colonel’s library, and he can’t be wantin’ nothin.’ . . . I’s gwine on a way from here.’’ In the end, Hughes is not advocating that African Americans commit violent acts against whites, although it may appear at first that this is his message. Actually, he intends the opposite. He wants to show that, when it comes to racial conflicts, nobody wins. If whites try to repress African Americans, they will eventually rise up against whites, using their own weapons against them. As Robert’s actions demonstrate, whites are not invincible, and can be killed just as easily as African Americans. In addition, since whites in this time period feel it is okay to sleep with white women,
V o l u m e
1 8
HUGHES IS NOT ADVOCATING THAT AFRICAN AMERICANS COMMIT VIOLENT ACTS AGAINST WHITES, ALTHOUGH IT MAY APPEAR AT FIRST THAT THIS IS HIS MESSAGE. ACTUALLY, HE INTENDS THE OPPOSITE. HE WANTS TO SHOW THAT, WHEN IT COMES TO RACIAL CONFLICTS, NOBODY WINS.’’
they are inadvertently producing a number of mulatto children. In the case of mulattos like Robert, white America could literally be creating the means of its own destruction. Like Robert, some of these children may share the characteristics of their white fathers. In Norwood’s case, these qualities—including stubbornness and pride—ultimately lead to his own death at the hands of his son, after Norwood denies him. Norwood’s denial underscores the denial of African Americans and mulattos by most whites in this time. As a result, Hughes’s play has wider implications. As Arnold Rampersad notes in his entry on Hughes for African American Writers, the play uses a tragic drama to illustrate the tragic qualities of race relations, especially ‘‘in the segregated South, with its denial of the humanity of blacks and their essential part in the nation, and the disaster awaiting the republic as a result of that denial.’’ The stage notes at the very end of the play, when the white mob breaks into the house and charges up the stairs after Robert, indicate Hughes’s global view of racial conflict. ‘‘(The roar of the mob fills the house, the whole night, the whole world.)’’ Hughes is saying that both whites and African Americans had better be careful because racial conflicts will inevitably lead to violence and tragedy for both races. Source: Ryan D. Poquette, Critical Essay on Mulatto, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Carol Dell’Amico Dell’Amico is an instructor of English literature and composition. In this essay, Dell’Amico
1 4 5
M u l a t t o
explores Hughes’s examination of race relations in the United States. Langston Hughes, a major U.S. writer, came into prominence in the 1920s as a poet with exceptional gifts. He is still most well known as a poet although he published prolifically in numerous literary genres, including short fiction, children’s fiction, literary criticism, and drama. Mulatto, one of many plays Hughes wrote during the 1930s, was first staged in 1935 and was well received by audiences who appreciated its trenchant treatment of race relations in the United States. The term mulatto, which is no longer used in the United States, in the 1930s referred to a person of mixed African and European descent. It originated in the country as a term to describe mostly the children of Euro-American men and slave women, and gradually expanded in meaning to refer to all persons of mixed African-European descent. Mulatto characters appeared quite often in literary works in the pre-Civil Rights era for a number of reasons. On the one hand, as in Mulatto, the special problems of such persons were a concern. For example, if the mulatto is both white and black, with which ethnicity and culture should he or she identify? Given the strict separation of races at the time, it was difficult for such persons to identify as both. They felt therefore that they were forced to deny a part of themselves and consequently were often depicted as tragic figures, torn by conflicting allegiances and a general sense that they belonged nowhere–and a special term, the ‘‘tragic mulatto,’’ was coined. Cora’s children are the principal mulatto characters in Hughes’s play. On the other hand, mulatto characters allowed writers to explore a number of major contradictions in pre-Civil Rights U.S. culture. One of these contradictions was that, since many mulattos ‘‘passed’’ as white and succeeded in white society (severing ties to the black population usually with great guilt, however), they gave the lie to the racist belief that blacks–or anybody with so much as ‘‘one drop’’ of black blood, as racist thinkers said–was inferior. Further, insofar as the mulatto embodies so perfectly the intersection of white and black, he or she symbolizes U.S. culture: it is a culture whose distinction is the way in which it is an amalgam of the cultures of all of its diverse peoples. Yet, the dominant white culture in the U.S. pretended that African Americans and other ethnic minorities contributed little to U.S. culture.
1 4 6
Bert is a ‘‘tragic mulatto’’ in Hughes’s play, a character driven mad by his conflicts, so mad that he ends up murdering his white father and ensuring his own demise. Further, through the relationships of Colonel Norwood and Cora, and Colonel Norwood and Bert, Mulatto dramatizes the tragedy of Southern culture in general at the time, which was the way that blacks and whites were drawn to each other only to be torn apart by the pernicious notion that Europeans must remain removed from their African counterparts. Hughes’s play illuminates the complex workings and effects of a culture infected by racism. It lays bare the doubleness of such a society for African Americans, who would perform obedience and subservience in the presence of whites and in private express themselves truly. It shows also how blacks might internalize racist tenets. Bert, it is clear, even as he defends his blackness and believes in racial equality, believes also that his whiteness somehow makes him better than other blacks. Further, Hughes explores the means and repurcussions of rebellion at the time in the rural South, showing how Cora rebels successfully because she does so undercover, how Colonel Norwood is taken to task for crossing the ‘‘color bar,’’ and how Bert is told that in rebelling he is not only endangering his own life, but also the well-being of all other blacks in the surrounding community. Cora and Colonel Norwood are the first characters to appear on stage in Hughes’s play. The colonel calls for Cora, she responds to his call formally, ‘‘Yes, sir, Colonel Tom,’’ and so the audience concludes that Cora is the colonel’s housekeeper. Yet over the course of their conversation about Cora’s child Sallie (who needs to be taken to the train station), the audience learns the complicated truth of the couple’s relation. Sallie is the colonel’s child also, as is Cora’s son Bert who will drive Sallie to the station. The central revelation and first shock of the play are thus delivered. The colonel and Cora are akin to husband and wife; yet Cora must behave in public as if she were his employee, displaying submission, deference, and calling him ‘‘sir.’’ Hughes underscores the outrageousness of such an arrangement, as well as its demeaning and difficult nature for Cora and the children, as the problem of Sallie’s luggage is discussed. The household servants have been removing Sallie’s suitcases from the upper level of the house down a narrow back stairway and side exit. However, Sallie has a trunk that does not fit into the narrow stairway and so a servant asks if it can be taken down the main
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
stairway and through the front door. The colonel is alarmed, instructing the servant to use the main steps but then to remove the trunk through the back door: ‘‘Don’t let me catch you carrying any of Sallie’s baggage out that front door here.’’ Sallie lives within the colonel’s main house, not in servant quarters, and so she is somehow different from an employee; yet in other ways the colonel treats his daughter as he treats his household servants. The colonel’s daughter, the mulatto Sally, inhabits a border world, not quite white, not really black, and the colonel is conflicted. How much should he love his daughter and where does she belong in his life? What he does not do is publicly recognize her as his daughter. She does not have his name and her parentage remains an unspoken ‘‘secret’’ in the community. The opening events of the play present Colonel Norwood as a hypocritical, conflicted, but fairly typical southern white with firm racist beliefs, a view that is confirmed when a new character, Higgins, is introduced. Higgins is an old friend of the colonel who comes visiting to report on Bert, who caused a scene at the town’s post office that morning. Bert demanded a refund of postal charges since the goods arrived destroyed. The local whites view his assumption that he deserves fair treatment as presumption, the attitude of an African American rebelling against his lowly place in the scheme of things. Higgins blames Bert’s pride on the colonel asserting that ‘‘You been too decent to your darkies, Norwood. That’s what’s the matter with you. And then the whole county suffers from a lot of impudent blacks who take lessons from your crowd. . . . Guess you know it. Maybe that’s the reason you didn’t get that nomination for committeeman a few years back.’’ Higgins is pressuring the colonel, telling him that his crossing of the color bar is eroding white power. He is attempting to draw the colonel more tightly into his fold of southern whites, who maintain the strictest of distance between the two populations. Bert, if for different tactical reasons, is also taken to task for threatening the status quo, most often by his mother. We learn, for example, that Cora has been telling the colonel that the girls are learning the basics and cooking at school, but in fact they are becoming professionalized. Cora not only intends that her daughters will not be domestics, she also lies to the colonel as to what he is paying for in schooling the girls. Cora may feel some genuine fondness for the colonel, but she will never view him as a true friend, because she understands that
V o l u m e
1 8
CORA UNDERSTANDS, IN SHORT, THAT OPEN REBELLION AT THE TIME IN THE RURAL SOUTH ENDANGERS NOT ONLY THE WELLBEING OF THE AGITATOR, BUT OTHERS AS WELL, AND THAT BERT MUST LEARN, LIKE SHE HAS, DUPLICITY AND CAUTION.’’
their interests are fundamentally divergent. Thus, when she lectures Bert to curtail his openly rebelliousness acts, this is not because she feels he is wrong. Rather, she understands that the colonel, in reaction, would likely cease contributing to the children’s education, including Bert’s. Furthermore, she tells Bert that in acting the way he does he is inciting the colonel to crack down on his black employees generally: Hard as I’s worked and begged and humbled maself to get de Colonel to keep you chilluns in school, you comes home wid yo’ head full o’ stubbornness and yo’ mouth full o’ sass for me an’ de white folks an’ ever’body. You know can’t no colored boy here talk like you’s been doin’ to no white folks, let alone to de Colonel and that old devil of a Talbot. They ain’t gonna stand fo’ yo’ sass a-tall. Not only you, but I ‘spects we’s all gwine to pay fo’ it, ever colored soul on this place. Cora understands, in short, that open rebellion at the time in the rural South endangers not only the well-being of the agitator, but others as well, and that Bert must learn, like she has, duplicity and caution.
Bert’s story exemplifies the sufferings of mulattos and underscores the way in which racism not only demeans those who are discriminated against, but also those who discriminate, eroding their humanity. Hughes shows that the colonel has feeling for his son, as he is touched when Bert tells him how he used to ‘‘like’’ him, before he beat Bert for calling him ‘‘papa’’ in front of whites, an event which led to the colonel establishing a stricter distance between them. Hughes’s stage notes say that the colonel is to respond as if ‘‘pleased’’ by Bert’s confidence: ‘‘So you did, heh?’’ Yet, despite this and other evidence of the colonel’s feelings for his son, he has every intention of denying them:
1 4 7
M u l a t t o
‘‘Nigger women don’t know their fathers. You’re a bastard.’’ Bert tells his father to refer to his mother respectfully, but then also says: ‘‘Oh! But I’m not a nigger, Colonel Tom. I’m your son.’’ Bert’s calling of his father ‘‘Colonel Tom’’ shows his untenable, painful position, the way in which he must speak to his father as to a stranger and superior. He yearns to be publicly recognized and accepted by his father, viewed and embraced as his ‘‘son.’’ He demands respect for himself and his mother, yet he finds it all too easy to say that he is not a ‘‘niggers,’’ exhibiting a part of himself swayed by the notion that to be white is to be different in a superior way. This attitude contradicts his otherwise egalitarian views, the way in which he declares that blacks and whites are and should be considered human equals: ‘‘I’ve learned something, seen people in Atlanta, and Richmond, and Washington where the football team went—real colored people who don’t have to take off their hats to white folks . . .’’ Bert is confused and angrily rebellious, and the rural South is an unsafe place for the rebellious. If the offending person did not escape or find protection with the courts, they could become the target of white supremacist vigilantes, who taking the law into their own hands, hanged them. Higgins refers to four such hideous crimes: ‘‘They’ve broke [the jail doors] down and lynched four niggers to my memory since [the jail] been built.’’ The conclusion of Hughes’s play is forceful. Bert is definitively rejected by his father and in a fury of hurt and anger kills him. This act seals his fate. A group of whites organize to find him and lynch him, Bert knows what is in store for him, and he kills himself. Lengthy monologues delivered by Cora punctuate the final events of the play. They are a lyrical if tragic blending of past and present, fantasy and reality, hope and dream, a mixing of registers that points to Hughes’s dream of reconciliation. Source: Carol Dell’Amico, Critical Essay on Mulatto, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
1 4 8
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
V o l u m e
1 8
1 4 9
M u l a t t o
1 5 0
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
V o l u m e
1 8
1 5 1
M u l a t t o
1 5 2
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
V o l u m e
1 8
1 5 3
M u l a t t o
1 5 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
V o l u m e
1 8
1 5 5
M u l a t t o
1 5 6
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
tion, the play was apparently well received by the playgoing public—so well received, indeed, that it was published in book form by Macmillan in 1910, with a reprinted edition following in 1915. In 1909 Broadway enjoyed a lively season, and the competition was vigorous and stimulating. The Nigger’s big competition was The Fortune Hunter starring that scintillating star of the stage (and later the screen), John Barrymore. As far as race relations in America were concerned, 1909 was also an interesting year. For this was the year that a group of concerned white northern liberals—Oswald Garrison Villard, Joel Spingarn, and Mary Ovington White—met to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Joining them in this enterprise was the young black scholar, William E. B. Du Bois, whose Niagara Movement in 1905 and 1906 became a model for the NAACP. The NAACP’s founders were motivated to organize their association because of the ever-increasing turbulence in race relations throughout the nation. They were particularly concerned about preventing further race riots like those in Brownsville, Texas, in 1906 and in Springfield, Illinois, in 1908. So Sheldon’s play’s title blended with the racial climate of the times and evidently reflected white America’s interest in this aspect of black-white relations.
Richard K. Barksdale In the following essay, Barksdale explores the many differences surrounding Hughes’s and Sheldon’s plays, despite their common theme of miscegenation. On 4 December 1909, at Broadway’s New Theatre, the curtain went up on a new three-act play written by Edward Sheldon. Although it bore the somewhat inflammatory title The Nigger and dealt with the intriguingly controversial topic of racial miscegena-
V o l u m e
1 8
Almost twenty-six years later, on 24 October 1935, Langston Hughes’s Mulatto opened at Broadway’s Vanderbilt Theater. Like Sheldon’s play, Hughes’s two-act play dealt with the theme of miscegenation and enjoyed a relatively long Broadway run (270 performances) and then successfully toured the nation for eight months. This was considered to be a fairly remarkable achievement for a play in the middle of the depression. However, Mulatto’s publication history was quite different from that of The Nigger. Hughes’s play was not published in English until 1963, twenty-eight years after its first Broadway run. Ironically, during this time, the play was translated into three foreign languages—Italian, Japanese, and Spanish—and play proved popular in Italy, Japan, and Argentina. But there was no American publication of Mulatto until Webster Smalley’s Five Plays by Langston Hughes was published by Indiana University Press in 1963. Between 1909 and 1935, some conditions and circumstances in America had changed and some had remained agonizingly constant. America’s racial climate had changed little. Blacks in the South were still voteless, powerless, and legally segregated; and blacks in the North lived, in the main, in
1 5 7
M u l a t t o
SO HUGHES’S PLAY CASTIGATES A SYSTEM THAT TURNED FATHER AGAINST SON, SON AGAINST FATHER, AND MADE A MOCKERY OF THE FAMILY AS A UNIT. . . .’’
poverty-stricken ghettos. In other words, although by 1935 Booker T. Washington had been dead for twenty years, the conditions about which he had prophesied blacks and whites could be as separate ‘‘as the fingers on the hand’’ still existed. One interesting item of evidence attesting to this state of affairs was that, in 1935, Hughes was not given complimentary orchestra seats to attend the opening of his play at the Vanderbilt because the theater management had ‘‘reservations’’ about seating blacks in the orchestra section. Some things had changed. In New York City proper, blacks no longer lived in the Tenderloin and San Juan Hill areas in mid-Manhattan where they were to be found in 1909. After the infamous Tenderloin District riot in 1902, they had begun moving over into Brooklyn and then, after World War I, they had moved in great numbers into Harlem. By 1935 this area of Manhattan housed over 360,000 blacks and had become the most populous black metropolis in the world. In the early 1920s it had been a heavenly refuge, but by 1935 the refuge was rapidly becoming a ghetto. Another interesting change of circumstances occurred on Broadway. In 1909 there were no black playwrights on Broadway, whereas in 1935 at least one enjoyed a somewhat tenuous status on the Great White Way. Hughes’s status is termed ‘‘tenuous’’ because the production and staging of Mulatto proved to be a traumatic and discouraging experience for him. Indeed, the story of how Mulatto found its way to Broadway is evidence of the bizarre nature of a black playwright’s lot in the 1930s. According to Faith Berry, Hughes, just prior to his departure for the Soviet Union in June 1931, gave Blanche Knopf a manuscript copy of Mulatto. At that time the author had no idea that four years would elapse before he could return to New York
1 5 8
City and inquire about his manuscript. He returned to the States in the summer of 1933, but he came back to California via Vladivostock, Shanghai, and Tokyo. In California, Hughes stayed with friends in Carmel in order to complete his first volume of short stories, The Ways of White Folks. From Carmel, he traveled to Reno, Nevada and thence, in December 1934, to Mexico to assist in settling the estate of his father who had died in November 1934. Unfortunately, once in Mexico Hughes found himself stranded; his wealthy father had left him nothing, and he found himself without funds to return to the States. So he stayed in Mexico with friends until May 1935. Even then, he did not return to New York to inquire about the Mulatto manuscript. Instead, he accepted an invitation from his friend Arna Bontemps to visit with the Bontemps family in Los Angeles in the summer of 1935. As a consequence, Hughes did not return to New York City until late September 1935. To his amazement, he found upon his return that Mulatto was not only in rehearsal but was scheduled for an October 1935 opening. He also discovered something else. When he attended his first rehearsal, he found that Martin Jones, Mulatto’s producer, had drastically revised the brief two-act plot. For instance, where Hughes had Sallie, Cora’s illegitimate mulatto daughter, leave to attend a northern college early in act 1, Jones, in order to retain a sex-cum-violence emphasis, canceled Sallie’s departure in act 1 so that she could be raped in act 2 to climax the racial violence at the end of the play. As a consequence, Hughes’s emphasis on the tragic consequences of miscegenation was somewhat diluted in the acted version of Mulatto. For there is no doubt that Hughes had intended to probe the psychological impact of miscegenation in his play just as he had done in his poetry (‘‘Cross,’’ ‘‘Mulatto’’) and in his short story, ‘‘Father and Son.’’ In other words, his emphasis had consistently been on the vitiating aftereffects of miscegenation and its accompanying evil, black concubinage. The South’s penchant for racial violence was certainly an important area of concern, but Hughes was primarily interested in the emotional stress and psychological insecurities of children born of forced interracial liaisons. In his view, they developed identity problems which, in turn, adversely affected their social behavior and their personal self-esteem. Ironically, the changes introduced by Martin Jones in Hughes’s play script to gratify the tastes of Broadway playgoers reflect, in some respects, the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
story line of Sheldon’s The Nigger. That play, too, has an interracial rape scene and an off-the-set lynching. It also has an overly romantic love plot. The major difference, among several to be noted later, is that The Nigger is a tawdry melodrama with a happy ending; Mulatto is a tautly written drama with an unhappy ending. A difference of less significance is that in Sheldon’s play the social and moral collapse of the Old Plantation South is writ large. This is in contrast to Hughes’s pointed analysis of a small unit of that South. At this point, one can almost hear violins sobbing beautifully in the background. But Sheldon is not through; and, after a few moments of well maneuvered suspense, he serves up, at the play’s end, his melodramatic pièce de résistance. The crowd has gathered before the Capitol Building, and Phil goes out to announce to all and sundry that he is a ‘‘nigger.’’ But the cheering crowd and the band’s playing of the national anthem drown out his words. In vain, he raises his hands for silence, but ‘‘the band crashes through the national anthem and the roar of voices still rises from below’’ as the curtain falls. So Sheldon’s The Nigger suggests two truths about miscegenation. The first is that miscegenation could be borne and accepted especially if the racemixing had occurred during slavery time—a time when the superordinate white male master held full sway over his black female slaves to use and abuse as he wished. The second truth suggested is that there always existed the possibility that white men of high position and status could have ‘‘tainted’’ blood as a result of a grandfather’s sexual mésalliance. Undoubtedly, a play with these implications in 1909 reflected a Northern liberal bias and could not have been presented in Charleston or Richmond or Atlanta. As has been suggested above, Hughes’s Mulatto differs from Sheldon’s play in many respects. It is shorter, has a more restricted focus, and is much more concerned with the psychological consequences of miscegenation from the black perspective and not with the sociological consequences from the white perspective. Moreover, Mulatto is much more than a ‘‘sociopolitical statement,’’ as Webster Smalleysuggests. The father-son conflict is intense throughout; in fact, the miscegenation theme is almost lost when Robert Lewis, the black illegitimate son, in a
V o l u m e
1 8
scene of Oedipal fury slays his white father, Colonel Norwood. At this point, race seems to be of little concern. Rather, the emphasis is on an aborted filial love and a callous and inhumane rejection of the offer of that love. So Hughes’s play castigates a system that turned father against son, son against father, and made a mockery of the family as a unit. Slavery left blacks, once they were freed, poor, fearful, and illiterate; but, in Hughes’s view, slavery’s worst heritage was the psychological damage done to the mulatto boy or mulatto girl whose mother, like Cora in Mulatto, was forced to be her master’s concubine. Hughes could have explored the full dimensions of concubinage in slavery, had he written a third act in which Sallie, Cora’s daughter by Colonel Norwood, would also have been forced to become her own father’s concubine. Had Hughes devoloped his plot in this direction, his play would have revealed how incest was the most sordid aspect of the sexual victimization and depravity inherent in American slavery. But even without any mention of incestuos concubinage, Hughes’s play does stress the fact that white men often felt constrained by custom and tradition from recognizing their mulatto children. It is also appropriate in this context to state that Hughes’s emphasis on the father-son conflict in Mulatto strongly suggests his own conflict with his father. The son of parents who divorced when he was a boy, Hughes had a harried childhood living with his poverty-ridden mother. When he went to live with his father in Toluca, Mexico, following his graduation from high school in Cleveland, Ohio, he found that he and his father were not compatible. According to the author’s own report in his 1940 biography, The Big Sea, his father had become a hard-driving, profit-seeking businessman who had no patience with his poetry-writing son and no sympathy for the plight of his fellow blacks in the States. Thus, when the young Hughes, in compliance with his father’s wishes, left Toluca to enroll, with considerable reluctance, as a first-year engineering student at Columbia University, the fatherson relationship was tense and embittered. And when the year at Columbia proved to be an academic disaster, Hughes eventually got a job on an Africa-bound freighter and never saw nor corresponded with his father again. Another difference between Sheldon’s The Nigger and Mulatto is that Hughes’s play places considerable emphasis on the psychological dilemma of
1 5 9
M u l a t t o
Cora, Colonel Norwood’s concubine and the mother of his three mulatto children—William, Robert, and Sallie Lewis. The longtime partner of the Colonels bed but never the wife of his bosom, Cora is torn between her mother’s love for her self-assertive and aggressive son Robert and her respect for the Colonel who is angered by his bastard son’s attitude and life-style. In the Colonel’s eyes, Robert does not behave the way a black bastard should behave; where he should have been obsequious and humble, Robert is aggressive and demanding. In fact, he demands the recognition that he is a Norwood who can walk into the Norwood front door and do anything that a white man can. Caught in a cross-fire of anger between father and son, Cora tries unsuccessfully to serve as peacemaker. Then, when the actual physical struggle takes place between Norwood and Robert and the son strangles the father, Cora’s first thought is to help her son escape the lynch mob that she is sure will be formed to track her son down. Scene 1, act 2, closes with Cora’s highly emotional soliloquy in which she converses with the Colonel’s corpse: Don’t you come to my bed no mo’. I calls for you to help me now, and you just lays there. I calls for you to wake up, and you just lays there. Whenever you called me, in de night, I woke up. When you called for me to love, I always reached out ma arms fo you. I borned you five chilluns and now one of ‘em is out yonder in de dark runnin’ from yo people. Our youngest boy out yonder in de dark runnin’. (Accusingly) He’s runnin’ from you too. You said he warn’t your’n—he’s just Cora’s little yellow bastard. But he is your’n, Colonel Tom. (Sadly) And he’s runnin’ from you. You are out yonder in de dark, (Points toward the door) runnin’ our chile, with de hounds and de gun in yo’ hand . . . I been sleepin’ with you too long, Colonel Tom, not to know that this ain’t you layin’ down there with yo’ eyes shut on de flo’. You can’t fool me . . . Colonel Thomas Norwood, runnin’ my boy through de fields in de dark, runnin’ ma po’ lil’ helpless Bert through de fields in de dark to lynch him . . . Damn you, Colonel Norwood! Damn you, Thomas Norwood! God damn you!
As the play draws to a close and the sounds of the lynch mob pursuing her Bert grow louder, Cora, in another long soliloquy, bitterly recalls how her concubinage with the Colonel began: ‘‘Colonel Thomas Norwood! . . . Thirty years ago, you put yo’ hands on me to feel my breasts, and you say, ‘Yo’ a pretty little piece of flesh, ain’t you? Black and sweet, ain’t you?’ An’ I lif’ up my face, an you pull me to you, an we laid down under the trees that night, an’ I wonders if yo’ wife’ll know when you goes back up da road into de big house . . . An’ ah
1 6 0
loved you in de dark, down thuh under dat tree by de gate, afraid of you and proud of you, feelin’ yo gray eyes lookin’ at me in de dark.’’ And at one point, she observes: ‘‘White mens, and colored womens, and lil’ bastard chilluns—tha’s de ol’ way of de South— but it’s ending now.’’ Mulatto ends when Robert takes his own life rather than be taken by the lynch mob. The last person on the stage is Cora. She stands quietly and does not move or flinch when Talbot, the white overseer, vents his frustration by slapping her. Her personal slavery as a white man’s concubine has come to an end, and Mulatto’s message also seems to be that no black person is truly free as long as one black woman is kept as a white man’s concubine. Obviously, Hughes’s 1935 statement on miscegenation is far more psychologically penetrating and direct than Sheldon’s 1909 statement. The principal cause for this difference is not that the intervening twenty-four years bred a greater awareness in the body politic of the social and psychological implications of miscegenation and black concubinage. Rather, the difference in approaches stems from the fact that Hughes’s view is a racially interior view and Sheldon’s is the racially exterior view commonly held by Northern liberals in appraising Southern mores and racial practices. Indeed, Sheldon, in the end, presents miscegenation as just another regional foible bespeaking the legendary moral turpitude of the sinful South. Hughes, on the other hand, had, like many of his fellow blacks, some experiential proximity to the problem. His father, like Colonel Norwood, had abandoned him for selfish and appetitive reasons. Moreover, Hughes had had a much-revered great uncle, John Mercer Langston, who, like many other black race leaders of the nineteenth century (P.B.S. Pinchback, Francis and Archibald Grimke, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, William Wells Brown, and others) had a slave-master father (Ralph Quarles, a wealthy planter from Louisa County, Virginia). One can therefore conclude that because Hughes, in his own life and career, had been close to the problem, his play has an emotional tautness and psychological intensity Jacking in The Nigger. Sheldon had aesthetic distance from his subject, but this very fact robbed his play of the emotional intensity that differentiates good drama from melodramatic entertainment. Source: Richard K. Barksdale, ‘‘Miscegenation on Broadway: Hughes’s Mulatto and Edward Sheldon’s The Nigger,’’ in Critical Essays on Langston Hughes, edited by Edward J. Mullen, G. K. Hall and Co., 1986, pp. 191–99.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
M u l a t t o
SOURCES Emanuel, James A., ‘‘Chapter 1: The Big Sea,’’ in Langston Hughes, Twayne’s United States Authors Series, No. 123, Twayne Publishers, 1967. Hughes, Langston, The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol. 5, Plays to 1942: ‘‘Mulatto’’ to ‘‘The Sun Do Move,’’ edited by Leslie Catherine Sanders and Nancy Johnston, University of Missouri Press, 2002, pp. 17–50. Hurst, Catherine Daniels, ‘‘Langston Hughes,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 7: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, edited by John MacNicholas, Gale Research, 1981, pp. 314–24. Martinson, Deborah, ‘‘Langston Hughes,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 228, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Second Series, edited by Christopher J. Wheatley, Gale, 2000, pp. 116–27. Rampersad, Arnold, ‘‘Langston Hughes,’’ in African American Writers, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991, pp. 193–204. Turner, Darwin T., ‘‘Langston Hughes as Playwright,’’ in CLA Journal, Vol. 11, No. 4, June 1968, pp. 297–309.
FURTHER READING Aptheker, Herbert, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, Vol. 3, From the NAACP to the New Deal, Carol Publishing Group, 1993. Unlike many other volumes of African American history, Aptheker’s historical study, originally pub-
V o l u m e
1 8
lished in 1973, relies on original documents, including essays, reports, speeches, letters, and news articles, from people who lived during this time period. Collectively, the book offers a good picture of what life was like for African Americans from 1910 to 1932. Berzon, Judith R., Neither White nor Black: The Mulatto Character in American Fiction, New York University Press, 1979. This book examines the various mulatto characters that American authors have introduced into their fiction. The author explores the dilemma that many of these characters faced in trying to reconcile their mixed heritage. Earle, Jonathan, The Routledge Atlas of African American History, Routledge, 2000. This book chronicles the four centuries of African American history and culture in the United States, from the arrival of the first African slaves in the early 1600s to the present day. The book contains short essays on several topics, each of which is illustrated with a variety of photographs, charts, graphs, maps, and other illustrations. The book also features a chronology of African history from 3200 B.C. through the late 1990s. Rampersad, Arnold, The Life of Langston Hughes, Vol. 1, 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing America, Oxford University Press, 1988. Rampersad offers a critical biography of the first part of Hughes’s life, which contains the author’s formative experiences. Of particular note is the effect that the rejection of Hughes by his father had on his life and writing.
1 6 1
The Playboy of the Western World J. M. SYNGE 1907
J(ohn) M(illington) Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World caused riots during its opening week in Dublin in 1907. Inspired by his close observations of the inhabitants of the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland, Synge based the play on a historical incident. His realistic yet poetic depiction of that incident and the manners and mores of Irish life angered many who thought the play indecent and guilty of promoting negative stereotypes. Critical acclaim, however, has grown over the years to the point where it is now regarded as the masterwork of one of the most highly regarded Irish playwrights in the modern age. The play focuses on the reception given to Christy Mahon as he wanders into a small Irish village, declaring that he has just murdered his father. The villagers initially embrace Christy, determining that his courageous act has made him ‘‘the playboy of the western world.’’ Their vision of him, however, soon changes as the plot develops. In his depiction of the interaction between Christy and the villagers, and especially of the relationship between Christy and Pegeen Flaherty, an attractive, strong-willed, young local woman, Synge explores the effects of social conventions and celebrates the power of the imagination.
1 6 2
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY J. M. Synge was born on April 16, 1871, in the Dublin suburb of Newton Little, to John Hatch and Kathleen Traill Synge. After his father died a year later, Synge, his three brothers, and one sister were raised in a comfortable, upper-class home by their devoutly religious mother. Synge suffered from poor health during his youth, which eventually prompted his mother to have him tutored at home. He began his studies in music theory and Irish history and language at Trinity College in Dublin when he was seventeen and completed a bachelor’s degree in 1892. Synge began to write poetry during his years at Trinity as well as at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he completed graduate work in music theory. Synge left Ireland in 1893 to study music in Germany, but his stage fright caused him to reconsider his career choice. A year later, Synge began language and literature studies at the Sorbonne. During his time in Paris, Synge met William Butler Yeats, who would have a dramatic effect on the rest of his life. Yeats inspired Synge to go to the Aran Islands, off the coast of Ireland and, as Yeats notes in his preface to The Well of the Saints, encouraged him to ‘‘live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.’’ For four years, Synge studied Irish life on the islands as he took photographs of the islanders and careful notes on their speech and habits. In 1901, he turned his notes into a collection of essays, The Aran Islands, and wrote his first play, When the Moon Has Set. Two verse plays followed in 1902, but Synge would not develop his mature style until later that year when he penned three plays: Riders to the Sea, In the Shadow of the Glen, and The Tinker’s Wedding. On October 8, 1903, In the Shadow of the Glen was the first play shown by the Irish National Theatre Society, run by Yeats and Lady Gregory. Though the play initially received a mixed reaction, due to its honest depiction of Irish life, it later gained success during its run in Dublin and England. Riders to the Sea earned positive reviews in Ireland and England. While writing his next play, The Playboy of the Western World, Synge became ill with Hodgkin’s disease, which delayed the play’s opening. The Playboy of the Western World became the most controversial production of the Irish National Theatre. Theatergoers rioted during initial performances in response to what they deemed to be a degrading portrait of Irish life. Controversy followed produc-
V o l u m e
1 8
J. M. Synge
tions of the play for years. However, by the later part of the twentieth century, it came to be recognized as Synge’s masterwork. Synge drafted Deirdre of the Sorrows during hospital visits as he battled his increasingly debilitating illness. He died on March 24, 1909, in Dublin without having had time to revise it.
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1 The Playboy of the Western World opens in a country public house owned by Michael Flaherty, father to Pegeen, who is preparing for her upcoming wedding to Shawn Keogh, a young farmer. Shawn arrives and is uneasy about being alone with her. Pegeen complains about being left by herself at night, fearing some harm will come to her. They argue about Shawn, who is waiting for the local priest to get a dispensation allowing their marriage, since they are cousins. Pegeen insists that Shawn
1 6 3
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
should be more daring. When her father and local farmers Philly O’Cullen and Jimmy Farrell arrive, they join Pegeen in berating Shawn about his fear of doing anything to displease the Church. Christy Mahon soon arrives exhausted and frightened, asking whether the police often come to the pub. When Michael assures him that they do not, all begin to quiz him about why he is running from the law. After several wrong guesses, Christy admits that he killed his father. The others embrace him as a courageous young man, and Michael promptly gives him a job helping out Pegeen, which delights his daughter. With the exception of Shawn, who does not appreciate the interest Pegeen is taking in Christy, they all assert that Pegeen will now be safe at night. Pegeen quickly dismisses Shawn, telling him to seek out the priest. After Christy tells Pegeen the details of his father’s murder, which increases her admiration for him, the Widow Quin arrives full of curiosity about the newcomer. Pegeen and the Widow Quin battle over Christy’s attentions until he declares that he will stay in the pub. After the Widow Quin departs, Pegeen declares that she will not be marrying Shawn, and Christy goes to sleep wondering at his good fortune.
Act 2 The next morning four girls from the village, Sara, Susan, Nelly, and Honor, come to see Christy, wanting to meet the man who killed his father. They all offer him presents and admire his brave act. When the Widow Quin arrives, she entreats Christy to tell them all the details of the murder. Christy takes great pleasure in telling the story and afterwards all call him a hero. When Pegeen arrives, she chases everyone out and angrily orders Christy to work. She tries to scare him away from talking to the village girls by suggesting that they might tell the police. Shawn arrives and tells Pegeen her sheep are in a neighbor’s garden, and she runs out. Shawn then tries to convince Christy to accept a passage to America, admitting that he fears Christy will interfere with his plans to marry Pegeen. Christy refuses the ticket but accepts the new clothes Shawn has brought him. The Widow Quin soon convinces the despondent Shawn that she will marry Christy and so clear the way for him with Pegeen. Just as Christy begins to believe himself to be the hero all claim he is, he spots his father and hides
1 6 4
W o r l d
from him. Mahon explains to the Widow Quin that Christy hit him but he recovered. Mahon then characterizes his son as a coward and ‘‘the laughing joke of every woman where four baronies meet.’’ In an effort to save Christy, the widow tells Mahon that he has ‘‘gone over the hills to catch a steamer.’’ After Mahon leaves, Christy comes out of hiding and admits that he had mistakenly thought he had killed his father. When he expresses the desire to finish the job, the widow is shocked. She later tells him that the two of them are alike and so proposes that they marry. Christy, however, reaffirms his love for Pegeen. After exacting a promise from Christy that when he marries Pegeen, he will supply her with provisions from the pub, the widow agrees to keep his secret.
Act 3 Later that day, Jimmy and Philly arrive at the pub, discussing Christy’s mastery of the village’s games and sports and his new role as ‘‘playboy of the western world.’’ Soon, Mahon arrives, and the widow tries to convince Jimmy and Philly that Mahon is a raving lunatic and not to pay attention to him. But, as Mahon tells his story, the two men become convinced of its veracity, and they point Christy out to him. After just having won all the day’s trophies, Christy tells Pegeen of his love for her in poetic terms, and Pegeen returns his devotion. After some disagreement, Christy convinces Michael that Pegeen should marry him and not Shawn. When the three return to the pub, Mahon confronts Christy and begins to beat him. Initially, Christy denies that Mahon is his father, but the crowd, along with Pegeen, soon turns against him. When Pegeen calls him ‘‘an ugly liar,’’ he threatens to finish the job he had started and goes after his father with a club. The crowd thinks he has really killed him this time and so calls for him to be hanged. After they bind him, Pegeen burns his leg. When his father appears at the door and sees what the crowd has done to his son, Mahon tells Christy to turn his back on the ‘‘villainy of Mayo and the fools is here.’’ The two depart, Christy confidently swaggering out the door. When Shawn insists that he and Pegeen can now marry, Pegeen boxes his ear and laments, ‘‘Oh my grief, I’ve lost him surely. I’ve lost the only playboy of the western world.’’
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
CHARACTERS Jimmy Farrell Jimmy is a forty-five-year-old ‘‘amorous’’ villager who flatters Pegeen when he visits the pub. He and his friend Philly represent the voice of the villagers as they respond to Christy’s story. Jimmy’s praise of his actions helps build Christy’s confidence and create his mythic stature in the community.
Michael James Flaherty A jovial publican, the good-humored Michael James allows his daughter to run the pub with a strong hand. Like the other villagers, Michael James initially regards Christy as a hero, but as soon as the truth is discovered, he is one of the first to call for his hanging.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • Playboy of the Western World was adapted for television in 1946 by the BBC and in 1983 in Ireland. • A film version of Playboy of the Western World was produced in Ireland in 1962, starring Siobhan McKenna and Gary Raymond and directed by Brian Hurst.
Pegeen Flaherty Pegeen, a young, attractive woman of twenty, runs the pub for her father. Though Pegeen complains bitterly about being left alone at night, her strength of character and quick tongue suggest she is capable of taking good care of herself. At the beginning of the play, Pegeen is engaged to Shawn, whom she is easily able to control. Pegeen’s fiery nature emerges in her dealings with her fiancé, her father, and the Widow Quin, her rival for the attentions of the local men and Christy when he arrives. Although independent and self-confident, Pegeen allows herself to be seduced by Christy’s mythology. Her penchant for romance and her active imagination cause Pegeen to encourage his poetic lovemaking and, as a result, she pledges herself to him. Her lack of clear-sightedness, coupled with her fiery temper, makes Pegeen turn against him when she discovers that he has not killed his father. By the end of the play, however, Pegeen regrets her impulsive actions and laments, ‘‘Oh my grief, I’ve lost him surely. I’ve lost the only playboy of the western world.’’
Shawn Keogh Shawn is engaged to Pegeen at the beginning of the play, although she appears not to think too highly of him. She often calls him Shaneen, which translates to ‘‘little Shawn,’’ teasing him for his timid demeanor. Shawn reveals his conservative nature when he declares that he cannot marry Pegeen until he gets approval from the Catholic Church, since the two of them are cousins. This conservatism also causes Shawn to be afraid to be alone with
V o l u m e
1 8
Pegeen, assuming that if word got back to the clergy, they would disapprove. Shawn also shows himself to be a coward when he finds Christy outside the pub, ‘‘groaning wicked like a maddening dog,’’ and he is too afraid to get close enough to him to offer aid. After Christy arrives, Pegeen compares Shawn unfavorably to ‘‘the playboy of the western world.’’ Shawn does show some spunk, however, when he tries to bribe Christy into leaving the village with a new suit of clothes and a ticket to America. Yet, when Christy refuses, Shawn resorts to his true self when he admits to the widow that he is too afraid to turn Christy in to the police for fear of retribution.
Christy Mahon When Christy first comes to Michael James’s pub, he is quite fearful about his reception there and being caught by the police. He had just committed a desperate and impulsive act from which he had run in panic, not checking to see if his father was truly dead. Yet, Christy’s attempted murder of his father also reveals his rebellious nature. Christy’s father had tried to force him to marry the Widow Casey, who is twice his age, blind in one eye, and noted for ‘‘misbehavior with the old and young.’’ When Christy first arrives at the pub, Pegeen calls him a ‘‘soft lad,’’ but after she hears his story, she determines him to be a hero. When Michael James decides to entrust Pegeen’s safety to him while she works alone in the pub at night, Christy becomes more confident in his abilities. His fears
1 6 5
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
soon return, however, when Pegeen, angry at the attention Christy receives from the local girls, suggests that the police might find him out. After all in the village declare his bravery and embrace him as ‘‘the playboy of the western world,’’ Christy swells with pride, believing and becoming his own myth. Since the villagers believe Christy to be a clever, daring man and so expect him to win at all the local sporting events, he becomes the day’s hero. Since Pegeen regards Christy as a desirable lover, he becomes passionate and eloquent as he woos her. By the end of the play, Christy retains his newfound strength and courage as he confronts his father and the angry villagers. As a result, Christy’s father gains a new respect for him as the two turn their back on the community that rejected him.
Old Mahon Christy’s bad-tempered father has alienated all of his children with his brutish behavior. His constant berating of Christy provoked his initially mildmannered son to crack his skull. When Old Mahon comes looking for Christy at Michael James’s pub, he is bent on revenge. However, when Christy is ill treated by the villagers, Old Mahon’s paternal instincts surface as he declares they will turn their backs on ‘‘the villainy of Mayo and the fools is here.’’ After Christy stands up to him and threatens to finish the job he had started, Old Mahon gains new respect for his son and follows him out of the village, smiling at his newfound courage.
Pegeen Mike See Pegeen Flaherty
is more realistic than her neighbors are, however. She is the first to discover that Christy did not kill his father and immediately strikes a deal with the boy, which would benefit both of them.
THEMES Social Conventions Although there are a few independent characters in the play, like the Widow Quin and Pegeen when she challenges male authority, most act according to social conventions. Shawn Keogh is the most conservative member of the community, refusing to step outside the boundaries set by the Catholic Church. He will not marry Pegeen until he has permission from the Vatican to do so, and he even refuses to be alone with her in fear of the Church’s disapproval. Although most in the community consider Shawn’s conservatism a mark of cowardice, they follow certain social standards as well. All consider Christy a hero since their community considers this type of rebellion praiseworthy. Synge illustrates their devotion to convention by sending groups of people to listen to and approve of Christy’s story. First, two local men, Jimmy Farrell and Philly O’Cullen, arrive and soon champion him for his bravery. Later, a group of young women appear bearing presents as rewards for his heroic deed. Yet, when the myth is exploded, they all again act according to a herd mentality as they almost lynch Christy, determined that his crimes deserve such harsh treatment.
Philly O’Cullen
Rebellion
Philly, along with Jimmy, represents the collective voice of the townspeople. Whereas Jimmy is more trusting, Philly is more cynical; yet he too is taken in by the excitement surrounding Christy’s actions, at least initially. When he learns the truth, he, like the others, is ready to hang the boy.
The play contains an ironic mixture of rebellion and conformity to social conventions. All of the characters, save Shawn, value a rebellious spirit. Pegeen often rebels against convention when she stands up to her father and any other man or woman who comes into the pub. She is not afraid to ignore Church doctrine and derides Shawn for his devotion to it.
Widow Quin The thirty-year-old Widow Quin is a lusty woman who appears to be engaged in a sexual rivalry with Pegeen. The Widow Quin appreciates men, although she hit her husband with a rusty pick, under circumstances never revealed, and as a result he died. This act prompts her to feel an affinity toward Christy, along with the fact that she finds him as attractive as does Pegeen. The Widow Quin
1 6 6
W o r l d
The village lionizes Christy for his murderous act because of the nature of that act. By killing his father, Christy was striking a blow against the tyranny of the older generation and of the traditions of the past. As a result, the community applauds his courage as expressed by Jimmy who notes, ‘‘bravery’s a treasure in a lonesome place, and a lad would kill his father, I’m thinking, could face a foxy divil
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
P l a y b o y
with a pitchpike on the flags of hell.’’ Ironically, though, when they face the reality of the act as Christy goes after his father with a club outside of the pub, they declare him barbaric and roundly condemn him. The issues of conformity and rebellion were at the forefront of Irish politics when the play was produced. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Ireland was in the midst of clashes between those who wanted to maintain the status quo by remaining a colony of England and those who pressed for home rule. The battle between these warring groups was waged throughout the twentieth century and resulted in Ireland declaring itself a free republic while Northern Ireland retained its colonial status. Clashes, however, still occur in Northern Ireland over the issue of home rule.
STYLE Realism and Poetry The play is an interesting mixture of realism and poetry. Synge’s time on the Aran Islands studying the inhabitants helped him create vivid and accurate portraits of Irish life. He writes in his preface to the play that his experiences on the islands provided him ‘‘more aid than any learning could have given [him].’’ His focus in the play also reflects the dominant themes of realism, with its attention to ordinary people confronting difficult social problems. In The Playboy of the Western World, Synge adopts this focus in his depiction of the villagers’ treatment of Christy, which is based on a combination of the community’s devotion to mythmaking and its mob mentality. The language of the play is a complex combination of realism and poetry. Dubliners were initially shocked by terms like ‘‘shift,’’ referring to women’s garments that they found filthy—terms that are considered examples of local color today. When this language is expressed through the unique phrasing and rhythms of the Irish tongue, Synge creates poetry within his prose. Christy’s declarations of love to Pegeen are especially praised for their lyric beauty.
Symbolism As an extension of the theme of mythmaking, Synge transforms Christy into a symbol of the
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research the movement for home rule in Ireland during the early part of the twentieth century. Explain how the clash between those loyal to England and those who supported Ireland’s separation from the British is reflected in the themes of the play. • During the first few decades of the twentieth century, a ‘‘New Woman’’ emerged who rejected the stereotyped roles of the past and demanded equal rights. Investigate whether this movement also appeared in Ireland. Then, analyze Synge’s treatment of women in the play. Do they fit stereotypes, or are they reflective of more modern ideas concerning a woman’s place? • Read Synge’s Riders to the Sea. Analyze the qualities of Irish life and character as depicted in the play and compare this portrait to that of The Playboy of the Western World. • Think about how an American version of the play would be produced. Would the play be able to retain its main themes, or would they have to be tailored to reflect the American character? Write up a scene-by-scene outline of a possible American version.
Christ figure. His name adds just a y, and, like Christ, he is the son of Mahon (man). The villagers’ treatment of him echoes Christ’s, as the community first praises and then betrays them both. Ultimately, both are also saved by their fathers.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Birth of the Irish Theater At the end of the nineteenth century, Irish writers were divided between two impulses: to express the nostalgia of the heroic legends of the past and to illustrate the beliefs and struggle of the
1 6 7
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
COMPARE & CONTRAST • Beginning of the 1900s: In the latter part of the nineteenth century, realism becomes the dominant literary movement in the Western world. In the last decade of the century, symbolism and naturalism emerge as important new movements. Today: Musicals like The Producers and realitybased plays like Proof dominate Broadway. • Beginning of the 1900s: In 1905, Arthur Griffith founded Sinn Fein among Irish Catholics to help establish home rule in Ireland. Demonstrations, especially in Northern Ireland, often turned violent as England fought to retain control over her colony. Today: The troubles in Ireland have calmed but have not been resolved. Northern Ireland is still under British rule and as a result, violent skir-
home-rule movement. They met in Dublin, as that city’s theater became an artistic representation of Irish country life and legends as well as the politics of the age. In the 1890s, the Irish middle and upper classes clamored for literature that reflected the nationalistic spirit of the age. They turned their interest to the tales of Ireland’s heroic past, recorded by folklorists like Douglas Hyde who studied the Irish language still spoken by the inhabitants of the western coast of the island. William Butler Yeats, who had already established himself as an important Irish poet, discovered the store of poetic material in the stories of this part of the country. Yeats, along with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn, founded the influential Irish Literary Theatre in 1899 to promote a national movement of the arts. When Martyn, an Ibsen devotee, later left, the remaining members retitled themselves the Abbey Theatre Company. Yeats had envisioned a people’s theater where writers and actors could return to the sources of their art: the native speech, habits, and rich mythology of the Irish. Later, Synge would become one of the Abbey’s directors.
1 6 8
mishes between the Nationalists and those loyal to England still occur. • Beginning of the 1900s: Samuel Clemens dubbed this era ‘‘The Guilded Age,’’ due in large part to the industrialization of the West. During this period, a handful of large industries gained control of the economy in the United States. Those industrialists who profited saw their fortunes grow at a rapid rate while the working class suffered with low wages and dangerous working conditions. Today: Public awareness of major companies exploiting foreign workers has grown. Many fear that the current push for economic globalization will reinforce the imbalances between the rich and the poor.
The first performance at the Irish Literary Theatre was a production of Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen, on May 8, 1899. Yeats’s forte, however, was lyric poetry, not realistic drama. His early verse dramas contained beautiful language but had little dramatic spark. Though he inspired the resurgence of the Irish literary movement, Yeats turned over the literary duties to Lady Gregory, who would pen several plays for the group, and Synge, who became the Abbey’s most famous and controversial playwright.
Realism In the late nineteenth century, playwrights turned away from what they considered the artificiality of melodrama to focus on the commonplace in the context of everyday contemporary life. They rejected the flat characterizations and unmotivated violent action typical of melodrama. Their work, along with much of the experimental fiction written during that period, adopts the tenets of realism, a new literary movement that took a serious look at believable characters and their sometimes problematic interactions with society. To accomplish this
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
P l a y b o y
goal, realistic drama focuses on the commonplace and eliminates the unlikely coincidences and excessive emotionalism of melodrama. Dramatists like Henrik Ibsen discard traditional sentimental theatrical forms as they chronicle the strengths and weaknesses of ordinary people confronting difficult social problems, like the restrictive conventions under which nineteenth-century women suffered. Writers who embraced realism use settings and props that reflect their characters’ daily lives and realistic dialogue that replicates natural speech patterns. Synge adopted many of the characteristics of realism in his plays but also added poetic elements. As a result, his plays became a complex mixture of traditional forms arranged in new ways. Ann Saddlemyer writes, in her introduction to Oxford’s collection of Synge’s plays, that Synge’s study of the inhabitants of the Aran Islands resulted in an ‘‘appreciation of their heightened sensitivity to the changing moods of nature and the harsh conditions they endured,’’ which helped him develop ‘‘his own aesthetic, a blending of romantic pantheism and ironic realism.’’ Synge writes in his preface to The Playboy of the Western World that he rejected the realism of Ibsen and Zola whom he argued ‘‘dealt with the reality of life in joyless and pallid words.’’ He insisted that ‘‘on the stage one must have reality, and one must have joy . . . the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality.’’
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Irish theater had never experienced such a violent audience response as it did when The Playboy of the Western World premiered on January 26, 1907. Theatergoers loudly proclaimed their disapproval of the plot, which appeared to glorify parricide; of what they considered offensive dialogue; and of Synge’s depiction of the Irish character. Hisses continually disrupted the performances during the play’s first week, and arrests were made nightly. The most controversial line in the play was Christy’s declaration that he was not interested in ‘‘a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself.’’ Similar outbursts occurred during a 1909 revival of the play and during performances in North America in 1911. County Clare, County Kerry, and Liverpool issued official condemnations of the play. Elizabeth Coxhead, in her article on Synge for British Writers, explains that when the play was produced, ‘‘Irish nationalistic feelings were high, and Synge’s plays had caused offense before among
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
those who felt that Ireland and the Irish should always be depicted with decorum on the stage.’’ While the January 28 edition of the Irish Times would observe that the play’s language brought ‘‘what in other respects was a brilliant success to an inglorious conclusion,’’ most reviews roundly condemned it. The Freeman’s Journal considered the ‘‘squalid, offensive production’’ to be an ‘‘unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men and worse still upon peasant girlhood,’’ citing its ‘‘barbarous jargon’’ and ‘‘the elaborate and incessant cursings of [the] repulsive creatures’’ in the play. The riots during the first week’s performances prompted Yeats, a firm supporter of the play, to hold a public debate on the issue of artistic freedom. Susan Stone-Blackburn, in her article on Synge in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, quotes Yeats’s argument that ‘‘every man has a right to hear’’ a play ‘‘and condemn it if he pleases, but no man has a right to interfere with another man hearing a play and judging for himself.’’ In an effort to instill a sense of national pride, he insisted, ‘‘The country that condescends either to bully or to permit itself to be bullied soon ceases to have any fine qualities.’’ The play’s reputation has grown throughout the twentieth century to the point that it is now recognized as Synge’s masterwork. P. P. Howe, in his critical study of Synge, insisted that The Playboy of the Western World ‘‘brought to the contemporary stage the most rich and copious store of character since Shakespeare.’’ Charles A. Bennett, in his essay ‘‘The Plays of John M. Synge,’’ considered it to be Synge’s ‘‘most characteristic work. It is riotous with the quick rush of life, a tempest of the passions with the glare of laughter at its heart.’’ Norman Podhoretz, in his assessment of the play in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘The Playboy of the Western World’’: A Collection of Critical Essays, championed it as ‘‘a dramatic masterpiece’’ that expresses ‘‘the undeveloped poet coming to consciousness of himself as man and as artist.’’
CRITICISM Wendy Perkins Perkins is a professor of English and American literature and film. In this essay, Perkins examines the theme of mythmaking in the play.
1 6 9
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
Des McAleer, as Old Mahon, and Aidan Gillen, as Christy Mahon, in a scene from a 1994 theatrical production of The Playboy of the Western World
Soon after Synge met William Butler Yeats in Paris, Yeats advised Synge to spend time living on the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland, to ‘‘live there as if you were one of the people themselves’’ and to ‘‘express a life that has never found expression.’’ Synge heeded Yeats’s advice, spending a good amount of time living on the islands and recording his observations of the inhabitants’ behavior and personalities. His observations, eventually collected in a series of essays, became translated into the central themes, settings, and characters in his plays, which would be heralded for their lyrical yet realistic portraits of the Irish spirit. Daniel Corkery, in his Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, considered Synge’s Aran materials ‘‘descriptive of the consciousness of the people.’’ One story Synge had heard on the Islands concerned a young man from Connaught who killed his father with a spade. The man then fled to Aran, where he begged the inhabitants to shelter him. This tale would become the plot of Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World, which first appeared on the Dublin stage in 1907. In this play, Synge incorporated his observations of Irish life, uncovering what Robin Skelton in his The Writings of J. M. Synge, deems the ‘‘heroic values’’ and the ‘‘aware-
1 7 0
ness of universal myth’’ that characterize the islanders. Skelton also determines that, through his studies, Synge was able to create ‘‘images and values . . . which point towards the importance of reviving, and maintaining, a particular sensibility in order to make sense of the predicament of humanity.’’ The ‘‘particular sensibility’’ that Synge artistically recreates in The Playboy of the Western World is what he calls in his preface to the play ‘‘popular imagination [in Ireland] that is fiery, and magnificent, and tender.’’ The Irish penchant for employing the imagination in the creation of myth becomes the focus of the play as Synge explores the lure of mythmaking as well as its inevitable clash with reality. The characters in the play initially appear unsophisticated and unsentimental. The independent, strong-willed Pegeen especially is characterized as adept at seeing others clearly. Although she has agreed to marry Shawn, she has an accurate perception of his drawbacks. She notes his conservatism and berates him for it. Yet, Shawn does have a touch of the poet, at least in the opening scene when he declares that as he was standing outside of her door, ‘‘I could hear the cows breathing, and sighing in the stillness of the air.’’ This lyrical line foreshadows
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • In The Abbey Theatre (1987), E. H. Mikhail presents a comprehensive history of the Abbey Theatre from the beginning to the present time, focusing on the actors, playwrights, directors, and supporters of the theater.
• Riders to the Sea was produced by the Irish National Theatre Society in Dublin in 1904. Like Playboy of the Western World, this play presents a realistic yet poetic vision of Irish life, specifically on one of the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland.
• Following Yeats’s suggestion, Synge lived for a time on the Aran Islands, where he made careful observations of the inhabitants there. He gathered together his notes in essay form, which were eventually published as The Aran Islands (1907).
• In the Shadow of the Glen (1903) was Synge’s first play to be produced by the Irish National Theatre Society in Dublin in 1904. It began the author’s battle with Irish theater patrons over his authentic portrait of Irish life.
the arrival of the more verbally talented Christy, who will steal Pegeen’s heart with his poetic overtures. Shawn will become the voice of reality for the villagers, even though they will pay him little heed.
determine him to be a brave and fearless lad who should be given the job of watching over Pegeen as she works at night in the pub. Shawn expresses the only voice of reason at the scene when he warns, ‘‘That’d be a queer kind to bring into a decent quiet household with the like of Pegeen.’’ The others dismiss him, caught up in their vision of the hero in their midst.
When Christy arrives, the process of mythmaking begins. The characters’ love of storytelling becomes evident soon after Christy’s arrival, as they quiz the lad about who he is and why he has arrived in their community. Their interest is immediately piqued when Christy inquires whether the police often stop at the pub. As Christy is reluctant to tell them the true reason for his fear of the authorities, all at the pub begin to create their own versions of his story. Pegeen assumes that ‘‘he followed after a young woman on a lonesome night.’’ The others decide he is either being chased by bailiffs or landlords, or perhaps he made counterfeit coins or married more than one wife. Their curiosity about him increases as they construct one scenario after the other that Christy refutes until Pegeen reasons that the fearful boy ‘‘did nothing at all.’’ She declares him ‘‘a soft lad’’ who ‘‘wouldn’t slit the windpipe of a screeching sow.’’ Her accurate portrait of his weak character prompts Christy’s rebuttal, and he declares that he murdered his father. Immediately, all are caught up in the drama of the event; even Pegeen is amazed at this daring feat. They will not let Christy rest until he has told the entire story, and when he has finished, they all
V o l u m e
1 8
The villagers’ shower of praise begins to transform Christy from a weak and fearful boy into a confident young man who declares himself ‘‘a seemly fellow with great strength in me and bravery.’’ The transformation, however, is gradual. Often, his confidence is checked by his fear of the police catching up with him, which causes him on one occasion to cower in the corner when someone knocks on the door of the pub. Christy especially blossoms under Pegeen’s attention, becoming the romantic hero all assume him to be. No one can beat him at games and sports, and by the end of the day, he is heralded as ‘‘the playboy of the western world.’’ Christy’s newfound confidence inspires him to construct lyrical declarations of love for Pegeen, who, completely won over, declares, ‘‘it’s the poets are your like, fine fiery fellows with great rages when their temper’s roused.’’ Synge illuminates the seductive power of the imagination in his depiction of the relationship between Christy and Pegeen. Christy leads a willing Pegeen
1 7 1
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
WHEN CONFRONTED BY HIS FATHER, CHRISTY TEETERS ON THE EDGE OF THE REALITY AND THE MYTH, FEARING HIS FATHER’S WRATH BUT UNWILLING TO GIVE UP THE ADORATION OF THE CROWD.’’
into his visions of their future, full of afternoons when he declares they will be ‘‘making mighty kisses with our wetted mouths, or gaming in a gap of sunshine with yourself stretched back unto your necklace in the flowers of the earth.’’ Christy’s new confidence allows him to stand up to Michael James’s reservations about him marrying his daughter and to threaten Shawn with bodily harm if he does not leave the two of them alone. Reality abruptly shatters the mythmaking, however, with the appearance of Christy’s battered but still breathing father, who declares that his ‘‘dribbling idiot’’ son is lazy, stupid, and inept with women. When confronted by his father, Christy teeters on the edge of the reality and the myth, fearing his father’s wrath but unwilling to give up the adoration of the crowd. Initially, Christy appears to revert back to his fearful self as he insists, ‘‘he’s not my father. He’s a raving maniac would scare the world.’’ Eventually, the myth wins out, and Christy determines to finish the job he started and goes after his father with a club. The myth, however, has exploded for the villagers, who see Christy’s once ‘‘gallous [splendid] story’’ of murder now as ‘‘a dirty deed’’ as it is played out in front of them. Christy’s fall from his mythic status infuriates the villagers who turn into a nasty mob, fueled by their shattered illusions and bent on revenge. All resort to conventional behavior in their demands for retribution. Ironically, by the end of the play, Christy has become the man the others had envisioned him to be. While he is bound and threatened with hanging, he bravely declares, ‘‘if I’ve to face the gallows I’ll have a gay march down, I tell you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.’’ His father recognizes that his son has transformed into a courageous and capable man and so allows him to take the upper hand. Pegeen also notices the transformation,
1 7 2
W o r l d
but she is too late. As Christy declares that he has become ‘‘a likely gaffer in the end of all’’ and exits triumphantly to ‘‘go romancing through a romping lifetime from this hour to the dawning to the judgement day,’’ Pegeen’s vision of an escape from her conventional life evaporates. She understands, after he leaves, that she has truly lost ‘‘the only playboy of the western world.’’ Elizabeth Coxhead, in her article on Synge for British Writers, quotes Lady Gregory, one of the founders with Yeats of the Irish Literary Theatre and a strong supporter of Synge’s works, who expresses her view of the Irish character by recognizing ‘‘our incorrigible Irish talent for myth-making.’’ In The Playboy of the Western World, Synge deftly illuminates that talent and the subsequent tension it inevitably produces between imagination and reality. His villagers are ready for a hero to rescue them from their monotonous and difficult lives and so do not examine Christy too closely when he appears. The lure of the dream, however, is difficult to reconcile with reality, at least for those who cannot break free from the bonds of convention. For others, like Christy, the ‘‘Irish talent for mythmaking’’ can become the inspiration for the fulfillment of the dream. Source: Wendy Perkins, Critical Essay on The Playboy of the Western World, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Louis Untermeyer In the following review, Untermeyer asserts that the play ‘‘points with promise to the reincarnation of poetry in prose.’’ Under the fanfare of the wrangling schools, a new voice is making itself heard, and strange, peasantlike harmonies announce the advent of another figure. It is to simple but exotic strains—to the melodies of rustic flute and weatherbeaten strings that the spirit of J. M. Synge is disclosed—the spirit of bogs and peatmarshes, the spirit of unfettered poetry. Wild poetry itself is in his utterance, for although Mr. Synge writes entirely in prose, his sentences are so steeped in similes of the skies that his very commonplaces are filled and colored with all the nuances of rhythm. The sunlight filters through his lines and the spell of scenic splendor is over all his work. This very poetic quality is at one time the most obvious and most indefinable characteristic of the four prose plays with which Mr. Synge has declared himself. Nor is dramatic power lacking; as the following passage between the two
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
A scene from a theatrical production of The Playboy of the Western World, written by J. M. Synge
disillusioned beggarfolk (the man and wife in ‘the Well of the Saints’) testifies: Mary Daul.—I wouldn’t rear a crumpled whelp the like of you. It’s many a woman is married with finer than yourself should be praising God if she’s no child, and isn’t loading the earth with things would make the heavens lonesome above, and they scaring the larks and the crows and the angels passing in the sky. Martin Doul.—Go on now to be seeking a lonesome place where the earth can hide you away; go on now, I’m saying, or you’ll be having men and women with their knees bled, and they screaming to God for a holy water would darken their sight, for there’s no man but would liefer be blind a hundred years, or a thousand itself, than to be looking on your like.
Even in this scrap, torn from its context, there is the natural burst of speech that is almost lyric. William Butler Yeats has pointed out that ‘it blurs definition, clear edges, everything that comes from the will; it turns imagination from all that is of the present, like a gold background in a religious picture. . . Perhaps no Irishman had ever that exact rhythm in his voice, but certainly if Mr. Synge had been born a countryman, he would have spoken like that. It makes the people of his imagination a trifle disembodied; it gives them a kind of innocence even in their anger and their cursing.’
V o l u m e
1 8
In The Playboy of the Western World (his latest drama, published by Maunsel & Co., Dublin), he himself explains this absence of prosiness in a remarkably spirited preface (the Shavian worshippers notwithstanding). In this he acknowledges his debt to the fishermen and ballad-singers, the beggar women and peat gatherers; from Kerry to Mayo or near Dublin he borrows the phrases from the folk imagination of these people. ‘Any one who has lived in real intimacy with the Irish peasantry will know that the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame, indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside cabin in Geesala or Carraroe or Dingle Bay. All art is a collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the storyteller’s hand as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time [or the playwright’s].’ And so Mr. Synge goes on to tell how, when he was writing The Shadow of the Glen (a tremendous little one-act play), he got more aid than any learning could have given him from ‘a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servant girls in the kitchen.’ The keynote of the preface, however, may be found in the next to last sentence where he maintains—‘In a good play every speech should be
1 7 3
T h e
P l a y b o y
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
IT IS TO SIMPLE BUT EXOTIC STRAINS—TO THE MELODIES OF RUSTIC FLUTE AND WEATHERBEATEN STRINGS THAT THE SPIRIT OF J. M. SYNGE IS DISCLOSED—THE SPIRIT OF BOGS AND PEATMARSHES, THE SPIRIT OF UNFETTERED POETRY.’’
as fully flavored as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by any one who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry.’ ‘Give up Paris; you will never create anything by reading Racine,’ Yeats told him. ‘Go to the Arran Islands. Live there as if you were one of the people themselves; express a life that has never found expression.’ All of which has borne fruit in this play itself, which, though it may lack the delicate suggestion and the haunting minor cadences of his Riders to the Sea, contains fresher and more virile writing than anything the prophets of the ‘Celtic revival’ have produced. The characters move naturally and seemingly of their own warm will,—they are peasants of to-day who live with hot words on their lips and hot blood in their hearts—peasants who believe in the beauty of the actual and who concern themselves little with esoteric symbolism, or the fates of Deirdre and Naois. Christy Mahon, a young Irish Peer Gynt, but with more dreams and less fire than the Norwegian ne’er do well, confesses to the murder of his father and thereby gains the respect of the community in general, and the girl Pegeen in particular. This, and the subsequent chorus of admiration from the countryfolk, furnishes the first shock to the unprepared reader—a shock from which the theatergoers in Dublin did not recover, until provoked by further outrages against what they considered the sanctity of the drama, they had vented their disapproval in rather medieval manners at the Abbey Theater early last year. Later, when the Widow Quin and Pegeen bid openly for Christy’s favor and vie with each other before the bashful braggart the shock is aggravated, and finally in the second act, when the village
1 7 4
W o r l d
girls and the widow hotly woo him, the climax is reached. These passages are boldly written and forceful dialogues, and though the writer of this cannot vouch for their genuineness, they have the almost unmistakable ring of truth. Intensely modern it is yet highly poetic. It is Shaw, without his sophistries and smart speeches—it is the ‘Life force’ revealing itself with neither paradox, decoration, nor apology. And in a country where the sex relation is a topic unfit for public mention—a topic for the fashionable clubman on one hand and the psycopath on the other—all of this was, naturally, unpardonable. But it will succeed in spite of the ‘prurient prudes’ (as Charles Reade was wont to call that estimable class). Mr. Synge is not writing for today, but for the years to come in such passages as these: It’s that you’d say surely if you seen him and he after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before, it may be, and going out into the yard as naked as an ash-tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visages of the stars till he had put the fear of death into the banbhs and screeching sows. I’ve told my story no place till this night, Pegeen. . . I’ve said it nowhere till this night, for I’ve seen none the like of you the eleven long days I am walking the world, looking over a low ditch or a high ditch, on my north or south, into stony scattered fields, or scribes of bog, where you’d see young limber girls, and fine prancing women making laughter with the men.
The imagery of the first quotation and the delicate naturalism of the second can only be matched with prose like this: It’s little you’ll think if my love’s a poacher’s love or an earl’s itself, when you’ll feel my two hands stretched around you, and I squeezing kisses on your puckered lips, till I’d feel a kind of pity for the Lord God (who) is all ages sitting lonesome in his golden chair.
But it is futile to quote; the play is full of such lines, and illuminated with the most skilful character-delineation. Mr. Synge calls it a ‘comedy in three acts,’ but in reality it is at one time history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, etc. There are moments of truly glorious farce (such as the return of Old Mahon, supposedly ‘destroyed’ by Christy), and there are times (notably in the last act) when the play verges perilously on rather bitter tragedy. But it is a comedy for all that, even though the ending may not be the conventional happy one, for this unflinching dramatist has no intention of flinging a sop to Cerberus.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
P l a y b o y
Taking it all in all the play (in conjunction with Mr. Synge’s other dramas) points with promise to the reincarnation of poetry in prose, the beautiful growing up through the common. It is to the chronicler of the peasant of to-day that we must look for the fulfilment of this promise, and should Mr. Synge continue to carry out this wonder, he shall have put the whole world in his debt. Source: Louis Untermeyer, ‘‘J. M. Synge and the Playboy of the Western World,’’ in Poet Lore, Vol. XIX, No. III, Autumn 1908, pp. 364–67.
o f
t h e
W e s t e r n
W o r l d
Saddlemyer, Ann, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. vii–xxi. Skelton, Robin, The Writings of J. M. Synge, Thames & Hudson, 1971. Stone-Blackburn, Susan, ‘‘John Millington Synge,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 10, Pt. 2, Modern British Dramatists 1900–1945: M–Z, edited by Stanley Weintraub, Gale Research, 1982, pp. 168–84. Synge, J. M., ‘‘Preface to Playboy of the Western World,’’ in The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 96–97. Yeats, William Butler, ‘‘Preface to The Well of the Saints,’’ in The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 52–56.
SOURCES Bennett, Charles A., ‘‘The Plays of J. M. Synge,’’ in the Yale Review, January 1912. Corkery, Daniel, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, Mercier, 1931. Coxhead, Elizabeth, ‘‘J. M. Synge / Lady Augusta Gregory,’’ in British Writers, Vol. 6, 1983, pp. 307–18. Howe, P. P., J. M. Synge: A Critical Study, Martin Secker, 1912. Podhoretz, Norman, ‘‘Synge’s Playboy: Morality and the Hero,’’ in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘The Playboy of the Western World’’: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, 1969. Review of The Playboy of the Western World, in Freeman’s Journal, January 28, 1907. Review of The Playboy of the Western World, in Irish Times, January 28, 1907.
V o l u m e
1 8
FURTHER READING Bushrui, S. B., ed., Sunshine and the Moon’s Delight, Colin Smythe, 1972. Bushrui edits several essays on Synge’s plays, including several on his use of language. Greene, David H., and Edward M. Stephens, J. M. Synge, 1871–1909, rev. ed., Macmillan, 1989. This indispensable biography contains little criticism of the works, but it offers a wealth of information about Synge’s life and influences on his work. Price, Alan, Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama, Methuen, 1961. Price presents insightful analyses of Synge’s plays and places them in a literary historical context. Skelton, Robin, J. M. Synge and His World, Viking, 1971. Skelton’s admirable work provides commentary on Synge’s life as well as relevant historical background.
1 7 5
The Rose Tattoo TENNESSEE WILLIAMS 1950
Tennessee Williams’s The Rose Tattoo was first staged in Chicago in 1950, premiered in New York City in 1951, and was a success with audiences. It is Williams’s most light-hearted play, an homage, many say, to his beloved sister Rose and to Frank Merlo, whom Williams loved. The drama chronicles events separated by three years in the life of its main character, Serafina Delle Rose. Serafina is characterized by her boastful pride, and the play’s drama and humor revolves around whether she will learn humility. What a close reading of the play suggests is that it is a mixed genre play. What this means is that it blends together distinct dramatic forms. The play synthesizes comedic elements, elements borrowed from ancient Greek tragedy, and elements that invoke ancient Greco-Roman celebrations of the god Dionysus. The play’s comedy rests on its bawdiness and the way the characters get themselves into ridiculous fixes. Its nod to the classic, tragic form is that Serafina has a major flaw, like all tragic heroes. The play’s focus on virility is its primary Dionysian element, as Dionysus is associated with life, love, virility, and intoxication. Dionysus is also, significantly, the god of right worship. He punishes mortals who think they are as great as gods or who refuse to give the gods their worshipful due. The two classic strains of the play work together in the way that the lusty Serafina is at once a celebration of life and a character whose flaw is self-worship.
1 7 6
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Like many of Williams’s plays, The Rose Tattoo is set in the U.S. South, Williams’s birthplace. It stands out, however, for its cast of characters, who are Italian Americans with Sicilian roots.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Tennessee Williams, a major twentieth-century U.S. playwright, was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. Williams began writing as a child, publishing in junior high and high school publications. He continued publishing as he pursued his bachelor’s degree, which he did leisurely, attending three different undergraduate institutions between 1929 and 1938. He decided to focus his creative energies primarily on drama during this period, although he wrote poetry, short stories, and novels throughout his life. In 1939, Williams sent a set of one-act plays as a competition entry to the Group Theatre in New York, which was run by prominent members of the New York drama scene. They were impressed, awarded him prize money, and invited him to move to New York with the promise that they would help him further his career. The experience and contacts Williams gained in New York proved to be invaluable, and with the Broadway premiere of The Glass Menagerie in 1944, Williams’s career was launched. This phenomenal critical and box-office success was soon followed by another, A Streetcar Named Desire. Both plays won New York Drama Critics Circle Awards and A Streetcar Named Desire won a Pulitzer Prize. The Rose Tattoo, which premiered on Broadway in 1951, was Williams’s third great box-office success. While certain prominent critics did not enjoy it as much as the public did, it nevertheless consolidated his position as a leading dramatist of the time and won a Tony Award. Indeed, Williams’s popularity was such that many of his plays were adapted into films. These movies, most of them made in the 1950s and 1960s, helped define the cinematic era, even if Williams was never quite pleased with most of them. Williams was a major force in drama internationally for many years, and he lived an active life. He traveled constantly within the United States and to Europe and had many loves. Despite his ongoing travel, he also stayed close to his family. He was
V o l u m e
1 8
Tennessee Williams
particularly fond of his grandfather and particularly protective of his sister Rose, who was incapable of working. By 1970, Williams’s popularity with the public and critics had waned. Nonetheless, he wrote until his death, and many of his plays were produced, though not on the scale and to the acclaim of his earlier plays. His major plays continue to be regularly performed. Williams died in New York City in 1983.
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1, Scene 1 The Rose Tattoo opens with a view of a cottage, on whose front steps three neighborhood children sit. The children’s mothers are calling them home to dinner, and the play’s main character, Serafina delle Rose, appears on stage. She is looking for her own daughter, the twelve-year-old Rosa. Next, Assunta, an old woman who practices ‘‘a simple sort of medicine,’’ arrives on the scene. Over the course of her and Serafina’s conversation, it is revealed that Serafina is deeply in love with her
1 7 7
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
handsome husband, that she is extremely proud of his virility, that she is pregnant, and that her husband is a trucker who, while posing as a legitimate operator, in fact smuggles illegal goods. Assunta leaves and another character, Estelle Hohengarten, is introduced. Serafina takes in sewing for cash. Estelle wishes her to make a shirt for a man with whom she is in love. Because Estelle behaves oddly and surreptitiously steals a framed photograph of Serafina’s husband, these actions indicate that the man with whom she is in love and with whom she is having an affair is Serafina’s husband, Rosario delle Rose. The scene ends with a neighbor’s goat running into Serafina’s yard. This upsets Serafina as she is frightened of the woman who owns the goat, a character referred to as the ‘‘strega.’’ Rosa states that by ‘‘strega’’ Serafina means witch. The scene ends with the strega cackling maliciously at Serafina’s discomfiture and with Serafina exclaiming that the strega has given her the ‘‘evil eye’’: ‘‘Malocchio! Malocchio!’’
Act 1, Scene 2 Scene 2 is very brief. It is dawn, and Serafina is sewing, since Estelle has told her that if she has the shirt done by the next day, she will pay her substantially more than her usual price. A priest, Father De Leo, and various neighborhood women are gathered outside Serafina’s house. The police have shot Rosario, and they are deciding who must tell her. At the same time, since Rosario never came home the night before, and since Serafina can hear them outside talking, they are saying that she knows the truth already.
Act 1, Scene 3 Scene 3 takes place at noon the same day. A funeral wreath is on Serafina’s door. A doctor and Father De Leo converse; Serafina has lost the baby. Father De Leo cautions the doctor to advise Serafina not to cremate her husband. The doctor notes that the body is already cremated, since after Rosario was shot, the truck crashed and caught fire. Yet, Father De Leo believes that if the body is not buried, Serafina will put the ashes of her husband in an urn and worship them like a pagan object. Next, Estelle Hohengarten arrives in black mourning clothing. The neighborhood women, who have been inside with Serafina, leave the house and
1 7 8
swoop around Estelle. Unlike Serafina, they know about Rosario’s affair. They banish Estelle from Serafina’s garden.
Act 1, Scene 4 This scene takes place three years later. It is graduation day for local teens, including Rosa, Serafina’s daughter. Neighborhood mothers are at Serafina’s door, asking for their daughters’ graduation dresses, which Serafina has been commissioned to sew. She is not responding to their knocks. Inside, Rosa is nude. Her mother has locked away all of her clothes to prevent her from leaving the house. She has done this because Rosa went to a dance and met a young man in whom she is showing interest. Miss Yorke, a teacher from the local high school, walks up at the same time Serafina bursts out of the house screaming that Rosa has cut her wrists. Miss Yorke investigates and finds that Rosa has just given herself a scratch to scare her mother. She tells Serafina to let Rosa dress for graduation. Rosa does, and she is beautiful in her white dress. Assunta, who is also present, convinces Serafina to hand over the other dresses, which Serafina does once the women assure her they have the money for them.
Act 1, Scene 5 Left alone after everyone has gone to the graduation ceremony, Serafina is worried she will miss it. She tries to pull herself together by beginning to get dressed, but her efforts are comically disastrous. In the previous scene, Serafina was dressed in a soiled pink slip and her hair was a mess. Clearly, in the three years since her husband’s death, she has, just as Father De Leo predicted, wallowed in an unhealthy mourning. Her futile attempt to dress indicates that she has forgotten how to arrange herself in a presentable manner. As Serafina continues her struggles, two new characters enter the scene, Bessie and Flora. They are, according to Williams’s stage directions, ‘‘two female clowns of middle years and juvenile temperament.’’ The women want to pick up a blouse Flora commissioned. Serafina is distracted and searches for the wristwatch she wants to give Rosa for a graduation present. She tells Flora she was too busy making graduation dresses and does not have the blouse ready. Flora is angry because she is on her way to a parade in New Orleans and had been
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
counting on the blouse. She threatens to complain to the Chamber of Commerce. Bessie, too, is irritated as this delay has caused them to miss the earlier train. Serafina becomes angry herself, and the women begin brawling. One outcome of this altercation is that Flora tells Serafina that the husband she was so proud of and always boasts about was having an affair with Estelle Hohengarten. Serafina is devastated, sensing that Flora is telling the truth. The two women leave.
Act 1, Scene 6 Rosa is back from the graduation ceremony with Jack Hunter, the young man she is sweet on. They are discussing that night’s graduation party and believe Serafina is out because the house is dark. Rosa expresses her attraction to Jack, teaching him the Italian word for ‘‘kiss’’ and then kissing him all over his face. But, Serafina is in the house and makes her presence known. Rosa insists that she meet Jack. When Rosa enters the house with Jack, she is embarrassed at her mother’s appearance. She quickly brushes her mother’s hair and applies some powder to her face. Serafina is in a daze, and Rosa thinks this is due to a combination of shock over her fake suicide attempt and exhaustion over having had to make so many dresses. She and Jack try to rouse Serafina by telling her about the graduation ceremony. Jack tells how Rosa was given a prize, recited a poem, and how the crowd emitted a collective sigh of awe over her beauty as she walked up to the podium. Serafina is finally roused, but only so as to begin interrogating Jack. She insinuates that he is after her daughter’s innocence and asks how this can be when her daughter is only fifteen. Jack, who is a sailor and brother of one of Rosa’s classmates, protests and insists that his intentions are honorable. Serafina finds out that he is a Catholic and makes him swear before her statue of the Virgin Mary that he will respect her daughter. He does swear. The two young people leave with friends for the island at which the post-graduation party will take place, and Serafina has forgotten once again to give her daughter the watch.
R o s e
T a t t o o
making a spectacle of herself, giving expression to her doubt and despair. Father De Leo arrives and tries to reason with her, telling her to pull herself together, to think of her daughter. Serafina asks him if he knows if her husband was having an affair. He refuses to discuss the issue, and Serafina becomes belligerent. Her anger attracts local women, who finally must drag her away from the priest. As Serafina begins calling on the Virgin Mary to give her a sign, a traveling salesman arrives at her door. He is delivering his sales pitch when a truck is heard approaching. A truck driver, a ‘‘very good looking’’ Italian, approaches, speaking angrily. The salesman forced the Italian off the highway when passing him, quite unnecessarily given the breadth of the roadway, calling him a number of derogatory names in the process. The trucker, Alvaro, wishes to fight the salesman, even if this leads to a complaint and the loss of his job, because he feels the man has been exceptionally insulting and disrespectful. The salesman’s response is to drive his knee into Alvaro’s groin. Alvaro, doubled over, stumbles into Serafina’s house, sobbing. Serafina begins sobbing too, if mostly for her own reasons. Over their communal weeping, Serafina sees that Alvaro’s jacket is torn, offers to sew it, and Alvaro worries that he will be fired and unable to care for what he calls his ‘‘three dependents’’ (his mother, sister, and father). As Serafina sews, they converse. Serafina explains that her husband is dead, and she thinks, as she speaks, of how Alvaro has her husband’s grand body but the aspect of a ‘‘clown.’’ Alvaro, despite his good looks, has protruding ears, and Williams’s stage directions indicate that he acts clownishly: ‘‘There is a startling, improvised air about him; he frequently seems surprised at his own speech and actions, as though he had not at all anticipated them.’’ Serafina also tells Alvaro about her husband’s rose tattoo and boasts about him. It becomes clear that there is an attraction between Serafina and Alvaro. Alvaro, when he speaks, is practically asking Serafina to become his partner in life, if not in so many words, and Serafina is struggling to reconcile her attraction to Alvaro and her loyalty to her dead husband. They part with Serafina telling him to return and pick up his jacket later in the evening after his delivery rounds.
Act 2, Scene 1 The second act of the play is one long scene whose events take place two hours after the previous scene. Serafina is mooning about her garden,
V o l u m e
1 8
Act 3, Scene 1 Alvaro arrives with chocolates and is spiffed up after a visit to the barber for ‘‘the works,’’ and
1 7 9
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Serafina is waiting, nicely cleaned up herself. Serafina discerns that Alvaro has rose oil in his hair, which disconcerts her, as her husband used to do the same thing. A bit later, Alvaro tells her he has a tattoo, a rose on his chest. This shocks Serafina even more, until Alvaro admits that he had it done that very day since she told him about her husband’s tattoo. Alvaro, clearly, is trying most diligently to win Serafina, but his plans go awry when a condom falls out of his pocket. At the sight of the condom and the thought of what their relations might lead to, Serafina commands Alvaro to leave. He is dismayed and begs her to reconsider. Serafina relents, telling him that her day has been terrible since she found out that her husband may have been cheating on her. As it turns out, Alvaro knows Estelle and where she works as a blackjack dealer, and he offers to telephone her to find out the truth once and for all. Over the phone, Estelle admits to the affair. The truth finally out, Serafina throws the urn of her husband’s ashes to the floor and herself into Alvaro’s arms. She tells him to drive his truck down the road, to park it, and to return quietly so nobody will know that she is having him stay the night.
Act 3, Scene 2 It is dawn the next day. Rosa and Jack are returning from their excursion. Jack is feeling guilty because he and Rosa have been intimate, even if they have not made love. He is thinking of the promise he made to Serafina. Yet, as in the previous scene between the two, it is Rosa who is the one most eager for intimacy. She is angry at her mother for the promise her mother extracted from Jack and tells him she will go into town to meet him the next day before his ship sails.
Act 3, Scene 3 The time of this scene, the play’s last, is three hours later. It is early morning and Rosa wakes on the couch in the living room where she fell asleep. Alvaro emerges from Serafina’s room, sees the drowsy, half-awake girl, and leans over her in shock and awe at her beauty. He is half-awake himself and appears to believe he is dreaming. Rosa, waking fully, screams, shocking Alvaro into realizing she is a real person. Serafina comes rushing out of her room and, in guilt over being caught with Alvaro, pretends he is an intruder and screams for him to leave. Rosa knows better, though, and tells her mother to calm herself. Alvaro in the meantime is
1 8 0
expressing his love for Serafina, and Rosa blurts out that she plans to meet Jack before he sets sail. At first, Serafina objects, but then she tells her daughter to go, humbled before her daughter’s certainty. The neighborhood in the meantime has been roused by Serafina’s earlier shouting about an intruder, and Assunta and the local women are watching events unfold. Rosa runs off and the women begin commenting on the presence of Alvaro and his rose tattoo (since his chest is bare). Serafina asks Assunta where the ashes of her husband have gone, because she wishes to retrieve them. Assunta tells her the wind blew them away. The local women are laughing at Serafina, but she does not mind. She believes she has conceived during her night of love, and the play closes with Alvaro and Serafina speaking to each other lovingly.
CHARACTERS Assunta Assunta is a wise old woman who sells herbal and other remedies to the local Sicilian American population, and she appears to be Serafina’s only true friend. She listens to Serafina boast and rant, gives her advice, helps her in times of need, and ignores her when she is rude.
Bessie Bessie, along with her counterpart Flora, is described in Williams’s stage notes as a ‘‘clown’’ of middle age and ‘‘juvenile temperament.’’ She has commissioned some sewing from Serafina, and, when she finds it is not finished on the day promised, she becomes angry and informs Serafina about Serafina’s husband’s infidelity. As far as Serafina is concerned, Flora and her friend are man-chasers and generally immoral.
Bruno Bruno is one of a group of small children who appear on and off again in the play. These children have small speaking parts, but they are a significant presence on stage, as they convey the way that the play’s celebration of life rests on more than a celebration of love, sexuality, and passion. Their wild, free, and innocent play conveys a sense of life that is essentially creative and pure.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Father De Leo Father De Leo is a stock representation of a good priest in the play. He appears during moments when Serafina is behaving in an antisocial and selfdestructive manner, with the goal of bringing her back into the fold and making her see reason. He is a character defined by his profession, a priest who sees his role as the care of his community.
Rosa Delle Rose Rosa is Serafina’s daughter. She has inherited her father’s startling good looks, and, like her mother, she is passionate. She is also quite precocious for her age, as she is certain about her love for Jack Hunter despite her tender age of fifteen. While Rosa is genuinely fond of her mother, they are quite different in many respects. Much of their difference rests on Rosa’s having been conventionally educated in the United States, whereas Serafina retains the culture of her peasant Sicilian background.
Rosario Delle Rose Rosario, Serafina’s husband, never appears on stage, but he is an important element in the play. Serafina talks of him being extremely good-looking, very manly, and a great lover. This combination of attributes contributes to the play’s celebration of the beauty of life, love, sexuality, and passion. Rosario’s character also conveys a cautionary message, because he is deceitful. He fools Serafina into thinking that she is his only love and smuggles illegal goods under the cover of his legitimate trucking operation. The duplicity of his character points to Serafina’s task in the play. She must distinguish between that which truly deserves worship and that which does not.
Serafina Delle Rose Serafina is the play’s main character, a woman whose problem is her untoward worship of her husband and, by extension, of herself. She begins the play boasting of her husband Rosario’s beauty, virility, and love for her, while the neighborhood knows he is having an affair with Estelle Hohengarten. Serafina’s boastfulness and ignorance of Rosario’s true character make her an object of fun. However, since she is a sympathetic character and one whose boasting revolves around things relating to love and passion, her character contributes to the play’s celebration of the life.
V o l u m e
1 8
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • The Rose Tattoo was made into a feature film in 1995 directed by Daniel Mann and starring Anna Magnani as Serafina and Burt Lancaster as Alvaro.
Rosario is killed at the play’s start, and in the three years that separate the play’s opening and concluding events, Serafina has continued to worship her husband and the memories she has of him. This unhealthy, excessive mourning has quelled Serafina’s nature, which is passionate and revels in life, not death. Serafina regains her lust for life when she learns the truth about her husband and a new man, the character Alvaro, enters her life. She also learns an important lesson in discovering her husband’s deception, which is that nobody, including herself, is perfect. Whatever Serafina does, she does to excess: at the play’s start she is overdressed; in the middle of the play, when she is unhappy, she is slovenly. When she loves, she worships; when she is happy or angry, the whole neighborhood knows.
The Doctor The Doctor appears only once in the play, to tend to Serafina after she learns of her husband’s death. The conversation he has with Father De Leo at this time is significant, because it underscores the play’s focus on the sacred nature of life and love. As Father De Leo rightly worries whether Serafina will funnel her worship of her husband into a worship of his memory, the doctor cannot understand how this could ever be a problem. The doctor’s inability to understand Serafina suggests his utterly profane nature. This man of science believes only in the facts of the physical world, where Father De Leo and Serafina are imbued with a spiritual sense that certain things are sacred.
1 8 1
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Flora Flora is Bessie’s friend and accompanies her to Serafina’s house to pick up a blouse. Flora is dismayed when Bessie tells Serafina about Rosario’s cheating. For this reason, she seems kinder than the more hotheaded Bessie.
Giuseppina Giuseppina, along with Peppina and Mariella, is a neighborhood woman who interacts minimally with Serafina. Giuseppina and these women appear on stage mainly to comment on the play’s events, most especially on Serafina’s follies. Their role in the play is much like the role of the chorus in ancient Greek tragedy; they are a group of figures whose purpose is to reflect on unfolding events from the sidelines. This commentary either reiterates what is happening for dramatic effect or else conveys the point of view of the community at large. Giuseppina and her counterparts make up a comedic as opposed to a tragic chorus of women, since their point of view conveys how much the community takes delight in Serafina’s misadventures. Serafina’s misfortunes afford these onlookers pleasure because her pride and arrogance offends them.
At first, Alvaro’s nature repels Serafina, but she quickly comes to appreciate his good qualities, one of which is his admiration for her. Alvaro’s last name, Mangiacavallo, means, roughly, ‘‘to eat a horse,’’ symbolizing his great lust for life.
Estelle Hohengarten
Mariella
Estelle is the woman whom Serafina learns was having an affair with her husband. Estelle appears on stage only twice, both times briefly. She is a foil or contrast to Serafina in the way she symbolizes death and order where Serafina symbolizes life and chaos. Estelle is austere in both person and dress, in contrast to Serafina’s excess and love of decoration. Estelle is a blackjack dealer at the local casino, which is where, presumably, she and Rosario originally meet.
Mariella is a neighborhood woman who, along with Giuseppina and Peppina, comments on Serafina’s actions and conveys the point of view of the local Sicilian American community at large. The group’s commentary heightens the drama and comedy of the play by emphasizing particularly important and ridiculous turns of event.
Jack Hunter Jack Hunter is the young man with whom Rosa is in love. He is a sailor and one of her school friend’s brothers. Serafina is suspicious about his intentions in regards to her daughter, but he appears to be as much in love with Rosa as she is with him.
Alvaro Mangiacavallo Alvaro is a Sicilian immigrant who appears in Serafina’s life three years after her husband’s death,
1 8 2
and Serafina and he fall in love. Like Serafina’s dead husband, Alvaro is a handsome truck driver who delivers bananas. Unlike her husband, he is clownish in his behavior. Yet, he is likeable. He wishes to be married to someone like Serafina who busies herself making money, as he himself is dedicated to work and has three dependents (a mother, father, and sister).
Alvaro’s similarity to and difference from Rosario is significant and indicates Serafina’s development in the play. Since Serafina meets Alvaro after she learns about her husband’s deceit, she sees Alvaro as he really is, ordinary, as opposed to how she saw her husband, perfect. In other words, Alvaro’s character is as much a product of Serafina’s point of view as it is a product of his own qualities. If she were still deluded as to the true nature of her husband, she might have seen Alvaro as another god, as her husband’s reincarnation.
Peppina Like Mariella and Giuseppina, Peppina is a neighborhood woman who functions to comment on Serafina’s actions. She and they believe that Serafina needs to learn humility and so they are not overly concerned when Serafina suffers.
The Salesman The salesman appears only once in the play and serves to demonstrate how Italian immigrants were subject to poor treatment. As he is trying to sell his wares to Serafina, Alvaro appears on the scene explaining how the man forced his truck off the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
highway, for no good reason, uttering ethnic slurs in the process. This suggests the salesman’s hypocrisy. He is polite to immigrants to whom he is trying to sell goods, but at the same time he secretly despises them.
The Strega The strega is the old woman who lives next to Serafina and whose goat always strays into her yard. Serafina is convinced the old woman is a witch, despite Rosa’s insistence that she is being superstitious. Every time Serafina sees the strega, she makes a special gesture to protect herself against the woman’s supposed evil powers, which affords the old woman a great deal of malicious pleasure. The woman’s maliciousness is evinced also in her frequent disparaging comments about the doings of the ‘‘wops’’ who live around her. The word ‘‘wop’’ was an ethnic slur for Italian immigrants at the time.
R o s e
T a t t o o
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research the history of vaudeville in any major U.S. city. To what other forms of comic and popular entertainment is it related? • Compare and contrast the cultural presence and importance of the gods Dionysus (Greek) and Bacchus (Roman) in ancient Greece and Rome. • Research the history of Italian American immigration in the United States. A possible focus could be Italian American immigration within the southern United States. • Explore evolving representations of one U.S. ethnic minority in U.S. film and/or television. In light of your research, would you say representations of minorities in American films has become more or less accurate over time?
THEMES Pride One of Serafina’s defining characteristics is her pride. She is excessively proud of her husband, Rosario, and seems to think that his glory reflects on her. This is shown in her boasting. She boasts about Rosario’s beauty, virility, and family. She claims, for example, that he was a baron in Sicily, though few believe her. While on one level, Serafina’s boastful pride is ridiculous and humorous, on another, it constitutes the play’s nod at classical Greek tragedy. In classical tragedy, the hero always has a significant tragic flaw, and hubris, or pride, is often that flaw. However, while in ancient drama the flaw is a factor contributing to the play’s tragic events, in Williams’s play, Serafina overcomes her weakness. Her change of heart comes about partly because she accepts that her husband was not perfect after all. Further, she signals, in her love for Alvaro, that she is not so glorious and is capable of loving someone who is not perfect.
Humanity The Rose Tattoo is a very human play, despite its borrowings from the austere, heroic tradition of
V o l u m e
1 8
classical tragedy. Serafina may have a character flaw that is reminiscent of the hubris that besets so many classical heroes, but she is far more a comedic figure than a tragic one. In having Serafina learn that she is ordinary, and in depicting her as essentially ridiculous, Williams fondly suggests that humans are, precisely, quite ridiculous most of the time and hardly grand at all. The element in the play that best encapsulates Williams’s notion of humanity is the play’s many references to clowns and clown-like behavior. A clown is a figure who makes people laugh, usually by suffering terrible indignities. In other words, Williams suggests that at the same time that people suffer terribly they are poor creatures whose lives are comic misadventures.
Idolatry Williams evokes ancient (pre-Christian) GrecoRoman religion in his play, through its focus on sexuality and virility and through the many references to wine. Specifically, he gestures toward the god Dionysus (Greek) or Bacchus (Roman). This god was the caretaker of many things, for example wine, creative intoxication, sexuality, passion, re-
1 8 3
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
generation, male sexual potency, and right worship. Serafina is, in one guise, what would have been known in ancient times as a ‘‘bacchante,’’ as her worship of her extremely virile husband is akin to a worship of male sexual potency, and hence Bacchus in general. In gesturing toward this god, Williams in some sense resuscitates him approvingly. The play is a celebration of life, sexuality, and passion. Yet, the play also makes it clear that Serafina worships her husband inordinately. Indeed, when he dies, she puts his urn of ashes on her mantle and seems to think of it as an object to be worshipped in her husband’s stead. In a sense, Serafina treats her husband as a god when he is alive and the urn as an object of worship when he is dead. Since idolaters are persons who worship things not approved of by those practicing official religion, Serafina is an idolater in the play. She elevates her husband and his remains in an improper manner. Serafina learns proper conduct by the play’s end, as she learns that neither her husband nor she are deserving of worship. Yet, she retains her lust for life. In remaining passionate and in having learned who and what properly deserves adulation, Serafina develops over the course of the play into a truly proper worshiper of Dionysus, as this god not only represents the life force but right worship as well.
Life and Death The Rose Tattoo sets up a particular opposition of life and death in the opposition of Serafina and Estelle. This duality associates chaos and excess with life and order and restraint with death. Serafina evokes a chaotic, burgeoning life force in many ways. Her elaborate outfits, hairstyle, and jewels are gaudy at the play’s opening, but endearingly suggestive of a passionate, happy nature at the same time. Her husband’s virility and her own fertility, in conjunction with her healthy plumpness and interest in sex, suggest the ongoing nature of life. Her cluttered house further suggests chaos at the same time that it serves as a hive of purposeful productivity, since Serafina runs a business from home. Estelle Hohengarten is in every way Serafina’s opposite, embodying forces that counter those that Serafina expresses. Where Serafina is plump and
1 8 4
drawn to the gaudy, Williams’s stage directions describe Estelle as slim and dressed in clothes suggestive of minimalism and restraint: ‘‘She is a thin blonde woman in a dress of Egyptian design.’’ Ancient Egyptian art and clothing are known for their simplicity, their severe abstraction, and for the many rules that govern their design. Estelle is linked to death because she first appears in Serafina’s life the day Rosario is killed, and she is on stage only one other time in the play, namely the next day at Rosario’s wake. Death counters life, then, as order counters chaos, as the definitive cessation of all open-ended creativity, activity, and productivity.
STYLE The Bawdy and Slapstick This mostly light-hearted play is funny largely owing to its bawdy humor and slapstick action. Bawdy humor refers to uncomplicated wit that focuses on bodily functions. In this play, the bodily function at issue is sex, with Serafina boasting continuously of her husband’s wonderful performance in bed and her own lusty enjoyment of the sexual act. One particular bawdy element is Rosario and Alvaro’s job, which is to transport bananas. The way in which this fruit conjures the male sex is blatant and silly, and therefore bawdy. The slapstick dimension of the play is another reason why it is comedic. Slapstick humor is physical comedy, as when characters trip over things, have things fall on their heads, behave outrageously, and so forth. The Rose Tattoo is replete with slapstick events. Serafina frequently parades in a state of semi-undress for all to see, stumbles around her house as she tries to squeeze herself into a girdle, and generally makes a fool of herself.
Symbolism Williams employs many symbols in this play. Symbols are objects, names, or persons in an artwork that suggest many things as opposed to just one. Primary among the play’s symbols are the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
character names, which are suggestive of the rose flower (Rosa and Rosario), Rosario’s and Alvaro’s rose tattoos, and Serafina’s dress-shop mannequins. Red roses are commonly associated with love and passion, and Williams exploits these associations to their fullest. The play’s focus on life, physical passion, and the spiritual communion between lovers is made amply evident through its plethora of roses. Serafina’s certainty that a rose tattoo temporarily appears on her bosom the night she conceives a child with her husband hints at Williams’s desire to suggest a spiritual dimension to sex and love, the manner in which the closeness between lovers makes them mystically one and the same. Serafina’s group of mannequins suggest social censure and the importance of communal life, among other things. They suggest social censure because, as a group of figures, they are doubles for the group of neighborhood women who believe that Serafina is too proud for her own good. They suggest the importance of community because in standing in for the neighborhood women, they point to how Serafina has isolated herself from the larger community.
Primitivism Primitivism refers to a particular way in which artists working within European traditions in the early and mid-twentieth century used other cultures and these cultures’ artworks in their own work. Art from distant lands was upheld as embodying a beauty and artistry that suggested a greater closeness to nature and to truth. For Western artists, the works pointed to something that had been lost and was yearned for. This was a simple way of life, one in touch with the simple and the sacred. Western artists admired these works and adopted their forms. Yet, it is now understood that these artworks signified entirely different things in the cultures from which they sprang, that the cultures Western artists imagine (appreciated for their simplistic truth in art were merely imagined cultures. In seeking the truth in art, certain Western artists manipulated the truth by taking foreign art out of its cultural context and then attributing value to it based on Western aesthetic sensibilities.) were just that, imagined cultures. Consequently, this primitivism seems naïve in retrospect, obscuring the complexity of these cultures and their peoples, and obscuring as well the way that cultures of all kinds necessarily impose
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
upon individuals any number of constraints in the interests of upholding tradition and social order. Williams’s play is primitivist in the sense that he employs a cast of Sicilian American characters of peasant roots and depicts them as persons controlled by elemental forces and largely devoid of selfreflection. These characters do not appear to think; they appear merely to act. And when they act, their actions follow from the controlling power of elemental forces, such as the sexual impulse, hate, love, envy, jealousy, and so forth. These Italian immigrants might be Westerners, but since they come from peasant stock they are to be understood as primitives. Williams’s play is primitive in the sense that he employs a cast of Sicilian American characters of peasant roots and uses them to represent the importance of the elemental things in life.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Rose Tattoo was composed in the late 1940s, in the period following World War II, which U.S. intervention had hastened to an end with the first deployment of nuclear warheads in history, the dropping of two atomic bombs in Japan. The citizens of the many countries decimated by this war lived in its pall during the 1940s, while the United States’ more peripheral involvement meant that U.S. citizens were less severely affected. U.S. culture flourished diversely in the 1940s, leading to the cultural phenomenon of the 1950s, when U.S. popular culture swept the world. The 1940s in the United States are noteworthy for numerous developments. This was the beginning of U.S. suburban life, when developers began responding to a housing need that urban, inner-city spaces could not accommodate. These new homes, moreover, were furnished like homes never before, as household timesaving appliances such as washers, dryers, vacuum cleaners, and the like became widely available and affordable. Television also made its first appearance in the 1940s. In the social and political arenas, U.S. citizens began witnessing the first upheavals of what would become the civil rights movement. For example, the first African American baseball player was admitted into the major leagues in 1947; this was Jackie
1 8 5
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1940s: Italy, where Williams traveled more than once during the 1940s, is attempting to recover from the devastating events of World War II. Today: Italy is a major tourist destination now that global travel is common. • 1940s: Televisions make their way into people’s homes and new, televised dramatic forms such as the situational comedy (sit-coms) are developed. Today: Most U.S. citizens tune into a favorite television comedy or drama each day of the week. • 1940s: Musical films and plays become a dominant form during the Great Depression and continue to be popular during WWII, partly in response to a need for levity and temporary escape from grim circumstances. Today: Musicals continue to be popular fare on Broadway. They are being performed in smaller off-Broadway productions as well, and various prime-time television shows are beginning to incorporate musical interludes. • 1940s: Italian Americans contribute diversely to U.S. culture and often are depicted in film and
Robinson who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers. By the mid-1950s, African Americans were fully mobilized, with leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. organizing numerous effective demonstrations that resulted in the full desegregation of U.S. institutions by the late 1960s. One major political development of the 1940s was the ‘‘Red Scare,’’ which followed from the post-WWII inception of the Cold War between the United States and the United Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). This war was ‘‘cold’’ because it did not involve warfare. Rather, it was an ideological contest, a world battle of belief. The United States was committed to the spread of capitalism; the U.S.S.R. was committed to the spread of commu-
1 8 6
drama so as to highlight a greater cultural expressiveness. Today: Italian-American Mafia culture continues to fascinate the U.S. public since the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather trilogy, 1972–1990. Television shows like the Sopranos, airing on HBO, enjoy widespread audience appeal. • 1940s: Racial segregation and ethnic prejudice are prominent in the United States. Today: Tensions are still felt among the various ethnic populations of the United States although great progress has been made. Immigration remains a heated issue. • 1940s: Method acting encourages greater emotional expressiveness in acting, partly by schooling actors to identify with the characters they are representing. Method acting is based on the idea that actors achieve greater verisimilitude when they do not rely solely on technique, but rather attempt to imaginatively become their characters as well. Today: Most actors’ training today is diverse, taking from and crossing various techniques and methods.
nism. The Red Scare in the United States refers to the way in which the hunt for communists within the United States reached a level of hysteria, with persons being called forth to testify about their political beliefs or those of their friends and colleagues. Many believe this development went against the grain of the United States’ belief in free speech, thought, and dissent. Many persons were prevented from holding jobs or pursuing their professions owing to either their beliefs or simply suspicions about them. At the same time, drama, film, and the arts in general were flourishing in the United States. When Williams entered the dramatic scene, he had much to live up to, as notable U.S. playwrights such as
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Carson McCullers, Clifford Odets, and Thornton Wilder, for example, were at the height of their creative powers. Like the work of these other dramatists, Williams’s is, on the whole, highly serious, and so The Rose Tattoo stands out in Williams’s body of work for its broad comedy. The Rose Tattoo’s fond treatment of its group of Sicilian American characters points to Williams’s conviction that Anglo-American culture at the time was marred by racial and ethnic prejudice. Thus, the play’s unsympathetic characters display a disparaging attitude toward the Sicilian immigrants that was consistent with the prejudices indicative of American reality. At the same time, some Americans looked down on Italian immigrants or their children, others welcomed the cultural contributions of Italian Americans. There were few singers more popular than Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin at the time, for example. There was a vogue for things Italian in the 1940s and 1950s, partly owing to the success of Sinatra and others, and also due to the importation of Italian films into the United States. Italy was experiencing a golden age in cinema, and many Italian actors were courted by Hollywood to star in U.S. made, English language films. One of these actors, Anna Magnani, was cast in the film version of The Rose Tattoo.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW The Rose Tattoo, which was a box-office success on Broadway, followed two other major Broadway successes for Williams, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. The play’s popularity with the public garnered it a Tony Award, with critics, on the whole, seeing it as a less successful play than the two previous successes. William Hawkins’s mixed review is typical of critical reaction following the play’s Broadway opening. Writing for the New York World-Telegram and The Sun, he states that in ‘‘its favor the play has atmosphere and warmth.’’ Yet, he writes, ‘‘the humor often seems glued to the surface, and passages of the play are endlessly chatty and repetitious.’’ Other critics thought the play’s bawdy humor worked awkwardly with its other, more serious intentions, or that the comedy was crude as opposed
V o l u m e
1 8
Burt Lancaster, as Alvaro Mangiacavallo, and Anna Magnani, as Serafina Delle Rose, in a scene from the 1955 film adaptation of The Rose Tattoo, directed by Daniel Mann
to bawdy. According to Margaret Marshall writing for the Nation, the play descends ‘‘into cheap farce which must be seen to be believed. The absurd and the vulgar contend for place.’’ Yet, in an essay from Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, entitled ‘‘Sentiment and humor in equal measure’’: Comic Forms in The Rose Tattoo,’’ Philip C. Kolin argues that a proper understanding of the play’s comedy is crucial for appreciation. He states that the play is ‘‘an experiment in comedy,’’ in which various comedic forms are juxtaposed and blended. These forms, says Kolin, ‘‘range from slapstick humor, including farce, music hall antics, and vaudeville to folk, satiric, and romantic comedy, and, occasionally, tragicomedy.’’ More recently in ‘‘The Family of Mitch,’’ in Magical Muse: Millennial Essays on Tennessee Williams, Kolin has written on the character of Alvaro. He argues that Alvaro is one of Williams’s plays’ ‘‘unsuitable suitors,’’ a ‘‘loser who becomes a winner,’’ as Williams is interested in resisting the conventional romance formula in which suitors are perfectly manly and gentlemanly.
1 8 7
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Most commentary on the play touches on its Dionysian dimension, its celebration of life and sexuality. For example, in A Critical Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Drama, C.W.E. Bigsby states that the play is about the ‘‘resilience of the human spirit, the undeniable power of the will to live and the primacy of the sexual impulse.’’ The Rose Tattoo is one of Williams’s plays that continues to be revived, and what audiences see each time depends upon the interpretation and vision of the director in question. Also affecting critical and audience reception is the prevailing cultural climate. Thus, for example, when the play was revived in New York City in 1966, critics were more appreciative. Their more positive response, says Kolin, follows from the fact that theater in the 1960s had taken an absurdist turn: ‘‘In the 1966 revival of The Rose Tattoo, Williams’ comedy had evidently changed for reviewers—it had become appropriately grotesque. If they would not assent to it as it was, they could at least praise the absurdist elements, in vogue in avant-garde theater both here and abroad.’’
CRITICISM Carol Dell’Amico Dell’Amico is an instructor of English literature and composition. In this essay, Dell’Amico discusses major symbols in Williams’s play. As Philip C. Kolin observes in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, The Rose Tattoo is ‘‘an experiment in comedy,’’ a blending of many comedic traditions. Slapstick, farcical, and bawdy elements are predominant, as the play is a strung together series of ridiculous events revolving around Serafina Delle Rose, a woman whose major preoccupation is her handsome husband’s virility. Williams’s play is a comic celebration of what the ancient Greeks or Romans would call the Dionysian elements of life, a celebration of eros, creative intoxication, virility, and regeneration. The play also celebrates fertility, however, and so Williams adds to the GrecoRoman mix. Williams’s idiosyncratic and playful experiment stands out within the context of his work as a whole, as most of his other plays are serious dramas shot through with tragedy and eruptions of violence. Yet, tying this play to Williams’s other works is its
1 8 8
development of the sacred nature of life and love. This theme is never the primary theme in his other works, but Williams’s treatment of love and sexuality throughout his career is intense, usually revolving around religious and psychological themes. Also tying the play to Williams’s other works is its dense symbolism, which is the subject of this essay. Symbols are things, persons, events, names, or images in an artwork that evoke a number of related associations, and they reflect and inform a work’s themes. In the published version of the play, Williams’s stage notes indicate that The Rose Tattoo opens with a view of what will be the play’s only setting, Serafina’s house and garden. Her cottage, he writes, is ‘‘in a village populated mostly by Sicilians somewhere along the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Mobile.’’ The setting is semi-tropical, with palms trees waving gently in a soft wind, ‘‘tall canes,’’ and a ‘‘fairly thick growth of pampas grass.’’ A folk singer at the edge of the stage sings and strums on a guitar as the curtain rises, and then, ‘‘in voices near and distant, urgent and tender, like the variable notes of wind and water,’’ the sound of mothers’ voices calling their children home to dinner is heard. It is just before dusk, ‘‘prima sera’’ or ‘‘first dusk’’ in Italian, and Venus, ‘‘the female star,’’ burns with ‘‘an almost emerald lustre’’ above. Three of the children being called home to dinner are sitting on Serafina’s front steps; they are Bruno, Salvatore, and Vivi. One holds ‘‘a red paper kite,’’ one a ‘‘hoop,’’ and the third holds ‘‘a doll dressed as a clown.’’ The children are ‘‘in attitudes of momentary repose,’’ Williams writes, ‘‘all looking up at something—a bird or a plane passing over—as the mothers’ voices call them.’’ Bruno speaks first: BRUNO: The white flags are flying at the Coast Guard Station. SALVATORE: That means fair weather. VIVI: I love fair weather.
The weather of comedy is spring, ‘‘fair weather,’’ which is mostly what the play delivers; yet, the statuesque stillness of these children announces what will be an accompanying, muted undercurrent of drama and even tragedy in the play. Williams’s children, and birds and song, are recurring symbolic elements in the play’s evocation of life. The innocence of children, the flight and song of birds, and the song of humans are all things that connote life’s beauties and joys. These various symbols are suggestive of freedom, creativity, joy-
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire was first staged in New York City in 1947 and remains one of his most celebrated works. Its main character, Blanche DuBois, is a sensitive and compromised Southern woman who succumbs to madness, overwhelmed by guilt and an inability to adapt to a changing world. • The Night of the Iguana (1960) was one of Williams’s last great successes. This play explores a set of socially marginal characters who find redemption despite their weaknesses and disappointments. • Carson McCullers’s novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) grows, like Williams’s work, out
ous rhapsody, and spontaneity, qualities that join Williams’s other evocations of life as those that are expressed in passions, emotions, and love. The children’s toys also resonate symbolically. The hoop evokes the circle of life or nature’s unending cycle. It also refers to Serafina’s womb, the way she is a celebration of female fertility in the play. Contributing further to Williams’s evocation of sacred womanhood and fertility is the ‘‘female star’’ Venus and Serafina’s experience of conception as a miracle. The second toy, the kite, reminds us of children’s play, of a gleeful immersion in play’s pursuit. The kite’s color refers to the redness of the rose flower and evokes, as well, the free flight of birds and the wind that carries the women’s songs. The third toy, the clown doll, is the first of the play’s many clowns. It works with Alvaro’s, Bessie’s, and Flora’s clownishness, not to mention Serafina’s, and evokes Williams’s comedic view of humanity in The Rose Tattoo. Clowns, traditionally, have sad faces and suffer hilarious mishaps. Even as Serafina suffers terribly the death of her beloved husband, Williams seems to say, she remains a mortal whose misadventures are also comic.
V o l u m e
1 8
of a strong Southern tradition in U.S. literature. This novel, like the Southern tradition in general, has strong gothic and grotesque overtones. • The Sound and the Fury (1929), by William Faulkner, is set in the U.S. South, as are most of Williams’s plays. Like Williams, Faulkner explores the tensions within Southern U.S. culture, especially as this culture’s regional values conflict with those of the broader, national U.S. culture. • The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams (1985), by Donald Spoto, is a highly readable biography and a thorough treatment of Williams’s life and works.
In a sense, Serafina’s task in the play is to see herself as a clown, to dispel all the illusions she has about herself. This self-delusion is shown in the way she elevates herself and her husband into living gods. She proclaims that her husband is royalty, a baron, and is convinced that the Christian goddess, the Virgin Mary, sends her signs. In fact, Serafina’s idea that her conceptions are miracles suggests how she puts herself on a par with the Virgin Mary, whose conception of Jesus Christ is a miracle in Christianity. Serafina believes, further, that the neighborhood women should recognize her exceptional qualities. Serafina is simultaneously the heart of the play’s celebration of life and an element in the play’s comedic farce. Her self-aggrandizement is comic because she is, clearly, a very ordinary woman. She is vain, squeezing herself into over-tight girdles; her husband, sadly, is deceitful; and, she lives a modest life in a cottage. The neighborhood women’s derision puts Serafina in her place, showing up her ridiculous, overblown boasting. The women in the play also contribute to the play’s celebration of life, however, because even as they are right in criticizing Serafina, it seems that
1 8 9
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
THE ROSE FLOWER IS THE CENTRAL SYMBOL IN WILLIAMS’S DENSELY SYMBOLIC PLAY. IT IS A PLETHORA OF ROSES, A BOUQUET FROM WILLIAMS TO THE PUBLIC AT LARGE.’’
Serafina is right to criticize them. She accuses them of having given up on love and romance. Serafina, and the audience by extension, see them as people who have lost touch with life’s sacred, joyous dimension. The dressmaker dummies are symbolically the women’s doubles in the play, but more than this as well. Williams imagined a group of seven dummies on the set: An outdoor sign indicates that Serafina, whose home the cottage is, does ‘‘SEWING.’’ The interior furnishings give evidence of this vocation. The most salient feature is a collection of dressmaker’s dummies. There are at least seven of these life-size mannequins, in various shapes and attitudes. [They have pliable joints so that their positions can be changed. Their arms terminate at the wrist. In all their attitudes there is an air of drama, somewhat like the poses of declamatory actresses of the old school].
These dummies’ immobility, stark forms, and truncated arms suggest death, and so they add to the undercurrent of drama and tragedy in the play. They are like statues, too, so they further suggest the children’s presence and postures in the play, postures that are similarly carefully choreographed so as to add a dramatic undercurrent to the play. In acting as a reminder of the group of neighborhood women, the dummies connote both Serafina’s unhealthy, deluded isolation and the women’s suppressed, death-like lives. Williams, thus, does not banish death from his play about life. Rosario dies; there is a wake; the mannequins beckon as reminders of death; and Serafina is a widow. Also ominously juxtaposed against the play’s celebration of life is the presence of evil, conveyed by the play’s goat. Goats, especially in a Greco-Roman context, symbolize evil, death, eros, and sexual licentiousness. The play’s
1 9 0
goat thus suggests that there are violent and excessive strains of love and passion, strains allied with death and not life. In addition to symbolizing evil into the play, the goat adds to its comedy. The goat belongs to Serafina’s unlikable next door neighbor and frequently escapes, or is let loose, and marauds through Serafina’s yard. Its owner and numerous children flood Serafina’s yard on a mad chase for the goat, with Serafina orchestrating events from her porch. These bursts of chaos and boisterousness are comic, classic farcical chase scenes. The central symbol of the play, however, is the red rose flower, to which the symbol of wine is related. Serafina only drinks of the wine of the red grape from Sicily, and she parades in scenes in a pink slip with its bodice stained with wine. Wine is the gift of the god Dionysus, the drink of creative intoxication and the elixir of love. Serafina’s stain is like a big rose on her chest, and so she has a rose tattoo like Rosario and Alvaro. She is bursting with life and is an embodiment of the life force and sexuality. The deep red of the red rose flower is the color of blood and its scent is intense and sweet; it is associated with love, romance, and all manner of passionate life. The rose flower is the central symbol in Williams’s densely symbolic play. It is a plethora of roses, a bouquet from Williams to the public at large. Source: Carol Dell’Amico, Critical Essay on The Rose Tattoo, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Philip C. Kolin In the following essay, Kolin explores Williams’ turn to comedy and his other motivations in The Rose Tattoo. When The Rose Tatto made its Broadway appearance on 3 February 1951, Tennessee Williams did not have a reputation as a comic writer. Quite to the contrary, his two hits, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, had, according to Life, established him as a dramatist who ‘‘could write only about doom-ridden damsels.’’ For his comic efforts in The Rose Tattoo, Williams was promptly whipped. As the reviewer in Newsweek put it, ‘‘there is an uneasy feeling that his new play is sometimes funny without quite intending to be.’’ Williams’ humor was labeled in the basest terms. The more serious events in act one ‘‘descend into cheap farce which must be seen to be believed,’’ wrote Margaret Marshall in The Nation.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
The reviewer for Time, contemptuous of the rapid changes of mood, renamed the play Banana Truck Named Desire. F. W. Dupee (‘‘Literature on Broadway,’’ The Partisan Review, May 1951, p. 334) quickly summarized the critical opinion of Serafina and much else in the play when he said it was ‘‘farced-up.’’
R o s e
T a t t o o
THE ROSE TATTOO IS EASIER TO TYPE THAN OTHER WILLIAMS’ PLAYS BECAUSE OF BOTH ITS VIRTUES AND ITS FAULTS. IT
In the 1966 revival of The Rose Tattoo, Williams’ comedy had evidently changed for reviewers— it had become appropriately grotesque. If they could not assent to it as it was, they could at least praise the absurdist elements, in vogue in avant-garde theater both here and abroad. Williams’ play had been acceptably reclassified through making virtues of its earlier vices. Absurdity by any other name is just as meet for neurotically-conditioned audiences. Henry Hewes offered an explanation for the approval: ‘‘Now it very probably was not Mr. Williams’s intention to write The Rose Tattoo as a grotesque comedy, but that is what this new presentation seems, and that is why it appears not in the least bit dated’’ (Saturday Review, November 1966). Jan Kott, who has found Shakespeare so relevant to our ‘‘absurd’’ world, would readily have approved of the change. Yet, regardless of the revival, and perhaps because of it, critics, with a few exceptions, have dismissed The Rose Tattoo as one of Williams’ lesser accomplishments, better left on the rose heap. Ruby Cohn has given the play its death-knell: ‘‘He probably intended The Rose Tattoo to be something of a saturnalia, a joyous celebration of sex, but (when we are not simply bored) we tend to laughed at rather than with the celebrants. To his credit, though, the play was and is still good box office.’’ Why in 1950–51 did Williams write a work which seemed in so many ways to differ from his previous, and successful, plays? Biography provides a few clues. Williams had just returned from a sojourn in Italy, the land of warm sunshine and fiery passions, and said, ‘‘I have never felt more hopeful about human nature as a result of being exposed to the Italians’’ (quoted in Saturday Review, March 1951). While in Sicily Williams must have soaked up enough local culture to write knowledgeably about the folklore, language, and characters of the region and create the Dionysian elements he claims to have captured in the play (Vogue, March 1951). Birds, children, goats, sky, fruit, earth, sun, and air—all are found in The Rose Tattoo. Biography aside, Williams’ neglect yet strong flair for the comic is found not only in The Rose Tattoo but elsewhere in his work. In a provocative
V o l u m e
1 8
SUCCESSFULLY DRAMATIZES THE FULFILLMENT OF HOPE AND LOVE. THE PLAY IS AN EXPERIMENT IN COMEDY, A POTPOURRI OF COMEDIC FORMS, SOMETIMES BLENDED AND SOMETIMES JUXTAPOSED.’’
article (‘‘The Comic Tennessee Williams’’), Charles Brooks calls Williams ‘‘an essentially comic playwright’’ whose ‘‘greatest power and appeal derive from a comic vision which he seems unwilling to trust fully.’’ In his review Hewes had said that comedy—even the more grotesque variety—could ‘‘open up a green territory in which Tennessee Williams might profitably exercise his talent.’’ Classifying Williams’ play by genres—tragedies or comedies—is gross oversimplification. Comedy is as difficult to define as tragedy. Socrates long ago said (in The Symposium) they were similar, often reaching the same ends; and Aristotle unfortunately never discussed that tragedy which, like a comedy, has a happy ending. The Rose Tattoo is easier to type than other Williams’ plays because of both its virtues and its faults. It successfully dramatizes the fulfillment of hope and love. The play is an experiment in comedy, a potpourri of comedic forms, sometimes blended and sometimes juxtaposed. Comic forms range from slapstick humor, including farce, music hall antics, and vaudeville to folk, satiric, and romantic comedy, and, occasionally, tragicomedy. Even sadness is assimilated into the comic vision. The Rose Tattoo has characteristics of low comedy or farce. But within this broad category are elements of vaudeville, Chaplinesque humor, and vestiges of the commedia dell’arte. Though dissatisfied reviewers and critics have lampooned Williams for his cheap and unsophisticated displays, jests and clowning are part of his stagecraft from his early works to his middle ones (Camino Real) to his
1 9 1
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
late ones (Gnädiges Fräulein). Williams is a shrewd man of the theater, keenly aware that laughs as well as tears sell tickets. He incorporates many comic gags, verbal and physical, to entertain and cajole his audience, and, at times, make them feel superior to his characters. One of Williams’ greatest achievements as a comic dramatist is his use of dialogue, though Ruby Cohn observes: ‘‘Larded with Italian phrases and locutions, the English is surprisingly grammatical, the vocabulary extensive, and the emotions selfconsciously expressed.’’ Regardless of Serafina’s regular syntax, the play is fastmoving, speeded along by a series of one-liners that are the classic tool of the comedian’s art. These are hurled at and by Serafina, some of them as cutting as the knife she will use on Estelle, others as sharp as a courtier’s rapier. These one-liners are well-suited to the Italian temperament. Angered by Serafina’s delay in sewing their daughters’ graduation dresses, local mothers pounce on her. One of them exclaims: ‘‘Listen, I pay in advance five dollars and get no dress. Now what she wear, my daughter, to graduate in? A couple of towels and a rose in her hair?’’ She thus makes sport of both the Delle Rose name (and emblem) and Serafina’s impoverishing profession. When Rosa stands naked in the window, her clothes hidden by her suspicious mother, Williams demonstrates his agility with an Italian pun when a neighbor says: ‘‘In nominis padri et figlio et spiritus sancti. Aaahh!’’ Figlio, the child of naked vulnerability, such as Rosa is judged to be, replaces the filio of the invocation. Later, Rosa catches her mother in an embarrassing lie when Serafina explains Alvaro’s presence by saying he was chased by the police. Rosa shrewdly inquires: ‘‘They chased him into your bedroom?’’ And the disarray in which Serafina finds herself after her boisterous fight with Father De Leo gives rise to even more humor because of the sham politeness with which the salesman addresses her: ‘‘I see directly to merchants but when I stopped over there to have my car serviced, I seen you taking the air on the steps and I thought I would just drop over . . .’’ Serafina’s verbal assaults match her muscular defenses. At the start of the play, Serafina can counter the potion-selling Assunta’s attempts to bring aphrodisiacs when they are not wanted by observing that it is not the sound of Venus that the old woman hears: ‘‘Naw, them ain’t the star-noises. They’re termites, eating the house up.’’ To those
1 9 2
who say she is improperly, scantily dressed, Serafina proclaims: ‘‘I’m dressed okay; I’m not naked!’’ Her invectives are charged by her shrewish wit. High school for her is as ‘‘high as that horse’s dirt out there in the street!’’ Equally facile retorts face Jack Hunter, as Serafina, punning on his name, asks: ‘‘What are you hunting?—Jack?’’ But Serafina reveals her own narrow limits and calls down laughter on her head when she utters the understatement of the play: ‘‘But we are Sicilians, and we are not coldblooded.’’ Serafina’s claim to recognize religious denominations in body types is of course ridiculous. Yet she bounces back into control when she plays a game with Alvaro. When he tells her of his previous amorous mishap because he gave the girl a fake diamond (a zircon), Serafina responds that she too would have slammed the door in his face. Williams see the folly of his characters’ lives and captures it in their dialogue as well. With Alvaro, Williams invents another comic portrait in prose. Alvaro’s description of this family and their petty vices sounds almost as if it came from Eudora Welty’s pen: ‘‘One old maid sister, one feeble-minded grandmother, one lush of a pop that’s not worth the powder it takes to blow him to hell.—They got the parchesi habit. They play the game of parchesi, morning, night, noon. Passing a bucket of beer around the table. . . .’’ Alvaro’s wry detachment from his inherited handicaps fills out the picture of his family. He asks Serafina what in his heritage as the grandson of a village idiot he has to be thankful about: ‘‘What have I got to respect? The rock my grandmother slips on?’’ Williams is at his best in these comic vignettes, as the comments exchanged between Bessie and Flora well illustrate. The two prigs, eager for some sexual titillation, discuss one such prank that may promise pleasure: ‘‘I heard, I heard that the Legionnaires caught a girl on Canal Street! They tore the clothes off her and sent her home in a taxi!’’ Of course they disavow any interest in this nonsense, but they obviously enjoy it. The Rose Tattoo also shows a mastery of other standard comic conventions, including physical deformities. Serafina’s exaggerated ego and passion match the rotundity of her shape. Hers is a big, often stricken body, described as a ‘‘heavy, sagging bulk.’’ Her hips have exceeded their girlish limits, suggesting a comparison to a ‘‘parading matador.’’ Moving to the other side of the ring, Williams labels her a bull. She is like a ‘‘strange beast in a cage.’’ All these remarks suggest that Serafina is like an animal in heat, her plump body always charging her ene-
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
mies or her lover. Her struggles with her girdle call attention to the incompatibility of her form and the restraint she seeks to impose on it. In these pantomimes, Serafina is both laughable buffoon and frustrated lover. The girdle represents an impediment to her passions; and the more she struggles, the funnier are her attempts. Nor has Williams spared other parts of her anatomy. Her hair is wild, greasy, always out of control like Serafina herself. No make-up, it seems, will help. Rosa’s ‘‘cosmetic enterprise’’ does not improve her mother; it leaves her only with a ‘‘dazed look.’’ Serafina’s deprecatory gestures, signs of her ethnic background and feverish anger, also make her look ridiculous. Her new lover, Alvaro, and his body are also exploited for comedy. This clown seems like an appropriate visitor to the carnival booth that is Serafina’s house. He is as awkward as Serafina is accusatory. His ears stick out, he is short, and he hitches his shoulders—traits that certainly call attention to his comic torso. Williams refers to him as one of the ‘‘glossy young bulls’’ as if to emphasize his sexual powers. Alvaro is doubtless the bull in the dress shop. He is so clumsy that he drops everything from ice cubes to condoms. His trance after his first night with Serafina has ‘‘the pantomimic lightness, almost fantasy, of an early Chaplin comedy.’’ Like the silent movie star, Alvaro finds mischief where he least expects it. He collides with Serafina’s furniture and, finally, her daughter. Thinking he is raping her daughter, Serafina lunges at him, beating him all the way out of the house. Alvaro scurries around the house with ‘‘his shirttails out’’ much as Chaplin tries to evade the comic Furies hounding him. The fight and the ensuing chase—the two most common and oldest comic tricks—fill up much of the action in The Rose Tattoo. Serafina tells Alvaro that ‘‘I had two fights on the street,’’ but she underestimates the number of her quarrels. She battles with her daughter, jerking her away from the window; she does much the same with her clownish customers, except she chases them out of the house with a broom. She is forever fighting with the Strega whom she orders ‘‘Getta hell out of my yard!’’ Not even the clergy is exempt; with Father De Leo Serafina is ‘‘on the point of attacking him bodily’’ when he is rescued by her neighbors. On stage these incidents elicit laughter. Yet they also point to the turmoil inside Serafina. She is out of control, as her anger and the shrewishness arousing it demonstrate. One beating, though, which does not fit with the rest is that given Estelle early in the play by Serafina’s
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
neighbors. As she comes to see Rosario’s body, ‘‘The bouquet of roses is snatched from her blackgloved hands and she is flailed with them about the head and shoulders.’’ Though not comic, this incident precipitates and parallels other quarrels. Serafina’s revenge lasts so long and is so violent that we automatically seek a cause: The community punishment of Estelle anticipates Serafina’s punishment of the community. The difference between the two beatings shows how funny Serafina’s struggles have become. These quarrels often result in chases among objects with people falling down or being torn apart. The slapstick humor is transparent; the angrier characters become, the less successful are their attacks. But when Serafina gets into the act, all discord follows. At first she locks Rosa in the house; then a little later Rosa is locked out of it, having to run around outside. The neighborhood children often flee in panic when Serafina threatens them. In her fury, she pursues her customers, Bessie and Flora, turning over a table. The most obvious flight, however, is the goat chase, a sign of Serafina’s passionate dilemma. Next comes Father De Leo, who is hounded by the widow. Then another goat chase. The pattern—chase after chase—characterizes the comic deception befalling Serafina and pinpoints Williams’s hilarious if conventional source of comedy. The opportunities for improvisational comedy are unlimited here. Alvaro’s arrival brings more chases and even greater damage. His precursor, the salesman, signals further debasement for Serafina. The new product he offers ‘‘explodes in Serafina’s face.’’ The scene recalls Punch and Judy antics, but it prefigures the eruptions with Alvaro. While talking to him about vicious rumors, Serafina hurls a glass to the floor. Twice, in a few minutes, she explodes at Alvaro, both times chasing him for his life and crushing anything in her way. First, ‘‘she springs up and runs into the parlor. He pursues. The chase is grotesquely violent and comic. A floor lamp is overturned. She seizes the chocolate box and threatens to slam it into his face if he continues toward her.’’ After a few calm moments, Serafina disrupts the peace when she hurls the phone to the floor. She even addresses the Blessed Virgin with ‘‘explosive gestures.’’ The second time, the termagant flies at Alvaro ‘‘like a great bird, tearing and clawing at his stupefied figure’’ in retaliation for his bumping into Rosa. Alvaro is the butt; even when he walks he ‘‘topples over.’’
1 9 3
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
But this rampage provides no release for Serafina; nor was it meant to. These chases only increase her frustration and rekindle the fires of her anger. For it is herself Serafina chases most often. She lunges, plunges and trounces all over; but, as Williams deftly points out, ‘‘she swiftly and violently whirls about in distraction.’’ In desperation for clothes, she grabs at her dummies, one of which collapses. She tears things apart and threatens death to those who cross her. But she can have no honest release until she breaks the urn holding Rosario’s ashes. All the other acts may be gratuitous, there for the laughs pure and simple, but when she ‘‘seizes the marble urn and hurls it violently into the furthest corner of the room,’’ she finally can escape from the whirligig of the time past and confront the love Alvaro has to offer. She can break away from the comic captivity of her previous actions; she can stop being ‘‘dressed in the rags of a convict.’’ Inserted among the other humorous acts, destruction of the urn may at first seem to be the result of Serafina’s rage. But Williams has juxtaposed this act with other slapstick gestures to suggest how it differs from them and how, in effect, it points to the climax of the play. Within Williams’ slapstick comedy is more serious business, but an appreciation of the relationship between events, however foolish, reveals the unity. Among the most obvious but, surprisingly enough, least valued elements in The Rose Tattoo is the folk comedy. The passions of Rosa Gonzales, her revengeful father, and the symbolic cock fight of Summer and Smoke are examples of Williams’ use of folk habits. Natives appear in both Camino Real and The Night of the Iguana. And insofar as his plantation caste in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Sweet Bird of Youth comprise separate, regional and rural subcultures, Williams reveals some knowledge of folk drama, twentieth-century style. Because of their obvious ‘‘foreignness’’ and importance, the Italians and Sicilians of The Rose Tattoo stand out most distinctly in Williams’ use of folk materials. Their language, religion, and superstitions give the play its zest and shape its humor. Their music permeates the play, since a folk player appears at all the major breaks. Although living in the American South, Serafina and her neighbors lost not a whit of their native hopes and fears in steerage. They are close to the earth and to the animals and the children bred on it. The lingo of these southern Europeans—the patois of the peasant—is liberally sprinkled throughout The Rose Tattoo, often adding to both the
1 9 4
romantic and the humorous depiction of Serafina and her neighbors. Born of ‘‘contadini,’’ Serafina becomes a ‘‘baronessa’’ even if her estate is no more than the sewing shop which is also her house. The Sicilian vocabulary makes Serafina’s ire even more passionate and her love more earthy. Alvaro is a ‘‘cretino,’’ a ‘‘buffone,’’ or, even worse, a ‘‘maleducato’’ when he alarms her, but he is her ‘‘amore’’ at the end of the play; and her once intractable daughter is her ‘‘carissimo.’’ The small house on Front Street, with the highway before it, is closer to Palermo than to New Orleans. This language also reflects the many superstitions and taboos that prey so humorously on Serafina’s psyche. Her goattending neighbor is always addressed as the Strega, the witch. So foolish is Serafina that she believes this spindly, hairylegged creature possesses evil powers. She has ‘‘malocchio,’’ an evil eye according to Serafina, though to the less impressionable Rosa it is only a cataract. When the Strega touches Rosa, Serafina at once supplies a folk cure—the girl must ‘‘wash [her] face with salt water and then throw the salt water away!’’ The Strega takes her place alongside Williams’ other hags, comic and serious. She is part of the tradition which produced the blind woman selling flowers for the dead in A Streetcar Named Desire and Leona in Confessional; they serve as reminders impending doom. The Strega, moreover, infrequently serves as the play’s narrator, pointing out comically Serafina’s excesses—‘‘The Wops are at it again’’—while she and her rampaging goat are also grotesque. The ‘‘little procession’’ of her and the goat home really begins in her having let him loose in the first place. The superstitions associated with her must be judged against those of Assunta, the ‘‘fattuchiere’’ with her miraculous aphrodisiacs, and the more prosaic powers of the ‘‘imported Sicilian spumanti.’’ The artifacts of this culture— goat, potions, wine—are among the leading stage symbols, however much they are abused through repetition and obviousness. From them Williams tries to create a comic (and folk) atmosphere; they are the legerdemain of his dramatic artifice. Even the plot of The Rose Tattoo reads like a series of folk motifs, many of them documented in the Stith Thompson index. A duped widow who strikes out at all around her because of their mockery of her love finds a solution to her problems with another man who, in many ways, is the muscular though comic reincarnation of her deceased husband. At first, Serafina is attracted to Alvaro because, as she claims, he has ‘‘My husband’s body,
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
with the head of a clown!’’ Alvaro is the lover disguised as a fool, an old motif that Williams adopts for his own purposes by fusing suitor and fool into one role. Alvaro’s disguise is laughable to Serafina who at first fails to see the love he brings. The mysterious attraction is demonstrated through the rose symbolism. The rose appears in folk beliefs as a magical love-producing object. In fact, it is the talisman which often draws a lover to a woman, though Williams uses it to draw the woman to the man. The sexual bonds between Rosario and Serafina need little comment. But an even more interesting folk motif about roses is associated with Alvaro. Even though Serafina is already aroused by Alvaro, when he has the patronymic emblem of her first husband emblazoned on his chest, she finds Rosario Delle Rose again, or a more faithful though less attractive version of him. In essence, her ‘‘rose’’ has been transformed into a human being, a folk motif which is at the center of Serafina’s discovery of self and the audience’s demand for comedic harmony. Folklore also associates sexual powers with roses. By eating a rose, according to one superstition, a woman could conceive. Serafina’s pregnancy by Rosario and her conception after sleeping with his humorous incarnation, the Tattooed Alvaro, recall the motif. As long as Serafina has a rose in her life, she does not need the sexual stimulation promised by Assunta’s potion. Much in The Rose Tattoo derives from the conventions of romantic comedy. Williams, who elsewhere is the frustrated romanticist or the rebellious puritan, here successfully gives the upper hand to the forces of love and nature. The fecundity of nature and man, and the desire, voiced by all romantic comedies, to unite every eligible female with every suitable man, frequently appears. Williams’ pastoral setting—on the Gulf Coast between the magic city of New Orleans and the port of Mobile— displays a territory of passion and a land of sexual fulfillment. References to vegetation are numerous, and fruitful. The ‘‘Author’s Production Notes’’ call for ‘‘palm trees,’’ ‘‘tall canes with feathery fronds and a fairly thick growth of pampas grass.’’ Rosario hauled bananas for the Romano Brothers; and Alvaro arrives with ‘‘a great golden bunch of bananas.’’ The shape of this fruit leads Henry Popkin to see it as a phallic symbol, which seems appropriate for the context. Estelle Hohengarten’s last name, which literally means a high garden, likewise suggests the fruitfulness of sex. The young Jack Hunter gives Rosa a bunch of roses for her graduation. And Serafina more than once breaks open a bottle of
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
spumanti, highly suitable for the Bacchic entertainment serving as a preamble to love. Above the fertility of the earth shines Venus, ‘‘the female star with an almost emerald luster,’’ and this star appears above Serafina’s porch near the end of the play ‘‘still undimmed.’’ The surge toward fertility—and reproduction— is even stronger among the characters for whom this vegetation serves as a background. The play begins and ends with Serafina pregnant, once by her unfaithful husband and once by her foolish paramour, Alvaro, Serafina’s rejection of the creative rhythms of life brings only reminders of how fruitful she should be. Father De Leo cautions her: ‘‘You are still a young woman. Eligible for—loving and— bearing again!’’ Later in the play, Alvaro tells her, in his awkward proposal, that his old maid sister wants nephews and nieces. Serafina can be happy only when she is loved and loving—whether it is every night with Rosario or not quite so often with Alvaro. Serafina’s comic problem rests in acknowledging and triumphing over obstacles to love. She must ignore Estelle’s illicit affairs and forgive Alvaro’s fumbling attempts to use contraceptives. If the specific pastoral location lends itself to romantic comedy, so too does the particular time of the action. It is June, near mid-summer, the time of love passion, fulfillment, weddings. It is a highly festive day on the calendar. Even the clowns Bessie and Flora are eager to see the Veterans Parade in New Orleans. But it is also a highly symbolic day— Rosa’s graduation day and Serafina’s as well. This occasion suggests Rosa’s development, her commencement of sexual maturity. As Rosa tells Jack, ‘‘Just think. A week ago Friday—I didn’t know boys existed!’’ It is her initiation, so to speak, receiving the Digest of Knowledge and Jack Hunter’s pristine love on the same day. Their trip to Diamond Key (the place name suggesting some kind of engagement) in a sense charts their rite of passage into sexual maturity, soon to be concluded in a New Orleans hotel room. But on this very special day, Williams reminds his audience, they are the quintessence of young love. As Brooks Atkinson said in a New York Times review of the original production, their affair ‘‘has all the lyric rapture and sincerity of young poetry. As sheer writing, it is one of the finest things Mr. Williams has done.’’ But as in so many other romantic comedies, the young lovers are frustrated in meeting and marrying. Usually, a blocking figure, some pitiful and
1 9 5
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
laughable parent, stands in their way. This is one dimension of Serafina’s role. She is the obstacle to their love as well as a blatant contrast to it. It is hard to agree with Charles Brooks who sees Serafina as ‘‘the healthy one in the play’’ and Rosa as the ‘‘sentimental’’ embodiment of her mother’s faults who ‘‘weakens an otherwise fine comedy.’’ If nothing else demonstrated how wrong this view of Rosa is, Serafina’s reactions to graduation day would certainly be enough. To the embittered widow, the festive day brings only anxiety and fear. She tries to spoil the holiday at first by locking her daughter up; the celebration, she thinks, is the public declaration of all the wrong things the high school did to Rosa. Even when Rosa is released through the intervention of Miss York [sic], Serafina still cannot participate in the ceremonies. She tries to attend, but she never does, for she is detained by her customers. And the music she hears does more to annoy than uplift her. When Rosa returns, elated by her honors, Serafina tries to fight off the future she brings with her diploma by saying: ‘‘Va bene.—Put it in the drawer with your father’s clothes.’’ Serafina hopes to keep Rosa in the stagnant past with the memory of Rosario. Rosa’s youthful innocence and Rosario’s faithfulness are tied together. Serafina does not want change. As she tells Jack Hunter: ‘‘Two weeks ago I was slapping her hands for scratching mosquito bites. She rode a bicycle to school. Now all at once—I’ve got a wild thing in the house.’’ Graduation day has caused all of Rosa’s problems and most of Serafina’s trouble. But Serafina, like so many other foolish parents in comedy, has problems both more serious and more comic than those she anticipates. She tries to protect Rosa from sexual abuse and dishonesty. Yet she herself is the victim of one of the oldest and funniest deceptions of romantic comedy. She has been cuckolded by Rosario and refuses, until shown otherwise, to believe it. In setting up a shrine to her late and beloved husband, she makes a mockery of her injunctions to Rosa not to trust a boy. Her religious fanaticism is, therefore, not without humor. Even her name suggests some comic duplicity. Not only does it imply her own nocturnally amorous ability (‘‘sera fina’’—‘‘fine nights’’), as Ruby Cohn has pointed out, but Williams may have had an actual Saint Seraphina in mind when he decided to name his heroine. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that Saint Seraphina was a virgin who ‘‘led a religious life in her parental home and was an example of piety, charity, mortification, and patience during a long serious illness. . . . ’’
1 9 6
The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary says she was associated with white violets, which ‘‘were found to be growing on the board on which she had lain.’’ The widow Delle Rose is hardly a young, suffering virgin, and the contrast between her activities and those suggested by her holy namesake emphasize the folly of her devotion. Her wifely piety and the shrine she erects come in for constant comic attacks. Her house is noted more for brawls than prayers. In fact, at one point it even turns into a kind of ‘‘casa privata.’’ But it is her opposition to Rosa and Jack that makes Serafina a foe to love. Only when she relents and sends her daughter off with a blessing does she overcome her own ignorance and accept love herself. Breaking Rosario’s urn and honoring Rosa’s desire to love Jack indicate the change. She moves from hostile enemy to confidant, from a blocking figure to a woman who can see the world romantically. Serafina graduates by throwing off the bonds of the past, which enshackled her in buffoonery, and accepts the love and promise of the future. The use of festivity in The Rose Tattoo derives from some of the major elements of romantic comedy. These include the so-called ‘‘green world’’ which the lovers inhabit, the opposition of the parent to their love, the easy comic deception of the parent, the hypocrisy of the parent’s advice, and the holiday occasion giving rise to these opposing views. Unlike other comic butts, though, Serafina finally joins the lovers’ cause. Williams’ tone of satire is replaced by a strong and unmitigated sense that harmony will finally reign. Much in The Rose Tattoo does not quite fit into the categories of vaudeville, farce, or romantic comedy. The serious moments of grief early in the play, the agony Serafina encounters in act two, and the union of Serafina and Alvaro at the end of the play amidst tears and laughter, defy comic label. Shifting tones and modes, many of them branded as Williams’ faults, suggest that The Rose Tattoo is a tragicomedy, a genre that allows comedy full and varied play, even giving it the last word, while acknowledging the undercurrent of tragic love and pain. The playwright’s inability to write pure comedy throughout the play may explain why The Rose Tattoo is a tragicomedy. Williams may have explained his play as a Dionysian celebration, a dream of life’s juices flowing through herbs, children, and lovers, but his preface on ‘‘The Timeless World of
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
the Play’’ turns the reader’s eye in another direction. There Williams speculates about ‘‘plays in the tragic tradition’’ and discusses his own version of catharsis by which ‘‘our hearts are wrung by recognition and pity,’’ a strange introduction for a saturnalian comedy. But perhaps these autobiographical assessments to some extent explain the work. Williams wants us to laugh and suffer with Serafina; she is both the dummy bride and the dummy widow. He wants ‘‘sentiment and humor in equal measure,’’ an almost impossible feat in an age grotesquely divorcing the two and a difficult task for a playwright whose comedy usually reflects irredeemable futility. Still, as Henry Hewes recognized when seeing the 1966 revival, ‘‘we laugh at the ridiculousness of the events at the same time that we recognize the characters’ agonizedly sincere involvement in them.’’ Laughter may provide a better catharsis than either pity or fear. Coarse, vulgar, foolish love exists alongside more noble kinds. The Strega, Estelle, and the taunting children get billing with Alvaro’s shrewd recognition that Serafina laid her ‘‘heart in the marble urn with the ashes’’ and Rosa’s advice that ‘‘Everybody is nothing until you love them,’’ perhaps the topic sentence of the play. Serafina is likewise the nothing turned to everything, comic scapegoat and sympathetic heroine. Williams debases and enthrones her, often at the same time. She sinks into ‘‘comic desolation,’’ and her appearance is at once ‘‘comic and shocking.’’ Her former beauty is often mentioned, nowhere more poetically expressed than in Father De Leo’s description of her as being ‘‘like a lady wearing a—piece of the—weather!’’ But his view is challenged by her present appearance; she has become a hobgoblin scaring the children away. Williams seems to transfer some of his former heroines’ problems to Serafina. Statues (‘‘The Grotesque Children of The Rose Tattoo’’) has concluded that, ‘‘In terms of Williams’s typical character deployment, Serafina is actually a direct descendant of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and of Alma Winemiller in Summer and Smoke.’’ Although Serafina lives in her own world, a victim of her own dreams, the affinity with Williams’ earlier female characters is tenuous. Serafina is much more adaptable than, say, Blanche DuBois. Serafina throws off the deception in time to marry Alvaro. But it is too late for Blanche and her Alvaro (Mitch), whom she loses too soon and wants too late. In short, Serafina is a complex, often contradictory figure whose failures and successes in love
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
combine farcical comedy with tragic implications. The rapid changes, especially after Alvaro reveals his rose tattoo in act three, are characteristic of and suitable for a tragicomedy. Another major feature of tragicomedy is surprise, the unexpected resolution of the tragic dilemma that leads to a happy ending. Poorly used, this deus ex machina, the manipulation of events, can descend to cheap melodrama. But Williams has made some attempts to prepare his audiences, and characters, for the unexpected comedic resolution of events. The numerous references to the Blessed Mother, whom Serafina at first worships, then rebukes, then adores, suggest that these Sicilians feel providence can work out their problems. And Williams cautioned his crew and cast not to scoff at the ‘‘religious yearnings’’ these people feel. Everywhere, Serafina looks for signs. In sympathy with her, the audience should too. It is significant that the play begins and ends with Assunta saying that ‘‘it is impossible to tell me anything that I don’t believe.’’ The appearance of Alvaro is just that strange event which, on the face of it, seems incredible, for as he tells Serafina: ‘‘If strange things didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be talking together.’’ Some have dismissed The Rose Tattoo as a contrived work, with Williams pulling all the strings in open view of the audience. And while there is some truth to the stricture that Alvaro is clumsy, and even stupid, his gift of love to Serafina does bring her out of despair and back into the world of love. Just as Serafina is filled with joy waiting for her first husband when the play begins, she is flowing over with excitement and love when running to meet her second husband as the play closes. That they rush to meet each other on the embankment signals their ascendancy over the neighborhood and the individuals who ridiculed and railed at them. Alvaro’s strange and comic visit to Serafina’s house results in the triumph of love. The theme of time adds to both the tragic and the comic dimensions of the play. In his preface to The Rose Tattoo, Williams says that if time is arrested the events on stage acquire more tragic worth and contribute to the dignity of the characters. Were The Rose Tattoo pure tragedy, such observations might clearly apply. But the cessation of time for Serafina is both cause and effect of her comic debasement and our sympathy for her. When she is bound by time, or restlessly fights its pull, she is most pathetic and least likely to accept a new and fruitful life.
1 9 7
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
The time of the play may be the present, but for Serafina it is, until Alvaro’s successful wooing, always the past. Before she learns of Rosario’s death, she rapturously recalls her previous nights of love. All time is measured by and included in her husband’s embrace. ‘‘Each time is the first time with him. Time doesn’t pass . . ., ’’ she tells Assunta. But when Assunta reminds her of time’s witness, the clock, Serafina has only contempt for it: ‘‘No, the clock is a fool. I don’t listen to it. My clock is my heart and my heart don’t say tick-tick; it says lovelove!’’ The action reveals both how foolish and how sad Serafina’s sense of time is when Estelle imposes another interpretation on the same hours: ‘‘Tomorrow’s the anniversary of the day we met . . ., ’’ she tells Serafina, who is of course unaware of Rosario’s infidelity. Serafina is not concerned with the future, despite reminders of time’s passing. She tells Assunta that Rosario will no longer conceal drugs under his load of bananas. ‘‘Tonight is the last time he does it! Tomorrow he quits hauling stuff for the Brothers Romano.’’ Tomorrow never comes, even though Williams manipulates stage time so as to make years pass between scenes three and four of act one. All of a sudden, it is ‘‘a June day, three years later.’’ (One recalls the passing of sixteen years between acts in Shakespeare’s tragicomedy The Winter’s Tale.) Williams admits that ‘‘The diminishing influence of life’s destroyer, time, must be somehow worked into the content of . . . [the] play,’’ Serafina’s struggle against it or imperception of it causes her grief. Williams’ critical views are at odds with his dramaturgy, not an unusual conflict considering that sometimes his dramatic criticism fails to provide the most trusty guide to the work it discusses. When Serafina understands and appreciates time’s changes, she is saved. Until then, she has only memories, views of the past which remove her from time’s obligations and successes. As she tell Alvaro, ‘‘The memory of a love don’t make you unhappy unless you believe a lie that makes it dirty.’’ She clings to the lie because it protectively confines her in a beautiful past. She dwells on the social honors of the past. Rosario’s uncle was a baron; she is a baronessa. But this claim brings only ridicule. She forestalls giving the mothers their daughters’ dresses, promising them ‘‘Domani-domani-domani,’’ even though, ironically enough, the dresses are done. In front of Bessie and Flora, she speaks of her previous work for them but spurns future jobs. When Serafina snarls at Flora that she is ‘‘late for the graduation of my daughter,’’ the angular prig cruelly retorts:
1 9 8
‘‘You got plenty of time.’’ Serafina has plenty of time except that all of it is recounted in her past sexual feats. It is with Rosa that Serafina’s distorted sense of time is more carefully treated. So harassed is Serafina that she never attends the graduation exercises; instead, she sits in the gloomy shadows of her house, surrounded by the manikins of both bride and widow, images of time past and time present. Ironically, the time-fettered Serafina buys Rosa a Bulova watch for her graduation present. But as Rosa leaves, the ‘‘gift still ungiven,’’ the action means Serafina’s sense of time cannot be transferred to her sexually unhindered daughter. That the watch does not work properly to begin with is further proof that this present represents Serafina’s own limits; she has been frozen in time and must be unlocked from the past. Starnes has argued that when the watch does work, ‘‘time’s passing and the transience of all meaning are now all she can see’’; and that when the watch ceases ticking ‘‘Time has been arrested for her again, and is significant of Serafina’s spiritual rebirth.’’ This view runs counter to the unfolding of events, for it is only when Serafina gives up on the defective watch that she can run to Alvaro who offers her a new love which relieves her from her past folly. In this role as time’s new man, the new watchman of Serafina’s heart, some of Alvaro’s silliness vanishes, and much of his thematic significance is stressed. Though an awkward lothario, Alvaro plans for the future. Although his dreams are not as grand as Jim O’Connor’s, Alvaro seeks security in the household of an older, financially stable and physically developed woman. But his youth and sexual prowess make him attractive to Serafina; he can offer her new hours of pleasure in bed while granting her wish not to be saddled with ‘‘some middle-aged man, not young, not full of young passion, but getting a pot belly on him and losing his hair and smelling of sweat and liquor.’’ With Alvaro, Serafina’s heart will again be in step with the fluidity and fruitfulness of time. Licking the chocolate from her fingers, Alvaro reminds Rosario’s widow that ‘‘You’re as old as your arteries, Baronessa. Now set back down. The fingers are now white as snow!’’ This ridiculous gesture is symbolically an act of purification, or a preview of sexual delights awaiting Serafina. When she protests his advances, Alvaro says, ‘‘Is it my fault you have been a widow too long?’’; and he even agrees to ‘‘go out and come in the door again’’ if the day is wrong. Timing is important for Alvaro, for he is
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
conscious of his past failures in love. Once Serafina exorcises the lie from her memory, comes back into time, and accepts Alvaro’s youthful love, she can escape the sadness of the past and the follow of the present. Giving assent to the passing of time shifts characters and audience away from tragedy and into the joy of comedy. The Rose Tattoo is not one of Williams’ best plays, but it does show his ability to write fulfilling comedy, comedy which is indebted to a number of different dramatic traditions. From farce and slapstick humor, Williams takes the lively action of his play—fights, chases, one-liners, grotesque characterization. But he dignifies, or at least tones down, some of these antics by incorporating elements of romantic comedy. Rosa’s attempts to run away with Jack Hunter are successful only when Serafina finds love herself. That recognition is placed within a tragicomic frame, allowing Williams to introduce more serious moments into the play. All this action is set within a folk community from which Williams derives further comedy. If the play never won critical approval, possibly Williams was too ambitious, too eager to make sure his play left no comic form untouched. Source: Philip C. Kolin, ‘‘‘Sentiment and Humor in Equal Measure’: Comic Forms in The Rose Tattoo,’’ in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, edited by Jac Tharpe, University Press of Mississippi, 1977, pp. 93–106.
Leland Starnes In the following essay, Starnes explores the regional and ethnic melange Williams mixes to give his characters their odd dialogue and bearing in The Rose Tattoo. That realism should be the convention fundamental to the work of Tennessee Williams is altogether logical. Until his late adolescence, Williams had little opportunity to see any form of theater other than the American cinema, and this form, of course, is firmly grounded in the realistic approach. Even the external shape of Williams’s theater shows especially clear evidence of this cinematic influence: a succession of episodes, ‘‘fade-outs’’ and ‘‘fade-ins,’’ background music, gauze scrims, and expressive lights focussed to simulate ‘‘close-ups’’— all devices immediately recognizable as film technique, itself a more poetic kind of realism. Often clearly aspiring to the conditions of poetry, Williams creates for himself an advantage which is not always available to other dramatists who start from the realistic or naturalistic base: like
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
Synge and O’Casey, he puts his words into the mouths of an essentially imaginative people who speak in the rhythms and colorful imagery of a region favorable to poetry. Even more to the point for our present subject, by staging his dramas in a realm just so much apart from ‘‘average’’ American life as the deep South and by having his characters speak in the distinctive language of that realm apart, Williams succeeds in distancing his plays from the purely realistic mode to a degree sufficient to justify and disguise a certain characteristic exaggeration and distortion of reality which permeates his entire canon. Under the speech of most of his characters there runs the faint but unmistakable thorough bass of grotesque folk comedy. The tone provided by this suggestion of the comic folk tale varies according to Williams’s intention, and, accordingly, the success of its effect depends upon the amount of distance he would have us put between the characters and ourselves. Williams’s opening scene in Orpheus Descending, for example, is an excellent study of his use of regional elements for these ends; we have only to examine the craftsmanship in this Prologue to an imperfect play to perceive how ingeniously (and how meticulously) this restless perfectionist has always gone about the business of constructing the artistic reality he thought indispensable to the coming to life of his vividly theatrical people. The set represents in nonrealistic fashion a general drygoods store and part of a connecting ‘confectionery’ in a small Southern town . . . Merchandise is represented very sparsely and it is not realistic . . . But the confectionery, which is seen partly through a wide arched door, is shadowy and poetic as some inner dimension of the play.
Then immediately, before this nonrealistic background, we hear language of such color that we realize the realm in which our action will take place is indeed very much apart. DOLLY. Pee Wee! BEULAH. Dawg! DOLLY. Cannonball is comin’ into th’ depot! BEULAH. You all git down to th’ depot an’ meet that train!
Pee Wee and Dog, ‘‘heavy, red-faced men,’’ verify the initial comic impression with a gag line as they ‘‘slouch through . . . in clothes that are too tight for them . . . and mud-stained boots.’’ PEE WEE. I fed that one-armed bandit a hunnerd nickels an’ it coughed up five.
1 9 9
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
Julie Waters and Matyelok Gibbs in a 1991 theatrical production of The Rose Tattoo
DOG. Must have hed indigestion.
As Pee Wee and Dog go out the door, Beulah begins the play’s exposition: I wint to see Dr. Johnny about Dawg’s condition. Dawg’s got sugar in his urine again, an as I was leavin’ I ast him what was the facks about Jabe Torrance’s operation in Mimphis.
When a few lines later Beulah begins her monologue, which ‘‘should be treated frankly as exposition,’’ Williams says, ‘‘spoken to audience . . . she comes straight out to the proscenium, like a pitchman. This monologue should set the nonrealistic key for the whole production.’’ The exposition is thus delivered in the idiom of folk comedy and takes advantage of the comedic possibilities in its theatricalist style. Beulah first describes with grim relish the circumstances of Papa Romano’s death; as she expounds at some length upon her convictions concerning the faithlessness of most marriages, her manner is that of back-fence gossip. But as she thus prepares a mordantly ironic background for our first view of Lady and Jabe Torrance, the tone of the scene modulates from what at first appeared to be cracker-barrel comedy to the extreme grotesque.
2 0 0
BEULAH. Then one of them—gits—cincer or has a—stroke or somethin’?—The other one— DOLLY.—Hauls in the loot?
The comic grotesquery of these women is obviously essential to Williams’s initial exposition of both characters and situation. As a kind of comic chorus, they provide not only environmental context in terms of which we are to interpret events, but, in their comic hypocrisy, an objective view of both the appearance and the reality of the principal characters and their predicament as well. When Jabe Torrance, mortally ill with cancer, returns from the hospital they greet him with mendacity the ironic significance of which the audience immediately perceives. BEULAH. I don’t think he’s been sick. I think he’s been to Miami. Look at that wonderful color in his face. DOLLY. I never seen him look better in my life! BEULAH. Who does he think he’s foolin’? Ha ha ha!—not me!
There are two groups of women, and two women in each group. Williams even arranges their
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
lines so as to verify the comic effect he intends us to see in this visual repetition by having them echo each other’s words in almost music-hall style. BEULAH. Lady, I don’t suppose you feel much like talking about it right now but Dog and me are so worried. DOLLY. Pee Wee and me are worried sick about it. LADY. About what?
R o s e
T a t t o o
SO IT IS, THEN, THAT OUR INTRODUCTION TO SERAFINA DELLE ROSE TAKES PLACE IN ‘AN INTERIOR THAT IS AS COLORFUL AS A BOOTH AT A CARNIVAL.’’’
BEULAH. Jabe’s operation in Memphis. Was it successful? DOLLY. Wasn’t it successful? . . . SISTER. Was it too late for surgical interference? EVA. Wasn’t it successful? BEULAH. Somebody told us it had gone past the knife. DOLLY. We do hope it ain’t hopeless. EVA. We hope and pray it ain’t hopeless. (All their faces wear faint, unconscious smiles.)
We are reminded of T. S. Eliot’s similar handling of verbal repetition in The Cocktail Party when Julia tells the story of Lady Klootz and her son who could hear the cry of bats. But Williams’s use of the device here, of course, is probably intended as comic suggestion of repetition as it is usually heard in the classic chorus. It is obvious that Williams is nowadays more concerned than ever with this matter of distance between his characters and his audience. The recent unfortunate production of Slapstick Tragedy and Williams’s own remarks about his intentions in that work indicate that he is in the process of experimentation and is therefore, we should hopefully say, in transition. Some critics have gone so far as to argue that Slapstick Tragedy should not have been given professional production. The two short plays are indeed more clearly akin to thumbnail sketches than to finished canvasses, and each has been written with baffling incompatibilities of content and style. But whatever the aesthetic shortcomings of this latest effort, we are forced to observe in Slapstick Tragedy that Williams again instinctively seeks the freedom from the strictures of photographic realism that grotesque comedy allows him, and his natural antic gifts have always been such that we should be encouraged to believe that it is within the realms of such comedy that he may eventually find the new mode he seeks. The Rose Tattoo, which was first produced in 1951, endures as a model of Williams’s stylistic integrity, and it is appropriate that such a play should have been chosen for successful revival in the 1966–67 season at New York’s City Center.
V o l u m e
1 8
In this surprisingly profound play, Williams of course again resorted to the creation of his own realm and to the writing of the language of that world, both of which provided aesthetic distance for the characters inhabiting that realm and explained or justified their exaggerated behavior. His context was the South again—the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Mobile—and it was, moreover, an Italian community within that area. We were thus twice removed from ‘‘normal’’ reality, and Williams worked with extraordinary effectiveness within the self-imposed limitations of that reality. In production, it would be unwise if not impossible to attempt to minimize the distancing effect that the national or regional characteristics of Williams’s central characters should have upon an audience. This ethnic identity is manifestly Williams’s keystone for the structure of his characters, and in The Rose Tattoo he stresses it repeatedly and purposefully in every scene of the play: JACK. Mrs. Delle Rose, I guess that Sicilians are emotional people . . . BESSIE. I’m a-scared of these Wops. THE STREGA . . . They ain’t civilized, these Sicilians. In the old country they live in caves in the hills and the country’s run by bandits.
Williams wants us to see clearly that he is writing about a special people with a special set of given circumstances: ‘‘they ain’t civilized’’; they are ‘‘wild,’’ ‘‘emotional,’’ ‘‘childlike,’’ and they do everything ‘‘with all the heart.’’ So it is, then, that our introduction to Serafina Delle Rose takes place in ‘‘an interior that is as colorful as a booth at a carnival.’’ Indeed, we cannot avoid noticing the extreme and vivid uses of color; such Van Gogh audacities are apropos for the broader statement that Williams wants to make. Moreover, the set in which Serafina sits is scarcely more colorful than the lady herself. As vivid as a circus poster, she
2 0 1
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
looks like a plump little Italian opera singer in the role of Madame Butterfly. Her black hair is done in a high pompadour that glitters like wet coal. A rose is held in place by glittering jet hairpins. Her voluptuous figure is sheathed in pale rose silk. On her feet are dainty slippers with glittering buckles and French heels . . . She sits very erect, . . . her ankles daintily crossed and her plump little hands holding a yellow paper fan on which is painted a rose. Jewels gleam on her fingers, her wrists and her ears and about her throat.
This, it scarcely need be said, is exaggeration. It is enthusiastic—and not actually terribly extreme— intensification of an already intense person for the purposes of vivid theatrical examination of her being. Quite obviously, the actress entrusted with the performance of such a role should have at least a working knowledge of the bigger, more ‘‘operatic’’ styles of acting and should not, as was unfortunately the case with Maureen Stapleton in both New York productions, be circumscribed by an earthbound naturalism which allows few if any glimpses of the theatrical size ultimately attainable in this characterization. While the Serafina Williams describes has not actually left the realm of naturalism, those characteristics which mark her individuality are stressed to just such a degree that they verge upon or actually become both theatricalist and comically grotesque; and by this preliminary visual presentation of the character and the realm she inhabits, we are alerted to expect the comic incongruity which ensues in her subsequent actions. And so it is that our introduction to Alvaro Mangiacavallo, Serafina’s thematic antagonist, is accomplished in a scene which borders upon farce and which makes heavy use of national characteristic for comedic effect. Alvaro, sobbing in pain and frustration because he has been kicked in the groin during a fight with an irate salesman, flees into the house to hide his shame, and Serafina, weeping in sympathy, offers to repair his torn jacket. The scene is audacious in its comedy—comedy which is, moreover, ingenious as expositional device—as the two characters continue a conversation which would probably be unexceptional if it were not for the fact that each of them is shaking with sobs. ‘‘Stop crying so I can stop crying,’’ Serafina says. ‘‘I am a sissy,’’ says Alvaro. ‘‘Excuse me. I am ashame.’’ At some point in our laughter, however, it might occur to us to ask if perhaps the exaggeration of national or folk characteristic had not been carried to too great an extreme and whether we might have passed altogether into the realm of the stage Italian and from thence into mindless farce. The question, surely, is not as primly academic as might at first appear, as
2 0 2
upon its answer depend our interpretation of this play and our evaluation of the spiritual worth of these persons. Critical reaction to the play at its first appearance in 1951 was such as to provide reason to conclude—at that time, at any rate—that Williams’s work here was at least uneven or uncertain. For example, Margaret Marshall, reviewing the play in The Nation, said that ‘‘in the second act the serious mood quickly evaporates; and the proceedings descend into cheap farce which must be seen to be believed. The absurd and the vulgar contend for place . . .’’ Kenneth Tynan, always a great admirer of Williams, found ‘‘the play’s complex structure— short scenes linked by evocative snatches of music— too poetic for its theme,’’ and George Jean Nathan simply said that the play was ‘‘sensational sex melodrama, pasted up with comedy relief . . .’’ Such critics at that time, then, asked whether Williams had not indeed drawn his ironies and exaggerations with too bold a stroke in this play. They apparently assumed that to push the protagonist so far into comic or grotesque incongruity as to make this incongruity his or her dominant dramatic value was to risk making the character so childlike or of such an inferior level of sensibility as to become a target for the destructive laughter of superiority. A playwright of Williams’s genre is limited by his protagonist’s perception, they believed, and so, then, is the force of his play. The Rose Tattoo was thought by many at that time to be a less significant play—‘‘just a comedy’’—because Williams had resorted to farcical exaggeration which all but destroyed any serious thematic intent. Some writers went so far as to deny the probability of any really new or valuable insights into the condition of human suffering in the ‘‘vulgar farce’’ of ‘‘childminded Sicilians,’’ and others questioned the likelihood that ‘‘the psychological aberrations of the universe can be quickly settled on one big bed.’’ We can enjoy Serafina, they implied, and we can even sympathize with her on occasion, but we cannot see her as representative of anything significant in reality after having laughed at her shenanigans for three acts. It is interesting and even a little amusing to compare such reactions with those of the writers who received the play with surprised enthusiasm when it was revived at City Center last season. Laughter which had in 1951 been deplored as destructive or emblematic of cheap farce was now seen to be either a mark of the play’s timelessness or the work of a skillful director who had managed through perceptive reinterpretation to bring the play
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
up to date. Walter Kerr decided that the play had ‘‘outwitted time. Outwitted 16 years, anyway, and likely to improve the score further.’’ Henry Hewes, writing for the Saturday Review, perhaps best exemplified this new vision of the play when he said that it ‘‘probably was not Mr. Williams’s intention to write The Rose Tattoo as a grotesque comedy, but that is what this new presentation seems, and that is why it appears not the least bit dated.’’ Hewes said, moreover, that to emphasize the grotesquery, the director, Milton Katselas, concentrated on creating the ‘‘wild and irrational’’ surroundings for Williams’s fable, and, as a result, ‘‘everything that happens is ironic—so that we laugh at the ridiculousness of the events at the same time that we recognize the characters’ agonizedly sincere involvement in them.’’ And yet, in 1951, as Williams waited for his play to open at the Martin Beck Theatre, he had said, ‘‘I always thought of [The Rose Tattoo] as funny in a grotesque sort of way’’; and in his famed Preface to the play he had specified grotesquery or ‘‘a certain foolery’’ as the probable stylistic solution for the playwright who would satisfy the peculiar conditions laid down for him by his modern, skeptical audiences. What Hewes and a surprising number of critics both in 1951 and in 1966 have failed to realize is that comedy is and always has been an essential part of the typical Williams drama. A certain amount of laughter may, or indeed must, be at the expense of the Williams protagonist, as it is clear that Williams has always meant us to see that even the noblest human being is often guilty of ridiculous incongruity and is thereby laughable. Most of the modern writers—certainly those of the so-called Absurdist genre—find that they have to reduce the protagonist (when there is one) to imperception in order to make the point they want to make. The concomitant feeling of superiority toward the protagonist in such case is, we recognize, a necessary part of Absurdist technique: we must be kept aloof and at a distance from the characters, because their actions and not the characters themselves are the important things, and our involvement with them as people would serve to establish the existence of values or of a coherence that the play was written to deny. But Williams does not typically concern himself with the faceless protagonist of Absurdist or surrealist farce. In The Rose Tattoo, he clearly wanted to acknowledge and accept the limitations imposed upon him by characters of ‘‘instinctive’’—rather than rational—sensibility, and to see this condition as altogether fundamental to his design. ‘‘Our pur-
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
pose,’’ he said, ‘‘is to show these gaudy, childlike mysteries with sentiment and humor in equal measure . . .’’ In any but the most superficial reading of The Rose Tattoo, one cannot help but be struck with the frequency of references concerning the childlike qualities of these characters, and most particularly of Serafina and Alvaro. ‘‘Their fumbling communication,’’ Williams says, ‘‘has a curious intimacy and sweetness, like the meeting of two lonely children for the first time.’’ Serafina, having climbed upon a chair to reach a bottle of wine, ‘‘finds it impossible to descend . . . Clasping the bottle to her breast, she crouches there, helplessly whimpering like a child.’’ The acceptance of the childlike characteristics of Williams’s characters is not only fundamental to their proper interpretation and performance, but leads as well—almost syllogistically—to comprehension of the symbolism of the play, and from thence, as in any poetic work of integrity, back again to even deeper understanding of the characters. Having once conceded that most of Williams’s Romantic symbolism is appropriately akin to association psychology one finds the logic of this statement somewhat nearer to hand. Thus, by way of penetrating Williams’s almost Wordsworthian concept of the importance of the childlike element in Serafina and Alvaro, it is, strangely enough, most pertinent to consider first the significance that he would have us see in the Strega’s black goat. Normally an easy ‘‘symbol’’ of sexual desire, the goat makes a significant appearance to objectify Serafina’s emotional situation at several pivotal points in the action—once, for example, when Rosario’s mistress, Estelle Hohengarten, appears to order the silk shirt; again after Alvaro and Serafina have discovered their attraction for each other in Act II; and as an offstage bleat when Serafina makes her desperate assignation with Alvaro in Act III. The device as staged is grotesquely comic, and each time the goat escapes to run wild in Serafina’s backyard the incident begins in farcical pandemonium and evolves finally into a ludicrous parody of a Bacchic procession, with a ‘‘little boy . . . clapping together a pair of tin pan lids . . . wild cries of children . . . the goat’s bleating . . . and farther back follows the Strega . . . her grey hair hanging into her face and her black skirts caught up in one hand, revealing bare feet and hairy legs.’’ Having once established an aural connection between the goat and the ‘‘wild cries of children,’’ Williams goes on to introduce these child sounds almost as choric amplification at subsequent points when something happens to stir Serafina’s wild
2 0 3
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
passion for Rosario. Alvaro unwraps the rose silk shirt, and the cries are heard again; Serafina suffers the desperate urge to smash the urn containing her husband’s ashes as a little boy’s cries parallel her excitement outside the window. And at the end of Act II when Serafina lifts her eyes to the sky and begs the dead Rosario’s forgiveness for believing the ‘‘lie’’ about his infidelity, ‘‘a little boy races into the yard holding triumphantly aloft a great golden bunch of bananas. A little girl pursues him with shrill cries. He eludes her . . . The curtain falls.’’ Obviously then, the connection between children and goat is more than merely aural. For Williams, their significance is reciprocal and complementary; they are altogether thematic, and as lyrical devices they symbolize or objectify in tangible form both ‘‘lyric and Bacchantic impulses’’ which Williams sees embodied in their purest crystalline state in his Sicilians. The Rose Tattoo, he said, is the Dionysian element in human life, its mystery, its beauty, its significance . . . Although the goat is one of its most immemorial symbols, it must not be confused with mere sexuality. The element is higher and more distilled than that. Its purest form is probably manifested by children and birds in their rhapsodic moments of flight and play . . . it is the limitless world of the dream. It is the fruit of the vine that takes earth, sun, and air and distills them into juices that deprive men not of reason but of a different thing called prudence.
Serafina and Alvaro are Italian, and, for Williams, ‘‘the Italians [reveal] a different side of human nature than any I [have] ever known. I think Italians are like our Southerners without their inhibitions. They’re poetic, but they don’t have any Protestant repressions. Or if they do have any, their vitality is so strong, it crashes through them. They live from the heat.’’
on both sides of the neutral reality. And as crystallization of those grotesque human characteristics more typically instinctive than rational, more visceral than cerebral, and more childlike than mature, she will inevitably commit certain of the comic incongruities usually attributed to children and will be ‘‘criticized’’ accordingly by the corrective laughter of her ‘‘civilized’’ audiences. Our laughter at Serafina, then, is as Williams would have it: in our very act of laughing we are to verify her freedom from ‘‘prudence,’’ ‘‘empiric evidence,’’ and ‘‘civilization.’’ In the first few pages of the play, this Dionysian freedom is acknowledged immediately as we sense her gusty vitality and her intensely sexual devotion to her husband; we perceive that she is aware of life, that she reaffirms life and rejoices in it, and in so doing she prepares us for laughter that is free and full. Then, as we, the audience, realize that we see a reality above and beyond her limited or childish conception of it, we naturally react to her at first in much the same way that we respond to persons we recognize as being of inferior sensibility; as we realize that she in effect inhabits a world that is out of step or incongruous with ‘‘the everyday man’s’’ reality, we criticize her with the laughter of superiority and consider her as by definition comic. Henri Bergson would probably have described her behavior as ‘‘mechanical’’ as she ignores or is unable to recognize fact as it appears before her but rather chooses to continue to act upon the conventions and maxims peculiar to her world, even as they are disproved or denied: JACK. It is a hard thing to say. But I am—also a— virgin . . . SERAFINA. What? No. I do not believe it. JACK. Well, it’s true though . . . SERAFINA. You? A sailor?
It follows, then, that Williams’s portraits of these Sicilians—and particularly that of Serafina— will reveal them as vivid embodiments of these impulses. These are Serafina’s special set of given circumstances; she is at the outset, like Williams’s Southerner, a more intense person than most, a creature from a realm apart. And, again like Williams’s Southerner, being thus unique, she excites Williams with motivation and material for the creation of another intensely theatrical person. As almost pure distillation of those elements of human character most meaningful to Williams she will necessitate from him a bolder stroke of the brush, a more daring use of color, a stronger contrast of light and shade—or, to vary J. L. Styan’s metaphor, a wider swing of the pendulum of dramatic balance
2 0 4
SERAFINA. What are you? Catholic? JACK. Me? Yes, ma’am, Catholic. SERAFINA. You don’t look Catholic to me!
And, of course, Serafina’s vehement condemnation of her daughter’s passion for the young sailor is in ironic—and laughable—contrast to her own concern with sexuality. We soon realize, of course, that this comes about because of the fact that in her own world of intense sexuality she is led to see the same exaggeration in her daughter’s world, and she in effect flails out at chimeras which are largely of her own making. Moreover, the incongruous contrast between the enormity of the effort she expends and the size of the problem with which she is
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
dealing—what Freud would term the ‘‘quantitative contrast’’—causes her to be seen as a grotesquely comic character. Thus, in her eyes, no sailor, regardless of how young, can be innocent; tight trousers must inevitably signify sexual license; a spring dance at a high school is manifestly given for purposes of sensual indulgence; and a school picnic chaperoned by teachers becomes a maenadic orgy: ‘‘The man-crazy old-maid teachers!—They all run wild on the island!’’ So Serafina forces the young man to pledge chastity while kneeling before the shrine to the Virgin—a shrine which she herself has dedicated to sexual love. The scene at the beginning of Act III in which we see Serafina struggling frantically, ‘‘with much grunting,’’ to get the girdle from around her knees before Alvaro arrives is almost pure vaudeville; by Joseph Wood Krutch’s definition, our protagonist is here reduced to the status of a clown. Speaking of the typical farcical character, Krutch says that ‘‘the climax of our amusement coincides with the climax of his discomfort, or worse. The chief personages in farce usually are—or are put in a situation where they seem to be—clowns. And a clown is a butt, or victim. In high comedy we usually are laughing at ourselves; in farce, at somebody else.’’ But more to the point of our present discussion—in allowing us this glimpse of Serafina, Williams achieves another of his bold critical strokes whereby we are made to scrutinize the protagonist from the objective viewpoint that such grotesque comedy provides. But to make endless catalogue of Serafina’s comic incongruities would profit us but little; most of them could be analyzed, if analysis were needed, by reference to the ‘‘quantitative contrast’’ idea, or some version thereof, and to the Freudian ‘‘release of inhibitive energy.’’ In any event, the resulting laughter is gratifying to Williams, as it is in all senses Dionysian. However, the essential fact concerning this laughter has yet to be said. It is simply that having criticized Serafina to such an extent and from such a superior vantage point, we end by retaining a clear image of her dignity and worth: she remains, when all is said and done, a person of some stature and significance. Of course, it must be said that it is altogether indicative of Williams’s success in this play that we are able to say of Serafina, after having laughed long and loudly at her, that we recognize her genuine and sizable capacity for love, and that it is in very point of fact this same extraordinary characteristic which is the significant element in her downfall. It is, in a sense, her hamartia, her tragic flaw.
V o l u m e
1 8
R o s e
T a t t o o
In recognizing Serafina’s special stature in this respect, we perceive in her being a universal in which we all share, and we sympathize. Even as we are led to laughter by Serafina’s extremities of behavior in her loss of control after Rosario’s death— [Rosa] crouches and covers her face in shame as Serafina heedlessly plunges out into the front yard in her shocking déshabille, making wild gestures . . . As Serafina paces about, she swings her hips in the exaggeratedly belligerent style of a parading matador.
—we recognize an extremity which is as peculiar to tragedy as it is to comedy. Even as we are made to laugh by the incongruity of her actions—or, as by them we see our own standards of ‘‘normal,’’ adult reality reaffirmed—we see the intensity of the grief which alone could cause such behavior; in our very act of laughing we seem almost heartlessly—but how effectively—to verify the extent of this visceral being’s feeling. Hers is a love and a grief so great they threaten her destruction; by this fact alone she suggests a greatness, and in that tragic flaw is centered the principal tension of The Rose Tattoo. With Rosario’s death, Serafina’s predictable reaction was to attempt to continue her worship in as close an approximation to its former pattern as possible. In so doing, of course, she chose to continue in blind devotion to her dead husband and became a prisoner of her own self-deception. Instead of association with living beings, she chose the motionless dummies of the dressmaker; instead of love bestowed on the living, she chose adoration before the ashes of the dead; and instead of actuality and engagement in the present, she chose memory and nostalgia for the past. It is interesting, then, to note that in speaking thus of Serafina, we find her to be another of Williams’s variations of the ‘‘weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace,’’ and around whom he structures his every play. In terms of Williams’s typical character deployment, Serafina is actually a direct descendent of Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and of Alma Winemiller in Summer and Smoke. But, on the other hand, like Blanche DuBois, she is an active protagonist rather than a passive, and to her in turn will come thematic antagonists—like Alvaro—who will contest her view of herself and who will thereby provide the means for a gradual, cumulative view of her character. In our admission that Serafina’s remarkable capacity for love triumphs over her more comedic aspects—or, rather, by having us concede that those very childlike characteristics which make her comic also give Serafina stature—Williams succeeds in having us reaffirm for him that fact about human
2 0 5
T h e
R o s e
T a t t o o
relationships which is woven somehow into most of the work of this avowed Romanticist and which, however phrased, expresses what remains for him man’s closest approximation to a dependable absolute: the human being transcends his own pathetic insignificance only when he puts himself aside to love another person. In loving another, Williams would have us see in The Rose Tattoo, man most nearly succeeds in conquering the ultimate enemy of all significance, time. Before Rosario’s death, Serafina says of her life with him: Time doesn’t pass . . . My clock is my heart and my heart don’t say tick-tock, it says love-love!
At the end of Act I, however, after Rosario has been killed, Serafina winds her daughter’s watch before her shrine, and glaring fiercely at the watch she pounds her chest three times and says: Tick-tick-tick! . . . Speak to me, Lady! Oh, Lady give me a sign!
With love gone from her life, time’s passing and the transience of all meaning are now all she can see. Then, at the end of the play, when Serafina has re-entered life through the discovery of new love with Alvaro, she holds the watch to her ear again. She shakes it a little, then utters a faint, startled laugh.
Time has been arrested for her again, and Williams, the supreme Romanticist, would have us see the stopping of her daughter’s watch as significant of Serafina’s spiritual rebirth. Love is itself unmoving, Only the cause and end of movement, Timeless . . . Source: Leland Starnes, ‘‘The Grotesque Children of The Rose Tattoo,’’ in Modern Drama, No. 12, February 1970, pp. 357–69.
2 0 6
SOURCES Bigsby, C. W. E., A Critical Introduction to TwentiethCentury American Drama, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, 1985. Hawkins, William, Review of The Rose Tattoo, in the New York World-Telegram and Sun, February 5, 1951, p. 10. Kolin, Philip C., ‘‘The Family of Mitch,’’ in Magical Muse: Millennial Essays on Tennessee Williams, edited by Ralph F. Voss, University of Alabama Press, 2002. ———, ‘‘‘Sentiment and Humor in Equal Measure’: Comic Forms in The Rose Tattoo,’’ in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute, University Press of Mississippi, 1977. Marshall, Margaret, Review of The Rose Tattoo, in the Nation, Vol., CLXII, February 17, 1951, 161–62.
FURTHER READING Grant, Michael, Myths of the Greeks and Romans, New American Library, 1962. Grant’s classic presentation and discussion of central ancient Greco-Roman myths and religious practices includes commentary about the god Dionysus. Mangione, Jerre, and Ben Morreale, La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience, HarperCollins, 1992. As the title of this work suggests, its authors consider the history of Italians in the North American region from the days of European exploration to the present. Martin, Robert A., Critical Essays on Tennessee Williams, G.K. Hall, 1997. Martin provides students of Williams with an excellent source book containing contemporaneous reviews of the plays, critical essays on individual plays, and essays that discuss Williams’s work as a whole. Voss, Ralph F., ed., Magical Muse: Millennial Essays on Tennessee Williams, the University of Alabama Press, 2002. The set of essays that make up this recent volume covers topics of interest to readers of Williams ranging from the literary to the biographical. Williams, Tennessee, Memoirs, Doubleday & Company, 1975. Memoirs is Williams’s engaging autobiography.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
The Sound of a Voice David Henry Hwang’s The Sound of a Voice is a tragic story told through the mythic metaphors of Japanese literature. This play is Hwang’s attempt to explore some of the deepest, and sometimes contradictory, human emotions. To do so, he created two very lonely middle-aged characters and placed them in an isolated house, almost as if to watch them interact as they simultaneously long for, and repel, the magnetic powers of love. Both his female and his male characters are desperately lonely, but their fear of being psychologically marred by the other keeps them from a final surrender to their emotional needs.
DAVID HENRY HWANG 1983
The Sound of a Voice was first produced on a double bill with Hwang’s The House of Sleeping Beauties by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater on November 6, 1983. Both of these plays were a departure for Hwang, who had previously focused on stories about Chinese American immigrants and the problems they faced as they tried to assimilate, or adjust, to life in the United States. Both plays take place somewhere in Japan, and several critics have remarked that the overall theme of The Sound of a Voice reminds them of the work of Japanese author Kobo Abe, especially his Woman in the Dunes, which was first published as a novel and later adapted to the screen. The Sound of a Voice is a deeply moving play with a surprising, or, more appropriately, a shocking ending. In the play, Hwang’s characters must con-
2 0 7
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
front their fears of growing old, of never finding love, and of never being comforted by the intimacy of a long and trusted relationship, all in the short but intense space of one act. To present such emotion in a short span of time, Hwang needed to create a dialogue that is as precise as it is spare, a feat that he accomplished quite successfully. The dramatic impact of this short play is not only deeply felt, but, according to many critics, also very haunting.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY David Henry Hwang was born on August 11, 1957, in Los Angeles, California, to his immigrant parents, Henry Yuan, a native of Shanghai, China, and Dorothy (Huang) Hwang, who was born in China but raised in the Philippines. Hwang’s mother and father met after immigrating to the United States and while attending the University of Southern California, where his mother studied music and his father majored in business. Although the theme of Chinese ancestry has played an important role in many of Hwang’s works, he has said that his ethnicity was not a significant concern as he was growing up. While attending Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor of arts degree in English in 1979, Hwang became involved in a search of his cultural roots and took an interest in what it meant to be an immigrant. Also, while at Stanford, Hwang wrote his first play, F.O.B. (‘‘fresh off the boat’’), which was first produced on campus. Hwang’s father, who had initially rebuked his son for wanting to be a writer, a profession that Hwang’s father felt merited little respect, later praised and encouraged his son after watching the performance of this play. F.O.B. was later produced off-Broadway in 1980 and went on to win an OBIE for best new play. Highlights of Hwang’s career include two plays that were written in 1981. Both plays contain Chinese immigration themes and were produced in New York—The Dance and the Railroad (a Pulitzer Prize finalist) and Family Devotions. Sound and Beauty (1983), which is the combined title for two one-act plays, The Sound of a Voice and The House of Sleeping Beauties, takes on a Japanese setting and style, a departure from Hwang’s exploration of Chinese identity. Then in 1986, Hwang stepped even further away from his roots with his play Rich Relations as he experimented with an all-Caucasian cast.
2 0 8
Critics were not very pleased with Rich Relations, not because they were disappointed with Hwang’s departure from Asian themes but rather for the ordinariness of the play. However, in 1988, with the production of Hwang’s M. Butterfly, critical appraisal returned as the play won a Tony Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. M. Butterfly was inspired by Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera Madame Butterfly and a news story that Hwang read concerning a French diplomat who lived with a Chinese lover whom he thought was a woman but who turned out to be a man. Hwang also went on to write the screenplay for M. Butterfly (1993), which starred Jeremy Irons and John Lone. Other screenplays include Golden Gate (1994), The Lost Empire (2001), a four-hour television miniseries, and, as coauthor, Possession (2001). Hwang is also involved in opera, having written librettos for composer Philip Glass’s 1000 Airplanes on the Roof (1988) and The Voyage (1992), and for composer Bright Sheng’s The Silver River (1997). He also co-authored the song ‘‘Solo,’’ which was released on the album Come by Prince. Hwang has served as vice president of Theatre Communications Group, conducted interviews on arts-related topics for the PBS cable television show Asian American, and was appointed to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities by President Clinton. Hwang is married to actress Kathryn Layng, and the couple have two children, Noah David and Eva Veanne.
PLOT SUMMARY Scene 1 In scene 1 of Hwang’s The Sound of a Voice, the man character is sitting inside the female character’s house. She is serving him tea. She then offers the man food, because she can tell that he has been walking for many days and because she wants to make him feel welcome. The woman asks the man if he is tired, and he tells her that he slept in the woods the night before, next to a rushing waterfall, which broke the silence. Neither th man nor the woman like silence. She states that she will sleep well if the man stays, because she will hear the sound of his breathing. When asked his name, the man refuses to give her one. The woman, in turn, tells the man that he can
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
call her Yokiko, although she suggests that this is not really her name. The man tells her that she is very kind. The woman tells him that he is very smart.
Scene 2 The man is getting dressed when the woman enters the room. She senses that he is leaving. He has a great distance to travel, he tells her. When she asks where he is going, the man offers vague images without detail, and the woman does not believe him. The woman talks about the care that she gives the flowers. When the man asks what it is that she does, she tells him that it is difficult to put it into words. ‘‘It takes hundreds of words to describe a single act of caring,’’ she tells him. Then she asks him to stay ‘‘as long as you’d like.’’ She longs for the man’s company, and he is attracted to her caring touch, but at the same time, he is also wary of needing her.
Scene 3 The man chops wood, a chore that he particularly enjoys. When the man notices that the woman is staring at his belly, he becomes self-conscious about his lack of body tone and makes fun of his body. The woman reprimands him. She demonstrates how he should care for his body, whether or not it is in good shape. The scene ends with the woman placing her hand on his belly, and the two of them staring into one another’s eyes, suggesting the first intimacy between them.
Scene 4 There is no dialogue in this scene. The man is lying on his sleeping mat, in a separate room from the woman. He suddenly lifts his head as if he is straining to hear something. In the background, finally, he hears the soft sound of a musical instrument (a shakuhachi, a Japanese flute), which quickly fades away. He takes out a flower that he has hidden under his pillow, a flower that he stole from the vase that the woman has since removed from the room. He stares at it. He is drawn to the music, but the flower represents something that scares him. He has heard rumors about other men who have come to this woman’s house and have never returned. Although his feelings for her are being aroused, he does not want to be entrapped by this woman.
Scene 5 Scene 5 opens with the man watching the woman scrub the floor. He tells her that he heard her
V o l u m e
1 8
David Henry Hwang
playing music the night before and asks that she play for him. She is shy about her abilities, believing that he will laugh at her because of her unsophisticated tastes in music. Then, she comes across a stain in the floor, one that she has tried for as long as she has lived there to remove. The man goes over and helps her. When he is successful in removing the stain, he states: ‘‘We are a team! You and me!’’ This scene is symbolic of the couple’s growing relationship. The woman suggests that she is ready to play the shakuhachi for him, but she tells him that she usually plays only to please herself, to makes sounds like the human voice to keep herself from being so lonely. In her willingness to play for him, the woman is exposing herself, making herself vulnerable to the man.
Scene 6 There is no dialogue in scene 6. It is nighttime again. The man is sleeping when all of the sudden he hears the woman’s music. This time, he hears it more clearly. The woman is playing louder than usual. He stands up and puts his ear to the door of her room and slowly slides the screen open so he can see her. He watches her as she takes care of her flowers, which are spread around her room. She is
2 0 9
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
dressed in a vibrantly colored robe, and the man is amazed at her beauty. He then closes the door and returns to bed.
Scene 7 In the morning, the man is practicing sword maneuvers. It is obvious that he has lost some of his skills. When the woman appears, he tells her that he heard her playing music the night before. She asks if he enjoyed it and then tells him that she wants to play for him every night. He turns her offer against himself, believing that she plays for him so he will fall asleep. This makes him feel like a baby who must be soothed. She tells him to stop making fun of himself. Then she says that she likes to play for him in order to shape his dreams. The man insists that she become involved in his swordplay and is totally caught off guard when she outmaneuvers him. Her having beaten him makes the woman feel uncomfortable, ‘‘undignified.’’ The man encourages her to try again. He is impressed with her skills. The woman, however, is afraid that her skills make her look too manly. She is concerned that she will not appear attractive because of her strength. The woman is afraid that the man will now want to leave, because she has embarrassed him with her abilities. She insinuates that she can outmaneuver men in many different ways, and that is what makes them want to leave. She is now afraid that the man will do the same. The man tells the woman that he has heard rumors that she is a witch and that she imposes curses on men who come to visit her. He tells her that she is beautiful. He is trying to tell her that he came to her house with some preconceived idea, but after living with her, he is beginning to lose his fear of women. The woman confesses that there have been men who have come to her house with the idea of ‘‘killing the witch in the woods.’’ She then realizes that he may have come for the same reason. He confesses that he is still somewhat afraid of her. He claims he hears voices when he looks into the flowers that she tends, insinuating that she has the power to imprison the spirits of the men. He listens to their hum, which he describes in positive terms: ‘‘It hums with the peacefulness of one who is completely imprisoned.’’ Here he suggests his fear of the power of love and is afraid of surrendering to his emotions. She, too, is afraid. She tells him that it is not only the man who suffers in love, women also
2 1 0
must surrender to it. In the past, when she has done so, the man has left, taking a part of her heart with him. She then declares that if the man has come to kill her, he should do it now, because she cannot stand to have her heart broken again. The man tells her that he would never leave her. The woman says that she believes him.
Scene 8 The woman opens this scene by confessing that she has never cried in her life. She is incapable of releasing the pain that she has endured. She is dressed in a special kimono, one that the man has only seen by peeking into her room at night. She suggests that they might go out that day, maybe just for a walk. She then wants to get something for him, but all he wants to do is practice his sword maneuvers. When she leaves the room, he sits down and places the sword on the floor, with its tip pointing upward, and he rests his chin on it. When the woman returns, she grabs his head and jerks it upward away from the sword, fearing that he will hurt himself. The man claims that what he was doing was a form of meditation. She tells him it is dangerous. He tells her that she is treating him like a child. He explains the practice, telling her that the friend who taught him this meditation had said that he could ‘‘feel the line between this world and the others’’ when he rested on his sword in this way. His friend told him that if he saw something in one of the other worlds that he liked better, all he had to do was to apply pressure on the sword with his neck, and he would be there. One day, he found his friend dead, with the sword having pierced his throat. He must have found something better, the man tells the woman, or else he had merely made the mistake of having fallen asleep on it. The woman claims that the man is tormenting her, and yet she tells him if that is how he wants to leave her, she could help him by pushing down on the back of his head. She would then commit suicide so that she could be with him; but then, she tells him to stop this type of meditation. He refuses. She insists; he tells her if she comes any closer, he will drop his head on the sword. She moves slowly toward him, stares into his eyes, then removes the sword, and takes it away.
Scene 9 The woman enters the room and sees that the man is getting ready to leave. She asks if he was just going to sneak out on her like a frightened child. He
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
tells her that he cares about her, but he must leave because she has shamed him. He ‘‘came seeking glory,’’ he tells her. She asks if his glory was to be gained by his killing her. He does not directly answer her but does state that he was too weak to kill her and too weak to kill himself. He tells her that she has defeated him. He confesses, obliquely, that he has fallen in love with her, and it is the love that has weakened him, or so he believes. The woman tells him to kill her, but he cannot. She tells him that she wants him to stay. They could offer one another solace. ‘‘The sound of a human voice,’’ the woman claims, is so simple and yet so hard to hold on to. She would rather that the man kill her than be left alone in her house. He responds that she should force him to stay; but she will not do that. She does warn him, however, that he walks on fragile ground. If he were to leave her, it would be as if he had fallen into a deep bottomless crevice. He would spend the rest of his life falling, always fearing when he would hit the bottom. Having been touched by love, she posits, he cannot go back to living as he had in the past.
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
heart to the woman. He becomes somewhat entranced by her music and later by her beauty and her tenderness. Slowly, he changes from being just a visitor to becoming a companion, helping her in her daily chores, enjoying her company. However, when the woman out maneuvers him in swordplay and then later humiliates him by taking his sword away from him while he performs a dangerous meditation, he decides that he can no longer stay with her. When he attempts to leave, however, his emotions pull him back to her home. He returns too late, though, for the woman has committed suicide during his indecision. He then attempts to play the flute, a feat that the woman had mastered. The play ends with the man trying to make a sound come out of the flute, a sound that the woman has referred to as a substitute for the sound of a human voice. The man is unsuccessful. In some ways, by the end of the play, the man is attempting to take over the role of the woman. He attempts to replace her but is unable to do so.
The Woman
The woman then leaves the room. The man starts to follow her, then turns around and rushes outside, then turns again, and walks back into the house and slowly toward her room. He opens the door and peers in. Then he returns to the main room and unrolls his sleeping mat. He notices the shakuhachi, picks it up, and blows into it, trying to make a sound. The woman’s room then lights up, and the audience sees that she has hung herself. The flowers around her have all been ‘‘blown’’ off, their petals are strewn around the room.
The woman is a self-sufficient elder female who lives in the woods alone. She has mastered many skills on her own, except for the ability to keep herself from feeling lonely. She craves the company of a man, someone she can care for. Her love, however, is so strong, and her abilities so advanced, that she scares most men away. When the man appears, she tries one last time to open her heart, to allow him to see her as honestly as she can portray herself. She cannot help being who she is and yet she fears that in totally exposing herself she will once again lose the opportunity to share love with a man.
CHARACTERS
In the beginning, she is shy. She reveals her true beauty and abilities slowly. She plays out the role of servant to the man, then returns to her private quarters, where she expresses herself more fully but in the privacy of her room. It is in her room that she fully blossoms; eventually, the man gains a glimpse of her beauty. This encourages her to share her feelings with him. However, as she demonstrates her skills and gains confidence in her love of the man, she also humiliates him, unknowingly. She is stronger than he is. She is more skilled. She is also more fragile, having had her heart broken many times before. In his indecision, the man rebukes her, and she cannot stand it. She would rather die than lose yet another chance to love. In the end, she commits suicide.
The Man The male character is an aging Samurai warrior, who is traveling all over the countryside of Japan. There is no mention of why he is wandering, only that he feels that he must keep moving on. He is very lonely and is also afraid of growing old and losing his skills. It is suggested that he has come to the woman’s home to kill her, as the surrounding villagers believe the woman to be a witch who mesmerizes men and entraps their spirits. The villagers would like to be rid of her. Although the man tries to remain objective about his supposed purpose, he slowly opens his
V o l u m e
1 8
2 1 1
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • The social stigma of suicide (hara-kiri and kamikaze) in Japan differs from that in the United States. Investigate this difference in social customs. What are the historical, philosophical, and social contexts for suicide in Japan? How and why did it become ritualized? What is it about Western attitudes towards death, especially selfinflicted, that differs from the Japanese? • Research the history of the Samurai warriors in Japan. In what period were they most active? What did they represent? Whom did they protect? Were they solitary figures or did they travel in groups? What was their attitude toward women? What kind of training did they undergo? How has the philosophy of the Samurai affected contemporary Japanese society? • Read Hwang’s The House of Sleeping Beauties, which was often produced with The Sound of a Voice as a sort of ‘‘sister’’ play. How are the plays similar? Do the themes compliment one another? Did you gain a more comprehensive understanding of The Sound of a Voice by reading the second play?
THEMES Loneliness and Isolation Hwang’s play The Sound of a Voice introduces two characters. First, there is a woman who lives alone in an isolated home in a small country village. Then there is a man, who travels alone throughout the country, a man who has no home. Both the woman and the man share a dislike of solitude. They also share the fear of being hurt by love, which keeps them locked in their separate psychological cages. They are both tremendously lonely, so much so that the man, at one point, sleeps near a waterfall because he has a strong desire to hear the sounds of human voices, and the waterfall is as close as he can come to simulating that sound. The woman, on the other hand, teaches herself to play a Japanese flute,
2 1 2
which is the closest she can come to mimicking the human voice. When they meet, they admit their loneliness to one another; but because they have lived so isolated not only from other people but also from their own emotions, the tearing down of the walls they have built to protect their hearts, in the end, destroys them.
Tragic Love The characters in Hwang’s play are both vulnerable to love. They both crave it, and they both fear it. The man is afraid that love will rob him of his powers. The woman is afraid that love will break her heart. The woman, at first, appears to be the more willing of the two to open up to the power of love. However, she has done so in the past, only to have the man of her affections leave her. It takes longer for the man to realize that he loves the woman. He first sees her as unattractive but kind. After staying with her, he finds beauty in her and becomes fascinated with her. However, when her skills in swordsmanship outshine his own, he backs away from her, denying himself any emotional fulfillment. He blames the woman for shaming him. Eventually, he realizes his love and is willing to commit himself to her. Unfortunately, he comes to this conclusion too late. The woman, because she would rather die than have him leave her, becomes confused by the man’s indecision and takes her life.
Aging The woman represents the often overlooked beauty of female middle age. When the man first sees her, he sees only her age. She is also often referred to, by the local villagers, as a witch because she lives alone, is aging, and yet reputedly is still capable of luring men. Since she is not young, people assume that the only way she could possibly attract a man is to place a spell on him. The longer that the man stays at the woman’s house, the more appealing she becomes. He begins to appreciate her kindness, her skills, and her femininity. He finds her beauty by truly seeing and appreciating her rather than comparing her to a young woman. The man, on the other hand, is an aging Samurai swordsman. He makes fun of the fat that has accumulated around his middle. His movements are slower as are his reactions when he sword plays with the woman. He is humiliated and frustrated by his age and his declining abilities. He is shamed by the fact that a mere woman can outmaneuver him. He becomes disgusted with himself and blames woman for having stolen his powers.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
Fear of Intimacy Both the man and the woman have a fear of intimacy. This is demonstrated in many different ways, beginning with their inability to tell one another their true names. The woman’s fear differs from the man’s, however. She fears that if she allows herself to fall in love again, she will end up having yet another part of her heart taken away from her. She has loved in the past and has been hurt. Although she is afraid, her fear does not stop her from hoping that the man will love her and never leave her. She is able to fantasize about the possibilities of love and yet when she senses that the man is leaving, she feels incapable of surviving yet another defeat. She craves intimacy so much that she would rather die than live any longer without it. The man fears that if he allows himself to become intimate with the woman, she will entrap him. She will hold him prisoner, as he assumes she has done to every other man who has stopped at her house. The man hears the voices of those men entrapped in the flowers that the woman tends. He does not want to become one of them. He is especially fearful after the woman demonstrates that she is better at swordplay than he is. He also becomes disgruntled when the woman takes away his sword in the midst of a so-called dangerous meditation that could end in the man’s death. He decides to leave the woman, despite his acknowledged love for her. When he tries to depart, he discovers that he cannot go. In the last scene, he has overcome his fear. Unfortunately, he has done so too late.
STYLE One-Act Play The Sound of a Voice is a one-act play, consisting of nine short scenes played by only two actors, a man and a woman. The first two scenes introduce the characters. The audience learns that the man is a traveling Samurai swordsman and that the woman lives alone in the woods. Other needed information is passed back and forth, and by the end of the second scene, the woman has invited the man to stay at her home. It is obvious that neither the man nor the woman know one another very well, but through their dialog, the audience senses that they both have needs that they each are hoping the other might satisfy. It is not clear, yet, what those needs are, but
V o l u m e
1 8
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
dramatic tension begins to build, and the audience’s curiosity is aroused simultaneously with the curiosity of the characters as they too explore the possibilities. What do the characters want from one another? How are they imagining they might get what they need? Is it a physical attraction or do their needs go much deeper? This scene is used to draw the audience into the characters lives. Intimacy begins to brew in scenes 3 through 5, with a continuing rise in dramatic tension. The man takes part in some of the domestic chores, demonstrating the first hints that he is willing to share in the woman’s life, that he wants more than just a few hours of physical pleasure. However, the sexual attraction is present, and the couple draws closer to one another physically, as the man bares his chest and then self-consciously makes fun of his girth. The woman touches his bare skin for the first time, as she gently reprimands him for putting down his physical appearance. With this gesture, the the woman suggests a variety of emotions. She is stating that the aging process need not be something that one fears. Rather, one should learn to love the various stages of life, not just youth. She is also saying that the physical is only one aspect of their attraction, and that the need to share goes much deeper. She signals her willingness to take the relationship beyond the physical by sharing her music with the man. Music is sensual, but it also signals a language that goes beyond words to a more spiritual realm. For his part, the man helps the woman remove a stain from her floor, one that she has been trying to get rid of for a long time. This signifies the man’s desire to help the woman on a deeper, psychological basis, helping the woman to wipe out a pain she has suffered in the past. By scene 6, which is without dialogue, it is evident that the man and the woman are pursuing something that goes much deeper than lust. In scene 7, trouble enters the picture, as the woman outmaneuvers the man in sword play. This causes the man shame and makes the woman regret that she may have stepped outside of the boundaries of what a woman is supposed to do. The man is further humiliated in scene eight when the woman takes away his sword while he is in the midst of performing a dangerous meditation. These scenes represent the major challenge the lovers must face. The woman has always been afraid of her powers in terms of her relationships with men. Once she fully exposes her strengths, men walk away from her. She does not try to squeeze herself into the typical, socially described definition of what a woman should
2 1 3
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
be. She exhibits her strength and intelligence. The man, on the other hand, has been warned of women like her, women who will sap his strength, imprison him. The actions of this scene play into the stereotypical definitions of man and woman. The challenge to the characters is to see if they can lift themselves beyond the social definitions of how a man and a woman should act. They also must redefine love in terms of strength rather than weakness. If they do not succeed, the potential for love will turn to tragedy. This is the height of dramatic tension. Many questions have been answered. The relationship has reached a plateau. The decisions that the woman and the man make will determine whether this is a play of romance or tragedy. In the final scene, the characters act demonstrate their conclusions. The woman has lost hope. She has opened herself to the man but has become too vulnerable. She has suffered too much loneliness and isolation in the past and cannot bear to suffer any more. She has also misjudged the man, believing that he cannot bear her strengths and is leaving. The man, tragically, has overcome his fear of the woman and his fear of intimacy, but he hesitates, which becomes his fatal flaw. This is a love story, but it ends tragically.
Symbolism Symbolism abounds in Hwang’s play. Of all of the symbols, sound is the most abundant. One of the first is the sound of tea being poured into a cup, which the man refers to as soothing. Later on, he tells the woman that he spent the night at the foot of a waterfall in the woods, which he also found soothing. The sound of water falling is soothing as a substitute for human voices, and the pouring of tea is part of an etiquette ritual that symbolizes companionship. Thus, Hwang is suggesting that the man also finds the woman soothing. These sounds temporarily answer a need for human contact, serving as symbols that incorporate the main theme of the play—the need for love and intimacy. The other obvious sound symbol is that of the shakuhachi, the Japanese flute that the woman plays. She relates it to the sound of the human voice just as the man interprets the sound of the waterfall; when she first plays the flute, she does so very softly. This is symbolic of the woman’s fear of truly expressing herself. She is afraid that if she tells the man exactly what she is feeling, she might scare him away. She states that she plays for her own satisfaction and does not know if what she is ‘‘saying’’ with the flute is appropriate.
2 1 4
Another dominant symbol is that of the flowers that the woman tends. They have been put in her care, she tells the man. They have come to her from all over, brought by visitors. When the man investigates the flowers, he believes that he can hear the sound of men’s voices inside the flowers, moaning, peacefully so, as if they have been entrapped. The woman keeps the majority of the flowers in her private room, bringing out only a few at a time to place in a vase each day. At night, she takes them back into the room with her. Whether or not the flowers represent actual men is not important. Rather, it is the care that she gives the flowers and the vibrant colors of the flowers that are significant. These attributes of caring and vibrancy might also be observed in her emotions, in her willingness to love, and the depth and nourishment of that love. At one point, the man secretly takes one of the flowers from the vase and keeps it under his pillow, signifying that he wants a part of her love, despite the fact that he is concerned that he, too, might become entrapped. Another symbolic act occurs when the woman is scrubbing the floor in scene 5. She comes upon a stain on the floor and tells the man that is has been there ever since she moved in. She has not been able to remove the stain, but the man wants to give it a try. He rubs to a rhythm as he recounts that he is slowly getting rid of it. First, the edges of the stain fade, then he moves ‘‘towards the center—to the heart.’’ This stain might represent the sorrow that the woman has felt throughout the years as other men have come and gone, taking a piece of her heart with them. The removal of the stain might be a process of healing for the woman. When the stain is gone, the woman thanks him, and he states: ‘‘We are a team!’’
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Asian American Literature Until the 1950s, most literature published in the United States that pertained to the Asian experience was written by non-Asian authors. One of the most prominent writers of this genre was Pearl S. Buck, the daughter of Presbyterian missionary workers who were stationed in China. Buck’s most famous work was called The Good Earth (1931), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a simple Chinese family
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1980s: Up from 1.5 million in the 1970s, the Asian American population starts out at nearly 3.7 million in 1980, a figure that almost doubled through the remainder of the decade.
Time magazine’s Man of the Year, is honored for his research into the AIDs epidemic. While in the arts, Yo-Yo Ma enthralls audiences with his tentime Grammy-winning performances on the cello.
Today: The Asian American population is over 10 million people. • 1980s: Amy Tan’s success with her novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) and subsequent movie of the same name popularizes literary works by Asian American authors.
• 1980s: Mao Zadong’s Cultural Revolution is officially proclaimed a catastrophe as China undergoes substantial political reform with Hua Guofeng, a protege of Mao, being replaced as premier by reformist Sichuan party chief Zhao Ziyang.
Today: Many prominent Chinese Americans are leaders in the fields of politics, computer technology, medicine, and the arts. Dr. David Ho,
Today: As unemployment figures soar in China, their officials search for ways to keep tabs on social unrest.
and their poverty. Buck called on her experiences of living in rural settings in China, pointing out both the need for landownership for economic stability, as well as other social issues such as the low status of Chinese women. In the 1960s, with old quotas on immigration from Asian countries abandoned, the Asian American population quickly expanded. Then in the 1970s, with the popularity of Maxine Hong Kingston’s National Book Critics Circle Award-winning memoir, Woman Warrior (1976), interest in the lives and literature of Asian Americans began to blossom. Ten years later, Amy Tan’s novel The Joy Luck Club (1989) and subsequent movie broadened the scope. Today there is a national writers’ organization devoted to Asian American authors; most colleges offer courses in Asian American studies; and burgeoning sales in literature and memoirs by Asian Americans are encouraging Asian American authors to widen their scopes and offer works not just on the topics of immigration and assimilation but also on themes of love or on everyday occurrences such as those in David Wong Louie’s novel The Barbarians Are Coming (2000) about a Connecticut ladies’ club.
V o l u m e
1 8
Movies with Asian American Themes Hwang has stated that many of his childhood images of Asian American models came to him through the movies. Such productions as the Charlie Chan movies, which were made during the 1930s and starred non-Chinese actors in the main role, portrayed a somewhat witty detective who often resorted to the quoting of pithy Chinese proverbs. Although Chan was a likeable character, Dr. Fu Manchu, an evil Asian crime lord created in the 1960s, was not. Hwang has said that he was often embarrassed by these mid-century movie characters. Movies with Chinese themes took another turn in the 1970s, with the production of martial arts driven movies, especially those starring Bruce Lee, such as his Enter the Dragon (1973). Amy Tan’s movie, The Joy Luck Club (1993), based on her novel, which enjoyed seventy-five weeks on the New York Times’s best-selling list, marked a new interest in Asian American people not as stereotypes of themselves but as real people dealing with genuine problems as they adjust to life in the States. Although movies with Chinese themes are still not prolific, the quality of such movies are changing, as witnessed with the production of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), which went on to win four Academy Awards.
2 1 5
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
Politics in China during the MidTwentieth Century Hwang’s father, Henry Yuan Hwang, left his native Shanghai, China, in the late 1940s, because of the communist takeover of his country. Prior to the communist takeover, parts of China had been controlled by Britain, Portugal, and Japan. After their support of the Allies during World War I, China had been promised that their land would be returned to them; however, it was not. In reaction to the broken promise, about three thousand students held a protest in Tiananmen Square on May 4, 1919, and this event became known as the beginning of the nationalist movement. In 1925, Chiang Kaishek took over the leadership of the fledgling Nationalist Party and began to unify the southern portion of China, massacring communists along the way. One young communist who was able to avoid being murdered was Mao Zadong, who would later become a powerful communist leader. The nationalists were making very successful strides in ridding the country of communists until Japan decided to invade Manchuria in 1937. With this invasion, the nationalist armies had to turn their attention to the Japanese, who were massacring large portions of the Chinese population. In 1941, after the assault on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese could not long pursue their visions of conquering China, as the U.S. military sought revenge on the Japanese homeland. With the Japanese out of the picture, the Chinese Communist Party regrouped and found that their military strategies were far superior to the nationalists, who had grown undisciplined due to rampant and intractable corruption, which had left the party all but bankrupt. By October 1949, Chiang Kaishek had fled to Taiwan and Mao Zadong had proclaimed the creation of the People’s Republic of China on the mainland.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW In a 1983 review of Hwang’s double billing, Sound and Beauty in which The Sound of a Voice was first staged, New York Times critic Frank Rich called Hwang ‘‘a hugely gifted, Los Angeles-born Chinese-American writer.’’ Although Hwang’s career has had its ups and downs, most critics concur that the author of The Sound of a Voice has had a great influence on American theater. At one point in his career, many reviewers even referred to Hwang’s having been gifted with a Midas touch—everything he wrote was a success.
2 1 6
The Sound of a Voice was somewhat a departure for Hwang, when it first was staged in New York, where it enjoyed a two-month off-Broadway run. His previous works had focused on the plight of Chinese immigrants as they attempted to adapt to their new lives in the United States. ‘‘I’m in a state of transition right now,’’ Hwang told a reporter for People Weekly, a year following the completion of the first run of this play. He was concerned at that time that he was being categorized as a ChineseAmerican playwright, so he thought he would write about something a little different than the ChineseAmerican immigrant experience. Although Rich did not view the play altogether favorably, he did find the overall atmosphere very ‘‘pictorial’’ and concluded that the play represented ‘‘an earnest, considered experiment furthering an exceptional young writer’s process of growth.’’ The play has been staged over the years in small theaters, and in 1994, it was performed in Salt Lake City as part of a celebration of Asian/Pacific American Awareness Week. Linda Sarver, for Theatre Journal reviewed the performance, referring to its ‘‘sparse and symbol-laden dialogue [that] is elegant in its minimalism.’’ Sarver also commented on the reaction of the audience at the end of the play, which she felt ‘‘attested to the effectiveness, beauty, and deep emotion’’ of Hwang’s work.
CRITICISM Joyce Hart Hart has degrees in English literature and creative writing and focuses her published writing on literary themes. In this essay, Hart compares Hwang’s characters to the relationship that Kobo Abe develops in his novel The Woman in the Dunes. Like David Henry Hwang’s The Sound of a Voice, Kobo Abe, a Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author and dramatist, wrote his classic piece of fiction, The Woman in the Dunes in the form of fable. Also like Hwang’s play, Abe depicts the tragic relationship between a lonely woman and a solitary man, which ends, like Hwang’s, with the male protagonist left alone in the woman’s abode. The similarities between Abe’s novel and Hwang’s Japanese-influenced play have often been noted by critics. The focus of this essay is to explore the relationships between the men and the women in these two
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
works, with an emphasis on the authors’ shared theme of entrapment. Hwang’s unnamed male protagonist, a Samurai warrior, wanders throughout the countryside of Japan ready to protect the villages he passes through. On one such venture, he is told about a woman who lives by herself in the woods, a woman whom the villagers believe is a threat because they do not understand her ability to fend for herself, or in other words, to be self-sufficient. Stories abound about this woman, including the fact that she is a witch who captivates men through magic spells. Armed with his sword, the aging Samurai seeks out the woman with the intention of killing her and thus ridding the village of potential harm. This is the opening premise of Hwang’s fairytale-like play, whose protagonist is a man seeking adventure. He lives on the road, alone, and happens to be afraid of women. Abe’s novel starts differently. His male protagonist, Niki Jumpei, is a bachelor, a schoolteacher, and a hobbyist who studies insects. During a summer trip to the country, he becomes fascinated with a particular beetle that lives in the sand. Stranded for the night in an isolated village located in the midst of the sand dunes, he accepts an invitation to stay at the home of a young widow. The widow lives in a house that is located in a hole thirty feet deep in the sand. The only means of entering her house is to be let down via a rope ladder. It is from these two points that the relationships in each story begin to develop. In Hwang’s play, the man enters the woman’s house willingly, urged on by the villagers. However, his motives for staying are deceptive. He tells the woman that he is lonely and praises her generosity in housing and feeding him. Although he probably truly appreciates her, he is not willing to tell her his name because he does not want to personalize the relationship. He is, after all, there to kill her. In Abe’s work, the man also enters the woman’s house willingly and also accepts her generosity. He, however, is not aware of the woman’s motives for welcoming him. She needs him to survive, for she lives, like her fellow villagers, in a house that would become quickly buried if she did not attend to the daily chore of hauling up the sand. It is a task that she cannot do alone. So when the stranger appears in the village, the local men, similar to the villagers in Hwang’s play, realize that they have found a solution to a community problem. Whereas in The Sound of a Voice, the
V o l u m e
1 8
Samurai warriors were active in Japan and this one is representative of the male figure portrayed in Hwang’s The Sound of a Voice
community tricks one of their own (the woman whom they fear is a witch) for the safety of the village, in The Woman in the Dunes, the people trick an outsider to help them secure one of the village houses. Abe’s protagonist Jumpei has no clue as to what is in store for him. He accepts the invitation to spend the night in the sand dunes without any suspicion of being in danger. He is not a warrior but rather a simple, solitary man who trusts strangers. Both men are now securely in place as guests in their respective houses. Although the man in Hwang’s play enters the woman’s house fully aware of his mission, he is quickly caught off guard by his emotions. He admits that he is afraid of women, in general, and especially afraid of this particular woman because of her reputation of entrapping men. He even searches the house for signs of the men who have come before him. However, when he inspects the flowers that the woman cares for, the blossoms that he suspects hold the woman’s past suitors, he refers to the supposed imprisoned lovers as being ‘‘peaceful.’’ He may fear the woman’s powers, but this does not keep him from eventually falling in love with her. He cannot control his
2 1 7
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • M. Butterfly, Hwang’s most famous play, was published by Plume Books in 1989. The story is about deception in love. • Playing as the other half of a double bill with Hwang’s The Sound of a Voice was another short play called The House of Sleeping Beauties, which Hwang based on a short story by Nobel Prize–winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata. Kawabata’s story was published in a collection bearing the same title in 1971. Another work by Kawabata that might shine more light on Japanese themes is his Beauty and Sadness (1981). • Maxine Hong Kingston is credited with opening up the market for other Chinese American authors with her Woman Warrior (1989), a story about the hardships of growing up in California. • For an overview of contemporary Asian American authors, Jeffrey Paul Chan has edited a collection of works titled The Big Aiieeeee: An
emotions as she continues to make him comfortable by caring for him. She satisfies him in ways that he is not used to being satisfied. Just as his body is showing signs of softness, so is his heart. If, as he fears, he is being imprisoned, he appears to be beguiled by the proposition. He is free to leave the woman’s house at any time, but he does not choose to do so. Instead, he endears himself to the woman, helping her with chores, doing things that she cannot do, working with her and declaring that they are a team. Abe’s male character, meanwhile, soon realizes that he has been tricked. In desperation, he attempts to leave but soon discovers that his efforts are fruitless. The men of the village have removed the rope ladder from above. Without the ladder, his only recourse is to try to climb the walls that surround the house. The harder he tries to scale the sand walls, the more deeply he becomes buried.
2 1 8
Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature (1991). • Edited by Velina Hasu Houston, The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women (1993) provides a female perspective of Asian American drama. • The Sound of a Voice is often compared to Kobo Abe’s Woman in the Dunes (1962), which tells the story of a man trapped in a community of sand-dwellers, who spend their lives trying to stabilize the forever-shifting shapes of their homes. It is also a story about a doomed relationship between a lonely woman and a stranger who happens upon her. • C. Y. Lee’s Flower Drum Song was recently reissued in 2002 with an introduction written by Hwang. The story concerns a young Chinese American man who struggles to find his identity while living in San Francisco during the first half of the twentieth century.
Whereas the man in Hwang’s play is entrapped emotionally, Abe’s counterpart is physically imprisoned. Eventually, like the man in The Sound of a Voice, Abe’s Jumpei volunteers to help the woman of the household complete her chores. His helpfulness is a scheme, however. He does so in an attempt to endear him to her. If she likes him, she may help him escape. His plan for escape is what helps him maintain his sanity in a very frustrating and desperate situation. He helps her excavate the continually falling sand. He bolsters the decaying wood braces of her house. Eventually, he even discovers a way of collecting water to add to their sparse daily ration. They even end up making love, but the encounter is more a result of close and constant physical contact than any emotional connection. The woman cooks and cares for him, but the man in Abe’s work cannot help but think that she is stupid to remain in a place that is so inhumane, to spend all the days of her life shoveling sand out of her house.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
In contrast, Hwang’s male protagonist is humbled by the woman. She is more clever in swordplay than he is, putting him to shame. He is amazed by her ability to play the flute and to create the colorful and robust flowers that fill her room. When he threatens to commit suicide by placing his sword under his chin, he warns her not to come close to him. She does not listen and, instead, walks up to him and takes away his weapon. This humiliates him further. Not only does he not have the courage to kill her, he also is not strong enough to end his own life. He is afraid that she and his love for her have weakened him. In this state of mind, he decides that his only recourse is to leave her. He discovers, too late, that this is his most fatal mistake. In his indecision, his newfound love, in despair, has taken her life. In an attempt to summon her spirit back to life, he sits down on his sleeping mat and picks up her flute. He tries to make a sound with it, but he cannot. In The Woman in the Dunes, the man tries to escape again. He makes it up the walls only to be caught by the villagers and returned to his sand prison. After a long time passes, he resigns himself to his fate and becomes caught up in the rhythm of the woman’s day. He watches how she works, notices the simple patterns of her monotonous routine. He creates his own busy work, setting bird traps, creating scientific experiments on the affects of moisture in the sand. He makes love with the woman; and in the end, she becomes pregnant. It is an ill-fated pregnancy, however, and the woman begins to bleed. A truck appears at the top of the dune, and the woman is taken away. In the excitement, a rope ladder is left dangling over the edge of the wall. It hangs down into the yard around the submerged house. The man takes notice of the ladder and begins to walk toward it; but in knowing that he can escape, he changes his mind. There is, after all, he says, no hurry. He no longer wants to leave. He has his newly discovered catchment system to tend. He wants to perfect it and then tell the other villagers about it. Who would better appreciate it? Both Hwang’s and Abe’s works end in similar ways. Both male protagonists are left alone. Both attempt to take up the familiar patterns of their respective women’s lives—Hwang’s protagonist tries to play the flute as the woman had; Abe’s Jumpei has found not only solace but a mild form of excitement in tending the woman’s house. By the conclusion of both stories, the entrapment in both men’s cases is self-imposed. They have forsaken the
V o l u m e
1 8
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
BY THE CONCLUSION OF BOTH STORIES, THE ENTRAPMENT IN BOTH MEN’S CASES IS SELFIMPOSED. THEY HAVE FORSAKEN THE ROLES THAT THEY PLAYED IN THEIR FORMER LIVES.’’
roles that they played in their former lives. The search for insects has ended for Jumpei. The travels of the Samurai are over. Source: Joyce Hart, Critical Essay on The Sound of a Voice, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Doreen Piano Piano teaches literature and writing at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In the following essay, Piano explores the tensions and misunderstandings that occur between a man and a woman in Hwang’s play. Produced in 1984, the play The Sound of a Voice explores the failed attempt by two people to overcome their fears and doubts that they have about each other during a brief encounter. The play takes place in the house of a middle-aged woman, who befriends a stranger travelling through a remote forest in Japan where she lives. Over the course of a few weeks, the two strangers become familiar with each other, yet they continue to treat each other with suspicion. The man fears that he will become emotionally involved and the woman thinks that he will leave like many of the others who have come to the house only to leave her once again isolated in the woods. Both have embedded in their suspicions very traditional views of what men and women are supposed to be like, and it is these ingrained views that prevent them from establishing the intimacy that both of them crave. Through the use of setting, character, dialogue, and symbolism, Hwang highlights not only these characters’ fears but also their suspicions about each other. Unfortunately, the characters’ inability to trust one another destroys their hopes for finding companionship and instead results in death.
2 1 9
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
FOR THE WOMAN, TIME IS
arts reveal her as a very able and independent woman. It is these qualities that unnerve the man and disturb his preconceived notion of femininity, thus reinforcing the rumors that she is a witch.
MEASURED NOT BY MINUTES BUT BY THE LAST TIME SHE HAS HEARD A HUMAN VOICE.’’
Hwang relies on the narrative pattern of the folk tale as a backdrop to this tragic love story. He does this by creating a timeless setting, providing few clues that would anchor the play in a particular time period. Like many folk tales, the setting is in a forest, a place distinctly separated from the more human activities of the village. In addition, little background information is given to the characters; instead, they exist in a timeless present. The strange circumstances of their meeting is also reflective of many folk tales. It is unclear at first why the man, who remains nameless throughout the play, has come to this remote part of the world. Towards the end of the play, the woman accuses him of coming there to kill her because rumor has it that she is a witch. Similarly, it is also unclear why the woman lives so isolated from other people when she clearly desires human companionship. This ambiguity contributes to the stories the man has heard about her being a witch. Thus, Hwang uses a familiar folk tale character—the witch—to build suspense and mystery in the play. Suspense is built through both setting and plot devices that convey the woamn as a mysterious and seductive woman. The eerie and unsettling atmosphere of the play—its remote setting in the woods, the starkness of the mysterious room—also enhances her ambiguous position while increasing the tensions between the two characters. The man’s suspicion that the woman is a witch is based on a number of observations that he makes throughout the play that provide its fantastical qualities: the picked flowers that appear to never die, his observation of her as a young beautiful woman in her room at night, her extraordinary sword maneuvers, and her shakuhachi playing. These various transformations and abilities that the woman has promote an uncompromising portrait of her as having seductive and magical powers. Yet the woman attempts to deconstruct this image by revealing her weakness to him: her dread of being alone. To him, her solitary lifestyle and her ability to be good at a number of
2 2 0
Thus, despite its folktale qualities, the play explores a very contemporary issue: the inability of men and women to communicate and view each other unguarded and without preconceived ideas. By focusing on gender roles, Hwang attempts to demystify the cultural myths that typify women’s and men’s roles in many cultures: that women are subservient, dependent, and weak, while men are strong, independent, and self-possessed. Even though the characters in his play are more complicated than these stereotypes, they still cling to these notions. Despite both characters displaying qualities that are typical of their gender, their actions and behavior belie these characteristics. For example, while the woman seems to need companionship and attempts to persuade the man to stay, she makes it very clear to him in the first scene that her loneliness stems not from any inherent quality but from her isolation. The nearest village is a two days walk. For the woman, time is measured not by minutes but by the last time she has heard a human voice. ‘‘Anything you say, I will enjoy hearing. It’s not even the words. It’s the sound of a voice, the way it moves through the air.’’ Thus, it is the isolated setting in a remote forest that contributes to the woman’s need to reach out to the man. Her isolation justifies her need to persuade the man to stay with her as a companion. The woman’s declaration of loneliness does not seem to have an impact on the man, and throughout the play, he continues to ignore her attempts to communicate the devastating effects of her isolation. Instead, he perceives her as an extraordinary rather than ordinary woman. She lives alone, cares for beautiful flowers, can play the flute, and also fights with a sword. In fact, it is particularly this last feat that makes him view his own aging body as inadequate. Although they are both middle-aged, she is more agile than he. In fact, her sword-fighting makes him realize that he has assumed her to be a typical middle-aged woman when in fact she is superior to him. After he eggs her on to fight him, he is dismayed when she beats him. Although he is supposed to be the warrior and proudly shows the woman the mosquito that he sliced in half, after being beaten by her, he is amazed and daunted. This amazement only seems to confirm his suspicions of her as a witch. Even as the woman apologizes about her seemingly unfeminine behavior, the man hints
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
at why she is alone when he claims, ‘‘There are stories about you. I heard them. They say that your visitors never leave this house.’’ His inability to understand her need for companionship makes him resort to accusations because she is too competent and independent for a woman; thus her attempts to persuade him to see her as otherwise go unheeded. As with any play, dialogue becomes the primary way of understanding character’s hidden motivations and desires. Thus, throughout the play, when the woman tries to communicate her loneliness to him, he misunderstands her. For example, whereas she sees her various talents as a way to pass time and deflect her loneliness, he views them as extraordinary accomplishments that he envies. At the climax of the play when the man finally reveals his intentions for coming to this remote area, he claims, ‘‘Sometimes—when I look into the flowers, I think I hear a voice—from inside—a voice beneath the petals. A human voice.’’ His insinuation that the flowers are men who have been imprisoned by her is a way of expressing his own fear of entrapment and the helplessness that accompanies falling in love. Even though the man obviously is smitten with the woman, viewing her as being younger than she is and helping her around the house, his fear of being turned into a picked flower is what makes him decide to leave even after he has told her that he would stay. To him, the flowers represent being subdued by the woman since she has the power to decide whether they live or die once they have been picked. In the final scene, as he is leaving, the man tells her, ‘‘You changed the shape of your face, the shape of my heart—rearranged everything—created a world where I could do nothing.’’ His feelings of inadequacy surface as he tells her pointedly that in many ways she is the stronger of the two. Her effect on him has been to make him feel powerless and less of a man because she is able to take care of herself. Rather than see the possibility of their relationship as being equal, he sees it as a power struggle, with either one or the other in charge. As it stands, he sees that the woman is in charge both of his feelings and of her life. The woman views the flowers in a different way; to her, they are representative of her ability to nurture and extend life. The flowers bring her comfort as they allow her to connect with life in an intimate way. She also views the men who have visited not as being captured by her but as taking a
V o l u m e
1 8
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
part of her with them when they leave. Thus, the flowers may represent the different parts of her that have been taken away and her need to replace what has been lost. The woman is not innocent; she is an aging woman who has experienced disappointment. For this reason, she does not provide a real name when the man asks her, thus contributing to the various levels of deceit that both characters participate in. Likewise, the man steals a flower and watches as it first continues to blossom and die when he spies on her in her room. The flowers represent differing perceptions of love—its possibilities and disappointments. In this short but complex play, Hwang explores how mistrust, deception, and fear can inhibit people from finding happiness with each other. Despite the obvious affection between the two aging characters, they cannot move beyond their own need to protect themselves to embrace love and understanding. The woman tries to please the man in the ways that are traditional to her gender, such as waiting on him and downplaying her talents rather than take pride in them. The man pretends that he is not emotionally involved with her and that he can leave at any time, yet it is her various abilities that intimidate him and make him feel inadequate. The mistrust that the man and woman have of each other cannot be overcome. Their deception and fears continue to create misunderstanding that ultimately ends in tragedy: the death of the woman. Because of her intense isolation and alienation from society, the woman has no other choice but to kill herself when the man decides to leave. She can no longer bear the rejection of visitors once they find out what she is really like. Ending on a despondent note, the woman prophesies that the man will suffer a fate worse than death because he has decided to leave. After he discovers her dead, he resumes her position as the main occupant of the house, taking her flute and attempting to play it, but he cannot play as the woman did. Her death has allowed him to reclaim his power over his feelings, but it has also resulted in the loss of both beauty and love. Source: Doreen Piano, Critical Essay on The Sound of a Voice, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Felicia Pattison In the following essay excerpt, Pattison discusses how Hwang’s play is inspired by traditional Japanese mythology and fairy tales.
2 2 1
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
The idea for The Sound of a Voice is original to Hwang, but it is inspired by Japanese ghost stories and has the character of a myth or a fairy tale. With ‘‘only minor alteration,’’ Hwang suggests in his introduction to FOB and Other Plays, ‘‘it could be set in a mysterious forest on any continent.’’ A Japanese woman in her forties or fifties lives alone in a secluded forest. Her only joys are her flowers, her shakuhatchi (an end-blown bamboo flute), and the occasional visitors she receives. The play opens with the woman receiving a fifty-year-old male visitor. Throughout the early scenes of the play, the couple exchange polite conversation, but when the woman leaves the room, the man investigates the room and its contents, takes a flower from a bouquet in a vase, and listens at the screens, but resumes a restful posture when the woman returns. When they retire for the evening, the woman takes the vase of flowers with her to her room, and the man sits on his mat with a sword at his side. The man prepares to leave in the morning, but the woman convinces him to stay. Underneath the polite chatter that continues between the two of them runs a counter dialogue of gesture. As the play progresses, the woman continues to wait on the man, guard her flowers, and play the shakuhatchi while the man helps the woman with the household chores, ponders his stolen flower, and practices his swordplay. The couple seemingly never sleep; the woman plays her shakuhatchi while the man dozes with his sword at his side, jumping awake at the slightest provocation. The man and woman continue in this torturous dance until, when the woman surprise the man with her skill with the sword, they confess their true situation. The woman is aware of the stories about her that circulate among the surrounding villages: that she a beautiful witch who enchants, seduces, and imprisons her would-be killers. Having heard the stories, the man has come to prove his manhood by surviving her wiles, killing her, and returning to the villages with his story. The woman challenges the man to kill her, but he is unable and promises never to leave her. Then, after a scene in which the man is unable to kill either her or himself, the man is shamed and decides to leave the woman. While she will not force him to stay, she begs him either to stay or to kill her, not to leave her alone: I won’t force you to do anything. (Pause) All I wanted was an escape—for both of us. The sound of a human voice—the simplest thing to find, and the hardest to hold on to. This house—my loneliness is etched into the walls. Kill me, but don’t leave. Even in death, my
2 2 2
spirit would rest here and be comforted by your presence.
The woman neither confirms nor denies the gossip about her but only chides the man for his cruelty in believing it. The woman thinks the man is leaving, so she goes to her room; but the man changes his mind, returns to the front room, moves everything off his mat, including the ever-present sword, and takes up the woman’s shakuhatchi. As he unsuccessfully attempts to play it, the lights come up behind the screen to reveal that the woman has hung herself. The man obliviously continues his futile task. One of the main themes of the play is expressed on the first morning of the man’s sojourn at the woman’s house, as the woman explains that words ‘‘are too inefficient. It takes hundreds of words to describe a single act of caring. With hundreds of acts, words become irrelevant.’’ Although she craves ‘‘the sound of a voice,’’ the two of them convey the most significant meaning through gesture and action, not dialogue. Scene 3 comically illustrates the contrast between voice and gesture. The man, stripped to the waist, enters the room with a load of chopped wood. Noticing the woman’s eyeing of his mid-life paunch, he pats it and begins to joke about his physique. She tries to convince him that he should love his body the way it is, but he continues to hit it as an instrument, talk to it as a companion, and generally belittle its appearance. The scene culminates with the man telling his belly that at least it will be faithful and ‘‘never leave me for another man.’’ The woman responds, ‘‘No,’’ acknowledging that she will be faithful, even though she was not directly addressed. The man then asks her, ‘‘What do you want me to say?’’ She responds to his request in gesture, leaning over to him and touching his belly with her hand. Like the older woman in The House of Sleeping Beauties, she ‘‘bewitches’’ the man, not with enchantment, but with kindness and caring expressed through her actions and gesture Referring to The House of Sleeping Beauties, Hwang told Cooperman that ‘‘there is the notion of stillness representing a certain amount of passion, a certain amount of need. The emotions that can’t really be expressed in an explicit form or can’t be understood but only act upon the individual.’’ Source: Felicia Pattison, ‘‘David Henry Hwang,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 228, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Second Series, Gale, 2000, pp. 128–43.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S o u n d
o f
a
V o i c e
SOURCES Reiner, Jay, Review of Flower Drum Song, in the Hollywood Reporter, Vol. 370, No. 23, October 15, 2001, pp. 6–7. Review of The Sound of a Voice, in People Weekly, Vol. 21, January 9, 1984, p. 88. Rich, Frank, ‘‘Theatre: Sound and Beauty, Two One-Act Plays,’’ in the New York Times, November 7, 1983. Sarver, Linda, ‘‘Between Worlds: The Sound of a Voice and Pay the Chinaman,’’ in Theatre Journal, Vol. 47, No. 1, March 1995, pp. 145–47.
FURTHER READING Daidoji, Yuzan, Code of the Samurai, Charles E. Tuttle, 1999. The role of the Samurai warrior in Japanese culture began in ancient times but continues to influence contemporary Japanese culture, politics, family life, and individual personality. This new explanation of the basic code of the Samurai way of life helps Westerners better appreciate Japanese warrior history. Hanke, Ken, Charlie Chan at the Movies: History, Filmography, and Criticism, McFarland, 1989. Hanke provides an in-depth study of the Charlie Chan movie series, covering the various actors who played the main characters, a synopsis of each film, and other details. Kawaii, Hayao, and Gerald Donat, eds., Dreams, Myths, and Fairy Tales in Japan, Daimon Verlag, 1995. As The Sound of a Voice is based on the form of a Japanese fairy tale, reading this book, which explains
V o l u m e
1 8
THE WOMAN NEITHER CONFIRMS NOR DENIES THE GOSSIP ABOUT HER BUT ONLY CHIDES THE MAN FOR HIS CRUELTY IN BELIEVING IT.’’
the form as well as its meaning in Japanese culture, offers a deeper understanding of the psychological underpinnings of Hwang’s play. Lee, Josephine, ed., Performing Asian American: Race and Ethnicity on the Contemporary Stage, Temple University Press, 1997. Josephine Lee explains the complex social and political issues depicted by Asian American playwrights. Discussed are such plays as David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly, Frank Chin’s The Chickencoop Chinaman, Velina Hasu Houston’s Tea, Jeannie Barroga’s Walls, and Wakako Yamauchi’s 12–1-a. Wong, Sau-Ling Cynthia, Reading Asian American Literature, Princeton University Press, 1993. As the field of Asian American literary studies grows, questions inevitably arise about how the works are to be interpreted. Authors whose work is explored include Frank Chin, David Henry Hwang, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, David Wong Louie, Bharati Mukherjee, Amy Tan, Shawn Wong, and Wakako Yamauchi.
2 2 3
The Square Root of Wonderful CARSON McCULLERS 1957
Carson McCullers’s The Square Root of Wonderful opened to very poor reviews on Broadway on October 30, 1957. It closed a little over a month later, after only forty-five performances. In 1958, an edition of the play was published in the United States and Britain. In this edition, McCullers notes in the ‘‘Personal Preface’’ that, of all the various versions of the play, ‘‘the one which follows . . . is the most nearly the truth of what I want to say.’’ Today, the play is valued primarily as a window offering a view into the author’s unusual personal life. In the ‘‘Personal Preface,’’ McCullers writes that the play’s origins can be found in the difficult relationship she had with her husband, Reeves McCullers, before he committed suicide in 1953. According to McCullers, the play also deals with her beloved mother, who died suddenly in 1955. ‘‘So, unconsciously, the life-death theme of The Square Root of Wonderful emerged,’’ she writes. The story takes place in a small town outside New York City during the 1950s. Phillip Lovejoy is an alcoholic writer whose early successes and more recent failures weigh heavily on his mind. He leaves the sanatorium where he has been recuperating from an attempted suicide and arrives at the house of his ex-wife, Mollie Lovejoy. Phillip is needy and in emotional pain. He soon discovers that Mollie is falling in love with John Tucker, an architect she recently rescued from car trouble, who is now living at the house. Phillip’s mother and sister are also visiting; their characters provide background infor-
2 2 4
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
mation about Mollie and Phillip’s two marriages to each other as well as information about Phillip as a child in Georgia. Phillip, overcome by the probability of a life without Mollie, commits suicide by driving his car into a nearby pond. Mollie is now free to love John.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Carson McCullers was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia, on February 19, 1917. Like the adolescent girl Frankie in her novel, The Member of the Wedding, McCullers renamed herself at age thirteen, dropping her first name in favor of her middle name. Her parents, Lamar Smith, a jeweler, and Marguerite Waters Smith, provided their three children with a comfortable middle-class life. Carson was their first born child, and they considered her an artistic genius and encouraged her interests, especially music. Lynne Greeley, writing in Theatre History Studies, refers to Carson McCullers as ‘‘the preferred child’’ in her family. McCullers is known primarily for her novels, but she also wrote two plays, a number of short stories, children’s poetry, and other works. Most of her work is set in the American South and involves people struggling with loneliness and feelings of isolation. Many critics place her among the best southern writers, along with William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Tennessee Williams. McCullers felt that she was an outsider and a loner. Her school days were marked by mediocre grades and the stares of fellow students at her eccentric dress and gangly height of nearly five feet, nine inches. When she was fifteen, she contracted rheumatic fever. From that point on, her life was a constant struggle with illness and physical discomfort. As soon as she graduated from high school, McCullers left Columbus and moved to New York City with plans to attend the Juilliard School of Music. Because of a lack of money—sources differ on whether her funds were mismanaged by a family friend or stolen—she ended up working various day jobs and attending night classes first at New York University and then at Columbia University during 1935 and 1936. In 1936, one of her professors at Columbia helped get her first short story, ‘‘Wunderkind,’’ published in Story magazine. During a trip back home in 1935, McCullers met Reeves McCullers. They were married in 1937. Their relationship ‘‘was not a traditional marriage,’’
V o l u m e
1 8
Carson McCullers
as Sara Nalley notes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, and they lived together only on occasion. Historians have noted the author’s deep and passionate friendships with other women as an inhibiting factor in her marriage. Others have described a marriage fraught with tension, violence, and substance abuse. According to McCullers in the introduction to her play The Square Root of Wonderful, her husband’s disappointment in his own attempt to launch a literary career is echoed in the play’s portrayal of Phillip Lovejoy. The couple divorced in 1941 but remarried in 1945. Reeves McCullers committed suicide in 1953. With the 1940 publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, McCullers became the toast of the literary scene. The novel was wildly successful, as were her next three works, all published before her thirtieth birthday: Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, and The Member of the Wedding. McCullers adapted The Member of the Wedding for the stage in 1951, winning that year’s New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Her second play, The Square Root of Wonderful, did not fare as well. Produced in 1957 for Broadway, it played for only forty-five performances and received nearly unanimously poor re-
2 2 5
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
views. The failure of this play crushed McCullers. Her health continued to diminish, and she never published another play. Her final novel, Clock Without Hands, received favorable reviews, but her great successes were behind her. She died on September 29, 1967, in Nyack, New York, after a stroke—one of many she had suffered throughout her life.
PLOT SUMMARY The play is presented in three acts over the course of about ten days in May, at a small apple farm in New York state, twenty miles from New York City.
Act 1 Act 1 begins after midnight in the living room. Mollie Lovejoy awakens and comforts her thirteenyear-old son, Paris, who has been having a nightmare in which his father, Phillip Lovejoy, is a burglar. Paris is sleeping on the couch because his grandmother, Mother Lovejoy, and his aunt, Loreena Lovejoy, also known as Sister, are visiting. Mollie and John Tucker, an architect who is living at the house, have been in the kitchen talking and drinking tea. Mollie says that she will be ‘‘desolate’’ when John leaves. When Paris asks the architect, ‘‘Why do you keep your arms around my mother? Why do you look at her in that zany way?’’ John admits that he loves Mollie. Mollie has been divorced twice from Paris’s father. Mollie has received a phone call from Phillip and is worried that he is going to show up at the house, having checked himself out of a sanatorium after attempting suicide. Paris brags that his father is a famous author and warns that he is going to tell Phillip about John. John is defiant, countering that he himself will tell Phillip that he loves Mollie. Mollie notes that Phillip’s most recent work, a play, opened and closed very quickly. Mollie and John reminisce about how they met ten days earlier, when she picked him up on the road as he was repairing his car. Mollie brought him back to the house and, to his surprise, offered him room and board. He had assumed that she was offering him sex. Mollie tells John that one of the things she loves about him is that he is interested in her for her mind and not for her body. She recalls meeting Phillip at a peach festival in her hometown when she was fifteen. They immediately had sex, and the next day they were married. Even though she is no longer
2 2 6
married to Phillip, she admits to John that he has always cast a sort of spell over her. Even when Phillip was verbally and physically abusive during their two marriages, ‘‘he had a lot of charm,’’ she says. They also talk about Sister and the disappointment the Lovejoy family feels about the fact that she was once a debutante but is now an old maid and a librarian. Sister enters the room, and John leaves to fix a noisy garage door. Sister warns Mollie that Phillip is probably going to show up at the house soon and ask her to marry him for the third time. Mollie says she does not want to marry him again but expresses concern that she will be swayed by Phillip’s charm. Answering Mollie’s question as to whether she has ever been in love, Sister admits to numerous loves in places around the world, but these are men and events that live only in her imagination. Mother Lovejoy enters the room looking for milk of magnesia, disappointed that Sister has already told Mollie about Phillip. Sister and Mother Lovejoy leave the room just as John comes back from fixing the door. He and Mollie discuss Phillip, John’s numerous love affairs, and the possibility of their getting married. After John goes to bed, Phillip appears holding a bouquet of flowers for Mollie. Phillip tries to get Mollie to remember what it was like when they were married. He adds that he knows his next book will be a success. He goes upstairs, expecting that Mollie will follow him. As Paris walks in, Mollie asks him, ‘‘My child, if your mother told you she is in love with two people, what would you think?’’ From upstairs, Phillip calls for Mollie as the curtain falls.
Act 2 The second act opens the next afternoon. Paris is talking to a school friend, Hattie, about a test they just took. The sounds of his father’s typewriter come from the next room. Hattie admits that she is afraid of Phillip because he is ‘‘crazy.’’ They briefly talk about when they took their clothes off and looked at each other, but Hattie leaves abruptly when Phillip enters the room. Phillip and Paris talk about their lives as father and son. Paris accuses his father of never remembering his age and never giving appropriate gifts. They have different recollections of their lives together on their apple farm: Phillip thinks only of how he wanted to buy a cow and milk it, work the land, and eat great country breakfasts, while Paris remembers that his father never liked milk, especially when
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
compared with whisky, paid him to tend to the garden, and typically only had black coffee for breakfast. Paris leaves the room as Mollie comes in with groceries, followed by Mother Lovejoy and Sister. The women chatter about a variety of topics. Mother Lovejoy says that Mollie is looking much more healthy and vibrant and attributes this to ‘‘S-E-X.’’ Mother Lovejoy also concludes that the absence of sex is why Sister does not appear as beautiful as Mollie. John enters the room, and Mother Lovejoy asks him if he is a ‘‘professional man,’’ thinking that Sister may appeal to him and instructs Mollie to leave the two of them alone. Sister tells John that she has been searching for ‘‘the right man.’’ After Sister leaves, Mollie enters the room. John expresses his love to Mollie, but she tells him that Phillip is back home. Paris enters with the blueprints of a house John intends to build. The three of them talk about what features might be included in the house. Paris tells John about having to beat up a fellow student who made fun of his name, and John admits to having had his feelings hurt by a girl who teased him about the acne he had when he was young. John talks about ‘‘the square root of sin. . . . The sin of hurting people’s feelings. . . . It’s the same as murder.’’ Paris and John agree that they have enjoyed their ‘‘man-to-man talk.’’ Paris leaves just as his father enters the room. Phillip is obviously angry about John and Mollie’s growing closeness and comments that everything at the farm is his, including ‘‘my wife.’’ Phillip quizzes the couple on whether they have slept together, to which Mollie answers, ‘‘No.’’ He goes on talking about how good the sex was between him and Mollie. Phillip leaves, looking for applejack to drink. Various characters enter and leave the scene, discussing topics from chess playing to Mother Lovejoy’s insistence that she always knew that Phillip would be a ‘‘great genius.’’ Eventually, Phillip and John are left alone; Phillip lets drop that Mollie slept with him the previous night. When Mollie returns, John questions her about this, and she admits it, begging forgiveness and blaming her weakness. He asks her, ‘‘When will you be strong enough to love the strong?’’ Phillip and his mother are left in the room, and they have a discussion that degenerates into an
V o l u m e
1 8
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
argument. She storms out. Mollie comes back and tells Phillip that she is leaving him for John. Phillip is disdainful of John but begins to plead with Mollie. He claims that ‘‘without you I will die,’’ but Mollie remains adamant that she is leaving with John. Phillip grabs her arm, and Mollie picks up a knife. He continues begging Mollie to stay with him, even going so far as to suggest, ‘‘You can be in love with him, that’s all right, but stay in love with me! Let me stay and I will write again.’’ Mollie refuses, and they continue arguing. Phillip picks up the grandfather clock as it chimes the hour and smashes it. The chiming continues, frightening both of them.
Act 3, Scene 1 Early the next morning, Philip awakens Paris, suggesting that they both leave the house. Phillip tells his son, ‘‘I need you.’’ When Paris asks his father where he is going, Phillip answers, ‘‘To zones and latitudes you never imagined.’’ Phillip tells Paris a Bible story involving talents, an ancient form of money, but Paris keeps confusing it with the word used to denote a particular ability. Paris is frightened of the ‘‘creepy’’ way Phillip is behaving. He remembers he has planned to go fishing that day, so he tells his father he will go with him ‘‘some other time.’’ Phillip leaves in his car just as Mollie comes down to check on Paris.
Act 3, Scene 2 A week has passed. From Paris and Hattie’s conversation, it is apparent that Phillip is dead, having driven his car into a nearby pond. Paris refuses to believe that his father’s actions were deliberate. ‘‘It was a defective steering wheel,’’ he insists, noting that his father was a strong man and only weak people commit suicide. They leave the room as Mother Lovejoy and Sister enter with suitcases. According to Sister, Mollie is going to get a job as a cosmetologist in New York City, but Mother Lovejoy remembers that Mollie made a woman bald the last time she worked as a cosmetologist. The two chatter about the limousine they have rented to get them to the train station for their trip back to Society City. Mollie comes downstairs as the limousine arrives. Mollie tells John that she is responsible for Phillip’s death. ‘‘Because I loved you, Phillip died,’’
2 2 7
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
she claims. She wonders aloud why she could not have helped Phillip, but John assures her she did enough for Phillip during his life. Paris enters, and John tells him that he is planning to marry Mollie and build the house he told Paris about. Paris responds that when John was describing the house, ‘‘it sounded wonderful; the square root of it, in fact.’’ After he leaves, Mollie asks John what Paris meant by the ‘‘square root of wonderful,’’ and John responds, ‘‘You.’’ Mollie is confused, because, as she notes, ‘‘love multiplies.’’ She ends the scene and the play talking about how, when she loves, everything is multiplied.
CHARACTERS Hattie Brown Hattie Brown is Paris Lovejoy’s school friend. The stage directions note that she is ‘‘buxom’’ and a year older than thirteen-year-old Paris. Hattie is a plainspoken girl who is somewhat confused by the goings on at the Lovejoy house, but she still likes Paris and tells him so. She is afraid of Phillip, though, mostly because she has heard tales of his attempted suicide and that he has recently been in a sanatorium. Hattie’s mother has told her never to go to the Lovejoy house, not because of Phillip but because Hattie told her about the time she and Paris took off their clothes and ‘‘looked at each other.’’
Loreena Lovejoy See Sister
Mollie Lovejoy Mollie Lovejoy has been married twice to Phillip but is currently divorced from him. A number of critics, including Sara Nalley writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, believe that Mollie is modeled after the playwright’s mother, a woman who spent much of her life taking care of McCullers when she was ill. Mollie is described in the list of characters as ‘‘a beautiful young woman,’’ and is in her thirties. Her attractiveness is noted in the play itself when she tells John that Phillip only wanted her for her looks. John assures her, after admitting that he does love her for her body, that he also loves her ‘‘for your wisdom of heart, and for your soul.’’
2 2 8
Mollie, though divorced from Phillip and dreading his return to the household, struggles during much of the play to separate herself emotionally from her ex-husband. She believes that ever since she met him at the age of fifteen and married him two days later, he has cast a spell over her. ‘‘I was under his spell,’’ she says, and acknowledges that even as an adult, she still believes in spells. Halfway through the play, still entranced by Phillip but leaning toward John, she asks Paris, ‘‘If your mother told you she is in love with two people, what would you think?’’ She loves deeply and sees things with a ‘‘luminous’’ light because of the intensity of her love. Mollie is a woman who does things on the spur of the moment, including picking up a stranger, John Tucker, on the road and bringing him back to the house. Ten days later, she is preparing to leave with John. Only after Phillip’s suicide and John’s gentle encouragement does she appear free of the power her ex-husband held over her.
Mother Lovejoy Mother Lovejoy is Phillip’s bossy mother, originally from Society City, Georgia. She has always believed that her son was special and musically gifted. ‘‘You crawled before any other child, walked before any other child, talked before any other child,’’ she remembers. Much of her focus is on encouraging Phillip and defending his behavior, but she has never understood why he wanted to be a writer. Mother Lovejoy’s husband left the family when Phillip and his sister were children. She had to work as a seamstress to make ends meet, but more recently she has come into a sizeable amount of money left to her by her Uncle Willie. Mother Lovejoy tells Mollie that she never liked the idea of her son being married to Mollie but that by their second marriage she was ‘‘resigned’’ to it. In fact, she wants Mollie and Phillip to marry for a third time, possibly to secure Phillip’s economic future—although how that might work is unclear. ‘‘Economics and common sense,’’ she tells Mollie, are the two reasons she wishes to see Mollie and Phillip together. Mother Lovejoy acts in a flighty and preoccupied manner about much of what goes on around the house. For example, she arranges for Sister and John to be alone together, even though John and Mollie are only hours away from running off together. However, there is the possibility that Mother
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
Lovejoy is more devious than she immediately seems. Maybe she knows of the deepening relationship between John and Mollie and is simply trying to keep Mollie available for Phillip.
Paris Lovejoy Paris Lovejoy is Mollie and Phillip’s thirteenyear-old son. All during the play, he is forced to sleep on the living room couch because his aunt and grandmother are visiting and have taken his room. Twice he is woken up by one of his parents. The play opens with Mollie shaking him awake from a bad dream about his father as a burglar, and later in the play, Phillip wakes him up early in the morning. Paris is more like a person the adult characters stumble upon than he is like a son or a grandson. His mother asks him for love advice, and Phillip comes to speak to Paris about ephemeral things early in the morning just minutes before he drives his car into the pond and dies. Paris does not have a strong relationship with his father and is especially sensitive to the fact that Phillip does not remember his age when sending him birthday gifts. In addition, he is resentful that all of the farm-related chores Phillip claims to look forward to doing around the house fall instead on his shoulders. He makes a deeper connection with John than with any of his relatives. Paris and John have a ‘‘man-to-man’’ talk in the play, and it is John, not Phillip, who expresses interest in Paris’s new chess set.
Phillip Lovejoy Phillip was a special child, according to his mother. When he was eighteen months old, he supposedly marched around the block waving an American flag and singing the ‘‘Marseillaise’’ (the French national anthem). Phillip arrives at Mollie’s house after a brief stay at a local sanatorium to recover from the poor reviews his most recent play has received and from his subsequent suicide attempt. Mother Lovejoy and others make comments in the play that refer to his having an alcohol problem. Even after his rest at the sanatorium, Phillip acts agitated and angry about his life as a writer. He wounds everyone around him with his spiteful words and behaves as if the world centers on him and his struggle to become a more successful writer. Mollie has always been there for Phillip when he needed help. ‘‘Take care of me now. You have always
V o l u m e
1 8
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
loved me,’’ he pleads to Mollie. When she tells him that she once loved him but no longer does, he tells her, ‘‘Without you there is nothing.’’ Much of his dialogue has him dramatically begging Mollie to support him and take care of him. John sums up Mollie and Phillip’s relationship after Phillip’s death, telling Mollie, ‘‘You were responsible for keeping life in a man who no longer wanted to live.’’ In addition to the attempted and then the successful suicide, there is an atmosphere of violence surrounding the writer. Mollie admits that he has hit her in the past, and when they argue about her feelings toward John, Phillip grabs her and she responds by picking up a knife.
Sister Sister, or Loreena Lovejoy, is Mother Lovejoy’s daughter and Phillip’s sister. She has never married, even though, as her mother notes, she had the ‘‘best prepared debut of any girl in Georgia’’ at the Peachtree Cotillion. According to Mother Lovejoy, Sister ruined her presentation to society by wearing glasses and vomiting at the debut ball. Sister works as a librarian and dreams of imaginary lovers she follows from one exotic country to another. Sister has a gentle personality and often tries to soothe people’s feelings after they have been hurt. Mother Lovejoy conspires to set her up with ‘‘that good-looking Mr. Tucker’’ by leaving the two of them alone with each other. Sister and John have a sympathetic conversation in which she asks him how to meet people.
John Tucker John Tucker is a divorced architect and nearly the exact opposite of Phillip; he is very stable and not given to dramatic statements and actions. He is honest with his emotions, and it is very clear to everyone involved that he loves Mollie. John admits, though, that when Mollie picked him up on the road and brought him back to her house, he expected a night of sex instead of an offer of room and board. He explains to Mollie that in such circumstances, ‘‘a man naturally anticipates.’’ But after getting to know her, John appreciates Mollie’s inner beauty as much as her outer beauty. John’s constancy is contrasted to Phillip’s unreliability throughout the play. For example, when the two men meet for the first time, Mollie mentions that John was in the Navy. John adds information
2 2 9
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
about the training he received, learning to ‘‘land on beachheads and slip into secret, dangerous places.’’ Mollie mentions that Phillip was in the Army but had to leave after a ‘‘short time’’ because he had the mumps. Phillip claims that John is boring and that Mollie will lose interest in him very quickly. In contrast to Phillip’s obscure and self-centered statements, John shares painful past experiences with Mollie and with Paris, admitting that he has been hurt by love. In addition, he shares with Paris his theory of emotions, which involves calculating ‘‘the square root’’ of each one. John comforts Mollie after Phillip’s death. He assures her that she is not responsible for her ex-husband’s death, even though, as Mollie suggests, Phillip’s suicide was in response to seeing her pack to leave with John.
THEMES Choice Mollie is faced with a choice: return to the life she knows with Phillip, a life sure to include physical violence, alcoholism, and emotional trauma; or begin a new life with John, one that will include a nice house and a stable lifestyle. While such a choice for many people may be an easy one, for Mollie it is complicated by the fact that she still believes she loves Philip—in fact, she believes that he has, from the moment they met, cast some sort of spell over her. She loves Phillip, even though she does not want to love him. John mentions that when one is in love, ordinary things look ‘‘luminous.’’ When Mollie uses that as a test to see if she loves John or Phillip, she concludes that she loves both. Her response is to spend the night with Phillip. Whether Phillip loves Mollie—or anyone, for that matter—is not easily answered. In fact, when she asks him how he feels, he answers, ‘‘Love you? I feel surrounded by a zone of loneliness.’’ Finally, he admits, ‘‘No, Mollie, it’s not love,’’ but he argues that he must still be with her and receive her love to survive and continue writing. Mollie’s role, one she has played very well for many years and still struggles to play, is to take care of Phillip. It is this role she seeks to escape in the play. Love associated with Phillip is immature and base. When Phillip shows up at her house from the
2 3 0
sanatorium, Mollie is caught by his spell, but she steps back from his presence and says, ‘‘But now I have to be adult and practical.’’ With Phillip, there has always been a strong physical attraction for Mollie. She slept with him when she was fifteen, the first day she knew him. Even after he abandoned her and Paris on numerous occasions, ‘‘when he comes in the door, when he looks into my eyes, and when he—I—I always know what he wants,’’ she says. Love with John is more solid and practical. John is a bit boring and much less romantic than Phillip. He acknowledges that he has never really written a poem, even when he was in love. When Phillip accuses Mollie of falling for a boring man and becoming boring herself, he suggests that she and John sleep together to make sure ‘‘he’s as good as me in the nighttime, Butterduck.’’ He also reminds Mollie that she ‘‘used to like it in the car, in ditches, in open fields.’’ But Phillip’s ranting does not fluster John, for John is as solid and foursquare as the houses he builds. He has even translated his philosophy of life into mathematical calculations, stating that ‘‘the square root of sin’’ is humiliating someone and the square root of wonderful is Mollie.
Destruction and Death Phillip is the perfect image of destruction, even though he is supposed to be someone who creates through his writing. His relationship with Mollie is destructive, for he thinks he can only feel secure after he has battered her with words, plates of spaghetti, or his fists. Phillip believes that he owns Mollie and tells John this within seconds of their first meeting. Phillip’s alcoholism is a hallmark of his selfdestructiveness. In a conversation with Phillip, Paris notes that his father never got much done on the apple farm except when he ‘‘worked the still . . . and made applejack.’’ Mother Lovejoy reminisces about the days ‘‘before you discovered beer and spoiled your sweet tooth.’’ Death, darkness, and suicide color Phillip’s character. The play opens with Paris waking up from a nightmare about a burglar in the house, and the burglar is his father. Phillip is in the sanatorium because he responded to his play’s poor reviews by slashing his wrists. He continually tells Mollie that if she leaves with John, he will die. While his intentions are unclear, Phillip asks Paris to come with him when on his way to commit suicide. Phillip’s destructiveness may extend to the desire to destroy his own child.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • All of the play’s action and dialogue occur within the confines of the living room, but the characters refer to numerous conversations and events that take place offstage. Why do you think McCullers chose to limit the play’s setting to the living room? Do you think this is effective, or would the play be stronger if some events that are only referred to were actually dramatized? • Many critics have complained about McCullers’s handling of humor in the play. List some examples of humor (or attempts at humor) in the play and discuss their effectiveness and impact. • Much of the play is autobiographical. McCullers notes in the introduction to the 1958 published version that she gave Mollie many of the features her own mother possessed and that Phillip reflects many of the personality traits of her hus-
Disconnectedness Everyone in the play has difficulty overcoming loneliness and connecting with other human beings. Mollie and Phillip’s history is filled with clumsy attempts to connect with each other. When they met, her first attempt to reach out to him was to have sex with him; she then demanded that they get married immediately. Their relationship is based on Mollie’s role as a helpmate, but she does not recognize Phillip as someone who cannot be helped. Phillip fails to connect with his son. Their conversations are disjointed and confusing, and Phillip tends to forget Paris’s age and to send inappropriate birthday gifts. Sister is an unmarried woman who does not understand quite how people get together, meet each other, and fall in love. Her loneliness has prompted her to create a series of imaginary lovers that she pretends to follow around the world to exotic locales. Mother Lovejoy does not listen to anyone and is oddly unaffected by her son’s death. Paris does not understand any of the adults around him, and his relationships with most of his schoolmates seem to center on fights over the oddness of
V o l u m e
1 8
band, Reeves. Critics have also suggested that McCullers’s own experiences and struggles are reflected in the play’s characters. Learn more about the author’s life and then make a case that the play is or is not autobiographical. • In the 1950s, many issues that appear in the play, such as sex, alcoholism, suicide, and mental illness, were viewed differently than they are today. Pick one of these topics and research how people viewed it in the 1950s. Compare this with how the issue is viewed with today. Do you think today’s attitudes are an improvement or not? • Write an epilogue for the play telling what you think the future will bring for Mollie, John, and Paris. Will they be happy? What challenges might each of them face?
his name. The play ends on a note of success, though, when John and Mollie begin to make an honest connection with each other.
STYLE Setting and Dialogue The play is constructed of three acts, with the last act having two scenes. All of the action takes place in one room, the living room of a house on a small apple farm in New York. Because of this, the characters must go in and out of a scene, as opposed to a movie in which the camera typically moves from one place to another. Important activities and conversations happen away from the living room, and the play’s readers and audience see only the results. For example, Phillip’s suicide occurs offstage, at a nearby pond, but the result of his suicide is apparent in the third act’s second scene. This
2 3 1
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
restriction limits what is actually known about the suicide, as it limits what is known about many other things in the play. It is also interesting to note that the first two acts are filled with dialogue in which the characters reveal information about themselves: their fears, their histories, and their dreams. Only the third act is divided into two scenes, and it contains the most action. In act 3, Phillip’s death is made known, Mollie’s plans to move to New York are suggested, and she takes the first real steps away from her exhusband and into a more stable life with John.
Comedic Moments within Tragedy Much has been made of McCullers’s use of humor in a play that is essentially a tragedy, chronicling the dissolution of a family and a marriage, alcoholism, mental illness, and eventual suicide. Many critics have found the author’s handling of the humor in the play clumsy. Certainly, it is interesting to see where she has placed comedic moments and how these moments may serve the play. For example, in a tense discussion between Mother Lovejoy and Phillip, primarily focused on ‘‘what’s the matter with’’ Phillip, she whines about his not having wanted to take a job she once found for him at the ‘‘Feed and Guano Store.’’ When Mollie walks into the house carrying groceries and crying over the bind she finds herself in with her exhusband, Paris asks why she is crying. Mollie denies her tears and, instead, begins to nag him about how eating pickles and cake together ‘‘give you that awful gas.’’ The humor throughout the play is similar to these examples, in which a comedic moment is juxtaposed with an uncomfortable, even painful, moment. Possibly, McCullers inserted small moments of humor to blunt the pain of more difficult ones.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT During the 1950s, America experienced unprecedented economic growth. Increased government spending on defense projects, home loans, and social programs, as well as rocketing demands for consumer goods, fueled this boom. Worker productivity rose; with only 6 percent of the world’s population, the United States produced 50 percent of its goods. Between 1945 and 1960, the median family income in the United States doubled. The birth rate soared, peaking in 1957, when a baby was
2 3 2
born approximately every seven seconds. Within this context, though, certain social elements were changing.
Individualism versus Conformity One of the primary complaints about American society in the 1950s was that people were experiencing severe pressure to conform to conventional values. The rugged individualist was a dying breed in the United States, according to some social theorists, replaced by men and women who wanted more to fit in than to stand out. David Reisman, a University of Chicago sociologist, and Nathan Glazier published The Lonely Crowd in 1950, a book asserting that Americans were increasingly looking to social institutions and mass media to understand how to live their lives, versus looking inward at personal convictions. People wanted to belong to a group but ultimately felt lonely and could not honestly identify with the group. William Whyte’s book, The Organizational Man, made a similar point. Americans during the post-World War II years worked primarily for the betterment of the corporation, he argued, diminishing creativity and innovation and the work ethic that had made America great. In The Affluent Society, author John Kenneth Galbraith railed against an economy based on increased consumer spending. He was concerned that personal wealth could prevent improvements in schools, health care, and other social goods.
Sexual Values in the 1950s In 1948, Alfred Kinsey, an Indiana University research scientist, published the results of his extensive survey of men and their sexual habits in an academic book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. To everyone’s surprise, it became a huge bestseller. Its findings included numbers showing that premarital sex and homosexuality were much more common than previously thought. In 1953, Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Howls of protest sounded from many quarters, concerned that traditional sexual mores would fall away and Americans would become unhealthily preoccupied with sex. The nation’s comfort level with sexuality was, in fact, changing. Movies became more explicit; in 1956, the Motion Picture Association of American changed the code that regulated what could and could not be shown—a code that had been in effect since the 1920s. Movies were freer to address topics
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1950s: Most middle-class families who buy new homes buy them in the suburbs. Eighty-five percent of the thirteen million homes built in the 1950s are in suburbs. Today: The 2000 United States Census shows a slight shift in American population patterns. While there has been a 14 percent increase in suburban population over the last decade, growth was not consistent across all suburbs; 37 percent of suburbs either lost residents or did not change in population. In fact, many cities seem to be on the rebound, population-wise; nearly three-quarters of American cities grew during the 1990s. • 1950s: Peyton Place (1956) is not only a huge best-seller but also a social phenomenon. Grace Metalious’s novel exposes the secrets and scandals of a fictional small town in New England. For the time, the novel’s relatively candid presentation of teenage and adult sex is groundbreaking. The film adaptation of the novel also causes a stir at the box office. Today: The inclusion of sexual issues or material in books and films is much more common than it was in the 1950s. Entertainment featuring
such as prostitution, abortion, and premarital sex. Novels also reflected this change. Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious, supposedly detailed what went on behind the closed doors of a typical American small town. Rock and roll music celebrated sexuality through both the music and its performance. Elvis Presley’s infamous gyrations being the epitome of the latter.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW McCullers’s second play, The Square Root of Wonderful, was much anticipated before it opened on
V o l u m e
1 8
extramarital sex and homosexuality are becoming more common. • 1950s: The number of cars on the road grows from 40 million in 1950 to 60 million in 1960. Today: The number of registered cars in the United States surpasses 132.4 million, more than double the number on the road in 1960. • 1950s: The United States birth rate peaks in 1957, when a baby is born every seven seconds, for a total of about 4.3 million babies. Today: Four million babies are born in the United States in 2000, an increase of 3 percent from the previous year. • 1950s: More and more women are entering the job market. By 1960, almost two out of five women with school-age children hold jobs. Today: Forty-six percent of the workforce in the United States is female; this figure is expected to increase to 48 percent by 2008. Women’s participation in the American labor force has steadily increased since the 1950s, with a short reversal period in the early 1990s.
Broadway in 1957. Her stage adaptation of The Member of the Wedding had been a huge success, winning the 1951 New York Drama Critics Circle Award as well as other prestigious awards. The Square Root of Wonderful, however, did not fare as well. In fact, even with a well-known cast and a prominent director, the play closed in about six weeks. Sara Nalley, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, joins many other critics in calling the play ‘‘a dismal failure.’’ She also notes that The Member of the Wedding can be described as ‘‘virtually plotless, consisting of a series of vignettes in which the three characters share their memories and fantasies.’’ Much the same criticism was leveled at The Square Root of Wonderful, a play in which most of the
2 3 3
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
look beneath its surface.’’ According to Evans, the play stands out because its themes are different from those in McCullers’s earlier work. McDowell comes to a similar conclusion about the mix of tragedy and comedy. She notes that McCullers adapted the play from her short story entitled ‘‘Who Has Seen the Wind?’’ The short story focuses solely on how alcohol destroys a husband and his marriage and does not attempt to mix tragedy with comedy. Even more damaging than weak characterizations, McDowell writes, is that the play lacks ‘‘an adequate synthesis of the comic and the tragic elements that had been so insistent in her original conception of the work.’’ Evans also writes in his The Ballad of Carson McCullers that the play is McCullers’s ‘‘weakest performance,’’ primarily because ‘‘she is still too close to her materials.’’ Phillip reflects the life of Reeves McCullers; Mollie is based on McCullers’s own mother, Marguerite Smith; and the author herself identifies with both characters at various points in the play. The play’s failure can be blamed on the fact that McCullers is writing not about a young girl with typical adolescent challenges (as in The Member of the Wedding) but about the pains of a writer—‘‘too specialized an area of human interest and experience’’ to capture the imagination of the typical theater audience, Evans claims.
Many critics have charged that the faults of The Square Root of Wonderful lie in its characters. Nalley writes that many of the play’s failures can be blamed on its ‘‘lifeless characters.’’ Margaret B. McDowell, writing in her book Carson McCullers, also criticizes the play’s characters. Aside from Mollie, according to McDowell, they ‘‘reveal little emotion and psychic complexity.’’
Critics have noted a variety of themes in the play, including loneliness, love, and life and death. The theme of love is approached ‘‘rationalistically,’’ according to McDowell. She asserts that John’s character offers a love to Mollie that is logical, as opposed to the magical but destructive version of love Phillip has to give. Lynne Greeley’s article in Theatre History Studies examines McCullers’s life and how it is reflected in her body of work. Greeley notes that the play is ‘‘dominated by a life and death theme’’ and is ‘‘generally seen by critics to be the expression of her grief about Reeves,’’ the author’s deceased husband.
Many critics suggest that the play’s problems can be blamed on its clumsy effort to blend tragedy and comedy. Oliver Evans, in a collection of critical essays entitled Carson McCullers, argues that the play ‘‘has a good many faults,’’ including ‘‘a rather low level’’ of humor and a reliance on too many ‘‘gag lines.’’ Despite these problems, the play is not a total disaster, Evans concludes, writing, ‘‘It is a better play than the reviewers, by and large, gave her credit for . . . and very few of them bothered to
Irving H. Buchen comments on an additional theme, void and nothingness. In his Dalhousie Review article, Buchen notes that John tells Mollie that his life had ‘‘no back or front or depth. No design or meaning’’ before he met her. Phillip, pleading with Mollie to stay with him, tells her that, ‘‘Without you, there is nothing. . . . And nothing resembles nothing. But nothing is not blank. It is configured hell.’’ From this dialogue, Buchen asserts, it is obvious that ‘‘the great terror for McCullers is the void.’’
dialogue is devoted less to moving the action along than to exposing how the characters came to be who they are.
2 3 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
Ultimately, the play may be more a curiosity than a great piece of theater, according to Amy Verner. In the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Verner writes that the play ‘‘is notable not for its dramatic value but because of the insights it offers about McCullers’s personal life.’’
CRITICISM Candyce Norvell Norvell is an independent educational writer who specializes in English and literature. In this essay, Norvell counters critics’ assertions that Mollie is a reflection of McCullers’s own ‘‘bizarre nonsexuality.’’ McCullers was an eccentric, and nothing about her was more eccentric than her sexuality. Especially because McCullers was a woman and a southerner who lived in less liberal times than now, this eccentric sexuality has always loomed large in studies of McCullers’s life and her work. (‘‘Especially’’ because sexual experimentation has been, in general, more tolerated in men than in women and because southern culture, in general, has given women less latitude than they have had in other regions to explore various roles and lifestyles.) Readers and critics alike, of course, are always tempted to see literary characters as barely disguised incarnations of their creators. The temptation is particularly strong when everything that is known or suspected about an author’s intimate life is offbeat and titillating. It is not surprising, then, that those who comment on McCullers’s work often analyze the sexual attitudes and behaviors of her characters and assume that these are an undistorted reflection of the author’s attitudes and behaviors. It is also not surprising that The Square Root of Wonderful would come in for more than its share of such analysis, since the play is all about love and sex. Hence, Lynne Greeley, in a recent article in Theatre History Studies, declares that in The Square Root of Wonderful and other works, McCullers ‘‘decapitates sex totally and retreats into a kind of bizarre nonsexualilty.’’ Greeley’s thesis is that McCullers, profoundly uncomfortable with her own sexuality, created characters, including Mollie in The Square Root of Wonderful, who are sexually dysfunctional and stories that portray sex as base or even pathological.
V o l u m e
1 8
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
Well-known facts about McCullers provide the starting point for such analysis. The author dressed androgynously and chose to use her gender-neutral middle name in place of her first name, Lula. In addition, she had a troubled marriage; a cadre of gay male friends, including playwright Tennessee Williams; and exceptionally close (though not necessarily sexual) relationships with women. For Greeley and some other critics, these facts add up to a flight from sexuality that, they believe, is clearly mirrored in The Square Root of Wonderful and other works. The Square Root of Wonderful does, indeed, portray love as more elevated than sex. Mollie tells John that Phillip wanted her for her body but that John loves her for her mind, which clearly makes her happy. The play’s symbolism links love to light and luminosity, while through characterization, the point is driven home that love and sex are two separate entities. John, who loves Mollie, does not have sex with her; Phillip, who does not love her, seduces her one last time. Mollie tells John that ‘‘a kiss that is warm can lead to sin and sorrow.’’ She refuses to have sex with John, although readers can reasonably assume that she plans to have a sexual relationship with him in the future. When Phillip reminds Mollie that ‘‘you used to like it in the car, in ditches, in open fields,’’ Mollie is embarrassed. Mollie’s words and actions certainly show a change in her attitudes about sex between her adolescence, when she first met Phillip, and the time of the play’s action. This hardly is tantamount to a rejection of sexuality. In Mollie’s life, impulsive indulgence of physical desire has cost her dearly. It has led her to marry, twice, a man who does not love her but who nevertheless expects her to fulfill his needs and desires. Phillip is an unstable, abusive alcoholic who, according to Mollie, has used physical attraction to cast a spell over her and draw her into physically satisfying but emotionally destructive encounters. Mollie’s withdrawal from Phillip, and her unwillingness to immediately enter into a sexual relationship with John, represent not a desperate, unhealthy flight from sexuality but a shift from immature, impulsive sexuality to a more mature handling of this challenging area of life. The older, wiser Mollie is more strongly attracted to John, a stable and loving man, than she is to Phillip. Her words and actions imply that she expects to have a physical relationship with John in the future. The fact that she is not willing to initiate this when she has known John only briefly, and when they are sharing the house with her ex-husband, his mother
2 3 5
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Illuminations and Night Glare (1999) is McCullers’s unfinished autobiography. The book features letters between the author and her husband, the outline for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, stories of her relationships with such famous people as Richard Wright, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Tennessee Williams, and memories of the psychiatrist she consulted after the failure of The Square Root of Wonderful. • McCullers’s second novel Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) is set at a southern military base in the 1930s and shocked audiences with its depiction of a bisexual army captain and his flirtatious wife. Just before McCullers’s death, it was adapted to the screen starring Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando. • Susie Mee’s Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers (1995) features twenty-one
and sister, and Mollie’s son, hardly seems unreasonable. Simply put, Mollie has learned through hard experience to take care of herself—to protect her heart, her feelings, and her well-being—by controlling her impulses and choosing her lovers wisely. She is committed to expressing her sexuality in a way that is not self-destructive. Critics who cast the change in Mollie as a rejection of sexuality are seeing in black and white; they seem to conclude that any limit placed on sexual behavior represents an unhealthy denial of a natural instinct. Both life and literature prove them wrong. Prudence is one of the age-old cardinal virtues; it is rare in the young, and its mastery is considered an important part of the maturation process. Young people are often rash and moved by impulses. More often than not, impulsive behavior brings suffering, and suffering leads eventually to the development of prudence, which simply means the wisdom to stop and think of the possible consequences before acting. This is what Mollie is finally learning to do.
2 3 6
stories written by a variety of authors ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Alice Walker, but it does not include McCullers. The stories were chosen based on the theme of memories about home in the South. • McCullers has often been compared to Flannery O’Connor for her depictions of odd-ball characters in the American South. O’Connor’s short stories have been collected in The Complete Stories (1971). The stories blend tragedy and comedy while revealing the darker side of human nature. • One of McCullers’s closest friends was playwright Tennessee Williams. His play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), an intense tale of familial relations, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for that year.
Most readers can think of people they have known in their own lives who have succeeded in learning prudence and, unfortunately, of those who have failed to do so. Literature, too, offers many stories built around the lesson of prudence: the tragedies of characters who fail to acquire it (the title character in Madame Bovary, for example) and the comedies of those who, after youthful errors and the resulting suffering, succeed (Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility). This theme is far from unique to McCullers; in fact, it is universal. Critics who interpret Mollie’s transformation negatively are predisposed to do so because they interpret McCullers’s life as a failure to come to grips with her own sexuality. But, they are wrong about Mollie, and they are quite possibly wrong about McCullers as well. Wearing pants and refusing to settle into conventional gender roles are not symptoms of a retreat into ‘‘bizarre nonsexuality.’’ McCullers had a famous contemporary who gives the lie to such notions. Actress Katharine Hepburn, like McCullers, has always been known for her
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
androgynous dress and her complete lack of interest in traditional female roles. Hepburn, like McCullers, prefers to live alone. The great love affair of Hepburn’s life, with alcoholic Spencer Tracy, was a relationship in which she loved much more than he and acted as caretaker and lover to a married man who gave her virtually nothing, emotionally or otherwise. In this way, Hepburn is reminiscent of Mollie. Further, since Tracy’s death in 1967, Hepburn, who is still living as of this writing, has remained unattached. That in itself might seem to be grounds for a charge that Hepburn retreated from sexuality. It is interesting, then, that Hepburn shares so much with McCullers and Mollie and yet, unlike them, has never been accused of being maladjusted, sexually or otherwise. In fact, Hepburn has been admired throughout her life for her determination to be her own person regardless of convention. The question of why Hepburn is judged so favorably while McCullers and her characters are labeled pathological is beyond the scope of this essay. Perhaps eccentricity is more tolerated in a New England woman than in a southern one, or in an actress than in an author. Perhaps McCullers’s physical illnesses colored opinions of her emotional health. In any case, the diagnosis of McCullers as having been a dysfunctional woman who wrote about dysfunctional women is far from certain, and it is a diagnosis that requires something in addition to the facts. Source: Candyce Norvell, Critical Essay on The Square Root of Wonderful, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Sheldon Goldfarb Goldfarb has a Ph.D. in English and has published two books on the Victorian author William Makepeace Thackeray. In the following essay, Goldfarb explores the different types of love portrayed in McCullers’s play. In her discussion of The Square Root of Wonderful in her book on Carson McCullers, Margaret B. McDowell says that in this play McCullers ‘‘approaches love rationalistically,’’ meaning that the lesson she is conveying is that love is a matter of logic rather than magic. This interpretation of McDowell’s gets to the central issue of the play, and yet it is not quite accurate to say McCullers condemns magic and promotes rationality in love. It would be truer to say that she presents two sorts of magic, clearly indicating that one is preferable to
V o l u m e
1 8
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
IN ANY CASE, THE DIAGNOSIS OF MCCULLERS AS HAVING BEEN A DYSFUNCTIONAL WOMAN WHO WROTE ABOUT DYSFUNCTIONAL WOMEN IS FAR FROM CERTAIN, AND IT IS A DIAGNOSIS THAT REQUIRES SOMETHING IN ADDITION TO THE FACTS.’’
the other. As to rationality, that is more present in the play as a refusal of love than as a way to get to it. It is true that the love McCullers promotes is the love offered by John Tucker, an unpoetical, scientific man, an architect who never wrote a poem in his life, a man who talks of the ‘‘logic’’ of love and who even uses the mathematical term ‘‘square root’’ in discussing the subject. Still, the logic that John talks of bears closer examination. When Mollie, in the middle of act 2, asks John what he means by the logic of love, he tells her it means, in effect, that they were fated to meet. If they had not met on the road where they did, they would have met somewhere else: in the Statue of Liberty or at the Panama Canal. This sounds more magical than logical, and indeed John goes on to say that the logic of love is ‘‘zany’’ and ‘‘crazy,’’ which sounds a long way from rationalistic. Moreover, near the beginning of the play, when he describes his relationship with Mollie, he calls it a ‘‘crazy time’’ in which ‘‘something magical happened.’’ He also says love can happen almost instantly, or at first sight. And near the end of act 1, he says that you cannot plan love; it arrives totally unexpectedly, and when it does, it puts a light in a person’s eyes and makes objects, such as the chair and table in Mollie’s house, shine like a watch dial. None of this sounds very scientific or rationalistic. The task for Mollie in this play is not to learn to reject love’s magic in favor of a more rational sort of love, but to learn to choose good magic over bad. John’s love is based on good magic; it is the magical coming together of people who are good for each
2 3 7
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
WHAT THE PLAY IS RECOMMENDING IS THE SORT OF MAGIC THAT BRINGS TOGETHER A
house he is planning for the two of them, she interrupts to do something practical: she goes off to fix dinner. It is as if she is pushing away both good love and bad love, good magic and bad magic, by trying to be down to earth, practical, rational. What she has to learn is to distinguish between good and bad love, good and bad magic.
MAN AND A WOMAN WHO SUPPORT EACH OTHER AND MAKE EACH OTHER STRONG, WHO LITERALLY LIGHT UP EACH OTHER’S LIFE.’’
other, who support each other. When John and Mollie magically meet, it brings order to John’s life; it gives him what he calls ‘‘color, pulse . . . [and] form.’’ As for Mollie, what John offers her is protection, affection, and collaboration. He wants her to help him with the house he plans to build for them, and it will be a strong house, a protective house. When Mollie says she will be desolate if he goes to San Francisco, he gently puts his arms around her. When she repeats a cruel thing Mother Lovejoy said to her, he has an angry word for Mother Lovejoy.
2 3 8
She does learn this. It is a gradual process. At the end of act 1, she is able to say that John is her moral support. At the end of act 2, she realizes that looking at John makes her strong. At the end of the play, Mollie is able to open herself to loving John, and as a result, loves everybody. Actually, even when Mollie loved Phillip she loved everybody, she tells John. There is something positive about Mollie’s love even when directed at someone who is no good for her. This can be seen at the end of act 1 when she tries out John’s theory that love makes objects shine. She is able to make the table and chair shine for both Phillip and John, for the two men she loves.
This is all quite different from the sort of love Mollie had previously with her ex-husband, Phillip. Phillip was an abusive husband. He beat Mollie, made fun of the way she talked, and one time even threw her naked out of the house. He also had affairs with other women. Yet, Mollie loved him and loved him in a magical way. She tells John that she was under Phillip’s spell, drawn as if by an irresistible force, as if they were two magnets. Love with Phillip, which she says was like ‘‘witches and ghosts,’’ made her powerless, swirled her head, and turned her legs to macaroni.
Interestingly, when Phillip sees the same table and chair, they do not shine for him. Quite the contrary. They stand out as a sort of reproach to him, in his eyes; he thinks they will outlast him and is angry with them. There is no love in Phillip, one might conclude, at least not love of a positive sort. The table and chair can shine for John and Mollie, but not for him. Indeed, when Phillip returns, although he asks for Mollie’s love, he tells her he cannot love her back. All he is really focused on is his writing. He thinks that if Mollie will love him again and protect him like a cocoon, then he will be able to write again. But cocoons are dead, Mollie says, a point Phillip seems indifferent to. He does not care if their relationship leaves her feeling dead. He does not care if it gives her nothing. He just wants it for what it can give him.
Remembering this sort of love with Phillip, Mollie at first will not even let John kiss her. Kissing, she tells him, leads to the dark and to sin, as if there was a sort of black magic associated with it, the bad sort of magic that weakens a person and binds them in an unhappy relationship like hers with Phillip. Thus, she tells John she cannot kiss him; instead she must ‘‘think and be practical.’’ Similarly, when Phillip returns bringing flowers and asking for love, Mollie tries to push him away by saying she has to be ‘‘adult and practical.’’ Later, when John is telling her lovingly about the dream
To be fair to Phillip, he too seems in the grip of an irresistible force. In reciting the poem by Rainer Maria Rilke about the violin and the bow, he seems to be saying that he would rather keep to himself, only something makes the two of them ‘‘twin.’’ He is able to remind Mollie of the lovemaking they used to engage in: they had that physical sort of love together. He says she needs him just as he needs her, which may be true in a way. They seem to have developed what a later era would call a pattern of co-dependency; they are both dependent on each other in an unhealthy way.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
Mutual desire and dependence is the nature of the love between Phillip and Mollie. It seems the sort of love it would be a good idea to escape. Mollie at first tries to escape through rationality and practicality, but this seems to have little effect. When Phillip returns, she is drawn to him again. Another sort of escape is the one practiced by Sister. Avoiding love in the real world, Sister indulges in all sorts of love fantasies about men who never existed. This seems a sad sort of solution, and quite unfulfilling.
challenged McCullers, leaving her humiliated after the negative critical reception of The Square Root of Wonderful.
The only effective escape from the unhealthy love relationship with Phillip seems to be another love relationship, the one with John. Only by connecting romantically to John can Mollie free herself from Phillip. Only by indulging in John’s good magic can she free herself from Phillip’s bad sort. The play is not recommending a rejection of love’s magic in favor of rationality, nor is it questioning all heterosexual love as suggested by Brooke Horvath and Lisa Logan in their Southern Quarterly article ‘‘Nobody Knows Best: Carson McCullers’s Plays as Social Criticism.’’
McCullers conceived the piece originally as a play and worked on it sporadically from 1952 until 1956, along with her novel, Clock Without Hands. This four-year period was scarred by McCullers’s continued ill health, the suicide of her husband, and perhaps the most devastating single event in her life, the death of her mother. Sick of heart yet salved by the will to keep writing, McCullers retained the essential features of the story line that eventually became The Square Root of Wonderful, but altered the characterization (and certain other features of the tale) sufficiently to cast its disparate parts into a long short story entitled ‘‘Who Has Seen the Wind?’’ Yet she could not abandon altogether her original plan to make a play of the story and soon resurrected her several scripts.
The play is condemning the hypnotic sort of magic that forces a person to do demeaning things against their will, as in the hypnotist’s show that John remembers, in which old ladies were made to ride bicycles and a dignified gentleman was made to stand on his head. What the play is recommending is the sort of magic that brings together a man and a woman who support each other and make each other strong, who literally light up each other’s life. This sort of magic transforms Mollie when John comes to live with her. Mother Lovejoy notes it in act 2, saying that when Mollie last lived with Phillip she lost her looks, but now she has got her old figure, her old color, and her old life back. Sister agrees, saying Mollie looks radiant. Mother Lovejoy attributes the transformation to sex, but what it really has to do with must be Mollie’s new love for John, which has not yet become sexual. Sex is what Mollie had with Phillip, and it made her sad and did not save her looks. What Mollie has with John is something much deeper, a magical love that makes her strong. Source: Sheldon Goldfarb, Critical Essay on The Square Root of Wonderful, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Virginia Spencer Carr In the following chapter excerpt, Carr examines how the politics and artistry of play-production
V o l u m e
1 8
Carson McCullers was the author, too, of a littleknown, second play, The Square Root of Wonderful, which opened on Broadway nearly eight years after the premiere of The Member of the Wedding. The reception of this play, however (by audiences and critics alike), was anything but enthusiastic.
In a preface to the published version of The Square Root of Wonderful, McCullers commented upon its autobiographical roots: ‘‘I recognized many of the compulsions that made me write this play. My husband wanted to be a writer and his failure in that was one of the disappointments that led to his death. When I started The Square Root of Wonderful my mother was very ill and after a few months she died. I wanted to re-create my mother—to remember her tranquil beauty and sense of joy in life. So, unconsciously, the life-death theme of The Square Root of Wonderful emerged.’’ The play went through more than a dozen drafts, six or eight by McCullers alone and a handful of assorted other scripts written in collaboration with her several producers and directors. The play’s first director was Albert Marre, who, having successfully directed Kismet, Saint Joan, The Chalk Garden, and a number of other plays, was invited by producer Arnold Saint Suber to direct The Square Root of Wonderful. Marre, along with Saint Suber, worked intensively with McCullers through six different scripts for over a year, but when Saint Suber announced that the script was ready to be cast and produced, Marre was on the West Coast and
2 3 9
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
THE PLAY DEMONSTRATED THAT IT WAS THE ADULTS IN THE TALE WHO HAD TO GAIN EMOTIONAL MATURITY, THAT, IN EFFECT, IT WAS THEY—NOT PARIS— WHO WERE THE CHILDREN.’’
unavailable. Jose Quintero, who was selected to replace Marre, worked with McCullers and Saint Suber until the play’s disastrous opening at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton on October 10, 1957, then left the play (though his name stayed on the credits for the Broadway opening). The afternoon that Quintero resigned, McCullers called the cast together and told them: ‘‘I have never directed a play, and I have never seen anyone direct a play, but I wrote this play, and I know what the characters are and what I want them to be. Now you can go home if you want, but if you’d like to stay, I’ll take over and do the best I can.’’ No one left. As though a single voice, the cast sang out: ‘‘We want you. We’ll stay!’’ According to Anne Baxter, who played Mollie Lovejoy, the lead role, ‘‘Carson’s play—the child— was dying, and she knew it.’’ Baxter believed that the chief problem was that McCullers ‘‘simply could not rewrite.’’ Albert Marre was convinced, however, that McCullers ‘‘could rewrite, but not the kind of square, so-called theatrical craftsman writing that the others tried to require of her.’’ George Keathley, Quintero’s eventual replacement, took the play from Princeton to Philadelphia for a nine-day run in an attempt to work out its problems, while the playwright herself and others assisted in major revisions. In a statement to the Philadelphia Inquirer just before the play’s opening in Philadelphia, McCullers told a reporter that one of the main difficulties for a writer was ‘‘to handle tragedy and comedy almost simultaneously,’’ but that the two elements had to be present ‘‘with the proper emotional progression.’’ McCullers wrote later (in her preface to the published version of The Square Root of Wonderful) of the emotional flexibility that a reader of novels has—with ‘‘time to reflect before he is pushed on to the next action’’—
2 4 0
in contrast to the lack of that kind of flexibility on the part of the theater-goer, who must respond immediately to the ‘‘absurd and painful truths of life’’ in a single line. ‘‘I have learned this in my work in the theater: the author must work alone until the intentions of his play are fulfilled—until the play is as finished as the author can make it. Once a play is in rehearsal, a playwright must write under unaccustomed pressure, and alas, what he had in mind is often compromised. That is why of the five or six evolutions this play went through I prefer to publish the one which follows. It is the last one I wrote before the production was set in motion and is the most nearly the truth of what I want to say in The Square Root of Wonderful.’’ In the play, McCullers paints a dramatic portrait (as highly charged autobiographically as the one revealed in The Member of the Wedding) in which the protagonist is a woman named Mollie Lovejoy, whose alcoholic husband (Philip) is a failed writer of one successful novel. They have been married twice to each other and have been twice divorced. At the play’s opening, Philip has just been released from a mental hospital. He still adores Mollie and goes to see her and their twelveyear-old son, Paris. But when he learns that Mollie has fallen in love with someone else (an architect named John Tucker), a man she hardly knows— who is already ensconced in her home—Philip commits suicide. Tucker plans to build for Mollie and her son a new house (in effect, a new life) and gives evidence of becoming the reliable and nurturing father figure to her son that Philip was not. The Square Root of Wonderful was soundly drubbed upon its opening on Broadway at the National Theatre on October 30, 1957, and it closed after forty-five performances. Whereas first-night critics commended Baxter for her brilliant performance as Mollie Lovejoy, the consensus was that the play could not survive its ‘‘stilted dialogue,’’ ‘‘wooden action,’’ and ‘‘unconvincing characters’’ (especially the young Paris Lovejoy). McCullers conceded that the child changed little during the course of the play, but defended her conceptualization of Paris in that it was primarily through him that the ‘‘proper emotional progression’’ of the other characters could be seen. The play demonstrated that it was the adults in the tale who had to gain emotional maturity, that, in effect, it was they—not Paris—who were the children. Reviewers agreed that comparisons of McCullers’s new play with The Member of the Wedding
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
were inevitable, and it seemed to those who knew McCullers personally (and of her increasingly debilitating illnesses) that writing for the theater was not her force. The production of The Square Root of Wonderful taught the playwright what she perceived to be a bitter lesson, and she vowed never again to attempt anything for the theater. In her preface to the published version of The Square Root of Wonderful, McCullers said that she found the ‘‘picayune last-minute changes’’ irritating, although she admitted that they were important since every weakness in the script becomes ‘‘magnified on the stage.’’ John Leggett, who edited the hardcopy edition for Houghton Mifflin, recalled that McCullers was deeply resentful of the rewrites that had been made without her permission in the acting version of The Square Root of Wonderful: ‘‘In working with her, I made several suggestions for minor changes, and she nodded, saying ‘Yes, that’s fine, Jack. Put it in like that.’ When I protested that these were my words, that I didn’t presume to write the play for her, she said ruefully, ‘Why not? Everybody else has?’’’ More than a curtain dropped when the play closed on December 7, 1957. McCullers had failed to work out in it the ambivalent love/hatred emotions kindled repeatedly, both in actuality and memory, by her husband and mother. Unlike The Member of the Wedding, which had given McCullers emotional release as well as extraordinary acclaim and financial security, The Square Root of Wonderful had become its opposite for the dejected playwright—‘‘the square root of humiliation.’’ Coping with a collaborator on The Member of the Wedding before producing a script that was, finally, wholly hers, and that became a prizewinning play with a long run was one thing; but to have The Square Root of Wonderful carved up beyond recognition by the play’s producers and directors was quite another, a dejection from which McCullers never quite recovered. Tennessee Williams once told her in speaking of his own career as a playwright: ‘‘It takes a tough old bird to work in the theater.’’ ‘‘Carson was tough,’’ said Williams, ‘‘like this marble-topped table,’’ he added, pounding it for emphasis, but he knew, too, that she had no intention of submitting herself wittingly ever again to the hazards and ‘‘bolts of chance’’ by writing for the theater. Source: Virginia Spencer Carr, ‘‘The Square Root of Wonderful,’’ in Understanding Carson McCullers, University of South Carolina Press, 1990, pp. 99–105.
V o l u m e
1 8
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
SOURCES Buchen, Irving H., ‘‘Divine Collusion: The Art of Carson McCullers,’’ in Dalhousie Review, Vol. 54, Autumn 1974, pp. 529–41. Evans, Oliver, ‘‘The Achievement of Carson McCullers,’’ in Carson McCullers, edited by Harold Bloom, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea House Publishers, 1986, pp. 21–31, originally published in the English Journal, Vol. 51, No. 5, May 1962. ———, The Ballad of Carson McCullers: A Biography, Coward-McCann, 1966, pp. 162–68. Greeley, Lynne, ‘‘Carson McCullers: Young, Gifted, and Odd,’’ in Theatre History Studies, June 2002, pp. 155–76. McDowell, Margaret B., Carson McCullers, Twayne’s United States Authors Series, No. 354, Twayne Publishers, 1980, pp. 141–44. Nalley, Sara, ‘‘Carson McCullers,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 7, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, edited by John MacNicholas, Gale Research, 1981, pp. 70–74. Verner, Amy, ‘‘Carson McCullers,’’ in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 228, Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, Second Series, edited by Christopher J. Wheatley, Gale, 2000, pp. 204–09.
FURTHER READING Bloom, Harold, ed., Carson McCullers, Modern Critical Views Series, Chelsea House Publishers, 1986. Bloom, respected Yale University professor and literary critic, provides the introduction to this collection of twelve academic articles dealing with McCullers’s work. Also included in the volume is a chronology of the writer’s life and an extensive bibliography. Carr, Virginia Spencer, The Lonely Hunter, Doubleday, 1975. Carr has written an especially detailed biography of McCullers, beginning with her childhood days in Georgia to her death at age fifty in New York. The book also contains numerous photographs, a preface by Tennessee Williams, and a chronology of McCullers’s life. Entzminger, Betina, The Belle Gone Bad: White Southern Women Writers and the Dark Seductress, Louisiana State University Press, 2002. Entzminger looks at images of southern womanhood in the fiction of southern white writers from before the Civil War through the present. She argues that interpreting these female characters through a lens of domesticity and conservatism is too superficial and that a certain darkness and power exists beneath their surface. Savigneau, Josyane, Carson McCullers: A Life, Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
2 4 1
T h e
S q u a r e
R o o t
o f
W o n d e r f u l
The author uses a variety of sources, including unpublished manuscripts and letters as well as critical works previously available only in French, to uncover many of the private aspects of McCullers’s life.
2 4 2
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
Tartuffe Molière’s play Tartuffe (also sometimes referred to as Tartuffe, or, The Imposter) is a masterwork by France’s most celebrated comic playwright. Tartuffe is set in the realm of seventeenth-century Parisian high society during the reign of King Louis XIV.
MOLIÈRE 1664
In Tartuffe, Orgon, a wealthy family man, takes in a stranger by the name of Tartuffe to stay in his home. Tartuffe appears to be an extremely pious and devout man of religion, and Orgon regards him almost as a saint. Orgon offers Tartuffe his best food and drink and places the needs of his guest above those of his wife and children. He plans to force his daughter to marry Tartuffe and to disinherit his son in order to make Tartuffe the sole heir to his fortune. All of Orgon’s friends and family regard Tartuffe as a con man who only pretends to be of the highest moral authority but who does not practice what he preaches. Orgon is warned that Tartuffe may be deceiving him in order to gain both financially and socially, but Orgon is blind to these warnings. Orgon finally learns that he has been betrayed by his guest when he overhears Tartuffe trying to seduce his wife. However, when he orders Tartuffe to leave his house, Tartuffe seeks revenge by trying to seize all of Orgon’s property and to have Orgon arrested. In the end, through the intervention of the King, Tartuffe is arrested, and harmony is restored to Orgon’s household. The character of Tartuffe represents those members of society who preach religious piety but do not themselves live by the morals they try to force upon
2 4 3
T a r t u f f e
others. Because the play focuses on the issue of religious hypocrisy, it was highly controversial at the time it was written and was banned from public performance for five years. A translation of Tartuffe in verse form by Donald F. Frame is published by Signet Classic in Tartuffe and Other Plays by Molière (1967).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, was baptized in Paris, France, on January 15, 1622. His father was a furniture merchant who, in 1631, was appointed chief provider of furnishings for the home of the king. Molière’s mother died when he was ten years old, and in 1633 his father remarried. Molière received his education at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont, after which he studied law and, in 1641, was admitted to the bar. After practicing law for six months, Molière decided to pursue a career in the theater instead. In 1643, he joined the newly formed theater company, the L’Illustre-Théâtre, soon taking the stage name of Molière. In 1645, he joined a touring theater company, with which he traveled throughout the south of France for the next thirteen years. The first public performance of a five-act comedy written by Molière was staged in 1655. In 1657, Molière’s theater company, having earned considerable renown as a traveling troupe, moved to Paris. Their first performance before King Louis XIV, Le Docteur amoureux (The Amorous Doctor), a farce written by Molière himself, was given in 1658. It was a great success with the king, who found it amusing and offered them the patronage of his younger brother, known as ‘‘Monsieur.’’ Now called the ‘‘troupe de Monsieur,’’ Molière’s company was provided performance space in the PetitBourbon theater. Molière’s first great personal success as an actor and a playwright came with the performance of Les Précieuses ridicules (Such Foolish Affected Ladies) in 1659. When the Petit-Bourbon was demolished in 1660, the company was given space at the Palais-Royal theater. In 1662, Molière, at age forty, married Armande Béjart, then nineteen years old. That year his comedy, L’École des femmes (The School for Wives or The School for Women), was a popular success but created controversy that continued for over a year. In 1663, Molière was granted a royal pension and, in 1664, King Louis XIV was named godfather of his firstborn son, Louis, who died less than a year later. The
2 4 4
year 1664 also began a five-year-long controversy over the play Tartuffe, which was banned from public performance until 1669. In 1665, Molière’s play Dom Juan (Don Juan) was cancelled after just fifteen performances due to its controversial nature and was never performed again in his lifetime, although it was never officially banned. Nonetheless, that same year the troupe earned the patronage of the king and the appellation Troupe du Roi (The King’s Troupe), and Molière’s pension was raised considerably. In 1666, while he enjoyed professional successes, Molière’s health began to decline seriously, due to tuberculosis, which occasionally prevented him from performing. In 1672, his wife died. A year later, during his performance as the hypochondriac in Le Malade imaginaire (1673; The Hypochondriac or The Imaginary Invalid), Molière collapsed on stage and died later that evening. Although he requested a priest for his final confession, none arrived in time, and, not given the right to a proper funeral because he was an actor, Molière was buried at night.
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1 Tartuffe is set in the Paris home of Orgon, a wealthy man who lives with his wife, Elmire; his daughter, Mariane; and his son, Damis. Orgon also has several houseguests, including Madame Pernelle (his mother), Cléante (Elmire’s brother), and Valère, who is engaged to Mariane. Orgon has recently befriended a man named Tartuffe, who has presented himself to Orgon as an extremely pious and devout man. Orgon invites Tartuffe to stay in his home as a moral guide and religious teacher. Orgon regards Tartuffe with extreme reverence, devotion, and adoration and treats him with greater love, affection, and favor than he does his wife and children. Orgon has taken Tartuffe as his close confidante, dotes on his guest excessively, and worships the man as if he were a saint. In the opening scene, Orgon’s mother, Madame Pernelle, announces to the other members of the household that she is leaving to stay elsewhere because she is disgusted with the manner in which they all (except Orgon) criticize Tartuffe. Madame Pernelle advises the others to take Tartuffe’s advice and reform their lives, but they protest that there is nothing immoral about their behavior.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
Orgon, who has just returned from two days spent in the country, asks Dorine (Mariane’s lady’smaid) how everyone has been doing in his absence. Dorine tells him that Elmire, his wife, has been sick, suffering fever, headache, loss of appetite, and insomnia. Orgon, however, expresses no interest in his wife’s illness and repeatedly asks about Tartuffe. Dorine describes Tartuffe, in contrast to Elmire, as having been in fine health and having eaten, drunk, and slept excessively. Orgon makes no comment about his wife’s suffering and expresses concern only for Tartuffe’s well-being. Orgon describes to Cléante how he met Tartuffe in a church and was so impressed by his piety and virtue that he decided to take the man into his home. Cléante attempts to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is not as virtuous as he pretends to be. He warns Orgon that Tartuffe is using the pretense of religious devotion for the purpose of his own social and material gain. Orgon, however, dismisses Cléante’s warnings about Tartuffe.
Molière Act 2 Orgon informs his daughter, Mariane, that he wishes her to marry Tartuffe. Mariane is surprised to hear this, because Orgon had already agreed that she could marry Valère, the man she loves. But Mariane is too obedient to openly protest her father’s wishes, and she remains passive while Orgon insists that marrying Tartuffe is a good idea. Dorine, meanwhile, repeatedly interrupts Orgon in an attempt to talk him out of forcing Mariane to marry Tartuffe. After Orgon leaves the room, Dorine tells Mariane that she must tell her father she refuses to marry Tartuffe because she wishes to marry Valère. Mariane replies that she cannot go against her father’s wishes, that she is too timid to fight him for the marriage she wants, and that she will simply kill herself if he forces her to marry Tartuffe. Dorine, however, assures Mariane that they can devise a plan to change Orgon’s mind and allow her to marry Valère. Valère tells Mariane he has heard that she will be marrying Tartuffe. Neither Mariane nor Valère wants to admit to the other to feeling hurt by this change of plans, so they both pretend to be perfectly happy that their engagement has been broken off. However, it is clear that they are both still in love with one another and are merely trying to keep their pride. Dorine then steps in, makes Mariane and Valère hold hands, and forces them to admit that
V o l u m e
1 8
they still love each other. Dorine then assures them that they can devise a plan to gain Orgon’s consent to their marriage.
Act 3 Damis, Orgon’s son, hides in a closet in order to overhear a conversation between Elmire and Tartuffe. During this conversation, Tartuffe propositions Elmire with the offer of an elicit affair behind her husband’s back. He assures Elmire that he would keep her infidelity a secret in order to safeguard his own reputation as a pious man. Elmire lets Tartuffe know that she has no interest in conducting an affair with him. However, she tells him that she will not tell her husband about his sexual advances if he promises to convince Orgon to allow Mariane to marry Valère. At that moment, Damis steps out of the closet where he has been hiding and states that he must report Tartuffe’s inappropriate behavior to his father. Elmire pleads with Damis not to tell Orgon of Tartuffe’s behavior, but Damis insists that Orgon must be informed of the matter. Damis tells Orgon that Tartuffe tried to conduct an illicit affair with Elmire. Orgon responds to this information by accusing Damis of lying about Tartuffe’s behavior. In his anger, Orgon orders Damis to leave the house immediately and declares
2 4 5
T a r t u f f e
that he will disinherit him. Orgon announces that he will make Mariane marry Tartuffe that very night and states that he is going to make Tartuffe the sole heir to his estate.
Act 4 Orgon tells Elmire that he does not believe Tartuffe made a pass at her. Elmire tells Orgon to hide underneath a table in order to overhear her conversation with Tartuffe. While Orgon is hiding under the table, Elmire tells Tartuffe that she would like to have an affair with him. Tartuffe responds that she must prove to him that she is sincere through an act of physical passion. Elmire then asks Tartuffe to look out in the hallway and make sure her husband is not listening in on the conversation. While Tartuffe is out of the room, Orgon comes out from under the table and admits to Elmire that Tartuffe has betrayed him. When Tartuffe returns to the room, Orgon orders him to leave the household immediately. Tartuffe responds that he will get revenge against Orgon for turning against him. Orgon explains to Elmire that he has given Tartuffe certain information that will make it possible for Tartuffe to ruin the family out of revenge.
Act 5 Orgon explains to Cléante that he gave a strongbox containing important documents to Tartuffe for safekeeping. This strongbox had been given to Orgon by a friend who fled the country in order to escape legal problems. Orgon now fears that Tartuffe will use these documents as evidence against him by turning them over to the legal authorities. These documents would serve as evidence that Orgon has been concealing a crime committed by the friend who gave him the strongbox. Monsieur Loyal, a bailiff, comes to the door and shows Orgon a legal document that names Tartuffe as the rightful owner of the house. He tells Orgon that he must move his family out of the house by the following morning. After Monsieur Loyal leaves, Valère tells Orgon that Tartuffe has handed the strongbox full of incriminating documents over to the King and that there is now a warrant out for Orgon’s arrest. Valère has brought a carriage in which Orgon may flee immediately in order to escape arrest. Before Orgon has a chance to flee, Tartuffe arrives with a Gentleman of the King’s Guard and states that Orgon is under arrest. However, just at
2 4 6
this moment, the Gentleman of the King’s Guard states that he is in fact arresting Tartuffe, not Orgon. The Gentleman of the King’s Guard explains that Tartuffe is being arrested for countless crimes he committed under another name. The Gentleman tells Orgon that the King has decided to restore Orgon as rightful owner of his home and wealth and to forgive him for withholding the strongbox of documents. In the final moments of the play, Orgon decides to go thank the King and then to see to the marriage of Valère and Mariane.
CHARACTERS Cléante Cléante is the brother of Elmire and brother-inlaw of Orgon. Cléante tries to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is not sincere in his religious devotion and is using Orgon for his money and influence. He observes that Tartuffe makes an outward display of religious devotion but does not practice what he preaches. He points out to Orgon that there are many pious people who live moral lives without making a public display of their piety. Orgon, however, is not convinced by Cléante’s reasoning and does not heed his advice about Tartuffe. In the final moments of the play, Cléante advises Orgon to go before the King and thank him for arresting Tartuffe and for restoring Orgon’s property to him. He states that Orgon should not harbor ill will toward Tartuffe but should hope that Tartuffe will one day mend his ways and become a truly virtuous person. Many critics have commented that Cléante represents the voice of reason in the play, providing guidelines for the sincere practice of Christian morality in contrast to the false piety of Tartuffe.
Damis Damis is the son of Orgon, stepson of Elmire, and brother of Mariane. Of all the characters, Damis is the most outraged by Tartuffe’s behavior, reacting impulsively and threatening violence on several occasions. Damis is very upset when he learns that Orgon wishes Mariane to marry Tartuffe. Damis is engaged to the sister of Valère and fears that if the engagement between Mariane and Valère is broken, Valère’s sister will break her engagement to him as
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
well. Damis hides in a closet in order to overhear the conversation between Tartuffe and Elmire, in which Tartuffe attempts to seduce Elmire. Upon hearing this exchange, Damis becomes extremely upset and goes to tell his father of Tartuffe’s behavior. Orgon, however, responds to this information by chastising Damis for daring to speak against Tartuffe. Orgon orders Damis out of the house immediately and declares that he will disinherit his son. Once Orgon learns of Tartuffe’s deception, he takes Damis back into the household and wishes to restore his son’s rightful inheritance to him. Damis, an emotional and impulsive young man, offers to slay Tartuffe out of revenge but is advised to be patient until a more reasonable plan for dealing with Tartuffe is devised.
Dorine Dorine is the lady’s-maid to Mariane. Although she is a servant, Dorine has a very strong personality and is never afraid to speak out against Orgon or anyone else with whom she disagrees. When Orgon tells Mariane that she must marry Tartuffe, Dorine immediately and emphatically protests the arrangement. She argues with Orgon that if he forces Mariane to marry a man whom she does not love, the result will be that she will be unfaithful to her unwanted husband. Dorine later tells Mariane that she absolutely must stand up to her father and insist that she be allowed to marry Valère, the man whom she loves. Dorine helps to mend the hurt feelings between Mariane and Valère after Valère learns of the engagement to Tartuffe and assures the young lovers that she will devise a plan to allow them to marry one another.
Elmire Elmire is the wife of Orgon, stepmother of Mariane and Damis, and sister of Cléante. As divorce would have been extremely uncommon in the seventeenth century, the reader is left to assume that Orgon had a first wife who was the mother of Mariane and Damis and that this wife died young. Accordingly, the reader may assume that Elmire is Orgon’s second wife. Although Elmire is the stepmother of Mariane and Damis, she seems to treat them as if they were her own children, and they seem to regard her as their mother. In the play, Elmire has a conversation with Tartuffe in which Tartuffe attempts to seduce her into having an affair with him. Elmire politely but clearly refuses Tartuffe’s advances. She tells him that she will not tell her husband about his behavior toward her if he
V o l u m e
1 8
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • Tartuffe was adapted to the screen in a 1925 silent film of the same title, directed by the German filmmaker F. W. Murnau and starring Emile Jannings as Tartuffe. This film was released on video with English language intertitles by Grapevine Video in 1995. • Tartuffe; or, The Imposter was adapted to the screen in a 1984 film of the same title, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company and directed by Bill Alexander. This production stars Anthony Sher as Tartuffe, Nigel Hawthorne as Orgon, and Alison Steadman as Elmire. It was produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and distributed on video by RKO Home Video. • Tartuffe was adapted to the screen in a 1986 film of the same title, directed by Pierre Badel. This production was performed by the Société des Comédiens Français and was released on video with French dialogue with English language subtitles by Films for the Humanities.
promises to convince Orgon to allow Mariane to marry Valère instead of him. This arrangement is foiled when Damis reports this conversation to his father. Because Orgon refuses to believe that Tartuffe tried to seduce his wife, he accuses Elmire of making the story up in order to malign Tartuffe and support the interests of Damis and Mariane. In order to prove to Orgon that Tartuffe has betrayed him, Elmire instructs him to hide underneath a table while she speaks to Tartuffe. While Orgon is hiding, Elmire tells Tartuffe that she would like to have an affair with him, and Tartuffe responds that she must prove this to him through an act of physical passion. At this point, Orgon is convinced that Tartuffe has betrayed him and orders Tartuffe to leave immediately.
Flipote Flipote is the maid of Madame Pernelle. Flipote appears only in the opening scene of the play and
2 4 7
T a r t u f f e
has no dialogue. As Madame Pernelle is leaving Orgon’s house, she slaps Flipote and, calling her a ‘‘slut,’’ tells her to hurry up.
A Gentleman of the King’s Guard In the final scene of the play, Tartuffe arrives at Orgon’s house with a Gentleman of the King’s Guard. Tartuffe announces that they have come to arrest Orgon. However, the Gentleman of the King’s Guard informs them that he is in fact going to arrest Tartuffe for various crimes committed under a different name. The Gentleman of the King’s Guard also tells Orgon that the King has restored to him all of the property he had signed over to Tartuffe.
The King Although the King does not appear as a visible presence or speaking character in Tartuffe, he is an important offstage character to the plot resolution of the play. Just when Orgon thinks he is about to be arrested, the Gentleman of the King’s Guard arrests Tartuffe instead. The Gentleman of the King’s Guard explains that the King has pardoned Orgon and will restore his property to him because of the fact that Orgon fought loyally on the side of the King during the civil wars (known as the Fronde). Thus, although the King is not a visible presence onstage, he is significant to the play’s theme of loyalty versus betrayal. The ending suggests that loyalty to the King, as well as to one’s friends and family, will always be rewarded.
Monsieur Loyal Toward the end of the play, Monsieur Loyal, a bailiff, arrives at Orgon’s house with a legal document that declares Tartuffe to be the rightful owner of the property. Monsieur Loyal informs Orgon that he and his family must vacate the house by the next morning. Monsieur Loyal adds that he has employed several men to spend the night in the house in order to be sure that they leave in the morning. His name, Loyal, is ironic in that he is in fact disloyal to the King when he acts on Tartuffe’s behalf.
Mariane Mariane is the daughter of Orgon, stepdaughter of Elmire, and sister of Damis. Mariane is in love with Valère and, as the play opens, has been granted her father’s permission to marry him. However, Orgon tells her that he wants her to marry Tartuffe instead of Valère. Mariane is horrified by the pros-
2 4 8
pect of having to marry Tartuffe but is too obedient to stand up to her father. She tells Dorine that she will simply kill herself if she is forced to marry Tartuffe. Dorine, however, tells Mariane that she must stand up to her father and insist on marrying Valère;, but when Mariane pleads that she is too afraid to resist her father, Dorine assures her that they will find a way for her to marry Valère. In the final lines of the play, Orgon states that they all must see to the marriage of the ‘‘loving pair,’’ Mariane and Valère.
Orgon Orgon is the husband of Elmire, father of Damis and Mariane, and son of Madame Pernelle. The play takes place in Orgon’s home, where he lives with his family and several houseguests. As the play opens, Orgon has met Tartuffe at a church and, impressed with his piety, has invited the stranger to stay in his home indefinitely. Orgon is completely taken with Tartuffe and treats him better than he treats his own family. He regards Tartuffe as his religious guide and is blind to the fact that Tartuffe is deceiving him. When his friends and family try to convince Orgon that Tartuffe is faking his piety and deceiving his host, Orgon dismisses their warnings. In Orgon’s eyes, Tartuffe is a model of religious devotion whom all others should emulate. He informs his daughter, Mariane, that he wants her to marry Tartuffe, even though he has already promised that she could marry Valère. When Damis reports to Orgon that Tartuffe has tried to seduce Elmire, his wife, Orgon does not believe him. Instead, Orgon accuses Damis of insulting Tartuffe, orders Damis to leave the house immediately, and announces that he will disinherit his son in order to make Tartuffe his sole heir. Elmire tells Orgon to hide underneath a table while she talks to Tartuffe so that he will hear for himself what kind of man Tartuffe really is. After Orgon hears Tartuffe trying to seduce Elmire, he is convinced that he has been betrayed. Orgon orders Tartuffe to leave his home immediately, but Tartuffe warns him that he has ample means for getting revenge. Orgon has given Tartuffe a strongbox of papers incriminating himself and has also signed all of his property over to Tartuffe. Thus, Tartuffe arranges to have Orgon arrested and the family turned out of their home. At the end of the play, however, Orgon is informed that he has been pardoned by the King and his property restored to him, while Tartuffe is arrested for a long list of previously committed crimes. In the closing lines of the
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
play, Orgon announces that he will go to the King to thank him and then see to the marriage of Valère and Mariane.
Madame Pernelle Madame Pernelle is the mother of Orgon, mother-in-law of Elmire, and grandmother of Mariane and Damis. In the opening scene of the play, Madame Pernelle announces that she is leaving Orgon’s home because she disapproves of the way the other members of the household (except Orgon) shun Tartuffe. Madame Pernelle criticizes the others for engaging in parties, dances, and other social events, which she considers to be immoral behavior. She tells them all that they should listen to Tartuffe’s moral pronouncements against them and try to take his advice. The others protest that there is nothing wrong with socializing with their friends and that Tartuffe is a despicable man who does not practice what he preaches. Toward the end of the play, Madame Pernelle returns to Orgon’s house. When Orgon tries to tell her that Tartuffe has betrayed him and tried to seduce his wife, Madame Pernelle refuses to believe him and insists that Tartuffe is a good man. However, when she sees that Tartuffe has taken Orgon’s property and tried to have him arrested, Madame Pernelle finally admits that Tartuffe is not what he appeared to be.
Tartuffe Tartuffe, the title character of the play, is a seasoned criminal, referred to by the other characters as a hypocrite and an imposter. Tartuffe pretends to be a pious man whose life is devoted to religious worship and moral behavior. Tartuffe met Orgon at a church, where he made such a show of religious devotion that Orgon decided to take him into his home as a religious guide. Tartuffe exerts a strong power over Orgon, who worships him as if he were a saint and shuns his own family in favor of this stranger. Orgon decides to make his daughter marry Tartuffe and disinherits his own son in order to make Tartuffe his sole heir. When Damis reports to Orgon that Tartuffe has tried to seduce his wife, Orgon does not believe this and instead blames Damis for speaking out against Tartuffe. However, when Orgon hides under a table and overhears Tartuffe trying once again to seduce her, he finally sees that he has been betrayed. Orgon orders Tartuffe to leave his home immediately, and Tartuffe threatens him with revenge. After Tartuffe leaves, he arranges to have Orgon arrested and his property taken away from him. However, at the last moment,
V o l u m e
1 8
a Gentleman of the King’s Guard arrests Tartuffe instead and informs Orgon that his property will be restored to him. The Gentleman of the Guard explains that Tartuffe had committed a long list of crimes under a different name and will be sent to prison.
Valère Valère is in love with Mariane. In the beginning of the play, Valère is engaged to Mariane with Orgon’s permission. Thus, when he finds out that the engagement has been broken and Mariane is to marry Tartuffe, Valère is very upset about the matter. When he confronts Mariane with the news of her engagement to Tartuffe, Mariane pretends that she does not care about Valère, and Valère likewise pretends that he will be happy to marry someone else. Dorine, however, brings Valère and Mariane together and forces them both to admit that they are still in love with one another and still wish to get married. Toward the end of the play, Valère bravely does whatever he can to save Orgon from being arrested. He arrives at Orgon’s house with a carriage and money for Orgon to escape arrest. Orgon is soon cleared of the charges against him and so does not need to run off or take Valère’s money. Nonetheless, Orgon is so grateful to Valère for this offering of help that he announces he will immediately arrange for Valère’s marriage to Mariane and reward Valère’s ‘‘deep devotion.’’ Valère’s genuine loyalty to Orgon is contrasted with Tartuffe’s false friendship; likewise, Valère’s genuine and honorable love for Mariane is contrasted with Tartuffe’s underhanded lust for Elmire.
THEMES Religious Hypocrisy versus True Christian Virtue The central theme of Tartuffe is the exploration of religious hypocrisy in contrast to true Christian virtue. Tartuffe is a hypocrite because he creates an outward appearance of extreme piety and religious devotion while secretly leading a life of crime and immoral behavior. Throughout the play, various characters refer to Tartuffe as a hypocrite and can see clearly that he does not practice what he preaches. For example, Tartuffe instructs his servant to tell anyone who asks that he is busy giving out charity to
2 4 9
T a r t u f f e
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Molière’s theatrical career took place during the reign of King Louis XIV of France. Write a report about the reign of Louis XIV and his influence on French society, culture, and history. • The playwrights Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine were contemporaries of Molière, as famous for their tragic plays as Molière was for his comic plays. Write a report on either Corneille or Racine, discussing his biography, theatrical career, major works, and the central themes of his plays. • The baroque movement in the arts was contemporary with the theatrical productions of Molière. Write a report about baroque art. What are the central themes and stylistic elements of baroque art? Who were some of the major artists of
the poor and downtrodden—whereas, in fact, he is busy trying to seduce the wife of his friend. Tartuffe also displays an outward show of religious devotion by assuming a stance of moral authority and telling everyone else in the household how to behave. In contrast to Tartuffe’s hypocritical behavior in regard to religious devotion, Molière offers a view of true Christian virtue in the character of Cléante. Throughout the play, Cléante expresses ideas about true Christian virtue as opposed to religious hypocrisy. Cléante points out to Orgon that there are many people leading truly virtuous lives who do not feel the need to prove to everyone else how devout they are. Furthermore, Cléante points out that ‘‘The truly pious people . . . are not the ones who make the biggest show.’’ Cléante adds that ‘‘True piety’s not hard to recognize’’; he describes those genuinely moral people who, rather than showing off their religious devotion, ‘‘practice what they preach,’’ in the sense that they ‘‘judge with charity and wish men well’’ and ‘‘mainly seek to lead a virtuous life.’’ Cléante comments that he feels no need to show off his religious devotion for
2 5 0
baroque? What are some of the most famous and important works of art from the baroque period? • With a group of students, pick one of the five acts from Tartuffe to perform before the rest of the class. Write an essay discussing how this performance helped you to gain greater understanding of the play and insight into the characters. • Pick one character from Molière’s play Tartuffe, and write an original short story from the point of view of that character. First, look carefully at the play to get a good sense of this character’s personality and significance to the play. In writing your own story, however, be inventive and creative: try to bring out various elements of this character that are not fully explored in the play, and feel free to make up scenes or conversations not included in the play.
others to see because ‘‘Heaven sees my heart.’’ In the final moments of the play, Cléante again demonstrates his deeply felt devotion to Christian morality, particularly the value of forgiveness. When Orgon learns that Tartuffe has been arrested for a long list of crimes, he begins to voice his desire to see Tartuffe suffer for his betrayal. However, Cléante cuts Orgon off in mid-sentence in order to point out that he should not desire revenge against Tartuffe but should hope that Tartuffe will repent for his sins and even that he will be granted a lighter sentence by the King. Cléante thus voices the play’s message regarding the difference between living a truly virtuous life and being a religious hypocrite who does not practice what he preaches.
Obsession and Excess versus Reason and Moderation The value of moderation and reason in all things, as opposed to excess and obsession, is an important theme running throughout Tartuffe. Tartuffe himself is a figure representing the dangers of excess; he is depicted as a glutton—a man who
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
eats and drinks immoderately at the expense of another man. Orgon is also a man of excess, although his excess takes the form of obsession. Orgon becomes so obsessed with Tartuffe that he loses all sense of reason and, as a result, nearly destroys his own family. Even after Orgon learns of Tartuffe’s true nature as a fake and a hypocrite, his first response is extreme; he determines that he will never trust another man again and will curse all those who claim to be virtuous. Cléante, however, represents the voice of reason in pointing out to Orgon that moderation in all things is better than extremes; he tells Orgon, ‘‘You never are content with moderation . . . you fly back and forth between extremes.’’ Cléante advises Orgon that the lesson to be learned from his experience with Tartuffe is not to curse all men who appear to be good but rather to carefully avoid all extremes of behavior and judgment and to act less impulsively. As with the matter of religious hypocrisy, Cléante voices a central message of the play, that moderation and reason in all things is better than extremes or obsessions of any sort.
Loyalty and Devotion versus Disloyalty and Betrayal Loyalty and devotion versus disloyalty and betrayal is another theme in Tartuffe. Tartuffe betrays Orgon’s trust and friendship in every way. Whereas Orgon offers Tartuffe his friendship, his home, his food, his confidence, his fortune, and his daughter, Tartuffe uses Orgon for the purposes of his own material and social gain. Tartuffe takes advantage of Orgon’s generosity and devotion by trying to seduce his wife, seize his property, and have him arrested. Under the influence of Tartuffe, Orgon himself temporarily betrays his own family. Orgon betrays both Mariane and Valère when he breaks off their engagement—to which he had previously consented—in order to make Mariane marry Tartuffe. Valère, by contrast, represents the virtues of loyalty, devotion, and friendship. Valère demonstrates his deep devotion and loyalty to Orgon when he takes a great personal risk in order to save Orgon from being arrested. Valère arrives at Orgon’s house with a carriage and advises him to flee immediately in order to evade arrest. Valère also gives Orgon a large sum of cash to facilitate his escape and promises to accompany him on his journey. Valère thus risks being himself arrested for aiding Orgon’s flight from the law. In the final lines of the play, Orgon states that he will reward Valère’s ‘‘deep devotion’’ by planning his wedding to Mariane. The theme of loyalty is also addressed in Tartuffe in
V o l u m e
1 8
terms of Orgon’s regard for the King. In the end of the play, Orgon is pardoned by the King for concealing the strongbox of documents, because he had fought courageously on the side of the King during the civil wars in France (known as the Fronde). Thus, while Tartuffe in the end is punished for his betrayal of Orgon, Orgon and Valère are rewarded for their acts of loyalty and devotion.
STYLE Setting Tartuffe is set in a wealthy family home in Paris, France, in the mid-seventeenth century, during the reign of King Louis XIV. All of the action in the play takes place in the home of Orgon, thus foregrounding the effect of Tartuffe’s presence on the dynamics of the family unit. The setting of the play in times contemporary to Molière and his original theater-going audience is also significant in that mention of the King toward the end of the play is meant to be understood as a reference to King Louis XIV; Molière is careful to describe the King as a fair and venerable ruler whose kind treatment of Orgon is regarded with immense gratitude and respect. The setting of the play in France during this period in history is also a significant element of the story. Molière addresses various societal issues of the day, particularly concerning religious controversy. Discussion among the characters regarding the nature of religious devotion and the challenges posed by ‘‘free-thinkers’’ would have been relevant to Molière’s audience at the time. Yet, although Tartuffe is set in a very specific historical, geographic, and cultural location, critics have often noted that the central themes and characters of the play remain relevant to readers and theater-goers throughout the world and across a span of several centuries. Thus, while the setting of the play is very specific, its significance and appeal remains universal.
Comedy Tartuffe is regarded as a masterpiece of comic drama by France’s greatest comic playwright. During the 1660s, when the performance of Tartuffe remained a public controversy for five years, many critics of the day considered religion to be an inappropriate topic for the comic stage. In fact, many religious authorities considered comic plays in general to be immoral. In his preface to the first published edition of Tartuffe, however, Molière
2 5 1
T a r t u f f e
defended comic drama as an important means of correcting immoral behavior. He pointed out that ‘‘It is a great blow to vice to expose it to everybody’s laughter,’’ because ‘‘We do not mind being wicked, but no one wants to be ridiculed.’’ Donald M. Frame, in Tartuffe, and Other Plays (1967), has observed of this corrective effect of Molière’s comedies: Again and again he leads us from the enjoyable but shallow reaction of laughing at a fool to recognizing in that fool others whom we know, and ultimately ourselves, which is surely the truest and deepest comic catharsis.
In the course of his career, Molière transformed the comic stage in France, adding a depth of humanity and philosophical complexity to the existing standards of comic theater. Molière’s complex use of comedy as a means of exploring serious psychological and moral issues in Tartuffe marks the play as a new development in the history of comic drama.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Reign of King Louis XIV Tartuffe was first written and performed during the reign of King Louis XIV of France, which lasted from 1643 until the king’s death in 1715. The social, cultural, and political atmosphere that characterized the reign of Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, was so distinct that it lent itself to the name of an era in French history. Louis XIV was the son of King Louis XIII and the Spanish Queen Anne of Austria. He was born in 1638 and officially ascended the throne at less than five years of age. During the early years of his reign, Louis XIV struggled through a series of civil wars known as the Fronde (1648–1653). As an adult, Louis XIV worked hard to consolidate his power and eventually became one of the most powerful monarchs in history. The reign of Louis XIV came to be considered the epitome of absolutist monarchy. He combined an international policy of aggressive warfare with a domestic policy of fostering the development of cultural arts such as architecture, theater, and dance. The ‘‘Louis XIV style’’ designates characteristic elements in the visual and decorative arts that developed during his reign, making Paris the European center of fashion, architecture, and culture.
2 5 2
Seventeenth-Century French Theater and Drama The reign of Louis XIV fostered the development of the theatrical arts, and Molière’s career was largely dependent on the direct patronage of the King himself. During the seventeenth century, there were three main theaters in the city of Paris. The first permanent theater to be built in Paris was the Théâtre de l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, which, after 1610, housed the theater company known as The King’s Player’s. In 1634, the Théâtre du Marais was created on the sight of a tennis court, which was converted for its purposes and quickly became the leading theater in Paris. The Marais Theater burned down in 1644 but was rebuilt with updated stage machinery. After 1660, Molière’s troupe was housed in the Palais-Royal Theater. The Italian commedia dell’arte (also called the Comédie-Italienne), a troupe with which Molière’s company shared space in two different theaters, was an equally important presence in the world of French theater. The year of Molière’s death in 1673, the king ordered the close of the Marais, combining its theatrical troupe with that of the late Molière and later with the troupe that had been associated with the Hôtel de Bourgogne. In 1680, this combined theatrical company was named the ComédieFrançaise, the first nationalized theatrical company in modern Europe. Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine were two major French playwrights contemporary to Molière. Pierre Corneille (1606–1684) is considered the inventor of French classical tragic theater and was a major influence on Molière. Corneille’s major works, known as the classical tetralogy, include Le Cid (1637), Horace (1640), Cinna (1641), and Polyeucte (1643). These plays are set in ancient Rome and concern themes of love and betrayal. Racine (1639–1699) further developed French classical tragedy to its greatest heights. Racine became a master of the tragic play equal in status to Molière as master of the comic play. Racine’s major works include the plays Andromaque (1667), Britannicus (1669), Bérénice (1670), and Bajazet (1672). His masterpiece, Phédre (1677), concerns a woman who falls hopelessly in love with her stepson.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW In his lifetime, Molière enjoyed immense popularity among audiences, as well as the ongoing favor
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
COMPARE & CONTRAST • Seventeenth Century: From 1643 to 1715, France is ruled by a monarchy under the reign of King Louis XIV. Early in the reign of Louis XIV, a series of civil wars known as the Fronde erupts in France. After this initial instability, Louis XIV becomes one of the most powerful monarchs in history, and his reign is later considered the epitome of absolutist rule. Today: France, in an era of government known as the Fifth Republic, is a democracy headed by a president who is elected by popular vote. • Seventeenth Century: The reign of King Louis XIV fosters the theatrical arts. Three theaters dominate the Parisian world of drama: the Marais, the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and the Palais-Royal. After the death of Molière in 1673, the king orders the merging of the three main theater troupes, which, in 1680, become the ComédieFrançaise, the first national theater in Europe. Today: The Comédie-Française performs the classic French plays of Molière, Corneille, and Racine, as well as new and contemporary plays. • Seventeenth Century: Until 1682, the Louvre, a building complex in Paris, serves as the seat of French government. During his reign, Louis XIV oversees major additions to and renovations of the Louvre. Meanwhile, the Palace of Versailles is transformed from a royal hunting lodge into the seat of absolutist power in France. The Palace of Versailles, located in the city of Versailles some ten miles outside of Paris, undergoes ex-
and patronage of King Louis XIV, while suffering the censorship and banning from the stage of some of his greatest works, as well as harsh condemnation from church and civic leaders. Molière also enjoyed a popular international reputation during his lifetime, and his plays were performed in England, Germany, and Holland. Margaret Webster, in an Introduction to Molière (1950), has described Molière’s lasting significance as a literary figure,
V o l u m e
1 8
tensive renovations between 1661 and 1710 and becomes a model of architecture, landscaping, and interior design. Louis XIV moves the seat of French government from the Louvre in Paris to the Palace of Versailles in 1682, where it remains until his death in 1715. Today: The Palace of Versailles is no longer the seat of French government. Because of its masterful architecture, landscaping, and interior design, the Palace of Versailles has been maintained as a museum and a major tourist attraction. In 1979, UNESCO names the Palace of Versailles a World Heritage Sight. Some 9 million people per year visit the Palace of Versailles. The Louvre, also once a seat of French government, is now a national museum and art gallery of France, as well as one of the most extensive and celebrated art museums in the world. • Seventeenth Century: French international affairs are characterized by a series of wars with neighboring nations of Europe, especially Spain and England. These conflicts include the FrancoSpanish War (1635–1660) and the War of the Great Alliance (1688–1697). Today: France is a member of the European Union, an organization of European nations, including Spain and England, that share mutual political, social, and economic interests. In January 2002, the Euro, a unit of currency common to most member nations of the European Union, is introduced.
noting, ‘‘in his own language he is as towering a figure as Shakespeare is in ours.’’ The initial performance of Tartuffe in 1664 generated a five-year-long national controversy involving the King of France, the municipal government of Paris, the Catholic religious authorities, and popular audiences, as well as Molière’s well-known theatrical troupe. For the modern reader to appreci-
2 5 3
T a r t u f f e
A scene from a 1994 theatrical production of Tartuffe, written by Molière and performed at the Theatre Antoine in Paris, France
ate the impact of this play upon its original audiences, Tartuffe’s circuitous path from bitter controversy to immense popular success is worth exploring in some detail. Tartuffe was first performed as a three-act play before King Louis XIV during a large celebration at the Palace of Versailles. Although the king himself was pleased with the play and did not find it offensive, he was pressured by powerful religious groups to ban it from further public production. The play was newly denounced a few months later by the president of the Parisian Parliament and not long
2 5 4
afterward by the Archbishop of Paris. Gertrud Mander, in Molière (1973), commented of these denouncements that: In other words, the highest secular and temporal powers considered Tartuffe to be a very dangerous matter, a revolutionary document which could arouse in the Parisian theater-goers revolutionary thoughts against both the state and religion, thereby endangering the established order.
Subsequent attempts on the part of Molière to stage Tartuffe resulted in renewed banning of the play by both governmental and religious authorities.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
In 1667, the Palais-Royal Theater staged a revised five-act version of Tartuffe under the title The Imposter. However, with the King away on military operations, the president of police and the archbishop banned the play, closed down the theater, and threatened anyone who went to see it with excommunication. Molière fearlessly defended his play in writing by publishing a public letter in defense of Tartuffe as well as sending letters to the king on three separate occasions, pleading to be granted the right to stage the play. But it was not until 1669 that the ban on Tartuffe was lifted, at which point the play enjoyed immense popular success, both among theater-going audiences and, in printed form, with the reading public. Tartuffe became the greatest popular and financial success of Molière’s career. Over three centuries of international recognition have generated an overwhelming mass of critical response to the work of Molière. After his death, early discussion of Molière’s work was frequently concerned with the autobiographical elements of his plays, noting parallels between his own life and career and his central characters. Later discussion was primarily concerned with the question of the extent to which Molière wished to convey a moral message through his plays, as well as the precise nature of this message. A significant shift in Molière criticism took place in the mid-twentieth century to a focus on Molière as dramatist, rather than on Molière as moralist. Other critics in the latter half of the twentieth century delved into the social and political context of seventeenth-century France in order to illuminate Molière’s plays. Hallam Walker, in Molière (1990), described Molière criticism since the early 1980s as an amalgam of approaches taking into account significant threads of thought developed throughout the twentieth century so that now ‘‘Work is done on Molière in the comic tradition, in the climate of his times, as a commentator on the human condition, and as a creator of theater.’’ More than three centuries after its initial performance, Tartuffe is a world-renowned masterpiece by France’s greatest comic playwright and remains one of his most commonly produced plays on the public stage. Walker, in Molière (1971), described the lasting appeal of Tartuffe as a play that addresses persistent universal themes: The subject [of Tartuffe] was controversial in 1664, and it is no less interesting and stimulating at present, because we cannot see or read the work without
V o l u m e
1 8
sensing the truth of its presentation of the effects of belief, love, lust, and power on the human creature.
CRITICISM Liz Brent Brent holds a Ph.D. in American culture from the University of Michigan and is a freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Brent discusses the theme of deception and the motif of the social mask in Molière’s Tartuffe. Deception is a recurring theme in Tartuffe. Tartuffe himself is a master of deception, successfully deceiving Orgon into believing he is a virtuous man. Tartuffe is sometimes referred to by the title ‘‘Tartuffe, or The Imposter.’’ An imposter is one who fools others into thinking that he is someone other than who he really is. Tartuffe turns out to be a sort of professional imposter who has committed a long list of crimes under various false identities. As in many of Molière’s plays, the symbol of the social mask is central to Tartuffe. The mask symbolizes the ways in which people tend to present an outward appearance to others that hides their true nature. The mask is a recurring motif in Tartuffe through which Molière explores the theme of deception. Throughout the play, various characters refer to the idea of the social mask in relation to Tartuffe. Dorine comments that Tartuffe puts on a ‘‘pious mask’’ in order to gain financially from Orgon’s devotion to him. Cléante later points out to Orgon that he has made the mistake of taking Tartuffe’s ‘‘mask’’ of piety for the face of his true nature; Cléante tells Orgon that he must learn to distinguish between such false appearances and the true intentions of those around him. After Orgon learns that Tartuffe has been tricking him, Cléante suggests that, in the future, he learn to ‘‘strip off the mask and learn what virtue means’’—in other words, to learn to distinguish between outward appearances and inner character. Other characters throughout the play, however, also engage in various forms of deception and social masks. Although deception is a tool of the villain in Tartuffe, it is also used as a means for the good characters in the play to reveal Tartuffe’s true nature, as well as for other purposes serving their own ends. In two important scenes, for example,
2 5 5
T a r t u f f e
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Pierre Corneille, a contemporary of Molière, was a master of French tragic drama and a major influence on Molière. His play Le Cid (1637) takes place during the time of the Roman Empire and concerns a conspiracy against the Roman Emperor Augustus. • The School for Women or The School for Wives (1662) by Molière, was a popular success in its initial production but created controversy that lasted for over a year. The story concerns a man who, afraid of the power of mature women, opts to marry an inexperienced young woman only to find himself at her mercy. • The Misanthrope (1666) is one of Molière’s most celebrated plays. It is set amidst the fashionable Parisian high society of seventeenthcentury France and concerns a young man who is disgusted with the hypocrisy, injustice, and overall corruption of human society. His disdain for society is complicated by the fact that he is in
one character hides somewhere in order to eavesdrop on a conversation between two other characters. Thus, while Molière in some ways condemns the use of deception on the part of Tartuffe, he also suggests within the play that deception is a common practice among human beings, both for good and bad. Through the symbol of the mask and the theme of deception, Molière explores a variety of social and familial power dynamics. He demonstrates the use of deception through the social mask to be a function of hierarchies within the family structure. Thus, characters with less power in the family hierarchy (such as the servant, the women, and the children) sometimes employ deception and the social mask as a means of gaining greater power within the household unit. In one scene, Dorine, a servant, employs various forms of deception and the social mask as a means of protecting Mariane from her father’s op-
2 5 6
love with a young woman who represents all of the social behaviors he deplores. • Molière himself starred in the initial production of his play The Hypochondriac or The Imaginary Invalid (1673) as a hypochondriac who is afraid of doctors. Molière had written the part to suit the cough he suffered due to tuberculosis, but he collapsed on stage during the fourth performance and died several hours later. • Phèdre (1677) is the masterpiece of the great seventeenth-century tragic playwright Jean Racine. It concerns a woman who is hopelessly in love with her stepson. • Molière was highly influenced by the French writer Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), who is credited with the invention of the essay as a new literary genre. The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1991) is a comprehensive collection of Montaigne’s major works.
pressive authority over her. In this scene, Orgon informs Mariane that he wants her to marry Tartuffe and that he will not take ‘‘no’’ for an answer. Mariane, although horrified by this prospect, is too obedient and passive to protest her father’s wishes. At this point, Dorine appears, and Orgon accuses her of eavesdropping on their conversation. One can surmise that Dorine has intentionally hidden herself from view in order to overhear this conversation. Thus, Dorine has employed a means of deception— hiding and eavesdropping—in order to protect the interests of Mariane. Much to Orgon’s annoyance, Dorine openly protests the proposed marital arrangement. At first, she argues directly with Orgon, expressing at length the various reasons why he should not make Mariane marry Tartuffe. Orgon responds by ordering Dorine to shut up and allow him to speak to his daughter. Dorine then tries a different approach to protesting Orgon’s decision; she repeatedly interrupts him
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
each time he begins to speak to Mariane. In anger and frustration, Orgon tries to slap Dorine to get her to shut up. After this point, however, Dorine stands behind Orgon so that he cannot see her; while Orgon is speaking to Mariane with his back to Dorine, Dorine mimes to Mariane various gestures encouraging her to protest her father’s words. By this means, Dorine uses a form of visual deception in order to resist Orgon’s dominance over both Mariane and herself. During this interaction, Orgon repeatedly turns around to look at Dorine, prepared to slap her; but every time he turns around, according to the stage directions, Dorine ‘‘either freezes, silent and motionless, or changes her signal to Mariane into an innocent gesture.’’ Thus, Dorine is able to present a mask of passivity to Orgon’s eyes in order to hide the opinion she is miming to Mariane behind his back—as well as to avoid being slapped by him. Thus, through the use of deception—such as eavesdropping and a mask of passivity—Dorine, a servant with little or no real power in the household, manages to outwit and resist Orgon, the master of the house. In the process, she encourages Mariane to resist the tyranny of her father and succeeds in frustrating Orgon so much that he ends the conversation. In another scene, both Mariane and Valère present to each other a mask of indifference in order to conceal their true feelings for one another. Mariane had explained to Dorine that, although she is in love with Valère and wishes to marry him, she does not want to protest her father’s wishes because she doesn’t want Valère to see how much she really loves him. Mariane’s attitude in this matter is a traditional one in which the woman feels that it makes her look unvirtuous if she expresses her love for a man too strongly. Thus, Mariane takes it for granted that a woman is required to wear a mask of indifference with a man she loves in order to conceal her true desire for him. Mariane tells Dorine: But if I show defiance to a parent, Won’t my love for Valère be too apparent? Shall I give up, for all his charm and beauty, The modesty that is a woman’s duty? And is my love a thing you’d have me flaunt . . . ?
In the scene that follows, Valère confronts Mariane with the news that their engagement has been broken and she is now free to marry Tartuffe instead of him. In this scene, both Mariane and Valère attempt to conceal from one another their true feelings for each other. Mariane does so in
V o l u m e
1 8
ALTHOUGH DECEPTION IS A TOOL OF THE VILLAIN IN TARTUFFE, IT IS ALSO USED AS A MEANS FOR THE GOOD CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY TO REVEAL TARTUFFE’S TRUE NATURE, AS WELL AS FOR OTHER PURPOSES SERVING THEIR OWN ENDS.’’
order to preserve her sense of feminine modesty, whereas Valère does so in order to preserve his masculine pride. As he tells Mariane: To show our love for one who’s turned us down Is to be both a coward and a clown.
In the process of trying to hide their true feelings of love for one another behind a mask of indifference, both Valère and Mariane manage to hurt each other’s feelings and almost sabotage their relationship. It is only with the intervention of Dorine that Mariane and Valère are forced to drop their masks of indifference and admit that they truly do love one another and wish to get married. However, once Dorine has gotten Valère and Mariane to admit this to one another, she proposes another deception in order to convince Orgon to allow them to get married. She suggests that they ask everyone else in the family to help them once again gain Orgon’s consent, and she advises Mariane in the meantime to present to her father ‘‘the appearance of a meek consent’’ to the marriage with Tartuffe. Thus, once again, deception and the false appearance of the social mask are employed as a means for the good-hearted characters in the play to overcome Orgon’s foolishness and Tartuffe’s trickery. In another important scene of Tartuffe, Elmire uses deception and the social mask as a means of proving to Orgon that Tartuffe has betrayed him. Orgon has been told that Tartuffe tried to seduce Elmire, his wife, but refused to believe this report. Thus, Elmire tells Orgon to hide underneath a table in order to overhear a conversation between herself and Tartuffe. By this means of deception, Elmire
2 5 7
T a r t u f f e
hopes to show Orgon that Tartuffe wants to have an affair with her. Orgon’s act of hiding under the table is one level of deception, while Elmire’s false expression of passion in conversation with Tartuffe adds another layer of deception. Elmire explains to Orgon ahead of time that everything she says to Tartuffe will be said for the purpose of revealing Tartuffe’s true nature. She warns Orgon of this ahead of time because she does not want him to think that she has any sincere interest in Tartuffe as a lover. She tells Orgon that she will be playing along with Tartuffe in order to ‘‘lure this hypocrite to drop his mask’’ and reveal the ‘‘shameless lust’’ beneath his outward show of moral purity. In other words, Elmire puts on a mask of false passion while speaking to Tartuffe for the purpose of getting Tartuffe to drop his mask of false piety. When Orgon finally comes out from under the table where he has been hiding, he accuses Tartuffe of betraying him. At this point, Elmire tells Tartuffe, ‘‘I do not like the part I’ve had to play’’—again highlighting the fact that she has shown Tartuffe only a mask of false passion for him but that the role she played in this conversation was contrary to her true feelings. Although Elmire does not enjoy the use of the social mask, her deception succeeds in convincing Orgon that Tartuffe has betrayed him. Orgon’s stubbornness and persistence in his foolishness and tyranny over his family is only put to an end by Elmire’s scheme. As a woman and wife, Elmire’s power within the structure of the traditional family unit is limited, and it is only through deception that she is able to influence her husband’s position as master of the household. Like Dorine and Mariane, Elmire, as a woman, has limited power within the household. For these women, deception and the social mask is one means of resisting, or at least influencing, Orgon’s authority over the rest of the family. In Tartuffe, Molière utilizes the recurring motif of the social mask and the theme of deception in an exploration of power struggles within the traditional family unit. Whereas Tartuffe uses deception as a means of achieving evil ends, the good-hearted characters in this play, such as Dorine, Mariane, and Elmire, use deception as a means of resisting the dominance of Orgon in the household and restoring harmony to the family unit. Though Molière does not seem to place a specific value judgment on the use of the social mask and other forms of deception, the character of Cléante does express a sentiment
2 5 8
that may be read as one moral of the play. Cléante at one point comments that he does not concern himself with how his behavior may be perceived by the rest of society based on outward appearances, because ‘‘Heaven knows my heart.’’ Cléante’s comment suggest that, though many people may at times hide their true nature behind a social mask—for a variety of reasons, both good and bad—it is what’s in one’s heart that determines one’s true virtue. Source: Liz Brent, Critical Essay on Tartuffe, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
David Partikian Partikian is a freelance writer and English instructor. In this essay, Partikian explains that although Tartuffe has historically been read as a critique of religion and the church, it can be read more subtly as a critique of France’s patriarchal monarchy. Censorship and Molière’s Tartuffe have run hand in hand since the very first production of the play, which scandalized ecclesiastical authorities to the point of banning the play for many years. Many studies on the work examine the trials and tribulations that Molière underwent in order to stage the work; Molière had to rework the play no less than three times over the course of five years in order to have the production finally staged. However, in spite of Molière’s extensive changes, there is still an allegorical criticism of authority, especially a patriarchal monarchy which runs throughout the play. Considering the era in which the play was staged, Molière could not have helped but step on a few toes in writing Tartuffe; the comedy, which originally poked fun at religion, when combined with the low regard for theater in general, was bound to cause offense no matter what the author’s true intent. Richard Parish sums up the predicament in which Molière found himself: Relations in France between the Catholic Church and the theatre were, throughout the seventeenth century and beyond, conflictual, irrespective of any perceived offense. Those sections of the church which promoted an austere morality were predictably uncompromising. . . . Within the climate of disapproval, the threat of Tartuffe is easy to account for: if all theatre is sinful, comedy as a frivolous genre, falls into a more sensitive category again; and comedy which addresses itself to religious issues, however superficially, pushes the tension to the limit.
Unfortunately, there is no extant complete text of the two earlier versions which Molière had to emend to appease the ecclesiastical authorities who
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
specifically appealed to the king. Nevertheless, scholars have managed to piece together the major changes implemented in the final version in order to get the seal of approval from King Louis XIV. The most obvious change involves a toning down of the character of Tartuffe in order to make him less priestly. Mikhail Bulgakov summarizes the original Tartuffe: ‘‘The play portrayed the most complete and consummate swindler, liar, scoundrel, informer, and spy—a hypocrite, lecher, and seducer of other men’s wives. And this personage, clearly a danger to surrounding society was none other than a priest. All his speeches were interlarded with honeyed, pious maxims, and in addition to that, he accompanied his reprehensible actions at every step with quotations from the Holy Writ.’’ Of course, the final version of the comedy portrays Tartuffe as an imposter who puts on religious airs but who is clearly not a priest. Tartuffe pretends to be holy, but he holds no official office. He is an imposter, a fact clearly illustrated by the expansion of the title Le Tartuffe, ou L’Imposteur (Tartuffe, or The Imposter) a title which is often shortened to just Tartuffe in English translations. In addition to no longer wearing holy garb, the final Imposter does not quote directly from the Holy Writ. The Tartuffe who has survived is clearly a flawed man taking advantage of religion to further his material aims, not a legitimate member of the clergy who is a representative of God. In order to emphasize this change, Molière beefed up the lines of the level-headed Cleante, a character who is a counterbalance to all the chaos in the play and who embodies reason and diplomacy and who is not fooled by the imposter Tartuffe. Throughout the play, he attempts to reconcile the feuding family factions. One brief speech stands out as a virtual disclaimer for any religious authorities who might still have been offended by the play: You’ve recognized your recent grave mistake In falling victim to a pious fake; Now, to correct that error, must you embrace An even greater error in its place, And judge our worthy neighbors as a whole By what you’ve learned of one corrupted soul? Come, just because one rascal made you swallow A show of zeal which turned out to be hollow, Shall you conclude that all men are deceivers, And that, today, there are no true believers? Let atheists make that foolish inference.
Appeasing the clergy was only part of the battle. Molière also inserted a new ending which includes a literary device known as deus ex machina. Playwrights and authors resort to a deus ex machina (Latin for ‘‘God out of the works’’) to create a neat
V o l u m e
1 8
IF A VIEWER OR READER UNDERSTANDS THE ORGON FAMILY AS AN ALLEGORICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY, WITH ORGON IN THE ROLE OF KING, THE PLAY CAN STILL BE VIEWED AS QUITE SEDITIOUS.’’
ending. Basically, a deity descends onto the scene to restore order to the chaos. In this instance, the deus (god) is literally the king, which in Latin is rex. Thus, deus ex machina is transformed by Molière to rex ex machina. In the final scene, the benevolent and omnipotent king saves the day by jailing Tartuffe and returning Orgon’s property. The play winds down with the utterly expected lines by Orgon, ‘‘Well said: let’s go at once and, gladly kneeling, / Express the gratitude which all are feeling.’’ In other words, ‘‘Hail to the King!’’ Although seemingly obvious to the modern reader, the employment of this modified literary device must have mollified King Louis XIV, since he granted permission for Tartuffe to be performed. While the above changes considerably lighten any tone of religious mockery which may have appeared in the earlier versions, it is still surprising that permission to stage the work was finally granted. Although Tartuffe is a mere criminal and the king a benevolent and wise ruler, there is a subtle allegorical criticism of patriarchal monarchy embedded within the play. If a viewer or reader understands the Orgon family as an allegorical representation of the French monarchy, with Orgon in the role of king, the play can still be viewed as quite seditious. The prevailing philosophy which dominated the Ancien Régime (Old Guard) in France during Molière’s era was that of the Divine Right of Kings. This philosophy, which fell out of favor after the French Revolution, compares the king favorably to God. Just as God rules in heaven, the king rules on earth. The king need only answer to God for his actions. An often overlooked condition in this philosophy is that the king is male. The French monarchy is a patriarchy. Unlike several other European
2 5 9
T a r t u f f e
monarchies, France had to be ruled by a king, never a queen. While this system was relatively stable in Molière’s era (it was, of course, to come crashing down about a hundred years later during the French Revolution), it was by no means perfect. Nevertheless, questioning the prevailing system was inconceivable. Witness the lines of Monsieur Loyal when he comes to evict Orgon and his family: Young man, my business here is not with you, But with your wise and temperate father, who, Like every worthy citizen, stands in awe Of justice, and would never obstruct the law.
Although Molière would not dare to openly question authority or the law, he creates a work in which a main character and his family represent a microcosm of the French crown. Orgon is the patriarch, the king within his family. The female characters are all reduced to a state of powerlessness that mirrors French society of the time. Madame Pernelle is the perfect example of the powerlessness of French woman, all complaint and no action. Her status is due only to her son’s position as the head of household. Elmire’s power resides in her tact and sexual wiles. Mariane is unable to disobey her father. Although her maid, Dorine, has a saucy tongue, she is constantly told to shut up, and on one occasion, Orgon even tries to slap her. The male characters are all reduced to trying to make Orgon realize that he is being duped. Orgon clearly has all the power. Unfortunately, he is unworthy of it. One might even claim that the household is dysfunctional based on the bizarre behavior of a leader, Orgon, whose authority cannot be questioned. The beauty of the theater resides in the play’s ambiguity, where so much rests on the interpretation of a particular performance. Depending on the director’s whim, Orgon can come across as a fool, a man undergoing a midlife crisis or even worse, a man with a mental illness. Cleante, always the voice of reason, makes an accurate diagnosis: ‘‘That deed of gift, were actions of a kind / Which scarcely indicate a prudent mind.’’ Orgon’s behavior is that of a tyrant who does not have the best interests of his family in mind. In fact he almost brings about the ruination of his family due to his pig-headedness. While Molière may have tamed his play in that the Tartuffe no longer quotes Holy Writ, Orgon’s speeches contain allusions to the Divine Right of Kings (‘‘I plan, Sir, to be guided / By heaven’s will.’’) as well as certain phrases which indicate that he believes himself to be
2 6 0
a god. There is a certain Old Testament brutality to Orgon’s speech, especially while arranging the marriage of his daughter. ‘‘Without delay, / I’ll spite this household and confound his pride / By giving him my daughter as his bride.’’ (64) Furthermore, religious connotations implicit in the command ‘‘mortify’’ (mortifiez in the original), which align themselves well with Augustinian Christian concepts of abstinence as well as the self-inflicted pain and discomfort of saints, make it clear that Orgon suffers from a severe delusion of grandeur: Get up! The more you loathe the man, and dread him, The more ennobling it will be to wed him. Marry Tartuffe, and mortify your flesh!
Although the magical deus ex machina appears to restore Orgon to a position of dignity at the end of the play, the questions one might ask concerning his behavior and the irrational power that he wields within his family can lead to some disconcerting conclusions. Why is the family so powerless in the face of the father’s mental breakdown? Is there nothing that can be done short of divine intervention to save the family from ruin? And if Orgon is viewed as an allegorical king, how should the family behave when faced with his insanity? Failing to obey would be tantamount to insurrection. Is this an instance—that is, when the king is not in his right mind—that a monarchy is not a reasonable political system? The French revere Molière much the way the English speaking world reveres Shakespeare. New words, neologisms, were often coined by both authors. Today, the word tartuffe in French is a synonym for a hypocrite. Orgon’s character is too ambiguous and rife with allusions questioning the legitimacy of monarchy to pigeonhole with a oneword definition; thus there is no word ‘‘orgon’’ in French to describe a delusional tyrant. Although Tartuffe is billed as a comedy with the best laughs reserved for the imposter and the scenes involving seduction, it is no mistake that the character from whom the name of the play derives does not appear until Act 3, Scene 2, about halfway through the work; Molière’s play is much more about Orgon and his struggles with his family than the folly of hypocrisy. These struggles contain a minefield of allegorical allusions which question the very idea of monarchy. By focusing attention on the imposter, Molière deflects attention from the uncomfortable questions that Orgon’s character poses. If the play were entitled ‘‘Orgon,’’ Molière,
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
in spite of all his efforts and textual changes, might never have been given permission to finally stage it; with the title ‘‘Orgon,’’ the inherent criticism of French royalty would have been all too blatant and not camouflaged sufficiently by the false piety of Tartuffe. Source: David Partikian, Critical Essay on Tartuffe, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Hallam Walker In the following essay excerpt, Walker explores Molière’s treatment of the concept of belief in Tartuffe, including abuse of faith by religious institutions. The shift from a comedy such as La Princesse d’Elide to one of quite serious content, Le Tartuffe, for a second featured play at the royal fete, may strike us as odd, yet the themes are not too different. Both comedies deal with illusions about love and power, and both show us figures consciously playing roles in situations created by fancy. Le Tartuffe treats these ideas and actions against a background of contemporary reality, however, and the result is a theatrical masterpiece. On the sixth day of ‘‘The Pleasures of the Enchanted Isle’’ Moliere presented three acts of Le Tartuffe, ou l’imposteur (Tartuffe, or the Impostor) with the rather unlikely seemingly subject of abuse of religious zeal by a confidence man and his victim. This play had been occupying the attention of the author so fully that he had managed to put into verse only the first scene of La Princesse, but Louis had excused this omission because of the merits of Tartuffe. He had heard a reading of the new work in April 1664, according to the troupe’s register kept by La Grange, and must have approved its performance at the fete, an ideal setting in which Moliere might win support of the courtiers as well as of the king. He would need such support in view of the inevitable opposition to the comedy by churchmen and a powerful faction of laymen who found the comedian’s piety very suspect. The controversy started by L’Ecole des femmes would be revived and embittered by a comedy that appeared to mock religion. To understand the violent reaction to Tartuffe, we must look briefly at the place of church and faith in the intellectual, cultural, and political life of the times because they had important functions beyond religious and moral guidance. Moliere had aimed at human failings and had hit a great power structure.
V o l u m e
1 8
The fact that the play treated credulity and abuse of faith was beside the point when Moliere’s contemporaries were all passionately involved in controversies on the nature of religion and were divided into doctrinal factions. Each might feel that his position was parodied in Tartuffe in some manner, and the major Catholic lay brotherhood felt most wronged and most obliged to act to get the play banned. Fakery on the part of a lay director of conscience was no hypothetical case in this period, no matter how unlikely the matter might seem to us three hundred years later, for such figures existed in an era that took its religious forms seriously. We must recall that France had just barely emerged from a time of general slaughter in the name of piety. Imperfectly and precariously united in a political sense, despite the imposing facade of the monarchy, the French were deeply split in matters of faith after long years of war between Catholics and Protestants. The amnesty and tolerance extended to the Huguenots in the first part of the seventeenth century was jeopardized by the warfare of the ‘‘Frondes’’ when religious groups sided with the various noblemen struggling for power. The increasing pressure upon all segments of society to conform and to serve a central government being built by Cardinal Richelieu and developed by Louis XIV found little room for independent thinking on the part of anyone, but the main danger to national unity was believed to lie in heresy. Religion and politics were inextricably bound together. The official policy of tolerance set forth in the Edict of Nantes under Henri IV became more and more disregarded, as Protestants were persecuted, suppressed, and exiled, until Louis XIV finally abandoned any pretense at allowing religious liberty and revoked the edict in 1685. In addition to this great split there was vigorous dissension within the Catholic Church over principles and forms of worship. The puritanical sect of Jansenists opposed what they held to be moral laxity in Jesuit practices, and this controversy had been given a lively public airing in the witty Provincial Letters (1656–57) by Blaise Pascal. The literate world of court and city in 1664 was eager to approve or decry further discussion of religious issues, but the comic stage was not considered as appropriate a rostrum as the letters. Moliere was in a delicate area both as to subject and form. The French Catholic church was further subjected to quarrels over the role of mysticism in faith, upheld by ‘‘Quietism,’’ and over the degree of independence that the Gallican
2 6 1
T a r t u f f e
A 2001 Ramatuelle Festival production of Molière’s play Tartuffe, directed by JeanClaude Brialy
church should enjoy from Rome. Agnostic, freethinking ideas were very much present, although carefully screened for fear of the real possibility of execution for heresy. The church was fully supported by the state, and vice versa, so that a clever man like Richelieu could pursue interlocking careers in the church hierarchy and government One path to temporal power was ecclesiastical, not only over the spirits of men but in the political and social sense. Seldom has there been a period when all aspects of a culture were so ruthlessly centralized and that yet produced
2 6 2
true beauty of artistic creation and true progress in intellectual matters. The happy chance of the existence of men of genius like Moliere, Corneille, and Racine may explain some of this phenomenon, but the combined forces of church and state must be credited with providing magnificent patronage and great sympathy for creativity that did not offer direct threat to the total structure. To say that Moliere had any direct intention of speaking out against the structure of the world in which he was just beginning to function fully is to misunderstand his situation. The theatrical creator needed material
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
circumstances that would give him full rein; to criticize government or the church united with it would destroy all that he worked to build. But when a subject involving human delusions based on perversion of faith occurred to him, he may well have felt that the lesson of false piety was for the public good. The artist had a serious role as instructor of the people, this age believed, and Moliere’s experiments in theater had led him to an awareness of how much comedy could say that was useful as well as amusing. There were plentiful examples of moral tales about false piety, and actual cases of crimes hidden behind such a front. The author quite possibly had in mind a case of a layman, Charpy de Sainte-Croix, who took advantage of the faith of his patron to seduce the man’s wife. The basic scheme of the ‘‘deceiver deceived’’ that was common in farce could be developed from such a situation, the dramatist perceived, if the seducer were duped and caught by justice. Themes of knowledge and blind ignorance, reality and appearances, love and its distortions—all suggested themselves to the comic playwright. The material for Tartuffe was artistically and dramatically excellent, popularly appealing, and psychologically fascinating, so there is small wonder that Moliere threw himself into the project of bringing it to the stage. The subject was controversial in 1664, and it is no less interesting and stimulating at present because we cannot see or read the work without sensing the truth of its presentation of the effects of belief, love, lust, and power on the human creature. The peculiar mixture of religion and temporal power that existed in Moliere’s time at once furnished him this material and the means by which his enemies would get his play prohibited. Even before the Versailles performance, the opposition was bringing pressure to bear upon Louis to keep the comedy from the public, and, failing in this, they redoubled their efforts to suppress it. The archbishop of Paris warned the king of the ‘‘bad effects’’ of Tartuffe, and the queen mother expressed her dismay. With such voices raised against the comedy, it suffered legal sanctions against its being presented, although private readings of the work were given by Moliere as part of his campaign to get it before the public. La Grange, the troupe’s recorder, says that the comedy was performed in September 1664, and a five-act version was presented in November of the following year, but it was not until 1669 that the present form of the play in five acts was offered on stage and in published version. In order to accomplish this in
V o l u m e
1 8
THE PECULIAR MIXTURE OF RELIGION AND TEMPORAL POWER THAT EXISTED IN MOLIERE’S TIME AT ONCE FURNISHED HIM THIS MATERIAL AND THE MEANS BY WHICH HIS ENEMIES WOULD GET HIS PLAY PROHIBITED.’’
the face of hard opposition Moliere fought long and skillfully, seeking powerful ears into which to read his play and suggest his arguments. The ultimate triumph he sought was not over religious groups per se but rather over pressure groups that calumniated him as an artist and as a man. Professional success and personal reputation were at stake. An attempt to present Tartuffe in 1667 caused the Palais-Royal theater to be closed, and, because Louis was off for eighteen months of military operations, the playwright could not make a direct appeal to his sympathetic patron. When the king returned and rescinded the closing of the theater, all Paris lined up for tickets to the controversial comedy, pouring a large sum into the troupe’s treasury for forty-five city performances and five private ones. The author had accomplished a certain self-justification, and the director had fulfilled his obligation to his players to get a hit on the boards. In preserving his Tartuffe from oblivion, Moliere gave the world a work that showed a new direction in comedy. The material that he dealt with was not all original, it must be said, for Italian and Spanish sources suggest themselves. The standard editions of the play indicate these. What he added was the remarkable psychological validity of the forces in the play projected through original theatrical techniques blending the old and the new. The title character of Tartuffe apparently takes his name from the Italian for truffle, and a certain sense of deception is in the verb truffer according to H. G. Hall. This critic observes that the sound of the name must have been important to Moliere because he called the character ‘‘Panulphe’’ in the abortive 1667 attempt to give the play. It was good box office, at any rate, for one name to suggest the other. In analyzing the play, we find that it uses and
2 6 3
T a r t u f f e
expands situations and characters familiar to us from the earlier comedies and that it stands as a logical development in depth and skill. The complexity of the motives and the behavior of Tartuffe and his patron Orgon moves far beyond that of Arnolphe of L’Ecole des femmes, the most significantly ambiguous of the author’s figures. The basically clownish quality of a situation of ‘‘deceiver deceived’’ is not absent from Tartuffe, but it is a framework for an examination of very complicated motives and their effects. French theater had had ‘‘false’’ types since medieval farce, but Moliere was the first author to conceive of a character like Orgon, the self-deceiving dupe whose motives are really ugly, or Tartuffe, the wily masker who chooses to drop his mask to satisfy his lust. These are not wholly humorous characters, it is evident, yet they function in the way that farce figures do, that is, as dramatic caricatures. Tartuffe thus remains in comic or low mode even as its meanings become serious or grim. The vehicle for such characters is largely a familiar plot with tyrannical father opposing the marriage of his daughter to the man she loves. The routine of the eavesdropper under the table is hardly proper to elevated drama, and an outspoken servant girl adds earthy wit as she aids her mistress to wed her love. A lovers’ quarrel in the second act seems to have been added as a filler, or it at least is transplanted from Le Depit amoureux to lighten the tone of the play. The resultant total impression is one of the surprising blending of seemingly disparate elements such as physical humor, psychological realism, and conventional form and diction. Boileau, the leading critic of the day, was sympathetic to the author yet disturbed by the odd combination of crude farce and elevated social satire. This style was not to be found in any standard text on drama such as Aristotle’s Poetics. The very nonconformity, of course, was the reason for Moliere’s progress in theatrical invention, and the same phenomenon can be observed in his colleagues in tragedy. Imitation of ancient examples was a principle honored in theory but flouted in practice. So long as the playwright remained within comprehensible boundaries of techniques and expression, his audience was willing to applaud innovation. Classification as to regular genre appears to be of no great aid in analysis of a play like Tartuffe, and it is of more help to try to perceive what thematic ideas are expressed and how. These are set forth, varied, repeated, and even inverted by means of the words and the framing of the players. We are trying
2 6 4
to understand just how a stage illusion is created that does not mirror actual life but uses obviously exaggerated and stagy elements to suggest patterns of human behavior. Tartuffe is thus not just a stage imitation of a religious hypocrite of 1664 but instead is a stage caricature of certain traits that are more clear to us as we learn a bit about religion in that period. Tartuffe’s primary meaning is as a selfcontained dramatic persona with absurdly contrasting characteristics, an ascetic who is fat and lustful. The same remarks apply to the other characters and to the parts of the plot that seem to reflect faithfully contemporary life because realistic elements immediately take on a stylized effect. By the use of exaggerated, theatrical effects the playwright imparts to us a knowledge that he is dealing with general matters of belief, trust, and love. The idea of belief is paramount in Tartuffe and expressed through many parts of the play, although not as religious belief because the stress in the central figure is upon his belief in himself and in his power over others. Similarly, in Orgon belief is not in the religious faith but in a perverted system of dogma that will make him triumph over his family while gaining salvation. Orgon and his mother, Mme Pernelle, want to believe in Tartuffe because he nourishes their pet notion and desires, while the rest of the characters protest against belief that has degenerated into credulity. The facts of Tartuffe’s hypocrisy are evident, but Orgon feeds his mind on fantasy and establishes his own faith in which all doubters are infidels and damned. He treats his family like an inquisitor and declares that for his belief he would see them perish like heretics. The ruling figure who pursues an existence in a world of illusion to which he tries to bend all reality is characteristic of Moliere’s major comedies. The thematic ideas turning about the axis of belief become more complicated as we observe that the psychology of the situation is that of the ‘‘confidence game,’’ the idea that one may reap great rewards (here it is salvation) for belief and an outlay of cash. Belief must be expressed to the confidence man by some tangible means, so that the dupe establishes himself as purely credulous when he gives something for nothing. Tartuffe and his victim need each other in a sort of symbiosis of cupidity. The concomitant faking of belief by the agent is imposture and hypocrisy, and thus the subtitle of ‘‘the imposter’’ for which we might substitute ‘‘the confidence man.’’ The word confidence is most useful to suggest the basic action of the comedy in which Tartuffe is confided in by Orgon, who in turn
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
feels confident. Trust is misplaced and abused until it becomes distrust and then disbelief. But before such a denouement of shattering of confidence on both sides there must be established an impression of confident belief in Tartuffe and Orgon. Each proceeds with utter trust in his own judgment and control of his life, all the while unknowingly committing part of this control to the other as a system of mutual confidence is created. The play turns upon the relationships between these two figures, and thus we may call it a play of nexus, a drama of a causal link of belief and confidence.
reminder that the most adept player in the game for power are subject to chance or destiny. Translating these observations to the mode of tragedy is not difficult, and the somber cast of Tartuffe becomes more understandable. A tragic hero gambles for the highest stakes and loses. Tartuffe is a sort of grotesque caricature of this hero who plays within the social world of comedy, operating as a confidence man. It will be helpful to keep in mind this remarkable character as we come to what Moliere makes of the Don Juan figure in his version of the legend, his next play.
The use of the words ‘‘confidence game’’ also reminds us of the playwright’s perception of the game playing that goes on in human contacts and how it may serve as the structure for a comedy. We recall how Les Facheux was built on this basis. In the case of Tartuffe we see a masker and poseur of great skill acting out a role designed to dupe others and to give him power over them. The title figure is a supple and strong player in the sparring for advantage that goes on within the family, able to accept small losses while concentrating upon the ultimate goal of control of a fortune. The play shows us the skirmishes of a group of people tightly bound to each other, all disguising true feelings and intentions beneath the exteriors conventionally required for their roles. As the struggle within Orgon’s home becomes more intense, the occasional slight dropping of a mask shows us the seriousness of the game being played. The sexual advances by Tartuffe toward his host’s wife are a remarkable example. Elmire rapidly makes adjustments in her mask with Tartuffe to play for advantage, suggesting that an affair would not be impossible. The competitive game for the confidence of Orgon is being played in dead earnest beneath the masking that the audience finds so amusing. The tension of a ‘‘no win’’ situation emerges despite the farcical apparatus of placing Orgon under the table to overhear the courting of Elmire by Tartuffe. The power struggle is only intensified.
A confidence game involves play with belief and also with a special type of love, that between the gullible victim and the deceiver, Orgon and Tartuffe. The peculiar nature of love in Orgon makes Arnolphe (L’Ecole des femmes) seem simple in comparison because the former combines a love of God, love of Tartuffe, and love of self in such a way as to suggest that he is acting in fear and hatred. What he chooses to call Christian love leads him to punish his family and himself, and all this is done through the agency of Tartuffe. Moliere depicts a sturdy bourgeois who becomes infatuated with religious mysticism and its promise of sure salvation for his soul, but this conflicts with demands for love in his temporal life by his wife and children. The selfish side of his nature finds an excuse for denying affection and material support to them and for giving these to Tartuffe in the name of God. Tartuffe is evidently the object of his warm feelings because he is a means of indulging tastes that suggest the sadistic, even masochistic. Religion is a ready-made justification for his behavior, and Tartuffe is a living embodiment of the principles according to which he acts. Self-love by Orgon is termed love of God and is directed toward the divinity through a surrogate. The scheme is heavily drawn by the author who shows us Orgon loading gifts and favors upon the sort of alter ego who is his means of evading aspects of life that he wants to deny. If the situation were one of a middle-aged man abandoning wife and family for a young mistress, it would be quite common and comprehensible, with obvious motives of denial of age and search for lost youth. But when the love is fixed upon a Tartuffe with an avowed object of escape from the material world of flesh into a realm of mysticism, then the love expressed in this play has some murky depths.
Tartuffe is not only the consummate masker but also a competitor who does his best to manipulate the other players. Moreover, he is a gambler who engages in a great game of chance because the outcome of his pursuit of power and fortune ultimately lies in factors beyond his control. He gambles upon the unending credulity of Orgon and his own ability to stay ahead of the law. But for the ending, when the king’s justice descends upon him like fate, he would emerge the victor in the game. The last scene is not merely a deus ex machina but a
V o l u m e
1 8
The other member of the central linked pair is equally interesting. Tartuffe in some ways parallels Orgon, for as Orgon is the ‘‘would-be mystic,’’ Tartuffe is the ‘‘would-be seducer.’’ The use of
2 6 5
T a r t u f f e
spiritual love to deny the flesh by Orgon is balanced by a hardly concealed eagerness in Tartuffe for the pleasures of the flesh with Orgon’s wife. The confidence man intends to seduce Elmire, his patron’s wife, and his sensual proclivities are seen in his crude eyeing of the bosom of the maid as he rebukes her for immodesty. He plans prudently to combine pleasure and profit by marrying Orgon’s daughter for her beauty and her large dowry. The real similarity of the two main characters is their great selflove, however, for Tartuffe is oblivious to the bad impression he makes on all the feminine characters, being supremely confident in his egotism. (We cannot include the deluded Mme Pernelle because she has a function of echoing her son. The old woman is well beyond attracting Tartuffe and the role was taken by a man.) He is shown as plump, gluttonous, and lecherous, hardly a dashing figure to play the Don Juan part that he envisions for himself. The seed of his destruction is in this sensuality that will cause him to drop his mask of puritanism. The spiritual love relationship with Orgon is thus Tartuffe’s way to physical triumphs in sex and in control over the lives and fortunes of others. In the idea of power over others Tartuffe and Orgon join hands and work with similar aims, each one cherishing the other because he offers a means to rule. Their feelings are like those of conspirators cooperating yet planning selfish ends. Normal and healthy forms of love abound in the comedy to reinforce our impression of the peculiarities of the central characters. The daughter, Mariane, and her suitor pursue the typical romance of comedy and are betrothed at the end, but the picture of family love of mother, sister, and brother for one another and for Orgon is set against the ugly distortions. Such a family situation is treated with a depth of feeling and realism not found before in French theater, and this alone would make the play noteworthy. The middle-class interior has a certain warmth and natural quality despite the obvious conventions observed; the wifely concern and impetuous loyalty of the son emerge despite the alexandrines of their speeches. The reactions of the family to the real threat of destruction naturally create some dramatic interest and tension, even though we know that a proper comic ending will come. Indeed, we must not forget that comedy traditionally affirms such an ending of love’s triumph as part of its values. This genre has as a regular tenet the social goodness and health of mankind, and this is a value that cannot brook distortions and
2 6 6
perversions of love, sex, and procreation for alien purposes like those of Tartuffe and Orgon. Selfishness, hatred, and lust that seek to find ways to command are the great enemies in comedy’s world, and Moliere moves from merely hinting at them, as he did in early plays, to presenting them boldly. It turned out that the most glaring case of the enemy in action was to be found in the social manifestations of religious faith, or rather the use of the externals of piety to exert political and personal power. The play dwells upon the warping of the principle of love, both Christian and sociocomic, in a household that is a microcosm of society. With no intention of irreverence, we might say that the informing idea or action of the comedy is ‘‘to love thy neighbor’’ and how not to. The strength of this play becomes evident, as does the size of the wrath of ecclesiastical circles in 1664. The opening scene emphasizes the rupture within what should be a loving family group as Elmire and the son and daughter, Damis and Mariane, accompanied by Orgon’s reasonable brother, Cleante, argue about Tartuffe with Mme Pernelle. The old mother-in-law is on her way out, according to the speeches. Elmire: ‘‘You are walking so fast that I can hardly follow you.’’ Stage directions are contained within the lines themselves, but the first impression is one of great naturalness. A very contrived arrangement of speeches ensues promptly, however, to remind us of the nature of this sort of play. Each character remonstrates ineffectually in turn with Mme Pernelle who cuts each one off with a withering comment, limiting them to one syllable of speech less at each exchange. The battle lines are clearly drawn as Damis mentions ‘‘your Monsieur Tartuffe’’ to his grandmother and gets the reply, ‘‘He is a worthy man to whom you must listen, and I can’t bear to hear a fool like you criticize him.’’ The young man sets forth a theme by complaining that Tartuffe usurps tyrannical power in the family, and the rest of the scene illuminates the character of this figure. By the time Tartuffe makes his entrance in the third act he is so well known to us by reputation that the appearance is an exciting moment. According to the maid, Dorine, he ‘‘controls everything’’ and has made himself ‘‘master in the house.’’ ‘‘Hypocrisy’’ is her sharp analysis of his game, nor does she fail to see that he is coveting Elmire: ‘‘I believe he’s jealous of Madame.’’ A variation on the discussion of personal integrity and its counterfeit is introduced as Mme Pernelle criticizes what she thinks is shameless social freedom in Elmire. Cleante defends her right to visit
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
friends and to move in polite circles despite any gossip about her. Dorine then describes a prying and slanderous couple who find fault with everyone to cover their own indiscretions. The thematic idea of hypocrisy and good faith in matters of love and sex is thus brought out early in the comedy in the discussion of a wife’s fidelity and its appearances in the eyes of others. The scene in which Tartuffe makes his proposition to Elmire is being prepared. The foreshadowing of things to come is neatly accomplished also by a suggestion that physical violence accompanies an assertion of power. Mme Pernelle slaps her servant and rudely shakes off the family, and this farcical version of violence will be followed by scenes of rage on the part of Orgon. Damis is like his father in his impetuous anger. It is to be remembered that the most violent acts are done in the name of persuading people to piety and that Tartuffe will eventually offer a genuine physical threat to everyone. The containment of the threat masked under humble pose is the core of the dramatic plot, and this idea of containing Tartuffe was graphically indicated in early productions of the play in which the police officer is recorded as limiting the movements of Tartuffe in the last scene by means of a staff. The stick can turn violence upon him. An exposition scene of the customary sort occurs as Dorine explains to Cleante her master’s infatuation with his protege, and we are thus prepared for Orgon’s behavior in scene 4. Elmire and the young people flee at the news of his return, indicating the fragmenting of the family. The maid relates Orgon’s mad actions: ‘‘He calls him brother and loves him in his soul a hundred times more than his mother, son, daughter, or wife. He is his sole confidant and director of his actions. He dotes on him, embraces him, and could not have, I believe, more tenderness for a woman he loves.’’ She sums up by calling him crazy, and this exaggeration tends to create an impression of a clownish oaf, a true aspect of the character. Dorine also speaks of Tartuffe’s hypocrisy about women, to lead toward the later scenes. Scene 4 features a famous example of Moliere’s effective repetition of a line with increasingly comic results. Orgon’s concern for Tartuffe is contrasted with his indifference toward Elmire and the illness she suffered in his absence, for his only inquiry is ‘‘And Tartuffe?’’ and his only comment ‘‘The poor man!’’ Dorine depicts the saintly man in heavily sarcastic terms that are lost on Orgon, who then tries to explain to Cleante the merits of Tartuffe. ‘‘He is a
V o l u m e
1 8
man who,—well, a man,—a man, then.’’ The inarticulate wonder at such a creature is grotesque and revealing of the unreasonable state of his mind, but this takes on a serious complexion as he states, ‘‘I would see brother, children, mother, and wife die and care no more than that,’’ accompanying the speech with a disdainful gesture. The words actually paraphrase Scripture, which then is debased by the snapping of thumbnail on teeth. The author’s prudent regard for criticism by church and lay groups caused him to include a long argument by Cleante about the need for distinguishing real and false piety, a speech that is obvious polemic and not essential to the play, but this is the only place in which adjustment to criticism is permitted to intrude. By the end of the first act Orgon has been established not only as a deluded tyrant but as a hypocrite, for he can gloss over a breach of faith in the matter of not giving Mariane to Valere as was pledged. He speaks vaguely of ‘‘doing Heaven’s will.’’ The second act continues the presentation of Orgon’s distortion of love as he insists that Mariane be willing and indeed eager to marry Tartuffe. Parental love seems to lose all meaning here, as it does in the later scene when he disinherits his son. The announcement of the marriage plans is made only after Orgon suspiciously looks for eavesdroppers, an action that serves two dramatic purposes, that of stressing an atmosphere of lack of trust despite all the talk of faith, that of building toward the eavesdropping scenes to come. Spying and suspicion are the results of warped beliefs and affections, so these are important concepts that are acted on in various ways. Orgon is overheard by Dorine, in spite of his precautions, and she stands behind him and mimes her horror at his conversation with Mariane. The essence of this talk is that he expects his daughter not only to appear to love Tartuffe but also to make such ‘‘imposture’’ real. A violently forced semblance of pious love and belief i what he requires of himself, of Tartuffe, and now of his family. With deceit and falsehood the keynotes, the blunt and truthful words of Dorine are an essential contrast. She tries mocking disbelief, cajolery, and then sharp argument against her master, pointing to the lack of social status and wealth of Tartuffe and declaring that such a marriage would force Mariane to be an unfaithful wife. Such ideas are unavailing against the determination of Orgon, and his description of the joys of marriage with Tartuffe foreshadows the tone of Tartuffe’s speeches, which will mix
2 6 7
T a r t u f f e
sensuality and piety: ‘‘He is most favored by Heaven, and it is a wealth second to none. This marriage will fulfill your desires and will be sugared with sweetness and pleasure. You will live together in a faithful ardor like two children, like two turtledoves.’’ A bit of clowning on Dorine’s part ensues as she talks ‘‘to herself’’ when forbidden to speak. Her enraged master finally takes a swing at her, demonstrating that reasonable communication has become impossible and that violence is his recourse. Mariane despairingly thinks of suicide while Dorine encourages her to fight, enumerating the horrors of life in the country as the wife of Tartuffe. Yet, the girl’s notions of proper behavior for a fiancee are limited to precious conventions, no matter how great her wish to escape Tartuffe, and she rejects unmaidenly forwardness. Dorine warns against faintness of heart, saying that this will lead to getting her ‘‘Tartuffified,’’ her own coined term. Valere enters and the young couple perform a neatly balanced lovers’ quarrel in which they manage to work themselves up to a point of parting, only to be brought together by Dorine, who then must urge them to break up the love scene. The carefully organized scene has suggested the formality of dance to many critics, and it indeed shows the great use of stylized elements in the midst of this play with its grave implications. The scene is not introduced as an attractive set piece to enliven the comedy, however, for it emphasizes the extent to which love has been disrupted and thus forms a variation on a basic theme. Act 3 brings Tartuffe on stage at last, and his hypocrisy is entirely equal to what we have been led to expect. References in his first speech to his hair shirt and his scourge contrast with the self-indulgence that Dorine has described. The action moves rapidly toward his first declaration of love for Elmire, the famous speeches blending gallantry and religious zeal in a way both laughable and revolting. Elmire counters by dealing with him frankly in an attempt to talk him out of marrying Mariane, and this conversation is overheard by Damis. The saintly faker fondles Elmire as he elects to unmask his desires, expressing them with pious words. The perversion of love that he terms ‘‘heavenly’’ to sheer sensuality is of great thematic significance, especially so at this midpoint in the play, its crux and turning point. Once Tartuffe openly reveals his inner self, the means of his defeat are in the hands of Elmire and the family. Good faith and true love are called upon for maximum effort to counter the character who speaks thus: ‘‘Ah, for being a devout
2 6 8
man I am no less a man, and when one sees your heavenly attractions, one’s heart surrenders and does not reason.’’ We think of the unreasoning love of Orgon for his holy friend and perceive how Moliere constantly works over his themes. The words of Tartuffe are in part a parody of casuistry that finds ways to excuse moral turpitude by idea juggling. He says that Elmire can trust him, further distorting this concept. When Damis bursts out of hiding he is convinced that the evidence will rid them of Tartuffe, but Orgon shrugs off the report in his complete confidence. The accused Tartuffe is so sure of his power by now that he humbly confesses to his imperfections: ‘‘Yes, brother, I am an evil, guilty, wretched sinner filled with iniquity, the greatest rascal ever.’’ He can express the literal truth and not be believed by Orgon, the great test of his certain control. The father is so angered at the accusation by Damis that he cuts him off from his inheritance and gives it to Tartuffe. This is capped by Orgon’s insistence that Tartuffe frequent Elmire to stop any gossip. We wonder whether the perversion of values can proceed any further, for Orgon seems bound to be the voluntary cuckold as well as the tyrant A neat reprise of characteristic utterances ends act 3: Tartuffe says, ‘‘The will of Heaven be done in all things!’’ and Orgon, ‘‘The poor man!’’ If this point were the original ending of the three-act version presented by Moliere at Versailles, it would certainly form a coherent whole. There has taken place exposition, development, and climax of action based upon a well-defined complex of themes. We do not know whether this was the form of the first Tartuffe, and scholars are divided in their opinions on the matter. Some think that the three-act version was intended to constitute a finished play, while others believe that Moliere was just sounding out his public and patron with what he had prepared by May 1664. A recent theory propounded by John Cairncross holds that acts 2 and 5 were the late additions, judging by internal evidence. Our present concern, however, is with the existing form and its theatrical excellence, and we may simply note that Moliere undoubtedly worked over his comedy to a point where some uneven spots are visible. The slick finish of Le Misanthrope is lacking, but this in no sense impairs its effectiveness and strength as theater. The parts all function forcefully to illuminate each other and to focus light upon the central ideas. Act 4 opens with an almost formal debate between Tartuffe and Cleante, the ‘‘reasoner’’ in
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
the comedy. Recapitulation is thus given, and it is shown again that reason is useless against entrenched smugness and hypocrisy. A sense of desperate acceleration is created by the announcement that Mariane is to wed Tartuffe in the evening, and the efforts to prevent this must be swift and clever. Elmire realizes that Tartuffe must be induced to unmask before Orgon, so she urges her husband to test his faith in Tartuffe and listen to his words to her. Orgon gets beneath the table over which Tartuffe continues to try to seduce Elmire, and this farcical arrangement gives physical embodiment to levels of meaning in the talk. The hidden and the evident constitute a clever pattern in actions and words. Elmire coughs to alert Orgon to the meanings of Tartuffe as she leads him on: ‘‘But how can I consent to what you want without offending Heaven, of which you are always speaking?’’ Tartuffe: ‘‘If it is only Heaven which is the obstacle to my desires, doing away with that is a small matter for me, and that should not restrain your heart.’’ When he says, ‘‘Scandalizing people is what gives offense, and sinning is not sinning if done in silence,’’ Elmire pretends to give in and tells him to be sure they are alone. Tartuffe goes to look out the door, then returns, arms extended to embrace her only to find before him his erstwhile ‘‘love’’ in the person of Orgon. The lifting of the veil from the mind of Orgon comes too late, however, for the power of Tartuffe is now legally established over the property of the household. He is literally the master and can afford to drop his pious pose, giving another variation on the theme of the hidden and the revealed. He does not abandon his vocabulary, we note, as he warns that he has what he needs ‘‘to confound and punish imposture, to avenge offended Heaven, and to cause repentance in those who talk of making me leave.’’ The situation of Orgon has become that of ‘‘impostor’’ as owner of his own home, and he realizes that Tartuffe controls his destiny because he has given him a chest containing some damaging evidence against him. In summation, misdirected trust and love have revealed at last that matters have become so distorted that Orgon has ruined himself and his family. The unwilling coming to harsh knowledge has been observed as a basis of other comedies. The sudden introduction of a new plot element creates suspense in the final act and permits the defeat of Tartuffe by royal justice at the end, but the main thing to be treated is Orgon’s rescue from his unhealthy love and beliefs, and this must be done through a reunion of the family that was broken. The
V o l u m e
1 8
plot is to be resolved, the comic entertainment is to be maintained, and the thematic parts are to be summarized, so Moliere deliberately simulates dramatic tension at the start of the act. An impression of danger and urgency is given by Orgon’s worry over the papers in the chest, for he explains that they were held for a friend in political trouble. His blanket recriminations against all ‘‘holy men’’ are amusing, nevertheless. Damis arrives, intent upon punishing Tartuffe, but his uncle stops him by saying that they live under a prince who sees justice done. The comic tone is resumed in a scene in which Orgon tries to persuade his mother of Tartuffe’s guilt and samples the frustrations of his family. Revelation of truth by actions is another idea repeated here as Mme Pernelle sees the legal officer arrive to order them out of the house that belongs to Tartuffe. Monsieur Loyal is thus the agent of justice that is unjust, the representation of disloyalty and bad faith, as his name ironically suggests. He speaks exactly like a Tartuffe with elaborate politeness and sanctimoniousness. It now seems that distorted principles will triumph for Tartuffe even though love and trust have returned to the family group, to which Valere brings his added bit of good faith by warning Orgon that his arrest is imminent. Orgon may be saved from his own spiritual folly, but his material situation appears desperate. The villain of the piece returns with an officer to assert his power, and this arrangement is less important for the working out of the plot than for a reprise of the themes of false belief and overconfidence. Trust in his own abilities to control all has led Tartuffe to go to justice and denounce Orgon as a traitor, but the confidence man turns out to be the victim of his own schemes because the law recognizes him as a wanted criminal. A dramatic arrest of Tartuffe shows us the deceiver as the ultimate dupe of himself, and the comedy can end upon a proper note of betrothal of Mariane and Valere. The denouement is heavily contrived yet so completely appropriate for the purposes of the play that we accept it without worrying about its lack of precise preparation. Thematically and structurally, the final act repeats the idea of the family threatened, and the threat turns out to be its own undoing, just as Tartuffe worked his own downfall in the eyes of Orgon. The perversion of principles of the title character goes full circle and brings evil to him. False love has been unmasked as hatred, misdirected faith has led to punishment and not salvation, and blind confidence has produced disaster. The family
2 6 9
T a r t u f f e
unit has been regrouped, as a paternalistic royal power extends its protecting hand to one of society’s menaced parts, and the comedy can thus finish with a stress upon a higher and greater structure of power that it is the playwright’s duty and pleasure to uphold. Cleante holds back his brother who wants to take revenge upon Tartuffe: Stop, brother, do not descend to such indignity. Let the wretch go to his evil fate, and do not be part of the remorse which is overpowering him. Rather wish that his heart may return to virtue and mend its ways while he comes to hate his vice. May the great Prince temper his justice while you go on your knees to give thanks for such generous treatment. ORGON: Yes, that is right. Let us go to his feet with joy to praise his goodness which his heart extends to us. Then, having performed some of this duty, we shall have to provide for the needs of another duty and for Valere crown with marriage the devotion of a noble and sincere lover.
Within the sheltering limits of a healthy social convention and organization, sincere love is rewarded and the distorted form is condemned. This analysis has been rather long, not in an attempt to be exhaustive in pointing out themes and their expressions but to show how thoroughly the author controlled a unified theatrical work. Other ideas will occur to the reader of Tartuffe, but all will be found woven into an integral theatrical pattern. It may be observed how the comedy fuses together into a new type of creation elements from the traditional farce, conventionalized playing, and a grave moral problem. Moliere managed to offer a study of the abuse of power in the name of religion, a matter seemingly requiring a tragic dramatic treatment, in standard comic entertainment. He mixed psychological realism, a certain illusion of contemporary reality, and familiar comic routines and techniques. In a word, he was inventive. Unfortunately, all of his public was not ready to welcome theatrical invention that overstepped its bounds of subject matter. Moliere not only had a fight on his hands but also a lack of a new hit for his troupe, so he endeavored to remedy both situations with typical creative industry and wrote a new play. In his Don Juan we suspect that he intended to preserve some of the achievements of Tartuffe while seeming to move toward theater of spectacle in which latent ideas are less likely to offend. He may have figured to appear to deal in fantasy while holding his ground on the principles of comic theater enunciated by Tartuffe. Source: Hallam Walker, ‘‘Some Power Structures Observed,’’ in Molière, Twayne Publishers, 1990.
2 7 0
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
V o l u m e
1 8
2 7 1
T a r t u f f e
2 7 2
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
V o l u m e
1 8
2 7 3
T a r t u f f e
SOURCES Frame, Donald M., ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Tartuffe, and Other Plays by Molière, translated by Donald M. Frame, Signet Classic, 1967, pp. vii–viii. Mander, Gertrud, Molière, Frederick Unger, 1973, p. 87. Molière, ‘‘Preface to Tartuffe,’’ in Drama: The Major Genres, an Introductory Critical Anthology, edited by Robert Hogan and Sven Eric Molin, Dodd, Mead, 1962, pp. 303–07. ———, ‘‘Tartuffe; or The Imposter,’’ in Tartuffe, and Other Plays by Molière, translated and with an introduction by Donald M. Frame, Signet Classic, 1967, pp. 235–312. Walker, Hallam, Molière, updated ed., Twayne’s World Author Series, No. 176, Twayne’s World Author Series, No. 176, Twayne, 1971, p. 84. ———, Molière, updated ed., Twayne’s World Author Series, No. 176, Twayne, 1990, p. 153. Webster, Margaret, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Molière, CowardMcCann, 1950, p. v.
FURTHER READING Auchincloss, Louis, La Gloire: The Roman Empire of Corneille and Racine, University of South Caroline Press, 1996. Auchincloss discusses the historical setting of ancient Rome in the tragic plays of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. Bernier, Olivier, Louis XIV: A Royal Life, Doubleday, 1987. Bernier provides a biography of King Louis XIV of France, who reigned from 1643 until 1715 and was a strong supporter of Molière’s theatrical career. Jones, Colin, The Cambridge Illustrated History of France, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Colin provides a history of France with an emphasis on artwork, engravings, and photographs.
2 7 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T a r t u f f e
Lalande, Roxanne Decker, Intruders in the Play World: The Dynamics of Gender in Molière’s Comedies, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996. Lalande offers feminist readings of the representation of women and gender in Molière’s major theatrical comedies. Maskell, David, Racine: A Theatrical Reading, Oxford University Press, 1991. Maskell offers discussion of the works of Jean Racine, the greatest tragic playwright of seventeenth-century France. Walker, Hallam, Molière Twayne, 1990. Walker offers discussion of the development of Molière’s dramatic career, focusing on his major works. Walton, Guy, Louis XIV’s Versailles, University of Chicago Press, 1986. Walton provides discussion of the significance of the Palace of Versailles to the reign of King Louis XIV of France.
V o l u m e
1 8
2 7 5
The Verge SUSAN GLASPELL 1921
The Verge was one of Susan Glaspell’s first fulllength plays and is considered by many to be the most complex of her career. The play grew out of Glaspell’s recognition of the way in which Victorian society left some women feeling trapped in roles for which they were unsuited. Because of the play’s non-realistic speech patterns and expressionistic elements, it was dismissed by most critics as being muddled and confusing. It has recently been ‘‘rediscovered’’ by feminist theorists, however, who see the work as an important contribution to theater history. At the time of the play’s first production in 1921, women were still expected to stay at home and be dutiful wives and mothers. This mindset was meeting with increased resistance. Many women began to voice dissatisfaction with their lack of opportunities and tried to change the situation. Thus, the feminist movement began to take hold. Other women rebelled by retreating into despondency, depression and, sometimes, madness. The Verge also reflects the fascination with Freudian theory that was sweeping the United States at the time. Freud had delivered his first U.S. lectures in 1909, and his theories of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation were widely discussed in many popular publications of the day. The Verge is a somewhat difficult play to comprehend upon first reading. Characters sometimes speak in sentence fragments and have strange syntactical patterns that are closer to poetry than to everyday speech. The play also employs a heavy
2 7 6
T h e
V e r g e
dose of symbolism to deliver its message. If one pays careful attention to the visual and poetic elements contained within the text, however, the work reveals a fascinating portrait of a woman trapped in a situation that slowly pushes her to madness.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Susan Glaspell was born on July 1, 1882, in Davenport, Iowa. She was the middle child and only daughter of Elmer and Alice Feeney Keating Glaspell. By the time of her graduation from high school, she had already formed an interest in writing. After high school, from 1894 to 1897, she worked for two local newspapers. In 1897, Glaspell enrolled in Drake University, graduating with a degree in philosophy in 1899. After graduation, she accepted a job as a political reporter for the Des Moines Daily News and eventually began writing her own column. She discovered that she was well suited to the writing life and, in 1901, returned to Davenport and continued writing short stories for women’s magazines. In 1907, Glaspell met George Cram Cook. At the time, Cook was awaiting divorce from his first wife so that he could marry his current fiancé. Glaspell and Cook became instant friends. Glaspell traveled to Europe and spent some time in Colorado, but she maintained her relationship with Cook. He eventually divorced his second wife and the two were finally married in 1913. The couple immediately moved to Greenwich Village, where Glaspell wrote her first play, Suppressed Desires. The couple presented it to the Washington Square Players for possible production. It was turned down, however, so during the summer of 1915, while vacationing in Provincetown, Cook and Glaspell decided to present it themselves. They gathered some of their friends and formed the Provincetown Players. The Provincetown Players had good success with their first endeavor and decided to continue production the following year. They dedicated themselves to producing new works by American playwrights and are credited with bringing the works of Eugene O’Neil to the stage. In 1916, the Provincetown Players staged Glaspell’s most well-known and critically acclaimed play, Trifles. Glaspell never quite gained the mainstream recognition of writers such as O’Neil, however. She continued to experiment in form and eventually penned The Verge, her most daring and unusual work. The original production of The Verge took place in New York in 1921,
V o l u m e
1 8
Susan Glaspell
but the play was not published until 1922. It was greeted with primarily negative reviews, although a few critics recognized it as an exciting, new form of theater. Because it did not gain critical acclaim, the work’s contribution to theater history was largely ignored. It did receive a production in London, however, in 1925. In 1922, Cook and Glaspell decided to leave the United States and move to Greece. Unfortunately, Cook died unexpectedly there in 1924. Following his death, Glaspell returned to the United States and once again took up her playwriting career. Her play Alison’s House won the Pulitzer Prize in drama for the 1930–1931 season. From the fall of 1936 through May 1938, Glaspell worked for the Federal Theatre Project as head of the Midwest Play Bureau. Glaspell wrote her last play, Springs Eternal, in 1945. She died on July 27, 1948.
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1 The Verge opens on a setting that is not easily recognizable. The place is dark except for a bright
2 7 7
T h e
V e r g e
shaft of light that emanates from a trap door in the middle of the floor. The shaft illuminates a strange, twisting plant. A violent wind can be heard swirling outside. It is clear that this is a strange, and perhaps threatening, space. Suddenly, a buzzer sounds, and Anthony emerges from the trap door. He picks up a telephone and is instructed by Miss Claire to check the temperature in the room. He does so and reports back to her that the temperature is dropping and that the plants are in danger. She says something on the telephone that eases his concern, and he retires back down into the trap door. The curtain is briefly drawn upon this scene. A moment later, it opens to reveal the setting as a greenhouse. It is now a winter morning, filled with sunshine, but the snow is blowing and piling up outside. The frost has made abstract patterns upon the greenhouse glass giving the room a somewhat creative atmosphere. Inside, there are strange plants filling the shelves and lining the walls. Of particular interest is a plant that creeps along the low back wall of the greenhouse. Its leaves are described as ‘‘at once repellent and significant.’’ It is clear that this room is not a typical greenhouse but is a botanical laboratory, used for experimentation in creating new plant forms. Anthony is at work preparing soil, but he stops briefly to check the thermometer. Pleased with the current temperature, he returns to his work. The buzzer sounds, but Anthony ignores it. Harry Archer enters from outside the greenhouse, snow blowing in violently, and Anthony requests that he immediately close the door so as not to harm the plants. Harry inquires why Anthony did not answer the buzzer and discovers that Claire has told him not to so he will not be disturbed in his work. Harry inquires why the house is freezing cold, and Anthony explains that Claire has had all of the heat diverted to the greenhouse so that the plants will not be harmed. Anthony mentions that it is very important to have heat for the plants at present because the Breath of Life is about to flower. Harry opens the door once again and is propelled back out into the snow by Anthony, who promptly returns to his work. Hattie, the maid, enters with breakfast food and informs Anthony that Mr. Archer has ordered breakfast to be served in the greenhouse because it has heat. Harry returns, and he and Hattie begin to set up breakfast. Claire enters and chastises Harry for inviting their houseguests, Tom and Dick, to eat breakfast in the greenhouse. Claire and Anthony then discuss the Edge Vine. They are both upset
2 7 8
because the plant is not doing well. Anthony tries to cheer Claire up by reminding her that the Breath of Life will open soon. It is clear from the way Claire and Anthony talk about the Edge Vine and the Breath of Life that these mean much more to them than ordinary plants. Dick arrives, and a brief farcical exchange takes place about the lack of salt for the eggs. Dick then inquires about Claire’s work with the plants. She tries to explain the importance of her experiments, but there are no words that can truly convey her feelings. Instead, she speaks in fits and starts, ‘‘I want to give fragrance to Breath of Life—the flower I’ve created that is outside of what flowers have been. What has gone out should bring fragrance from what it has left. But no definite fragrance, no limiting enclosing thing.’’ The men continue to question Claire about her motives, and she becomes increasingly agitated. In her frustration and desire to explain, she smashes one of the eggs. She finally retires to the inner room. Harry and Dick discuss Claire’s strange behavior, and Harry confides that he is considering having a physician come out to visit Claire. Tom arrives but is locked outside the greenhouse. Another farcical episode occurs as the men try to communicate to Tom that they do not have the key. Tom comically threatens to shoot himself with his revolver if they will not let him in. Claire finally returns and unlocks the door, but not before sending Tom on his way to fetch some salt. He mistakenly returns with pepper. The three men sit down for breakfast and continue to question Claire about her strange behavior. Claire continues to try and explain herself in stilted, inadequate language, as Harry becomes more frustrated and confused. Claire finally exits to help Anthony in the inner room. The three men continue to discuss Claire’s behavior. Harry confesses that he was hoping to get some help with the situation from Tom and Dick, but now he is concerned that they will just encourage her. Tom urges Harry to just let Claire be as she is. He says that if Claire can ‘‘do it with plants, perhaps she won’t have to do it with herself.’’ When Harry asks what he means, he explains, ‘‘Break up what exists. Open the door to destruction.’’ Harry exits to go have a smoke. Tom then confesses to Dick that he loves Claire but, because he cannot have her as he wants, he must go away to India. Elizabeth, Claire’s daughter, arrives with Harry. Claire returns but is unable to embrace her daughter or show her any affection. Claire tries to exit, but
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
Harry stops her. It is clear that Claire is very uncomfortable with her daughter’s presence. Elizabeth tries very hard to win over her mother, but Claire will have none of it. Elizabeth wants to help her mother with the plants, but Claire vehemently tells her that it will not be. Claire once again launches into a diatribe about what she is attempting to do, and the words again fail her. She suddenly focuses on the Edge Vine, and her disappointment that ‘‘it isn’t—over the edge’’ but is reverting to traditional forms. She decides it should be destroyed. Claire flies into a rage and rips up the Edge Vine. She then tries to strike Elizabeth with the vine, but Harry wrests it from her and quickly ushers Elizabeth out.
Act 2 The scene opens upon Claire alone in a strange tower. She is seen through the downstage window. Adelaide and Harry enter. Adelaide reprimands Claire for not being a proper mother to Elizabeth. Claire argues with her and says she has no interest in being what Adelaide considers a proper woman. Harry then informs Claire that he has invited Dr. Emmons, the neurologist, to dinner in hopes that he can make her well. Claire quickly flings open the window of the tower and yells down to Tom that she is in trouble and needs help. Tom quickly runs up to the tower to see what is wrong. Claire intimates that she needs help to escape from Adelaide’s absurd ideas. Harry suggests that they all go down for dinner, but Claire refuses. She convinces Tom to stay and talk with her as Harry and Adelaide exit. Claire confesses to Tom that she loves him, but he tells her it cannot be. He is afraid that if they became lovers they would no longer be able to communicate the way they do now. Tom asks Claire to tell him about the Breath of Life flower. She says that she will know tomorrow if she has succeeded and asks him to stay until she finds out. Tom says he will try. Claire once again pleads for Tom to stay and help her find what she is seeking, but he again refuses. Claire continues to try and persuade Tom, becoming more poetic in her speech. Tom begins to be swept away by her words and almost gives in to her, but cannot. Claire realizes she has failed and breaks the moment by running down the stairs to scold Harry for playing the phonograph. She then returns to the tower, followed by Harry. She asks Harry to have everyone come up to the tower, including Dr. Emmons, so he does. Claire rails against Dr. Emmons and says that ‘‘It must be very
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
interesting—helping people go insane.’’ Dick arrives, and Claire immediately runs to him and asks him to take her away. Harry now realizes that Dick and Claire have been lovers. He tries to go after Dick, but Dr. Emmons stops him.
Act 3 The action is now back in the greenhouse. Anthony is working on the plants when Hattie, the maid, rushes in. She tells Anthony that Mr. Archer is talking to Dick heatedly and that she is worried for Dick’s safety. In the next instant, Dick rushes in and tries to escape down the trap door. Harry chases him with the revolver. Anthony stops him by saying ‘‘You can’t shoot him in here. It is not good for the plants.’’ Claire enters and calmly removes the revolver from Harry’s hand. Then Tom enters. He has come to say goodbye. Anthony reminds Claire that it is time to go see what has happened to the Breath of Life. Anthony goes to see and reports to Claire that they have succeeded. But, she is not happy. Harry is distressed and tells Claire he wishes she would be satisfied. The three men then leave. Tom returns and tells Claire that he has decided he does not want to go away without her and urges her to come away with him to India. This upsets Claire because she realizes that Tom is just like all of the others. He wants her on his own terms. Claire becomes so distraught that she feels she has no alternative but to kill him. Claire strangles Tom and then picks up the gun and ‘‘raises it high and fires above through the place in the glass left open for ventilation.’’ The others, hearing the shot, run in to find Tom dead. Claire is now totally engulfed by madness, and the play closes as she quietly sings ‘‘Nearer My God, to Thee.’’
CHARACTERS Adelaide Adelaide is Claire’s sister who has been raising Elizabeth, Claire’s daughter from her first marriage. She also has five children of her own. She is a proper Victorian woman who constantly chastises Claire for not taking on her responsibilities as dutiful wife and mother. She calls Claire ‘‘unnatural’’ and is appalled that she does not exhibit a traditional mother’s love for her daughter. Adelaide is per-
2 7 9
T h e
V e r g e
fectly happy with the role society has dictated for her. As she notes in the second act, ‘‘I go about in the world—free, busy, happy. Among people. I have no time to think of myself.’’
Anthony Anthony is a rugged, older man who assists Claire with her work in the greenhouse. He is loyal to Claire and obeys any orders she gives. Anthony is devoted to his work with the plants and will even give Mr. Archer instructions when it comes to his actions in the greenhouse. Anthony stays out of the family’s affairs unless they interfere with his botanical work. He believes in Claire’s work, and, like her, is very captivated by the Breath of Life plant.
Claire Archer Claire is the protagonist around whom the play revolves. She is a woman who feels trapped in circumstances beyond her control. She is trying to break free from this ‘‘prison’’ through her creation of new and unusual forms of plants. Claire’s sense of self runs parallel with her botanical experiments. She is seeking ‘‘otherness’’ in her plants and in herself. She longs to escape from the forms that constrain her and conveys this desire symbolically through creating life that takes on a new, unrestrained form. She feels this is her only salvation. ‘‘We need not be held in forms molded for us. There is outness—and otherness.’’ Claire believes that if she can recreate her plants, she can recreate herself. She is extremely unhappy in her current existence and is frustrated in her inability to truly communicate with those around her. Mere words are inadequate to try and convey her emotions and so, throughout the play, she resorts to poetry to try and get her meaning across. She is unsuccessful, however, and remains trapped in her own interior prison. Claire is not able to truly break from the patterns that imprison her, and the frustration and disillusionment that come from this realization push her ever closer to madness. Claire foreshadows her own fate very early in the play when she speaks the line, ‘‘Things that take a sporting chance—go mad.’’ She does not necessarily believe that madness is a terrible thing. For Claire, it is her only chance of breaking free. If Claire cannot recreate the outside world in which she lives, she must turn to the only word she has total control over, her interior one. For Claire, madness is the ultimate welcome escape. She sums up this paradox with the line, ‘‘Madness that is the only chance for sanity.’’
2 8 0
Harry Archer Harry is Claire’s husband. He is a pilot. He is also a congenial man who subscribes to the traditional Victorian values. He believes in behaving properly and that one should exhibit correct manners and decorum at all times. Propriety is very important to Harry, and he comments throughout the play on what behavior he believes a proper woman should exhibit. Throughout the play, Harry tries to restrain Claire’s ‘‘strange’’ behavior and to pull her back into the role of a traditional Victorian wife. He constantly urges Claire to be happy and to be ‘‘herself,’’ not understanding that these two things might be mutually exclusive. Harry believes a normal woman should be perfectly content with being a good homemaker, wife, and mother. He is patronizing to Claire and does not understand what her work with the plants means to her. He dismisses her projects with comments such as, ‘‘Well, I don’t want to see it get you—it’s not important enough for that.’’ Harry does not understand Claire’s behavior at all and believes that she is suffering from hysteria.
Richard Demming Richard Demming is a houseguest and friend of the Archer’s. He is known to his friends as Dick. Dick is an artist who produces abstract drawings. Many of the other characters in the play do not understand his artwork. Harry calls his drawings, ‘‘lines that don’t make anything.’’ Through his artwork, Dick too is breaking patterns by creating drawings with forms that people do not recognize. He is having an affair with Claire of which Harry is unaware at the start of the play. As an artist, Dick concentrates primarily on the visual aspects of things. For example, when Claire urges him to destroy the Edge Vine in act 1, he resists because it is ‘‘interesting in form.’’ Dick loves Claire’s physicality, her exterior self, but he does not understand what is going on inside her. Dick dismisses Claire’s ramblings as ‘‘merely the excess of a particularly rich temperament.’’
Tom Edgeworthy Tom is an old friend of Claire’s who is her closest confidant. Tom is into meditation and mystical practices and is somewhat of a poet and philosopher. Of all the men in Claire’s life, he is the most sensitive to her feelings. Tom tries to understand her torment, but he too ultimately fails. Tom is in love
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
V e r g e
with Claire and has decided he must go away because he cannot have her love on his own terms. At the end of the play when he tries to pull Claire away with him, it is clear that he does not truly understand her either, and Claire sees this as the last straw. His inability to ‘‘meet Claire in her world’’ ultimately leads to the climax of the play. Of all of the characters, Tom’s speech patterns most closely resemble Claire’s with their sometimes stilted and disjointed meter. In this way, Glaspell symbolically indicates the chance for a connection between the two characters.
talking heatedly with Mr. Demming, she becomes very upset and tries to get Anthony to intervene. She serves an important function at the beginning of act 3 when she reports what occurred the previous night and what she has witnessed during the conversation between Mr. Archer and Mr. Demming.
Elizabeth
Death and Rebirth
Elizabeth is Claire’s daughter from her first marriage. She has been raised by her Aunt Adelaide and has not seen her mother for the past year. She is poised, graceful, and self-assured. Elizabeth tries very hard to ingratiate herself to her mother, but she is not able to get through to Claire at all. Claire rejects her because Elizabeth represents all of the things that keep women ‘‘locked in’’ to their traditional roles. Unlike Harry, Elizabeth recognizes that things are rapidly changing in society, although she is not a willing participant in the change. In the first act, she notes that, ‘‘I’m not going to teach or preach or be a stuffy person. But now that—values have shifted and such sensitive new things have been liberated in the world—.’’ Elizabeth is a product of her upbringing and is well-suited to fulfill the role that society expects of her.
Numerous images and symbols of death and rebirth occur throughout The Verge. First and foremost are the symbolic elements lent by the plants. Through her plants, Claire brings forth life. She has the power to create this life, but she also has the power to destroy it, as she does at the end of act 1 with the Edge Vine. Claire also intimates throughout the play that she is not afraid of death and would perhaps find it a welcome respite from her horrible existence, ‘‘Why should we mind lying under the earth?’’ Claire believes that if people are ‘‘planted’’ in the earth, they might sprout forth anew into a better world. When she kills Tom at the end of the play, it is not out of malice, but love. She calls it her ‘‘gift’’ to him because in Claire’s idiosyncratic mind, death is the best possibility for life.
THEMES
Patterns Dr. Charlie Emmons Dr. Emmons is a neurologist whom Harry enlists to try and help Claire. Dr. Emmons is a congenial man who tries his best to be non-threatening. He does not subscribe to the new Freudian theories of psychoanalysis that have been put forth. He holds on to the old belief that rest and isolation can help ‘‘cure’’ a hysterical patient, an idea that was common at the time the play takes place. Dr. Emmons has been brought to the house by Harry, who hopes he can find a way to help Claire revert back to her ‘‘normal’’ self.
Hattie Hattie is the Archer’s maid. She is loyal to the family and gets very concerned whenever she feels something is amiss. When Hattie notices Mr. Archer
V o l u m e
1 8
Patterns of all kinds are prominent symbolic elements throughout The Verge. The play contains many visual and social patterns that serve to emphasize the restraints by which Claire feels trapped. Glaspell uses this symbolic element to emphasize the static, unchanging nature of Claire’s world. The patterns are introduced early in the play in the first stage description of the greenhouse, ‘‘The frost has made patterns on the glass as if—as Plato would have it—the patterns inherent in abstract nature and behind all life had to come out. . . . And the wind makes patterns of sound around the glass house.’’ Harry’s actions in the play also exhibit definite patterns, ones that Claire finds unbearable. For example, in the first act, Harry refuses to eat his egg without salt. He has always taken his egg with salt, and he intends to keep on doing it that way, no matter what. Claire feels increasingly trapped by
2 8 1
T h e
V e r g e
TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Patterns are an important element of The Verge. What patterns do you notice in your life? What social and psychological patterns can you identify in society or in your own actions or habits? Are there any of these under which you feel trapped? • Expressionism uses distortion and exaggeration to convey the inner life of a character. It can be thought of as seeing the world through a character’s eyes. If you were to design an expressionistic set of the way in which you see the world, what would it look like? What elements would be distorted and why?
• Carefully read Susan Glaspell’s description of Claire’s tower at the beginning of act 2 of The Verge. What do the visual elements of the tower symbolize? If you were to direct this play, would you follow Glaspell’s description? If so, why? If not, how and why would you change the way the tower is supposed to look?
• Research the women’s suffrage movement. Who were some of the leaders of this movement? What were their arguments for giving women the right to vote? What were the main arguments presented by the opposition?
• Research Sigmund Freud. How did he change the way mental illness was treated? At the time, his theories were considered quite revolutionary. Do you think they still seem revolutionary today? Why, or why not?
these social patterns, and thus, has a mounting desire to break free of them. Claire also attempts to break free with the patterns of her speech, but she is unsuccessful and becomes increasingly agitated, ‘‘Stop doing that!—words going into patterns; They do it sometimes when I let come what’s there. Thoughts take pattern—then pattern is the thing.’’ Glaspell uses the patterns as a metaphor for the way Victorian society trapped women into predefined roles.
pieces, we’d be shocked to aliveness.’’ This theme is visually emphasized a moment later when Claire smashes the egg. The theme is also tied to various objects and images throughout the remainder of the play. For example, in act 1, Claire talks of how plants can ‘‘explode their species,’’ something she finds very ‘‘beautiful’’ and ‘‘brave.’’ In act 3, Claire says to Tom, ‘‘Perhaps the madness that gave you birth will burst again.’’ Of course, at the end of the play, Claire literally shatters the Breath of Life plant by knocking Tom into it, and she deliberately shatters the greenhouse when she shoots through the roof.
Shattering and Exploding Images of shattering and exploding occur throughout The Verge in both the dialogue and the action of the play. Claire wants to rearrange old concepts and ways of being, and she believes the best way to do this is to first explode what already exists. In act 1, the audience is introduced to Claire’s desire to shatter conventions and affect change when she says, ‘‘I want to break it up! If it were all in
2 8 2
• The Verge takes place during the time of Prohibition. Research this period in American History. What groups were strongly in favor of Prohibition? What groups were against it? Why did each side hold their particular views? What changes did the period of Prohibition cause in United States society?
Locked Out and Locked In In The Verge, Claire feels trapped within her circumstances, and Glaspell uses numerous visual and textual images to emphasize Claire’s imprisonment. In act 1, Harry tries the trap door and finds it is locked. He then exasperatedly says, ‘‘Well I love the way she keeps people locked out!’’ This, of
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
course, refers to the trap door, but on a thematic level, also refers to the larger issue of how Claire keeps everyone locked out from her own feelings. A short time later in the play, the theme is visually played out when Tom is locked out of the greenhouse. Later in the play, when Claire is trying to explain her view on why the war afforded such great possibilities she says, ‘‘We were shut in with what wasn’t so.’’ Claire was hoping that the war might help society to break free from its conventions and restraints and for human beings to find a better way to communicate with each other. Unfortunately, she finds that this did not come about and that human beings are still trapped within the same patterns and circumstances. At the end of the play, Glaspell once again foregrounds the theme of Claire’s desire to escape from what she perceives to be her prison, with Claire’s final speech. Her last word before sinking into the revery of the hymn is ‘‘Out.’’
plants have had,’’ and it is in a ‘‘hidden place’’ within the greenhouse. This again emphasizes that it is a unique and yet strange living thing, much like Claire herself.
Blank Verse Blank verse is lines of poetry that do not rhyme. Blank verse is most often associated with iambic pentameter in which each line contains five sections or feet (‘‘iambs’’), each one containing one soft and one hard accent as in the line, ‘‘I wish I had a dog to call my own.’’ Blank verse does not necessarily have to conform to this iambic model as long as it maintains some degree of meter. Claire speaks in blank verse when she is trying to convey her dreams and emotions to the other characters. The more agitated she becomes, the more she uses this poetic device to try and get her point across. Claire’s scene in act 2 with Tom in the tower is particularly full of blank verse.
Symbolism
STYLE Expressionism Expressionism was a movement in literature and the arts that took hold in the early twentieth century. It uses techniques of distortion and symbolism to try and convey inner human experience. In drama, expressionism can be thought of as ‘‘seeing the world through a particular character’s eyes.’’ For example, in The Verge, the sets appear deformed and certain elements are exaggerated because they represent Claire’s experiences. When Claire feels trapped in her situation, Glaspell uses visual elements to clue in the audience. For example, in the second act, Glaspell has the audience view Claire in the tower through a ‘‘bulging window,’’ one that might seem as if it is being pushed on from the inside. This helps to convey Claire’s emotional isolation and also her desire to escape from the ‘‘prison’’ of her world. Other distorted elements are used throughout the play to also try and convey a physical expression of Claire’s inner emotional state. For example, at the opening of the play, a strong shaft of light emanates from the trap door to illuminate the Breath of Life plant, giving it a special significance. The plant emerges as a bright spot in this dark world. The severe lighting lends a mystical quality to the scene. The plant itself is described as having ‘‘a greater transparency than
V o l u m e
V e r g e
1 8
Symbolism uses objects to stand for or represent something else. The play is filled with symbolic images that help to convey the playwright’s message. For example, in The Verge, the Edge Vine symbolizes Claire’s desire to create something that is new and has no pattern. The play is also filled with visual and textual symbols that allude to Claire’s sense of isolation and entrapment. There are also numerous symbols that refer to the patterns that Claire is trying to break, such as the patterns of frost on the greenhouse window and the broken pattern of the tower into which Claire retreats. There are also many symbolic elements that refer to twisting and breaking such as the twisting stems of the Edge Vine and the twisting spiral staircase that leads up to Claire’s tower.
Farce Farce is exaggerated humor that contains unlikely situations. It is often characterized by raucous physical comedy and the comings and goings of many different characters. The Verge uses farcical elements in some scenes to heighten the absurdity of the situation. For example, one of the most farcical moments in the play occurs in the first scene when characters are ‘‘blowing’’ in and out of the greenhouse door. Another farcical moment occurs when Tom gets locked outside in the cold, and the characters must try to communicate with him through
2 8 3
T h e
V e r g e
pantomime. Glaspell uses farce in The Verge to emphasize the craziness of the world and also to inject some humorous elements into the play.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The early 1920s were a time of great change for the United States. World War I had ended in 1919 but was still exerting its influence. There was a postwar letdown in the country during which a large part of the population began to get restless. After the stress of the war, it seemed that much of American society was looking for a release. The country had been disillusioned by the devastating war and much of society was now questioning old values and beliefs. The old Victorian ideals of decorum and etiquette were going out of style and were being replaced by a new ‘‘modernity’’ that was much less restrictive. Attitudes toward sex became more open and a general eroding of family life began to occur. Many people adopted a looser moral code than they had followed previously, and society saw a real questioning of long-held beliefs and values. Even though much of the country was embracing new attitudes and beliefs, there was also a longing to return to a former, more innocent time. Warren G. Harding was elected President of the United States in 1920. His campaign slogan promised a ‘‘return to normalcy,’’ and he won by a wide margin. Prohibition, which made it unlawful to sell and consume alcohol unless it was for ‘‘medicinal’’ purposes, was in force after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919. This drove partying and alcohol consumption ‘‘underground,’’ and a great wave of decadence broke out that was to culminate in the flapper era of the late 1920s. Gangsters took advantage of the opportunity to bootleg liquor for large profits, which also led to a great deal of mob violence during the era. Concurrent with this new modernity, women were moving into a new position in society. They had gained the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 and they continued to push for more freedom and equal rights. They began to take a wider variety of jobs outside the home. Up to this time, women who held jobs had been largely restricted to school-teaching, nursing, social service, or clerical work. They now began to work in publishing, real estate, and numerous other
2 8 4
professions that had previously been considered appropriate for men only. Many women who did stay at home were able to spend less time on their domestic duties, as many laborsaving devices such as electric irons and washing machines became available. Some women were able to embrace their newfound freedom and found it to be a very liberating time. Others, like Claire in The Verge, were not able to reconcile their inner desires with the expectations of women that society had ingrained in them for so long. They found themselves caught in an inner struggle that was emotionally devastating for some. Many of the women writers of the day, such as Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, wrote about this inner turmoil. Sigmund Freud’s theories became very popular in America during this time. Freud had given his first lectures in the United States at Clark College, Massachusetts in 1909. The war temporarily drew attention away from domestic issues, however, so Freud’s popularity did not really take hold in the United States until after World War I. Freud posited that mental illness was caused by ‘‘repression’’ of memories and experiences and could be cured if the underlying causes were discovered. This discovery would be affected by conducting extensive conversations between the patient and the doctor. Some psychoanalysts immediately subscribed to Freud’s ‘‘talking cures,’’ while others still held on to the traditional ways of treating patients through rest, isolation, and electroshock therapy. Popular magazines and newspapers ran articles about psychoanalysis, and many ‘‘Freudian terms’’ made their way into everyday conversation. World War I had a major impact upon the United States. Even though the war was fought overseas, many people had relatives in the military and thus, it played a significant role in their lives. Also, numerous young men returned wounded from battle and this became a constant reminder for many, of the horrors that human beings could perpetrate upon each other. As Harry notes in The Verge, ‘‘I’d like to have Charlie Emmons see her—he’s fixed up a lot of people shot to pieces in the war.’’ World War I heralded a kind of ‘‘loss of innocence’’ for America. Americans now realized that there was a significant threat from countries that once seemed very far away. Ironically, in Glaspell’s play, Claire has a somewhat different view of the war. She sees it as a missed opportunity for society to remake itself, ‘‘The war. There was another gorgeous chance. . . . But the war didn’t help. Oh, it was a stunning chance! But fast as we could—scuttled right back to
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
V e r g e
COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1920s: Women have just won the right to vote in the United States with the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment on August 26, 1920. They see it as an important victory and vow to use their votes wisely to effect important change. Today: Most voters are apathetic about their right to vote. Many do not even bother going to the polls, and election turnout is often very small. • 1920s: The first scheduled radio broadcast emanates from KDKA, Pittsburgh. Today: Thousands of radio stations broadcast constantly throughout the United States and the world. Consumers can now subscribe to satellite radio with hundreds of commercial-free stations. • 1920s: The fear of communism grips the United States as it is considered a threat to the democratic way of life. This fear comes to be known as the ‘‘red scare.’’ Today: With the break-up of the Soviet Union, communism is no longer considered a major threat. Terrorism is now the main threat to U.S. security.
the trim little thing we’d been shocked out of.’’ To Claire, the war is a symbol of the possibility for the creation of a new world. In this time of great transition, there was also a great deal of activity in the art world. The country was beginning to establish a cultural heritage. Movements in the European arts such as expressionism influenced many modern artists. Greenwich Village, New York, established itself as a haven for bohemian artists, who experimented with style and form in their work. The little theater movement also took hold during this time. It was a movement in which local artists established their own small theaters in order to produce cutting-edge works by American playwrights. The movement’s beginning can be traced to Maurice Brown’s founding of the Chicago Little Theatre in 1912. Many other little
V o l u m e
1 8
• 1920s: The internal horn Victrola makes owning a phonograph practical for many Americans. Millions of people purchase a Victrola for their home. The piece of furniture containing the device is rather large and is usually placed in the parlor. Today: Personal, electronic, hand-held devices are available that can store thousands of songs within minimal circuitry. • 1920s: Prohibition is in full force. Alcohol is illegal throughout the United States. Gangsters take advantage of the opportunity and begin to bootleg alcohol for large profits. Today: Alcohol is legal in the United States, and its sale and distribution is controlled through governmental and state legislation. • 1920s: Early in the decade, it is considered scandalous if a woman’s hemline is nine inches above the ground. Today: Women’s fashions include apparel that reveal legs, arms, and midriffs.
theaters were to follow, including the Provincetown Players established by Susan Glaspell and George Cram Cook.
CRITICAL OVERVIEW Although The Verge received mixed reviews for its first production by the Provincetown Players in 1921, unfortunately, the majority of them were negative. Many of the reviewers reacted negatively because they found the play dense and confusing. Some were also put off by Claire’s view of the world. They found her to be unpleasant and annoying. Linda Ben-Zvi quotes Alexander Woollcott of the New York Times calling Claire ‘‘a neurotic and
2 8 5
T h e
V e r g e
atypical woman,’’ and went on to say, ‘‘We greatly fear that the average playgoer will be offended by Miss Glaspell’s abject worship of the divinity of discontent.’’ Others, who did not understand the play, offhandedly dismissed it. As Gerhard Bach reports, the title of Percy Hammond’s review for the New York Herald pretty much sums up his opinion: ‘‘What The Verge Is About, Who Can Tell.’’ One of the things several reviewers did note about The Verge, however, was the techniques that it borrowed from German expressionism. The film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari had opened in the United States in the spring of 1921, just prior to the play’s production. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a film that became well-known for its use of distorted sets and exaggerated visual elements, and reviewers saw many parallels between the film’s visual style and Glaspell’s theatrical style. As J. Ellen Gainor notes, ‘‘Reviewers at the time of its premier also saw stylistic resemblance in the scenography to recent developments in expressionist film technique, especially, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.’’ Even though many reviewers panned the play, some audiences did appreciate what Glaspell was trying to do. As Barbara Ozieblo notes in her essay, the play received acclaim by members of The Heterodoxy, a radical woman’s club who saw that ‘‘here was a playwright who dared to show how society takes its revenge on a woman rebel.’’ They strongly felt that Glaspell’s message was important and should not be dismissed just because of the difficult stylistic elements. In fact, Gainor quotes Ruth Hale of The Heterodoxy, who wrote a letter to the New York Times in response to Woollcott’s review, chastising him for his negative comments. She felt the play deserved support in spite of its complexity, ‘‘I do feel very strongly that, if we can not always quite understand, it would be smart of us to try.’’ While The Verge did not receive glowing reviews upon its first production, recently it has been ‘‘rediscovered’’ by feminist theorists who find it an important and overlooked work. After a seventyyear absence, the play was once again presented in 1991 at a conference at Brigham Young University. Modern critics now recognize the value and daring in Glaspell’s message and creative style and find The Verge an important work of feminist drama. Liza Maeve Nelligan notes, ‘‘The Verge operates under an increasing emphasis on an individuality that rejects old notions of ‘femininity’ and struggles to form a new definition of womanhood,’’ and Marcia Noe writing in Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction calls it ‘‘a remarkable
2 8 6
play.’’ It seems that The Verge may have been a bit ahead of its time, but modern reviewers are now able to look at the play with fresh eyes, and many of them find it an important and courageous work.
CRITICISM Beth Kattelman Kattelman is a freelance writer and researcher and holds a Ph.D. in theater from Ohio State University. In this essay, Kattelman explores the textual, visual, and social elements Glaspell uses to emphasize the themes contained in the play. The Verge is a complex play, but if the elements are looked at individually, some of the mystery can be unraveled. By isolating the textual, visual, and social elements of the play, one can begin to see the picture Glaspell is trying to create. In the play, Glaspell uses the various elements to emphasize the play’s underlying themes. While the basic story line revolves around Claire’s descent into madness, the play contains a much bigger message relayed to the audience through a dense symbolic structure. As J. Ellen Gainor notes, ‘‘Glaspell represents the disintegration of Claire’s world through a complex network of poetic language, floral and religious imagery, and experimentation with theatrical form that continues to challenge and perplex.’’ The textual elements of the play provide a clue as to what is going on within each character. This is particularly true, of course, of the character of Claire. Her speech patterns are strange and unusual, and not like the typical dialogue one would find in a realistic play. Claire plays with words and tries to create new images, just as she tries to create new plants. She is repeatedly frustrated in her efforts, however, and comments upon the problem when she declares, ‘‘Stop doing that!—words going into patterns.’’ Claire’s speech patterns reflect her inability to find words that can truly express her inner life. She tries to communicate but finds traditional speech inadequate. Claire must resort to poetry to help convey her deeper meaning. Unfortunately, it is poetry that the rest of the world does not understand. The broken structure of Claire’s sentences also represents her attempt to break out of accepted societal structures. Her words are jagged, broken, and incomplete. She breaks out of accepted modes of speech because it is the only way she can try to convey her meanings. She ultimately fails. As Gainor
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
V e r g e
comments, ‘‘Claire breaks away from sentences into verse, in the hope that she will come closer to what she wants to express, but she finds poetry equally confining.’’ Tom’s speech patterns also function as a symbol in the play. His sympathy toward Claire is reflected in the way in which his speech mirrors hers when they are alone. When Tom is trying to truly understand Claire, his sentences become more broken and poetic. This is particularly apparent in the second act during the scene in the tower when the two discuss their relationship. Tom speaks such phrases as, ‘‘You— you brave flower of all our knowing’’ and ‘‘You rare thing untouched—not—not into this—not back into this—by me—lover of your apartness.’’ Tom is unable to sustain his connection with Claire, and he eventually reverts back to more normal and recognizable sentence structures. The visual elements of Glaspell’s play are carefully laid out in her stage directions. She carefully describes the environment of the greenhouse and the tower, emphasizing the strange, expressionistic elements that compose each one. The greenhouse contains exotic plants and, in particular, a strange vine that is ‘‘arresting rather than beautiful.’’ It is also described as ‘‘repellant and significant.’’ These might be descriptions of Claire, herself. With her carefully chosen visual elements, Glaspell conveys to the reader that this is no ordinary plant and that it will figure significantly within the meaning of the play. Glaspell makes a point of mentioning the patterns of frost on the greenhouse glass. These visually emphasize the patterns in which Claire finds herself trapped. When Glaspell states that ‘‘one sees a little way’’ into the room off to the left, she emphasizes the strange and mysterious place that Claire inhabits. The audience can see only partway into that room, just as the other characters in the play can only see partway into Claire’s world. Even the action of the first scene points up the deeper meaning of the play. Claire and Anthony try to keep all of the male characters outside because they do not want their greenhouse space to be invaded. They would rather keep the men ‘‘out in the cold’’ than to let them into their world. Glaspell’s description of the tower provides even more information about the meaning of the play. She notes that ‘‘jagged lines’’ break from the expected curve of the tower. Here, another pattern is smashed. She also notes that there are numerous ‘‘pricks and slits’’ in the metal. This relates directly to the line Claire later delivers when she tells Adelaide, ‘‘But never one of you—once—looked
V o l u m e
1 8
Suffragettes march in front of the White House in support of women’s rights, representing the change in society that slowly lead to Claire Archer’s madness in The Verge
with me through the little pricks the gayety made— never one of you—once, looked with me at the queer light that came in through the pricks.’’ In this scene, Glaspell describes how the audience actually sees Claire through a large bulging window at the front of the tower. Again, here the visuals emphasize the themes. The window serves as a barrier, both trapping Claire and yet keeping her safe. It bulges to symbolize Claire’s longing to push out, her longing to break free. The social elements of The Verge can be seen through the relationships among the characters. The relationship each man in the play has with Claire signifies the various ways men treated women at the time. Harry just wants to be in control of Claire; Dick is using her for a physical relationship; and, Tom tries to understand but is still unable to relate to feminine experience. The men all have their preconceived notions of how Claire should behave, and they liberally offer their opinions throughout the play. Harry consistently bosses Claire around. In the first act, he tells her to ‘‘be decent,’’ ‘‘don’t take it so seriously,’’ ‘‘be amusing,’’ and ‘‘snap out of it’’
2 8 7
T h e
V e r g e
WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Trifles (1916) is Susan Glaspell’s most famous work. This one-act play is a murder mystery that explores the different way in which men and women see the world. It is recognized as an early example of a play that portrays ‘‘female bonding.’’
• Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) is a stream-of-consciousness novel, a style that was popular in the 1920s . It is considered to be one of the most important works of feminist fiction of all time
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1899) is a short story that explores a woman’s slow descent into madness. It is a staple text for feminist historians.
• The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1976), compiled by Thomas H. Johnson, is considered to be the most authoritative collection of her work. This is the only work that contains all 1775 of Dickinson’s poems in a single, chronological volume. Claire’s fragmented dialogue resembles the fragmented phrases of Dickinson’s innovative poetry.
• Elmer Rice’s play The Adding Machine (1923) explores the effect the machine age has had upon man . It is still a widely-studied and widelyperformed piece of expressionistic drama.
as well as scolding her outright several times. It is clear that Harry feels perfectly justified in telling Claire what to do. He is, after all, the man of the house, and during the time period of the play, it was customary for men to wield power over women. He is the breadwinner and, therefore, he should hold the power. This does not work out as planned for Harry, however, because Claire refuses to be subordinate. No matter what tactics Harry uses to regain his station as head of the household, he fails. In contrast to Harry, Dick is much more carefree and easygoing. His relationship with Claire is purely a physical one, and as long as that remains intact, he does not really much care how she behaves. He just wants to be left alone to work on his own creations, his drawings. While he seems to love Claire, Dick has little invested in the relationship. One gets the feeling that if it were to end he would just go on and find another mistress. Tom is the most benign of the male characters, but even he cannot break out of his masculine preconceptions. Tom desperately tries to understand Claire. He wants to connect with her on her own terms and even slightly takes on the speech patterns she exhibits. As Barbara Ozieblo states, ‘‘Only Tom gropes toward an understanding of her disjointed utterances.’’ Tom ultimately fails in his efforts, however. He cannot break through to Claire
2 8 8
any more than can the other characters. He shows his true colors at the end of the play when he says to Claire, ‘‘You are mine, and you will stay with me! [Roughly.] You hear me? You will stay with me!’’ When Tom is backed into a corner, he resorts to giving orders. The relationships of the female characters also provide a clue to The Verge’s underlying meaning. Elizabeth represents the proper modern Victorian woman. She is demure, polite, flirtatious, and cultured. She aims to please. Elizabeth holds the same opinions as ‘‘all the girls’’ because that is what is expected of her. She is a conformist and that is why Claire cannot tolerate her. Claire is appalled that she has created a creature that has taken on the very patterns from which she is trying to break free. By her very presence, Elizabeth points up the fact that Claire is biologically her mother, and no matter how much Claire abhors the fact, she cannot change it. Elizabeth’s existence forces Claire into a role that she wants to disown but cannot. Claire may not act like a mother to Elizabeth, but she is her mother and will remain so no matter what happens. A similar dynamic occurs between Claire and her sister, Adelaide. Again, here is a woman who embodies everything Claire is rebelling against. Adelaide defines herself through her relationships with her
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
family, an idea that Claire rejects unconditionally. She will not be a good sister to Adelaide, and she will not be a good mother to Elizabeth. She wants to be defined on her own terms.
V e r g e
THE VISUAL, TEXTUAL, AND SOCIETAL ELEMENTS IN THE VERGE
The visual, textual, and societal elements in The Verge all combine to create a rich symbolic life for the play. In order to truly understand the work one must look beyond the surface to what the various pieces represent. By examining each component individually, the various themes become clear. With this play, Glaspell has created a rich tapestry designed to give a multifaceted message to the audience. It is not an easy one to grasp upon first reading, however. It takes a lot of effort and thought. The dense symbols in The Verge are the reason that Linda Ben-Zvi calls the play ‘‘Glaspell’s most radical and challenging work.’’ Source: Beth Kattelman, Critical Essay on The Verge, in Drama for Students, Gale, 2003.
Julia Galbus In the following essay excerpt, Galbus examines elements of The Verge within the context of Socratic and Platonic influences. Susan Glaspell’s play The Verge (1921) depicts the story of Claire Archer, who attempts to breed a unique plant while her husband, sister, daughter and friends worry that her obsessive quest is driving her mad and vainly attempt to divert her attention. Glaspell refers to Plato in the first stage direction, asserting that a winter storm outside Claire’s greenhouse would reveal the inherent Platonic forms of nature on the frost patterns of the glass. From that moment forward, ‘‘form’’ becomes the pivotal term of the drama. Claire tends her horticultural experiments and protests the confining forms of language, art, motherhood, and traditional relationships between people while expressing her desire for destruction and avoiding explanations of her experiment unless coerced. Glaspell utilizes ancient Greek philosophy and culture to dismantle Plato’s static metaphysical form theory. At the same time, Glaspell’s main character cleverly mimics Socrates’ ironic style of dialogic interaction, questioning those who oppose her, and only minimally indicating the kind of new form that she seeks, suggesting that Claire Archer is a philosopher who has escaped Plato’s cave. Because recent feminist critics have questioned the gendered foundation of Platonic metaphysics,
V o l u m e
1 8
ALL COMBINE TO CREATE A RICH SYMBOLIC LIFE FOR THE PLAY. IN ORDER TO TRULY UNDERSTAND THE WORK ONE MUST LOOK BEYOND THE SURFACE TO WHAT THE VARIOUS PIECES REPRESENT.’’
Glaspell’s charge against Plato’s forms obtains a sharper relevance. Platonic forms are the essential templates which make ideas or things the kinds of things that they are. Independent of the imperfect material world, forms are more real than any instantiation or copy of a form. Forms are the source of our personal conceptions and cause material things by serving as the model which they imitate. For example, the form of a rose in a greenhouse imitates the perfect Platonic form of rose. Although Socrates sometimes used ordinary objects to explain forms, his goal is to elucidate the forms of abstract ideas like virtue, justice and goodness. Ideally, human interpretations of virtue and justice could be measured against the unchanging, pure forms of those ideas. Unfortunately, people often act as if there are forms for behavior and societal roles. Because Platonic forms are unchanging, the application of the idea of forms beyond their intended scope can wreak havoc with human lives. Therefore, Glaspell’s main argument against forms stems from their permanence. Glaspell revises Platonic metaphysics by using the term ‘‘form’’ to represent a new and original creation rather than a preexisting metaphysical form. She applies the term more broadly than Plato did by including gender roles and species of plants in order to demonstrate how pervasively the idea limits human activity. Using Judith Butler’s work on gender as a constructed social category and her work on the implicit gendered role of matter in Platonic metaphysics, I argue that Glaspell foreshadows late-twentieth century criticism of Plato and depicts clearly why forms can hinder creativity, language, and societal roles. Glaspell’s play is important in American dramatic and theatrical history
2 8 9
T h e
V e r g e
CLAIRE ARCHER REPEATS SOCRATES’ COMIC AND IRONIC POSTURE AND QUESTIONS PEOPLE’S
work has been neglected. The Verge provides far less resolution than Trifles, a realistic drama that employs domestic clues to determine whether a woman has murdered her husband. The Verge is an expressionistic story about a scientist determined to breed a new form of plant purely for the sake of its invention.
MISTAKEN UNDERSTANDING IN ORDER TO DESTROY CONVENTIONS THAT INHIBIT HUMAN POTENTIAL, INCLUDING HER OWN. LIKE SOCRATES, SHE EVADES DIRECT QUESTIONS, CLAIMING IGNORANCE AND PROTECTING HER PROJECT.’’
not only because of its feminist agenda, but also because it anticipates late twentieth-century criticism of Platonic metaphysics. Susan Glaspell (1876–1948) grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, and attended Drake University where she studied Greek and philosophy. She worked as a newspaper reporter for a few years, quit and moved to Chicago and then to New York, where she cofounded the Provincetown players with Eugene O’Neill. She wrote thirteen plays, fourteen novels, and more than 50 short stories and essays, and was the second woman to earn a Pulitzer prize in drama, for Allison’s House (1931). She was a popular, formidable success surrounded by supportive, intelligent friends. Because her husband, George Cram Cook, loved ancient Greek culture, they moved to Greece in 1922, though Glaspell returned to the United States after his death in 1924. The Verge has puzzled critics, though it has not been widely circulated or performed. Until the Cambridge edition of selected Glaspell plays was published in 1987, The Verge was out of print, and there are no known reviews of it between 1925 and 1991. The play has been described as ‘‘tormented and bewildering,’’ a ‘‘remarkable piece of psychological literature’’ that combines ‘‘comedy and melodrama, feminism and a critique of feminism, social criticism and metaphysical enquiry’’ reflecting its internal complexity. Although Glaspell’s Trifles and the fictional version of the same plot, ‘‘A Jury of Her Peers,’’ have been widely anthologized since their recovery in the 1970’s, the majority of Glaspell’s
2 9 0
The existing scholarship on The Verge focuses mainly on Glaspell’s revolutionary treatment of gender. Several scholars note Glaspell’s tendency to link women’s freedom to language. In ‘‘Susan Glaspell’s Contributions to Contemporary Playwrights,’’ Linda Ben-Zvi discusses Glaspell’s ability to forge ‘‘women-centered’’ drama with its own language and distinct point of view. Ben-Zvi maintains that language oppresses women unless they invent their own dialects to signify their distinct meanings. Similarly, Ann Larabee indicates that for Glaspell, language makes direct correspondences and metaphors that capitulate to old men and ancestors. Other critics have emphasized Glaspell’s treatment of gender roles. Barbara Ozieblo claims that The Verge shows humankind trapped by patriarchally established norms within which only men are permitted to pursue a quest for self-discovery. Ozieblo calls Glaspell’s theme ambivalent because Claire’s project requires a stressful, perhaps impossibly continuous innovation of new forms. C. W. E. Bigsby’s introduction to Glaspell’s plays notes that around 1913 Greenwich Village ‘‘came to stand for the determination of women not to be trapped in the roles offered to them’’ and implies that this attitude pervaded Glaspell’s plays once she and her husband moved there. Veronica Makowsky’s sweeping study of Glaspell’s fiction and drama, Susan Glaspell’s Century of American Women, traces themes of the entrapment of motherhood, the maternal role of the artist, and the cost of children to mothers, all of which appear in The Verge. Christine Dymokowski states that Glaspell stresses the organic nature of truth, the natural violence of creation, and the uniquely female capacity to give birth to new life. A smaller number of critical responses take a psychological tact. David Sievers’ 1955 study of Freud’s influence on the American theater calls The Verge a portrait of manic depressive psychosis and ‘‘possibly the most original and probing play that has been written in America by 1921.’’ Isaac Goldberg’s 1922 study of modern drama calls The Verge ‘‘one long abstraction in three acts.’’ Focusing on its theoretical agenda, he insists, ‘‘there is more than rebellious womanhood in these dramas; there is consciousness of valid self, or of a passion for
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
freedom, of dynamic personality; there is craving for life in its innermost meaning.’’ Both the feminist and psychological interpretations of The Verge recognize Glaspell’s emphasis on individual freedom and the entrapment of women through traditional roles as well as ordinary language. Glaspell’s play critiques Platonic metaphysics and the societal limitations on gender roles. It is fruitful to study The Verge in the context of Judith Butler’s recent explication of the connections between gender, Platonic metaphysics, and contemporary phenomenology. Butler has argued both that gender is a performative category, created by its repetition and reinforced by cultural constructions, and that the ancient Greek distinction between matter and form is created ‘‘through an exclusion and degradation of the feminine.’’ In ‘‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,’’ Butler dismantles the notion that gender is a permanent form rooted in biological sex. She uses a phenomenology that takes the social agent as an object rather than a subject of constitutive acts, to demonstrate her contention that gender is ‘‘an identity constituted in time’’ through a stylized repetition of acts, rather than a stable locus of identity from which acts proceed, acts which express supposedly essential gender traits. The repetition conceals the origin of this created category which is so pervasive that we are tempted to assume that those who resist it are unnatural or deviant. In Bodies That Matter, Butler links the body’s materiality to the performance of gender by discussing the gender-related terms in Plato’s metaphysics. Comparing Plato’s Timeaus with Irigaray’s deconstruction of Plato in two chapters of Speculum of the Other Woman, Butler claims that Plato’s form theory depends on seeing matter as ‘‘a substitution for and displacement of the feminine.’’ There are two modes of materiality: one formed and intelligible, the other displaced by the binary opposition between matter and form. The latter cannot be named because, properly speaking, pure unformed matter does not exist. For Plato, all objects participate in a form. Butler believes that the feminine aspect of metaphysics is simultaneously locked outside the matter / form distinction, but is also its condition; the composite structure between matter and form relies on invisible, unformed ‘‘feminine’’ matter. Butler’s reading depends on the connotations of ancient Greek terms in Plato’s Timeaus, which she reads as ‘‘a collapse and displacement of those figures . . . that secure a given fantasy of heterosexual intercourse and male autogenesis.’’ Because of
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
the masculine bias Butler sees within the metaphysics, she argues that material bodies ought not be an uncontested ground of feminist theory or practice. Whether or not one agrees with Butler that gender is constructed, her reading of Plato sheds light on the anomalous circumstance of Claire Archer’s role: a female artist who dares to re-form matter, and who disdains the repetition of form and wants to replace it with something new and more flexible. It also brings to the fore Glaspell’s sensitivity to her own position as a female playwright experimenting with gender, language and invention in a patriarchal culture. The Verge creates a complex critical response to Plato’s confining forms. In addition to using the term ‘‘form’’ and alluding to Plato’s cave scene in The Republic, Glaspell’s Claire Archer cleverly mimics the character and attitude of Socrates in The Verge. The historical Socrates was Plato’s teacher, but Socrates was suspicious of writing, and preferred to exchange his ideas with his students through dialogue. Plato preserves Socrates’ style of teaching by writing dialogues in which Socrates is the main character, although there is considerable academic debate about the accuracy of Plato’s depiction. Claire Archer repeats Socrates’ comic and ironic posture and questions people’s mistaken understanding in order to destroy conventions that inhibit human potential, including her own. Like Socrates, she evades direct questions, claiming ignorance and protecting her project. Her quest is solitary and concrete; she develops a new plant just as she tries to develop a lifestyle unconfined by the conventions of marriage and motherhood. Although Socrates is married and has children, his family only appears briefly in The Phaedo before his execution. Claire Archer’s life is less conventional. During the play she is living with her second husband while two of her former lovers, her sister and her daughter from her first marriage visit. In spite of their seeming openness to unusual marital and family relationships, their flexibility does not extend to Claire’s work. She defends its merit and her absorption in it while they suspect that she endangers her health by challenging so many conventions. They seek soothing explanations of her erratic behavior which Claire refuses to provide because the words would contain and limit her endeavor. The forms she seeks are not binding, but liberating precisely because of their originality. Thus Glaspell modifies the static, patterned metaphysics of Platonic form theory using a Socratic style of inquiry in order to replace it with original, revisable forms.
2 9 1
T h e
V e r g e
A pervasive Platonic allusion that Glaspell employs is a reference to the cave scene from the Republic. For Plato, the philosopher’s task is to acquire knowledge of the forms which order the cosmos. Ordinary people routinely assume information based on limited and erroneous perceptions. It is efficient, but misguided. The Allegory of the Cave illustrates human beings’ habitual misperception. The Allegory is central to Glaspell’s play because Claire Archer accuses her friends and family members of being like Plato’s cave dwellers, unable to see what she has discovered outside. The Allegory depicts people living in a cave with a long entrance open to the light along its entire width. Their legs and necks have been fettered since childhood, so that they remain in the same spot and cannot turn their heads. Behind and above them a fire burns. Between the fire and the prisoners, shadows are cast from puppets. Plato compares human beings to prisoners watching shadows of objects on a wall. They mistake the shadows for the objects because they have had no reason or experience to question that belief. When someone escapes the cave and sees the sun and learns what things look like in real light, he returns to teach the others, but appears crazy because his perspective is so unusual. By pursuing her work as an amateur horticultural scientist trying to breed a hybrid plant, Claire has left the cave of convention which dictates the behavior of genteel women. Her horticulture becomes a symbolic and practical means of moving beyond traditional forms of womanhood. Like Socrates, she is an ironic figure with a project she does not expect others to understand or approve. Yet Claire does not advocate her inquiry for anyone else and she has no students. She does not voice an agenda to change women in particular or people in general to go with her ‘‘to the verge,’’ beyond form. Having created a greenhouse of her own in which she labors, she is disinterested in other people’s curiosity. Anti-social and solitary, her scientific work separates her from the surrounding community. Like Socrates in the Republic and the Apology, Claire defends herself to a mini-polis of family, friends and servants. The male characters in The Verge could be placed on various levels of Plato’s divided line, which immediately precedes the Allegory of the Cave. The line shows varying levels of reality in ascending order in order to illustrate the metaphysical relationship between ideas and objects. The line is divided into four sections. The lower sections represent things that can be seen; the
2 9 2
upper sections represent things known by the intellect. The lowest segment of the line contains the sensual qualities of matter, like the redness and smoothness of an apple, ‘‘shadows, then reflections in water and on surfaces of dense, smooth and bright texture.’’ The second section contains ‘‘that of which this is a likeness or an image.’’ Items at this level include matter and form composites, like plants, animals, people, and artifacts. The lower intelligible section of the line contains the mathematical descriptions of things, such as the numerical property of roundness, and the highest section contains the form itself, the idea of the pure form. Claire’s husband, Harry Archer, is rooted in the sensual and the physical as he seeks comfort and entertainment at the lowest level of the divided line. He thinks Claire should be happy because she ‘‘has everything.’’ Dick Demming is an abstract artist who draws ‘‘[l]ines that don’t make anything’’ and can’t tell a person anything. Tom Edgeworthy, Claire’s lover, understands her fear of language, but is wary of her search for pure forms. He recommends that Claire be left alone because she ‘‘isn’t hardened into one of those forms she talks about. She’s too—aware. Always pulled toward what could be—tormented by lost adventure.’’ His name alludes to the project that almost succeeded, her Edge Vine, which, like Tom, returned to its source rather than exploding into a new species. Only Claire seeks transcendence at the top of the Platonic line, where she can identify old forms and attempt to create new ones. Plato’s Republic takes place outside Athens’ walls, where Socrates can more safely discuss the perfect political state. The Verge takes place in Claire’s territories, her greenhouse and her tower, but both places are frequently invaded by others. Glaspell’s language emphasizes boundaries and borders which Claire desires to transcend. As the play opens, Claire and her assistant, Anthony, are working in the greenhouse. Due to a storm and a broken furnace, Claire has diverted the house’s heat to the greenhouse; her Breath of Life, ‘‘the flower that I have created that is outside what flowers have been,’’ is about to blossom and needs a constant temperature. Because the house is cold, Harry Archer orders the maid to serve breakfast in the greenhouse, and is clearly more interested in salt for his eggs than in Claire’s project. Claire thinks of little besides her plants which outweigh anyone’s needs. Harry worries condescendingly that Claire takes her plants too seriously. He explains, ‘‘I don’t want to see it get you—it’s not important enough for that.’’
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
Unfortunately, Claire is less self-assured and articulate than Socrates and dependent on Harry to understand her project so that he will leave her alone. Most of the plot revolves around the attempts of Harry and the other characters to make Claire behave the way they think she should, while she tries to complete her work in spite of them. Claire is frustrated by the traditional choices her sister, Adelaide, and her daughter, Elizabeth, have made, though Elizabeth admits that she has to be wellmannered because she doesn’t do anything interesting. Both relatives are concerned with the utility of Claire’s horticultural experiment. Elizabeth describes Claire’s work as ‘‘doing one’s own thing’’ and ‘‘doing a useful, beautiful thing.’’ Elizabeth can’t understand the use of making plants ‘‘different if they aren’t any better.’’ This perturbs Claire, who seeks the intrinsic challenge of creating a new form without respect to its extrinsic value. Unfortunately but predictably, Elizabeth charges that Claire’s project is morally wrong unless she improves the plants by making them more beautiful. Adelaide suggests that Claire find a way to be like her, ‘‘free, busy, happy. Among people, I have no time to think of myself.’’ This conformist choice strikes Claire as a conspiracy in which people try to be alike ‘‘in order to assure one another that we’re all just all right.’’ Claire accuses Adelaide of ‘‘staying in one place because she hasn’t the energy to go anywhere else’’ through a creative venue of her own. Claire does not want to be like the people that surround her. Instead it is as if she is in the cave trying to escape, hoping that there are more options outside, but not knowing for certain. Claire frequently ignores Harry’s directions and suggestions. When Claire refuses to explain to Dick the procedure for cross-pollenating a plant to give it fragrance, Harry charges that Claire doesn’t try to make her work less mysterious, and insists that she should answer Dick’s questions if she can. It is almost as if he suspects there is safety in its articulation, and danger in its mystical, unspoken state. She complies, and in the process, says that she is giving her flower a scent she’ll call ‘‘Reminiscence,’’ which echos Plato’s suggestion in The Phaedo and The Phaedrus that knowledge depends on recollection. Claire worries that her new plant might find itself ‘‘lonely out in what hasn’t been.’’ The scent provides a metaphorical kind of memory of the plant’s biological predecessors. When Dick insists he understands Claire’s explanation, Claire responds in skeptical Socratic fashion, ‘‘I wonder if you do.’’ Because her attitude disturbs Harry, he
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
encourages her to be amusing for Tom, her former lover who will be leaving soon. Instead, Claire flirts with Dick, speaking about perversion and suggesting that Harry might think she is Dick’s latest strumpet. Harry chastises her for not behaving like the refined ‘‘flower of New England’’ that she is, ironically invoking a plant to correct her. The hint of New England ancestors upsets Claire, and she insists that ‘‘[w]e need not be held in forms molded for us. There is outness—Land otherness.’’ Glaspell constantly shifts Claire’s moods, conveying the unstable but provocative basis of Claire’s personality, making her mimic the flexible form she seeks. Glaspell suggests that forms confine and contain individual beings rather than reveal true being. Claire’s evasiveness is underscored by her irony and her refusal to explain her goal. Her attitude is attractive and frustratingly elusive. When Harry and Dick discuss Claire, Harry stammers, unable to categorize Claire easily because she is not archetypal: . . . you might know all there is to know about women and not know much about Claire. But now about (does not want to say passion again)—of, feeling—Claire has a certain—well—a certain— DICK: Irony? HARRY: Which is really more—more— DICK: More fetching, perhaps. HARRY: Yes! Than the thing itself. But of course, you wouldn’t have much of a thing that you have irony about.
Harry is as unable to articulate Claire’s personality as she is unable to describe what a new form might accomplish for her. When Harry asks Claire why she refers to World War I as a ‘‘gorgeous chance’’ and she replies, in true Socratic fashion, ‘‘I don’t know—precisely. If I did—there’d be no use in saying it.’’ For Claire, language is most interesting when one’s knowledge is tentative and imprecise. To practical Harry, this makes no sense. Tom seems to understand that articulation can damage an idea or emotion when he replies to Claire, ‘‘The only thing left worth saying is the thing we can’t say.’’ Harry repeatedly pushes Claire to articulate her project in order to demystify it. After rejecting Elizabeth’s offer to assist her in the greenhouse, Harry again pushes Claire ‘‘[t]o get down to brass tacks and actually say what she’s driving at’’ so that she can ‘‘realize just where’’ she is. Claire prefers not to ‘‘nail it to a cross of words’’ but explains that her plants have found otherness, ‘‘They have been shocked out of what they were—into something they were not; they’ve broken from the forms in
2 9 3
T h e
V e r g e
which they found themselves. They are alien. Outside. That’s it, outside’’ and she continues, ‘‘when you make a new pattern you know a pattern’s made with life. And then you know that anything may be—if only you pattern’s made know how to reach it.’’ Claire Archer’s new patterns include the new plant and the lifestyle she has created for herself. Implicitly, Glaspell reinforces the relation between language and forms. Since language consists primarily of categories, and categories are directly related to forms because they indicate the kind of being things are, it is necessary that Claire be frustrated by words and by Plato’s forms. Source: Julia Galbus, ‘‘Susan Glaspell’s The Verge: A Socratic Quest to Reinvent Form and Escape Plato’s Cave,’’ in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Vol. 15, No. 1, Fall 2000, pp. 81–95.
2 9 4
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
2 9 5
T h e
2 9 6
V e r g e
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
2 9 7
T h e
2 9 8
V e r g e
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
V e r g e
Arthur Waterman In the following essay, Waterman explores Glaspell’s blending of experimental views and techniques with more traditional elements in The Verge. The plays written by Susan Glaspell for the Provincetown Playhouse between 1915 and 1922 illustrate a characteristic not usually found in avantegarde playwrights and little theatres, but one that is common to both this playwright and the theatre that produced her plays; namely, an unusual blending of traditional values with radical attitudes typically associated with an experimental artistic group. The traditional outlook derives mainly from the midwestern background of so many of the Players, especially George Cram Cook, the founder and director of the Provincetown, and Susan Glaspell, Cook’s wife and the theatre’s leading playwright. They were like many midwesterners who were born late in the nineteenth century in a small rural town and were brought up with a conscious awareness of their pioneer ancestry, with its heritage of freedom and independence, only to discover in the staid, conservative society around them a disregard, even a denial, of their forefathers’ ideals. They fled, these midwestern children, first to Chicago, then to New York, where they were joined by eastern counterparts, who also arrived in Greenwich Village bringing with them attitudes that were at once oldfashioned and bohemian. Inheritors, produced by the Provincetown in 1921, clearly shows the midwestern basis for most of Susan Glaspell’s art. The play covers three generations of Iowans, beginning in 1879 when a Hungarian immigrant and an American pioneer work together to establish a state university, hoping that future generations will continue their vision of hope and faith for America. The next generation is represented by the son of the immigrant, now the university President, who stifles campus dissent in order to appease a state Senator; and the son of the pioneer, who has turned bitter after the death of his son in World War I, perverting his father’s idealism into misanthropy. The third generation consists of
V o l u m e
1 8
2 9 9
T h e
V e r g e
IT IS POSSIBLE . . . TO VIEW THE VERGE AS A PLAY REACHING BEYOND ITS OBVIOUS FEMINIST
a conflict that is inherently dramatic, so Susan Glaspell’s strategy, by no means an easy one, was to choose from a great many dramatic possibilities for presenting this conflict on stage. Indeed, the play’s success undoubtedly depends on this given situation: forceful, universal, compelling—in short, good, sound theatre.
EMPHASIS TO THE LARGER QUESTION OF HOW A SOCIETY CAN BEST DIRECT THE ENERGIES OF ITS MORE GIFTED ECCENTRICS TO CONSTRUCTIVE ENDS. . . .’’
Madelaine Morton, one of the campus radicals, meaning she defends the rights of minorities, and the President’s son, who is an incipient Nazi in taking repressive actions against the dissenters, especially Madelaine. The play questions whether the old vision can endure unchanged as time passes, as the Midwest develops from an isolated, agrarian locale to a complex, modern society, whose sons die on foreign soil and whose twentieth century culture complicates its once uncomplicated idealism. The success of the play comes in large measure from our acceptance of the midwestern setting as the region where the American Dream once found its greatest expression and now faces its greatest challenge. Born in Davenport, educated at Drake University, a political reporter for the Des Moines Daily News, Glaspell knew her region intimately and dramatizes brilliantly the essential dangers facing the old liberalism, seeing how it could be narrowed and corrupted into political expendiency and suppressive acts—all in the name of the very beliefs now being threatened. With a conscious irony she shows how the tradition that fostered the Dream could be used to restrict it, and with a foresight that is prophetic she chose the campus as the place where the testing of inherited values would lead to an explosive confrontation between defenders of the ‘‘American’’ way of life and individuals insisting on their rights at any cost. Inheritors is probably Glaspell’s best play. But it was a play that faced its author with few overwhelming dramatic problems. Its development, characters, language, and tone are all clearly available and readily created once the essential plot has been established. The personal and ideological differences between Madelaine and her Uncle create
3 0 0
When she came to write her next play, The Verge, also produced in 1921 by the Provincetown, she faced a different problem, which was how to find the dramatic equivalents—the words, gestures, symbols, and setting—that would depict a liberated woman who was also an experimental biologist, as radical in her profession as she was in her sexuality. Claire, the heroine of The Verge, is quite unlike Madelaine; Claire is more alone, more desperate, more visionary, and more dangerous than is the younger girl. Claire is what Madelaine might have become if she hadn’t been raised in the Midwest and had not inherited her grandfather’s belief in communal responsibility as a part of this idealism. The play shows how far Susan Glaspell had advanced from her nineteenth-century Davenport background to where she could by 1921 present the ‘‘new’’ woman in all her orginality, yet still retain enough of her midwestern background to qualify her response to Claire and to question the validity of her search. In her laboratory Claire experiments with plants in order to train them to alter their natures and grow into new forms. During the play her horticultural attempts are scoffed at, sympathized over, ignored, misunderstood, and abused; consequently, she becomes increasingly more hysterical. Obsessed by her own inner need to reach a new feminine identity and frustrated by her plants’ failures to create their own radical forms, she kills the one man trying to understand her and ends the play singing insanely against a backdrop of twisted biological freaks. The Verge borders on the edge of being absurd and the plot certainly has its melodramatic moments. Moreover, Claire’s aspirations, which shape the entire play, are more lyrical than dramatic, so they need someone to explain and interpret her feelings, someone, that is, more like a novelist than a playwright. Glaspell has to express Claire’s obsession in terms that make her understandable, even acceptable; yet she has to present the conflicts within and around Claire in a dramatic and effective way. She had to draw upon everything she had learned in her seven years of playwriting for the Provincetown, then invent several new techniques to make meaningful and dramatic her new woman. For Claire is seeking a new feminine self, trying to
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
become a Nietzschean woman-artist, superior to the ordinary person and, thereby, justified in her extreme behavior. To her credit, Susan Glaspell succeeded in making Claire the most talked about dramatic character of the season and The Verge the most interesting play of its time. Alexander Woolcott complained that Miss Glaspell ‘‘could not think of any other way of dramatizing Claire than by having her talk and talk and talk about herself with the egocentric ardor and helpless garrulity of a patient in a psychoanalyst’s office.’’ Although Woolcott failed to appreciate many of the fine things in The Verge, he is right in criticizing Claire’s talkiness. Late in the play, after Claire has been driven almost mad by the massive refusal of the other characters to take her idealism seriously, she begins to speak poetry, desperately trying to find the verbal equivalents for her radical vision, while at the same time she senses that this speech pattern is warning of instability: ‘‘Sometimes—from my lowest moments—beauty has opened as the sea. From a cave I saw immensity.’’ Let me tell you how it is with me I do not want to work, I want to be; Do not want to make a rose or make a poem— Want to lie upon the earth and know. (Closes her eyes) Stop doing that!—words going into patterns They do it sometimes when I let come what’s there.
Thus Claire does sound at times more like a woman in a novel than one on stage. Her talkiness obviously places an extraordinary burden on the actress who plays Claire and who must somehow provide suitable stage actions to accompany Claire’s many long speeches. In the Provincetown production, Margaret Wycherly, in a sequin dress and wearing long beads, portrayed Claire as a nervous, fidgety woman, who, dressed as she was and moving as abruptly as she did, gave striking visual counterpoint to Claire’s set speeches. Woolcott called her ‘‘gorgeous,’’ but Stark Young objected to her busy stage manner, saying it interfered with the intellectual content of the play. If Claire’s extreme character required Susan Glaspell to interpret her heroine through words, the special emphasis of the play on psychological and biological experiments gave her an opportunity to create two brilliant and symbolic stage sets. The two settings of The Verge comprise the most innovative technique in the play and were the one aspect of it praised by all the critics. As the lights come up on the opening scene, we see a greenhouse:
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
This is not a greenhouse where plants are being displayed, nor the usual workshop for the growing of them, but a place for experiment with plants, a laboratory. At the back grows a strange vine. It is arresting rather than beautiful. It creeps along the low wall, and one branch gets a little way up the glass. You might see the form of a cross in it, if you happened to think it that way. The leaves of this vine are not the form that leaves have been. They are at once repellent and significant.
Dominated by the brooding shadow of the vine, spotted with light and shadow, enveloped in the wind’s sound, this set superbly conveys the bizarre and groping qualities of Claire’s experiments. This is her world, strange, a bit frightening, but also attractive and powerful. The partially concealed room at the rear and the trap-door leading below allow for some interesting staging, with a variety of exits and entrances, and also indicate the private nature of Claire’s domain, with certain areas marked out as hers alone. Act Two opens on a twisted, incomplete tower room. This is a distorted, straining place, where the madness that ends the play can be anticipated in this jagged, ominous landscape. It is also a private place, not a womb necessarily, but a retreat certainly, suggesting the aloneness of Claire and her psychological withdrawal from the human voices below. This set particularly illustrates how far Susan Glaspell had developed in her dramatic skills, so that here she could draw upon the rich theatrical experience and training she had undergone with the Players, and apply her intimate knowledge of what could be done on that tiny stage, with its dome at the rear, to create a symbolic picture as experimental as the new expressionistic sets being created in Europe. In The Verge Susan Glaspell moves away from the heritage of stage realism she followed in Inheritors to invent one of the most suggestive sets ever seen on the American stage. Although the sets of The Verge indicate how experimental Susan Glaspell could be, other aspects of the play show how traditional she was, and how much her midwestern background was still influencing her art. Claire is surrounded by five people— two women and three men—and Susan Glaspell goes back to old-fashioned well-made procedures by illuminating Claire through these five, to show by contrast how Claire’s feminism is different from and preferable to the flat, insipid natures of most of the other characters. Her husband, Harry, is a typical male chauvinist, so totally insensitive to his wife’s behavior that he is more comical than pathetic. Harry worries more about getting some salt for his
3 0 1
T h e
V e r g e
breakfast egg than he does about his wife’s apparent infidelity with a house guest and her increasingly strange behavior. Dick, who is Claire’s lover, is attracted sexually to her and can sense something of what she is striving for since he is an artist. But he cannot accept her willingness to destroy her plants when they refuse to grow. He protests when she rips out her latest creation the Edge Vine at the close of Act One and by his protests he loses her. She will no more wait for him than she will let her plant retreat to what is was. The third man is Tom, who is closest to Claire in vision and affection. Tom was once Claire’s lover, but now has moved beyond physical passion to mystical contemplation and at first plans to leave to search her spiritual oneness, but by Act Three decides to stay and protect Claire. With Tom Claire finds her closest partner, one who understands her, a lover-thinker capable of going with her to ‘‘otherness,’’ to, that is, as far as it is humanly possible to go. Most of Act Three centers on the growing response Tom makes to Claire’s need of him, culminating in the last scene where he promises to stay and love her. When Claire realizes, however, that with her Tom has found enough and will try to stop her from going beyond even his love and his faith, she strangles him. We have to understand that it is precisely because she is drawn to Tom’s offer of a safe haven that Claire kills him. He is her true enemy, for he is the tempter drawing her back from ‘‘otherness,’’ so in a frenzy of love for him and out of her own desperate need to go on, she strangles him, crying ‘‘It is you puts out the breath of life.’’ As the play ends, Claire is completely alone and apparently transfigured—close to religious ecstasy, and beyond the human community—nearer, literally, to God. We can understand why Claire appealed to the Village feminists: in killing Tom she rejects the most sinister temptation of all, namely her own desire to conform to an identity better than any other, except this identity is one given her by Tom. It is his version of what she should be and, as far as he is concerned, it will not change once she accepts it. Like her plants, Claire will not stagnate, be fixed into a role. She will not, that is, be like the other women in the play: her conventional daughter and her middle-class sister, both of whom disapprove of and misunderstand Claire. Susan Glaspell meant us to agree that Claire has lost control and gone too far. There are actually two currents in The Verge; one is Claire: so powerful a presence that her energy and strength dominate and direct the flow of action and events; the other a
3 0 2
current of stability, best exemplified by Tom and the other woman, a quieter flow attempting to channel Claire’s more dangerous and strident flood. Unfortunately the forces of stability are unable to satisfy adequately the greater force of exceptional power. In other words, we have not yet found the means to give the exceptional person in our society the expression of her fullest capacity without stifling her, and, as a result, we have driven her to extremes dangerous to both herself and to us. Claire is as much a victim as a heroine: a victim, not of male chauvinism, although Harry might like to think so, but of a closed world which restricts her identity by forcing on her roles of wife and mother, that insists on dulling her brilliance as a woman and a scientist, and that twists her desire for ‘‘otherness’’ into something depraved and crazy. Claire is a pariah because she is different as a woman, a person, and a biologist, and there is not room in the ‘‘normal’’ world for her difference. The true opposition to Claire has to be from the audience. Moved by her desperation, we are nonetheless shocked at her murderous behavior at the end. We reject her. We have to, although the play does not provide any suitable alternative. This is the true radical nature of The Verge and it explains why the critics were divided so widely over its success. With a hindsight not given to the critics of the 1920’s, we can see that The Verge is a remarkable achievement, one that in its attitude toward woman’s identity is far ahead of almost any other play written in the next decades or so, and in its dramaturgy shows how far Susan Glaspell had advanced in her years with the Provincetown. Living in the Village she absorbed many of the bohemian notions of the then ‘‘radical-chic,’’ and from the Provincetown she learned a new craft of playwriting. In The Verge she brings together her dramatic gifts with the intellectual milieu of the avante-garde and balances these against her more conservative midwestern background. For all of its limitations: a language flow at times close to rant, a careful boxing in of her heroine with well-made supporting characters, a lack of any complexity in plot or mood, The Verge is a major play. It brilliantly fulfills the avowed purpose of the Provincetown: to produce only original plays by native playwrights. Also, it gave to the American stage a play that spoke not simply to the Village audience that patronized the tiny theatre, but also a play that faced by extension the question of the limits being enforced by the American society on her most gifted and extraordinary citizens. In 1919 the Palmer raids began, in 1920 Sacco and
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
T h e
Vanzetti were arrested, and in 1921 immigration quotas were established—events that signified for a liberal and generally permissive person and artist like Susan Glaspell that limits, indeed, were being invoked and that conformity to the status-quo was the desired aim of the 1920’s, that what she had presented in Inheritors was, in fact, an actuality. It is possible, therefore, and I believe entirely accurate to view The Verge as a play reaching beyond its obvious feminist emphasis to the larger question of how a society can best direct the energies of its more gifted eccentrics to constructive ends, without, on the one hand, repressing those exceptional qualities that define the genius nor, on the other hand, allowing that eccentricity license to move beyond normal and legal limits to violent and disastrous ends. The Verge does not resolve the question, perhaps no resolution is possible, but it does dramatize the issue. Like Inheritors, The Verge deserves a place in American theatre, and should be revived, for it transforms a serious social question into a moving and rewarding play. Source: Arthur Waterman, ‘‘Susan Glaspell’s The Verge: An Experiment in Feminism,’’ in Great Lakes Review: A Journal of Midwest Culture, Vol. 6, No. 1, Summer 1979, pp. 17–23.
SOURCES Bach, Gerhard, ‘‘Susan Glaspell: Mapping the Domains of Critical Revision,’’ in Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi, University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 257. Ben-Zvi, Linda, Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi, University of Michigan Press, 1995, pp. 6, 97. Gainor, J. Ellen, Susan Glaspell in Context: American Theater, Culture, and Politics, 1915–1948, University of Michigan Press, 2001, pp. 144–69. Nelligan, Liza Maeve, ‘‘‘The Haunting Beauty from the Life We’ve Left’: A Contextual Reading of Trifles and The Verge,’’ in Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and
V o l u m e
1 8
V e r g e
Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi, University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 86. Noe, Marcia, ‘‘The Verge: L’ecriture feminine at the Provincetown,’’ in Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi, University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 140. Ozieblo, Barbara, ‘‘Suppression and Society in Susan Glaspell’s Theater,’’ in Susan Glaspell: Essays on Her Theater and Fiction, edited by Linda Ben-Zvi, University of Michigan Press, 1995, p. 115. ———, Susan Glaspell: A Critical Biography, University of North Carolina Press, 2000, p. 186.
FURTHER READING Bigsby, C. W. E., A Critical Introduction to TwentiethCentury American Drama, Vol. 1, 1900–1940, Cambridge University Press, 1982. Bigsby traces and analyzes the innovations that took place in drama during the first part of the twentieth century. He provides extended critical accounts of some of the most influential playwrights and theatrical groups of the time. Black, Cheryl, The Women of Provincetown Players, 1915–1922, University of Alabama Press, 2001. Black provides an in-depth look at the Provincetown Players and the women who were most important in creating and sustaining the experimental theater group. Hillenbrand, Mark, Produce Your Play without a Producer: A Survival Guide for Actors and Playwrights Who Need a Production, Smith & Kraus, 2001. Hillenbrand provides step-by-step instructions for all aspects of putting on a play, from the initial readings through the final performance. The book also contains a lengthy bibliography and lists of national and regional theater organizations, drama bookstores, rights and royalties agencies, and state arts agencies. Styan, J. L., Modern Drama in Theory and Practice: Expressionism and Epic Theatre, Vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, 1983. Styan traces expressionism on stage from its forerunners at the turn of the century in Germany through its later manifestation in other countries, including the United States. He also provides an extensive history of epic theater around the globe.
3 0 3
Glossary of Literary Terms A Abstract: Used as a noun, the term refers to a short summary or outline of a longer work. As an adjective applied to writing or literary works, abstract refers to words or phrases that name things not knowable through the five senses. Examples of abstracts include the Cliffs Notes summaries of major literary works. Examples of abstract terms or concepts include ‘‘idea,’’ ‘‘guilt’’ ‘‘honesty,’’ and ‘‘loyalty.’’ Absurd, Theater of the: See Theater of the Absurd Absurdism: See Theater of the Absurd Act: A major section of a play. Acts are divided into varying numbers of shorter scenes. From ancient times to the nineteenth century plays were generally constructed of five acts, but modern works typically consist of one, two, or three acts. Examples of fiveact plays include the works of Sophocles and Shakespeare, while the plays of Arthur Miller commonly have a three-act structure. Acto: A one-act Chicano theater piece developed out of collective improvisation. Actos were performed by members of Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino in California during the mid-1960s. Aestheticism: A literary and artistic movement of the nineteenth century. Followers of the movement believed that art should not be mixed with social, political, or moral teaching. The statement ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ is a good summary of aestheticism. The
movement had its roots in France, but it gained widespread importance in England in the last half of the nineteenth century, where it helped change the Victorian practice of including moral lessons in literature. Oscar Wilde is one of the best-known ‘‘aesthetes’’ of the late nineteenth century. Age of Johnson: The period in English literature between 1750 and 1798, named after the most prominent literary figure of the age, Samuel Johnson. Works written during this time are noted for their emphasis on ‘‘sensibility,’’ or emotional quality. These works formed a transition between the rational works of the Age of Reason, or Neoclassical period, and the emphasis on individual feelings and responses of the Romantic period. Significant writers during the Age of Johnson included the novelists Ann Radcliffe and Henry Mackenzie, dramatists Richard Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith, and poets William Collins and Thomas Gray. Also known as Age of Sensibility Age of Reason: See Neoclassicism Age of Sensibility: See Age of Johnson Alexandrine Meter: See Meter Allegory: A narrative technique in which characters representing things or abstract ideas are used to convey a message or teach a lesson. Allegory is typically used to teach moral, ethical, or religious lessons but is sometimes used for satiric or political purposes. Examples of allegorical works include
3 0 5
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Allusion: A reference to a familiar literary or historical person or event, used to make an idea more easily understood. For example, describing someone as a ‘‘Romeo’’ makes an allusion to William Shakespeare’s famous young lover in Romeo and Juliet. Amerind Literature: The writing and oral traditions of Native Americans. Native American literature was originally passed on by word of mouth, so it consisted largely of stories and events that were easily memorized. Amerind prose is often rhythmic like poetry because it was recited to the beat of a ceremonial drum. Examples of Amerind literature include the autobiographical Black Elk Speaks, the works of N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, and Craig Lee Strete, and the poetry of Luci Tapahonso. Analogy: A comparison of two things made to explain something unfamiliar through its similarities to something familiar, or to prove one point based on the acceptedness of another. Similes and metaphors are types of analogies. Analogies often take the form of an extended simile, as in William Blake’s aphorism: ‘‘As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.’’ Angry Young Men: A group of British writers of the 1950s whose work expressed bitterness and disillusionment with society. Common to their work is an anti-hero who rebels against a corrupt social order and strives for personal integrity. The term has been used to describe Kingsley Amis, John Osborne, Colin Wilson, John Wain, and others. Antagonist: The major character in a narrative or drama who works against the hero or protagonist. An example of an evil antagonist is Richard Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, while a virtuous antagonist is Macduff in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Anthropomorphism: The presentation of animals or objects in human shape or with human characteristics. The term is derived from the Greek word for ‘‘human form.’’ The fables of Aesop, the animated films of Walt Disney, and Richard Adams’s Watership Down feature anthropomorphic characters. Anti-hero: A central character in a work of literature who lacks traditional heroic qualities such as courage, physical prowess, and fortitude. Anti-heros
3 0 6
typically distrust conventional values and are unable to commit themselves to any ideals. They generally feel helpless in a world over which they have no control. Anti-heroes usually accept, and often celebrate, their positions as social outcasts. A well-known anti-hero is Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22. Antimasque: See Masque Antithesis: The antithesis of something is its direct opposite. In literature, the use of antithesis as a figure of speech results in two statements that show a contrast through the balancing of two opposite ideas. Technically, it is the second portion of the statement that is defined as the ‘‘antithesis’’; the first portion is the ‘‘thesis.’’ An example of antithesis is found in the following portion of Abraham Lincoln’s ‘‘Gettysburg Address’’; notice the opposition between the verbs ‘‘remember’’ and ‘‘forget’’ and the phrases ‘‘what we say’’ and ‘‘what they did’’: ‘‘The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.’’ Apocrypha: Writings tentatively attributed to an author but not proven or universally accepted to be their works. The term was originally applied to certain books of the Bible that were not considered inspired and so were not included in the ‘‘sacred canon.’’ Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, and John Marston all have apocrypha. Apocryphal books of the Bible include the Old Testament’s Book of Enoch and New Testament’s Gospel of Peter. Apollonian and Dionysian: The two impulses believed to guide authors of dramatic tragedy. The Apollonian impulse is named after Apollo, the Greek god of light and beauty and the symbol of intellectual order. The Dionysian impulse is named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and the symbol of the unrestrained forces of nature. The Apollonian impulse is to create a rational, harmonious world, while the Dionysian is to express the irrational forces of personality. Friedrich Nietzche uses these terms in The Birth of Tragedy to designate contrasting elements in Greek tragedy. Apostrophe: A statement, question, or request addressed to an inanimate object or concept or to a nonexistent or absent person. Requests for inspiration from the muses in poetry are examples of apostrophe, as is Marc Antony’s address to Caesar’s corpse in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘‘O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
am meek and gentle with these butchers!. . . Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!. . . ’’ Archetype: The word archetype is commonly used to describe an original pattern or model from which all other things of the same kind are made. This term was introduced to literary criticism from the psychology of Carl Jung. It expresses Jung’s theory that behind every person’s ‘‘unconscious,’’ or repressed memories of the past, lies the ‘‘collective unconscious’’ of the human race: memories of the countless typical experiences of our ancestors. These memories are said to prompt illogical associations that trigger powerful emotions in the reader. Often, the emotional process is primitive, even primordial. Archetypes are the literary images that grow out of the ‘‘collective unconscious.’’ They appear in literature as incidents and plots that repeat basic patterns of life. They may also appear as stereotyped characters. Examples of literary archetypes include themes such as birth and death and characters such as the Earth Mother. Argument: The argument of a work is the author’s subject matter or principal idea. Examples of defined ‘‘argument’’ portions of works include John Milton’s Arguments to each of the books of Paradise Lost and the ‘‘Argument’’ to Robert Herrick’s Hesperides.
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
performance, including plays, poetry readings, speeches, and concerts. Jane Austen’s parody of the gothic novel, Northanger Abbey, was originally intended for (and also pokes fun at) an audience of young and avid female gothic novel readers. Avant-garde: A French term meaning ‘‘vanguard.’’ It is used in literary criticism to describe new writing that rejects traditional approaches to literature in favor of innovations in style or content. Twentieth-century examples of the literary avantgarde include the Black Mountain School of poets, the Bloomsbury Group, and the Beat Movement.
B Ballad: A short poem that tells a simple story and has a repeated refrain. Ballads were originally intended to be sung. Early ballads, known as folk ballads, were passed down through generations, so their authors are often unknown. Later ballads composed by known authors are called literary ballads. An example of an anonymous folk ballad is ‘‘Edward,’’ which dates from the Middle Ages. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’’ and John Keats’s ‘‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’’ are examples of literary ballads.
Aristotelian Criticism: Specifically, the method of evaluating and analyzing tragedy formulated by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics. More generally, the term indicates any form of criticism that follows Aristotle’s views. Aristotelian criticism focuses on the form and logical structure of a work, apart from its historical or social context, in contrast to ‘‘Platonic Criticism,’’ which stresses the usefulness of art. Adherents of New Criticism including John Crowe Ransom and Cleanth Brooks utilize and value the basic ideas of Aristotelian criticism for textual analysis.
Baroque: A term used in literary criticism to describe literature that is complex or ornate in style or diction. Baroque works typically express tension, anxiety, and violent emotion. The term ‘‘Baroque Age’’ designates a period in Western European literature beginning in the late sixteenth century and ending about one hundred years later. Works of this period often mirror the qualities of works more generally associated with the label ‘‘baroque’’ and sometimes feature elaborate conceits. Examples of Baroque works include John Lyly’s Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, Luis de Gongora’s Soledads, and William Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
Art for Art’s Sake: See Aestheticism
Baroque Age: See Baroque
Aside: A comment made by a stage performer that is intended to be heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters. Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude is an extended use of the aside in modern theater. Audience: The people for whom a piece of literature is written. Authors usually write with a certain audience in mind, for example, children, members of a religious or ethnic group, or colleagues in a professional field. The term ‘‘audience’’ also applies to the people who gather to see or hear any
V o l u m e
1 8
Baroque Period: See Baroque Beat Generation: See Beat Movement Beat Movement: A period featuring a group of American poets and novelists of the 1950s and 1960s—including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti—who rejected established social and literary values. Using such techniques as stream of consciousness writing and jazz-influenced free verse and focusing on unusual or abnormal states of mind—generated by religious ecstasy or the use of
3 0 7
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
drugs—the Beat writers aimed to create works that were unconventional in both form and subject matter. Kerouac’s On the Road is perhaps the bestknown example of a Beat Generation novel, and Ginsberg’s Howl is a famous collection of Beat poetry. Black Aesthetic Movement: A period of artistic and literary development among African Americans in the 1960s and early 1970s. This was the first major African-American artistic movement since the Harlem Renaissance and was closely paralleled by the civil rights and black power movements. The black aesthetic writers attempted to produce works of art that would be meaningful to the black masses. Key figures in black aesthetics included one of its founders, poet and playwright Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones; poet and essayist Haki R. Madhubuti, formerly Don L. Lee; poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez; and dramatist Ed Bullins. Works representative of the Black Aesthetic Movement include Amiri Baraka’s play Dutchman, a 1964 Obie award-winner; Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, edited by Baraka and playwright Larry Neal and published in 1968; and Sonia Sanchez’s poetry collection We a BaddDDD People, published in 1970. Also known as Black Arts Movement.
district of London, from around 1907 to the early 1930s. The Bloomsbury Group held no uniform philosophical beliefs but did commonly express an aversion to moral prudery and a desire for greater social tolerance. At various times the circle included Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, and John Maynard Keynes. Bon Mot: A French term meaning ‘‘good word.’’ A bon mot is a witty remark or clever observation. Charles Lamb and Oscar Wilde are celebrated for their witty bon mots. Two examples by Oscar Wilde stand out: (1) ‘‘All women become their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.’’ (2) ‘‘A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.’’ Breath Verse: See Projective Verse Burlesque: Any literary work that uses exaggeration to make its subject appear ridiculous, either by treating a trivial subject with profound seriousness or by treating a dignified subject frivolously. The word ‘‘burlesque’’ may also be used as an adjective, as in ‘‘burlesque show,’’ to mean ‘‘striptease act.’’ Examples of literary burlesque include the comedies of Aristophanes, Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote,, Samuel Butler’s poem ‘‘Hudibras,’’ and John Gay’s play The Beggar’s Opera.
Black Arts Movement: See Black Aesthetic Movement Black Comedy: See Black Humor Black Humor: Writing that places grotesque elements side by side with humorous ones in an attempt to shock the reader, forcing him or her to laugh at the horrifying reality of a disordered world. Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22 is considered a superb example of the use of black humor. Other well-known authors who use black humor include Kurt Vonnegut, Edward Albee, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter. Also known as Black Comedy. Blank Verse: Loosely, any unrhymed poetry, but more generally, unrhymed iambic pentameter verse (composed of lines of five two-syllable feet with the first syllable accented, the second unaccented). Blank verse has been used by poets since the Renaissance for its flexibility and its graceful, dignified tone. John Milton’s Paradise Lost is in blank verse, as are most of William Shakespeare’s plays. Bloomsbury Group: A group of English writers, artists, and intellectuals who held informal artistic and philosophical discussions in Bloomsbury, a
3 0 8
C Cadence: The natural rhythm of language caused by the alternation of accented and unaccented syllables. Much modern poetry—notably free verse— deliberately manipulates cadence to create complex rhythmic effects. James Macpherson’s ‘‘Ossian poems’’ are richly cadenced, as is the poetry of the Symbolists, Walt Whitman, and Amy Lowell. Caesura: A pause in a line of poetry, usually occurring near the middle. It typically corresponds to a break in the natural rhythm or sense of the line but is sometimes shifted to create special meanings or rhythmic effects. The opening line of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘‘The Raven’’ contains a caesura following ‘‘dreary’’: ‘‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary. . . . ’’ Canzone: A short Italian or Provencal lyric poem, commonly about love and often set to music. The canzone has no set form but typically contains five or six stanzas made up of seven to twenty lines of eleven syllables each. A shorter, five- to ten-line ‘‘envoy,’’ or concluding stanza, completes the poem.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Masters of the canzone form include Petrarch, Dante Alighieri, Torquato Tasso, and Guido Cavalcanti. Carpe Diem: A Latin term meaning ‘‘seize the day.’’ This is a traditional theme of poetry, especially lyrics. A carpe diem poem advises the reader or the person it addresses to live for today and enjoy the pleasures of the moment. Two celebrated carpe diem poems are Andrew Marvell’s ‘‘To His Coy Mistress’’ and Robert Herrick’s poem beginning ‘‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. . . . ’’ Catharsis: The release or purging of unwanted emotions— specifically fear and pity—brought about by exposure to art. The term was first used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle in his Poetics to refer to the desired effect of tragedy on spectators. A famous example of catharsis is realized in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, when Oedipus discovers that his wife, Jacosta, is his own mother and that the stranger he killed on the road was his own father. Celtic Renaissance: A period of Irish literary and cultural history at the end of the nineteenth century. Followers of the movement aimed to create a romantic vision of Celtic myth and legend. The most significant works of the Celtic Renaissance typically present a dreamy, unreal world, usually in reaction against the reality of contemporary problems. William Butler Yeats’s The Wanderings of Oisin is among the most significant works of the Celtic Renaissance. Also known as Celtic Twilight. Celtic Twilight: See Celtic Renaissance Character: Broadly speaking, a person in a literary work. The actions of characters are what constitute the plot of a story, novel, or poem. There are numerous types of characters, ranging from simple, stereotypical figures to intricate, multifaceted ones. In the techniques of anthropomorphism and personification, animals—and even places or things— can assume aspects of character. ‘‘Characterization’’ is the process by which an author creates vivid, believable characters in a work of art. This may be done in a variety of ways, including (1) direct description of the character by the narrator; (2) the direct presentation of the speech, thoughts, or actions of the character; and (3) the responses of other characters to the character. The term ‘‘character’’ also refers to a form originated by the ancient Greek writer Theophrastus that later became popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is a short essay or sketch of a person who prominently displays a specific attribute or quality, such as miserliness or ambition. Notable characters in lit-
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
erature include Oedipus Rex, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Macbeth, Candide, Hester Prynne, Ebenezer Scrooge, Huckleberry Finn, Jay Gatsby, Scarlett O’Hara, James Bond, and Kunta Kinte. Characterization: See Character Chorus: In ancient Greek drama, a group of actors who commented on and interpreted the unfolding action on the stage. Initially the chorus was a major component of the presentation, but over time it became less significant, with its numbers reduced and its role eventually limited to commentary between acts. By the sixteenth century the chorus—if employed at all—was typically a single person who provided a prologue and an epilogue and occasionally appeared between acts to introduce or underscore an important event. The chorus in William Shakespeare’s Henry V functions in this way. Modern dramas rarely feature a chorus, but T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral and Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge are notable exceptions. The Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town performs a role similar to that of the chorus. Chronicle: A record of events presented in chronological order. Although the scope and level of detail provided varies greatly among the chronicles surviving from ancient times, some, such as the AngloSaxon Chronicle, feature vivid descriptions and a lively recounting of events. During the Elizabethan Age, many dramas— appropriately called ‘‘chronicle plays’’—were based on material from chronicles. Many of William Shakespeare’s dramas of English history as well as Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II are based in part on Raphael Holinshead’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Classical: In its strictest definition in literary criticism, classicism refers to works of ancient Greek or Roman literature. The term may also be used to describe a literary work of recognized importance (a ‘‘classic’’) from any time period or literature that exhibits the traits of classicism. Classical authors from ancient Greek and Roman times include Juvenal and Homer. Examples of later works and authors now described as classical include French literature of the seventeenth century, Western novels of the nineteenth century, and American fiction of the mid-nineteenth century such as that written by James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain. Classicism: A term used in literary criticism to describe critical doctrines that have their roots in ancient Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, and art. Works associated with classicism typically
3 0 9
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
exhibit restraint on the part of the author, unity of design and purpose, clarity, simplicity, logical organization, and respect for tradition. Examples of literary classicism include Cicero’s prose, the dramas of Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine, the poetry of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, and the writings of J. W. von Goethe, G. E. Lessing, and T. S. Eliot. Climax: The turning point in a narrative, the moment when the conflict is at its most intense. Typically, the structure of stories, novels, and plays is one of rising action, in which tension builds to the climax, followed by falling action, in which tension lessens as the story moves to its conclusion. The climax in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans occurs when Magua and his captive Cora are pursued to the edge of a cliff by Uncas. Magua kills Uncas but is subsequently killed by Hawkeye. Colloquialism: A word, phrase, or form of pronunciation that is acceptable in casual conversation but not in formal, written communication. It is considered more acceptable than slang. An example of colloquialism can be found in Rudyard Kipling’s Barrack-room Ballads: When ’Omer smote ’is bloomin’ lyre He’d ’eard men sing by land and sea; An’ what he thought ’e might require ’E went an’ took—the same as me! Comedy: One of two major types of drama, the other being tragedy. Its aim is to amuse, and it typically ends happily. Comedy assumes many forms, such as farce and burlesque, and uses a variety of techniques, from parody to satire. In a restricted sense the term comedy refers only to dramatic presentations, but in general usage it is commonly applied to nondramatic works as well. Examples of comedies range from the plays of Aristophanes, Terrence, and Plautus, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Francois Rabelais’s Pantagruel and Gargantua, and some of Geoffrey Chaucer’s tales and William Shakespeare’s plays to Noel Coward’s play Private Lives and James Thurber’s short story ‘‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.’’ Comedy of Manners: A play about the manners and conventions of an aristocratic, highly sophisticated society. The characters are usually types rather than individualized personalities, and plot is less important than atmosphere. Such plays were an important aspect of late seventeenth-century English comedy. The comedy of manners was revived in the eighteenth century by Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, enjoyed a second revival in the late nineteenth century, and has endured
3 1 0
into the twentieth century. Examples of comedies of manners include William Congreve’s The Way of the World in the late seventeenth century, Oliver Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal in the eighteenth century, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in the nineteenth century, and W. Somerset Maugham’s The Circle in the twentieth century. Comic Relief: The use of humor to lighten the mood of a serious or tragic story, especially in plays. The technique is very common in Elizabethan works, and can be an integral part of the plot or simply a brief event designed to break the tension of the scene. The Gravediggers’ scene in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a frequently cited example of comic relief. Commedia dell’arte: An Italian term meaning ‘‘the comedy of guilds’’ or ‘‘the comedy of professional actors.’’ This form of dramatic comedy was popular in Italy during the sixteenth century. Actors were assigned stock roles (such as Pulcinella, the stupid servant, or Pantalone, the old merchant) and given a basic plot to follow, but all dialogue was improvised. The roles were rigidly typed and the plots were formulaic, usually revolving around young lovers who thwarted their elders and attained wealth and happiness. A rigid convention of the commedia dell’arte is the periodic intrusion of Harlequin, who interrupts the play with low buffoonery. Peppino de Filippo’s Metamorphoses of a Wandering Minstrel gave modern audiences an idea of what commedia dell’arte may have been like. Various scenarios for commedia dell’arte were compiled in Petraccone’s La commedia dell’arte, storia, technica, scenari, published in 1927. Complaint: A lyric poem, popular in the Renaissance, in which the speaker expresses sorrow about his or her condition. Typically, the speaker’s sadness is caused by an unresponsive lover, but some complaints cite other sources of unhappiness, such as poverty or fate. A commonly cited example is ‘‘A Complaint by Night of the Lover Not Beloved’’ by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Thomas Sackville’s ‘‘Complaint of Henry, Duke of Buckingham’’ traces the duke’s unhappiness to his ruthless ambition. Conceit: A clever and fanciful metaphor, usually expressed through elaborate and extended comparison, that presents a striking parallel between two seemingly dissimilar things—for example, elaborately comparing a beautiful woman to an object like a garden or the sun. The conceit was a popular
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
device throughout the Elizabethan Age and Baroque Age and was the principal technique of the seventeenth-century English metaphysical poets. This usage of the word conceit is unrelated to the bestknown definition of conceit as an arrogant attitude or behavior. The conceit figures prominently in the works of John Donne, Emily Dickinson, and T. S. Eliot. Concrete: Concrete is the opposite of abstract, and refers to a thing that actually exists or a description that allows the reader to experience an object or concept with the senses. Henry David Thoreau’s Walden contains much concrete description of nature and wildlife. Concrete Poetry: Poetry in which visual elements play a large part in the poetic effect. Punctuation marks, letters, or words are arranged on a page to form a visual design: a cross, for example, or a bumblebee. Max Bill and Eugene Gomringer were among the early practitioners of concrete poetry; Haroldo de Campos and Augusto de Campos are among contemporary authors of concrete poetry. Confessional Poetry: A form of poetry in which the poet reveals very personal, intimate, sometimes shocking information about himself or herself. Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, and John Berryman wrote poetry in the confessional vein. Conflict: The conflict in a work of fiction is the issue to be resolved in the story. It usually occurs between two characters, the protagonist and the antagonist, or between the protagonist and society or the protagonist and himself or herself. Conflict in Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie comes as a result of urban society, while Jack London’s short story ‘‘To Build a Fire’’ concerns the protagonist’s battle against the cold and himself. Connotation: The impression that a word gives beyond its defined meaning. Connotations may be universally understood or may be significant only to a certain group. Both ‘‘horse’’ and ‘‘steed’’ denote the same animal, but ‘‘steed’’ has a different connotation, deriving from the chivalrous or romantic narratives in which the word was once often used. Consonance: Consonance occurs in poetry when words appearing at the ends of two or more verses have similar final consonant sounds but have final vowel sounds that differ, as with ‘‘stuff’’ and ‘‘off.’’ Consonance is found in ‘‘The curfew tolls the knells of parting day’’ from Thomas Grey’s ‘‘An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.’’ Also known as Half Rhyme or Slant Rhyme.
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Convention: Any widely accepted literary device, style, or form. A soliloquy, in which a character reveals to the audience his or her private thoughts, is an example of a dramatic convention. Corrido: A Mexican ballad. Examples of corridos include ‘‘Muerte del afamado Bilito,’’ ‘‘La voz de mi conciencia,’’ ‘‘Lucio Perez,’’ ‘‘La juida,’’ and ‘‘Los presos.’’ Couplet: Two lines of poetry with the same rhyme and meter, often expressing a complete and selfcontained thought. The following couplet is from Alexander Pope’s ‘‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady’’: ’Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expense, And Splendour borrows all her rays from Sense. Criticism: The systematic study and evaluation of literary works, usually based on a specific method or set of principles. An important part of literary studies since ancient times, the practice of criticism has given rise to numerous theories, methods, and ‘‘schools,’’ sometimes producing conflicting, even contradictory, interpretations of literature in general as well as of individual works. Even such basic issues as what constitutes a poem or a novel have been the subject of much criticism over the centuries. Seminal texts of literary criticism include Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Poetics, Sir Philip Sidney’s The Defence of Poesie, John Dryden’s Of Dramatic Poesie, and William Wordsworth’s ‘‘Preface’’ to the second edition of his Lyrical Ballads. Contemporary schools of criticism include deconstruction, feminist, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, new historicist, postcolonialist, and reader-response.
D Dactyl: See Foot Dadaism: A protest movement in art and literature founded by Tristan Tzara in 1916. Followers of the movement expressed their outrage at the destruction brought about by World War I by revolting against numerous forms of social convention. The Dadaists presented works marked by calculated madness and flamboyant nonsense. They stressed total freedom of expression, commonly through primitive displays of emotion and illogical, often senseless, poetry. The movement ended shortly after the war, when it was replaced by surrealism. Proponents of Dadaism include Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Philippe Soupault, and Paul Eluard. Decadent: See Decadents
3 1 1
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Decadents: The followers of a nineteenth-century literary movement that had its beginnings in French aestheticism. Decadent literature displays a fascination with perverse and morbid states; a search for novelty and sensation—the ‘‘new thrill’’; a preoccupation with mysticism; and a belief in the senselessness of human existence. The movement is closely associated with the doctrine Art for Art’s Sake. The term ‘‘decadence’’ is sometimes used to denote a decline in the quality of art or literature following a period of greatness. Major French decadents are Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud. English decadents include Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, and Frank Harris. Deconstruction: A method of literary criticism developed by Jacques Derrida and characterized by multiple conflicting interpretations of a given work. Deconstructionists consider the impact of the language of a work and suggest that the true meaning of the work is not necessarily the meaning that the author intended. Jacques Derrida’s De la grammatologie is the seminal text on deconstructive strategies; among American practitioners of this method of criticism are Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller. Deduction: The process of reaching a conclusion through reasoning from general premises to a specific premise. An example of deduction is present in the following syllogism: Premise: All mammals are animals. Premise: All whales are mammals. Conclusion: Therefore, all whales are animals. Denotation: The definition of a word, apart from the impressions or feelings it creates in the reader. The word ‘‘apartheid’’ denotes a political and economic policy of segregation by race, but its connotations— oppression, slavery, inequality—are numerous. Denouement: A French word meaning ‘‘the unknotting.’’ In literary criticism, it denotes the resolution of conflict in fiction or drama. The denouement follows the climax and provides an outcome to the primary plot situation as well as an explanation of secondary plot complications. The denouement often involves a character’s recognition of his or her state of mind or moral condition. A well-known example of denouement is the last scene of the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare, in which couples are married, an evildoer repents, the identities of two disguised characters are revealed, and a ruler is restored to power. Also known as Falling Action.
3 1 2
Description: Descriptive writing is intended to allow a reader to picture the scene or setting in which the action of a story takes place. The form this description takes often evokes an intended emotional response—a dark, spooky graveyard will evoke fear, and a peaceful, sunny meadow will evoke calmness. An example of a descriptive story is Edgar Allan Poe’s Landor’s Cottage, which offers a detailed depiction of a New York country estate. Detective Story: A narrative about the solution of a mystery or the identification of a criminal. The conventions of the detective story include the detective’s scrupulous use of logic in solving the mystery; incompetent or ineffectual police; a suspect who appears guilty at first but is later proved innocent; and the detective’s friend or confidant— often the narrator—whose slowness in interpreting clues emphasizes by contrast the detective’s brilliance. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’’ is commonly regarded as the earliest example of this type of story. With this work, Poe established many of the conventions of the detective story genre, which are still in practice. Other practitioners of this vast and extremely popular genre include Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie. Deus ex machina: A Latin term meaning ‘‘god out of a machine.’’ In Greek drama, a god was often lowered onto the stage by a mechanism of some kind to rescue the hero or untangle the plot. By extension, the term refers to any artificial device or coincidence used to bring about a convenient and simple solution to a plot. This is a common device in melodramas and includes such fortunate circumstances as the sudden receipt of a legacy to save the family farm or a last-minute stay of execution. The deus ex machina invariably rewards the virtuous and punishes evildoers. Examples of deus ex machina include King Louis XIV in Jean-Baptiste Moliere’s Tartuffe and Queen Victoria in The Pirates of Penzance by William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Bertolt Brecht parodies the abuse of such devices in the conclusion of his Threepenny Opera. Dialogue: In its widest sense, dialogue is simply conversation between people in a literary work; in its most restricted sense, it refers specifically to the speech of characters in a drama. As a specific literary genre, a ‘‘dialogue’’ is a composition in which characters debate an issue or idea. The Greek philosopher Plato frequently expounded his theories in the form of dialogues.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Diction: The selection and arrangement of words in a literary work. Either or both may vary depending on the desired effect. There are four general types of diction: ‘‘formal,’’ used in scholarly or lofty writing; ‘‘informal,’’ used in relaxed but educated conversation; ‘‘colloquial,’’ used in everyday speech; and ‘‘slang,’’ containing newly coined words and other terms not accepted in formal usage. Didactic: A term used to describe works of literature that aim to teach some moral, religious, political, or practical lesson. Although didactic elements are often found in artistically pleasing works, the term ‘‘didactic’’ usually refers to literature in which the message is more important than the form. The term may also be used to criticize a work that the critic finds ‘‘overly didactic,’’ that is, heavy-handed in its delivery of a lesson. Examples of didactic literature include John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism, JeanJacques Rousseau’s Emile, and Elizabeth Inchbald’s Simple Story. Dimeter: See Meter Dionysian: See Apollonian and Dionysian Discordia concours: A Latin phrase meaning ‘‘discord in harmony.’’ The term was coined by the eighteenth-century English writer Samuel Johnson to describe ‘‘a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.’’ Johnson created the expression by reversing a phrase by the Latin poet Horace. The metaphysical poetry of John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Abraham Cowley, George Herbert, and Edward Taylor among others, contains many examples of discordia concours. In Donne’s ‘‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,’’ the poet compares the union of himself with his lover to a draftsman’s compass: If they be two, they are two so, As stiff twin compasses are two: Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if the other do; And though it in the center sit, Yet when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Dissonance: A combination of harsh or jarring sounds, especially in poetry. Although such combinations may be accidental, poets sometimes intentionally make them to achieve particular effects. Dissonance is also sometimes used to refer to close but not identical rhymes. When this is the case, the word functions as a synonym for consonance. Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and many other poets have made deliberate use of dissonance.
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Doppelganger: A literary technique by which a character is duplicated (usually in the form of an alter ego, though sometimes as a ghostly counterpart) or divided into two distinct, usually opposite personalities. The use of this character device is widespread in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and indicates a growing awareness among authors that the ‘‘self’’ is really a composite of many ‘‘selves.’’ A well-known story containing a doppelganger character is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which dramatizes an internal struggle between good and evil. Also known as The Double. Double Entendre: A corruption of a French phrase meaning ‘‘double meaning.’’ The term is used to indicate a word or phrase that is deliberately ambiguous, especially when one of the meanings is risque or improper. An example of a double entendre is the Elizabethan usage of the verb ‘‘die,’’ which refers both to death and to orgasm. Double, The: See Doppelganger Draft: Any preliminary version of a written work. An author may write dozens of drafts which are revised to form the final work, or he or she may write only one, with few or no revisions. Dorothy Parker’s observation that ‘‘I can’t write five words but that I change seven’’ humorously indicates the purpose of the draft. Drama: In its widest sense, a drama is any work designed to be presented by actors on a stage. Similarly, ‘‘drama’’ denotes a broad literary genre that includes a variety of forms, from pageant and spectacle to tragedy and comedy, as well as countless types and subtypes. More commonly in modern usage, however, a drama is a work that treats serious subjects and themes but does not aim at the grandeur of tragedy. This use of the term originated with the eighteenth-century French writer Denis Diderot, who used the word drame to designate his plays about middle-class life; thus ‘‘drama’’ typically features characters of a less exalted stature than those of tragedy. Examples of classical dramas include Menander’s comedy Dyscolus and Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex. Contemporary dramas include Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes, and August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Dramatic Irony: Occurs when the audience of a play or the reader of a work of literature knows something that a character in the work itself does not know. The irony is in the contrast between the
3 1 3
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
intended meaning of the statements or actions of a character and the additional information understood by the audience. A celebrated example of dramatic irony is in Act V of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where two young lovers meet their end as a result of a tragic misunderstanding. Here, the audience has full knowledge that Juliet’s apparent ‘‘death’’ is merely temporary; she will regain her senses when the mysterious ‘‘sleeping potion’’ she has taken wears off. But Romeo, mistaking Juliet’s drug-induced trance for true death, kills himself in grief. Upon awakening, Juliet discovers Romeo’s corpse and, in despair, slays herself.
Edwardian: Describes cultural conventions identified with the period of the reign of Edward VII of England (1901–1910). Writers of the Edwardian Age typically displayed a strong reaction against the propriety and conservatism of the Victorian Age. Their work often exhibits distrust of authority in religion, politics, and art and expresses strong doubts about the soundness of conventional values. Writers of this era include George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad.
Dramatic Monologue: See Monologue
Edwardian Age: See Edwardian
Dramatic Poetry: Any lyric work that employs elements of drama such as dialogue, conflict, or characterization, but excluding works that are intended for stage presentation. A monologue is a form of dramatic poetry.
Electra Complex: A daughter’s amorous obsession with her father. The term Electra complex comes from the plays of Euripides and Sophocles entitled Electra, in which the character Electra drives her brother Orestes to kill their mother and her lover in revenge for the murder of their father.
Dramatis Personae: The characters in a work of literature, particularly a drama. The list of characters printed before the main text of a play or in the program is the dramatis personae. Dream Allegory: See Dream Vision Dream Vision: A literary convention, chiefly of the Middle Ages. In a dream vision a story is presented as a literal dream of the narrator. This device was commonly used to teach moral and religious lessons. Important works of this type are The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, Piers Plowman by William Langland, and The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Also known as Dream Allegory. Dystopia: An imaginary place in a work of fiction where the characters lead dehumanized, fearful lives. Jack London’s The Iron Heel, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s My, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four, and Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale portray versions of dystopia.
E Eclogue: In classical literature, a poem featuring rural themes and structured as a dialogue among shepherds. Eclogues often took specific poetic forms, such as elegies or love poems. Some were written as the soliloquy of a shepherd. In later centuries, ‘‘eclogue’’ came to refer to any poem that was in the pastoral tradition or that had a dialogue or monologue structure. A classical example of an eclogue is Virgil’s Eclogues, also known as Bucolics. Giovanni
3 1 4
Boccaccio, Edmund Spenser, Andrew Marvell, Jonathan Swift, and Louis MacNeice also wrote eclogues.
Elegy: A lyric poem that laments the death of a person or the eventual death of all people. In a conventional elegy, set in a classical world, the poet and subject are spoken of as shepherds. In modern criticism, the word elegy is often used to refer to a poem that is melancholy or mournfully contemplative. John Milton’s ‘‘Lycidas’’ and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘‘Adonais’’ are two examples of this form. Elizabethan Age: A period of great economic growth, religious controversy, and nationalism closely associated with the reign of Elizabeth I of England (1558–1603). The Elizabethan Age is considered a part of the general renaissance—that is, the flowering of arts and literature—that took place in Europe during the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries. The era is considered the golden age of English literature. The most important dramas in English and a great deal of lyric poetry were produced during this period, and modern English criticism began around this time. The notable authors of the period—Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon, and John Donne—are among the best in all of English literature. Elizabethan Drama: English comic and tragic plays produced during the Renaissance, or more narrowly, those plays written during the last years of and few years after Queen Elizabeth’s reign. William Shakespeare is considered an Elizabethan dramatist in the broader sense, although most of his work was produced during the reign of James I. Examples of Elizabethan comedies include John
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Lyly’s The Woman in the Moone, Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, or, Moll Cut Purse, and William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Examples of Elizabethan tragedies include William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy, and John Webster’s The Tragedy of the Duchess of Malfi. Empathy: A sense of shared experience, including emotional and physical feelings, with someone or something other than oneself. Empathy is often used to describe the response of a reader to a literary character. An example of an empathic passage is William Shakespeare’s description in his narrative poem Venus and Adonis of: the snail, whose tender horns being hit, Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain. Readers of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s The Windhover may experience some of the physical sensations evoked in the description of the movement of the falcon. English Sonnet: See Sonnet Enjambment: The running over of the sense and structure of a line of verse or a couplet into the following verse or couplet. Andrew Marvell’s ‘‘To His Coy Mistress’’ is structured as a series of enjambments, as in lines 11–12: ‘‘My vegetable love should grow/Vaster than empires and more slow.’’ Enlightenment, The: An eighteenth-century philosophical movement. It began in France but had a wide impact throughout Europe and America. Thinkers of the Enlightenment valued reason and believed that both the individual and society could achieve a state of perfection. Corresponding to this essentially humanist vision was a resistance to religious authority. Important figures of the Enlightenment were Denis Diderot and Voltaire in France, Edward Gibbon and David Hume in England, and Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson in the United States. Epic: A long narrative poem about the adventures of a hero of great historic or legendary importance. The setting is vast and the action is often given cosmic significance through the intervention of supernatural forces such as gods, angels, or demons. Epics are typically written in a classical style of grand simplicity with elaborate metaphors and allusions that enhance the symbolic importance of a hero’s adventures. Some well-known epics are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Epic Simile: See Homeric Simile
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Epic Theater: A theory of theatrical presentation developed by twentieth-century German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht created a type of drama that the audience could view with complete detachment. He used what he termed ‘‘alienation effects’’ to create an emotional distance between the audience and the action on stage. Among these effects are: short, self-contained scenes that keep the play from building to a cathartic climax; songs that comment on the action; and techniques of acting that prevent the actor from developing an emotional identity with his role. Besides the plays of Bertolt Brecht, other plays that utilize epic theater conventions include those of Georg Buchner, Frank Wedekind, Erwin Piscator, and Leopold Jessner. Epigram: A saying that makes the speaker’s point quickly and concisely. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote an epigram that neatly sums up the form: What is an Epigram? A Dwarfish whole, Its body brevity, and wit its soul. Epilogue: A concluding statement or section of a literary work. In dramas, particularly those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the epilogue is a closing speech, often in verse, delivered by an actor at the end of a play and spoken directly to the audience. A famous epilogue is Puck’s speech at the end of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Epiphany: A sudden revelation of truth inspired by a seemingly trivial incident. The term was widely used by James Joyce in his critical writings, and the stories in Joyce’s Dubliners are commonly called ‘‘epiphanies.’’ Episode: An incident that forms part of a story and is significantly related to it. Episodes may be either self-contained narratives or events that depend on a larger context for their sense and importance. Examples of episodes include the founding of Wilmington, Delaware in Charles Reade’s The Disinherited Heir and the individual events comprising the picaresque novels and medieval romances. Episodic Plot: See Plot Epitaph: An inscription on a tomb or tombstone, or a verse written on the occasion of a person’s death. Epitaphs may be serious or humorous. Dorothy Parker’s epitaph reads, ‘‘I told you I was sick.’’ Epithalamion: A song or poem written to honor and commemorate a marriage ceremony. Famous examples include Edmund Spenser’s
3 1 5
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
‘‘Epithalamion’’ and e. e. cummings’s ‘‘Epithalamion.’’ Also spelled Epithalamium. Epithalamium: See Epithalamion Epithet: A word or phrase, often disparaging or abusive, that expresses a character trait of someone or something. ‘‘The Napoleon of crime’’ is an epithet applied to Professor Moriarty, arch-rival of Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle’s series of detective stories. Exempla: See Exemplum Exemplum: A tale with a moral message. This form of literary sermonizing flourished during the Middle Ages, when exempla appeared in collections known as ‘‘example-books.’’ The works of Geoffrey Chaucer are full of exempla. Existentialism: A predominantly twentieth-century philosophy concerned with the nature and perception of human existence. There are two major strains of existentialist thought: atheistic and Christian. Followers of atheistic existentialism believe that the individual is alone in a godless universe and that the basic human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Nevertheless, because there are no fixed values, individuals can create their own characters— indeed, they can shape themselves—through the exercise of free will. The atheistic strain culminates in and is popularly associated with the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. The Christian existentialists, on the other hand, believe that only in God may people find freedom from life’s anguish. The two strains hold certain beliefs in common: that existence cannot be fully understood or described through empirical effort; that anguish is a universal element of life; that individuals must bear responsibility for their actions; and that there is no common standard of behavior or perception for religious and ethical matters. Existentialist thought figures prominently in the works of such authors as Eugene Ionesco, Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus. Expatriates: See Expatriatism Expatriatism: The practice of leaving one’s country to live for an extended period in another country. Literary expatriates include English poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats in Italy, Polish novelist Joseph Conrad in England, American writers Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Gertrude Stein, and Ernest Hemingway in France, and Trinidadian author Neil Bissondath in Canada.
3 1 6
Exposition: Writing intended to explain the nature of an idea, thing, or theme. Expository writing is often combined with description, narration, or argument. In dramatic writing, the exposition is the introductory material which presents the characters, setting, and tone of the play. An example of dramatic exposition occurs in many nineteenth-century drawing-room comedies in which the butler and the maid open the play with relevant talk about their master and mistress; in composition, exposition relays factual information, as in encyclopedia entries. Expressionism: An indistinct literary term, originally used to describe an early twentieth-century school of German painting. The term applies to almost any mode of unconventional, highly subjective writing that distorts reality in some way. Advocates of Expressionism include dramatists George Kaiser, Ernst Toller, Luigi Pirandello, Federico Garcia Lorca, Eugene O’Neill, and Elmer Rice; poets George Heym, Ernst Stadler, August Stramm, Gottfried Benn, and Georg Trakl; and novelists Franz Kafka and James Joyce. Extended Monologue: See Monologue
F Fable: A prose or verse narrative intended to convey a moral. Animals or inanimate objects with human characteristics often serve as characters in fables. A famous fable is Aesop’s ‘‘The Tortoise and the Hare.’’ Fairy Tales: Short narratives featuring mythical beings such as fairies, elves, and sprites. These tales originally belonged to the folklore of a particular nation or region, such as those collected in Germany by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Two other celebrated writers of fairy tales are Hans Christian Andersen and Rudyard Kipling. Falling Action: See Denouement Fantasy: A literary form related to mythology and folklore. Fantasy literature is typically set in nonexistent realms and features supernatural beings. Notable examples of fantasy literature are The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien and the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. Farce: A type of comedy characterized by broad humor, outlandish incidents, and often vulgar subject matter. Much of the ‘‘comedy’’ in film and television could more accurately be described as farce.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Feet: See Foot Feminine Rhyme: See Rhyme Femme fatale: A French phrase with the literal translation ‘‘fatal woman.’’ A femme fatale is a sensuous, alluring woman who often leads men into danger or trouble. A classic example of the femme fatale is the nameless character in Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, portrayed by Marilyn Monroe in the film adaptation. Fiction: Any story that is the product of imagination rather than a documentation of fact. characters and events in such narratives may be based in real life but their ultimate form and configuration is a creation of the author. Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind are examples of fiction. Figurative Language: A technique in writing in which the author temporarily interrupts the order, construction, or meaning of the writing for a particular effect. This interruption takes the form of one or more figures of speech such as hyperbole, irony, or simile. Figurative language is the opposite of literal language, in which every word is truthful, accurate, and free of exaggeration or embellishment. Examples of figurative language are tropes such as metaphor and rhetorical figures such as apostrophe. Figures of Speech: Writing that differs from customary conventions for construction, meaning, order, or significance for the purpose of a special meaning or effect. There are two major types of figures of speech: rhetorical figures, which do not make changes in the meaning of the words, and tropes, which do. Types of figures of speech include simile, hyperbole, alliteration, and pun, among many others. Fin de siecle: A French term meaning ‘‘end of the century.’’ The term is used to denote the last decade of the nineteenth century, a transition period when writers and other artists abandoned old conventions and looked for new techniques and objectives. Two writers commonly associated with the fin de siecle mindset are Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. First Person: See Point of View Flashback: A device used in literature to present action that occurred before the beginning of the story. Flashbacks are often introduced as the dreams or recollections of one or more characters. Flashback techniques are often used in films, where they
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
are typically set off by a gradual changing of one picture to another. Foil: A character in a work of literature whose physical or psychological qualities contrast strongly with, and therefore highlight, the corresponding qualities of another character. In his Sherlock Holmes stories, Arthur Conan Doyle portrayed Dr. Watson as a man of normal habits and intelligence, making him a foil for the eccentric and wonderfully perceptive Sherlock Holmes. Folk Ballad: See Ballad Folklore: Traditions and myths preserved in a culture or group of people. Typically, these are passed on by word of mouth in various forms—such as legends, songs, and proverbs— or preserved in customs and ceremonies. This term was first used by W. J. Thoms in 1846. Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough is the record of English folklore; myths about the frontier and the Old South exemplify American folklore. Folktale: A story originating in oral tradition. Folktales fall into a variety of categories, including legends, ghost stories, fairy tales, fables, and anecdotes based on historical figures and events. Examples of folktales include Giambattista Basile’s The Pentamerone, which contains the tales of Puss in Boots, Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast, and Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories, which represent transplanted African folktales and American tales about the characters Mike Fink, Johnny Appleseed, Paul Bunyan, and Pecos Bill. Foot: The smallest unit of rhythm in a line of poetry. In English-language poetry, a foot is typically one accented syllable combined with one or two unaccented syllables. There are many different types of feet. When the accent is on the second syllable of a two syllable word (con-tort), the foot is an ‘‘iamb’’; the reverse accentual pattern (tor -ture) is a ‘‘trochee.’’ Other feet that commonly occur in poetry in English are ‘‘anapest’’, two unaccented syllables followed by an accented syllable as in inter-cept, and ‘‘dactyl’’, an accented syllable followed by two unaccented syllables as in su-i-cide. Foreshadowing: A device used in literature to create expectation or to set up an explanation of later developments. In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the graveyard encounter at the beginning of the novel between Pip and the escaped convict Magwitch foreshadows the baleful atmosphere and events that comprise much of the narrative.
3 1 7
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Form: The pattern or construction of a work which identifies its genre and distinguishes it from other genres. Examples of forms include the different genres, such as the lyric form or the short story form, and various patterns for poetry, such as the verse form or the stanza form. Formalism: In literary criticism, the belief that literature should follow prescribed rules of construction, such as those that govern the sonnet form. Examples of formalism are found in the work of the New Critics and structuralists. Fourteener Meter: See Meter Free Verse: Poetry that lacks regular metrical and rhyme patterns but that tries to capture the cadences of everyday speech. The form allows a poet to exploit a variety of rhythmical effects within a single poem. Free-verse techniques have been widely used in the twentieth century by such writers as Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams. Also known as Vers libre. Futurism: A flamboyant literary and artistic movement that developed in France, Italy, and Russia from 1908 through the 1920s. Futurist theater and poetry abandoned traditional literary forms. In their place, followers of the movement attempted to achieve total freedom of expression through bizarre imagery and deformed or newly invented words. The Futurists were self-consciously modern artists who attempted to incorporate the appearances and sounds of modern life into their work. Futurist writers include Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Wyndham Lewis, Guillaume Apollinaire, Velimir Khlebnikov, and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
G Genre: A category of literary work. In critical theory, genre may refer to both the content of a given work—tragedy, comedy, pastoral—and to its form, such as poetry, novel, or drama. This term also refers to types of popular literature, as in the genres of science fiction or the detective story. Genteel Tradition: A term coined by critic George Santayana to describe the literary practice of certain late nineteenth-century American writers, especially New Englanders. Followers of the Genteel Tradition emphasized conventionality in social, religious, moral, and literary standards. Some of the best-known writers of the Genteel Tradition are R. H. Stoddard and Bayard Taylor.
3 1 8
Gilded Age: A period in American history during the 1870s characterized by political corruption and materialism. A number of important novels of social and political criticism were written during this time. Examples of Gilded Age literature include Henry Adams’s Democracy and F. Marion Crawford’s An American Politician. Gothic: See Gothicism Gothicism: In literary criticism, works characterized by a taste for the medieval or morbidly attractive. A gothic novel prominently features elements of horror, the supernatural, gloom, and violence: clanking chains, terror, charnel houses, ghosts, medieval castles, and mysteriously slamming doors. The term ‘‘gothic novel’’ is also applied to novels that lack elements of the traditional Gothic setting but that create a similar atmosphere of terror or dread. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is perhaps the best-known English work of this kind. Gothic Novel: See Gothicism Great Chain of Being: The belief that all things and creatures in nature are organized in a hierarchy from inanimate objects at the bottom to God at the top. This system of belief was popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A summary of the concept of the great chain of being can be found in the first epistle of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man, and more recently in Arthur O. Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea. Grotesque: In literary criticism, the subject matter of a work or a style of expression characterized by exaggeration, deformity, freakishness, and disorder. The grotesque often includes an element of comic absurdity. Early examples of literary grotesque include Francois Rabelais’s Pantagruel and Gargantua and Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller, while more recent examples can be found in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Evelyn Waugh, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Eugene Ionesco, Gunter Grass, Thomas Mann, Mervyn Peake, and Joseph Heller, among many others.
H Haiku: The shortest form of Japanese poetry, constructed in three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. The message of a haiku poem usually centers on some aspect of spirituality and provokes an emotional response in the reader. Early masters of haiku include Basho, Buson, Kobayashi
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Issa, and Masaoka Shiki. English writers of haiku include the Imagists, notably Ezra Pound, H. D., Amy Lowell, Carl Sandburg, and William Carlos Williams. Also known as Hokku. Half Rhyme: See Consonance Hamartia: In tragedy, the event or act that leads to the hero’s or heroine’s downfall. This term is often incorrectly used as a synonym for tragic flaw. In Richard Wright’s Native Son, the act that seals Bigger Thomas’s fate is his first impulsive murder. Harlem Renaissance: The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is generally considered the first significant movement of black writers and artists in the United States. During this period, new and established black writers published more fiction and poetry than ever before, the first influential black literary journals were established, and black authors and artists received their first widespread recognition and serious critical appraisal. Among the major writers associated with this period are Claude McKay, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston. Works representative of the Harlem Renaissance include Arna Bontemps’s poems ‘‘The Return’’ and ‘‘Golgotha Is a Mountain,’’ Claude McKay’s novel Home to Harlem, Nella Larsen’s novel Passing, Langston Hughes’s poem ‘‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers,’’ and the journals Crisis and Opportunity, both founded during this period. Also known as Negro Renaissance and New Negro Movement. Harlequin: A stock character of the commedia dell’arte who occasionally interrupted the action with silly antics. Harlequin first appeared on the English stage in John Day’s The Travailes of the Three English Brothers. The San Francisco Mime Troupe is one of the few modern groups to adapt Harlequin to the needs of contemporary satire. Hellenism: Imitation of ancient Greek thought or styles. Also, an approach to life that focuses on the growth and development of the intellect. ‘‘Hellenism’’ is sometimes used to refer to the belief that reason can be applied to examine all human experience. A cogent discussion of Hellenism can be found in Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy. Heptameter: See Meter Hero/Heroine: The principal sympathetic character (male or female) in a literary work. Heroes and heroines typically exhibit admirable traits: ideal-
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
ism, courage, and integrity, for example. Famous heroes and heroines include Pip in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, the anonymous narrator in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, and Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Heroic Couplet: A rhyming couplet written in iambic pentameter (a verse with five iambic feet). The following lines by Alexander Pope are an example: ‘‘Truth guards the Poet, sanctifies the line,/ And makes Immortal, Verse as mean as mine.’’ Heroic Line: The meter and length of a line of verse in epic or heroic poetry. This varies by language and time period. For example, in English poetry, the heroic line is iambic pentameter (a verse with five iambic feet); in French, the alexandrine (a verse with six iambic feet); in classical literature, dactylic hexameter (a verse with six dactylic feet). Heroine: See Hero/Heroine Hexameter: See Meter Historical Criticism: The study of a work based on its impact on the world of the time period in which it was written. Examples of postmodern historical criticism can be found in the work of Michel Foucault, Hayden White, Stephen Greenblatt, and Jonathan Goldberg. Hokku: See Haiku Holocaust: See Holocaust Literature Holocaust Literature: Literature influenced by or written about the Holocaust of World War II. Such literature includes true stories of survival in concentration camps, escape, and life after the war, as well as fictional works and poetry. Representative works of Holocaust literature include Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy, Czeslaw Milosz’s Collected Poems, William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, and Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Homeric Simile: An elaborate, detailed comparison written as a simile many lines in length. An example of an epic simile from John Milton’s Paradise Lost follows: Angel Forms, who lay entranced Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades High over-arched embower; or scattered sedge Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o’erthrew Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, While with perfidious hatred they pursued The sojourners of
3 1 9
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating carcasses And broken chariot-wheels. Also known as Epic Simile. Horatian Satire: See Satire Humanism: A philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the medieval perception of the individual as a weak, fallen creature. ‘‘Humanists’’ typically believe in the perfectibility of human nature and view reason and education as the means to that end. Humanist thought is represented in the works of Marsilio Ficino, Ludovico Castelvetro, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, Dean John Colet, Desiderius Erasmus, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Matthew Arnold, and Irving Babbitt. Humors: Mentions of the humors refer to the ancient Greek theory that a person’s health and personality were determined by the balance of four basic fluids in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. A dominance of any fluid would cause extremes in behavior. An excess of blood created a sanguine person who was joyful, aggressive, and passionate; a phlegmatic person was shy, fearful, and sluggish; too much yellow bile led to a choleric temperament characterized by impatience, anger, bitterness, and stubbornness; and excessive black bile created melancholy, a state of laziness, gluttony, and lack of motivation. Literary treatment of the humors is exemplified by several characters in Ben Jonson’s plays Every Man in His Humour and Every Man out of His Humour. Also spelled Humours. Humours: See Humors Hyperbole: In literary criticism, deliberate exaggeration used to achieve an effect. In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth hyperbolizes when she says, ‘‘All the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten this little hand.’’
I Iamb: See Foot Idiom: A word construction or verbal expression closely associated with a given language. For example, in colloquial English the construction ‘‘how come’’ can be used instead of ‘‘why’’ to introduce a question. Similarly, ‘‘a piece of cake’’ is sometimes used to describe a task that is easily done. Image: A concrete representation of an object or sensory experience. Typically, such a representation helps evoke the feelings associated with the
3 2 0
object or experience itself. Images are either ‘‘literal’’ or ‘‘figurative.’’ Literal images are especially concrete and involve little or no extension of the obvious meaning of the words used to express them. Figurative images do not follow the literal meaning of the words exactly. Images in literature are usually visual, but the term ‘‘image’’ can also refer to the representation of any sensory experience. In his poem ‘‘The Shepherd’s Hour,’’ Paul Verlaine presents the following image: ‘‘The Moon is red through horizon’s fog;/ In a dancing mist the hazy meadow sleeps.’’ The first line is broadly literal, while the second line involves turns of meaning associated with dancing and sleeping. Imagery: The array of images in a literary work. Also, figurative language. William Butler Yeats’s ‘‘The Second Coming’’ offers a powerful image of encroaching anarchy: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart. . . . Imagism: An English and American poetry movement that flourished between 1908 and 1917. The Imagists used precise, clearly presented images in their works. They also used common, everyday speech and aimed for conciseness, concrete imagery, and the creation of new rhythms. Participants in the Imagist movement included Ezra Pound, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), and Amy Lowell, among others. In medias res: A Latin term meaning ‘‘in the middle of things.’’ It refers to the technique of beginning a story at its midpoint and then using various flashback devices to reveal previous action. This technique originated in such epics as Virgil’s Aeneid. Induction: The process of reaching a conclusion by reasoning from specific premises to form a general premise. Also, an introductory portion of a work of literature, especially a play. Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘‘Prologue’’ to the Canterbury Tales, Thomas Sackville’s ‘‘Induction’’ to The Mirror of Magistrates, and the opening scene in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew are examples of inductions to literary works. Intentional Fallacy: The belief that judgments of a literary work based solely on an author’s stated or implied intentions are false and misleading. Critics who believe in the concept of the intentional fallacy typically argue that the work itself is sufficient matter for interpretation, even though they may concede that an author’s statement of purpose can
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
be useful. Analysis of William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads based on the observations about poetry he makes in his ‘‘Preface’’ to the second edition of that work is an example of the intentional fallacy. Interior Monologue: A narrative technique in which characters’ thoughts are revealed in a way that appears to be uncontrolled by the author. The interior monologue typically aims to reveal the inner self of a character. It portrays emotional experiences as they occur at both a conscious and unconscious level. images are often used to represent sensations or emotions. One of the best-known interior monologues in English is the Molly Bloom section at the close of James Joyce’s Ulysses. The interior monologue is also common in the works of Virginia Woolf. Internal Rhyme: Rhyme that occurs within a single line of verse. An example is in the opening line of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘‘The Raven’’: ‘‘Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary.’’ Here, ‘‘dreary’’ and ‘‘weary’’ make an internal rhyme. Irish Literary Renaissance: A late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century movement in Irish literature. Members of the movement aimed to reduce the influence of British culture in Ireland and create an Irish national literature. William Butler Yeats, George Moore, and Sean O’Casey are three of the bestknown figures of the movement. Irony: In literary criticism, the effect of language in which the intended meaning is the opposite of what is stated. The title of Jonathan Swift’s ‘‘A Modest Proposal’’ is ironic because what Swift proposes in this essay is cannibalism—hardly ‘‘modest.’’ Italian Sonnet: See Sonnet
J Jacobean Age: The period of the reign of James I of England (1603–1625). The early literature of this period reflected the worldview of the Elizabethan Age, but a darker, more cynical attitude steadily grew in the art and literature of the Jacobean Age. This was an important time for English drama and poetry. Milestones include William Shakespeare’s tragedies, tragi-comedies, and sonnets; Ben Jonson’s various dramas; and John Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Jargon: Language that is used or understood only by a select group of people. Jargon may refer to terminology used in a certain profession, such as
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
computer jargon, or it may refer to any nonsensical language that is not understood by most people. Literary examples of jargon are Francois Villon’s Ballades en jargon, which is composed in the secret language of the coquillards, and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, narrated in the fictional characters’ language of ‘‘Nadsat.’’ Juvenalian Satire: See Satire
K Knickerbocker Group: A somewhat indistinct group of New York writers of the first half of the nineteenth century. Members of the group were linked only by location and a common theme: New York life. Two famous members of the Knickerbocker Group were Washington Irving and William Cullen Bryant. The group’s name derives from Irving’s Knickerbocker’s History of New York.
L Lais: See Lay Lay: A song or simple narrative poem. The form originated in medieval France. Early French lais were often based on the Celtic legends and other tales sung by Breton minstrels—thus the name of the ‘‘Breton lay.’’ In fourteenth-century England, the term ‘‘lay’’ was used to describe short narratives written in imitation of the Breton lays. The most notable of these is Geoffrey Chaucer’s ‘‘The Minstrel’s Tale.’’ Leitmotiv: See Motif Literal Language: An author uses literal language when he or she writes without exaggerating or embellishing the subject matter and without any tools of figurative language. To say ‘‘He ran very quickly down the street’’ is to use literal language, whereas to say ‘‘He ran like a hare down the street’’ would be using figurative language. Literary Ballad: See Ballad Literature: Literature is broadly defined as any written or spoken material, but the term most often refers to creative works. Literature includes poetry, drama, fiction, and many kinds of nonfiction writing, as well as oral, dramatic, and broadcast compositions not necessarily preserved in a written format, such as films and television programs. Lost Generation: A term first used by Gertrude Stein to describe the post-World War I generation of
3 2 1
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
American writers: men and women haunted by a sense of betrayal and emptiness brought about by the destructiveness of the war. The term is commonly applied to Hart Crane, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others. Lyric Poetry: A poem expressing the subjective feelings and personal emotions of the poet. Such poetry is melodic, since it was originally accompanied by a lyre in recitals. Most Western poetry in the twentieth century may be classified as lyrical. Examples of lyric poetry include A. E. Housman’s elegy ‘‘To an Athlete Dying Young,’’ the odes of Pindar and Horace, Thomas Gray and William Collins, the sonnets of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir Philip Sidney, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Rainer Maria Rilke, and a host of other forms in the poetry of William Blake and Christina Rossetti, among many others.
M Mannerism: Exaggerated, artificial adherence to a literary manner or style. Also, a popular style of the visual arts of late sixteenth-century Europe that was marked by elongation of the human form and by intentional spatial distortion. Literary works that are self-consciously high-toned and artistic are often said to be ‘‘mannered.’’ Authors of such works include Henry James and Gertrude Stein. Masculine Rhyme: See Rhyme Masque: A lavish and elaborate form of entertainment, often performed in royal courts, that emphasizes song, dance, and costumery. The Renaissance form of the masque grew out of the spectacles of masked figures common in medieval England and Europe. The masque reached its peak of popularity and development in seventeenth-century England, during the reigns of James I and, especially, of Charles I. Ben Jonson, the most significant masque writer, also created the ‘‘antimasque,’’ which incorporates elements of humor and the grotesque into the traditional masque and achieved greater dramatic quality. Masque-like interludes appear in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. One of the best-known English masques is John Milton’s Comus. Measure: The foot, verse, or time sequence used in a literary work, especially a poem. Measure is often used somewhat incorrectly as a synonym for meter. Melodrama: A play in which the typical plot is a conflict between characters who personify extreme good and evil. Melodramas usually end happily and
3 2 2
emphasize sensationalism. Other literary forms that use the same techniques are often labeled ‘‘melodramatic.’’ The term was formerly used to describe a combination of drama and music; as such, it was synonymous with ‘‘opera.’’ Augustin Daly’s Under the Gaslight and Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon, The Colleen Bawn, and The Poor of New York are examples of melodramas. The most popular media for twentieth-century melodramas are motion pictures and television. Metaphor: A figure of speech that expresses an idea through the image of another object. Metaphors suggest the essence of the first object by identifying it with certain qualities of the second object. An example is ‘‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?/ It is the east, and Juliet is the sun’’ in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Here, Juliet, the first object, is identified with qualities of the second object, the sun. Metaphysical Conceit: See Conceit Metaphysical Poetry: The body of poetry produced by a group of seventeenth-century English writers called the ‘‘Metaphysical Poets.’’ The group includes John Donne and Andrew Marvell. The Metaphysical Poets made use of everyday speech, intellectual analysis, and unique imagery. They aimed to portray the ordinary conflicts and contradictions of life. Their poems often took the form of an argument, and many of them emphasize physical and religious love as well as the fleeting nature of life. Elaborate conceits are typical in metaphysical poetry. Marvell’s ‘‘To His Coy Mistress’’ is a wellknown example of a metaphysical poem. Metaphysical Poets: See Metaphysical Poetry Meter: In literary criticism, the repetition of sound patterns that creates a rhythm in poetry. The patterns are based on the number of syllables and the presence and absence of accents. The unit of rhythm in a line is called a foot. Types of meter are classified according to the number of feet in a line. These are the standard English lines: Monometer, one foot; Dimeter, two feet; Trimeter, three feet; Tetrameter, four feet; Pentameter, five feet; Hexameter, six feet (also called the Alexandrine); Heptameter, seven feet (also called the ‘‘Fourteener’’ when the feet are iambic). The most common English meter is the iambic pentameter, in which each line contains ten syllables, or five iambic feet, which individually are composed of an unstressed syllable followed by an accented syllable. Both of the following lines from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
‘‘Ulysses’’ are written in iambic pentameter: Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Mise en scene: The costumes, scenery, and other properties of a drama. Herbert Beerbohm Tree was renowned for the elaborate mises en scene of his lavish Shakespearean productions at His Majesty’s Theatre between 1897 and 1915. Modernism: Modern literary practices. Also, the principles of a literary school that lasted from roughly the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of World War II. Modernism is defined by its rejection of the literary conventions of the nineteenth century and by its opposition to conventional morality, taste, traditions, and economic values. Many writers are associated with the concepts of Modernism, including Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, William Butler Yeats, Thomas Mann, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and James Joyce. Monologue: A composition, written or oral, by a single individual. More specifically, a speech given by a single individual in a drama or other public entertainment. It has no set length, although it is usually several or more lines long. An example of an ‘‘extended monologue’’—that is, a monologue of great length and seriousness—occurs in the oneact, one-character play The Stronger by August Strindberg. Monometer: See Meter Mood: The prevailing emotions of a work or of the author in his or her creation of the work. The mood of a work is not always what might be expected based on its subject matter. The poem ‘‘Dover Beach’’ by Matthew Arnold offers examples of two different moods originating from the same experience: watching the ocean at night. The mood of the first three lines— The sea is calm tonight The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straights. . . . is in sharp contrast to the mood of the last three lines— And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night. Motif: A theme, character type, image, metaphor, or other verbal element that recurs throughout a single work of literature or occurs in a number of different works over a period of time. For example, the various manifestations of the color white in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a ‘‘specific’’ motif, while the trials of star-crossed lovers is a ‘‘conventional’’
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
motif from the literature of all periods. Also known as Motiv or Leitmotiv. Motiv: See Motif Muckrakers: An early twentieth-century group of American writers. Typically, their works exposed the wrongdoings of big business and government in the United States. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exemplifies the muckraking novel. Muses: Nine Greek mythological goddesses, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory). Each muse patronized a specific area of the liberal arts and sciences. Calliope presided over epic poetry, Clio over history, Erato over love poetry, Euterpe over music or lyric poetry, Melpomene over tragedy, Polyhymnia over hymns to the gods, Terpsichore over dance, Thalia over comedy, and Urania over astronomy. Poets and writers traditionally made appeals to the Muses for inspiration in their work. John Milton invokes the aid of a muse at the beginning of the first book of his Paradise Lost: Of Man’s First disobedience, and the Fruit of the Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos. . . . Mystery: See Suspense Myth: An anonymous tale emerging from the traditional beliefs of a culture or social unit. Myths use supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. They may also explain cosmic issues like creation and death. Collections of myths, known as mythologies, are common to all cultures and nations, but the best-known myths belong to the Norse, Roman, and Greek mythologies. A famous myth is the story of Arachne, an arrogant young girl who challenged a goddess, Athena, to a weaving contest; when the girl won, Athena was enraged and turned Arachne into a spider, thus explaining the existence of spiders.
N Narration: The telling of a series of events, real or invented. A narration may be either a simple narrative, in which the events are recounted chronologically, or a narrative with a plot, in which the account is given in a style reflecting the author’s artistic concept of the story. Narration is sometimes used as
3 2 3
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
a synonym for ‘‘storyline.’’ The recounting of scary stories around a campfire is a form of narration. Narrative: A verse or prose accounting of an event or sequence of events, real or invented. The term is also used as an adjective in the sense ‘‘method of narration.’’ For example, in literary criticism, the expression ‘‘narrative technique’’ usually refers to the way the author structures and presents his or her story. Narratives range from the shortest accounts of events, as in Julius Caesar’s remark, ‘‘I came, I saw, I conquered,’’ to the longest historical or biographical works, as in Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as well as diaries, travelogues, novels, ballads, epics, short stories, and other fictional forms. Narrative Poetry: A nondramatic poem in which the author tells a story. Such poems may be of any length or level of complexity. Epics such as Beowulf and ballads are forms of narrative poetry. Narrator: The teller of a story. The narrator may be the author or a character in the story through whom the author speaks. Huckleberry Finn is the narrator of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Naturalism: A literary movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The movement’s major theorist, French novelist Emile Zola, envisioned a type of fiction that would examine human life with the objectivity of scientific inquiry. The Naturalists typically viewed human beings as either the products of ‘‘biological determinism,’’ ruled by hereditary instincts and engaged in an endless struggle for survival, or as the products of ‘‘socioeconomic determinism,’’ ruled by social and economic forces beyond their control. In their works, the Naturalists generally ignored the highest levels of society and focused on degradation: poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, insanity, and disease. Naturalism influenced authors throughout the world, including Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Hardy. In the United States, in particular, Naturalism had a profound impact. Among the authors who embraced its principles are Theodore Dreiser, Eugene O’Neill, Stephen Crane, Jack London, and Frank Norris. Negritude: A literary movement based on the concept of a shared cultural bond on the part of black Africans, wherever they may be in the world. It traces its origins to the former French colonies of Africa and the Caribbean. Negritude poets, novelists, and essayists generally stress four points in their writings: One, black alienation from tradi-
3 2 4
tional African culture can lead to feelings of inferiority. Two, European colonialism and Western education should be resisted. Three, black Africans should seek to affirm and define their own identity. Four, African culture can and should be reclaimed. Many Negritude writers also claim that blacks can make unique contributions to the world, based on a heightened appreciation of nature, rhythm, and human emotions—aspects of life they say are not so highly valued in the materialistic and rationalistic West. Examples of Negritude literature include the poetry of both Senegalese Leopold Senghor in Hosties noires and Martiniquais Aime-Fernand Cesaire in Return to My Native Land. Negro Renaissance: See Harlem Renaissance Neoclassical Period: See Neoclassicism Neoclassicism: In literary criticism, this term refers to the revival of the attitudes and styles of expression of classical literature. It is generally used to describe a period in European history beginning in the late seventeenth century and lasting until about 1800. In its purest form, Neoclassicism marked a return to order, proportion, restraint, logic, accuracy, and decorum. In England, where Neoclassicism perhaps was most popular, it reflected the influence of seventeenth-century French writers, especially dramatists. Neoclassical writers typically reacted against the intensity and enthusiasm of the Renaissance period. They wrote works that appealed to the intellect, using elevated language and classical literary forms such as satire and the ode. Neoclassical works were often governed by the classical goal of instruction. English neoclassicists included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, John Gay, and Matthew Prior; French neoclassicists included Pierre Corneille and JeanBaptiste Moliere. Also known as Age of Reason. Neoclassicists: See Neoclassicism New Criticism: A movement in literary criticism, dating from the late 1920s, that stressed close textual analysis in the interpretation of works of literature. The New Critics saw little merit in historical and biographical analysis. Rather, they aimed to examine the text alone, free from the question of how external events—biographical or otherwise— may have helped shape it. This predominantly American school was named ‘‘New Criticism’’ by one of its practitioners, John Crowe Ransom. Other important New Critics included Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks. New Negro Movement: See Harlem Renaissance
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Noble Savage: The idea that primitive man is noble and good but becomes evil and corrupted as he becomes civilized. The concept of the noble savage originated in the Renaissance period but is more closely identified with such later writers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Aphra Behn. First described in John Dryden’s play The Conquest of Granada, the noble savage is portrayed by the various Native Americans in James Fenimore Cooper’s ‘‘Leatherstocking Tales,’’ by Queequeg, Daggoo, and Tashtego in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and by John the Savage in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
O Objective Correlative: An outward set of objects, a situation, or a chain of events corresponding to an inward experience and evoking this experience in the reader. The term frequently appears in modern criticism in discussions of authors’ intended effects on the emotional responses of readers. This term was originally used by T. S. Eliot in his 1919 essay ‘‘Hamlet.’’ Objectivity: A quality in writing characterized by the absence of the author’s opinion or feeling about the subject matter. Objectivity is an important factor in criticism. The novels of Henry James and, to a certain extent, the poems of John Larkin demonstrate objectivity, and it is central to John Keats’s concept of ‘‘negative capability.’’ Critical and journalistic writing usually are or attempt to be objective. Occasional Verse: poetry written on the occasion of a significant historical or personal event. Vers de societe is sometimes called occasional verse although it is of a less serious nature. Famous examples of occasional verse include Andrew Marvell’s ‘‘Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from England,’’ Walt Whitman’s ‘‘When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d’’— written upon the death of Abraham Lincoln—and Edmund Spenser’s commemoration of his wedding, ‘‘Epithalamion.’’ Octave: A poem or stanza composed of eight lines. The term octave most often represents the first eight lines of a Petrarchan sonnet. An example of an octave is taken from a translation of a Petrarchan sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt: The pillar perisht is whereto I leant, The strongest stay of mine unquiet mind; The like of it no man again can find, From East to West Still seeking though he went. To mind unhap! for hap away hath rent Of all my joy the very
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
bark and rind; And I, alas, by chance am thus assigned Daily to mourn till death do it relent. Ode: Name given to an extended lyric poem characterized by exalted emotion and dignified style. An ode usually concerns a single, serious theme. Most odes, but not all, are addressed to an object or individual. Odes are distinguished from other lyric poetic forms by their complex rhythmic and stanzaic patterns. An example of this form is John Keats’s ‘‘Ode to a Nightingale.’’ Oedipus Complex: A son’s amorous obsession with his mother. The phrase is derived from the story of the ancient Theban hero Oedipus, who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Literary occurrences of the Oedipus complex include Andre Gide’s Oedipe and Jean Cocteau’s La Machine infernale, as well as the most famous, Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Omniscience: See Point of View Onomatopoeia: The use of words whose sounds express or suggest their meaning. In its simplest sense, onomatopoeia may be represented by words that mimic the sounds they denote such as ‘‘hiss’’ or ‘‘meow.’’ At a more subtle level, the pattern and rhythm of sounds and rhymes of a line or poem may be onomatopoeic. A celebrated example of onomatopoeia is the repetition of the word ‘‘bells’’ in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘‘The Bells.’’ Opera: A type of stage performance, usually a drama, in which the dialogue is sung. Classic examples of opera include Giuseppi Verdi’s La traviata, Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme, and Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Major twentieth-century contributors to the form include Richard Strauss and Alban Berg. Operetta: A usually romantic comic opera. John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, Richard Sheridan’s The Duenna, and numerous works by William Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan are examples of operettas. Oral Tradition: See Oral Transmission Oral Transmission: A process by which songs, ballads, folklore, and other material are transmitted by word of mouth. The tradition of oral transmission predates the written record systems of literate society. Oral transmission preserves material sometimes over generations, although often with variations. Memory plays a large part in the recitation and preservation of orally transmitted material. Breton lays, French fabliaux, national epics (including the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, the Spanish El Cid,
3 2 5
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
and the Finnish Kalevala), Native American myths and legends, and African folktales told by plantation slaves are examples of orally transmitted literature. Oration: Formal speaking intended to motivate the listeners to some action or feeling. Such public speaking was much more common before the development of timely printed communication such as newspapers. Famous examples of oration include Abraham Lincoln’s ‘‘Gettysburg Address’’ and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘‘I Have a Dream’’ speech. Ottava Rima: An eight-line stanza of poetry composed in iambic pentameter (a five-foot line in which each foot consists of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable), following the abababcc rhyme scheme. This form has been prominently used by such important English writers as Lord Byron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and W. B. Yeats. Oxymoron: A phrase combining two contradictory terms. Oxymorons may be intentional or unintentional. The following speech from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet uses several oxymorons: Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate! O anything, of nothing first create! O heavy lightness! serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health! This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
P Pantheism: The idea that all things are both a manifestation or revelation of God and a part of God at the same time. Pantheism was a common attitude in the early societies of Egypt, India, and Greece— the term derives from the Greek pan meaning ‘‘all’’ and theos meaning ‘‘deity.’’ It later became a significant part of the Christian faith. William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the many writers who have expressed the pantheistic attitude in their works.
3 2 6
paradox. Literary examples include Francis Bacon’s statement, ‘‘The most corrected copies are commonly the least correct,’’ and ‘‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’’ from George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Parallelism: A method of comparison of two ideas in which each is developed in the same grammatical structure. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘‘Civilization’’ contains this example of parallelism: Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Parnassianism: A mid nineteenth-century movement in French literature. Followers of the movement stressed adherence to well-defined artistic forms as a reaction against the often chaotic expression of the artist’s ego that dominated the work of the Romantics. The Parnassians also rejected the moral, ethical, and social themes exhibited in the works of French Romantics such as Victor Hugo. The aesthetic doctrines of the Parnassians strongly influenced the later symbolist and decadent movements. Members of the Parnassian school include Leconte de Lisle, Sully Prudhomme, Albert Glatigny, Francois Coppee, and Theodore de Banville. Parody: In literary criticism, this term refers to an imitation of a serious literary work or the signature style of a particular author in a ridiculous manner. A typical parody adopts the style of the original and applies it to an inappropriate subject for humorous effect. Parody is a form of satire and could be considered the literary equivalent of a caricature or cartoon. Henry Fielding’s Shamela is a parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela.
Parable: A story intended to teach a moral lesson or answer an ethical question. In the West, the best examples of parables are those of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, notably ‘‘The Prodigal Son,’’ but parables also are used in Sufism, rabbinic literature, Hasidism, and Zen Buddhism.
Pastoral: A term derived from the Latin word ‘‘pastor,’’ meaning shepherd. A pastoral is a literary composition on a rural theme. The conventions of the pastoral were originated by the third-century Greek poet Theocritus, who wrote about the experiences, love affairs, and pastimes of Sicilian shepherds. In a pastoral, characters and language of a courtly nature are often placed in a simple setting. The term pastoral is also used to classify dramas, elegies, and lyrics that exhibit the use of country settings and shepherd characters. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘‘Adonais’’ and John Milton’s ‘‘Lycidas’’ are two famous examples of pastorals.
Paradox: A statement that appears illogical or contradictory at first, but may actually point to an underlying truth. ‘‘Less is more’’ is an example of a
Pastorela: The Spanish name for the shepherds play, a folk drama reenacted during the Christmas season. Examples of pastorelas include Gomez
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Manrique’s Representacion del nacimiento and the dramas of Lucas Fernandez and Juan del Encina.
are Edmund Husserl, George Poulet, Marcel Raymond, and Roman Ingarden.
Pathetic Fallacy: A term coined by English critic John Ruskin to identify writing that falsely endows nonhuman things with human intentions and feelings, such as ‘‘angry clouds’’ and ‘‘sad trees.’’ The pathetic fallacy is a required convention in the classical poetic form of the pastoral elegy, and it is used in the modern poetry of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and the Imagists. Also known as Poetic Fallacy.
Picaresque Novel: Episodic fiction depicting the adventures of a roguish central character (‘‘picaro’’ is Spanish for ‘‘rogue’’). The picaresque hero is commonly a low-born but clever individual who wanders into and out of various affairs of love, danger, and farcical intrigue. These involvements may take place at all social levels and typically present a humorous and wide-ranging satire of a given society. Prominent examples of the picaresque novel are Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, and Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe.
Pelado: Literally the ‘‘skinned one’’ or shirtless one, he was the stock underdog, sharp-witted picaresque character of Mexican vaudeville and tent shows. The pelado is found in such works as Don Catarino’s Los effectos de la crisis and Regreso a mi tierra. Pen Name: See Pseudonym Pentameter: See Meter Persona: A Latin term meaning ‘‘mask.’’ Personae are the characters in a fictional work of literature. The persona generally functions as a mask through which the author tells a story in a voice other than his or her own. A persona is usually either a character in a story who acts as a narrator or an ‘‘implied author,’’ a voice created by the author to act as the narrator for himself or herself. Personae include the narrator of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Marlow in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Personae: See Persona Personal Point of View: See Point of View Personification: A figure of speech that gives human qualities to abstract ideas, animals, and inanimate objects. William Shakespeare used personification in Romeo and Juliet in the lines ‘‘Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,/ Who is already sick and pale with grief.’’ Here, the moon is portrayed as being envious, sick, and pale with grief— all markedly human qualities. Also known as Prosopopoeia. Petrarchan Sonnet: See Sonnet Phenomenology: A method of literary criticism based on the belief that things have no existence outside of human consciousness or awareness. Proponents of this theory believe that art is a process that takes place in the mind of the observer as he or she contemplates an object rather than a quality of the object itself. Among phenomenological critics
V o l u m e
1 8
Plagiarism: Claiming another person’s written material as one’s own. Plagiarism can take the form of direct, word-for-word copying or the theft of the substance or idea of the work. A student who copies an encyclopedia entry and turns it in as a report for school is guilty of plagiarism. Platonic Criticism: A form of criticism that stresses an artistic work’s usefulness as an agent of social engineering rather than any quality or value of the work itself. Platonic criticism takes as its starting point the ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s comments on art in his Republic. Platonism: The embracing of the doctrines of the philosopher Plato, popular among the poets of the Renaissance and the Romantic period. Platonism is more flexible than Aristotelian Criticism and places more emphasis on the supernatural and unknown aspects of life. Platonism is expressed in the love poetry of the Renaissance, the fourth book of Baldassare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, and the poetry of William Blake, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Friedrich Holderlin, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. Play: See Drama Plot: In literary criticism, this term refers to the pattern of events in a narrative or drama. In its simplest sense, the plot guides the author in composing the work and helps the reader follow the work. Typically, plots exhibit causality and unity and have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes, however, a plot may consist of a series of disconnected events, in which case it is known as an ‘‘episodic plot.’’ In his Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster distinguishes between a story, defined as a ‘‘narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence,’’ and plot, which organizes the events to a
3 2 7
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
‘‘sense of causality.’’ This definition closely mirrors Aristotle’s discussion of plot in his Poetics. Poem: In its broadest sense, a composition utilizing rhyme, meter, concrete detail, and expressive language to create a literary experience with emotional and aesthetic appeal. Typical poems include sonnets, odes, elegies, haiku, ballads, and free verse. Poet: An author who writes poetry or verse. The term is also used to refer to an artist or writer who has an exceptional gift for expression, imagination, and energy in the making of art in any form. Wellknown poets include Horace, Basho, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Edmund Spenser, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, George Gordon, Lord Byron, John Keats, Christina Rossetti, W. H. Auden, Stevie Smith, and Sylvia Plath. Poetic Fallacy: See Pathetic Fallacy Poetic Justice: An outcome in a literary work, not necessarily a poem, in which the good are rewarded and the evil are punished, especially in ways that particularly fit their virtues or crimes. For example, a murderer may himself be murdered, or a thief will find himself penniless. Poetic License: Distortions of fact and literary convention made by a writer—not always a poet— for the sake of the effect gained. Poetic license is closely related to the concept of ‘‘artistic freedom.’’ An author exercises poetic license by saying that a pile of money ‘‘reaches as high as a mountain’’ when the pile is actually only a foot or two high. Poetics: This term has two closely related meanings. It denotes (1) an aesthetic theory in literary criticism about the essence of poetry or (2) rules prescribing the proper methods, content, style, or diction of poetry. The term poetics may also refer to theories about literature in general, not just poetry. Poetry: In its broadest sense, writing that aims to present ideas and evoke an emotional experience in the reader through the use of meter, imagery, connotative and concrete words, and a carefully constructed structure based on rhythmic patterns. Poetry typically relies on words and expressions that have several layers of meaning. It also makes use of the effects of regular rhythm on the ear and may make a strong appeal to the senses through the use of imagery. Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘‘Annabel Lee’’ and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass are famous examples of poetry. Point of View: The narrative perspective from which a literary work is presented to the reader.
3 2 8
There are four traditional points of view. The ‘‘third person omniscient’’ gives the reader a ‘‘godlike’’ perspective, unrestricted by time or place, from which to see actions and look into the minds of characters. This allows the author to comment openly on characters and events in the work. The ‘‘third person’’ point of view presents the events of the story from outside of any single character’s perception, much like the omniscient point of view, but the reader must understand the action as it takes place and without any special insight into characters’ minds or motivations. The ‘‘first person’’ or ‘‘personal’’ point of view relates events as they are perceived by a single character. The main character ‘‘tells’’ the story and may offer opinions about the action and characters which differ from those of the author. Much less common than omniscient, third person, and first person is the ‘‘second person’’ point of view, wherein the author tells the story as if it is happening to the reader. James Thurber employs the omniscient point of view in his short story ‘‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.’’ Ernest Hemingway’s ‘‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’’ is a short story told from the third person point of view. Mark Twain’s novel Huck Finn is presented from the first person viewpoint. Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City is an example of a novel which uses the second person point of view. Polemic: A work in which the author takes a stand on a controversial subject, such as abortion or religion. Such works are often extremely argumentative or provocative. Classic examples of polemics include John Milton’s Aeropagitica and Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis. Pornography: Writing intended to provoke feelings of lust in the reader. Such works are often condemned by critics and teachers, but those which can be shown to have literary value are viewed less harshly. Literary works that have been described as pornographic include Ovid’s The Art of Love, Margaret of Angouleme’s Heptameron, John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; or, the Life of Fanny Hill, the anonymous My Secret Life, D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. Post-Aesthetic Movement: An artistic response made by African Americans to the black aesthetic movement of the 1960s and early ’70s. Writers since that time have adopted a somewhat different tone in their work, with less emphasis placed on the disparity between black and white in the United States. In the words of post-aesthetic authors such
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
as Toni Morrison, John Edgar Wideman, and Kristin Hunter, African Americans are portrayed as looking inward for answers to their own questions, rather than always looking to the outside world. Two wellknown examples of works produced as part of the post-aesthetic movement are the Pulitzer Prizewinning novels The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Beloved by Toni Morrison.
Prologue: An introductory section of a literary work. It often contains information establishing the situation of the characters or presents information about the setting, time period, or action. In drama, the prologue is spoken by a chorus or by one of the principal characters. In the ‘‘General Prologue’’ of The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer describes the main characters and establishes the setting and purpose of the work.
Postmodernism: Writing from the 1960s forward characterized by experimentation and continuing to apply some of the fundamentals of modernism, which included existentialism and alienation. Postmodernists have gone a step further in the rejection of tradition begun with the modernists by also rejecting traditional forms, preferring the antinovel over the novel and the anti-hero over the hero. Postmodern writers include Alain Robbe-Grillet, Thomas Pynchon, Margaret Drabble, John Fowles, Adolfo Bioy-Casares, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Prose: A literary medium that attempts to mirror the language of everyday speech. It is distinguished from poetry by its use of unmetered, unrhymed language consisting of logically related sentences. Prose is usually grouped into paragraphs that form a cohesive whole such as an essay or a novel. Recognized masters of English prose writing include Sir Thomas Malory, William Caxton, Raphael Holinshed, Joseph Addison, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway. Prosopopoeia: See Personification
Pre-Raphaelites: A circle of writers and artists in mid nineteenth-century England. Valuing the preRenaissance artistic qualities of religious symbolism, lavish pictorialism, and natural sensuousness, the Pre-Raphaelites cultivated a sense of mystery and melancholy that influenced later writers associated with the Symbolist and Decadent movements. The major members of the group include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Swinburne, and Walter Pater. Primitivism: The belief that primitive peoples were nobler and less flawed than civilized peoples because they had not been subjected to the tainting influence of society. Examples of literature espousing primitivism include Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko: Or, The History of the Royal Slave, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise, Oliver Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, the poems of Robert Burns, Herman Melville’s stories Typee, Omoo, and Mardi, many poems of William Butler Yeats and Robert Frost, and William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. Projective Verse: A form of free verse in which the poet’s breathing pattern determines the lines of the poem. Poets who advocate projective verse are against all formal structures in writing, including meter and form. Besides its creators, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Charles Olson, two other wellknown projective verse poets are Denise Levertov and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka). Also known as Breath Verse.
V o l u m e
1 8
Protagonist: The central character of a story who serves as a focus for its themes and incidents and as the principal rationale for its development. The protagonist is sometimes referred to in discussions of modern literature as the hero or anti-hero. Wellknown protagonists are Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Jay Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Protest Fiction: Protest fiction has as its primary purpose the protesting of some social injustice, such as racism or discrimination. One example of protest fiction is a series of five novels by Chester Himes, beginning in 1945 with If He Hollers Let Him Go and ending in 1955 with The Primitive. These works depict the destructive effects of race and gender stereotyping in the context of interracial relationships. Another African American author whose works often revolve around themes of social protest is John Oliver Killens. James Baldwin’s essay ‘‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’’ generated controversy by attacking the authors of protest fiction. Proverb: A brief, sage saying that expresses a truth about life in a striking manner. ‘‘They are not all cooks who carry long knives’’ is an example of a proverb. Pseudonym: A name assumed by a writer, most often intended to prevent his or her identification as the author of a work. Two or more authors may work together under one pseudonym, or an author may use a different name for each genre he or she publishes in. Some publishing companies maintain
3 2 9
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
‘‘house pseudonyms,’’ under which any number of authors may write installations in a series. Some authors also choose a pseudonym over their real names the way an actor may use a stage name. Examples of pseudonyms (with the author’s real name in parentheses) include Voltaire (FrancoisMarie Arouet), Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Currer Bell (Charlotte Bronte), Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte), George Eliot (Maryann Evans), Honorio Bustos Donmecq (Adolfo Bioy-Casares and Jorge Luis Borges), and Richard Bachman (Stephen King).
tive experience. Seminal authors in the tradition of Realism include Honore de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James.
Pun: A play on words that have similar sounds but different meanings. A serious example of the pun is from John Donne’s ‘‘A Hymne to God the Father’’: Sweare by thyself, that at my death thy sonne Shall shine as he shines now, and hereto fore; And, having done that, Thou haste done; I fear no more.
Renaissance: The period in European history that marked the end of the Middle Ages. It began in Italy in the late fourteenth century. In broad terms, it is usually seen as spanning the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, although it did not reach Great Britain, for example, until the 1480s or so. The Renaissance saw an awakening in almost every sphere of human activity, especially science, philosophy, and the arts. The period is best defined by the emergence of a general philosophy that emphasized the importance of the intellect, the individual, and world affairs. It contrasts strongly with the medieval worldview, characterized by the dominant concerns of faith, the social collective, and spiritual salvation. Prominent writers during the Renaissance include Niccolo Machiavelli and Baldassare Castiglione in Italy, Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega in Spain, Jean Froissart and Francois Rabelais in France, Sir Thomas More and Sir Philip Sidney in England, and Desiderius Erasmus in Holland.
Pure Poetry: poetry written without instructional intent or moral purpose that aims only to please a reader by its imagery or musical flow. The term pure poetry is used as the antonym of the term ‘‘didacticism.’’ The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, Stephane Mallarme, Paul Verlaine, Paul Valery, Juan Ramoz Jimenez, and Jorge Guillen offer examples of pure poetry.
Q Quatrain: A four-line stanza of a poem or an entire poem consisting of four lines. The following quatrain is from Robert Herrick’s ‘‘To Live Merrily, and to Trust to Good Verses’’: Round, round, the root do’s run; And being ravisht thus, Come, I will drink a Tun To my Propertius.
R Raisonneur: A character in a drama who functions as a spokesperson for the dramatist’s views. The raisonneur typically observes the play without becoming central to its action. Raisonneurs were very common in plays of the nineteenth century. Realism: A nineteenth-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters, situations, and settings in a realistic manner. This was done primarily by using an objective narrative point of view and through the buildup of accurate detail. The standard for success of any realistic work depends on how faithfully it transfers common experience into fictional forms. The realistic method may be altered or extended, as in stream of consciousness writing, to record highly subjec-
3 3 0
Refrain: A phrase repeated at intervals throughout a poem. A refrain may appear at the end of each stanza or at less regular intervals. It may be altered slightly at each appearance. Some refrains are nonsense expressions—as with ‘‘Nevermore’’ in Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘‘The Raven’’—that seem to take on a different significance with each use.
Repartee: Conversation featuring snappy retorts and witticisms. Masters of repartee include Sydney Smith, Charles Lamb, and Oscar Wilde. An example is recorded in the meeting of ‘‘Beau’’ Nash and John Wesley: Nash said, ‘‘I never make way for a fool,’’ to which Wesley responded, ‘‘Don’t you? I always do,’’ and stepped aside. Resolution: The portion of a story following the climax, in which the conflict is resolved. The resolution of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is neatly summed up in the following sentence: ‘‘Henry and Catherine were married, the bells rang and every body smiled.’’ Restoration: See Restoration Age Restoration Age: A period in English literature beginning with the crowning of Charles II in 1660 and running to about 1700. The era, which was characterized by a reaction against Puritanism, was the first great age of the comedy of manners. The finest literature of the era is typically witty and
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
urbane, and often lewd. Prominent Restoration Age writers include William Congreve, Samuel Pepys, John Dryden, and John Milton. Revenge Tragedy: A dramatic form popular during the Elizabethan Age, in which the protagonist, directed by the ghost of his murdered father or son, inflicts retaliation upon a powerful villain. Notable features of the revenge tragedy include violence, bizarre criminal acts, intrigue, insanity, a hesitant protagonist, and the use of soliloquy. Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy is the first example of revenge tragedy in English, and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is perhaps the best. Extreme examples of revenge tragedy, such as John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, are labeled ‘‘tragedies of blood.’’ Also known as Tragedy of Blood. Revista: The Spanish term for a vaudeville musical revue. Examples of revistas include Antonio Guzman Aguilera’s Mexico para los mexicanos, Daniel Vanegas’s Maldito jazz, and Don Catarino’s Whiskey, morfina y marihuana and El desterrado. Rhetoric: In literary criticism, this term denotes the art of ethical persuasion. In its strictest sense, rhetoric adheres to various principles developed since classical times for arranging facts and ideas in a clear, persuasive, appealing manner. The term is also used to refer to effective prose in general and theories of or methods for composing effective prose. Classical examples of rhetorics include The Rhetoric of Aristotle, Quintillian’s Institutio Oratoria, and Cicero’s Ad Herennium. Rhetorical Question: A question intended to provoke thought, but not an expressed answer, in the reader. It is most commonly used in oratory and other persuasive genres. The following lines from Thomas Gray’s ‘‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’’ ask rhetorical questions: Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death? Rhyme: When used as a noun in literary criticism, this term generally refers to a poem in which words sound identical or very similar and appear in parallel positions in two or more lines. Rhymes are classified into different types according to where they fall in a line or stanza or according to the degree of similarity they exhibit in their spellings and sounds. Some major types of rhyme are ‘‘masculine’’ rhyme, ‘‘feminine’’ rhyme, and ‘‘triple’’ rhyme. In a masculine rhyme, the rhyming sound falls in a single accented syllable, as with ‘‘heat’’
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
and ‘‘eat.’’ Feminine rhyme is a rhyme of two syllables, one stressed and one unstressed, as with ‘‘merry’’ and ‘‘tarry.’’ Triple rhyme matches the sound of the accented syllable and the two unaccented syllables that follow: ‘‘narrative’’ and ‘‘declarative.’’ Robert Browning alternates feminine and masculine rhymes in his ‘‘Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister’’: Gr-r-r—there go, my heart’s abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence, God’s blood, would not mine kill you! What? Your myrtle-bush wants trimming? Oh, that rose has prior claims— Needs its leaden vase filled brimming? Hell dry you up with flames! Triple rhymes can be found in Thomas Hood’s ‘‘Bridge of Sighs,’’ George Gordon Byron’s satirical verse, and Ogden Nash’s comic poems. Rhyme Royal: A stanza of seven lines composed in iambic pentameter and rhymed ababbcc. The name is said to be a tribute to King James I of Scotland, who made much use of the form in his poetry. Examples of rhyme royal include Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parlement of Foules, William Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece, William Morris’s The Early Paradise, and John Masefield’s The Widow in the Bye Street. Rhyme Scheme: See Rhyme Rhythm: A regular pattern of sound, time intervals, or events occurring in writing, most often and most discernably in poetry. Regular, reliable rhythm is known to be soothing to humans, while interrupted, unpredictable, or rapidly changing rhythm is disturbing. These effects are known to authors, who use them to produce a desired reaction in the reader. An example of a form of irregular rhythm is sprung rhythm poetry; quantitative verse, on the other hand, is very regular in its rhythm. Rising Action: The part of a drama where the plot becomes increasingly complicated. Rising action leads up to the climax, or turning point, of a drama. The final ‘‘chase scene’’ of an action film is generally the rising action which culminates in the film’s climax. Rococo: A style of European architecture that flourished in the eighteenth century, especially in France. The most notable features of rococo are its extensive use of ornamentation and its themes of lightness, gaiety, and intimacy. In literary criticism, the term is often used disparagingly to refer to a decadent or over-ornamental style. Alexander Pope’s ‘‘The Rape of the Lock’’ is an example of literary rococo.
3 3 1
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Roman a clef: A French phrase meaning ‘‘novel with a key.’’ It refers to a narrative in which real persons are portrayed under fictitious names. Jack Kerouac, for example, portrayed various real-life beat generation figures under fictitious names in his On the Road.
dane. Russian symbolists include Aleksandr Blok, Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov, Fyodor Sologub, Andrey Bely, Nikolay Gumilyov, and Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov.
Romance: A broad term, usually denoting a narrative with exotic, exaggerated, often idealized characters, scenes, and themes. Nathaniel Hawthorne called his The House of the Seven Gables and The Marble Faun romances in order to distinguish them from clearly realistic works.
S
Romantic Age: See Romanticism Romanticism: This term has two widely accepted meanings. In historical criticism, it refers to a European intellectual and artistic movement of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that sought greater freedom of personal expression than that allowed by the strict rules of literary form and logic of the eighteenth-century neoclassicists. The Romantics preferred emotional and imaginative expression to rational analysis. They considered the individual to be at the center of all experience and so placed him or her at the center of their art. The Romantics believed that the creative imagination reveals nobler truths—unique feelings and attitudes—than those that could be discovered by logic or by scientific examination. Both the natural world and the state of childhood were important sources for revelations of ‘‘eternal truths.’’ ‘‘Romanticism’’ is also used as a general term to refer to a type of sensibility found in all periods of literary history and usually considered to be in opposition to the principles of classicism. In this sense, Romanticism signifies any work or philosophy in which the exotic or dreamlike figure strongly, or that is devoted to individualistic expression, self-analysis, or a pursuit of a higher realm of knowledge than can be discovered by human reason. Prominent Romantics include Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Romantics: See Romanticism Russian Symbolism: A Russian poetic movement, derived from French symbolism, that flourished between 1894 and 1910. While some Russian Symbolists continued in the French tradition, stressing aestheticism and the importance of suggestion above didactic intent, others saw their craft as a form of mystical worship, and themselves as mediators between the supernatural and the mun-
3 3 2
Satire: A work that uses ridicule, humor, and wit to criticize and provoke change in human nature and institutions. There are two major types of satire: ‘‘formal’’ or ‘‘direct’’ satire speaks directly to the reader or to a character in the work; ‘‘indirect’’ satire relies upon the ridiculous behavior of its characters to make its point. Formal satire is further divided into two manners: the ‘‘Horatian,’’ which ridicules gently, and the ‘‘Juvenalian,’’ which derides its subjects harshly and bitterly. Voltaire’s novella Candide is an indirect satire. Jonathan Swift’s essay ‘‘A Modest Proposal’’ is a Juvenalian satire. Scansion: The analysis or ‘‘scanning’’ of a poem to determine its meter and often its rhyme scheme. The most common system of scansion uses accents (slanted lines drawn above syllables) to show stressed syllables, breves (curved lines drawn above syllables) to show unstressed syllables, and vertical lines to separate each foot. In the first line of John Keats’s Endymion, ‘‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever:’’ the word ‘‘thing,’’ the first syllable of ‘‘beauty,’’ the word ‘‘joy,’’ and the second syllable of ‘‘forever’’ are stressed, while the words ‘‘A’’ and ‘‘of,’’ the second syllable of ‘‘beauty,’’ the word ‘‘a,’’ and the first and third syllables of ‘‘forever’’ are unstressed. In the second line: ‘‘Its loveliness increases; it will never’’ a pair of vertical lines separate the foot ending with ‘‘increases’’ and the one beginning with ‘‘it.’’ Scene: A subdivision of an act of a drama, consisting of continuous action taking place at a single time and in a single location. The beginnings and endings of scenes may be indicated by clearing the stage of actors and props or by the entrances and exits of important characters. The first act of William Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale is comprised of two scenes. Science Fiction: A type of narrative about or based upon real or imagined scientific theories and technology. Science fiction is often peopled with alien creatures and set on other planets or in different dimensions. Karel Capek’s R.U.R. is a major work of science fiction. Second Person: See Point of View
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Semiotics: The study of how literary forms and conventions affect the meaning of language. Semioticians include Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles Sanders Pierce, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva.
works first appeared during the abolition movement of the 1830s through the 1850s. Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, The African and Harriet Ann Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl are examples of the slave narrative.
Sestet: Any six-line poem or stanza. Examples of the sestet include the last six lines of the Petrarchan sonnet form, the stanza form of Robert Burns’s ‘‘A Poet’s Welcome to his love-begotten Daughter,’’ and the sestina form in W. H. Auden’s ‘‘Paysage Moralise.’’
Social Realism: See Socialist Realism
Setting: The time, place, and culture in which the action of a narrative takes place. The elements of setting may include geographic location, characters’ physical and mental environments, prevailing cultural attitudes, or the historical time in which the action takes place. Examples of settings include the romanticized Scotland in Sir Walter Scott’s ‘‘Waverley’’ novels, the French provincial setting in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, the fictional Wessex country of Thomas Hardy’s novels, and the small towns of southern Ontario in Alice Munro’s short stories. Shakespearean Sonnet: See Sonnet Signifying Monkey: A popular trickster figure in black folklore, with hundreds of tales about this character documented since the 19th century. Henry Louis Gates Jr. examines the history of the signifying monkey in The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, published in 1988. Simile: A comparison, usually using ‘‘like’’ or ‘‘as’’, of two essentially dissimilar things, as in ‘‘coffee as cold as ice’’ or ‘‘He sounded like a broken record.’’ The title of Ernest Hemingway’s ‘‘Hills Like White Elephants’’ contains a simile. Slang: A type of informal verbal communication that is generally unacceptable for formal writing. Slang words and phrases are often colorful exaggerations used to emphasize the speaker’s point; they may also be shortened versions of an oftenused word or phrase. Examples of American slang from the 1990s include ‘‘yuppie’’ (an acronym for Young Urban Professional), ‘‘awesome’’ (for ‘‘excellent’’), wired (for ‘‘nervous’’ or ‘‘excited’’), and ‘‘chill out’’ (for relax). Slant Rhyme: See Consonance Slave Narrative: Autobiographical accounts of American slave life as told by escaped slaves. These
V o l u m e
1 8
Socialist Realism: The Socialist Realism school of literary theory was proposed by Maxim Gorky and established as a dogma by the first Soviet Congress of Writers. It demanded adherence to a communist worldview in works of literature. Its doctrines required an objective viewpoint comprehensible to the working classes and themes of social struggle featuring strong proletarian heroes. A successful work of socialist realism is Nikolay Ostrovsky’s Kak zakalyalas stal (How the Steel Was Tempered ). Also known as Social Realism. Soliloquy: A monologue in a drama used to give the audience information and to develop the speaker’s character. It is typically a projection of the speaker’s innermost thoughts. Usually delivered while the speaker is alone on stage, a soliloquy is intended to present an illusion of unspoken reflection. A celebrated soliloquy is Hamlet’s ‘‘To be or not to be’’ speech in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Sonnet: A fourteen-line poem, usually composed in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes. There are three major types of sonnets, upon which all other variations of the form are based: the ‘‘Petrarchan’’ or ‘‘Italian’’ sonnet, the ‘‘Shakespearean’’ or ‘‘English’’ sonnet, and the ‘‘Spenserian’’ sonnet. A Petrarchan sonnet consists of an octave rhymed abbaabba and a ‘‘sestet’’ rhymed either cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce. The octave poses a question or problem, relates a narrative, or puts forth a proposition; the sestet presents a solution to the problem, comments upon the narrative, or applies the proposition put forth in the octave. The Shakespearean sonnet is divided into three quatrains and a couplet rhymed abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet provides an epigrammatic comment on the narrative or problem put forth in the quatrains. The Spenserian sonnet uses three quatrains and a couplet like the Shakespearean, but links their three rhyme schemes in this way: abab bcbc cdcd ee. The Spenserian sonnet develops its theme in two parts like the Petrarchan, its final six lines resolving a problem, analyzing a narrative, or applying a proposition put forth in its first eight lines. Examples of sonnets can be found in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti, Elizabeth Barrett
3 3 3
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus, and Adrienne Rich’s poem ‘‘The Insusceptibles.’’ Spenserian Sonnet: See Sonnet Spenserian Stanza: A nine-line stanza having eight verses in iambic pentameter, its ninth verse in iambic hexameter, and the rhyme scheme ababbcbcc. This stanza form was first used by Edmund Spenser in his allegorical poem The Faerie Queene. Spondee: In poetry meter, a foot consisting of two long or stressed syllables occurring together. This form is quite rare in English verse, and is usually composed of two monosyllabic words. The first foot in the following line from Robert Burns’s ‘‘Green Grow the Rashes’’ is an example of a spondee: Green grow the rashes, O Sprung Rhythm: Versification using a specific number of accented syllables per line but disregarding the number of unaccented syllables that fall in each line, producing an irregular rhythm in the poem. Gerard Manley Hopkins, who coined the term ‘‘sprung rhythm,’’ is the most notable practitioner of this technique. Stanza: A subdivision of a poem consisting of lines grouped together, often in recurring patterns of rhyme, line length, and meter. Stanzas may also serve as units of thought in a poem much like paragraphs in prose. Examples of stanza forms include the quatrain, terza rima, ottava rima, Spenserian, and the so-called In Memoriam stanza from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem by that title. The following is an example of the latter form: Love is and was my lord and king, And in his presence I attend To hear the tidings of my friend, Which every hour his couriers bring. Stereotype: A stereotype was originally the name for a duplication made during the printing process; this led to its modern definition as a person or thing that is (or is assumed to be) the same as all others of its type. Common stereotypical characters include the absent-minded professor, the nagging wife, the troublemaking teenager, and the kindhearted grandmother. Stream of Consciousness: A narrative technique for rendering the inward experience of a character. This technique is designed to give the impression of an ever-changing series of thoughts, emotions, images, and memories in the spontaneous and seemingly illogical order that they occur in life. The
3 3 4
textbook example of stream of consciousness is the last section of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Structuralism: A twentieth-century movement in literary criticism that examines how literary texts arrive at their meanings, rather than the meanings themselves. There are two major types of structuralist analysis: one examines the way patterns of linguistic structures unify a specific text and emphasize certain elements of that text, and the other interprets the way literary forms and conventions affect the meaning of language itself. Prominent structuralists include Michel Foucault, Roman Jakobson, and Roland Barthes. Structure: The form taken by a piece of literature. The structure may be made obvious for ease of understanding, as in nonfiction works, or may obscured for artistic purposes, as in some poetry or seemingly ‘‘unstructured’’ prose. Examples of common literary structures include the plot of a narrative, the acts and scenes of a drama, and such poetic forms as the Shakespearean sonnet and the Pindaric ode. Sturm und Drang: A German term meaning ‘‘storm and stress.’’ It refers to a German literary movement of the 1770s and 1780s that reacted against the order and rationalism of the enlightenment, focusing instead on the intense experience of extraordinary individuals. Highly romantic, works of this movement, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Gotz von Berlichingen, are typified by realism, rebelliousness, and intense emotionalism. Style: A writer’s distinctive manner of arranging words to suit his or her ideas and purpose in writing. The unique imprint of the author’s personality upon his or her writing, style is the product of an author’s way of arranging ideas and his or her use of diction, different sentence structures, rhythm, figures of speech, rhetorical principles, and other elements of composition. Styles may be classified according to period (Metaphysical, Augustan, Georgian), individual authors (Chaucerian, Miltonic, Jamesian), level (grand, middle, low, plain), or language (scientific, expository, poetic, journalistic). Subject: The person, event, or theme at the center of a work of literature. A work may have one or more subjects of each type, with shorter works tending to have fewer and longer works tending to have more. The subjects of James Baldwin’s novel Go Tell It on the Mountain include the themes of father-son relationships, religious conversion, black life, and sexuality. The subjects of Anne Frank’s
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Diary of a Young Girl include Anne and her family members as well as World War II, the Holocaust, and the themes of war, isolation, injustice, and racism. Subjectivity: Writing that expresses the author’s personal feelings about his subject, and which may or may not include factual information about the subject. Subjectivity is demonstrated in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, and Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. Subplot: A secondary story in a narrative. A subplot may serve as a motivating or complicating force for the main plot of the work, or it may provide emphasis for, or relief from, the main plot. The conflict between the Capulets and the Montagues in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is an example of a subplot. Surrealism: A term introduced to criticism by Guillaume Apollinaire and later adopted by Andre Breton. It refers to a French literary and artistic movement founded in the 1920s. The Surrealists sought to express unconscious thoughts and feelings in their works. The best-known technique used for achieving this aim was automatic writing— transcriptions of spontaneous outpourings from the unconscious. The Surrealists proposed to unify the contrary levels of conscious and unconscious, dream and reality, objectivity and subjectivity into a new level of ‘‘super-realism.’’ Surrealism can be found in the poetry of Paul Eluard, Pierre Reverdy, and Louis Aragon, among others. Suspense: A literary device in which the author maintains the audience’s attention through the buildup of events, the outcome of which will soon be revealed. Suspense in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is sustained throughout by the question of whether or not the Prince will achieve what he has been instructed to do and of what he intends to do. Syllogism: A method of presenting a logical argument. In its most basic form, the syllogism consists of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. An example of a syllogism is: Major premise: When it snows, the streets get wet. Minor premise: It is snowing. Conclusion: The streets are wet. Symbol: Something that suggests or stands for something else without losing its original identity. In literature, symbols combine their literal meaning with the suggestion of an abstract concept. Literary symbols are of two types: those that carry complex associations of meaning no matter what their con-
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
texts, and those that derive their suggestive meaning from their functions in specific literary works. Examples of symbols are sunshine suggesting happiness, rain suggesting sorrow, and storm clouds suggesting despair. Symbolism: This term has two widely accepted meanings. In historical criticism, it denotes an early modernist literary movement initiated in France during the nineteenth century that reacted against the prevailing standards of realism. Writers in this movement aimed to evoke, indirectly and symbolically, an order of being beyond the material world of the five senses. Poetic expression of personal emotion figured strongly in the movement, typically by means of a private set of symbols uniquely identifiable with the individual poet. The principal aim of the Symbolists was to express in words the highly complex feelings that grew out of everyday contact with the world. In a broader sense, the term ‘‘symbolism’’ refers to the use of one object to represent another. Early members of the Symbolist movement included the French authors Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud; William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and T. S. Eliot were influenced as the movement moved to Ireland, England, and the United States. Examples of the concept of symbolism include a flag that stands for a nation or movement, or an empty cupboard used to suggest hopelessness, poverty, and despair. Symbolist: See Symbolism Symbolist Movement: See Symbolism Sympathetic Fallacy: See Affective Fallacy
T Tale: A story told by a narrator with a simple plot and little character development. Tales are usually relatively short and often carry a simple message. Examples of tales can be found in the work of Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Saki, Anton Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant, and Armistead Maupin. Tall Tale: A humorous tale told in a straightforward, credible tone but relating absolutely impossible events or feats of the characters. Such tales were commonly told of frontier adventures during the settlement of the west in the United States. Tall tales have been spun around such legendary heroes as Mike Fink, Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, Johnny Appleseed, and Captain Stormalong as well as the real-life William F. Cody and Annie Oakley. Liter-
3 3 5
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
ary use of tall tales can be found in Washington Irving’s History of New York, Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, and in the German R. F. Raspe’s Baron Munchausen’s Narratives of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia.
cruelty was theorized by Antonin Artaud in his Le Theatre et son double (The Theatre and Its Double), and also appears in the work of Jerzy Grotowski, Jean Genet, Jean Vilar, and Arthur Adamov, among others.
Tanka: A form of Japanese poetry similar to haiku. A tanka is five lines long, with the lines containing five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables respectively. Skilled tanka authors include Ishikawa Takuboku, Masaoka Shiki, Amy Lowell, and Adelaide Crapsey.
Theater of the Absurd: A post-World War II dramatic trend characterized by radical theatrical innovations. In works influenced by the Theater of the absurd, nontraditional, sometimes grotesque characterizations, plots, and stage sets reveal a meaningless universe in which human values are irrelevant. Existentialist themes of estrangement, absurdity, and futility link many of the works of this movement. The principal writers of the Theater of the Absurd are Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Harold Pinter.
Teatro Grottesco: See Theater of the Grotesque Terza Rima: A three-line stanza form in poetry in which the rhymes are made on the last word of each line in the following manner: the first and third lines of the first stanza, then the second line of the first stanza and the first and third lines of the second stanza, and so on with the middle line of any stanza rhyming with the first and third lines of the following stanza. An example of terza rima is Percy Bysshe Shelley’s ‘‘The Triumph of Love’’: As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay This was the tenour of my waking dream. Methought I sate beside a public way Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,. . . Tetrameter: See Meter Textual Criticism: A branch of literary criticism that seeks to establish the authoritative text of a literary work. Textual critics typically compare all known manuscripts or printings of a single work in order to assess the meanings of differences and revisions. This procedure allows them to arrive at a definitive version that (supposedly) corresponds to the author’s original intention. Textual criticism was applied during the Renaissance to salvage the classical texts of Greece and Rome, and modern works have been studied, for instance, to undo deliberate correction or censorship, as in the case of novels by Stephen Crane and Theodore Dreiser. Theater of Cruelty: Term used to denote a group of theatrical techniques designed to eliminate the psychological and emotional distance between actors and audience. This concept, introduced in the 1930s in France, was intended to inspire a more intense theatrical experience than conventional theater allowed. The ‘‘cruelty’’ of this dramatic theory signified not sadism but heightened actor/audience involvement in the dramatic event. The theater of
3 3 6
Theater of the Grotesque: An Italian theatrical movement characterized by plays written around the ironic and macabre aspects of daily life in the World War I era. Theater of the Grotesque was named after the play The Mask and the Face by Luigi Chiarelli, which was described as ‘‘a grotesque in three acts.’’ The movement influenced the work of Italian dramatist Luigi Pirandello, author of Right You Are, If You Think You Are. Also known as Teatro Grottesco. Theme: The main point of a work of literature. The term is used interchangeably with thesis. The theme of William Shakespeare’s Othello—jealousy—is a common one. Thesis: A thesis is both an essay and the point argued in the essay. Thesis novels and thesis plays share the quality of containing a thesis which is supported through the action of the story. A master’s thesis and a doctoral dissertation are two theses required of graduate students. Thesis Play: See Thesis Three Unities: See Unities Tone: The author’s attitude toward his or her audience may be deduced from the tone of the work. A formal tone may create distance or convey politeness, while an informal tone may encourage a friendly, intimate, or intrusive feeling in the reader. The author’s attitude toward his or her subject matter may also be deduced from the tone of the words he or she uses in discussing it. The tone of John F. Kennedy’s speech which included the appeal to ‘‘ask not what your country can do for you’’ was intended to instill feelings of camaraderie and national pride in listeners.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
G l o s s a r y
Tragedy: A drama in prose or poetry about a noble, courageous hero of excellent character who, because of some tragic character flaw or hamartia, brings ruin upon him- or herself. Tragedy treats its subjects in a dignified and serious manner, using poetic language to help evoke pity and fear and bring about catharsis, a purging of these emotions. The tragic form was practiced extensively by the ancient Greeks. In the Middle Ages, when classical works were virtually unknown, tragedy came to denote any works about the fall of persons from exalted to low conditions due to any reason: fate, vice, weakness, etc. According to the classical definition of tragedy, such works present the ‘‘pathetic’’—that which evokes pity—rather than the tragic. The classical form of tragedy was revived in the sixteenth century; it flourished especially on the Elizabethan stage. In modern times, dramatists have attempted to adapt the form to the needs of modern society by drawing their heroes from the ranks of ordinary men and women and defining the nobility of these heroes in terms of spirit rather than exalted social standing. The greatest classical example of tragedy is Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. The ‘‘pathetic’’ derivation is exemplified in ‘‘The Monk’s Tale’’ in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Notable works produced during the sixteenth century revival include William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. Modern dramatists working in the tragic tradition include Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O’Neill. Tragedy of Blood: See Revenge Tragedy Tragic Flaw: In a tragedy, the quality within the hero or heroine which leads to his or her downfall. Examples of the tragic flaw include Othello’s jealousy and Hamlet’s indecisiveness, although most great tragedies defy such simple interpretation. Transcendentalism: An American philosophical and religious movement, based in New England from around 1835 until the Civil War. Transcendentalism was a form of American romanticism that had its roots abroad in the works of Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Coleridge, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The Transcendentalists stressed the importance of intuition and subjective experience in communication with God. They rejected religious dogma and texts in favor of mysticism and scientific naturalism. They pursued truths that lie beyond the ‘‘colorless’’ realms perceived by reason and the senses and were active social reformers in public education, women’s rights, and the abolition of slavery. Promi-
V o l u m e
1 8
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
nent members of the group include Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Trickster: A character or figure common in Native American and African literature who uses his ingenuity to defeat enemies and escape difficult situations. Tricksters are most often animals, such as the spider, hare, or coyote, although they may take the form of humans as well. Examples of trickster tales include Thomas King’s A Coyote Columbus Story, Ashley F. Bryan’s The Dancing Granny and Ishmael Reed’s The Last Days of Louisiana Red. Trimeter: See Meter Triple Rhyme: See Rhyme Trochee: See Foot
U Understatement: See Irony Unities: Strict rules of dramatic structure, formulated by Italian and French critics of the Renaissance and based loosely on the principles of drama discussed by Aristotle in his Poetics. Foremost among these rules were the three unities of action, time, and place that compelled a dramatist to: (1) construct a single plot with a beginning, middle, and end that details the causal relationships of action and character; (2) restrict the action to the events of a single day; and (3) limit the scene to a single place or city. The unities were observed faithfully by continental European writers until the Romantic Age, but they were never regularly observed in English drama. Modern dramatists are typically more concerned with a unity of impression or emotional effect than with any of the classical unities. The unities are observed in Pierre Corneille’s tragedy Polyeuctes and Jean-Baptiste Racine’s Phedre. Also known as Three Unities. Urban Realism: A branch of realist writing that attempts to accurately reflect the often harsh facts of modern urban existence. Some works by Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Emile Zola, Abraham Cahan, and Henry Fuller feature urban realism. Modern examples include Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land and Ron Milner’s What the Wine Sellers Buy. Utopia: A fictional perfect place, such as ‘‘paradise’’ or ‘‘heaven.’’ Early literary utopias were included in Plato’s Republic and Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, while more modern utopias can be found in
3 3 7
G l o s s a r y
o f
L i t e r a r y
T e r m s
Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, Theodor Herzka’s A Visit to Freeland, and H. G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia. Utopian: See Utopia Utopianism: See Utopia
erature include the poetry of Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the criticism of Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin, and the novels of Emily Bronte, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Thomas Hardy. Also known as Victorian Age and Victorian Period. Victorian Age: See Victorian
V Verisimilitude: Literally, the appearance of truth. In literary criticism, the term refers to aspects of a work of literature that seem true to the reader. Verisimilitude is achieved in the work of Honore de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, and Henry James, among other late nineteenth-century realist writers. Vers de societe: See Occasional Verse Vers libre: See Free Verse Verse: A line of metered language, a line of a poem, or any work written in verse. The following line of verse is from the epic poem Don Juan by Lord Byron: ‘‘My way is to begin with the beginning.’’ Versification: The writing of verse. Versification may also refer to the meter, rhyme, and other mechanical components of a poem. Composition of a ‘‘Roses are red, violets are blue’’ poem to suit an occasion is a common form of versification practiced by students. Victorian: Refers broadly to the reign of Queen Victoria of England (1837–1901) and to anything with qualities typical of that era. For example, the qualities of smug narrowmindedness, bourgeois materialism, faith in social progress, and priggish morality are often considered Victorian. This stereotype is contradicted by such dramatic intellectual developments as the theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud (which stirred strong debates in England) and the critical attitudes of serious Victorian writers like Charles Dickens and George Eliot. In literature, the Victorian Period was the great age of the English novel, and the latter part of the era saw the rise of movements such as decadence and symbolism. Works of Victorian lit-
3 3 8
Victorian Period: See Victorian
W Weltanschauung: A German term referring to a person’s worldview or philosophy. Examples of weltanschauung include Thomas Hardy’s view of the human being as the victim of fate, destiny, or impersonal forces and circumstances, and the disillusioned and laconic cynicism expressed by such poets of the 1930s as W. H. Auden, Sir Stephen Spender, and Sir William Empson. Weltschmerz: A German term meaning ‘‘world pain.’’ It describes a sense of anguish about the nature of existence, usually associated with a melancholy, pessimistic attitude. Weltschmerz was expressed in England by George Gordon, Lord Byron in his Manfred and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in France by Viscount de Chateaubriand, Alfred de Vigny, and Alfred de Musset, in Russia by Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, in Poland by Juliusz Slowacki, and in America by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Z Zarzuela: A type of Spanish operetta. Writers of zarzuelas include Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderon. Zeitgeist: A German term meaning ‘‘spirit of the time.’’ It refers to the moral and intellectual trends of a given era. Examples of zeitgeist include the preoccupation with the more morbid aspects of dying and death in some Jacobean literature, especially in the works of dramatists Cyril Tourneur and John Webster, and the decadence of the French Symbolists.
D r a m a
f o r
S t u d e n t s
