To Have or Have Not: Essays on Commerce and Capital in Modernist Theatre

To Have or Have Not

ALSO EDITED BY JAMES FISHER “We Will Be Citizens”: New Essays on Gay and Lesbian Theatre (McFarland, 2009) Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays (McFarland, 2006)

To Have or Have Not Essays on Commerce and Capital in Modernist Theatre Edited by JAMES FISHER

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

To have or have not : essays on commerce and capital in modernist theatre / edited by James Fisher. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-4717-6 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Drama — History and criticism. 2. Money in literature. 3. Wealth in literature. 4. Commerce in literature. 5. Social classes in literature. I. Fisher, James, 1950 – PN1650.M65T63 2011 809.2 — dc23 2011031002 BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2011 James Fisher. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Front cover image: poster art for Holiday, 1938 (Columbia Pictures/ Photofest) Manufactured in the United States of America

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To my family: Dana, Daniel, and Anna

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Table of Contents Introduction JAMES FISHER

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Friedrich Engels, Lewis Henry Morgan, Capitalism, and Theatre-Making in Nineteenth-Century America ROSEMARIE K. BANK

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“Money Is Our God Here”: The Comedy of Capital in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and Philip Barry’s Holiday JAMES FISHER

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Amateur Economies: Widowhood and Marriage for Amateur Performers EILEEN CURLEY

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Gold Rush: McTeague, Frank Norris, and Neal Bell ROBERT F. GROSS

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Money in Chekhov’s Plays LAURENCE SENELICK

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Jacob Gordin and Jewish Socialism in America VALLERI J. HOHMAN

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The Music Master and the Money Makers FELICIA HARDISON LONDRÉ

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Performing “Amerikee”: Rural Caricature and the George Washingtons of Percy MacKaye and Jacques Copeau MARK EVANS BRYAN

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I Am Your Worker/I Am Your Slave: Dehumanization, Capitalist Fantasy, and Communist Anxiety in Karel Tapek’s R.U.R. PAUL MENARD

121

Home Away from Home: Greed in Marco Millions THIERRY DUBOST

131

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Babbitting Broadway: Satire, the Gospel of Success, and Americanization of Expressionism JAMES M. CHERRY

143

A New Approach to Revolution: Artef and Hirsch Leckert in the Third Period JOSHUA POLSTER

157

“Television’s Comin’ In, Sure as Death”: The Strange Consumer Paradise of Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost CHRISTOPHER J. HERR

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Back-Alleys to Basements: Narratives of Class and (Il)legal Abortion on the American Stage CHRISTINE WOODWORTH

184

Peter Weiss’s The Investigation: The Marxist View of the Holocaust GENE A. PLUNKA

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Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls: Postmodern Complicity and the Economics of Thatcherism DANIEL KEITH JERNIGAN

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Excessive Greed, Excessive Visions: Brenton and Hare’s Brassneck and Pravda JOHN E. O’CONNOR

225

The Absence of Wealth in Recent British Plays about Business AMELIA HOWE KRITZER

244

Between Want and Wealth: The Failure of Upward Mobility in José Rivera’s Early Plays J. CHRIS WESTGATE

257

Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Under America: How Mainstream Reviews Represent the Guilty and Obscure the Economics of the U.S. Prison Industry JACOB JUNTUNEN

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About the Contributors

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Index

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Introduction JAMES FISHER

To Have or Have Not: Essays on Commerce and Capital in Modernist Theatre brings together research by a range of both distinguished and emerging scholars and theatre practitioners, all with the intention of bridging traditional scholarship and performance to reveal varied issues of economics found in modernist theatre. This eclectic collection spans dramatic works written during and about the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism, Karl Marx’s theories, Wall Street, immigration, the Gilded and Jazz Ages, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the post–World War II economic “boom,” and the recent (2007– 2011) economic crisis and contemporary cultural issues. Contributors to this collection were charged to explore modern to postmodern dramatic literature and performance in which characters’ lives are profoundly influenced by the economics of these varied times either resulting from their own actions or springing from cultural forces beyond their control or comprehension. It will be obvious to the reader that the contributors to this volume have extended well beyond this general charge. This collection inherently examines the complex nexus between capitalism and individual identity in modern and postmodern theatre, with emphasis on ever-changing economic, political, and social spheres in societies constructed on capitalist principles. What is the meaning of commerce and capital for ordinary individuals— what do the demands of money or its absence do to or for the human spirit, relationships, family, and the workplace? The essays in To Have or Have Not query the ways in which American and European drama has staged the cultural and economic ramifications of capitalism and the growing power of the corporate realm. In the earliest play featured, Edward BulwerLytton’s 1840 comedy Money, its protagonist, Alfred Evelyn, experiences both poverty and wealth and, at one point, melodramatically proclaims, “The Vices and Virtues are written in a language the World cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are FAILURE and SUCCESS!” (Rowell 112). This prescient description of materialistic values resulting from the rising tide of capitalism in Bulwer-Lytton’s time recognizes the vast socioeconomic and cultural changes seen in Europe and America during the early nineteenth century, offering an early theatrical statement on the power of money in human 1

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relations. Much early nineteenth century philosophical thought and fiction, notably in the novels of Bulwer-Lytton’s contemporary and friend Charles Dickens, was framed by crushing economic transitions, although drama only began to address these and related economic subjects with any regularity after Bulwer-Lytton’s Money, even if the problems of rich and poor are found in drama from the birth of theatre. As modernist concepts inspired new forms in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly in the sociallyconscious realistic plays of Henrik Ibsen and those inspired by his model, momentous economic changes were dissected in a franker and more realistic way, a trend that could be said to have dominated drama ever since. These plays reveal that both rich and poor, regardless of national origin, are compelled to negotiate the demands of money or its lack within the historical sweep of vast social changes and national and international calamity. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), published less than sixty-five years prior to Bulwer-Lytton’s Money, laments economic inequities, but also seems to challenge artists to consider the problems, when Smith writes, “Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers.... It is by imagination that we can form any conception of what are his sensations” (Smith 2). Bulwer-Lytton imagines the impact of the experience of “our brother” through the life of the aforementioned Evelyn, a decent man slaving as a clerk for inadequate wages. Drawn to the similarly poverty-stricken Clara Douglas, Evelyn proposes marriage, but she turns him down because she has witnessed the devastating impact of economic deprivation on the relationship of her parents. When Evelyn unexpectedly inherits a fortune those around him curry his favor for their cynical and selfserving ends, an embittering experience for Evelyn. Money is a comedy and, as such, Evelyn’s situation finds happy resolution as he and his Clara are united, but Bulwer-Lytton’s complex thematic questions linger. The lack of money is the true root of much social evil as Bulwer-Lytton sees it, setting up permanent conflict between and among rich and poor. Trapped in an unbreakable cycle of disintegrating hopes, the poor are denied opportunities to pursue happiness and are prone to social ills resulting from an unending cycle of poverty and class oppression destructive not only to individuals, but to the well-being of society in general. The wealthy, too, are not liberated from basic human dilemmas and, in fact, may be corrupted by their entitlements. Bulwer-Lytton’s modest play provides a thematic template for nearly two centuries of American and European dramatists who, in either serious or lighthearted ways, depict ordinary individuals contending with poverty and wealth. Across the second half of the nineteenth century, modern dramatists increasingly probed the power of money — or its lack. Bronson Howard’s The Henrietta (1887), the first “Wall Street” comedy, followed Bulwer-Lytton’s lead by tracing the influence of financial circumstances on the human heart, but the subject took a more serious turn in Ibsen’s plays. Among these, Ibsen exposed

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moral, political, and ethical problems resulting from economic pressures in such works as An Enemy of the People (1882). Dr. Thomas Stockmann, the play’s protagonist, reveals that his town’s local waters, which are at its prosperous foundation, are also dangerously polluted. Stockmann is at first deemed a hero, but as economic ramifications come into focus the tide of public support turns against him. Stockmann refuses to relent, proclaiming that in moral matters an individual must stand for the truth and, in this case, against vested interests. With this drama, Ibsen stressed the potential for moral corruption inherent in the unpredictable forces of economy, a topic central in the plays of George Bernard Shaw, Ibsen’s most vocal advocate. Shaw chose to directly indict political, religious, class, and business forces in his work, and to point up the greater inequities faced by women inherent in the prevailing economic structure of Victorian society (Ibsen had opened this door with A Doll’s House [1879]), all of which, he insisted, were responsible for the crushing economic plight faced by those at the bottom of the class system. In Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893), Major Barbara (1905), and Pygmalion (1912–13), among others, Shaw mockingly excoriated Victorian and Edwardian England not only for the blind eye it turned to the suffering poor, but for willfully maintaining economic inequities as a means of solidifying political power. Shaw offered socialist principles as a panacea for the deeply-rooted ills of the British class structure and what he considered a corrupt economic system, while also satirizing sentimentalizing proprieties and traditional values he believed masked a deeply hypocritical and economically cynical culture. In the twentieth century, numerous dramatists writing in diverse styles focused on economic injustice and social ills in the Shavian mode. Written fifty years apart, Harley Granville Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance (1905) and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956), follow Shaw’s lead in illuminating the travails of class status, whether upper or lower, and the potentially negative ramifications on private lives. Barker, particularly, in assailing the Ponzischemers of his time is prescient in imagining those of our own. Following World War II, German dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit (1956) offers a grim portrait of vengeance driven by greed as a woman wronged in her youth by an older man, returns to her economically depressed hometown as the wealthiest woman in the world. She offers economic support with only one price: the death of the man who wronged her. In the same era, leftist Italian playwright/actor Dario Fo applied farcical skills drawn from medieval and Renaissance forms to address contemporary issues, often centering on the plight of the middle and lower classes, as in Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay! (1974), in which a group of working-class housewives take matters into their own hands with a rebellion over inflationary food prices. Fo’s political farces eventually brought him a Nobel Prize for Literature. Major American dramatists emerging after World War I, and led by Eugene O’Neill, increasingly questioned national values, including capitalism and “Big

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Business” interests. In his plays, O’Neill’s characters voice his lament for an American society in thrall to materialism, stressing in his plays the illusions and human weaknesses preventing the nation (not to mention the individual) from realizing lofty and perhaps unachievable ideals. Late in his career, and responding to the post–World War II economic boom and resultant freshly renewed values of materialism and conformity, O’Neill stated, “I feel, in a sense, that America is the greatest failure in history. It was given everything, more than any other country in history, but we’ve squandered our soul by trying to possess something outside it, and we’ll end as that game usually does, by losing our soul and that thing outside it too” (quoted in Diggins xiii). Regardless of the setting of any O’Neill play, or the unique desires of any of his characters, disillusionment with false values changes and often destroys his characters. O’Neill identified a deep chasm between American optimism and the harsher truths of a society in the grip of materialist desires, deep racial and ethnic prejudices, and anti-intellectualism which, for him, inevitably shattered any hope for genuine democracy. In depicting longings for a utopian future and the struggle for freedom and spiritual fulfillment, O’Neill framed the dilemmas of characters who ultimately recognize, or at least feel, the crushing loss inherent in this disjunction — and he established recurrent themes for American playwrights who emerged in his wake. O’Neill’s concerns were adopted and adapted by subsequent dramatists, even during the giddily prosperous Jazz Age. The stakes were raised by the 1929 Stock Market crash and the onset of the Great Depression of the 1930s, an economic disaster that tested the nation’s soul and survival. Elmer Rice, Clifford Odets, Robert E. Sherwood, and Lillian Hellman, among others, overtly challenged American-style capitalism in mostly realistic bourgeois dramas in which the harsh realities of deprivation weigh heavily on the lower and middle classes, and in which the moral price of striving for material success is seen too often to come at too great a cost. Odets, for example, brought a leftist political agenda to the topic in dramas supporting unions, such as Waiting for Lefty (1935), or in the plight of first and second generation Jewish-Americans striving for survival at the height of the Depression in Awake and Sing! (1935). As in Elmer Rice’s earlier drama, Street Scene (1929), Odets depicted bigotries and class differences, not to mention deep-seated familial conflicts, individual frustrations, and political upheavals exacerbated by the deprivations of the time and an immigrant class conflicted by its belief in American ideals of economic success and the realities of poverty most lived with. In The Petrified Forest (1935), set in the depths of the Depression, Sherwood pits the ruthless greed of a John Dillinger-style gangster against the idealistic principles of a poetic dreamer; both killer and dreamer are doomed, but a young idealistic artist is provided hope and opportunity. Hellman’s The Little Foxes (1939) assails unchecked capitalist greed which she sees as a toxic pollutant with the power to threaten the survival of human decency and family. Even comic writers addressed the sub-

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ject. Moving the conversation from tenements to mansions, Philip Barry depicted wealth and privilege as a burden to human interaction and an obstacle on the journey to self-realization in his high comedies Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939), while most dramatists of the 1930s found the lack of money the more oppressive dilemma and catalyst for human conflict. The generation of dramatists who came of age during World War II were children of the Great Depression and, as such, their characters and themes were shaped by this experience. Some emphasized the socio-political realities, while others depicted characters retreating into illusions of a gentler past while trapped in a rapidly changing and disorienting world. Overt politics melt away in the early work of Tennessee Williams, whose “memory play,” The Glass Menagerie (1945), revisits the economic woes of the Depression. Williams creates a semi-autobiographical drama exposing the profound personal costs of economic deprivation as Amanda Wingfield, unable to cope with the grim realities of the St. Louis tenement in which she finds herself, escapes into reveries of a real or imagined past of familiarity, hope, and comfort. But her reveries are fleeting and she is pulled back continually to the unforgiving present and her fears for the security of her emotionally fragile daughter, Laura. Amanda, like many Williams heroines, is unable to function without the protections of money and privilege they have known and lost — or that they have never known and seem unable to attain. Despite the postwar economic boom, Arthur Miller, also a product of the Great Depression, offers varied perspectives on the “American Dream” of material success O’Neill warned against. In Miller’s All My Sons (1947), Joe Keller, a prosperous manufacturer of airplane parts, sees his life implode in the aftermath of his knowingly shipping defective parts during World War II in order to secure his business. The resultant death of American pilots translates Keller’s ethical lapse into a mortal sin with no means of atonement. Miller’s next play, Death of a Salesman (1949), exposed the false god of materialism through the tragedy of Willy Loman, a salesman who fails to attain financial success or even modest security. Willy becomes lost through the death of his dream and the realization that material attainment does not necessarily equate with personal fulfillment. In the 1950s, Lorraine Hansberry became the first African American woman to have a major drama produced on Broadway with A Raisin in the Sun (1959), a play centering on the ways a $10,000 life insurance check provides otherwise elusive hope to the Youngers, a poor black family whose stifled dreams are unleashed by the money. After significant conflict, the family rallies together to improve their lives by using their resources to move to a nice house in an all-white neighborhood. There they will surely face bigotry and possible violence, but Hansberry prefers to emphasize the concept that money may provide them if not happiness at least opportunity. Another major black dramatist, August Wilson, tracked the African American experience in a cycle of ten plays,

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each set in a different decade of the twentieth century and each exploring not only the segregated society in which blacks resided for much of the century, but also the ways in which denial of opportunity and economic attainment influenced African American culture. Edward Albee, in a short play entitled The American Dream (1960), challenged traditional values, including materialism, but darker portraits of the economic realities of late twentieth century American society are to be found in the plays of David Mamet, for whom the corrosiveness of unchecked capitalism destroys moral values. In American Buffalo (1975) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1984), Mamet envisions a society of thieves and hucksters who have long since abandoned ethics in search not only of material success, but of survival. Mamet’s dog-eat-dog American Dream values only the “big score” or, more likely, the futile dream of it; for example, in Glengarry Glen Ross, a real estate sales force sells bogus parcels of land in a fierce competition in which the first prize is a new car, second is a set of steak knives, and third is being fired. Mamet, like Jerry Sterner, author of Other People’s Money (1989), illuminates a heartless society in which money seems the only measure of worth and ethics are obstacles to financial gain. Tony Kushner, author of the two-play epic Angels in America (1991–92), sets his characters adrift in a nightmare landscape of a millennial society cut off from the values of the past, yet longing for what those values promised. At the height of Ronald Reagan’s presidency in the mid–1980s, Kushner’s characters seek a new faith emerging from a dream of community and compassion. Kushner transmutes Reagan’s “trickle-down” economic theories into a kind of “trickle-down” morality in which betrayals and bad faith in the ruling class poison its culture. “Reagan’s children,” as one of Kushner’s characters insists, are “Selfish and greedy and loveless and blind” (Kushner 74); for Kushner, belief in a true American community of economic, racial, and gender equality is the key to a brighter future. As the play’s Angel announces “The Great Work begins” (Kushner 119), it is clear that Kushner believes this “great work” to be the realization of a more equitable and compassionate society while in his most recent drama, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (2009), an examination of the human cost of the continual struggle between labor and management is central among its themes. Barack Obama’s ascension to the American presidency in early 2009, in the midst of an economic crisis unequalled since the Great Depression, resulted from voters presumably rejecting the policies of Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, especially those aimed at enhancing the wealth of the richest Americans through tax breaks. Corporate excesses, Wall Street corruption, the near collapse of major financial institutions, and crushing health care costs contributed to the catastrophic proportions of the financial meltdown that promised an era as grim as the 1930s. By late 2010, a slow economic recovery and

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high unemployment precipitated losses for Obama in the midterm elections and the immediate future remains uncertain, but these circumstances suggest that the subjects of commerce and capital will remain central in American theatre and drama well into the new millennium. Following this introduction, intended merely as a broad overview of major plays and playwrights who have led the way in dramatizing economic concerns, To Have or Have Not features a set of twenty eclectic essays organized in moreor-less chronological order and drawn from the canon of modern American and European plays. The diversity of content and approach by the contributors, not to mention the quality, is the raison d’être for this collection. Rosemarie K. Bank kicks off the volume with a wide-ranging examination of capitalism in nineteenth century Euro-American plays about Native Americans set against the theories of Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Lewis Henry Morgan; my contribution explores two comic plays, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and Philip Barry’s Holiday, in which the impact of financial security and its lack influences the pursuit of personal happiness; Eileen Curley focuses on the plays of “amateur” women dramatists on the economics of marriage and widowhood written and performed to raise money for social charities in the late nineteenth century; Robert F. Gross examines greed and other aspects of the Gold Rush in two stage versions of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague; Laurence Senelick traces Anton Chekhov’s interest in money matters in his plays and professional life; Jewish Socialism and the plays of Yiddish dramatist Jacob Gordin are the subject of Valleri J. Hohman’s essay; Felicia Hardison Londré explores reaffirmations of the American dream in Charles Klein’s The Music Master and other stage works at the turn of the twentieth century; Mark Evans Bryan’s essay compares images of George Washington and tensions between rural and technological America evident in the theatres of Percy MacKaye and Jacques Copeau; Paul Menard follows suit in his examination of the dehumanizing aspects of technology and capitalist fantasy in a study of Karel Tapek’s R.U.R.; Eugene O’Neill’s Marco Millions inspires Thierry Dubost to probe issues of imperialistic greed in the play and other dramas of the 1920s; James M. Cherry locates the “gospel of success” in American expressionist plays; Joshua Polster investigates Artef ’s 1920s production of the Soviet play Hirsch Leckert; utopian visions of the future and capitalist ambivalence in the plays of Clifford Odets are interrogated by Christopher J. Herr, with an emphasis on Paradise Lost; Christine Woodworth traces, among other things, the economic causes and ramifications of abortion in several plays, including Eugene O’Neill’s Abortion, Sidney Kingsley’s Men in White, John Van Druten’s I Am a Camera, and Jane Martin’s Keely and Du; Gene A. Plunka considers Marxist views of the Holocaust via Peter Weiss’s The Investigation; economics in the era of Margaret Thatcher are the subject of Daniel Keith Jernigan’s study of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls; John E. O’Connor also focuses on British drama in his probing of themes of corporate greed in Howard Brenton and David Hare’s plays Brassneck and Pravda; recent British dramas

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about business are also explored by Amelia Howe Kritzer in her essay; J. Chris Westgate finds the elusiveness of economic mobility for Hispanic Americans depicted in José Rivera’s early plays; and Jacob Juntunen compares aspects of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and his own Under America to illuminate the economics of the U.S. prison system. As editor of this book, I am deeply grateful to these contributors and humbled by their trust and generosity. I also appreciate the forbearance of my coworkers at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the early encouragements I received while a young faculty member at Wabash College. The support of such friends as Fredric Enenbach, Peter Frederick, Kenneth Kloth, Erminie C. Leonardis, Diane and Jamey Norton, the Penland family, Bert Stern, John C. Swan, Lauren K. “Woody” Woods, and others has meant and continues to mean a great deal to me.

WORKS CITED Diggins, John P. Eugene O’Neill’s America: Desire Under Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Kushner, Tony. Angels in America. A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Part One: Millennium Approaches. New York: Theatre Communications Groups, 1992. Rowell, George, ed. Nineteenth Century Plays. Second Edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Smith, Adam. Theory of Moral Sentiments. Second Edition. London: A. Millar, 1762.

Friedrich Engels, Lewis Henry Morgan, Capitalism, and Theatre-Making in Nineteenth-Century America ROSEMARIE K. BANK

Joan Mark observes, in Four Anthropologists, that “Marxists revered Lewis Henry Morgan, whose book Ancient Society was the foundation on which Engels based The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.” Historian George W. Stocking, Jr., offers the view that “the true founder of British social anthropology was the American Lewis Henry Morgan,” who both warned of the danger of the unchecked growth of private property and emphasized the connection between material circumstances and the ability of cultures to develop. There can be no doubt that both Morgan and Engels were searching for underlying patterns and the unconscious presumptions (or prejudices) that, in the nineteenth century, informed many Euro-American ideas of the origins of ancient societies and the practices that characterized them. Both works located these patterns in a society’s culture in a way that deserves to be called original, and even when Morgan’s work was contested by (especially British) anthropologists, no one thought Ancient Society unimportant, indeed, Morgan is the only American social theorist to be cited by Darwin, Marx, and Freud — and, of course, Engels, the significance of whose work hardly needs my affirming voice” (Mark 174; Stocking 301). Morgan and Engels focus capitalism in an historiographic, if characteristically modern, manner. Their way of looking is “modern,” in that each tries to be scientific, to present data to establish and support his pattern of interpretation. In addition, like good modernists, each knows how the story comes out — Engels’ title expresses this view, as does the whole of Morgan’s (Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagry through Barbarity to Civilization). On the other hand, however, both see capitalism historiographically, as a provisional stage in a larger pattern circling or revolving backward toward cultures that expose the prejudices and presumptions of 9

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modernity, cultural patterns that are both anti-modern and ante-modern. The exploration of some of their ideas about culture only begins and will not conclude here, but, inevitably, Morgan’s (and, so, Engels’) model for revolving backward to go forward is performance, the “Grand Order of the Iroquois,” which allowed Morgan, like anthropologists before and since, to “play Indian” (Morgan, Engels). Lewis Henry Morgan was a self-educated anthropologist, indeed, when he graduated from college in 1840, there was no American institution he might have attended to take a degree in the then non-existent academic discipline that would shortly be called anthropology. Instead, Morgan studied philosophy, languages, and letters, read law after graduation, and made his living as a lawyer and businessman. Though asked toward the end of his life to teach anthropology, Morgan never did so, though he served (in 1879) as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I recount these elements of Morgan’s biography to provoke thought about the nineteenth century’s view of credentials, authority, and science. Morgan, for example, was an advocate of the American “free market” system of governance and law, indeed, European and American anthropologists of the period were often champions of commerce and private property, middle-class morés, and representative government, views informing the “circular relationship ... between the anthropological theorists and those who instituted and managed policies” intended to govern people they considered primitive (Daniel Noah Moses 188f and 195). What made Lewis Henry Morgan an anthropologist was cultural rather than intellectual experience. In 1843, when Morgan was 24, he and members of a literary club broke into an abandoned Masonic lodge in Aurora, New York, and created the Grand Order of the Iroquois, a bogus Indian society that had several hundred members at its height and “lodges” spread from the eastern end of Lake Erie to the Hudson River, distributed according to the lodge’s traditional place in a metaphorical long house. (As members relocated within what they perceived to be the Iroquois Confederation’s territory, they established new lodges.) Like the Confederation, upon which it was modeled, the Grand Order had six subdivisions, named after the six Iroquois nations— Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Tuscaroras (added to the Iroquois Confederation in 1715), Cayugas, and Senecas. The Grand Order’s subdivisions were again subdivided into clans named after animals. (Morgan’s group in Aurora, for example, was the Wolf Clan of the Cayuga.) (Deloria 72–73, 76 –80; Daniel Noah Moses 41–42). The Grand Order of the Iroquois saw itself as picking up the torch from the falling Indian, who (rather than ancient Greece or Rome) represented America’s past. What was valued in the American past was a history counter to the one Morgan and his fellows were living, a society not shaped to the needs of a market economy. To run the next lap of the race, the men of the Grand Order of the Iroquois needed to restore harmony between the environment and human endeavor and between red men and white. Accordingly, Morgan wrote an ini-

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tiation ritual that spoke to what Morgan saw as the familial nature of the historical bond between the two races, in which initiates took the places of those (Indians) who were gone. It was a ceremony which sought to echo the Iroquois practice of condolence through adoption. One with the very many voluntary associations that characterized the era, the Grand Order was surely a too convenient way for white men to celebrate the culture(s) they were displacing, though, in Morgan’s day, Iroquois culture in upstate New York was far from remote. The connection between them was, indeed, demonstrated the next year (1844), when Morgan met the Seneca Ely Parker in Albany, New York, where the latter was translating on behalf of a delegation seeking to preserve the Tonawanda Reservation near Buffalo. Morgan interviewed the spiritual leader in the delegation on points of Seneca ritual, prompting Morgan “‘to remodel the fraternity along authentic Iroquois lines.’” Shortly thereafter, Ely Parker was initiated into the Grand Order of the Iroquois.1 Parker’s motives in “playing Indian” surely had something to do with securing support for himself and his people, indeed, members of the Grand Order provided money for Parker to attend Morgan’s alma mater, where Parker, like Morgan, could prepare to become a lawyer. Parker, in turn, shocked the Grand Order into action on behalf of the Tonawanda Seneca. In 1845, Morgan wrote lodge brother Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a noted anthropologist, “‘If therefore we can take an early stand in behalf of the Indian: encourage a generous feeling toward him, in a word stand up to vindicate his rights, and watch over his political prosperity; the Order of the Iroquois will become the Institution which our country needs above all others.’” More scholarships for Indians followed, letters were written, Morgan journeyed to Washington in 1846 to meet with President Polk and John Quincy Adams, critic of removal and chairman of the House Committee on Indian Affairs, and Schoolcraft testified in support of the Seneca before Congress. Lobbying on behalf of the Seneca by Morgan and former lodge brothers continued for years. Finally, in 1857, Parker took a case bearing his name to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that whites knew treaty-making affecting land among the Iroquois had to be unanimously approved by them (whereas an 1840 treaty ceding Tonawanda Reservation land to the Ogden Land Company had been signed by fewer than half of the Iroquois delegation). In a mixed blessing victory, the Court decreed that only the U.S. government could force Indians from their lands, and the Tonawanda Seneca were able to buy back the Ogden portion of their reservation with money that had been set aside for their removal.2 How much the Grand Order of the Iroquois did for the Iroquois people, upon whose customs it was modeled, is difficult to determine, but, certainly, it was more than a social club for neurasthenic white men seeking communitas and poetry. In Lewis Henry Morgan’s case, the formation of the Order led to the discovery of his vocation as an anthropologist, beginning with his research to establish the rules of Iroquois governance regarding who could make deci-

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sions of national importance (the substance of the Tonawanda litigation). Initially, Morgan’s involvement with Iroquois customs vascillated between that of a hobbyist and of a researcher. In 1846, for example, Morgan and two friends asked to be “initiated” into Tonawanda Seneca society. Since no practice of the kind existed in Iroquois culture, Parker instead negotiated a respectful entertainment by the Seneca, in thanks for Morgan’s help with the Seneca’s land claims. Like Morgan, the Grand Order itself was caught between the secret life of a fraternal society and its work as a scholarly and advocacy organization. Dissolved about 1848, the Grand Order’s “brotherhood” mission was absorbed by a variety of fraternal organizations, including the Red Men, founded in the 1830s by former Masons, whose fellowship began to sag in the 1850s, after peaking with forty-five “tribes” and more than 37,000 members. The new and Improved Order of Red Men, which would count 350,000 members by 1900, revised its rituals in 1868, using as its source Lewis Henry Morgan’s 1851 scholarly study, The League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee, or Iroquois (Daniel Noah Moses 75; see the account of the Improved Order of Red Men [Deloria 59 –68]. Deloria also discusses Parker’s motives in connection with Morgan’s fraternity [8] and the Grand Order’s political and research agendas [80 –89]). Lewis Henry Morgan was hardly the only man in the nineteenth century to do what Philip J. Deloria has called “playing Indian.” “The performance of Indian Americaness,” Deloria writes, “afforded a powerful foundation for subsequent pursuits of national identity.” Organizations like the Grand Order of the Iroquois stretch from Tammany societies in the eighteenth century through the (Improved Order of ) Red Men in the nineteenth century to the present day. Part of the fraternal movement that is believed to have “attracted millions of nineteenth-century men to weekly meetings and initiation ceremonies,” fraternal Indian societies borrowed from and informed the Indian plays that reached apogee in the antebellum decades. (The Improved Order of Red Men, for example, had both a Metamora and a Pocahontas “lodge,” shadowing John Augustus Stone’s 1829 play Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags and George Washington Parke Custis’ 1830 Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia. They also made use of ethnographic works like Morgan’s and insisted upon the relation of their societies to American history. Theatre makers, on the other hand, insisted upon their own authenticity with respect to Indians, indeed, the claim to honest trade in “Indianess” came to characterize the most successful Indian plays and dramatic characters during the antebellum decades, most notably Edwin Forrest’s insistence that the effectiveness of his portrayal of Metamora, in the chief Indian play of that era, was the direct result of his onsite research while living with Indians earlier in his career. (An awed reviewer wrote of the opening performance that “Forrest caught the very manner of their breathing” in his Metamora, testimony to how near and how far Amerindians were to cultural imitators like Forrest and Morgan and those who knew their work.) (Deloria 7; Deloria 8 notes that women did not consistently play Indian

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until the early twentieth century. See Moody, Edwin Forrest, 47–48, for Forrest among the Indians. For the reporter’s words, see Moody (ed.), Dramas from the American Theatre, 1762 –1909, introduction to Metamora, 201). The bond between culture and science in the nineteenth century was one anthropology would help to forge. Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Joseph Henry, Secretary at the Smithsonian for many years, both argued “that the study of the American aborigine should be at the center of scientific research in the United States.” That study was essential, in their view and in Morgan’s, to establish an American history, and it was implicated in the controversy over human origins ripping the American Ethnological Society apart during the 1850s. The League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee, or Iroquois, considered the first scientific account of an Indian nation, did not argue Morgan’s monogenesist position, rather it tried to document the Iroquois kinship tradition and how its rules of hospitality and loyalty worked. The research would have made clear to Morgan the errors in his earlier “initiation ceremony,” and attempts to play Indian at Grand Order meetings through dressing up and mimicking Iroquois songs, dances, and feasts. Morgan’s publications (but not his research) languished for the next decade and a half, while the evolution debate continued and the American Civil War ran its course. Morgan’s next work, The American Beaver, cited several times in Darwin’s The Descent of Man, appeared in 1868, followed (in 1871) by Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity in the Human Family. I will take up Systems of Consanguinity and Morgan’s 1877 Ancient Society together, as I press on toward Engels, modern capitalism, and the role of cultural performance in them (I have discussed “the Indian as American [U.S.] history” in previous work; for Schoolcraft and Henry, see Daniel Noah Moses 75). If the Indian was American history, Amerindians offered the advocates of monogenesis an opportunity to connect Indians to the Old World, reinsert them into a single human narrative, and strengthen the case for a single human origin. Forging this connection became Morgan’s mission from the 1850s. From an historical perspective, a common origin meant that all humans were people, an important argument when we recall that between 1815 and 1914, European colonial control of the planet is estimated to have increased from thirty-five to eighty-five percent. Equally human, anthropologists, historians, and social theorists struggled to explain why people in the nineteenth century did not everywhere display the same levels of what Euro-Americans considered development. Morgan argued, in Systems of Consanguinity and in Ancient Society, that kinship analysis explained social categories, structures, and evolution. Passing from promiscuous groupings to communal then barbaric families then to monogomous (if polygamous) families, human history seemed to Morgan driven by the progressive need to identify property and to control how it was passed on. Amerindians, at the point where Europeans encountered them, were in the clan phase and practiced communism. It was a system that Morgan believed could not survive in the face of a counter-system of private property and the civil

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government created to protect it, a view which reflects John Locke’s concept of contract governance (In addition to the works themselves, see White 257– 268. Locke expresses his idea of contract government in Two Treatises of Government). Anthropologist Morgan’s progressive system of cultural refinement may seem far away from the young man who played Indian, though the two remain as linked in Morgan’s work as Edwin Forrest’s Metamora is linked to William F. Cody’s Buffalo Bill. Philip Deloria has argued Morgan’s view of Indians in The League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee was a protomodern type of “salvage ethnography,” picking over the remains of a wrecked culture before it entirely disappeared, at the same time utilizing knowledgeable Indians (like Ely Parker) as what I might call informed “culture divers.” The distinction, Deloria explains, rests upon being able to see people (present) as distinct from their traditional cultures (vanishing), a difference the activities of theatre people, who vocationally separate the two, regularly confound. In Deloria’s view, if traditional culture made the Iroquois people, for example, “really” Indian, “Morgan could believe that the actual Iroquois really had disappeared.” Ely Parker, however, contested the separation of person and culture, at the same time he verified that cultures change. To be sure, linking culture to science furthered the objectification for which anthropology became infamous— people as past objects of study or as foreign (even when domestic) “others”— thus, as Lewis Henry Morgan created himself a scientific ethnographer in his later works, exploring Indian cultures through time, he participated in the depiction of Indian people, as Deloria puts it, as “in a different temporal zone.” Before turning to the relationship among culture, change, and performance, however, we should consider what else Morgan’s mature writings propounded (Deloria 90 –91 [the latter for the quote], “Others” 93 and temporal schisms, 105 –106 in Deloria). Ancient Society, Morgan’s crowning achievement after the Civil War, refined the kinship system he had earlier described in Systems of Consanguinity into stages of savagry, barbarism, and civilization which Morgan traced worldwide through inventions and technological changes, and through changes in ideas about government, family, and property over time. In Morgan’s view, invention, governance, and family coalesced in wealth/property, the management of which became paramount in human social organization. Though he clearly saw these “lines” as evolutionary, defining savagry, barbarism, and civilization against each other and connecting them to concepts of progress and culture, Morgan did not equate the movement (or progress) of human history with the improvement of the human condition. A staunch advocate both of democracy and the free market system, Morgan saw that the wealthiest ten percent of Americans in the 1870s owned three-quarters of U.S. material wealth. The democracy that characterized Amerindian cultures before 1492, in Morgan’s view, assured a social and material equity unknown to Americans in the 1870s, for, though Morgan thought American society more open than Europe’s, he

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saw all governments, institutions, and laws as instruments for the creation and protection of property. As Morgan put it, a society with the accumulation of property as its aim contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity

of more ancient cultures (Morgan 467). According to his biographer, Lewis Henry Morgan was “the preeminent anthropologist of the years following the Civil War,” indeed, in 1877, Joseph Henry wrote that anthropology itself “‘is at present the most popular branch of science.’” Why this would be so, if it was, might speak to later nineteenthcentury perceptions of alienation and anthropology’s ability to provide a cultural history of social development, and to suggest the impermanent nature of any given social construction. At the same time, Morgan said of the Grand Order of the Iroquois that “‘whatever of interest I have since taken in Indian studies was awakened through my connection with this Indian fraternity.’” Four research trips to the trans–Mississippi west and Canada, questionnaires to government agents and missionaries in the U.S. and around the world, and thorough study of the researches of others were the result of Morgan’s early “connection” to playing Indian. Amerindians remained central among the cultures Morgan studied (and were the only ones he field-researched)— Amerindians make up thirty percent of the evidence in Ancient Society, for example, more than any other data base — and they were exemplary of Morgan’s ideas about cultural evolution (Morgan’s reflection upon the abiding influence of the Grand Order upon his work is quoted in White’s introduction to Ancient Society, xiv). Lewis Henry Morgan’s work never lost the benefits or liabilities of playing Indian. In comparing Morgan and Ely Parker, Philip Deloria casts both as “hybrid figures, living at the over-lapping intersections of Iroquois and white American cultures.” In distinguishing between the two men, Deloria observes that “when Morgan donned Indian costume and Parker wore his suit and tie, they played with the boundaries of self hood and meaning, simultaneously breaking down and creating cultural difference,” not the same difference, however, since “Morgan did not to engage Iroquois social conventions,” whereas Parker and his people “had to negotiate American society.” Political and social power between the two men was not equal, but cultural power may have been more nearly equivalent. The performance analogy for this action might be Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, of which William F. Cody said that without the Indians there would be no show. Similarly, without the Iroquois, Morgan’s work could not have been undertaken or to have provided, in turn, a historical context for Marx and Engels to use (Deloria, 188; for Cody’s statement, see Standing Bear, 260 –264). Ancient Society’s view of cultural development from the origin of man to

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relatively modern times broke with and replaced the biblical account of human history by setting out the achievements of each stage of culture. It also challenged the then-reigning theory of the patriarchal family by replacing it with clans, offering societas (kinship society) against a civitas (civil society) organized around property relations and territorial control. In 1881, the year of Morgan’s death, Karl Marx borrowed a copy of Ancient Society and made notes for a work intended to be called The Ethnological Notebooks, a project cut short by Marx’s death in 1883. Morgan’s emphasis upon the role invention and technological developments played in controlling the means of subsistence appealed not only to Marx, but to Friedrich Engels, who carried Marx’s project to publication in 1884 in Engel’s Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, In Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan. Morgan deserved the title credit because Marx and Engels needed Morgan’s work to fill in the gaps (open since the 1846 publication of The German Ideology) in their account of the history of the division of labor and the emergence of private property (In addition to Engels’ acknowledgment of Morgan, see the introduction by White to Ancient Society and by Leacock to The Origin of the Family, etc. For Daniel Noah Moses’ assessment, see 279). The reception of Morgan’s research turned his “lines” into modernist patterns (recall the title Ancient Society; or, Researches in the Lines of Human Progress). Engels says, in his preface to the first edition of The Origin of the Family, “Morgan in his own way had discovered afresh in America the materialistic conception of history discovered by Marx forty years ago.” In this view, Morgan gave “‘a logical order to the history of primeval society’” equal to Darwin’s ordering of biological history. Ancient Society made clear that governments were created to protect private property, and monogamy to preserve it. Not only class structure, but slavery had developed from ideas of private property, and colonization, internal and external, depended upon governments privileging the possession of territory and the people upon it. Capital had always held labor in servitude, Morgan said in an 1852 address, adding, “‘No government is worthy of the name which suffers capital to reduce labor to dependence.’” He spoke more frankly still in his journal, where Morgan added to the aristocrats and priests who were enemies of the people the necessity for working men to rise against merchants and traders as well. Engels could not have known Morgan’s private journals, and is unlikely to have read his public address. Neither, in any of his writings, does Morgan recognize the class struggles in the U.S. that produced an American branch of Marx’s International Workingmen’s Association in 1868, the textile and coal strikes of the 1870s, the formation of the U.S. Social Democratic party in 1874, the Knights of Labor Convention in 1875, or the reprisals against railroad strikers and the Molly Maguires in the 1870s and 80s. Though not without a political sense or conscience, Morgan was not a dialectician or a consistent materialist. Engels attention has prejudiced Morgan’s reception in those directions at the same time Morgan’s research, indeed, helped set the

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nineteenth century’s perception of human history on a materialist footing (see Engels, 71, for the tribute to Morgan; Engels quoted by White in the introduction to Ancient Society, xxxiv; the quote from Morgan’s 1852 address is taken from this source, xxxvi and see White, xxxvii–xxxviii for the journal). Like other nineteenth-century intellectuals, Engels believed social laws had to be investigated and exposed, lest the world seem governed by chance, by unrecognized powers, or by blind laws. Because evidence about pre-class social relations was rare, Morgan’s research, which collected what was known world-wide about these relations, seemed to Marx and Engels of great importance. Ancient Society showed not only what those relations were, from ancient times to Morgan’s and Engels’ time, but how societies had broken down in the past in the course of omnipresent colonial rule — kin groups and clan lands into individual families and properties, women from status-high positions of power to subservience, communal leadership to the usurpation of power by chiefs, equality to the strengthening of rank and relationships of class. Just as Engels and Marx saw compatibilities between ancient and modern society “at the level of determinate mechanisms,” so Morgan saw them at the level of generally hidden processes. It is processes, rather than things or states, that interact. In Philip Deloria’s view, Morgan “lived on the cusp of modernity,” but, in advancing a spatial historical view of processes, one can speculate whether Morgan pushes past modernity to a counter —(or post, if you like) modern view, shadowing Adorno’s “negative dialectic” (see Leacock’s introduction to The Origin of the Family, 57–58, 61–62 and Deloria, 99). To be sure, even if we interpret the word “progress” in Morgan’s title as “movement” rather than “improvement,” Ancient Society depicts “civilization” as better than “savagry” because “civilized society” allows humans to more effectively control the natural environment. Morgan’s book appeared at a time in the nineteenth century when manifest destiny has been taken as the dominant theme in American culture, indeed, only nine years separate Engels’s 1884 Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State from Frederick Jackson Turner’s 1893 “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” with its triumphalist thesis arguing that a line between “frontier” and “settled” could no longer be determined. What is often lost in a conflation of Turner’s notion of a line and Morgan’s is that the latter’s is a much more spatial view of history than Marx’s or Engels’ (or Turner’s). In addition, Morgan offered a clear view of the cost in equality and equity, to whites no less than to Indians, of what Turner would depict as the march of civilization westward (the connection between geography/environment and social organization has recently been made by Diamond. Also see Turner). The cost of uncontrolled capitalism is captured in many post–Civil War frontier plays, where it manifests itself in white longing for the clear conflicts nature offers, as opposed to the hidden machinations of humans (Frank H. Murdock’s 1872–73 Davy Crockett, for example, or Joaquin Miller’s 1881 Forty-

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Nine, Augustus Thomas’s 1899 –1900 Arizona and Owen Wister’s and Kirke La Shelle’s 1904 The Virginian). These plays also depict an appreciation of nature’s power to regenerate the deaths of self, inflicted by civilization (see Bartley Campbell’s 1879 My Partner or William Vaughn Moody’s 1906 The Great Divide), and they show an understanding of the damage caused by greed for wealth, property, and the accoutrements of civilization even when they support “getting ahead” (Henry C. DeMille’s and Charles Barnard’s 1886 Main Line, for example, or Walter Woods’s 1906 Billy the Kid). These deaths and defeats are mirrored in plays in the loss of kinship with Indians, depicted in late nineteenth/early twentieth century plays sometimes as ruthless savages (Augustin Daly’s 1871 Horizon and David Belasco’s and Franklin Fyles’s 1893 The Girl I Left Behind Me), sometimes as shiftless and lazy (David Belasco’s 1905 The Girl of the Golden West), and sometimes as shiftless on the one hand and nobly self-sacrificing on the other (Edwin Milton Royle’s 1905 The Squaw Man). (The twelve plays cited in the text are representative of popular frontier plays of the last thirty years of the nineteenth and first few years of the twentieth centuries— representative, but not exhaustive. For a thorough-going consideration of such works, see Hall.) The dilemma represented by the prejudice informing “civilized society/ civilization” haunts all of Lewis Henry Morgan’s work. The greater the pressure to valorize “civilization” the more likely was its “savage” predecessor to be denigrated. Read one way, the way the U.S. War Department and the U.S. Department of the Interior/Bureau of Indian Affairs read it, Amerindians lived in Morgan’s description of a state of “barbarism,” from which “civilized” education, technology, monogamy (often the emphasis of missionary work), and capitalism could and had to rescue them. Read another way, however, Amerindians were seen by many in the nineteenth century as among the planet’s last remnants of an older “civilized” (because more democratic) society. Historians since that time have often described this reading as a form of nostalgia for a supposedly more innocent, less market-oriented way of life, but, like Morgan’s Grand Order of the Iroquois, Ancient Society and The Origin of the Family sought a circling back to something hardly established by the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before it was hijacked by market capitalism. I have argued the connection in performance of people who are present (actors, audiences) with cultural acts that vanish in performance (though material manifestations remain — scripts, costumes/regalia, objects, music, as well as memories, ethical and social values, understandings of history, norms for behavior, ways of being, and the like). In a sense, theatrical performance is a form of “salvage ethnography” because it preserves something of a culture that disappears in the act of doing it. Because cultures change, however, they become mutually constitutive, even when — or, perhaps, especially when — the social, ethnic, and gender stakes are not equal. Many scholars of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West have analyzed its operation as a capitalist enterprise. Recent works credit

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it with treating workers equitably, in paying them, housing and feeding them, nursing them, and contracting with them on an equal footing. Few have noted, however, that Indians, the heart of William F. Cody’s enterprise, were contextualized in his Wild West not as white-oriented frontier plays depicted them, but as the remnants of an older civilization, a reminder of the unfulfilled democratic promise of the late eighteenth century and the up-risings of the nineteenth, whose due-bills were manifested in the class struggles of Engels’ and Morgan’s lifetimes. To be sure, Cody’s performers attacked the settler’s cabin and the stagecoach, but they also rose up from the dust of the arena to win the rough rider competition, participate in the Grand Finale, and pose for postperformance cameras in the Wild West campground (where they were photographed playing ping-pong and reading newspapers in street clothes). These activities were changes accompanied by the persistence of cultural values that pre-dated market capitalism, values different from those of the men and women caught up in the labor disputes of the late nineteenth century, but similar in manifesting counter-capitalist values and the assertion, as Morgan and Engels noted, of a different reading of “democracy.”3 Like others who played Indian — the artist George Catlin, anthropologists Frank Cushing and Franz Boas, and many, many others, including “show Indians”— Lewis Henry Morgan took more than “interest” from the Grand Order. Through it, he found a corrective for his ideas (driven by the desire to be more accurate, more authentic, more scholarly) that, over time, changed his understanding of the processes that drive societies and inform the material cultures they produce. Performance enacts processes, of which theatre becomes the selfcritical model. In Morgan’s day, actions flowed freely among the performance of research, oratory, benevolent activities, politics, craftsmanship, and the like, in a way later modernist specialization and professionalism would seek to prevent. To be sure, the fellows of the Grand Order weren’t theatre people, however much they were enacters, nor was that kind of performance Lewis Henry Morgan’s work. His job was to recast what the word “society” meant. He did that in cultural terms and with a full understanding of the limitations of all existing societies. Like Engels and Marx, Morgan called for the next development, “the higher plane” and “the higher form” that revived what had been previously enscripted. Performing those processes revealed their patterns and relationships to other patterns, a process we can readily identify as theatrical. It seems to me that there is something to the number of times people in nineteenth-century America who do non-theatre work “play Indian” that relates to Indians playing Indians and show people playing Indians. There are a number of ways to chase this relationship. Morgan’s work plays the relationship between performance and cultural anthropology, a relationship that engages many of the historiographical issues associated with modernity and the prejudices we and our subjects perform.

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NOTES 1. For the agendas of voluntary associations, see my Theatre Culture in America. For the quote (from one of Morgan’s letters), see Daniel Noah Moses, 53. Though not as numerous in the 1840s as they had been in the 1820s, when a young George Catlin painted Red Jacket in upstate New York, the Seneca had hardly vanished, indeed, connections to the past were close at hand. Parker’s grandfather, Jemmy Johnson, spiritual leader of the delegation, was Red Jacket’s nephew. Ely Parker moved readily between the white and Indian worlds. He later joined the Masons, the Knights Templar, and the New York militia. Parker became aide to Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War and, in 1868, the first Indian Commissioner of Indian Affairs (Daniel Noah Moses, 53). 2. Morgan’s letter to Schoolcraft is quoted in Daniel Noah Moses, p. 53. Parker consulted Schoolcraft and former Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin about Iroquois unanimity policies, which can be interpreted as indicative of “the extent of the Tonawanda’s successful assimilation into white culture and the erosion of their traditional society” (Daniel Noah Moses, 57). Rather than Parker being ignorant about Iroquois rules of unanimity, however, the legal point that needed to be established was what whites knew, that is, whether the Ogden Land Company had committed fraud in 1840 (as well as acted as if it was a treaty-making branch of the U.S. government). For an account of Parker’s and Morgan’s involvement in the land dispute, see Deloria, p. 85. 3. For the argument that cultures are mutually constitutive and socially produced, see Gates, 303 –319. It must suffice here to suggest that Cody’s show offered an opportunity to counter scenarios of vanishing Indian “others” with entirely present Indian “subjects.” For a consideration of Cody’s enterprise in the context of other wild west shows, see L.G. Moses. Fair treatment as a worker is no argument about fair treatment as a theatrical character, a difference which speaks to what audiences perceive. My point in this context is that show Indians and show Indian culture were present in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, not absent, a counter-argument to both written and staged accounts of their vanishing.

WORKS CITED Bank, Rosemarie K. Theatre Culture in America, 1825 –1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Deloria, Philip J. Playing Indian. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005. Engels, Friedrich. The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, in Light of the Researches of Lewis Henry Morgan. Edited by Eleanor Burke Leacock. New York: International Publishers, 1972. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “African American Criticism,” in Redrawing the Boundaries. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1992. Hall, Roger A. Performing the American Frontier, 1870 –1906. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Locke, John. Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by Ian Shapiro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. Mark, Joan. Four Anthropologists: An American Science in Its Early Years. New York: Science History Publishers, 1980. Moody, Richard. Edwin Forrest, First Star of the American Stage. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960. Moody, Richard. ed. Dramas from the American Theatre, 1762 –1909. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966. Morgan, Lewis H. Ancient Society. Edited by Leslie A. White. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1964. Moses, Daniel Noah. The Promise of Progress: The Life and Work of Lewis Henry Morgan. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009. Moses, L. G. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883 –1933. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996. Standing Bear, Luther. My People the Sioux. Lincoln: 1928 rpt; University of Nebraska Press, 1975.

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Stocking, George W., Jr. Victorian Anthropology. New York: Free Press, 1987. Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, Inc., 1966. White, Leslie A. ed. “How Morgan Came to Write Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity,” in Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 42 (1957).

“Money Is Our God Here” The Comedy of Capital in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and Philip Barry’s Holiday JAMES FISHER

The debuts of two plays with single word titles, Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Money (1840) and Philip Barry’s Holiday (1928), are separated by nearly ninety years, yet despite significant stylistic differences, these two unique comedies are connected in theme and character, and otherwise bookend eras of vast and, to many living through them, crushing economic changes. Bulwer-Lytton and Barry wrap skepticism about the worship of money and its impact on matters of the human heart in humorous and romantic adornments, but also with no small measure of social criticism. Set in transitional eras of economic change, fear and confusions burnish the comedy of Money and Holiday, unexpectedly prescient works in which characters are faced with multiple challenges of an economic nature in negotiating relationships. The well-worn theatrical styles and clichés of the melodramatic well-made play form employed by Bulwer-Lytton or the Broadway-style high comedy wit and polish evident in Barry’s approach provide distinct pleasures, but the ways in which two eras are portrayed or, most importantly, the ways in which they mirror the economic dilemmas of the new millennium, are equally significant. Money, which appeared during wrenching social turmoil as the first Industrial Revolution gave way to the second, and Holiday, which reflects the easy money giddiness of the Jazz Age prior to the coming economic collapse of the Great Depression, are, in fact, more than theatrical exemplars of their individual eras. Both plays are historical documents of evolving social attitudes in England and America, shaped in part by their authors, but more by the sweep of history engulfing these works, within which moral, political, and human questions are framed by economic realities. Money is rife with the sentimental situations, melodramatic plot devices, and broadly-conceived characters typical of Victorian drama and literature in general; but it is also a surprisingly cynical meditation on the corrosive powers of commerce and capital on human relations. Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, 22

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published less than a hundred years before Bulwer-Lytton completed Money, describes its background environment in theoretical terms, but decades elapsed before contemporary economic concerns were seen on stages in any overt manner. By the early nineteenth century, Charles Dickens presented the economic inequities of the era in individually human terms and, in a like manner, BulwerLytton was among the first to dramatize for the stage the human face of Smith’s concepts, emphasizing the dehumanizing realities of the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath. Stripping away the outer layers of melodramatic conventions (although these also enhance the play’s themes in some respects) also reveals Bulwer-Lytton’s themes as unexpectedly contemporary. Money, or its lack, is the play’s central concern, with emphasis placed on the destructive effects of class distinctions and poverty on life and love at all economic levels: poor, middle-class, and rich. Bulwer-Lytton ends his play with the expected uplift of a happy ending typical of nineteenth century theatre, not to mention the requisite triumph of good over evil, but these theatrical trappings provide satisfied amusement without obscuring the more disturbing impact of Money’s timeless thesis. What makes Money so potentially valuable to contemporary audiences? To some extent, the answer resides in parallels to be found between the play’s concerns and those of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, particularly from the rise of Ronald Reagan’s “voodoo economics” in the 1980s to the “Great Recession” of 2007–2008 and its aftermath, although economic inequities have consistently influenced dramatists from the dawn of the Industrial Age through the rise of realism. In the wake of Reagan’s election and that of a kindred spirit, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, numerous British and American dramatists and filmmakers responded to what their deregulating proclivities and “trickle down” economic theories wrought and, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, what an age of essentially unchecked capitalism might also bring. Popular culture provides vivid images of these realities, from Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, in which ruthless corporate raider Gordon Gekko espouses a Reaganesque “greed is good” mantra, to Jerry Sterner’s Other People’s Money (1989), a play (and subsequent film) in which another corporate raider, Lawrence Gardner, aka “Larry the Liquidator,” zeroes in on a small company which has supported a community for decades, intending to sell off its assets and shut it down. Dramatists of the decades following Reagan and Thatcher — playwrights as diverse in style and politics as David Mamet, Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, Tom Stoppard, and David Hare — address the bleakness resulting from capitalistic excess and its often negative impact on ordinary lives. Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross (1982), for example, is among the most chilling assaults on the corrosive nature of capitalism and a metaphor for the heartlessness some identified in late twentieth century American society, and depicts an ethics-free battle for survival among cutthroat real estate salesman. Similarly, Churchill’s Serious Money (1987), a dark satire of the financial world, gained

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traction when produced just as a stock market slide in 1987 occurred, but Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures (2009), which presents among its many topics the existential struggle of an aging labor organizer suicidal over what he perceives as his failure to improve the lot of his comrades, captures the present-day individual dilemmas within a society in thrall to money and gripped by corporate excess, but in which the average worker elicits scant concern. This is hardly a new situation. Generations before Kushner, in Awake and Sing! (1935) and Waiting for Lefty (1935), Clifford Odets similarly examined the conflicted lives of ordinary individuals caught up in the economic maelstrom of the Great Depression. A few years later, Arthur Miller also focused on the profound moral contradictions inherent in a capitalistic society in All My Sons (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949). In essence, these and other writers emphasize the human cost of money and its corporate ramifications— and ponder the possibility of change, either evolutionary or revolutionary. Whether depicting an era as cataclysmic as the economic collapse of the early 1930s or of the everyday struggles of the “have nots” in any era, twentieth century dramatists seem inexorably drawn to the inequities inherent in the capitalistic system. Few such plays examine the sweep of economic history directly, but instead trace its impact on individual lives, on relationships, family affairs, the daily struggle for survival, and the dreams of security and freedom central to such plays, and particularly evident in Money and Holiday. In this sense, Bulwer-Lytton’s Money may be seen as a true forbear of numerous contemporary dramas inspired by economic concerns. Consistent with his themes, Bulwer-Lytton wrote himself out of poverty with novels, but these are not only ignored by current scholars and readers but, as exemplified by San Jose State University, Bulwer-Lytton’s name has become synonymous with the worst writing in a competition in which contestants write the most laughably bad first line for a novel (the first line of Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 Paul Clifford— “It was a dark and stormy night...”— is given as the definitive example). Despite this, he captured the imaginations of readers in his time and among his more memorable lines he provided some indelible terminology —“the great unwashed” and “the almighty dollar”—which applied to the economic challenges of his time and to ours. His reforming zeal was never more evident than in Money, which, although billed a comedy, is, in fact, much more. Bulwer-Lytton’s brief career as a dramatist in the late 1830s was inspired by his admiration for actor William Charles Macready, but was truly only a temporary interruption in his fervent political pursuits and novel writing. In 1834, Bulwer-Lytton met Macready at a dinner party and began to write plays with Macready in mind, including Cromwell (1834), The Duchess de la Valliere (1837), The Lady of Lyons; or, Love and Pride (1838), a melodrama set during the French Revolution which, as James L. Campbell, Sr., explains, “focuses on the breakdown of class barriers and the rise of a middle class of

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talent and wealth” (Campbell 14), Richelieu, or the Conspiracy (1839), and The Sea Captain; or, The Birthright (1839). In early June 1840, he confided his desire to write a different style of play in a letter to Macready: The more I think, the more I am persuaded, that since you dislike Tragedy, Pure Comedy would be the thing. [...] What I want is— that all is pathos & height should not be apart from the comic, but belong so essentially to it (as in Don Quixote) that you should almost laugh & weep, ridicule & admire in a breath. My fault is to separate the comic from the grave, but I think I could do much if I once saw how to blend the two in one conception [Bulwer-Lytton 97–99].

To some extent, Bulwer-Lytton would succeed in this with Money. Intrigued by the possibilities, Macready agreed, but suggested reversing Bulwer-Lytton’s original notion of a “rogue” character, preferring a gentleman who is seen as a rogue (or, as it ultimately emerged, a failure) by those around him. By the end of June 1840, Bulwer-Lytton had arrived at a workable plot for a play initially (and tellingly) titled Appearances, expanding on and rethinking Macready’s suggestions. In late August of that year, he wrote to Macready that “I have heightened the individuality of your character — by what I think a happy afterthought & given the whole play a purpose & philosophy it wanted before. This may you conjecture by the Title I now suggest The Egotists or The Sin of the Century” (Bulwer-Lytton 103 –104). A final title change to Money, a blunter identification of the “sin of the century,” as Bulwer-Lytton saw it, established the play’s core concern. Money is set in the hurly-burly of London in 1840, and focuses on Alfred Evelyn, a clerk possessing a witty intelligence and genuine nobility of spirit, but whose innate idealism is giving way to bitterness resulting from painful experiences of the world and his low position in it. Underestimating the wisdom and virtue of Clara Douglas, the woman he loves, Evelyn is crushed when she rejects his proposal of marriage. She loves him deeply, but believes his only option is to marry into money and position if he is to have any hope of fulfilling the potential she sees in him. Clara, who is as poor as Evelyn, has learned from the hard example of her father’s economic failures and the irreparable damage poverty visited on the love between her parents: “A marriage of privation—of penury—of days that dread the morrow! I have seen such a lot! Never return to this again” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 57). Resolute in her love for Evelyn, who is deeply wounded by her rejection, and equally resolute in turning down his proposal, Clara unwittingly hurts him more profoundly than she realizes. He judges her rejection as selfish; as he interprets it, Clara selfishly seeks a better marriage than he can offer. The impasse is broken when Evelyn unexpectedly receives a generous inheritance, causing him to rashly propose marriage to the dim and mercenary Georgina Vesey, daughter of his employer, Sir John Vesey, an avaricious humbug of a merchant who gets by on the appearance of wealth. Early in the play, Vesey announces to Georgina that “as I spend all that I have, I can have nothing to leave you” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 50), heightening her need (and desire) to find security through marriage to wealth.

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Vesey, the dramatic ancestor of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko (the cinematic exponent of the Reaganesque “greed is good” mantra) and the avaricious salesmen of Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, expends his meager income to create an illusion of prosperity; money is all to him, as becomes clear when he says of the suddenly wealthy Evelyn, “I love him as a son — and I look to his money as my own” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 79). Seeming to speak for Gekko (not to mention the Bernie Madof–style Ponzi schemers of twenty-first century Wall Street), Vesey contemptuously states the maxims of greed with the shameless knowledge of who he is and what he represents: “First men are valued not for what they are, but what they seem to be. Secondly, if you have no merit or money of your own, you must trade on the merits and money of other people” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 50). Vesey’s credo excludes the decency and compassion represented by Evelyn, who, at the beginning of the play, and prior to his unexpected legacy, is frantically attempting to borrow a mere ten pounds to see to the care of his aged nurse, or Clara, whose fundamental and abiding goodness and self-sacrifice have no currency in Vesey’s world. Despite his sudden wealth, Evelyn is despairing: “What’s money without happiness?” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 119), he laments, thinking of Clara, who is similarly distraught over the turn of events. Evelyn shows signs of self-destructiveness, wasting part of his fortune on bouts of gambling and becoming increasingly morose about his situation. “When I was poor, I hated the world; now I am rich I despise it” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 66), he cries, realizing his serious error in judgment regarding his rebound betrothal to Georgina. With the desperate hope of breaking his engagement, Evelyn pretends his resources have been squandered and that he is once again penniless. Fortune-hunting Georgina is encouraged by her father to seek a more lucrative match and thus freed of his commitment to Georgina, and coming to an understanding of Clara’s true feelings, Evelyn reunites with her, proclaiming that she has “succeeded where wealth had failed! You have reconciled me to the world and to mankind” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Theatre 120). Money is vividly plotted in the melodramatic sense, with a thick Dickensian texture of caricature, sentiment, and episodic vitality and the atmospheric environment of the populous hell of Victorian London, a setting not unlike that of Oliver Twist or David Copperfield. Bulwer-Lytton’s tone and themes are thematically in spirit with Dickens as well, and are as potentially grim as Evelyn comes as close to despair and total ruin as any Dickens character. As previously noted, the themes of Money are allied with much early to mid-nineteenth century fiction, especially the novels of William Makepeace Thackeray and Dickens, who heard Money read on 17 November 1840 (the play opened at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, on 8 December 1840) and commented that he “had not supposed that Bulwer could do anything so good,” and years later, on 17 April 1848, he further noted in a speech at the General Theatrical Fund dinner that it was the best British comedy since the days of Goldsmith and that it “hit on

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the right vein” (Dickens 163), a vein central to his own work. Dickens had also been present at the first performance of Money and, on 12 December 1840, wrote congratulations to Bulwer-Lytton on its “brilliant reception and success,” describing the play as “so full of real, distinct, genuine character; and now that I am better acquainted with it, I am only the more strongly confirmed in this honest opinion” (Dickens 163). How much Money might have influenced Dickens is difficult to determine, but his admiration of the play must certainly result, in part, from his recognition of the connections to recurring themes in his work. Money had many other admirers in its time. In an 1845 essay on Anna Cora Mowatt’s Fashion, no less than Edgar Allan Poe wrote, “...the drama has not receded: on the contrary it has very slightly advanced in one or two plays by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer” (quoted in Senelick 42). Despite transposing BulwerLytton’s name, Poe recognized that stage art had advanced and, it could be added, presaged the dawn of modernism in drama. Evelyn is Bulwer-Lytton’s “Everyman,” caught up in a profoundly moral struggle to balance the demands (and constraints) of reality with desires of the heart. His idealistic philosophy of life is constantly threatened by embittering experiences with the money-mad world in which he lives and, it is seen, he would almost certainly and inevitably fall into an irreparable bitterness were it not for Clara’s nobility of spirit and the lessons learned from his sudden inheritance. This perspective cast Money as a model for plays by Dion Boucicault, Tom Taylor, and Charles Reade, and more significantly for socially-conscious plays like T. W. Robertson’s Society (1865) and Caste (1867), Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Times (1891), Harley Granville Barker’s The Voysey Inheritance (1905) and Waste (1907), John Galsworthy’s Strife (1909), and, to some extent, the early plays of George Bernard Shaw. Even Money’s original 1840 production was a harbinger of the future. According to Russell Jackson, Money was “staged with the precise and conscientious realism that Macready brought to his historical pieces— including Shakespeare” (quoted in Jackson 310), and not in a broadlyconceived farcical style typical of pre-modern comedies. Money is best understood as a harbinger of the plays of Shaw and, thus, of the contemporary works on commerce and capital by Mamet, Churchill, Kushner, and others. Those few critics and theatre historians who have paid attention to BulwerLytton’s plays are traditionally at odds over the significance and quality of Money. Ernest Reynolds views the play as “a bitter satire on Victorian commercialism” that “over-stepped the bounds of true comedy. The characters are too sharply divided between vice and virtue. The author allows his theme to run away with the dramatic balance of the play, and the satire is so exaggerated that it misses the point” (65). George Rowell tends to agree, but only in that Money “gives the theatre a glimpse of the world of Thackeray’s novels” (The Victorian Theatre 52), and, it might be asserted, Dickens’s novels. Michael R. Booth applauds the “ironic satire” (Theatre in the Victorian Age 179) of Money, and sees it as “an important play that looks forward and establishes theme and tone for

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much succeeding comedy. On the other hand its popular contemporary, Boucicault’s London Assurance (1841), looks backward, modeling itself on the wit, style and characterisation of an older comedy” (Theatre in the Victorian Age 179). Booth rightly underscores that “the main themes of Money— wealth, class, social ambition, and social pride — became the general subject-matter of so much Victorian comedy that the tracing of influences upon individual plays would be repetitious and pointless,” and that Money is “a transitional play and as an influential one it is probably the most important comedy of the nineteenth century” (English Plays of the Nineteenth Century 158 –159). Money did not have significant impact on American comedy which, until the late nineteenth century, was broad, filled with ethnic and racial stereotypes, and generally devoid of overt themes of social significance. Among the relatively few important American comedies of the early twentieth century is Philip Barry’s Holiday. As Donald R. Anderson explains, “Before he was a playwright specializing in the meticulous world of the well-to-do, Philip Barry was a specialist in the evanescent” (Anderson 1), but like his only true peer, S. N. Behrman, Barry was a writer “who came of age during and after the Great War,” and one who regularly “questioned” the values of their era and explored effective ways in which those questions could be “shaped and generated” (Anderson 5). Barry found his voice in high comedies set among the rich who, in his depictions, found being “haves” equally as problematic as being “have nots”; wealth, his plays seem to suggest, did not provide the means for his generation to address their true problems. Among his plays, Holiday offers the fullest expression of this, as well as his attitudes about capital, commerce, and the pursuit of happiness and self-realization. Barry was born into a prosperous family, but one tinged with tragedy at its beginning. His father died from appendicitis within a year of his birth, leaving Barry’s older brother to manage the family’s successful marble and tile business. Uninterested in business pursuits, Barry enrolled in George Pierce Baker’s Workshop 47 at Harvard University to study playwriting following his undergraduate years at Yale. After service in England during World War I, Barry began writing plays in earnest, completing one nearly every year of his life. His first play produced on Broadway, You and I (1923), also offers a first manifestation of Barry’s skepticism of American-style “Big Business” in its depiction of G. T. Warren, a businessman who despite being likeable has “no intellectual or cultural interests, whose entire life revolves around his business” (Lippman 151). Warren is a prototype of several such figures in other Barry plays, including Holiday’s Edward Seton, the patriarch of a wealthy family and a far less likeable exemplar of “Big Business,” a man inclined to measure all things by their cash value or the currency of social position. In fact, Seton is something of a culmination of this character type in Barry’s plays, one of several variations, from the young businessman in The Youngest (1924) through Seth Lord, the casually philandering tycoon in The Philadelphia Story (1939).

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In his comparatively short life (he died at fifty-three), Barry wrote over twenty diverse plays, although he is today remembered for his high comedies of which Holiday was the first and, arguably, the best. Like his contemporaries, Eugene O’Neill and Robert E. Sherwood, Barry had experimented in his early work and was influenced by multiple sources, including Ibsen and Luigi Pirandello, symbolism and expressionism, and various philosophical and religious concepts. Like Johnny Case, the protagonist of Holiday, Barry ultimately sought his own identity, at least in dramatic terms, and found it within his first decade as a playwright and by the time he wrote Holiday. It opened at the Plymouth Theatre in an Arthur Hopkins production on 26 November 1928 for 229 performances, and starred Hope Williams, an actual debutante daughter of a wealthy lawyer, as Linda Seton and Ben Smith as Johnny Case. In an early study of Barry’s work, Monroe Lippman surveys the “sociopolitical” beliefs of the playwright and their expression in Barry’s plays— and Holiday may be the definitive example. Lippman insists that Barry “has written only one play in which the major theme is primarily based on a political, social, or economic issue” (Lippman 151), but Anderson and others, including this author, find his skepticism and challenge to the entitled and the prejudiced of his time as central to his work. Holiday surely centers around economics, and money matters— wealth and its lack, the impact of business values on its leaders, and class are at the heart of no fewer than four other Barry plays, including his earliest produced work, You and I, as well as The Youngest, The Philadelphia Story, and Liberty Jones (1941), curiously all works explored by Lippman. How Lippman or anyone else defines these “themes” matters less in this case than the fact that Barry frequently explored the relationship of money and business matters to human relations, much as Bulwer-Lytton did in Money, albeit to a lesser and more broadly comic effect. It is clear that corporate life and the inherent power resulting from the possession of capital are often the catalysts for Barry’s characters. This is never more true, and never more effectively explored in a Barry work, than in Holiday. Barry is, in essence, closer to the social commitment of Clifford Odets than is apparent at first glance; however, whereas Odets examines in Waiting for Lefty or Awake and Sing!, among other works, the impact of the lack of money or economic power among the lower-middle and lower classes, Barry considers the negative impact of wealth among those in the upper class; as Anderson suggests, with Holiday Barry elevated his “societal focus” from “the very comfortable” of his earliest works to “the very wealthy” (Anderson 45) and, as such, expands his skepticism regarding materialism. Barry’s challenge is, in a sense, greater than that facing Odets given that the problems of the rich are a hard sell to an American audience accustomed to rooting for the underdog in all things. The “haves” are not typically sympathetic except in the most romantic of works— the “poor little rich girl (or boy)” proves difficult to sympathize with since boredom, a lack of direction, romantic disappointments, and the difficulty of

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“finding good help” are, one might reasonably assume, easily assuaged by wealth and privilege. Barry does not ignore such clichés, but treats them with humor while allowing the more profound and, perhaps, universal problems of selfdiscovery and the pursuit of true happiness to take center stage. For Barry, these challenges are easily as difficult for the rich as for the poor, if not more so. Holiday begins as a romantic comedy of a boy and girl in love attempting to win over a forbidding parent, yet within this framework Barry introduces not only the dysfunction of the Seton family, but the more insidious corruptions of wealth, social position, and the way these things are perceived by both the “haves” and the “have nots.” “It’s not about the money, it’s about the game between people” (quoted in Gross 61), Gordon Gekko says in Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, the 2010 sequel to Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street. Certainly the “gaming” of the system is what a man like Edward Seton, the “Big Business” exemplar of Holiday, lives for, but Barry is more concerned with the ways in which money distorts values and destroys individuals, relationships, and families. He assumes his audience understands that Seton is, if not corrupt, at least espousing corrupt values. He uses his family name, position in society, and even his children to maintain his winning position in the economic game, much as Vesey does in Money. For Barry, it is not so much about financial gamesmanship as it is the fact that money or its lack, more often than not, is an impediment to discovering one’s true nature, as demonstrated by Seton’s daughter, Linda, when she suggests that Johnny’s holiday — sitting under a tree and contemplating his soul — may be a greater challenge than playing and winning the financial game, especially when the deck is inevitably stacked or, at best, a dangerous game of chance. Barry believes wealth characterizes an individual and provides built-in expectations, as does poverty. Johnny, like Money’s Alfred Evelyn, has experienced both and, as such, has a perspective that those trapped in one or the other do not possess. Holiday is identified as a high comedy, but not in the usual sense and, as such, Johnny is not the typical protagonist of a high comedy. As Steve Vineberg succinctly states it, characters in a high comedy are “wealthy enough to be able to do what they want (always providing they don’t cross class boundaries)” (Vineberg 163) which, of course, is what Johnny proposes to do in reverse — born into poverty and having worked his way up to the golden threshold of wealth and privilege, he chooses not to continue an ascent most would relish, but to use his newfound wealth to find himself. Linda, the play’s other protagonist, has been born into wealth and is unfulfilled by it; as such, she is also not a typical heroine of high comedy, most of whom are comfortable in their luxury or, at worst, ambivalent about it. Linda, however, is deeply cynical about her entitlements and what these do to people. As evidenced by the play, she has seen it, presumably, destroy her mother, and it is in the process of doing the same to her alcoholic brother, Ned. Linda does not, however,

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immediately grasp that she would be struggling to find herself regardless of whether she is with or without economic means. The existential dilemma of self-discovery in a complicated world, the problems posed by the circumstances in which one is born, and determining one’s place in it, however lightly treated, are as centrally evident in Holiday as in any Odets work, or in those of other like-minded dramatists in the era between the world wars— and, it must be noted — as they are in Money. Holiday functions differently than Money— and is more effective than Barry’s more famous The Philadelphia Story— and, it might be argued, more effective because it is essentially about more. The aforementioned twin dilemmas of Johnny and Linda, and the dissatisfactions they feel with their lot in life and the challenge of articulating that dissatisfaction convincingly to those around them, is much like the situation faced by Evelyn and his Clara in Money. Johnny and Linda go beyond Evelyn and Clara in seeking answers to the unanswerable questions of what life wants of them and what they want of life. The common and universal confusions of taking command of one’s own destiny elevate Holiday beyond the usual bounds of a romantic high comedy. This may explain the comparative lack of revivals of Holiday and the relatively short runs rare revivals have achieved. Despite appearances, Holiday, like Money, is only superficially a romantic comedy in the style of The Philadelphia Story, a true exemplar of that form. The play is, in reality, a dual (his and hers) coming-ofage “dramedy.” Audiences and critics may find it lacks the fun of The Philadelphia Story; it does, and that is the point. At the start of the play, Johnny is immediately disoriented in Seton’s family home. He has come with his newly-acquired fiancé, Julia Seton, the fashionable daughter of the aforementioned Seton. Johnny jokes that he would have proposed sooner had he known that Julia was heir to the Seton fortune, but, in fact, his reaction is more surprised than enthused, as becomes clear when Julia suggests that “you’re going to make millions, yourself !” (11). “Oh, no, I’m not” (11), he replies, setting off a battle of wills between the two. Johnny is even more shocked to learn that Julia is one of “those Setons” (12), the princess of a fictional family with wealth approximate to that of the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, or Astors. References to Julia’s grandfather, who Barry presents as a nineteenth century robber baron, are both admiring and disparaging, but he is now deceased and his vast fortune is managed by his son, the father of Julia, Ned, and Linda. Johnny begins to realize that Julia sees him as “a budding young Captain of Industry” (12), in the mode of her grandfather and father, something he has no intention of becoming. Johnny also discovers that the Setons are a deeply troubled family despite the façade of wealth and public respectability. Julia covers for Ned, acknowledging that he is “inclined to drink too much,” but that “he’ll outgrow it” (15). She is also deeply embarrassed by Linda, describing her to Johnny as a “curious girl” who has “developed the queerest — I don’t know — attitude toward life. I

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can’t make her out. She doesn’t think as we do at all, any more,” adding that “Father’s worried sick about her” (15). When Linda appears and learns of the impending nuptials, she is surprised, but increasingly pleased as she takes full measure of Johnny. In a lighthearted vein, she slowly reveals her attitude about her particular gilded cage: “Well, young man, I hope you realize what you’re getting in for [...] the general atmosphere of plenty, with the top riveted down on the cornucopia” (17), and as their conversation continues, Linda becomes more blunt, stating frankly that “money is our god here” (20). Johnny keeps his responses light as he senses Julia’s mounting annoyance. He and Linda fall into an easy banter, with Johnny playing the poor boy: JOHNNY: (Goes to her) I have in my pocket now, thirty-four dollars and a package of Lucky Strikes. Will you have one? LINDA : Thanks. (She takes a cigarette from him)— But no gilt-edged securities? No rolling woodlands? JOHNNY: I’ve got a few shares of common stock tucked away in a warm place. LINDA: — Common? Don’t say the word! [20].

Ned joins in the joshing as they prepare Johnny for his first encounter with Seton, with Linda jokingly warning that without money or social position winning Julia’s hand is a lost cause. Their merriment offends Julia, but Linda, who is won over by Johnny, offers to throw a New Year’s Eve party to celebrate the engagement. She becomes wrapped up in the idea of a party that will be the opposite of the lavish formal social event her father is likely to insist on. Fixating on the party as a mild act of rebellion (or liberation), Linda envisions a cozy affair in their old play room, a unique space in the house and one that Barry takes pains to identify as the favorite refuge of their late mother (and now of Linda). Julia agrees reluctantly, wanting only to end the jocularity before Seton arrives. She rushes off to make arrangements, leaving Johnny and Linda to become better acquainted. Linda is impressed as Johnny reveals aspects of his background and his dream of taking time away from the work-a-day grind he was forced into from the age ten. “Life must be swell,” he passionately states, “when you have some idea of what goes on” (26). Linda admits that she, too, has been trapped in an unhappy existence compared to which “the last man in a chain-gang thoroughly enjoys himself ” (26). Johnny and Linda are bolstered to discover they are kindred spirits and Barry weaves their terse dialogue to allow each to reveal their own personal attitudes. Speaking to each other, they are also speaking to themselves: JOHNNY: Mine is a simple story: I just want to save part of my life for myself. There’s a catch to it, though. It’s got to be part of the young part. LINDA: You’ll never get on and up that way. JOHNNY: All right, but I want my time while I’m young. And let me tell you, the minute I get hold of just about twenty nice round thousands, I’m going to knock off for as long as they last, and — LINDA: Quit? JOHNNY: Quit. Retire young, and work old. That’s what I want to do [27].

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Linda mistakenly believes her sister is more in sympathy with her view of things (and Johnny’s) than she actually is, and otherwise displays a self-sacrificing approach to her siblings that hampers her own search for identity. Protective of the largely helpless Ned, who is only able to defend himself from Seton and Julia with a rapier-like wit they tend to ignore, and believing she and Julia stand together against what their father represents, Linda puts herself and her desires second to Ned and Julia. This becomes increasingly challenging as her feelings for Johnny grow against her conscious will. To Linda, it would be unthinkable to become Julia’s rival, even when treated dismissively by Julia, who goes back on her promise to let Linda throw an engagement party, and as she sees the pressures Julia and Seton place on Johnny to abandon his long-held dream. When Seton (who is identified in the text as Edward) arrives in the midst of Linda and Julia’s sparring, he begins what he believes is a subtle interrogation of Johnny, hoping to discover if the young man possesses the necessary social status to make him a suitable mate for Julia — and to be certain the young man is not a gold digger. Johnny politely responds, but has no intention of bending the truth to improve his standing. He finally offers a blunt account of his Dickensian background: JOHNNY: My mother and father died when I was quite young. My father had a small grocery store in Baltimore, which he was never able to make a go of. He left a number of debts which my mother worked very hard to clear up. I was the only child, and I wasn’t in a position to help very much. She died the May before my sixteenth birthday. (LINDA is listening with growing interest.) EDWARD : But how sad. JOHNNY: It was pretty sad.— I hadn’t any connections, except for an uncle who’s in the roofing business in Wilmington. He wasn’t much good, though — he was inclined to get drunk — still is— LINDA : We have an uncle like that, but he keeps off roofs. JOHNNY: (Smiles at her, and continues)— But I was what’s called a bright boy, and I managed to wangle a couple of scholarships. They helped a good deal in school and college, and there were always plenty of ways to make up the difference. In term-time I usually ran eating-joints and typed lecture notes. In summers I sold aluminum pots and pans—[...] EDWARD : (It is all he can say) Admirable! JOHNNY: No— it simply happened to be the only way to get through [34 –35].

Linda’s open sarcasm directed at her father expresses much of Barry’s cynical response to the icons of “Big Business” explored in earlier works—and occasionally in post–Holiday plays. For example, Richard Winslow, the young businessman at the center of Barry’s The Youngest, struggles to maintain his individuality; he is not unlike Johnny (or Linda) in an innate refusal to blindly conform to the expectations of others, and in a desire to possess more of his life for himself, as when he insists, “What the world needs is more leisure ’n’ fewer alarm clocks— less do-as-you’re told ’n’ more do-as-you-please” (quoted in Lippman 152). He is even more pointed when he takes on the elitism of the Setons of the world:

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To Have or Have Not ...to be different doesn’t mean to be inferior. There’s no such thing as inferiority, anyway, neither in individuals, nor in towns, nor in nations.... Being different. That’s what makes life worth living! America’s kept her individuality — Where’d she be if she hadn’t? Let’s keep ours! And let’s see this inferiority thing as the myth that it is— a myth invented by tyrants— to make themselves superior! And oh, my dear fellow-citizens, if any of you ever feels it, mind you treat it as young America did: declare yourself — equal —free — independent! [quoted in Lippman 152].

Lippman finds Barry’s “allusions to Business” to be “oblique rather than direct” (Lippman 151), but in fact, the playwright’s assault on “Big Business,” as represented by Seton (and the odious Seton cousins, Seton and Laura Cram, secondary characters in Holiday), is overt and, in its way, merciless. Seton, in fact, borders on caricature (not unlike Bulwer-Lytton’s Vesey): self-important, comfortable in his deep belief in his innate superiority, scornful of the pleasures of life (unless he can own them like a possession), often coldly unfeeling about the pain felt by his children (particularly Ned and Linda), and unrelenting in having his way. He seems, on the surface, somewhat less human than the other characters of the play. This is certainly intentional, to a point; as with Money’s Vesey, Seton is kept at a distance, a figure with whom the more human characters can be compared in a favorable light. However, Seton is no mere Babbitt or autocrat — he bends enough to accept Johnny as Julia’s fiancé, despite what are certainly misgivings about a young man whose background, in Seton’s world, is unsuitable. He is clearly distressed about the differing rebellions of Ned and Linda, but not enough to attempt to understand what makes them tick. He is only disturbed at their failures to live up to his expectations or at the potential embarrassment they pose to his professional or social life. Julia pleases because she consistently accedes to his wishes. Barry allows Seton, who views Johnny and Linda’s goals as merely those “of the seventeen-year-old variety” (91), to make his opposing case for the desirability of wealth and position. Seton does not, however, sway Johnny, despite considerable pressures applied, or Linda, who is convinced she is a prisoner in a gilded cage. In the 1938 Columbia Pictures film version of Holiday, starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn as Johnny and Linda, screenwriters Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman add a brief scene in which Seton expresses his hopes for Julia’s happiness. It adds a humanizing dimension, but Barry did not intend it and no such moment is to be found in the original play (An earlier, little-known film version, released by Pathé Pictures in 1930, hews closer to the original play in this and other respects). Lippman rightly posits that Holiday was written and first produced in a period when “the prevalent attitude toward Big Business was primarily one of respect” (Lippman 152), a far cry from what it would be after the Stock Market crash and, certainly, what it is in the twenty-first century. As such, Barry’s view, as spoken by Johnny, is counter to that of much of his audience and, as such, may well have seemed subversive in 1928, a period in which “not a great deal of serious social protest”

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(Lippman 152) was yet seen on American stages. This, too, would change significantly within a few short years. Holiday takes a decidedly darker turn in its second act, set in the aforementioned playroom. The grandeur and formality of the environment of the first act is gone, replaced by a very different room as informal as the rest of the Seton mansion is formal. This is where Linda has planned her party for Johnny and Julia — the only other guests are Nick and Susan Potter (two free spirits who happen to be mutual friends of Johnny and Linda), Ned, and a few others who never arrive. Linda’s plan, ignored by Seton and Julia, has been brushed off in favor of a large, formal dress New Year’s Eve ball in another part of the mansion. Julia appears hoping to find the absent Linda, who refuses to attend the ball, but she instead encounters a tipsy Ned, angry on Linda’s behalf. Julia defensively insists that Linda “should have realized that Father couldn’t announce my engagement without some fuss” (41–42) and pleads with Ned to convince Linda to put in an appearance at the ball. Embarrassed only at the lapse in manners caused by Linda’s absence, Julia is clearly unconcerned about Linda’s genuine distress. Ned refuses and continues to drink despite Julia’s protestations. “It’s my protection against your tiresome friends. Linda’s out of luck, she hasn’t one” (42), he sneers. The specter of Seton’s late wife — the mother of Julia, Linda and Ned — hangs heavily over the playroom, which was obviously her safe zone away from the expectations of her husband’s world and, presumably, his controlling nature. As Ned bluntly states, “Drink to Mother, Johnny — she tried to be a Seton for a while, then gave up and died.— Drink to Mother —” (44). Few specifics are offered about Mother or her relationship with Seton, although Linda’s resentment of her father seems somehow connected to their relationship. Despite the ball, Linda proceeds with her little party. She and Johnny discuss circumstances with the Potters, who share the general disdain for Seton’s acquisitive ways and rigid social proprieties. However, Nick draws a parallel between Grandfather Seton and Linda, suggesting that she is more like her dreaded forebear than she wishes to believe: “He wasn’t satisfied with the life he was born into, so he made one for himself. Now, you don’t like his five-story log cabin so you’re out in the woods again with your own little hatchet” (51). Linda refuses to see the connection and Johnny rejects Seton’s dismissive attitude about what he and Linda are seeking. For Johnny, life is “no damn good at all if someone else takes you on it. Damn it, there’s no life any good but the one you make for yourself ” (51). Breaking away from the work-a-day world is no simple matter for most people, as Susan acknowledges of her free-spirited existence with Nick: “I don’t know quite what we’d do if we had to earn our own living” (52). Linda has hefty inheritances from her mother and grandmother, a safety net should Seton otherwise disinherit her, but Johnny has had to earn every cent of the price of his potential freedom. When good luck emerges in the form of news of a successful business venture, Johnny stands on the threshold of realizing his dream.

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The remaining obstacles are Julia, her wishes for him and their life together, and the expectations of being a Seton. In a climactic confrontation with Seton, late in the play’s second act, Johnny states his wishes directly: JOHNNY: You see, I’m a kind of queer duck, in a way. I’m afraid I’m not as anxious as I might be for the things most people work toward. I don’t want too much money. EDWARD : Too much money? JOHNNY: Well, more than I need to live by. (He seats himself facing them and begins eagerly, hopefully, to tell them his plan)— You see, it’s always been my plan to make a few thousands early in the game, if I could, and then quit for as long as they last, and try to find out who I am and what I am and what goes on and what about it — now, while I’m young, and feel good all the time.— I’m sure Julia understands what I’m getting at — don’t you, Julia? [67].

Julia does not understand and Johnny finds himself in an increasingly defensive position as Seton and Julia press him to put off his “holiday” and re-enter the business world. Critics have pointed to “holes” in Barry’s play in regard to Johnny’s “desire to have fun,” which they find “somewhat vague” (Canby). This is certainly true (and of Linda’s fear of a deadness of spirit she believes results from a materialistic life), but surely Barry’s intention is to allow his audience to fill in this blank with their own dream of escape from the treadmill of materialism. Johnny acknowledges himself that his dream may be a bust, but also insists that what he truly seeks is self-knowledge. Evelyn of Money learns about the world and his heart’s desire; Johnny aims to learn about himself. Seton scoffs at the thought that Johnny would live as a “gentleman of leisure,” but Johnny begs to differ: “Even if it turns out to be just one of those fool ideas that people dream about and then go flat on — even if I find I’ve had enough of it in three months, still I want it. I’ve got a feeling that if I let this chance go by, there’ll never be another for me” (67–68). Seton is appalled, but Julia shifts strategies and convinces her father to let her handle matters. Left alone with Johnny, Julia argues against what she persists in understanding only as his resistance to work: “I’ve known quite a few men who don’t work — and of all the footling, unhappy existences— it’s inconceivable that you could stand it — it’s unthinkable you could” (69), Johnny holds his ground, but his mounting disappointment in Julia’s resistance and his realization that she is not who he thought she was, colors his response: JULIA : But you haven’t an idea yet of how exciting business can be — you’re just beginning! Oh, Johnny, see it through! You’ll love it. I know you will. There’s no such thrill in the world as making money. It’s the most — what are you staring at? JOHNNY: Your face. JULIA : (She turns away) Oh — you won’t listen to me — you won’t hear me —[...] JULIA : — Wait till next year — or two years, and we’ll think about it again. If it’s right, it can be done, then as well as now.—You can do that for me—for us— can’t you? (A moment. Then he slowly brings her around and looks into her eyes.)

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JOHNNY: You think by then I’d have “come around.” That’s what you think, isn’t it?— I’d have “come around”—[70 –71].

This is indeed what Julia thinks, but Johnny goes along with the announcement of the engagement, despite misgivings on both sides. At this point, Linda, with prodding from Ned, admits her true feelings (“I love the boy, Neddy” [77]) and struggles to keep her distance from Johnny. He is drawn to Linda, yet his sense of right and wrong will not permit him to speak his feelings directly, and Linda, similarly at war with her feelings, will not violate her loyalty to her sister. The engagement announcement comes at midnight on New Year’s as Linda is left alone in the playroom with Ned, who has passed out. After a few dispirited moments, she steels herself and, for Julia’s sake, makes an appearance at the ball. The third act finds a rapidly changing situation. Johnny has disappeared and Julia is imperiously pretending nothing is amiss. Linda, meanwhile, is desperately trying to locate Johnny with the help of Nick and Susan. She cannot understand Julia’s position, believing that Johnny can find a way to make all things right if only he can be found. Her determination wavers, especially when Susan challenges her about her own feelings: Susan: But you see, the things you like in him are just what she can’t stand, Linda. And the fate you say he’ll save her from is the one fate in this whole world she wants. Linda: I don’t believe it.— Even so, she loves him — and there’s been a break — and wouldn’t you think she’d at least be woman enough to hang on —hang on! Susan: I don’t know. There’s another one who isn’t woman enough to grab. Linda: (There is a silence. Finally LINDA speaks)— I don’t quite get you, Susan [83 – 84].

When Julia appears, Linda tries to convince her that “you can’t stand this sort of life forever” (89) and cites several peers who have unraveled in various ways from the hollowness of a life of ease without purpose. As Linda sees it, they have “— Nothing left to do or want — that’s why — and no insides! There’s not a poor girl in town who isn’t happier than we are — at least, they still want what we’ve got — they think it’s good” (89). Julia shocks Linda, insisting, “I think it’s good” (89). Reinforcements arrive when Seton appears to smugly suggest that Johnny’s “outlook has merely become — somewhat confused” (90), and that he and Julia intend to correct his views. When Seton insists that Johnny’s attitudes are “deliberately un–American” (90) a bemused Linda can only respond that Johnny “can’t quite believe that a life devoted to piling up money is all it’s cracked up to be.— That’s strange, isn’t it — when he has us, right before his eyes, for such a shining example” (91). Linda’s sarcasm ineffectively masks the fact that she sees herself as a “misfit in her own family” who discovers “with intensifying fervency and certainty as the play goes on, that she’ll never discover who she is until she can get away from her family” (Vineberg 165). Linda as a character is unquestionably related to The Philadelphia Story’s Tracy Lord, but Tracy is, for much of that play, more Julia than Linda. Unbending

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and unforgiving, “Tracy is a mass of prejudices” (Vineberg 167), although she is ultimately transformed by facing and embracing her flaws and becomes, if only by the final scenes of the play, something closer to Linda. Linda is, from the moment she appears, the person she is at the end of the play, only strengthened and liberated by Johnny’s example (and her feelings for him) and the knowledge she gains about the true motives of her sister and father. Her principles are as strong as Tracy’s, but far more compassionate and open-hearted. As Tracy is bluntly told by her ex-husband, Dexter, “You’ll never be a first class woman or a first class human being till you have learned to have some small regard for human frailty” (Barry, The Philadelphia Story 71). Linda has long since learned this lesson — she longs for a way to put herself to service for something bigger than herself and her wealth, as she has tried to do with her siblings. Seton and Julia are oblivious to such concerns and, as such, are unable to access Linda’s true worth as a human being. When Ned confronts Linda about her feelings, she bursts forth to admit that thanks to Johnny, “I feel alive, and I love it. I feel at last something is happening to me. But it can’t go anywhere, so it’s like living on —your stuff. I’ve got to get over it” (95). She views Julia as a kindred spirit gone astray, and believes her to be a loving sister, a view abruptly debunked by Ned: “you’re twice as attractive as Julia ever thought of being. You’ve got twice the looks, and twice the mind, and ten times the guts” (95). Johnny’s return interrupts them and Linda is distressed to see that “The fun’s gone out of you, Johnny” (97). He explains that he will compromise (in other words, give in) and Linda is gently comforting, causing Johnny to suddenly blurt out: “You care more what happens to me than she does” (98). Linda demurs, but continues to support Johnny’s position when he finally faces Seton and Julia. He says he will accept a lucrative job offer: JOHNNY: Julia said a year or two. I’ll stay with them three years. I’ll work harder than ever I’ve worked before. I’ll do everything I can to make a success of it. I only ask that if at the end of the three years I still feel that it’s wise to quit for a while, there won’t be any more objections. EDWARD : I doubt if by that time there’ll be reason for any. JOHNNY: We’ll have to see about that, sir [100].

The compromise does not last long. Discussion of wedding plans are immediately taken over by Seton with Julia’s acquiescence. Johnny finally can stand it no longer, declaring, “— I’m back where I was now. I can see now that it’s got to be a clean break, it’s simply got to” (103). When Julia takes her father’s side and states bluntly, “I don’t quite see myself with an idler for a husband,” Johnny is similarly blunt: “I suppose the fact is, I love feeling free inside even better than I love you, Julia” (104). Johnny politely thanks Seton and bids farewell. Linda attempts to comfort Julia with the possibility that Johnny will eventually return, but Julia is having none of it: “What do you think I am? Do you think all I’ve got to do with my time is to persuade a — a lightweight like him that

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there’s something to life but having fun and more fun?” (105). Linda is stunned by Julia’s attitude and demands a definitive answer that she already knows: “You don’t love him!” (105). Finding the path suddenly clear, she makes a hasty departure, despite the outraged reaction of her father, and states her case to Julia: LINDA : (Turns to Julia)— You’ve got no faith in Johnny, have you Julia? His little dream may fall flat, you think — yes? So it may! What about it? What if it should? There’ll be another — the point is, he does dream! Oh, I’ve got all the faith in the world in Johnny. Whatever he does is all right with me. If he wants to sit on his tail, he can sit on his tail. If he wants to come back and sell peanuts, Lord how I’ll believe in those peanuts! [107].

Despite the enduring popularity of The Philadelphia Story, Holiday is, from a thematic standpoint, a far more compelling work in regard to the twin dilemmas facing its central characters and its inherent critique of a capitalist society on a prosperous high in the 1920s. History has cast an interesting light on Holiday, which was produced only eleven months before Black Friday and the start of the Great Depression. Its characters are poised on a precipice: the Setons, for all their wealth and social position, may find themselves in significantly reduced circumstances and may experience the end of the rarified world they live in within mere months of the action of the play. Surely they are wealthy enough to withstand the coming economic tsunami, but things will never be the same (although The Philadelphia Story, written at the other end of the Depression, presents the Lords living much as the Setons do in Holiday; perhaps, for the mega-rich, no social change, however cataclysmic, can truly alter their circumstances). Certainly their insulated social world will change, but they remain protected from the deprivations to be faced by the middle and lower classes. And what of Johnny and Linda’s “holiday”? How will the new social circumstances change their plans and influence their “coming-of-age” journey? There is no clear answer, as Barry surely intends, although various scenarios may be imagined. Anderson notes that Barry “leaves us on the edge of discoveries that do not seal our assurances and allow us to leave the play comfortably behind” (Anderson 53). Indeed, but Linda (with, it must be acknowledged, the security provided by the money her grandmother and mother have left her), has made her discovery and follows Johnny to pursue it as he pursues his. Barry could not have envisioned the changes to come with the Stock Market crash, even in his most skeptical moments about the money-mad values of his time. However, considering the play today, it emerges as a document of its time and invites an audience to imagine what happens to the Setons and their lifestyle and, more importantly, to Johnny and Linda. Clearly their holiday, in its most obvious sense, will end prematurely, but how will they respond? Will they build a new world and subscribe to new views or retreat into the comparative security of what will certainly be a surviving but diminished Seton fortune? In the aftermath of the crash, will the story of Johnny and Linda lead to what Barry presumes

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will be a romantic conclusion, with two happy lovers of like minds setting out vigorously on an unknown journey into an unknowable future? Or will it be a rude awakening — a next morning hangover following a glut of freedom and fun, leaving the question of “what next?” That “what next?” element also shadows the situation of Alfred Evelyn and Clara Douglas. Like Johnny and Linda, they have found love and, presumably, happiness once freed from the obstacles of money or its lack. Johnny and Linda might well share Evelyn’s proclamation, “I’ve not been rich and poor for nothing” (Rowell, Nineteenth Century Plays 112), and the lessons the two couples learn — and those taught to the audiences of both plays— are of the potential catastrophes of both wealth and poverty if the power and illusion of both are not well understood.

WORKS CITED Anderson, Donald R. Shadowed Cocktails: The Plays of Philip Barry from Paris Bound to The Philadelphia Story. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010. Barry, Philip. Holiday. A Comedy in Three Acts. New York: Samuel French, 1928. _____. The Philadelphia Story. New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1941. Booth, Michael R. ed. English Plays of the Nineteenth Century. III. Comedies. Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1973. _____. Theatre in the Victorian Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bulwer-Lytton, Edward. Letters of Bulwer Lytton to Macready 1836 –1866. Newark, NJ: The Carteret Book Club, 1911. Campbell, James L. Sr. Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Boston, MA: Twayne, 1986. Canby, Vincent. “The Wee Problems of the Seriously Rich in the Frenzied 20’s,” New York Times (4 December 1995). Dickens, Charles. The Letters of Charles Dickens. The Pilgrim Edition. Volume Two. 1840 –1841. Edited by Madeline House and Graham Story. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Ganzel, Dewey. Bulwer-Lytton As Dramatist. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Dissertations, 1958. Gross, Daniel. “Bored Room,” Newsweek (27 September 2010). Jackson, Russell. ed. Victorian Theatre: The Theatre in Its Time. New York: New Amsterdam, 1989. Lippman, Monroe. “Philip Barry and His Socio-Political Attitudes,” The Quarterly Journal of Speech 42/2 (April 1956). Macready, William Charles. Macready’s Reminiscences, and Selections from his Diaries and Letters, Volume II. Edited by Sir Frederick Pollock. London, 1875. Reynolds, Ernest. Early Victorian Drama (1830 –1870). Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons, 1936. Rowell, George. ed. Nineteenth Century Plays. Second Edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. _____. The Victorian Theatre. A Survey. London: Oxford University Press, 1967. Senelick, Laurence. ed. The American Stage: Writing on Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner. New York: Library of America, 2010. Vineberg, Steve. “Philip Barry and the Yankee Aristocracy,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism XV/2 (Spring 2001).

Amateur Economies Widowhood and Marriage in Drama for Amateur Performers EILEEN CURLEY

Before working herself into a hysterical tizzy about a pair of boots left behind a curtain in a hotel room, Mrs. Bellamy, the widowed heroine in Mrs. Burton N. Harrison’s Behind a Curtain, proudly proclaims that she shall “never marry again! What! Sacrifice my life of enchanting independence for the sake of a man!”(50). Yet, by the end of the monologue, Bellamy has decided that marriage to a formerly disagreeable suitor is preferable to life as a widow. This piece, along with the other plays in Harrison’s Short Comedies for Amateur Actors, follows a pattern wherein a young and often financially secure female character chooses to marry or remarry to ensure male protection, albeit sometimes protection against inconsequential threats like boots and mice. Economic issues relevant to the amateurs who often performed these plays as charity fundraisers figure prominently in most of the pieces, including the negotiation of household budgets for newlyweds and the expense of tokens that show a spouse’s love. Financially secure widows appear in a number of plays, and yet those widows are encouraged to re-enter marriage and renounce economic freedom and social independence. Indeed, marriage is often depicted as a means to personal financial and physical security, while trinkets and diamonds are seen as a means of displaying love. The presentation of household economies in these plays predictably reinforces traditional gender roles, reflecting contemporary traditions, and thereby undermines the agency provided to amateur women by the performance experience. While plays selected for amateur performances more often than not seem to have been comedies, there are enough outliers in and enough performances that have been omitted from the historical record to make drawing any real global conclusions about what type of drama was regularly performed in amateur theatricals difficult. Plays published for nineteenth-century amateur performers varied from adaptations and translations of commercial scripts, as well as pieces written expressly for amateurs.11 The latter more often appear in 41

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anthologies of amateur drama and tend toward comediettas and quaint pieces, which could suggest that amateurs were performing socially acceptable scripts, although Pamela Cobrin has explored the subversive potential of some parlor drama (see Cobrin). For other key treatments of parlor drama, see also Dawson and Halttunen); however, commercial presses were also publishing lists of plays available for amateur performance which include contemporary commercial scripts of every genre. The historical record also shows that amateur performers chose a variety of scripts for their performances, and those plays were not necessarily those designed specifically for amateur performance. Society news and amateur drama columns in New York City newspapers, for example, reveal a dizzying array of performance content, ranging from minstrel shows to melodramas, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas to contemporary commercial plays, and Shakespeare to Sheridan. What makes Mrs. Burton N. Harrison’s plays particularly useful to historians is Harrison’s relationship with New York city amateur performers in the 1880s and 1890s who regularly performed her works in public, as well as her later commercial success as a novelist and playwright. As we know that her plays were regularly performed by amateurs on commercial stages, and we know that the women who were performing them were skating on the lines of propriety — some turning professional while others were using amateur theatricals as cover to hide their aspirations at forbidden professional careers— Harrison’s comedies and her choice to translate and anthologize these specific treatments of marriage, widows, and financial relationships provide an interesting counterpoint to the production habits of the performers. Felicia Hardison Londré argues that a woman dramatist at the turn of the century needed to prove that her “essential femininity—her attractive appearance, her social position as a wife, her ability to run a household, her maternal devotion, and so forth —had not been impaired by her writing career” (Londré 131). Throughout her writing career, Harrison certainly followed this model, publishing under Mrs. Burton N. Harrison rather than Constance Cary Harrison, continuing to serve as a hostess and patroness for numerous social events, and incorporating amateur charity theatricals within this social network. While she does not appear to have performed in her plays, the friends who did stage her dramas also negotiated a similar balance between femininity and power, as did many women who used charity work besides theatricals as a means of acquiring a public voice (see Ginzberg and Barker-Benfield; for amateur charity theatricals, see Curley). Harrison’s amateur performers represent an intriguing cross-section of women on the verge of the new century: the unmarried Lawrence sisters aspired to professional careers but satisfied themselves with staging many of Harrison’s plays over more than a decade as charity theatricals; Elsie de Wolfe and Mrs. James Brown Potter, on the other hand, courted intense public scorn for their decisions to turn professional—Brown Potter moreso than de Wolfe because she turned her back on her husband, child, and social position. This negotiation of feminine

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power and position also pervades the dramas in Harrison’s collection, as they undercut women who are in traditionally volitional widow roles with humor and plot machinations that place the women firmly back within a domesticated and subservient role. The plays and subject matter chosen by Harrison could easily be seen as part of the women’s collective attempts to balance public perception of their behaviors. Indeed, the prior success of her plays in the hands of New York amateurs such as Mrs. Brown Potter, Elsie de Wolfe, Alice and Rita Lawrence, and others is seen as a selling point for Harrison, who introduces her plays by claiming that amateurs can successfully perform them: The five short comedies selected for this volume are easily within the scope of intelligent amateurs. They have been tested and approved as suitable for this purpose by various audiences assembled in private houses, and by the larger hearing accorded on the occasions noted with each play [Harrison i].

As the plays were part of the repertoire of Harrison’s circle of amateur friends, they were indeed regularly performed as charity fundraisers at commercial theatres and public halls across the New York metropolitan area in the 1880s and 1890s. Their successful fundraising with these plays ensures their viability as performance pieces and charity fundraisers, but also as vehicles which other amateurs can stage without tainting their own images and reputations. Harrison also sells her pieces to the reader by remarking that her choice to translate these short French farces is a benefit to amateurs, because they will “have the benefit of an untrodden field, and be spared comparison with professional predecessors” (Harrison i). Harrison’s concern here is not for the content of the plays, except insofar as successfully acting for the duration of a full-length play is significantly harder than in a one-act, but rather she wants her amateur performers to avoid comparison with professional performers, as would happen with a commercial piece (Harrison i ). “Few amateur aspirants bear in mind that, in selecting for performance the established dramas identified with the names of artists who have successfully interpreted them, they are exposing themselves to a two-edged sword of criticism” (Harrison i). Indeed, she neither dissuades the purchasers of her plays from performing what is popular in contemporary theatre nor avoids what is commercially successful in her selection of plays. Harrison’s career as a playwright was overshadowed by her later and more successful career as a novelist, and yet her comic plays certainly fit within the broader dramatic and playwriting traditions of the end of the nineteenth century. Engle characterizes this period as “governed by popular melodrama, musical theatre, light comedies, and burlesque” in her study of American women playwrights at the turn of the twentieth century (Engle 28), and Harrison’s forays into playwriting for amateur and professional theatre both reveal an understanding of commercial trends as well as participation in the tradition of translating foreign texts. Her most successful play was an 1883 adaptation and

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translation of a Scribe comedy, A Russian Honeymoon, and the 1901 The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch also follows commercial production patterns towards realism and social critiques. A Russian Honeymoon, prior to becoming a vehicle for professionals, was produced at the Madison Square Theatre by the same amateur performers who regularly performed works from her Short Comedies for Amateur Players. The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch, after being the source of a legal authorship dispute between David Belasco and Harrison, was staged first by Minnie Maddern Fiske and not by amateurs and was made into a 1914 film; by 1895, however, Harrison’s amateur compatriots had all either died, moved to Europe or turned professional, and her writing career was sufficiently developed that perhaps the professional stage was a more logical place to debut work. The four plays and one monologue in Short Comedies for Amateur Players combine a number of these dramatic and social traditions. As with Harrison and her amateur performers, the female characters are potentially powerful and yet never able to fully embody their aspirations without succumbing to traditional gender roles. Comic pratfalls, mistaken identities and witty humor abound, and thus traditionally strong young widow characters are undercut and disempowered by remarriages justified by utterly nonsensical reasoning and by the comic need for a happy resolution. The one unmarried woman who agrees to move up in society through marriage in Two Strings to Her Bow learns that she, like the widows, needs to act demurely and passively rather than put on airs or, in the case of the widows, adopt the power of her financial position. Each of the plays addresses marriage and the economic exchanges inherent in such an arrangement, and yet throughout the plays, the complicated intersections of economic power and gendered propriety routinely suggest that all women, regardless of their financial power, need to be returned to the protective arms of a husband. The juxtaposition of Harrison’s volitional amateur performers and these characters adds an intriguing layer of analysis to plays that already suggest that women who were performing amateur drama should not eschew traditional gender roles, even when financially independent. Tea at Four O’Clock satirically chronicles the misery that Mrs. Effingham, a young widow, experiences while trapped in her parlor, receiving guests and unwelcome suitors. She wants “nothing better than a turn in the park!” (Harrison 57) and bemoans that “society is a prison into which we are cast, as soon as we are born, and in vain we cry, ‘We can’t get out!’” (Harrison 57–58). Economics in this play are squarely centered on the concerns of the upper class in their parlor discussions and attempts to marry one another. Effingham’s suitors include Grayson, who spews sentiment despite repeatedly getting cut off by other suitors. Mr. Appleby, “the millionaire, the match of the season” (Harrison 67) according to the foolish Mrs. Coddington is viewed by his rival Walton as “the miser millionaire [... who] is even saving of his words, which accounts for his never being able to complete a sentence” (Harrison 61). Dr. Grantley, who expounds at length about tariff bills even while no one listens to him, covers

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Appleby’s lack of dialogue, while Walton and Sabretache tell competing stories of military prowess. The utterly hopeless debutante, Arabella Coddington, prodded into speaking by her mother, concocts a story about a duel involving Effingham’s preferred suitor, Arthur Rutledge, who despises these receiving hour events and is absent through much of the play. The meaningless conversations in the parlor intertwine and include false gossipy news that Rutledge, Effingham’s suitor, is engaged to another and that he was involved in a duel at a club. Grantley’s pontification about the tariff bill punctuates Effingham’s increasingly panicked attempts to learn news about Rutledge, simultaneously making this discussion of taxes incredibly boring and inconsequential in the face of social news. At points, this heady economic discussion becomes the source of comedy, as Effingham panics when she hears Dr. Grantley mention “the proposed horizontal reduction” and interprets his comment as “Horizontal! That means poor Arthur was lying on the ground.” The rest of Grantley’s comment about the tariff, “[w]as stupidity itself ” then reflects back upon Effingham’s histrionics or perhaps upon the awkward Arabella’s concocted story which she shares because her mother cajoles her to be social and talk so that she can attract one of Effingham’s suitors for herself (Harrison 78). Effingham, unlike the other three widows in the collection, does not profess that she wishes to remain unmarried, but the dialogue suggests that she, like the others, is resisting all of her suitors. After a comical exchange with her servant about broken figurines, she remarks that she “can’t understand why Arthur didn’t come yesterday; not so much as a note or a bunch of violets. I was so cold on Saturday when he said good-bye. His eyes had that deep wounded, yearning look” (Harrison 57). The play, then, becomes a prolonged afternoon of suffering which makes her realize that she does wish to marry Arthur, in part perhaps because she feared that she had lost him. However, Effingham’s lines at the end of the play only allow her to resolve that Arthur is not dead and Arabella’s stories were all false (Harrison 78 –80); she never vocalizes any change of mind about Arthur nor agrees to marry him. He simply takes her hand, while refuting the false rumor that he was to marry Fanny Golightly, and she does not refuse him (Harrison 80). While Tea at Four O’Clock neglects to address why Effingham would want to remarry, The Mouse-Trap displays a widow’s willingness to give up freedom and financial independence to marry an earnest if foolish man when faced with a source of terror; in this case, the threat is a mouse. The widow Mrs. Prettipet opens this one-act with a humorous set of vehement instructions to her servants, begging them to lock the door and search the house because “[t]here’s no knowing whether the monster wouldn’t try to follow me” (Harrison 3). Presumably, there is an expectation that the audience will understand the suggestion that she is trying to uncover a threatening man, for it is not until the end of a long paragraph of instructions that she notes that the creature which scared her, grasped at her, and sent her into this tizzy had a tail and was a indeed mouse

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rather than a devilish man. Prettipet then transitions immediately into a discussion of her suitor, the bumbling lawyer Mr. Brief bag, who “[has been] proposing to me at intervals of three weeks regularly [and] doesn’t mind refusals in the least.” Like the other widows, Prettipet has no intention of marrying and notes that she would only do so “to find a protector” (Harrison 4). Given that she has been panicking about a mouse and remarking that the only failing in her late husband was his fear of mice (Harrison 4), Brief bag’s success in wooing her will depend on his ability to protect her from that mouse. Brief bag’s foolishness is surpassed only by Prettipet’s squeamishness about the mouse. Until it reappears and she faints, Prettipet boldly refuses all of Briefbag’s advances and toys with him. When a servant announces that the cat has caught the mouse, Prettipet leaps up and runs to the door, only to discover that the servant cannot tell the difference between a mouse and a ball of yarn. Her current support system of servants and cat cannot protect her from the mouse, and she again begins fretting. Brief bag, misinterpreting her emotional display, tells a concocted story of his bravery to impress her and at the climax, the mouse leaps from her knitting basket, runs across the room, and Prettipet faints. The juxtaposition of events here suggests that she, as a world and suitor-weary widow, is not fazed by his advances and machinations but instead feigns to be indignant about his behavior at the appropriate moments. The mouse, on the other hand, causes her to fret, faint and then leap onto a chair, shrieking. After a brief moment of confusion, Brief bag realizes there is a mouse and leaps onto another chair in terror. While Prettipet offers to finally accept his hand in marriage if he scares off the mouse, asking him to “rid me of this, our common enemy” (Harrison 12). Brief bag is too terrified and refuses. At this moment, Prettipet finally begins to act like an independent woman and starts planning ways for them to work together to shoo the mouse out of the room; they fail, however, as her attempts to hit the mouse with books and yarn go wide and hit Brief bag instead. Finally physically pummeled into action, Brief bag limply and ineffectually flaps his umbrella. Prettipet suggests making noise, and the pair create a cacophony that again fails, but which reminds Briefbag that he “once had some success in my imitations of a cat” (Harrison 12). He roars, embracing the inner animal which has been hidden throughout the piece, and sends the mouse scurrying into the hall and into the paws of Prettipet’s cat. The mouse has brought the pair together insofar as she has ceased affecting indignation and he has stopped pompously pretending to be worldly. Rather than quickly resolving their marital arrangement with the expulsion of the mouse, however, the play continues the confusion and mixed messages through another exchange wherein he threatens to leave and she finally convinces him to stay, as long as he buys a mouse-trap. The symbolic usage of such a mundane fear as a mouse here in The Mouse-Trap works within the confines of the farce, but her quick willingness to remarry implies that financial security is not enough. Notably, these widows are not falling in love with strong male characters, in

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part because of the farcical tone of the plays, but the implication is that women should not and cannot be alone. Indeed, Prettipet even explains while she is refusing the idea of marrying Brief bag that “[i]t is hard for a woman to tread the path of life alone” (Harrison 4). Rather, the widows run into these marriages for protection from minor threats which send them into hysterics, perhaps reinforcing that the successful treatment of hysteria is when a male doctor, or in this case a second husband, “had mastered her will and her body” (SmithRosenberg 211). Thus, the widow Prettipet here renounces freedom not because she is financially insecure or in love with her new husband, but because he can offer her protection from minor terrors that live in her knitting basket. Behind a Curtain is a monologue that runs a brief four pages, but contains many of the tropes from the other plays in the collection in its presentation of a widow who agrees to remarry as a result of nonsensical fears. The critique of economically independent women becomes more pointed in this piece as it also draws upon contemporary assumptions about hysteria in a less physically comic fashion than in The Mouse-Trap. While Prettipet throws books at the mouse in her home and recovers quickly from the perceived rodent threat, Mrs. Bellamy is significantly more mobile as widow and thus more at risk of her succumbing to her mental infirmities. The young widow Bellamy stages a meeting with her suitor, “that tiresome Captain Fitzhenry” (Harrison 49) and then runs away rather than receive him. The piece opens as she arrives in a New York hotel, having left a false message for Fitzhenry with her butler: “‘called to New York on business of importance’” (Harrison 49). Moments after she arrives, Fitzhenry announces his presence in her New York hotel through a letter, where he reveals that he was able to learn her plans and follow her to New York through “judicious bribery of your servants” (Harrison 50). Fitzhenry’s earnest desire to marry Bellamy is revealed in his letter: “I was, during the whole journey, in the rear car of your train. It was horribly dull there, in company of a maiden lady, who ate lozenges; but I was comforted by thinking, if an accident occurred, I should, at least, have the happiness of perishing with you” (Harrison 50). Fitzhenry, who never appears on stage, needs to be depicted as devoted and persistent but essentially harmless through this letter, for the rest of the monologue shows Bellamy’s increasingly neurotic fears about her hotel room, imagined threats to her life, and her plans to buy off potential attackers with her wealth. Women’s understanding of the power and usage of wealth is shown as misguided and ineffectual throughout, and yet money is clearly related to power and protection. After all, Fitzhenry has the means and power to bribe Bellamy’s servants into betraying her trust. The presumption here is not that Bellamy is not well off, but rather that the widow, despite her wealth, does not fully control her employees. Indeed, moments before Bellamy learns of the betrayal through Fitzhenry’s letter, she was sitting in the hotel room laughing at her success, noting that she hadn’t completely lied to Fitzhenry, and remarking that Mr. Bellamy did leave her quite wealthy upon his death: “It’s true, I have an excuse

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for coming. To-morrow is Augusta’s wedding-day. [...] When I was married before her, three years ago, she was quite green with jealousy; but when poor Mr. Bellamy died, six months after, leaving me all that money, Augusta was ready to tear my eyes out. Poor Augusta! She never could stand another person’s luck! (Harrison 49 –50).” The suggestion that being widowed and wealthy is something worthy of jealousy is then repeated in Bellamy’s reaction to Fitzhenry’s letter, for she proclaims that she does not want to give up her “life of enchanting independence” (Harrison 50). Yet, this announcement is cut-off by her panic over a noise in the room and her revelation that she fears traveling without her maid, who was injured and unable to accompany her. Thus, independence is equated not with self-sufficiency, but with the accompaniment of trustworthy servants— a device that appears in other plays in the collection as well. This noise begins Bellamy’s descent into a paranoid frenzy that leads her check for a burglar under the bed and to stack chairs behind the door so that she “won’t be murdered without knowing it” (Harrison 50). Her choice to read newspapers has not led to intellectual enlightenment, but rather to melodramatic observations that “villains seem to pick out solitary females; widows especially” (Harrison 51). The sensational paper in her room then confirms this fear: “‘Only last week a young and charming widow —chloroformed at — her hotel!’” (Harrison 51). She then views a pair of boots, left behind by the last hotel customer, and becomes convinced that there is a burglar in the room who will slit her throat for her diamonds, which he of course knows that she has carried with her on this trip. The fear of being left “weltering in my gore” leads her to wish that Fitzhenry were there to save her from the imagined burglar (Harrison 51), and presumably thus from her own inability to be in a room by herself without having an irrational and emotional breakdown. Continuing to display her simplistic understanding of finances and humanity and her tendencies towards hysteria, Bellamy proffers her diamonds and cash to the burglar, hoping to buy him off and assuming that he is a good soul who has simply fallen on hard times: “No doubt you are more unfortunate than guilty. A series of financial reverses may have impelled you to this method of earning a livelihood. Your wife, no doubt, is dying. Your children, poor little things, are gnawing crusts” (Harrison 51). She begs to keep her instruments of vanity and control over her feminine appearance but which cannot offer protection, her “comb and brush, and my tooth-brush,” and then offers the rest of her purse to the boots which sit behind the curtain. Eventually she resorts to pleading with the boots: “O Mr. Burglar, spare me! Have pity on a woman who never did you any harm!” (Harrison 51). Her overactive imagination has clearly been addled by emotional strain, but it also reveals an over-reliance on motifs from melodramas and the sensationalist press; rather than having the presence of mind to think clearly about the situation and go look behind the curtain, she reverts to fantastic interpretations and terror, simply because she is alone. Of course, the hotel staff soon interrupts to ask for the boots, but rather than laugh

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at her fears, she confirms her inability to be alone in the world and vows to marry Fitzhenry, who will save her from herself. The play works to reveal that Bellamy has neither the nerve to live an independent life nor the capacity to understand a true threat from an imagined one, just as she was incapable of effectively creating a scheme to avoid Fitzhenry, whom she should just marry. The text also plays upon contemporary presentations of hysteria in women; Bellamy never had children with her late husband, and thus cannot be reacting hysterically to the demands of marriage and parenthood. She does embody the remainder of Smith-Rosenberg’s description of the hysteric who simply cannot cope: “Any general description of the personal characteristics of the well-to-do hysteric emphasized her idleness, self-indulgence, deceitfulness, and ‘craving for sympathy.’ Petted and spoiled by her parents, waited upon hand and foot by servants, she had never been taught to exercise self-control or to curb her emotions and desires” (Smith-Rosenberg 205). Bellamy gleefully lies to her suitor and runs away rather than face him, and yet she also wants the burglar and Fitzhenry to pity her; clearly, she works herself into a frenzy in the piece because she cannot control her emotions long enough to think rationally about the situation or to recognize the impact that sensational news has had upon her mind. Indeed, the play seems to be arguing that the idle and carefree life of the widow will create an opportunity for hysteria to arise in a woman rather than free a woman from the pressures which might have led to conditions classified at the time as hysteria; Bellamy’s redeeming quality at the end of the play is that she understands that she cannot handle these freedoms and thus needs the grounding of a man to protect her from her own emotional instability. While Behind the Curtain and The Mouse-Trap show widows in emotionally overblown situations who decide to remarry, Weeping Wives presents wedded life two years after the remarriage of the widow Delphine. Her relationship with her husband Prosper Chambly, a sometimes whiny man with a love of gambling, is juxtaposed against the newlyweds Albert de Rieux and Clotilde, who are honeymooning. Delphine and Clotilde know each other from the convent, while the two men knew each other at school, and each couple happens upon the other while on vacation in Baden. The discussions of household economics and the relationship between love and monetary expenditures provide the foundation of this entire play, with Delphine staunchly inspiring much of the action throughout. At the outset, Chambly is bemoaning his inability to win when gambling as well as his decision to let his wife control the household finances: And here I am, with forty-five thousand louis of rent upon my books, and not twenty francs in my pocket. [...] So much for having said to Madame Chambly in my first moment of marital expansion, “Take the key of my secretary, my beloved. From this moment you are the keeper of our fortunes— the disposer of my purse.” Strange to say, she accepted. [...] At that time it made little difference. We were not at Baden, and this passion for play had not taken hold of me [Harrison 18].

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Immediately, it is established that their financial accounts have been combined, and later discussions confirm that not only does Delphine control the finances, but she also freely spends her own money on diamond earrings while refusing to give her husband more than his monthly allowance (Harrison 33). Much of the plot then involves Chambly attempting to connive money out of Delphine while a servant, Jean, tries to then bribe and extract money from Chambly. He fails because his wheedling is ineffectual; Chambly plays the role of submissive wife, but he is clearly unskilled at it, while Delphine embodies the strong volitional widow heroine of earlier comic traditions. Their relationship, while altered somewhat for nineteenth-century concerns about gender and finances, follows well-established patterns of dramatic widowhood. Panek notes that marrying a widow could be a boon for a man, but it also “threatened his manhood even as it established it, for having already relinquished to his wife, at least in part, the masculine role of financial provider, a widow’s new husband risked entering a continuous power struggle for the masculine attributes of domestic government” (Panek 327). Weeping Wives explores the ramifications of that “power struggle” within this marriage, and yet firmly places the blame for the battles on Chambly and his ill-advised plan to marry a widow: A widow. That has always been my dream. A young girl knows nothing of life, of character. Her experiments may so easily make shipwreck of your happiness. A widow, now — there are no whims, no illusions about her! If she has been unhappy with her first, she is the more disposed to be satisfied with number two. Or if she has been devoted to number one, she is inspired by tenderness to make the most of number two [Harrison 24].

His decision to marry based on emotions rather than finances relegates him to a feminine role, and his choice to allow Delphine to control their money is the source of trouble throughout the plot. Albert and Clotilde provide a counterpoint to this remarried widow and emasculated husband, with Clotilde’s constant requests that Albert prove his love by buying her diamond earrings paralleling Chambly’s requests for money from Delphine. The newlyweds reinforce traditional gender dynamics by placing Albert in control of the finances, but both relationships employ money as rhetorical exhortations of affection. As Delphine refuses to give Chambly gambling money or to fall for his claims that “I am no longer beloved!” (Harrison 38), she is simultaneously schooling Clotilde in methods of extracting tokens of love, the diamond earrings, from Albert. Clotilde asks Albert for the earrings again, while betraying her true feelings: If you only knew how I have set my heart on them. (Aside.) I haven’t really, but Delphine says my future is at stake!” [Harrison 30].

The duel between the newlyweds for the earrings is presented by Delphine as a battle for control over the entire relationship:

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After only six weeks of marriage you allow your husband to say “No”? Clotilde, you are the verge of a bottomless abyss! [...] My poor, innocent child, don’t you know you life’s happiness depends on the stand you take during the honeymoon? Oh, it was your lucky star that led you to my hands. If you want those diamonds, you must have them — there! [Harrison 28].

Delphine has this power over Clotilde in part because she has been married longer and twice, but also because she has an identical set of the earrings and control of the household finances, which awes Clotilde. Inspired, Clotilde successfully weeps and gets Albert to outbid another buyer and acquire the earrings, thereby gaining the upper hand in the relationship for a moment, while Chambly’s attempts at manipulating Delphine through tears predictably fail (Harrison 38). For Albert, Delphine is clearly a corruptive force, and her power extends both from her position as a knowledgeable former widow and from her control of Chambly’s money. In attempting to commiserate with Chambly about the cost of the earrings, a pair of which Delphine also owns, Albert learns that Delphine bought them for herself. His puzzlement is momentarily overshadowed by Chambly’s request to borrow money, which of course Albert loans to his old friend, but then Albert overhears a conversation between the two women where he learns that he was manipulated by his new bride: “I am the dupe of these designing women! Oh, it is contemptible!” (Harrison 35). Chambly is still brooding on his atrocious gambling luck, while Albert has a crisis of faith which he blames entirely upon Delphine: Suppose I were to tell you that your wife — my wife — both our wives— are — monsters of duplicity; that they are leagued together to destroy our happiness? [...] That together they revel in hypocrisy, coin sentiments to betray us with, invent soft speeches to ruin us; feign tears [.... Delphine], if anything, is the worse. She leads the way, and my wife follows. She is the high priest, Clotilde the neophyte. “Weep, weep, my dear,” counsels your insidious wife, “and nothing will be refused to you” [Harrison 36].

Albert references the fact that both of their wives had been in the convent, but Delphine’s inappropriate position of power in her marriage has enabled her to lead Clotilde astray. But, while Albert assumed that Clotilde would thus be innocent and pliable, Chambly wanted to marry a widow and gave Delphine the power that is now corrupting Albert’s relationship. Thus, Chambly’s scheme and willingness to then cede control of the family finances can be read as the direct cause of the new tension in Albert’s relationship. Of course, rather than agreeing with Albert about Delphine’s unnatural power, Chambly is so consumed with his gambling and submissive to his wife that he hears Albert’s tale and decides to try crying to Delphine to get money from her (his tears work on Jean, the comically unintelligent servant, but not on his smart wife). Throughout, the fact that Delphine was widowed provides explanations for her strength of character and forceful nature. She, like the widows in the other plays in Harrison’s collection, did not want to remarry at first, and she rebuffed Chambly’s advances with laughter. While Chambly recounts her refusal to wed

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him, notably she simply laughs again in response to his story and never admits why she chose to marry him: “Why can you not love me?” I asked mournfully. “Because I have vowed never to marry again,” you answered. “But there must be some other reason,” I urged. “Well, then, my dear M. Chambly, you are — if you will have it — you are —” “Go on; put me out of my misery, madame.” “You are too fat!” The fact is I was immense — nothing poetical about me. “I will grow thin or die!” I exclaimed. From that moment I went in for athletics [Harrison 19].

While Chambly did thin down, no reason is given for why Delphine decided to marry him, if she assumed he would not lose weight for her, if he is again compared to a woman here, or if he simply asked for her hand too soon after her first husband’s death. While her “tears were hardly dry in [her] shining eyes” (Harrison 19) when she first met Chambly, the dialogue implies that her first husband was a vicious man. Her motivations thus remain utterly unmentioned throughout the piece, and in part, they are irrelevant as she made her choice and yet still clearly retained her power over the finances and gained power over her new husband. While Chambly seems upset with Delphine only because she will not let him gamble, the other men see Delphine’s volition as an unnatural potentially corruptive force. Jean, after watching Delphine convince Chambly to give him money, remarks in an aside: “She was a widow when he married her, I’ll take my oath to it, or she’d never be so uppish” (Harrison 21). Jean also views her power in the relationship as something which emasculates Chambly, noting that he “is not so much his own master as when I saw him last” (Harrison 22) in Paris, before the marriage. For Delphine and Chambly, the play seemingly becomes an exercise in enabling Chambly to find his masculinity again, but there is no attempt to tame a shrewish wife here; instead, the strong widow orders her husband out into the battle that allows him to recover his pride. While gambling, three officers started mocking Chambly, and Albert, unbeknownst to his friend, witnessed the event and challenged the trio to a duel so as to defend Chambly’s honor. Rather than let Albert fight his battles for him, though, Delphine shames Chambly into taking care of his own reputation while simultaneously attempting to restore peace in Albert and Clotilde’s newly fractured relationship. When a letter arrives informing them all about the upcoming duel, Delphine tells Clotilde to not mention the letter or the situation to Albert, but instead to keep him trapped in the hotel. Clotilde, innocent, powerless and hysterically terrified for Albert’s life, fails miserably to calm him, win him back or otherwise control the situation. Her tears, this time, are real but he does not believe her, and he still quite clearly equates her betrayal with “those miserable gewgaws” (Harrison 42) upon which he spent thousands to prove his love. Eventually, Delphine resorts to showing Albert the letter, having realized that Clotilde is insufficiently skilled at controlling her husband through tears or falsehoods; Albert forgives his wife and rushes to the duel, only to be interrupted by the returning Chambly,

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who bravely administered “a mere scratch” (Harrison 44) to the offending officer. Women may have been viewed as the moral compass of the nineteenthcentury family, but this episode suggests that Clotilde’s innocence and naiveté are preferable to Delphine’s machinations, although Chambly’s willingness to compromise his authority by caving to his wife is seen as equally problematic. The Angel in the House should not control the purse strings. Once goaded into action by his wife, much like Brief bag had to be encouraged to fight the mouse, Chambly proves himself no longer fully emasculated, and that feeble display of manhood is all it takes for Delphine to submit and turn over the key to the secretary. Here, despite the presentation of a strong remarried widow, is where the text reverts to the same simplistic turn of events that are seen in the other widow dramas in the collection. Chambly’s ability to scratch one of three soldiers parallels Brief bag’s caterwauling in its comically limp reversal of the weak male character and that minor change in character’s ability to cause an otherwise strong woman to suddenly crumble (presumably, Chambly’s use of fencing to lose weight connect to his ability to then employ, in a manner of speaking, his fencing skills in this conflict, but the duel only occurs because he loses money gambling and gets into an argument with his fellow gamblers). In both Weeping Wives and The Mouse-Trap, the widow retains power only insofar as she convinces an otherwise weak man into proper action and behavior, thereby suggesting a return to sentimentality: the love of a good widow can save a man from himself, and any embodiment of physical prowess is sufficient to protect a former widow; Delphine could protect herself in the future, but Prettipet and Bellamy appear wholly dependent on their second husbands. Thus, the buffoonish second husband points to an inability of widows to choose an appropriate second husband. Certainly, Chambly’s gambling problem suggests that Delphine could have chosen more wisely, and Fitzhenry and Brief bag are hardly intelligently witty or sentimentally pure suitors. Only Arthur stands presented as an acceptable match, a reward for Effingham’s ability to suffer through receiving hours. With the exception of an oblique reference in Weeping Wives, the plays avoid discussions of blending the fortunes and finances of the widow and the second husband. The absence of such details makes sense, perhaps, within the context of a comedy; what wittily flirting couple wishes to stop throwing books at a mouse and discuss how to combine bank accounts? And yet, the absence also implies that women would of course, upon remarriage, become once again subservient to their husband, financially and physically, in exchange for his protection. Indeed, if anything, the lack of discussion of women’s financial contributions to the marriage suggests that such large financial matters are beyond the concern of these women who have other economic concerns, just as Effingham cannot be bothered by tariff bills but is willing to buy a $50.00 subscription from the foolish Mrs. Coddington (Harrison 77). The widows’ lack of worry over complex finances is further underscored by comically inept servants, who

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abound out of tradition, but who stand as evidence of the widow’s inability to run her household effectively. The discussions of marriage finances that do occur always focus on what the groom will provide to the bride; Appleby is worth millions, and Coddington vainly exclaims that the expenditures on the new Sybarites clubhouse “is a premium on celibacy” because the “men [were] spending all that money on a place where women can’t be with them!” (Harrison 67). Accordingly, Alphonse de Luceval’s inheritance in Two Strings to Her Bow figures prominently in the last comedy in the collection, which is the most traditional presentation of a young couple that work towards marriage. As with the widows, Cecile does not wish to marry, but wants to exercise outdoors and go “for a long, delightful ride in the forest” (Harrison 92) rather than meet her suitor. Not a New Woman who loves cycling, though, Cecile is a middle-class country girl with simple tastes and a limited vocabulary. Her parents and godfather dream of financial stability which they can now only gain through their daughter’s marriage (Harrison 88). Cecile inherited their incompetence at social graces, but her suitor is equally plain and thus a good match. Alphonse de Luceval has chosen to take his inheritance, flee his impersonal and lonely life at Chateau Luceval and purchase a plot of land next to Cecile’s family for sentimental familial reasons. His uncle wanted him to “give up Paris, and settle in the country. [...] The meadow your father has been good enough to part with to me, once contained the little cottage where my uncle was born. Do you wonder that the spot is sacred to me — that I dreamed of attaching myself to it by another link?” (Harrison 111). The lure of the simply country life appeals to de Luceval and is embodied in Cecile; if they can get past the comic machinations, then they will be happy. Chaos ensues when the family’s bumbling attempts to appear worldly offend de Luceval. Additionally, Cecile’s father and godfather both arrange for suitors, and the threat of financial ruin due to retribution hovers briefly because the second suitor is the Inspector-General’s son. However, confusions are soon explained, and de Luceval proves wealthy and honorable enough to protect his new wife and her family. Of the women who are married in Harrison’s Comedies for Amateur Acting, Cecile is most sympathetic and yet also the most vapid, largely because she neither is a widow nor has been corrupted by a widow’s bad advice. Rather than displaying the corruptive effects of power and financial freedom, fears of remarrying, or the taints of hysteria, Cecile vainly worries that marriage will result in her mother’s life: “a double chin” and “disputing with papa about whether or not the beef is overdone” (Harrison 93). While all of the women do marry, Cecile’s character suggests that when a woman is honest and does not perform a role, she will be attractive to a good, sentimental, wealthy man. Effingham is perhaps the next most successful at choosing a spouse, for while she panics about Arthur’s false wounds, she also nobly suffers through the routine of entertaining tedious guests and suitors and is rewarded with a husband who is an

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upright if underdeveloped character. The other widows are matched with emasculated men who need to be cajoled into fulfilling their duties, perhaps because only a widow can encourage them. Panek argues that Jacobean widow marriage plays used “the notion of the widow as lustful and susceptible to sexual aggression [...] as a kind of compensation mechanism against her threat to a second husband’s masculine domestic authority” (Panek 329). Here, the late nineteenth-century comedies for amateurs instead address that fear by having the women capitulate out of fear, hysteria or completely unexplained character reversals. These widows are not Panek’s “lusty widows,” but rather women who dallied with freedom but learned that they needed protection. All of Harrison’s widows inherit well enough to maintain at least an upper-middle class lifestyle, they are all young, and they have no children to raise. Thus, the only difference between them and another young single woman is their inherited wealth and their worldliness. Cecile, as the only non-widow heroine in the collection, stands in contrast to these disempowered former widows; her financially tenuous situation makes marriage a viable option. But with all of the characters, the connections to the performers cannot be forgotten. Cecile’s concerns about class mobility and desires to marry up parallel with amateur performers, for the fad for theatricals in the late nineteenth-century was greatest amid the middle and lower-upper classes. In each play, the women choose to marry rather than maintain their economic independence and power — a powerful message for women who used these dramas in theatricals which raised thousands of dollars for charitable causes and a powerful reminder to audiences that the ability to earn money through artistic endeavors does not necessarily render a woman unmarriageable.

NOTES 1. Nineteenth-century amateur drama presents particular analytical difficulties for the performance historian, in part because the historical record for amateur productions is relatively limited. Anthologies and guidebooks for amateur performances survive, as do some personal materials and newspaper accounts of performances, but one has to assume that the vast majority of amateur productions went unrecorded in extant materials. Thus, the study of amateur drama can be quite easily skewed towards the published plays or towards plays recounted in society news columns, both of which have the potential to alter our understanding of what texts were actually being performed.

WORKS CITED Barker-Benfield, G. J. “The Origins of Anglo-American Sensibility,” in Charity, Philanthropy and Civility in American History. Edited by Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 71–89. Cobrin, Pamela. “Dangerous Flirtations: Politics, the Parlor, and the Nineteenth-Century Victorian Amateur Actresses,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 16/3, (2006): 385 –402. Curley, Eileen. “Tainted Money? Nineteenth-Century Charity Theatricals,” Theatre Symposium 15 (2007): 52–73. Dawson, Melanie. Laboring to Play: Home Entertainment and the Spectacle of Middle-Class Cultural Life. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2005.

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Engle, Sherry. “An ‘Irruption of Women Dramatists’: The Rise of America’s Woman Playwright, 1890 –1920,” New England Theatre Journal 12 (2001): 27–50. Ginzberg, Lori D. Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics and Class in the Nineteenth Century United States. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990. Halttunen, Karen. Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830 –1870. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982. Harrison, Mrs. Burton. Short Comedies for Amateur Players. New York: De Witt Publishing House, 1889. Londré, Felicia Hardison. “Money without Glory: Turn of the Century America’s Women Playwrights,” in The American Stage, ed. Ron Engle and Tice L. Miller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 131–140. Panek, Jennifer. “‘My naked weapon’: Male Anxiety and the Violent Courtship of the Jacobean Stage Widow,” Comparative Drama, 34/3 (2000): 321–344. Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Knopf, 1985.

Gold Rush McTeague, Frank Norris, and Neal Bell ROBERT F. GROSS

Our society produces schizos the same way it produces Prell shampoo or Ford cars, the only difference being that schizos are not salable. — Deleuze/Guattari 245

Gold Rush. The rush for gold, whether in the hills and rivers of California in 1849 or on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange today? Or the rush of gold, that exhilaration accompanying the actuality or even simply the fantasy of wealth acquisition? The eagerness for a rush of gold that motivates the rush for gold, an addictive intoxication that, like all addictions, can become debasing, overriding all other concerns, allegiances, and ethical considerations. The power of McTeague, in both its novelistic and dramatic forms, would be incomprehensible without our awareness of the awesome power exerted by the prospect of a gold rush. Almost a century separates the publication of Frank Norris’s novel McTeague in 1899 from the premiere of its dramatic adaptation by Neal Bell at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in 1992. The only other notable adaptation of Norris’s novel preceding this had been Eric von Stroheim’s epic silent film adaptation, Greed (1924), which only survives today as a magnificent fragment, having been butchered to only a small fraction of its original length by the studio. Although the two works largely follow the same plot line, include the same characters, and employ the same settings, they are shaped by different socio-economic circumstances and infused with different values. While Norris explains the decline of his characters as the results of inherited weaknesses, showing the influence of late nineteenth century theories of race, Bell dramatizes how the brutality of the economic system leads to sociopathic, violent, and self-destructive behavior. Both McTeagues tell the story of an immense, incredibly strong young man of severely limited intellect, capable of extracting teeth with his bare hands. Raised at a gold mine and trained by an itinerant dentist, he comes to San Francisco to practice as a dentist, is drawn into a intense desire for one of his patients, and has his life transformed when she wins five thousand dollars in a 57

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lottery, only for it to disintegrate completely due to the unexpected and disastrous consequences of her good fortune. But although both works can be described as ‘naturalistic,’ they differ considerably. Replacing racist assumptions with a more nuanced vision, Bell constructs a Janus-faced representation of the capitalist imagination — transformative and imaginative one moment, inflexible and terrifying the next. To do justice to both aspects of the imagination, Bell juxtaposes moments of expressionism to the predominant naturalism, making gold both the means of mere survival and the stuff of fantasy. This dream-like, hallucinated dimension of Bell’s McTeague makes for an important revision in the representation of capitalism from Norris’s more reified understanding of homo economicus. Norris’s McTeague is commonly recognized one of the most notable examples American naturalism. Naturalism had begun in France three decades earlier, with the Goncourts’s Germinie Lacerteux (1864), Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1867), and Gustav Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale (1869). Of the three authors, it would be Zola, with his positivist interest in the influence of hereditary and environmental factors in the development of character, who would be the most significant influence on Norris. Similarly, Bell showed a similar interest in Zolaesque naturalism, adapting Thérèse Raquin to the stage in 1991. As David Baguley has shown, “the distinguishing element of the naturalist novel is its elaboration of an entropic vision, as opposed to the elaboration of a moral law, as found in realist fiction” (94). In naturalism, “the fiction feels drawn inevitably toward death, disintegration, and dissipation” (Baguley 222). Regression and chaos tend to win out over maturation and coherence, and the bestial tends to assert itself over the forces of civilization. As the fictional world decays, so do literary distinctions: genres and tones generally kept separate in realism tend to break down as well (Baguley 215), leading to harsh discordances and grotesque juxtapositions. Gilles Deleuze’s view of naturalism is similar to Baguley’s. For him, it is distinguished by a lapse into formlessness, most clearly marked by its preferred milieus, including the desert, wilderness, and jungle (whether primeval or urban) in which objects become fragmentary or fetishistic, and characters deteriorate into mere impulses (124 –127). At an extreme, the naturalist morass, or “originary world” as Deleuze calls it, becomes almost indistinguishable from the fragmented, fetishistic, libidinous surrealist landscapes of Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. This common deterioration of realist milieu and character into primal chaos and impulse in both naturalism and surrealism, leads Deleuze to consider Luis Buñuel (commonly classified as a surrealist), as one of the three great naturalists of the cinema, along with Eric von Stroheim (Greed’s director) and Joseph Losey. The “entropic vision” (to borrow the sub-title of Baguley’s impressive study) of naturalism opened up new areas of contemporary life for depiction. Instead

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of centering on the world of the bourgeoisie, with lower-class characters playing minor roles, insofar as they appeared on the periphery, naturalists increasingly turned their attention to bourgeois characters in economic and social descent, or people who were never able to ascend into the bourgeois world to begin with. Suddenly, the struggle of the impoverished to survive, in all its disturbing details and desperate energy, along with a heightened awareness of the tenuousness of middle-class life, became the subject of fiction. Indeed, it could be argued that the development of naturalism was a result of the economic instability of the American and European economies in the second half of the nineteenth century, with increasing industrialization, urbanization, rampant speculation, and changes in the financial systems. Trina and McTeague’s unexpected good fortune and equally unexpected descent into squalor echo the boom-and-bust dynamics of its era. The decade of Norris’s McTeague was one of both cutthroat financial expansion, including the rise of big manufacturing corporations, increased destructive competition, and a unprecedented growth in mergers, and economic hardship, most clearly marked by four years of depression initiated by the Banking Panic of 1893, the third banking panic since the Civil War (Seavoy 239 –241). By the end of 1893 over 500 banks and 1600 businesses had closed. The depression further intensified arguments over the raging issue of monetary standards. Supporters of the gold standard, led by President Grover Cleveland, blamed the panic on the use of silver in the financial system, and held gold to be the only stable and internationally viable basis for exchange, while the bimettalists (those supporting a combined gold and silver standard) argued their system was both more stable and deflationary. In 1895, Cleveland took the economically successful but politically suicidal step of turning to the Morgan banking syndicate to float a European bond issue that would purchase gold and prop up the U.S. gold standard. The controversy over the Gold Standard resonates through Norris’s novel to an extent difficult for us to appreciate today. Walter Benn Michaels has analyzed this aspect of the novel in detail, showing how the monetary discourses of the period, fearing a gold shortage, opposed the miner, who took gold out of the earth and put it into circulation, to the dentist, who put gold into mouths and out of circulation, and the miser (149). McTeague’s life is structured by gold, from his boyhood as a cartboy in a mine, through his work as a dentist, his loss of gold (though his loss of his job and his wife’s miserliness), his return to a miner’s life his discovery of a rich vein of gold, and his final loss of the fortune and his life in Death Valley. By the time the story of McTeague returned in the form of Neal Bell’s powerful and imaginative dramatic reworking, arguments over the gold standard had long vanished. But economic problems remained. The play came after nearly two decades of economic decline, as the American postwar prosperity unraveled, along with the cultural confidence that had accompanied it (Kemp 205 –216). The United States shifted from being the world’s leading creditor

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nation to the major international debtor. In 1973, real income for American households began to fall for all but the wealthiest fifth of the population, and would continue to decline through the 1980s. Attempts to control unemployment met with only intermittent success, and by the time McTeague premiered, it had reached 7.8 percent — the highest it had been since 1984. During the two terms of the Reagan administration, increased military spending, accompanied by cuts in personal and corporate income taxes, led to financial deficits of almost 5 percent in 1983 –86 (DuBoff 129 –131). Expanded military spending and increased tax cuts were accompanied by major cutbacks in education, environmental programs, and public infrastructure. In its diminution and partial dismemberment of social warfare programs, this unraveling of the social ‘safety net’ looked back toward the laissez-faire economy reflected in Norris’s novel a century earlier. To finance these enfeebled and beleaguered programs without having to turn to politically unpopular tax increases, more and more states began to turn to lotteries. They had been a common means of raising revenue in from colonial times until the mid-nineteenth century, but they were rarely ongoing enterprises. Rather, they were one-time events used to underwrite public works projects (McGowan 18). Moral reformers imposed lotteries as state-sanctioned gambling, and in 1833 Pennsylvania became the first state to ban them completely. In 1842, the federal government abolished all federal lotteries. By 1860, twenty-one of the twenty-four states that had allowed lotteries had put an end to them. By 1895, lotteries were illegal in all forty-five states of the Union, and constitutionally prohibited in thirty-five of them.(Pierce/Miller, 18) Although San Francisco had been the gambling capital of the U.S. throughout much of the latter half of the nineteenth century, the activity was increasingly restricted during the 1880s and 90s, and it is significant that Norris does not present gambling as a part of a San Franciscan lifestyle in his novel, but as an illegal and marginalized activity. The return of state lotteries began in New Hampshire in 1964, but neither it nor the New York state lottery of 1967 were particularly successful. In 1970, New Jersey introduced the model for state lotteries which is prevalent today, with frequent drawings and easily accessible ticket outlets. By 1974, twelve states had lotteries, but 75 percent of all lotteries were instituted after the Reagan spending cuts. By 1995, thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia had lotteries as a means of increasing income. By 1999, the late nineteenth century’s prohibition against gambling had largely become a thing of the past, with many state lotteries, as well as privately owned casinos; some form of gambling was legal in all but two states. In a fascinating essay, “Grace and Gambling,” Kathryn Tanner reflects on the deeper cultural meanings expressed by the widespread and state-supported culture of gambling in the United States today. In an increasingly calcified economic order, in which the traditional values of work ethic seem to offer less

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and less opportunity for advancement, “gambling is fair in a way that the present economic system is not — that, indeed, might be one of its prime attractions” (240). With the diminution of the welfare state that began under Reagan, the risk and anxiety that accompany the prospect of unemployment have increased. In such an anxious environment, the winning lottery ticket offers a not only a prospect of security, but a “life-transforming payout” that is nowhere else to be found (249). Increasingly, Tanner argues, gambling has become the vehicle for the affirmation of traditional American values such as equality, upward mobility, and opportunity as hard work seems to offer less and less. But neither Norris nor Bell create characters who are characterized as gamblers. Rather, the key act of chance in both the novel and play comes totally unsought. Not one of the characters are defined, as are Dostoevsky’s famous gamblers, by a weakness for gaming. Sociologist Georg Simmel described the fascination of gambling as a form of adventure in which the player voluntarily opens himself to the play of chance (191). Trina, on the other hand, is deeply risk-averse. In Norris’s novel, she only buys a lottery ticket to get rid of Maria, who is selling them in McTeague’s office and making her uneasy (17). Bell makes the situation even less voluntary. Awakening from anesthetic from dental surgery, she is confused and panicked when her dentist suddenly proposes marriage. Woozily getting out of the chair and lurching from the room, her way is suddenly blocked by Maria, who is aggressively hawking the tickets. Desperate, she thrusts a bill at Maria, grabs the ticket, and bolts from the room (21). The sole purchase of a lottery ticket here is not a hedonistic indulgence in the workings of chance, but a convergence of chance events that force a character to behave uncharacteristically — ether, sexual intensity, commercial aggression. In both the novel and the play, the ticket is bought impulsively and then apparently forgotten. No one invests it with any fantasy life or concomitant suspense. In both works, it takes Trina some time to even accept the announcement as truth. Bell clarifies the nature of her resistance to this windfall. She is so much a product of culture dominated by the work ethic that unearned good fortune is unthinkable: “But I haven’t earned it. I don’t deserve it” she objects (42). Rather than the type of the gambler, McTeague presents two variations of the type of the miser, Trina and Zerkow, and shows other figures, most notably McTeague and his rival, Marcus Schouler, increasingly driven by a desire for wealth. Usually, we tend to think of the miser as a comic type, whether in Plautus’ Pot of Gold, Moliére’s The Miser, Goldoni’s Brothers and Cousins, Sternheim’s The Strongbox, Wilder’s The Matchmaker, or the routines of Jack Benny. This comic stage figure makes its way into the realistic novel, most notably as the miserly patriarch Grandet in Eugénie Grandet (1833). Balzac transformed the miser from an ahistorical type to an individualized figure who is the result of a highly particularized set of economic and historical circumstances, and less as an amusing anomaly than a chilling instance of the obsession with wealth that permeates his society. Grandet is no less greedy than dozens of characters

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in Balzac’s Comédie humaine— he simply disposes of his lucre differently. A comparison of the misers in Balzac and Norris illuminates the differences between realism and naturalism. While Eugénie Grandet dramatizes an age of speculation and economic growth in all its energy, imagination, canniness, and cutthroat shrewdness, McTeague dramatizes an age of entropy as it is played out on the margins by people incapable of mastering its capriciousness. After McTeague, the most celebrated treatment of avarice is Arnold Bennett’s Riceyman Steps (1923), another chilling depiction of a descent into terminal miserliness. In recent decades, the miser has largely disappeared as a character type, and seems to exert little power over the twenty-first century imagination. Perhaps this is because money has lost its concreteness in a increasingly computerized economy of credit. The intangibility of electronic funds makes our actual financial circumstances pleasantly indefinite a good deal of the time, and the miser’s relation to his or her horde has an erotic immediacy that a Visa card cannot begin to rival. Today, it is far easier to imagine what we might purchase with our money than the money itself. In this respect, Bell’s McTeague looks back to an earlier period of financial imagination. Norris’s understanding of economic realities is overlaid with a psychology based on racial types. His college education, at Berkeley and Harvard, was strongly imbued with a variety of evolutionary thought that was deeply racist. Norris studied under Joseph Le Conte, an one-time officer in Confederacy during the Civil War, Southern-born and educated, who was the author of Evolution: Its Nature, Its Evidence, and Its Relation to Religious Thought. Le Conte argued that different races evolved at different rates, leading to ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ races (Pizer 19 –20). Norris’s interest in this particular development of positivist thought led him to Max Nordau’s study of decadence in modern art and culture, Degeneration, and to Nordau’s influential predecessor in the study of degenerate types, Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso. This interest led him so far as to title one of his stories, a lurid tale of miscegenation, “A Case for Lombroso” (Pizer 17–18). This combination of fin-de-siécle psychology and the prevalent racial stereotyping in American society at large leads Norris to make racial types the cornerstone of his characterizations and, by extension, his novel. You do not need to open a copy of McTeague to see this typing at work; it is apparent on its cover. As early as the late 18th century, “Teagueland” and “Teaguelanders” were listed in a London underworld dictionary as terms for Ireland and the Irish (Dawson 41), and so the protagonist’s name is the clue to his identity. His shiftlessness, weakness for drink, and “maudlin musicality” were all stereotypical Irish qualities during this period (Dawson 34). Norris may also have calculated that his readership would remember the notorious 1893 San Francisco crime which inspired his novel, in which an Irish laborer, Patrick Collins, viciously murdered his wife, who worked as a cleaning woman in a kindergarten (Rouse 38). Although Norris does not harp on his protagonist’s background, it informs his entropic trajectory. Roused out of his habitual torpor

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by his desire for Trina, McTeague is domesticated until he loses his job and needs to find an alternative livelihood, then quickly degenerates into the habits that were inculcated in him in the mines (263), and loses any desire to better his miserable situation (240). More and more he becomes a creature of mere “instinct “ (263, 269) Bell alters McTeague in subtle but significant ways. He does not change his protagonist’s name, but since it no longer functions for modern audiences as a racial signifier, and since the play contains no explicit references to the character’s Irishness, this aspect of the character vanishes. Bell mentions the fact that McTeague’s father had a drinking problem, which could lead one to infer a hereditary aspect to his weakness for alcohol, but the play does not insist on, or even advance a causal explanation. Similarly, Bell does not explain McTeague’s deterioration as an unemployed man into increasing inertia and shiftlessness as a sign of racial atavism. In fact, he spends much less time than Norris does on that aspect of the story. This may be in part because inertia is fundamentally undramatic and tends not to hold the stage for long, but the overall effect is to render the character less the victim of any inherently flawed identity that existed prior to his misfortune, and more a man beset with bad fortune beyond his control. In fact, adversity even seems to bring out a burst of class consciousness in Bell’s version of the character, something that would be totally beyond Norris’s increasingly atavistic brute. In his final confrontation with Trina, McTeague castigates her for groveling before her employers rather than using her money to help preserve her selfrespect: “Thank you for letting me scrub the floor where little Johnny threw up last week,” he remarks sarcastically (sarcasm being beyond Norris’s character’s mental capacities). “Don’t give me a dollar. I’d do this just for the joy of the mortification” (97). The result of this and other similar touches is to make Bell’s McTeague less of a marginal human being, and more a working man who is the victim of economic misfortune. For Norris, Trina is of German-Swiss extraction and her tendency toward avarice stems from that (Quay 209): Economy was her strong point. A good deal of peasant blood still ran undiluted in her veins and she had all the instinct of a hardy and penurious mountain race — the instinct which saves without any thought, without idea of consequence, saving for the sake of saving, hoarding without knowing why [106].

The thriftiness is not an intelligent response to the realities of life; it is an atavism, which unchecked, degenerates into “a veritable mental illness” (281). As Trina’s situation deteriorates, she becomes increasingly incapable of thinking of money as a means of exchange; her mental limitations can only see the gold as an object in itself. Having invested her lottery winnings with her prosperous uncle in better times, she finds herself incapable of seeing any significance in the investment certificate he has given her. She is frenzied to be in the presence of the gold itself — to shine, talk to, and spread over her body. The gold, taken out of

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the economic system (as both dentists and misers were seen as doing) becomes one of the fragmented and fetishized objects Deleuze finds central to the naturalist vision. Trina, under pressure, reverts to an exaggerated version of her racial type, in which she is no longer able to understand the function of money in exchange, but experience a sensuous addiction to an object. Bell shifts the foundation of Trina’s miserliness from racial atavism to an awareness of the precariousness of even a minimal level of security in her world. She is acutely aware that her family is growing poorer, and although none of them are starving yet, it could happen. Trina’s fear of starvation finds expression in a story she tells her suitor when he tries to assure her that they are close enough to financial security to become man and wife: We useta have neighbors, across the street. This dear old couple who lived on a pension. It wasn’t enough to get by. It was close. One day they didn’t come out of their house. And then a week passed. And then there was a smell. So my father broke in. And all he found, besides them, was a skeleton, maybe as big as your hand’s. Like a rat. MCTEAGUE : Trina! TRINA : And either the rat was their very last meal, or maybe it starved to death, too. (Pause) Their pension wasn’t enough. It was close [40].

This story, not found in the novel, functions both as a factual report of economic realities in Trina’s world and as a traumatic site that serves to ground the character’s descent into pathological avarice. Norris’s heroine, who hoards “instinctively, without knowing why” (148), becomes the embodiment of the all-too-real fears of downward mobility. The further Trina falls into poverty, the more terrified she becomes of the prospect of relinquishing any of the money that can protect her from starvation. And so she starves. Taking her gold out of circulation, she becomes poor within her wealth, reducing the gold to nothing more than trash. Rather than the alchemist’s dream of the transmutation of base matter into gold, Trina performs its entropic inversion. The owner of the junk shop, Zerkow has been described as “one of the most vicious anti–Semitic portrayals in any major work of American literature.” (Pizer 15) Indebted to Dickens’s Fagin and Du Maurier’s Svengali (Pizer 25), Zerkow is a sinister monster, red-haired, feline, with claw-like fingers: “the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses” (Norris 34). He is a man consumed by a single passion — greed — and he is an extreme and unadulterated example of the anti–Semitic caricature of the Jew as miser. Zerkow’s junk shop is both San Francisco in miniature and its entropic parody. Everything seems inevitably to find its way there as it wears down and outlives its usefulness (Norris 33). But, in true naturalist fashion, Zerkow cannot effect any alchemical transformation of this base matter. He lives on the verge of insanity, obsessed by the vision of the one thing that is excluded from his emporium —value. When Maria comes into valueless world with her story of a set of gold dishes that she says belonged to her parents, she becomes the

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object of his mania. He insists that she repeat the story endlessly, and becomes determined to possess both her and her inheritance. He marries her and they have a sickly child who quickly dies. Zerkow becomes convinced that the valuable tableware is hidden on the grounds of the his junkshop, and when Maria, in an obscurely motivated case of post-partum amnesia , no longer remembers the story of the gold, he grows more frenzied until he savagely murders her, and is discovered drowned soon after. Clearly, there was no way for Norris’s bigoted stereotype to find a place in Bell’s contemporary adaptation. The character needed to be fundamentally reconceived, while still playing the same role in the progression of the narrative line. Bell removes all references to Zerkow’s Jewishness, and just as he replaces Norris’ ethnic stereotype of Trina with a narrative that accounts for her avarice, he makes Zerkow’s obsession emerge from the specifics of his life story. Bell’s Zerkow is a miner who was trapped in the mountains over a particularly severe winter. Local rumor has it that he ate his fellow prospector to survive (56 –57). Zerkow denies the charge, and presents a counter-narrative. Trapped with his starving and fevered partner, he tries to keep him alive with stories of gold, and succeeds, for a week, before the man dies in his arms: Like I told him we’d found the mother lode. And the sun on all our gold was so bright, it was melting the snow just as fast as it fell. (Pause) He stopped askin’ for food. But kept on askin’ for stories [91].

Maria’s story recapitulates the fantasy that Zerkow spun out in the mine, a story that links fantasies of gold to keeping mortality at bay. When she can no longer tell the story, he feels he has let him die (91). The traumatic failure of the first fantasy reiterates itself as she withdraws her fantasy from him. Zerkow threatens Maria with the bag of tin plates that she hid to taunt him, an entropic, parodic image of the dream of opulence with which she lured him. Just as Trina’s fortune becomes indistinguishable from trash, so too does Maria’s imaginary inheritance. The tin plates that Zerkow hauls along with him in the final stages of his insanity are at once the object of a hoped-for alchemical transformation through storytelling and the imagination and its entropic negation. As Zerkow’s partner in folie à deux and racial degeneracy, Maria Macapa, the Latina cleaning woman who bullies the tenants into giving her possessions to sell to Zerkow, and sometimes goes so far as to rob them, reflects Norris’s belief that the Spanish settlers were degenerate, hot-blooded, and irrational (Morgan 132, 136). Thieving, selling illegal lottery tickets, perversely masochistic in her sexuality, and given to a strange and inexplicable non sequitors — “Had a flying squirrel an’ let him go” (16), — her grasp on reality for much of the novel seems as tenuous as Zerkow’s. Her origins are unknown, and her story that she grew up in a family that ate off golden dishes is linked to the local “legend” that her parents had once lived a wealthy existence somewhere in Central America (17), a tale that neither Norris nor Bell ever confirm or deny. But,

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just as she does not seem to be sufficiently in control of her speech to set the claim about the flying squirrel into any context (or perhaps not even be aware that she is saying it), the rapturous description of the gold service, which she uses to exert control over Zerkow, is never situated in a biographical narrative, and, after the intense “dementia of childbirth” (191), as Norris obscurely puts it, the memory (or delusion) of the gold is completely and inexplicably erased from her mind. Bell increases Maria’s self-awareness over that of her counterpart in the novel. She knows she is looked down on as a “Crazy greaser woman. Without a dime” (55) whose assets are minimal. Her prime capital is her eloquence, which Bell establishes early on with her dreamy evocation of the quiet of San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon, meant to lull a drowsy McTeague (10). Rather than defining her as a character whose verbal blips betray a damaged brain, as Norris did, Bell defines Maria by her ability to mobilize language toward her ends. Her poetic gifts allow her to enchant Zerkow (and the audience) with her descriptions of her family’s lost treasure. Furthermore, Bell uses eloquence to establish an affinity between Maria and Zerkow, whose language skills act as a counterweight to their common situation as poor and lonely figures of marginalization. She is able to summon up absent objects, while he can imbue junk, and even dust, with a morbid fascination (23). At the bottom of the society’s hierarchy, Bell finds the true artists. Set in contrast to the rough, vulgar and violent world of the rest of the novel, in which notions of propriety are so foreign that any attempts of it lead inevitably to grotesque exaggeration (72), the romantic subplot between the retired dressmaker, Miss Baker, and the veterinary surgeon, Old Grannis, is a tale of occasionally painful delicacy. Both are Anglo-Saxons, characterized by reserve, fastidiousness, and gentility in a world otherwise crowded with roughhewed ethnic types. The couple’s minority status in the novel reflects actual circumstances in 19th century San Francisco; in the U. S. census figures for 1870, 1880, and 1890 it had the highest percentage of foreign-born residents of any major American city (Berglund 4) Their plot shares in none of the sordid, violent impulses that color the rest of the novel. It is delicately comic, slightly sentimental, and even reaches a happy ending that is touching but also feels slightly out of place in this otherwise naturalistic novel. Grannis has invented a binding apparatus for pamphlets that is bought by a bookseller’s, leaving him the money to modestly retire from taking care of dogs, and marry Miss Baker (254 –255). As Donna Campbell has observed, the Old Grannis–Miss Baker subplot actually derives from a completely different genre of late 19th century American fiction, the sentimental local color fiction of authors such as Mary Wilkins Freeman (40 –42). Campbell notes, “Of the three pairs of lovers in the work, Old Grannis and Miss Baker represent the almost excessive restraint, manners, asexuality, and spiritual self-denial characteristic of local color fiction, just as the junk dealer Zerkow and Maria signify the excessive passions of Zolaesque

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naturalism” (43). In a novel of entropy, the elderly couple rise, albeit modestly, in the world. Amidst a chaos of destructive passions, they achieve a strong but delicate union. Their ability to achieve a better life together puts the deterministic vision of the rest of the novel in question (Cassuto 50 –53). This subplot implies that the entropic forces that lead to so much destruction can be surmounted by diligence, ingenuity, and self-discipline — and that these qualities are more likely to be found in Anglo-Saxons. It should come as no surprise then, that the novel’s first critics, a genteel lot, were most drawn to this subplot above the other plots, and repulsed by the rest (Campbell 40). Norris’s views on racial characteristics mute his critique of the economic system. Yes, the system may be brutal and unjust, but it ultimately sustains and even rewards those who have the requisite virtues, and leaves to flounder those shoe survival skills are at best slender. The hierarchy of selection is clear, with Anglo-Saxons at the top, Western Europeans somewhat further down, and Southern Europeans and Jews at the bottom. Even though Norris makes gentle fun of timidity of Grannis and Baker, and shows them to be genteel almost to the point of inanition, his hierarchy of racial types demands that their story end happily. With the Anglo-Saxons resisting and even (delicately) triumphing over the novel’s powerful drive toward entropy, McTeague alternately foregrounds the squalor of San Francisco’s lower depths and participates in the elite’s narratives the history of the city as “one of the triumph of order over disorder” (Berglund 1). The Grannis/Baker subplot works to question the deterministic implications of the other plot lines and suggest that free will is a possibility (Cassuto 46)— if only for some. Bell revises the romance between Grannis and Baker so it no longer hinges on the success of Grannis’s invention. Bell does not allow them a resolution that depends so much on outside circumstances. Rather, he plots a crisis in their relationship that is a response to the reality of these two fundamentally gentle people who have been forced into a dangerous environment by economic circumstances. Unlike Norris, Bell includes the couple at the picnic at which McTeague and his one-time friend, now embittered rival, Marcus, erupt in a bloody brawl. Miss Baker, terrified, turns to Grannis and begs him to intervene, but he does nothing, later admitting “I was afraid” (68), Her fear and disillusionment, along with his humiliation, creates a temporary rift between the two. But Bell takes pain to show that Grannis is not quite the coward he first appeared. He takes an incident from the novel, in which Marcus intervenes, knife in hand, to protect Maria, who is being pursued by a crazed and violent Zerkow, and recasts it so that Grannis becomes Maria’s defender, facing her abusive husband down with the (false) claim that he has a gun and will shoot Zerkow down if he does not desist. This touch of ingenious chivalric bravado allows Grannis a moment of sweetly comic swagger, but also shows that he is not a totally ineffectual figure in the violent milieu in which he lives, and is

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willing to be courageous when it comes to protecting someone in peril. The revision from the predictably strong Marcus to the apparently weaker Grannis as knight in shining armor makes the old man a touch more robust, more complex, and less discontinuous with his environment. Rather than adopting the break in daily routine that comes with the sale of Grannis’s invention that Norris uses to bring the lovers together, Bell creates a heightened awareness of shared vulnerability in the wake of the picnic to unite them. Realizing that they are similar in their age and isolation, Miss Baker can find the courage to come to Grannis’s room with a cup of tea when she hears him weeping, and they can move forward over their mutual appreciation of each other’s vulnerability and bravery, as two timid people, and open up to each other. But, although Bell has the two timid lovers finally find a way to a happy ending, he does not treat them to further financial means to render them secure them in their union. Although we are touched by their alliance, we are nevertheless haunted by our memory of Miss Baker shopping for day-old fish, and Trina’s traumatized recollection of the sweet old couple who starved to death, because they only had “close” to enough to live on. Bell frees his characters of any trace of determinism based on ethnicity, but underscores their vulnerability to economic forces. This pervasive financial vulnerability evokes dreams of escape, especially in Trina, and we in the audience latch on to such moments of hopeful reverie. Bell’s play is suffused with a utopian longing absent from Norris’s novel. Norris tends to sneer at McTeague and Trina’s tastes as proof of their irremediable vulgarity and mental limitations (even the apprentices and shop girls on Polk Street make fun of the McTeagues’s tacky possessions (220)), and uses them to launch a satiric attack on the degeneracy of a nascent mass consumer culture, which would finally come into its own in the United States after World War I (Seavoy 267). Zola, as was so often the case, had trailblazed the novelistic treatment of the new consumerism with his 1883 novel set in a department store, Au Bonheur des Dames. Norris catalogs the kitschy lithographs and colored prints that adorn the McTeagues’s abode, and describes in detail their ‘exotic’ wallpaper: Hundreds and hundreds of Japanese mandarins, all identically alike, helping hundreds of almond-eyed ladies into hundreds of impossible junks, while hundreds of bamboo palms overshadowed the pair and hundreds of long-legged storks trailed contemptuously away from the scene [124 –125].

As the wallpaper exemplifies, the mass production of culture is literally the production of masses, which, in its endless reiteration, reveals itself to be increasingly ridiculous. Like Trina’s miserly horde, it possesses abundance without worth. Trina is not only the primary consumer in the novel, but a producer of mass goods as well. Painting toys by hand to supplement her income, she wonders over the seemingly bottomless pit of mass consumption, which reduces childhood to a market demographic:

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“Where do all the toys go to?” she murmured. “The thousands and thousands of these Noah’s arks that I have made — horses and chickens and elephants— and always there never seems to be enough. It’s a good thing for me that children break their things and they all have to have birthdays and Christmases.” She dipped her brush into a pot of Vandyke brown and painted one of the whittled toy horses in two strokes. Then a touch of ivory black with a small flat brush created the tail and mane, and dots of Chinese white made the eyes. The turpentine in the paint dried it almost immediately and she tossed the completed little horse into the basket [270].

Obsessing over her relatively paltry savings, it never occurs to Trina that she is being exploited to fatten much larger bank accounts, and that this exploitation has toxic aspects, even literally so. She paints the toys with a poisonous paint which will eventually lead to the amputation of three fingers. From Trina to the more affluent and tasteful shoppers on Polk Street, Norris depicts a modern economy in which the possession of commodities becomes a way to American identity (Quay 213). From this perspective, even Maria’s images of gold tableware can be viewed as an aspiration for “untainted nonethnic identity” (Quay 218). For his part, Bell spends no time cataloging kitsch lithographs and cheap lace curtains. This is probably due in part to the shift from novel to stage. The objects on which Norris lavishes attention can’t dominate theatrical space in the way they come to command attention through the ‘close-up’ of novelistic description. Objects that cannot be put at the service of dramatic action quickly lose their significance. More important, however, is the fact that Bell is less interested in criticizing the McTeagues’s tastes than emphasizing their relatively short period of domestic happiness before McTeague loses his job as a dentist. McTeague’s manners and hygiene improve, he becomes more self-aware in modest ways, and he begins to dream of a better life, which may not be terribly imaginative, but is certainly better than his initial torpor or kitsch consumption. “A house of our own. Six rooms and a bath. Daylilies out front on the lawn. And a boy. Daniel” (58). The dream he articulates, of home ownership and children, resonates familiarly with a contemporary American middle-class audience — it’s the common trope of the American Dream, so, when it is sabotaged, the spectators can easily identify with the loss, especially in economically uncertain times. While Norris critiques tastes, Bell uses elements of mass culture to give expression to the aspirations that are evoked by them. When Norris has McTeague take Trina to the Orpheum as a part of his courtship, it is an occasion for a extended exercise in the comic grotesque, climaxing in Trina’s little brother urinating in his best outfit, his mother smacking him in frustration, and the child wailing loudly. In the evening’s bill of diversions, Norris gives special emphasis to the kinetoscope as a vulgar form of entertainment, and McTeague’s awestruck reaction to it is yet further proof (as if more were needed by this point) of his naiveté (Young 645 –646). While Norris presents the Orpheum as a space totally devoid of aesthetic judgment (Young 655), Bell introduces a wistful note. During

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a break in the entertainment, McTeague once again tries to persuade Trina that they should get married, and, once again, she explains that it is not economically feasible. Defeated once again, McTeague turns to dreams of escape and the kinetoscope they’ve just witnessed of a trolley car: McTeague: I wish they’d start that magic lantern again. Trina: What for? McTeague: I’d get you onto that trolley car. We’d ride away. Trina: We’d be done for though, when the lights came up. McTeague: We’d be gone. We’d never know [40 –41].

Although Bell jettisons a good deal of the novel’s objects and consumer activities from his play, he retains and continues to give prominence to, the novel’s most distinctive and well-known object, the huge sign of a gilded tooth that Trina gives her then-fiancé as a birthday present. It fuses at once abjection and value, commerce and aesthetics. It celebrates Trina and McTeague’s triumph over circumstance through the chance intervention of the lottery, marking at once the achievement of romance, wealth, and professional status, and seems (falsely) to promise its continuation. At once monstrous and strangely beautiful —“shining dimly out as if with some mysterious light of its own” (118)— it can be taken as a metatextual symbol of Norris’s naturalist novel, which brings the monstrous and the beautiful together in a single object, disconcerting yet compelling. While Norris sets up the dental sign from the first pages of the novel as a long-standing ambition of the young dentist and an indication of his limited capacities (4), Bell dramatizes how this fantasy comes about and, by so doing, alters and enhances it. In the play, we first see McTeague on the chair of his dental parlor on a Sunday afternoon, having drunk some beer, playing his concertina and singing none-too-dulcetly before drifting off into a deep slumber. There is no indication of dreaming here; the young dentist is barely sensible in a closed and isolated world, only kept company by his canary. But when McTeague’s new friend Marcus bursts onstage a few scenes later drags his lethargic friend off to Cliff House one Sunday afternoon, McTeague’s attention is drawn to a jagged rock out at sea, illuminated by the sun and reminding him of “a giant incisor” (11). Marcus takes up the association and elaborates on it, suggesting that it could serve as the model for a huge sign outside the dental parlor, one that would not merely be painted, but would actually be made of gold. In the following scene, we see McTeague back in his dental chair, asleep, but this time “Above him, a giant golden tooth appears” (12). McTeague has become a dreamer. By presenting the gold tooth, not as a given of McTeague’s consciousness from the outset, but as an image that comes into being as a result of his newfound friendship with Marcus, the breaking of his customary Sunday torpor, physical activity, fresh air, sunlight, and the sea, it is no longer an indication of the limitations of McTeague’s mind, but a dramatization of the expansion of it. Perception of the rock leads to the memory of an incisor and the creation

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of a simile. That image, in turn, is taken up by Marcus as the basis for a fantasy and is returned to McTeague, in whose dream it next appears. Eventually, the appearance of the tooth will provide the climax to the first act, no longer a fantasy, but a reality, and not through the agency of friend Marcus, but of fiancée Trina. Bell underlines that money may serve as a medium of exchange, but so does fantasy. Zerkow is able to keep his dying friend alive for a time with fantasies, which the friend needs more desperately than food. The process by which the image of the tooth is generated through dramatic action, which seems to unfold casually, even effortlessly, between the two friends, introduces an important dynamic that runs through Bell’s McTeague— the intersubjective nature of fantasy, whether in imagery or narrative. As people enter McTeague’s life and change it, we see him dreaming more. The awakening of his passion for Trina takes the form of eerie fantasies, at once tender and suggestive of violence, as she lies in his dentist’s chair under the influence of ether. Once married, at the height of his good fortune, he is able to articulate the “dreams” he has for his marriage (58). Whereas Norris’s McTeague is finally reduced to the point at which he takes the tooth to a prosperous dentist in hopes of selling it to him, Bell’s McTeague is so deeply invested in the sign as the concretization of his longings that he is incapable of parting with it, and it is Trina who sells it to the dentist while her husband is out one day, provoking the first outbreak of violence in the marriage. For the McTeagues, as for Maria and Zerkow, the disintegration of pacts made through imagery, whether expressed in words or objects, leads to violence. It is most particularly in this emphasis on the integrative potential of fantasy that Bell’s McTeague complicates what could have been a simplistic materialism into a more complexly vectored exploration of the imagery of gold. As a result, gold comes to exert not only an entropic force as a figure of greed, but an anti-entropic force as a figure of the imagination. While gold, as a powerful element and signifier in the currency system, stands in for the economic realities that play such a role in shaping the narrative and points toward material forces, it also, sometimes simultaneously stands in for the riches of the imagination. Gold carries archetypal association of psychic riches as well as material ones. The transmutation of base materials into gold was at the heart of the alchemist’s quest, and that quest carried both exoteric and esoteric meanings (Hillman 137). From this perspective, the gold tooth can be interpreted as an alchemical token, as a testament to the transformative potential of the imagination and art. It would be mistaken, however, to simplify the oppositions of Bell’s McTeague along the lines of matter vs. spirit, since the alchemical dynamics of the play are not simply rooted in the aesthetic imagination. The play also presents the prospect of transformation through gold, primarily through the vehicle of the lottery. The entropic dynamic of an economy, whether my tiny bank account or the vast wastes of the U. S. Treasury, requires the repeated influx of new funds to restore it. In the words of Hans Christoph Binswanger: “The modern economy

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is a continuation of alchemy by other means” (33). Gold, whether in the form of a physical substance or a governmental edict, holds forth the promise of thwarting the entropy central to the naturalist vision, but its triumphs are only intermittent; the pull toward disintegration is ultimately more powerful. Furthermore, the relative scarcity of gold can transform it into an entropic force. It is the desire for wealth that cankers the “Damon and Pythias” (28) friendship between McTeague and Marcus, as the latter broods how Trina’s lottery winnings have escaped him through his generosity. It is money that drives the temperamental differences between Trina and McTeague to a violent conclusion. Once Zerkow ceases to enjoy Maria’s tale of gold as an evocation of lost splendor and begins to believe it is an account of something that can actually be possessed, disaster becomes inevitable. Gold can be shared and act as a cohesive, even erotic force in the imagination, but proves to be divisive in a world divided into haves and have-nots. Entropy and alchemy harmonize most discordantly in the final scene of the play. Bell condenses the last fifty-odd pages of the novel down to less than seven, no doubt partly due to the need for dramatic condensation, but the choice also gives further evidence of his repudiation of Norris’s fascination with a racially grounded regression to primal type. The play’s compression presents McTeague’s final deterioration less as gradual decline and more as a precipitous breakdown in the aftermath of Trina’s murder. In the novel, McTeague is drawn back to the mine, which is both his source of origin and the gold’s. One might expect that this completed circuit would create closure, but Norris refuses to let McTeague find rest in any mythical point of origin or return to nature. Rather, he drives his degenerating hero into a totally new milieu, the alkali expanse of Death Valley, a hostile void that seems to prefigure the wastes of mid-twentieth century existentialist landscapes by Albert Camus, Paul Bowles, Francis Bacon, and Michelangelo Antonioni. There, McTeague and Marcus finally confront each other in a landscape of absolute alterity. Bell eliminates the mining scenes and picks up with his protagonist on the verge of Death Valley, his choice to enter the lethal wasteland appearing almost the workings of a death drive (101). Norris’s McTeague is reduced to the simplest reflexes and instincts in the desert; Bell’s is beset with hallucinations of a battered and bloody Trina and memories of his early fascination with her. Although he may defensively assert “I don’t dream” (101), he has learned to dream only too well, and his dreams have become nightmares. There is no way that he can revert to Norris’s simple brute. Stranded in the desert, without any water, Marcus and McTeague are ‘goners.’ The gold in McTeague’s saddle bags has become as valueless and incapable of sustaining life as Trina’s horde and Zerkow’s bag of tin plates and cups. And yet it continues to exercise a tenacious hold on Marcus’s imagination, and he is determined to fight his rival to the death to gain possession of it. The

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force of the imagination, more powerful than the need for food in the case of the dying miner, pits the doomed men against each other in the absence of any prospect of actual gain. Economic competitiveness has become so deeply engrained that it is no longer a means to an end, but an end in itself. The monetary concerns that seemed reasonable at the beginning of the play have progressive deformed their subjects, leading to increasing perversity, insanity, and death. It is only here, at the conclusion of the play that we are confronted with a naked image of the economy’s core dynamic, one that prefigures the confrontation between Shlink and Garga in Bertolt Brecht’s In the Jungle of the Cities a few decades later. The madness of the final scene is not a break from the ‘civilized’ world of the capitalist metropolis— it is its inevitable conclusion: The capitalist machine does not run the risk of becoming mad, it is mad from one end to the other and from the beginning, and this is the source of its rationality [Deleuze/Guattari 373].

A gold rush provides a real ‘high’ but is ultimately lethal for all concerned. In a recent article on Ibsen, Franco Moretti has analyzed the two registers of discourse in Ibsen’s mature work, and related them two to aspects of capitalism: the prosaic, non-metaphorical language of analysis and bourgeois work, best represented by the final pages of A Doll’s House, and the metaphor-ridden, visionary language of the capitalist entrepreneur, best seen in the megalomaniacal raptures of John Gabriel Borkman, for whom dreaming and speculating are synonymous (127–128). The two McTeagues show how the capitalist system is not simply fueled by visionary raptures at the top of the hierarchy, but how they energize, unite, and disrupt, throughout the system, producing strong ambivalences. At the opposite ends of the socio-economic order Borkman and Zerkow, both entrepreneurs, dream alarmingly similar dreams, and the differences between the wintry bluffs overlooking a Norwegian fjord and Death Valley are amazingly few, whatever the temperatures.

WORKS CITED Baguley, D. Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Bell, Neal. McTeague: A Tale of San Francisco in Three Plays. New York: Broadway Play Publishing, 1998. Binswanger, H. C. Money and Magic: A Critique of the Modern Economy in the Light of Goethe’s Faust. Translated by J. E. Harrison. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Campbell, Donna M. “‘Frank Norris’ ‘Drama in a Broken Teacup’: the Old Grannis–Miss Baker Plot in McTeague,” American Literary Realism, 1870 –1910. 26/1 (Fall 1993). Cassuto, Leonard. “‘Keeping Company’ with the Old Folks: Unraveling the Edges of McTeague’s Deterministic Fabric,” American Literary Realism, 1870 –1910. 25/2 (Winter 1993). Dawson, Hugh J. “McTeague as Ethnic Stereotype,” American Literary Realism 20/1 (Fall 1987). Deleuze. Gilles. Cinema 1. The Movement-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1986. _____ and Félix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Mark Sem Hurley and Helen R. Lane. New York: Penguin Books, 2009. DuBoff, Richard B. Accumulation and Power: An Economic History of the United States. Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1989.

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Englund, Barbara. Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846 – 1906. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Hillman, James. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row, 1975. Kemp, Tom. The Climax of Capitalism: The U.S. Economy in the Twentieth Century. Longman: New York, 1990. McGowan, Richard. State Lotteries and Legalized Gambling: Painless Revenue or Painless Mirage. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994. Michaels, Walter Benn. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. Moretti, Franco. “The Grey Area: Ibsen and the Spirit of Capitalism,” New Left Review 61 (January– February 2010). Morgan, H. Wayne. American Writers in Rebellion: From Mark Twain to Dreiser. New York: Hill and Wang, 1965. Norris, Frank. McTeague: A Tale of San Francisco. New York: Signet Classic, 2003. Pierce, Patrick A. and Miller, Donald E. Gambling Politics: State Government and the Business of Betting. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004. Pizer, Donald. American Naturalism and the Jews: Garland, Norris, Dreiser, Wharton, and Cather. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Quay, Sara E. “American Imperialism and the Excess of Objects in McTeague,” American Literary Realism 33/3 (Spring 2001). Ritter, Gretchen. Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Antimonopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America, 1865 –1896. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Seavoy, R. E. An Economic History of the United States: From 1607 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2006. Simmel, Georg. “The Adventurer,” in On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings. Edited and translated by Donald N. Levine. Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 1971. Tanner, Kathryn. “Grace and Gambling,” in Gambling: Mapping the American Moral Landscape. Edited by Alan Wolfe and Eric C. Owens. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009. Young, Paul. “Telling Descriptions: Frank Norris’s Kinetoscopic Naturalism and the Future of the Novel,” Modernism/Modernity 14/4 (2007).

Money in Chekhov’s Plays LAURENCE SENELICK

Chekhov’s interest in money is so prominent in his life and works that it is surprising that no one has studied it in more detail. Although his biographers usually offer some space to a discussion of the financial arrangements at either end of his career — his entrance into comic journalism to help support his feckless family in Moscow and his deals with the publisher Adol’f Marks, in which he somewhat improvidently sold off the rights to his past writings for a lump sum, — they are hesitant to inquire too deeply into Chekhov’s income or his concern over it. In the West, this has had to do with a once-entrenched view of Chekhov as a secular saint, someone above such mundane matters; in Soviet criticism, Chekhov had, of course, to be seen as a critic of capitalism, not an avid participant in it. Chekhov the dramatist is particularly implicated in getting and spending. His first ventures into the professional theatre were motivated by hopes of rich royalties; and many of his plays, one-acts or full-length, are themselves driven by the need for money. He is Balzacian in telling us how much things cost, how much characters earn, how much interest capital can accrue. No other playwright of his time provides so much pecuniary detail —certainly not Ibsen, whose plays often revolve around bankruptcy and moral insolvency; not Strindberg, who turned the fact that in Swedish skuld means both debt and guilt into a symbolist device; and not even Shaw, the hardest-bargaining Socialist in literature. Only the French naturalists pay so much attention to prices. This may be in part because Chekhov, like many of his characters, had to toil to make money and was not that good at it. Even while hobnobbing with millionaires such as Suvorin and Stanislavsky, “he did not,” as Prince Mirsky reminds us, “become so rich as to compare with Mr. Rudyard Kipling or Gabriel d’Annunzio, nor even with Gorky” (Mirsky 83). Once Chekhov made up his mind to write a play for Korsh’s theatre in Moscow in 1887, at the manager’s urging, his earliest references to it concern what it will earn. To his brother Aleksandr, he writes in early October, “The play slipped out of me easy as pie, without a single tedious patch. The subject matter is unusual. I will stage it, probably, at Korsh’s (if the latter isn’t stingy)” (to Al. 75

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P. Chekhov, Moscow, 6 or 7 October 1887) (all quotations from Chekhov’s letters and plays are my translations of texts in A. P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochineniy i pisem [Complete Collected Works and Letters], 30 volumes. Moscow: Nauka, 1974–1983). By the end of the month, reporting to Aleksandr that the play, the first version of Ivanov, will go up at the end of November, he specifies “Contract: no less than 8 percent of the box-office takings. A sold-out house at Korsh’s comes to 1100 –1500, and at benefits 2400. The play will be put on many times. The praise lavished on it, along with the forthcoming deal, have cheered me up a bit” (to Al. P. Chekhov, Moscow, 21 October 1887). Chekhov takes pride in his deal-making, for he repeats the information about the contract a week later, adding that 8 percent means 2 percent per act and referring to Korsh as “that crook” (to Al. P. Chekhov, Moscow, 29 October 1887). Evidently, he had sought advice on this matter from his friend the much-staged comic author Nikolay Leykin, for he boasts, “From Korsh I did not take 50 rubles per performance, as you advised, but more: 8 percent of the box-office gross, i.e., 2 percent per act” (to N. A. Leykin, Moscow, 4 November 1887). At the same time, he complains about the cost of cabs to the rehearsals. Chekhov took an active part in promoting the play, realizing that if the opening night were a success, Korsh would revive it, thus providing more revenue for the author. Signing himself “Schiller Shakespearovich Goethe,” he urges Aleksandr to insert a notice in the newspaper to the effect that the play was received with accolades on its second appearance. “A notice like that will make them do the play again, and I’ll get an extra fifty or a hundred smackers” (to Al. P. Chekhov, Moscow, 24 November 1887). Buoyed up by this success, he advises a friend to write comedies: “It won’t do you any harm, but will provide an income” (to A. I. Maslov, Moscow, 7 April 1888). When the Imperial Alexandra Theatre offers to revive Ivanov with the celebrated Mariya Savina as Sasha, Chekhov is candid in his personal correspondence: “Frankly speaking, what tempted me about the production of the play was neither fame nor Savina.... I was counting on earning about a thousand rubles. [...] I’ll bet that, sooner or later, I shall fleece the management to the tune of 6 or 7 thousand. Want to bet?” (to A. S. Suvorin, Moscow, 30 December 1888). When the time comes for his plays to be published, the inexperienced Chekhov is not as demanding as when they are performed. “Of course, I take much less money for a play than for prose. I set the price when I know the size of the play. The longer it is, the less I take per page. I have never published a play and don’t know the prices. If you were to give me advice — what sort of price to set, so that no one is offended — I would be very grateful to you. Name a figure” (to A. N. Pleshcheev, Moscow, 11 February 1889). He vacillates between the emotional and financial highs experienced by a dramatist and the steadier pleasures of a prose writer. “Ivanov, sold with The Bear, has earned me a thousand or a bit under a thousand rubles. And I’m going to get about two or three hundred from the Society for Dramatic Authors. It’s profitable to write plays, but

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it’s unsettling to be a dramatist and not in my nature. I don’t care about ovations, backstage panics, successes and failures, but I have a lazy soul and can’t stand abrupt ups and downs in temperature” (to N. A. Leykin, Moscow, 21 February 1889). He finds a piscatorial conceit to point the difference between audience response and regular receipts: “I like staging a play in the same way that I fish or catch crayfish: you cast your line and wait to see if anything will turn up. But you go to the Society to collect your royalties with the same feeling with which you go to a fish-trap or an eel-pot: over night did you snag a perch or a lot of crayfish? It’s a pleasant recreation” (to A. S. Suvorin, Moscow, 18 November 1888). The Society for Russian Dramatic Authors and Operatic Composers had been founded in 1874 to protect their rights in a theatre world that played fast and loose with scripts and scores. Any play not contracted to an Imperial theatre was handled by the Society. Chekhov joined it in 1887 at the same time that Ivanov was about to be produced. Although part of the Society’s mandate was to promote the improvement of Russian playwriting, he regarded it primarily as a “commercial institution,” whose collection of royalties for writers superseded all its other functions. He was, however, not without a sense of humor about the avidity of playwrights to get their due. In April 1888, he published a parody in New Times (Novoe vremya, 4721 [22 Apr. 1888]), purporting to be an affidavit from a provincial hack whose one and only melodrama had been produced by amateurs fifteen years earlier and who now wants full rights in running the Society. The sketch pointed out that, of its members, only thirty were regularly produced, the other 300 rarely if ever staged. Chekhov’s squib was said to have created a quite a commotion among those minor writers (Ezhov). When it came to his own royalties, Chekhov took the Society very seriously. He was not above badgering it to correct an accounting error, when a single performance was inadvertently omitted from the reckoning (“A slight error has crept into the account which I received yesterday. My Bear was performed at Korsh’s 18 times, but in the account it is listed as 17 times. This error has occurred, probably, because The Bear was performed once at Korsh’s instead of Turgenev’s Evening in Sorrento and was not advertised on the playbill” [to I. M. Kondrat’ev, 6 March 1889]). Since the Society was located in Moscow, he delegated Aleksandr to be his proxy in St Petersburg, bombarding him with instructions on how to refuse an offer to purchase a play outright, to insist on 2 percent of the box-office per act, to wait for an offer to be made rather than soliciting one, and to keep all such deals strictly private. In the course a year, Chekhov had become a shrewd bargainer in the theatre. When the 1888/89 season ended, he charged Aleksandr with visiting the managements and collecting what was owed him. If they won’t hand it over or they cheat, tell them that you will appeal to the commercial middleman Bykov. Wire me the money, and then send the accounting by post. You should get around a thousand in cash. I want you to drop dead from black envy or else to be compelled by jealousy to sit down and write a play, which isn’t

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This last point is important. For Chekhov, the theatre was a milch-cow which was to provide important supplemental earnings to keep the family comfortable. It is a note he strikes again and again in his letters. When the Maly Theatre in Moscow urges him to write them a play, he has no illusions: “Ah, if only there were time! A good play wouldn’t get written, but it would be enough to make a little bit of money” (to A. N. Pleshcheev, Moscow, 24 September 1889). On his first trip abroad in 1891, he writes home from Naples, “All summer, Messrs. Gentry, we will have no money, and the thought of this spoils my appetite. For the trip, which solo I should have completed for 300 rub., I have gone into debt for a thousand. All my hopes lie in the idiotic amateurs who will perform my Bear” (to the Chekhovs, Naples, 7 [19] April 1891). He plans on his return to “go to Moscow, collect from the Society about 150 –200 rubles for The Bear, that’s how God provides for our fellow-man the loafer” (to A. S. Suvorin, Bogimovo, 30 August 1891). The same preoccupation with money that colors Chekhov’s attitude to the performance of his plays suffuses the plays themselves. In his journeyman efforts, starting with the division of the characters into debtors and creditors in the untitled play usually referred to as Platonov, the motivation is largely pecuniary. Throughout, money is referred to as “filthy lucre,” “ill-gotten gains,” “Mammon.” The older generation uses it to corrupt and suborn the younger generation through mortgages, loans, bribes and gifts. Many of them are shown as nouveaux-riches, upstarts whose incomes derive from such suspect sources as leasing out dramshops and ruining old-established families. Yet their juniors are easy prey, depicted as wastrels and profligates. In Act Two, the clownish young doctor Triletsky puts the touch on a parvenu grocer “just because,” and then hands out the cash he has received, ruble by ruble, to anyone who comes along. As the one-ruble banknotes pass from hand to hand, they graphically illustrate the mindless prodigality of Chekhov’s nobly-born contemporaries. This snatch of dialogue distils the atmosphere: PETRIN : (comes out of the house arm in arm with Shcherbuk). Put down fifty thousand in front of me, and I’ll steal it.... Word of honor, I’ll steal it.... Just so long as nothing happened to me ... I’ll steal it.... Put it down in front of you, and you’d steal it. SHCHERBUK : I wouldn’t steal it, Gerasya! No! PETRIN : Put down a ruble, and I’ll steal the ruble! Honest to goodness! Phooey! Who wants your honesty? A honest man is a stupid man... SHCHERBUK : I’m a stupid man.... Let me be a stupid man... TRILETSKY: Here’s a ruble for each of you, elders of the tribe! (Gives each ofthem a ruble.) PETRIN : (takes the money). Hand it over ... [Act II, Tableau 1, sc.7].

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What undermines the entire society in Platonov becomes concentrated on a single protagonist in Ivanov. Barely has the curtain gone up when the issue is raised. Ivanov’s kinsman, the estate overseer Borkin, asks for eight-two rubles to pay some workmen, and is put off because Ivanov has no money until he is paid his own salary as a member of the Council for Peasant Affairs. Eighty-two is a very precise amount, but the characters in this play always know exactly how much they are owed. Ivanov is in debt not only to his workers, but also to his neighbor, the money-lending skinflint Zinaida Savishna, who constantly complains of his defaulting on his loan. When he asks for an extension, she almost faints. This debt, owed to friends, preys on Ivanov’s mind and is a contributory factor to his depression. It is noteworthy that, in this play, money is controlled by older women, Zinaida, who withholds pocket money from her convivial husband, and the rich widow Babakina, who is the target of fortune-hunters. Their very first conversation is about lottery tickets and stock prices with complaints about the high cost of living. Ivanov’s debt to Zinaida, mentioned at the play’s start, is bookended in the last act by the discussion of the dowry for her daughter, which is diminished in order to pay that debt. All the men in the play are in need of money and this need motivates their actions: Count Shabelsky, a hanger-on on his nephew’s estate, would like money to go to Paris and visit his wife’s grave; without the fare, he finds he has no place for himself. Borkin, in addition to covering the expenses of the estate, cherishes getrich-quick schemes which need start-up funds; it is he who launches the project for Shabelsky to marry Babakina so as “to line his poches.” Lebedev, Zinaida’s husband, always has to excuse his wife’s penuriousness and try to collect the money owed her; at the last, he admits to having a secret bank account of ten thousand rubles, which he is willing to make over to Ivanov. Dr. Lvov complains of not being paid by his patients and sees mercenary motives in Ivanov. Indeed, like the whole community, he believes Ivanov married his first wife for her fortune and, disappointed in that, is now gold-digging the Lebedevs. Even the inveterate card-player Kosykh’s obsession with his whist scores presents a variation on the concept of acquisition. The young women, although they are not interested in money, are constrained by it. Anna Petrovna, by being disinherited by her parents, cannot bring Ivanov the fortune that would enable him to carry out his idealistic schemes; she cannot even afford the trip that would help treat her tuberculosis. So she becomes a burden rather than a savior. Sasha, rather unrealistically (and not unlike Anya in The Cherry Orchard), wants to live without money, in some romantic utopia like America. These themes are even clearer in the Ur-Ivanov, the first version which was

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produced at Korsh’s theatre in 1888. There the speeches about money are much longer and more topical, particularly in the wedding episodes of the last act. Lebedev congratulates his daughter that “your generous mother will not use the occasion to pass off on you coupons that fall due ten years from now or shares in Skopin’s bank” (Skopin’s bank, in the southern county town of Ryazan, failed spectacularly in 1884 and was a topic of conversation for years). The comic characters cheer on Ivanov for “putting the squeeze” on Zinaida; Borkin comments on the price of the wine at the wedding banquet and then tries to sell a thousand rubles’s worth of shares in a non-existent stud farm. When he fails to get money out of Babakina, he proposes to her. Lebedev laments that he has no income of his own and is living off his wife. Chekhov may have felt that this was too much money-grubbing for an elegant St Petersburg audience and pared it down when he revised the play for the Alexandra; nevertheless, the later and final versions still put the characters at the mercy of their finances. The Bear, which Chekhov wrote barely three months after Ivanov’s premiere at Korsh’s, opens in much the same way as Ivanov. A brooding protagonist is intruded upon by a demand for money. The landowner Smirnov has come to the door of the widow Popova to collect a debt, because he has to make a payment on his mortgage. When she puts him off, asking him to wait for her overseer to return the next day, he goes berserk. Ivanov’s inability to pay his debts made him depressive; Smirnov’s makes him manic. The cause is the same, however, and in both cases it is an estate which is endangered by the possible defalcation. Although at this time of his life Chekhov had limited experience of landowners and estates, his plays reflect an historical condition. Following the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, allowing Great Britain to import wheat, prices for land in Russia rose. Many of the gentry either mortgaged their estates or, after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, sold out to peasants and merchants. Those who did not experienced the crop failures that occurred between 1867 and 1873 and the famine of 1868. They ran deeper into debt, selling off arable land and trying to hold on to the forests and pastures which could be leased out. The monarchy attempted to assist them in preserving their estates for their descendants by establishing a Nobles’ Land bank in 1885. It offered easy credit and low interest loans (this is the bank to which Smirnov must make payments), but indebtedness grew. Other loans were made by private mercantile banks, a relatively new feature of Russian life. The bank which serves as setting for the farce The Celebration (1891) is celebrating only its fifteenth anniversary. In Platonov, the cultured Voinitsev family, rather than deal with the bank, gets involved in a scheme to have the rich landowner Glagol’ev purchase their estate and then pay him back. “Anyway it’s easier doing business with him than with the bank,” explains the indolent young philologist Sergey Pavlovich. “Ugh, I’m so fed up with that bank!” (Act II, Tableau 1). This disdain for new-fangled modes of commerce ultimately leads to the Voinitsevs’ losing their estate when

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Glagol’ev fails to keep up his end of the bargain. It is bought at auction by the Jewish venture capitalist Vengerovich, using the nouveau-riche grocer Bugrov as his front. The lower middle-classes, exploiting innovative techniques of capitalism, find it easy to displace the heedless aristocrats. By the end of the century, the gentry had lost a third of the land they had held in 1861, and of that, a full half was mortgaged (Standard works on the subject include Blum, Robinson, Pipes). In other words, most of Chekhov’s characters, drawn from the landed gentry or the intelligentsia, are those who have been most displaced by the economic currents of the time. It would be easy to divide Chekhov’s characters into those who know how to manage money and those who do not. The dramatis personae of The Wood Goblin include some excellent managers: Yuliya Zheltukhina runs her brother’s farm with alarming efficiency; the flamboyant Fyodor Orlovsky owns estates in the Caucasus and advertises for settlers; Dr. Khrushchov rents a watermill to the eccentric Dyadin, who has enough money left over to send to his faithless wife. What makes The Wood Goblin resemble a traditional high comedy is that most of the characters are well-to-do and have sufficient leisure to pursue love affairs; the action is packed with playtime activities— luncheons, croquet games, picnics. Money is not a major issue until Act Three, when the Professor proposes to sell his daughter’s estate (ironically, it is the Professor, supposedly engaged in high-minded pursuits, who shares with Yuliya a penchant for exact figures). Then we learn that Georges Voinitsky, himself an excellent manager, has been living on a pauper’s salary; his suicide has less to do with that, however, than with a sense of his failure as a human being. Throughout The Wood Goblin, money remains in the background. Chekhov would adjust the focus when he refashioned the play as Uncle Vanya. In Vanya leisure becomes more pernicious. It offers a painful withdrawal from the drug of work. Without significantly increasing the emphasis on business, Chekhov tightens the structure. In The Wood Goblin, the Professor’s sale of the estate was of community interest. We hear who has made a bid on it, how the timber is to be felled, and how Dr. Khrushchov is attempting to raise money to purchase it. In Vanya, the sale is strictly a domestic matter, with no ramifications outside the family circle. The financial situation remains unchanged, as Vanya stipulates to the Professor in the last act. When Sonya and Vanya return to their account books, their first task is to send out bills to their customers, in order to maintain the status quo. The toting up of sums during a psychological crisis— a scene which Chekhov may have borrowed from Sumbatov-Yuzhin’s divorce play Ties That Bind (Tsepi)— , the immersion in financial affairs, represents the dulling routine which has mired their lives but keeps them from going under. Chekhov’s attitude towards playwriting began to change as he himself became more financially independent. Writing in 1895 to Suvorin, who was running his own private theatre in St Petersburg, he declared,

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This is believed to be the first mention of what would turn out to be The Seagull. Written to suit Chekhov’s own taste more than that of the public (although it still contains many elements of conventional stagecraft), The Seagull approaches money in a more abstract, one might almost say mystical, way. (Maeterlinck was on Chekhov’s mind at the time.) The earlier plays had been realistic in their depiction of debit and credit, sales and purchases, incomes and outlays. On the shores of the “spell-binding” lake, however, money exercises a maleficent power. Most of the characters are in thrall to it: whether or not they have personal agency depends largely on whether they have spending money. This note is struck in the play’s very first moment when the schoolmaster Medvedenko complains: All I make is twenty-three rubles a month, not counting deductions, but you don’t see me in mourning. [...] MASHA: It’s got nothing to do with money. Even a poor person can be happy. MEDVEDENKO: In theory, but in reality it doesn’t work that way; there’s me and my mother and two sisters and my little brother, and my pay comes to twenty-three rubles. Got to buy food and drink, don’t you? And tea and sugar? And tobacco? It gets you going in circles [Act I].

Throughout the play, this contrast between illusions (“Even a poor person can be happy”) and harsh realities, such as the cost of living, is maintained. Sorin longs to be back in his downtown office, but is nailed to the estate because the farm overseer squanders his pension on agricultural disasters. Treplyov cannot even afford a new coat, which might allow him to frequent society, let alone the cost of travel. Nina’s inheritance has been confiscated, making her a dependent whose only alternative is ill-paid theatre work. In a lifetime of obstetric practice, Dr. Dorn saves up enough for a single trip abroad. Only Arkadina, who’s “got seventy thousand in a bank in Odessa,” has the mobility to get on with her life; and she is so panicked at the expense of her wardrobe and the thought of poverty that she has turned into a penny-pincher. The only one who seems to be exempt from the grip of economic necessity is the author Trigorin; characteristically, he turns it into a figure of speech. A young writer, he says, “can’t help hanging around people connected with literature and art, unrecognized, unnoticed by anyone, afraid to look them boldly in the face, like a compulsive gambler who’s run out of money.” Treplyov’s condition, precisely. In an earlier essay, I wrote that “The lake’s enchantment can be felt as the spell of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Everyone who sets foot there is suspended in time, frozen in place. Real life seems to go on somewhere else” (Senelick 85).

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Typically, in Chekhov, however, the supernatural can always be explained by the natural. The characters’ inertia is as much the result of their economic situation as of the lake’s powers of attraction. Money per se does not play a dominant role in Three Sisters. In structure, it hearkens back to The Wood Goblin, each act organized around a special event: a party, a holiday, a fire and a military departure. In typically Chekhovian fashion, routine is interrupted, re-established, then interrupted again. This is a class of society, with sufficient time for recreational activities, and whose income derives from secure sources: the army and the educational system. The older socio-economic fabric is becoming threadbare. The loyal if serf-based relation of a dependent like the nanny Anfisa to the family is gradually replaced by a bourgeois master-hired servant relationship. The members of the gentry, unable to survive without becoming wage-slaves, cannot reconcile their idealistic vision of labor with workaday drudgery. Ironically, it is the meshchanka Natasha who lives a life of leisure, battening on the accumulated cultural and financial capital of her husband and her in-laws. Here the economic imperative is revealed not through commercial transactions but through issues of ownership. The house, which belongs jointly to the Prozorov siblings, becomes mortgaged because of brother Andrey’s debts and the money has been confiscated by his wife: the debts were incurred by gambling, and gambling is the narcotic Andrey takes to forget his dreadful marriage. So, Natasha is the prime mover of the loss of the house, her sense of proprietorship far more lethal than the mortgage to the bank. While the bank and its lien remain nebulously offstage, her slow but deliberate ejection of the siblings from their rooms and eventually the building itself is always before our eyes. Naum Berkovsky, one of the few Soviet critics to analyze this theme (in “Chekhov, povestvovatel’ i dramaturg” [“Chekhov, fiction writer and playwright”], Teatr 1 [1960]: 87–99), noted that “Natasha expands corporeally, through Bobik and Sophiekins she constricts everyone else who lives on earth.” He pointed out that the sisters lose, because “they will not get engaged in property litigation with her — this would put the sisters on her level, and that would be disgraceful for them.” This refusal to appear mercenary, the abstention from contesting rightful ownership undermine them. By failing to protect their property, they lose, no matter how high-minded their motives. For Berkovsky, writing within a Marxist-Leninist frame, the only way to preserve the sisters’ admirable abstention from a fight over private property or connivance with an unjust system is to abolish private property. Chekhov, who used his hard-earned cash to buy his family a farmstead and finance his trips abroad, would probably have disagreed. Whatever its inequalities, he never countenanced replacing the economic status quo with community property or socialism. For him, the sisters’ squeamishness at financial dealings is part and parcel of their superior attitudes and not necessarily a good thing. In The Cherry Orchard, we are plunged into a world of capital tout pur.

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Its central character is a businessman, a self-made millionaire of peasant stock. It is one of the ironies of theatre history that Chekhov intended this role for Stanislavsky, himself a millionaire of serf origins, but the actor-manager chose instead the more sympathetic role of the feckless barin Gaev. Lopakhin is the successful version of Borkin. Ivanov’s estate manager was full of harebrained and somewhat underhanded schemes for making money; Lopakhin actually has the Midas touch. Whatever he deals in — real estate, poppies, timber — it proves to be a source of revenue. Like Borkin, too, he cites exact figures. This precision is in sharp contrast to the vagueness of the others, for whom Lopakhin “stinks of brass” (as Virginia Woolf said of Arnold Bennett). For Gaev time is an occasion for speechifying; for Trofimov time is a rosy future; for Firs it is an indistinct past. Time for Lopakhin is a railroad time table, calibrated by his pocket watch. As with time, so with money. Only Lopakhin understands how money works. Ranevskaya cannot hold on to it: she overtips waiters and tramps, scatters gold pieces on the ground, wastes it on a party and a klezmer band. SimeonovPishchik deals only in other people’s money, until, by a windfall, not by hard labor, he comes into some of his own. Trofimov earns the occasional translation fee. Gaev, whose speculations are vague and windy, ends up working for a bank. For them money has no real existence. To adopt a term of Sholom Aleichem’s, this is a world of luftmenshn, people who live off the air and the airy nothings that they conjure up. When, in The Wood Goblin, it was made clear that the sale of the Serebryakov estate, will entail its forests being felled for timber, Dr. Khrushchov denounces such practices, and we are meant to take the side of this protoecologist. In The Cherry Orchard, however, when Lopakhin proposes the money-spinning plan of clearing the timber and building summer cottages, we are not so sure that we are to endorse Gaev’s and Ranevskaya’s protestations of “vulgarity” or Trofimov’s scoffing at the idea of vacationers becoming marketgardeners. Chekhov had had plenty of fun at the expense of summer vacationers (not least in his one-act “joke” An Involuntary Tragedian), but he can admire Lopakhin’s up-to-date enterprise. At first sight, it may seem as if we have returned to Platonov, Ivanov and The Bear, where estates have been mortgaged to a bank and distracted landowners cannot keep up the payments. Dispossession was, however, a stale theme in Russian drama by 1903. It goes back at least as far as Pyotr Nevezhin’s 1883 melodrama Second Youth. The difference here is that, except for Lopakhin, no one is depressed, worried or excited about the estate’s financial situation, its owners least of all. This is not even the three sisters sitting out the battle while a predator expropriates what is theirs. As A. P. Skaftymov noted, “The Cherry Orchard contains neither the hostilely aggressive merchant nor the resistant landowner, fighting for his own proprietary interests” (Shaftymov 313 –338). Ivan Bunin’s famous remark that there were no such cherry orchards to

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be found in Russia (Bunin 216) is both spot on and beside the point. The estate has long ceased to be an income-earning establishment or even a home: it is an idea, cited in the Encyclopedia, cherished in the memory, but with no raison d’être and no means of support. Lopakhin buys it as much out of nostalgia for a lost youth as out of commercial considerations, wildly overbidding at the auction. Hard cash is thus the means of holding on to an emotion, a recollection, a hope. Money remains in circulation, but it is ultimately less potent than the force of the cherry orchard as a symbol, interpreted differently by each of the characters. This is typical of Chekhov’s maintenance of a duality in his best plays. Surface reality is convincing and familiar, but at the same time it is heightened to the level of a symbol. One can play the surface, but at the risk of losing the work’s larger significance.

WORKS CITED Blum, Jerome. Land and Peasant in Russia from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961. Bunin, Ivan. O Chekhove [On Chekhov]. New York: Chekhov Publishing House, 1955. Chekhov, A. P.. Polnoe sobraniya sochineniy i pisem [Complete Collected Works and Letters], 30 volumes. Moscow: Nauka, 1974 –1983. Ezhov, N. M. Istoricheskiy vestnik [Historical Messenger], 139/2 (1915). Mirsky, D. S. Contemporary Russian Literature 1881–1925. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1926. Novoe vremja [New Times], 4721 (22 April 1888). Pipes, Richard. Russia under the Old Regime. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974. Robinson, Geroid Tanquary. Rural Russia under the Old Regime. New York: Macmillan, 1967. Senelick, Laurence. Anton Chekhov. London: Macmillan, 1985. Skaftymov, A. P. “K voprosu o printsipakh postroeniya p’es A. P. Chekhova” [On the question of the principles underlying the construction of Chekhov’s plays], in Stat’i o russkoy literature [Essays on Russian Literature]. Saratov: Saratovskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo, 1958.

Jacob Gordin and Jewish Socialism in America VALLERI J. HOHMAN

Jacob Gordin, who would become a leading Yiddish playwright in America, arrived in the United States in 1891 as part of a mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to America that began in the 1880s. As a playwright, journalist, and lecturer, he quickly became one of the most influential voices in the lively, diverse community on New York’s Lower East Side. Writing plays for the leading Yiddish actors, including Jacob Adler, David Kessler, Bertha Kalich, and Celia Adler, Gordin was one of few playwrights in America at the time who made a living primarily as a playwright. Influenced by Russian realism, Gordin sought to write pieces that dealt with recognizable social problems for his émigré audience, though his plays often relied on melodramatic stage devices. He focused his attention on generational conflicts, acculturation, attempts at upward mobility, women’s equality, exile, and the survival of the family. Three of his plays, The Jewish King Lear, God, Man and Devil, and The Kreutzer Sonata, reveal the way Gordin dealt with these issues in relation to questions about labor and economics. Due to a population explosion, recurring economic hardships, and increasing anti–Semitism in Russia, several prominent, progressive Jewish leaders called for a massive relocation of Russian Jews. The relocation of large numbers of Russian Jews to the West, it was thought, would ease the tensions for those who remained in Russia and her territories. It would also provide new economic opportunities and religious freedoms for those who chose to emigrate elsewhere. Although many left for cities throughout Europe, the majority set out for (or eventually ended up in) cities in the United States, particularly New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago. From the 1880s–1910s, hundreds of thousands arrived in the United States from parts of Romania, Lithuania, Ukraine, and other parts of the Russian Empire. It was a diverse, multilingual group that consisted of the educated and the uneducated, the orthodox and the progressive, the observant and unobservant, the wealthy and the poor (though the greatest in number were impoverished.) Established and wealthy German Jewish immigrants organized philanthropic organizations to help meet the social, economic, and educational needs of the new arrivals, but they sometimes also owned the 86

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factories and workshops in which the new arrivals worked. Russian-Jewish leaders, often rebelling against the wealthy capitalists in the new land, taught the newcomers socialist ideologies, organized them into unions, and used Yiddish as the unifying language of the growing community. As in Russia, there were contested beliefs among the progressives: Should a revolutionary movement be internationalist or nationalist in character? Should it focus on education or activism? Should it include equality for women? Should it support trade unionism at all costs? Should it work within the established government structures to promote change? These questions were not easily resolved, but the dominant opinions about these matters shifted after 1905 (following a new wave of pogroms in Russia and the failed revolution). In the industrialized cities in America, the Jewish labor movement became more nationalist in character, promoted unionism and activism, and relied on Yiddish as the primary language. Jacob Gordin developed his belief system while living in Russia. His father had been influenced by the Haskala (the Jewish enlightenment) movement, and he encouraged the use of Russian in the home and offered Gordin an education in Russian and European languages and literature. Influenced by the group Am Olam (The Eternal People), the Russian Strundists, and Leo Tolstoy, who viewed agricultural labor as the only form of honorable and useful work, Gordin had hoped to establish agricultural communes, in which the land would be shared by group members and goods would be distributed based on needs. Gordin became the leader of a group known as the Spiritual Biblical Brotherhood, an interethnic group that combined beliefs from Christianity and Judaism, advocated women’s social and economic equality, and sought to develop agrarian communes using modern scientific principles. Gordin’s inability to access land in Russia, however, encouraged him to follow earlier groups in trying to establish a commune, such as the Mennonites had done, in America (for in depth discussion of the agrarian movement, see Frankel). Upon arrival, though, Gordin recognized in the previous failures of his predecessors that his dream was impractical. He also had to attend to the immediate needs of a large family, so he began working as a journalist, and later as a playwright to support his family. He remained in New York City, where, in addition to his work in the theatre, he established the first (though short-lived) Russian-American newspaper, the Jewish Educational League (offering classes in English, social science, economics, and literature to men and women) and the Gordin Theatre Circle. According to the famous Yiddish actor Jacob Adler, who first commissioned Gordin to write plays for him in Yiddish in 1891, actors and audience members were reluctant to accept Gordin’s plays (see chapter on Gordin in Jacob Adler’s memoirs). He wrote about common people and everyday problems. He set his characters in naturalistic environments, limited unmotivated singing and dancing, and used common Yiddish, even for upper-class characters. The Yiddish theatre at the time, like its American counterpart, primarily staged spectacular melodramas and light comedies. Most performers and audience members

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viewed the theatre as a place for entertainment, not as a place for the discussion of serious or complicated social issues. Though traditional issues of morality might be taken up, dramatists weren’t expected to take up everyday struggles. Influenced by the developments in European and Russian realism, Gordin, however, did value the stage as a place of enlightenment on social and economic issues. One character in The Jewish King Lear, critiquing the coarseness of a performance he has just witnessed, calls the theatre, “the most important art in the world.” So, too, thought the author. Gordin’s earliest success as a playwright came with the production of The Jewish King Lear (1892), written for Jacob Adler. The play is set in Vilna (at the time part of Russia) and adapts the story of King Lear to that of a wealthy Jewish father, Dovidl Moysheles (see Gordin, The Jewish King Lear). Moysheles decides to leave his possessions and his business to his three daughters and spend the rest of his life studying in the land of Israel. His eldest daughters are married: one to a strict orthodox Jew and the other to an alcoholic. The Cordelia character, Taybele, desires to remain single, to the complete consternation of her father. In the opening scene of the play, Taybele mirrors Cordelia in her lack of verbosity, when she fails to praise her father for the beautiful jewel he has given her. But unlike Cordelia, she ignites his rage and contempt, though not disinheritance, when she refuses to speak of marriage and confesses her wish to become a doctor. The play progresses when Dovidl returns broken from abroad in Act II. Now reliant on his eldest daughter, Etele, and her husband, Avrom Harif, who have locked the cupboard and refuse to give sufficient food to the family members, Dovidl becomes weak and eventually grows blind. Avrom Harif refuses to give Taybele money to study medicine, so she has become a teacher, which the others in the family find horrific. That she has become self-sustaining is one thing; that she would become part of the common working class is quite another for this elite family. They view her as an embarrassment, and she is sent away without any financial support. Gordin’s own beliefs are outlined by the progressive character, Yaffe, a friend (and eventual husband) of Taybele, in this act. Yaffe says, “Every person, if he wants it, if he has higher strivings can make do with little. We will both work hard and earn what we need to live.” The two leave optimistically, while the others remain in the deteriorating home. Clearly, Gordin expresses the populist view that useful, productive work was the correct path in the modern world. As we see later in the play, this path leads to happiness and a clear moral conscience. After five years, Taybele returns to visit her family, whose corruption and devolution is quite apparent. She is now a doctor, and though her father bids her to leave him again, she remains committed to rescuing him and the other members of the family from Avrom Harif ’s callous rule. To do that, she and Yaffe threaten legal action, and Avrom Harif restores the funds to the sisters. (Taybele intends to establish a hospital with her inheritance.) Finally, Taybele

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performs an operation that restores Dovidl’s sight, and the play ends in reconciliation (a common approach for 19th century versions of Lear). Gordin deals with several interwoven progressive social and economic issues in this piece. Generational conflicts, particularly the conflict between traditional belief and modernity, dominate the play. Dovidl, and the extreme traditionalist Avrom Harif, govern the family with strict rules based on gender roles, customary practices, and fear of modern science and acculturation. They are defeated by blind adherence to customs that restrict the mobility of women, deny the benefits of modern science, and focus on concepts like ‘obedience’ and established practices. Harif, the symbolic stand-in for the capitalist, is critiqued for having access to wealth and refusing to distribute it among those who need it. Throughout the play, young babies are present (a common feature of Gordin’s plays), revealing that the need has grown, but Harif only allows his own to thrive. The play strongly focuses on the rights of women in traditional Jewish families. In the opening, Dovidl orders his wife (for which there is no parallel in Shakespeare) to obey his instructions and follow him abroad. He makes the decisions, and when she challenges him, he quickly silences her: she has no legal access to their finances and must agree to his choices. The second daughter, Gitele, too, is powerless. Her husband had become a drunkard, and Harif refuses to give them money for their children, who are sick and undernourished. Certainly, though, the entire action rotates around the independence of Taybele: her desire for an education and self-sufficiency are challenged by all but Yaffe, who grants her economic independence and freedom of choice even after they are married. When she has achieved her goal, she radiates with confidence and kindness. Though she and Yaffe struggle financially in early scenes in the play, when she finally has economic independence, she views herself as a servant and benefactor of the community. Gordin’s utopian vision of the educated, selfsufficient, economically-responsible woman is clearly articulated through the actions of Taybele. Her generosity toward her struggling sister, Gitele, mark her as an ideal socialist-feminist, making this play one of the earliest works in this vein. Women figure prominently in the other plays discussed here, but only The Jewish King Lear presented a positive model for the modern socialist woman. Of the three plays, his popular play, God, Man and Devil (1900), set in Dubrovne, Russia, offers the most straight-forward critique of capitalism. A combination of the legends of Job and Faust, it centers on the conscientious and moral Hershele Dubrovner, an impoverished Russian-Jewish scribe, who is tempted by Satan with wealth and prosperity. In the prologue in Heaven, Satan argues that even the most righteous and pious believer will give up “piety, goodness, righteousness, family life, friendship, and ... other virtues” for “a little bag of gold” (Sandrow 40). Predictably, the play develops around the actions of Dubrovner, who becomes the owner of a large factory, after winning

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the lottery, through his interaction with the disguised devil. A forerunner to Bertolt Brecht’s, The Good Person of Setzuan, God, Man, and Devil sets out the position that capitalism and goodness are incompatible. At the play’s outset, Dubrovner is not only pious, but he is good-natured and kind. He feels sympathy for his long-time wife, who complains of a toothache. He plays the violin cheerfully after a long day of work. He generously cares for his aging father and does not complain of his poverty. When he is offered the chance for great wealth, he replies that he doesn’t even know what he would do with it. But the temptation is too strong. His family gives him many ways in which he could spend the money: on a dentist, warm clothes, new shoes, a dowry for his niece. He accepts a lottery ticket, wins fifty thousand rubles, and Mischief becomes his business partner. As the play progresses, Hershele Dubrovner’s wealth grows. He builds a factory to make prayer shawls, believing that it would be “Godly labor” and improve the conditions of the community of weavers (Sandrow 95). Mischief entices him to divorce his first childless first wife, and marry his niece, who in Act I was enchanted by his violin playing. His former friends and family quickly move away from him, as they become his laborers or outcasts. By the end of Act III, Dubrovner is beside himself with greed, stabbing Mischief in the neck when he tries to take the money in the strongbox. The climax occurs when Motele, the son of Dubrovner’s former friend and husband of another niece, loses his hand at the factory and dies during an operation. Left alone, Dubrovner hangs himself with a blood-stained prayer shawl tied to the strongbox. In addition to the clear critique of capitalism (a system under which nobody lives freely), the play suggests alternatives to this system and to traditional beliefs that victimize women. The play moves from the festive atmosphere of celebration during Hanuka, with music and a lively group atmosphere, to the somber final moments of solitude and despair. Dubrovner, though poor in the opening acts, lives happily with his wife and family. The community supports, respects, and protects its members. As this group shifts from a communal to a private atmosphere, all happiness, friendship, and freedom is lost. Only Khatskl Drakhme, Dubrovner’s friend, remains faithful to the principles of the communal lifestyle, refusing to work in the factory, even as a manager. Though he suffers the losses brought about by the destructive force of modern capitalism, he withstands its authority and clearly states the views of the playwright throughout the work. Once again, Gordin critiques the ways in which traditional beliefs and practices victimize women. Dubrovner legally leaves his first wife, Pesenyu, complying with a traditional custom that allowed Jewish men to divorce if their wives remained childless after ten years. In the play, Pesenyu has only the good will of others to fall back on. Though Dubrovner offered her a small settlement, the money didn’t last long as she loaned it to others. Formerly part of a selfsufficient community, alone Pesenyu has no rights or entitlements. Even

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Dubrovner’s second wife, Freydenyu, has no rights or freedoms. While Dubrovner treats her kindly, she lacks purpose or merriment. She simply follows the instructions of her husband, who wishes to adorn her as a prize. In this play, there is no Taybele character, willful enough to enter the professions, though Freydenyu’s sister, Tsipenyu gives the strongest voice to socialism and feminism. When she and Pesenyu come to Dubrovner’s home in Act III, the following argument occurs: FREYDENYU : Tsipenyu, you speak to me as if you hate me. We are strangers now. TSIPENVUTU : Yes, we are strangers. We are enemies. We work, we slave, we grieve, we mourn. And you, you rich people, you grab the last bite of food from our mouths. Your’re drowning us.... FREYDENYU : We are not your enemy. It’s your own fault, Uncle says... TSIPENVUTU : You only know what Uncle says. You yourself are not a person? You don’t know that once you had good friends, and now you are cut off from them? ... You don’t know that you took the woman who raised you like flesh and blood, and you drove her out of her own house and took her place? [Sandrow 73].

The conversation ends when Dubrovner returns, and the women leave. Like Taybele, Tsipenyu views herself as an autonomous human being, responsible for her own actions, but she also values communal living and support for other women in the community. She attacks her sister because of Freydenyu’s ignorance and inaction and because Dubrovner’s factory has destroyed the community. Her outburst does seem to influence Freydenyu, who aligns herself with the women when her husband returns. The play, written for an American immigrant community that labored in the garment factories far from Russia, struck a chord with audiences. Though the only alternatives the play offered were unavailable to those in the United States, it affirmed the basic values many had been taught, while discarding archaic, restrictive traditions. First performed in 1900, it starred David Kessler in the leading role, and remained in the repertories of Yiddish theatres for decades. Jacob Gordin set the final play to be discussed here, The Kreutzer Sonata (1901) in America. The play takes up many of Gordin’s key concerns, and, this time, he depicted them using characters who closely resembled the audience members in their current circumstances. Gordin took the title of the play from a novel by Tolstoy, though the play has little in common with the novel in which a jealous husband reveals how he murdered his adulterous wife. In Gordin’s play, the reverse occurs: a woman murders her husband and his lover, her sister. (Tolstoy’s novel, however, serves as a device in the play. The primary character, Miriam, reads the novel throughout the play, and uses the novel as a hiding place for a photograph and letter from her former lover.) The play, partly due to its relationship to Tolstoy, became Gordin’s only play to be produced in English (on Broadway) during his lifetime. In many ways, the play acknowledges the failure of Gordin’s own Tolstoyan-American dream and laments the fate of exile (My discussion of the play is based on Langdon Mitchell’s version of

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Gordin’s The Kreutzer Sonata, published by Harrison Grey Fiske in 1907. I wish to thank Kurt Jacobson for his insights regarding the original Yiddish publication of the play. In Jacobson’s view, only the character of Ephroym Randar deviates significantly from Gordin’s original. Mitchell increased the comic effect of the character with an exaggerated broken English dialect.). The play opens in Raphael Friedlander’s house in a town in Russia. Through the coded discussion of the seventeen-year-old Celia and the servant Natasha, the audience learns that Celia’s sister Miriam is pregnant with the child of a Russian soldier, who recently committed suicide. Miriam had planned to convert to Christianity in order to marry the soldier, but the Russian’s parents forbade the marriage. Miriam’s embarrassed and enraged father plans to marry her to the Jewish violinist, Gregor, though he is of a lower social status, to save the family from certain destruction. The act covers the wedding arrangements: meeting the in-laws, discussing dowries, bargaining, and planning for the couple to emigrate to America. Gregor essentially marries Miriam, knowing of her condition, in order to have the financial means to emigrate and establish himself in America. Raphael offers a handsome sum, asking only that Gregor treats her well and lives respectably. Throughout the act, Gordin emphasizes the financial nature of the arrangement, though he indicates that the arrangement is necessary only because of the intolerant moral and cultural climate that prohibits intermarriage and ostracizes women who become pregnant before marriage. The next act opens in Gregor’s apartment in the New York’s Upper East Side. Seven years have passed, and the audience learns that Raphael’s entire family has arrived in the United States. Gregor and Miriam live in the city, while Raphael, his wife, Celia, and Natasha live on a farm in Connecticut. Samuel, Raphael’s son, has moved to the Lower East Side, and Celia intends to move soon. Raphael, a close parallel to Gordin, establishes the farm in part as a charity “for [the] people who have been worked to death in the sweatshops....” (Gordin, The Kreutzer Sonata 29). The farm isn’t very successful, but Raphael still believes it will be in the future, though all but Miriam have given up on their father’s dream. Raphael begs his family, even his wife, to remain on the farm. He promises them, “I will be more American” (By this, he means that he promises to stop trying to dominate the family and expect obedience from his wife and children; Gordin, The Kreutzer Sonata 57). Nevertheless, the family sees the hopelessness of his dream to run a productive farm and seeks more excitement in the city. Raphael loses all his wealth, while the others access wealth by establishing a music business in New York City. In the opening part of the act, Gordin stages an encounter between generations: the young assimilated children of Raphael and the newly arrived parents of Gregor, who is now a music professor. The younger generation, smartly dressed in the latest American fashions, joke about the folk ways and country lifestyle of the newcomers. The elders react with astonishment and dismay. Even Gregor brushes his parents aside, calling them beggars. Only Miriam

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remains pleasant and patient with her in-laws, while the others avoid contact with the elders to minimize being associated with their foreignness and rural folk customs. Eventually, Eyphroym grows more American, first joining a union, then establishing a conservatory, and he works with his son to train musicians in the city. Through Gregor and Ephroym, Gordin provides a glimpse of the Russian-Jewish noveau riche, which he critiques. As Ephroym ascends the scale of wealth, he sacrifices earlier beliefs. Celebrating his new status in America, he claims “I wouldn’t go back to Russia if they made me a grand duke.... America and equality for me! Oh, what a pleasure it is to be everybody’s superior!” Though in Act three, he is a “dyed in the wool Union man,” by Act four, he scoffs at the “common man” in the union. He later tells the servant, Natasha, “I was a union man, but now I am Professor Randar. Everybody comes to me with money, and when they go away, I have their money” (I have dropped the broken English of the text to remain more in line with Gordin’s representation of the character). While he talks a great deal about equality, he’s proud to achieve a higher status than those around him. Gordin pokes fun at the weakness of the unions, with members who parrot the language of the leaders but have little real belief in socialism or equality for all. Gordin felt that unions, which sought to solve the immediate needs of members, weakened the socialist movement. He believed that the socialist movement succeeded when it focused on education and long-term planning. Gordin’s approach, however, was considered oldfashioned and ineffective, by the latest émigré recruits who sought immediate change through action (strikes, political agitation, etc.). In the play, once he ascends to the upper class through his business, Ephroym quickly imitates Gregor and discards his union membership. He and Gregor buy their wives expensive clothing and ornament them with jewels to display their own wealth. Unlike his son, though, Ephroym offers aid to Raphael when he seeks help with his mortgage payment, and eventually understands that friendship, honesty, and mutual support are of greater value than material wealth. That is, he comes to understand socialism more fundamentally, not in association with his own immediate needs (the type of socialism Gordin thought the unions encouraged.) As with the other plays, Gordin creates a household tyrant, a relentless capitalist whose demise is assured by his own villainy. In this case, Gregor fills the role. As he becomes more wealthy and successful, he grows harsher and abuses his family. He is particularly violent toward David, Miriam’s son. Always viewing his marriage to Miriam as a matter of business, he abuses Miriam, and carries on an affair with Celia, her sister. Gregor, along with Celia, becomes increasingly materialistic, deceptive, and cruel. They are overwhelmed by their new social and economic status and become caught up in the way New York’s social elite view them: which is why they buy expensive clothing, attend the opera, and avoid contact with unassimilated émigrés.

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The climax occurs in the final moments of the play. Miriam learns that Celia secretly gave birth to Gregor’s child in Chicago, though she had promised to end her affair with him. No longer able to endure Gregor’s treatment of her, her son, and her father, Miriam confronts him. Gregor denies her accusations. He claims, “I love you only, and you are mine, aren’t you?” She responds with the revealing monologue: Yours? Yours? Yes, I am your chattel. My body belongs to you and must belong to you until I die. When you want my body, you say you love me.... I have lived with you ten years as your servant, and no day of that ten years but you have trampled and derided me, deceived and betrayed me. Yes, and you have struck me.... I was silent, and I endured. But it was not for your sake — but for his, for his— poor little child whom I brought into this vile world. Enough! I’ll no longer be humiliated, deceived, betrayed. No-no more! [Gordin, The Kreutzer Sonata 76].

Celia laughs at her, provoking her further until Miriam loses all self-control and shoots Gregor, then Celia. The tragedy ends (in typical nineteenth century fashion) as Miriam descends into complete madness. While the play may make use of traditional elements of spectacular melodrama, the concerns of the play were quite contemporary and astounded the critics. Gordin’s critique of customary beliefs about gender roles was the most astonishing at the time. The trigger for the tragedy, Raphael’s unsympathetic reaction to Miriam’s pregnancy, led to the family’s destruction. But Gordin’s critique of traditions wasn’t total: certain beliefs from rural Russia seemed preferable to the individualism and materialism adopted by those who most easily adapted to America’s capitalist economy. Though the depiction simplifies the complicated networks émigrés negotiated as they sought economic independence in America, Gordin encouraged equality in-so-far as it didn’t rely upon the exploitation of others. Gordin lamented his own failing dream of a communal farm in America through the character of Raphael, but he didn’t view the failure as complete. He held out the possibility of such a venture through his fictional characters. In the play, the farm seemed the only place to avoid the excesses, and certain destruction, of buying into the capitalist system. The last time we see Raphael, before the murder scene, he has just received enough money to save his farm. Ephyoim, Raphael’s estranged wife, and Natasha pool their resources to pay the mortgage, and they all plan to leave the city and work with Raphael and his grandson, David. From one perspective, it seems that Gordin is pinning his hopes on the next generation, viewing the current one as doomed. Gordin’s ideas remained idealistic rather than practical. Most of the collective farms founded by Russian Jews, in fact, failed. Gordin seems to place the blame for the failures on the lack of commitment by those who sought immediate success and quick assimilation, rather than on the more probable cause being the lack of farming experience of the Jewish émigrés who came from Russia, where they were prohibited to farm.

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Gordin’s views were often controversial. Conservatives attacked his break with traditions and his radical ideas, especially those involving women, while a younger generation of progressives disagreed with his ‘universalist’ stance and his critique of labor unions. It was ultimately a battle with Abraham Cahan, editor of the widely read Jewish Daily Forward, that resulted in great financial difficulties for Gordin in the last few years of his life. As characterized by Melech Epstein in Profiles of Eleven, Cahan took offense to Gordin’s attack on union leadership in his play, The Russian Jew in America, and began a campaign against him, which grew after Gordin sharply criticized Cahan’s novel, Yekel. The antagonism continued, eventually leading to Cahan’s ability, using his own newspaper, to shape opinion against Gordin (Epstein 153 –156). Although he was being produced less in the United States during his last years, Gordin’s plays had found an audience in Russia, where he remained popular among Jewish audiences. When he died in June 1909, twenty thousand mourners crowded the streets outside of the Thalia Theatre to honor the playwright (“Thousands Honor Gordin’s Memory”). Though he often criticized those who supported him, the community understood that he had paved the way for a modern Jewish drama and wrote plays that dealt with the most immediate challenges facing the Russian Jews in America. Though they didn’t always agree with his methods or his ideological stance, they appreciated his candor, forthrightness, and his utopian desire for universal social and economic freedom. Several of his works became well-known outside of the Yiddish speaking community, and he was encouraged to write plays for the English-language stage, though only one of his works, The Kreutzer Sonata, was presented in English during his lifetime. Although Gordin wrote plays for a specific immigrant population, Yiddish theatre troupes across Europe presented his plays. The recent revival of the study of Yiddish language and Yiddish literature continues to stimulate interest in the modern drama of Jacob Gordin.

WORKS CITED Adler, Jacob. A Life on the Stage. Translated and edited by Lulla Rosenfeld. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Epstein, Melech. Profiles of Eleven. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1965. Frankel, Jonathan. Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism, and the Russian Jews, 1862 –1917. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Gordin, Jacob. The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America. Translated by Ruth Gay. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2007. _____. The Kreutzer Sonata. New York: Harrison Grey Fiske, 1907. Sandrow, Nahma. ed., trans. God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Translation. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999. “Thousands Honor Gordin’s Memory,” New York Times (14 June 1909). Proquest Historical Newspapers.

The Music Master and the Money Makers FELICIA HARDISON LONDRÉ

Two revelations jump off the pages for anyone casually browsing through the 1904 –1911 volume of New York Times Theater Reviews. The first is that most plays seen in New York in those days were of foreign origin: London imports, new productions of Shakespeare, Sheridan, and Shaw, translations from the French, adaptations from the Russian, and so on. The second revelation is that the plays that were written by Americans— whether by Clyde Fitch or by little known and long forgotten authors—seem just about always to turn upon money issues. We note numerous variations on the paternalistic millionaire, the girl who inherits millions, the young man who conceals his fortune in order to win true love. The storylines often involve opposition between insensitive wealthy characters and poor but honest ones, or an unscrupulous opportunist preying upon apparently easy marks. A few examples must suffice to suggest the wealth (!) of American plays in that vein. An “octogenarian millionaire” was part of the fun in The Street Singer, a crowd-pleasing “corker” of a play with no author credited. Nat Goodwin played “a cowboy millionaire” who goes to England to win a girl in The Usurper by I. N. Morris. In Abigail by Kellett Chalmers, the meek title character refuses her rich relatives’ invitation to leave the humble boarding house and live with them “for fear some of their fashionable friends will discover the dread fact that there is a poor working girl somewhere in the family;” luckily she inherits twelve million dollars and is able to verify that the man she loves is no mere fortune hunter. George M. Cohan’s Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, based upon George Randolph Chester’s collection of stories, allowed audiences to revel vicariously in the dazzling financial finesse of the con man, yet Wallingford’s last-act reformation prompted by love not only satisfied the moral sensibilities of the audience but yielded a happy-ending bonus when his cockeyed scheme unexpectedly makes him a millionaire (The New York Times Theatre Reviews). Yes, the reviewers saw through the clichés and scoffed, and still the public embraced these reaffirmations of the American dream that high moral character (perhaps coupled with some hard work) would pay off in worldly success.1 Both 96

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middle-class theatergoers and “gallery gods” could identify with the struggles of a good character in simple circumstances and dream of the moment when they too might make it into the opulently furnished drawing room that often graced the stage for one of the three or four acts. All of the foregoing characteristics can be identified in the most popular play of the decade, Charles Klein’s The Music Master, produced by David Belasco and starring David Warfield. It opened on 26 September 1904 and played three seasons to packed houses in New York, after which Warfield toured it with unabated success until 1910 and revived it in New York in 1916. Meanwhile Klein published a best-selling novelization of his play. The Music Master epitomizes the American dream of riches bestowed on one who has struggled mightily and who morally merits the reward. While the American obsession with money (and the moral values framing that obsession) certainly factored into the phenomenal appeal of the stage production, the press coverage related to it — especially during its nationwide tours— often situates the play within the larger story of the three artists who made considerable fortunes from it. David Warfield, David Belasco, and Charles Klein all rose from poverty and struggled to overcome adversity. All three were regarded by the public as good, decent men. The wealth they accrued from The Music Master was hard-earned and richly deserved. I suggest that the public’s intertextual awareness of the creators’ stories must have enhanced the drawing power of their play. The story of The Music Master centers on a well-educated, gentle-natured old man, once a celebrated composer and conductor in Leipzig, now living in reduced circumstances in New York. Despite years of privation, Anton von Barwig hides his suffering and persists in his quest to find the daughter who was stolen from him in her early childhood. When he finally discovers her, she is a millionaire’s daughter engaged to marry a fine young man of good family. In order not to jeopardize that marriage, Von Barwig denies himself the longanticipated joy of revealing his identity to his daughter. That the recognition finally comes from her (with no menace to her marriage or her money) makes the final-curtain reunion all the sweeter. Like the buffeted but resilient old music master, Warfield, Belasco, and Klein each rose above serious setbacks and each achieved — seemingly as a by-product of personal integrity — great personal wealth. Besides celebrating those American success stories associated with The Music Master, newspapers in cities and towns across America marveled at the broad and sustained popularity of so unremarkable a piece of dramatic writing.2 By the time Charles Klein’s rather clumsy tear-jerker hit the stage in 1904, melodrama was supposed to be nearing the last gasp of its protracted death throes. That was the year Joseph Jefferson III, America’s beloved Rip Van Winkle, made his farewell stage appearance. There were still a few Uncle Tom’s Cabin troupes on the road, but it was widely (albeit still somewhat reluctantly) acknowledged that Henrik Ibsen’s realism had won the day — along with its leading actresses.3

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Indeed, the implication that The Music Master seemed quaintly out of place on the early 20th-century stage is evident in comments like this one in the original New York Times review: “Mr. Klein has put his faith in the most hackneyed and — yes!—falsest wares of the stage.... It is Evangeline and Enoch Arden rolled into a mush of theatric breakfast food.” (New York Times Theatre Reviews, 27 September 1904). The reason most often advanced for The Music Man’s excellent box office was the performance by David Warfield in the title role.4 Warfield was an unlikely leading man. Unprepossessing in appearance and self-trained only through his power of observation, Warfield had worked his way up from performing Jewish monologues in an Eighth Avenue concert saloon to three seasons as a featured comedian at the Casino Theatre. He could elicit waves of laughter before he even spoke a word, and when the words did come — in lines that appear quite unfunny on the page — he would follow them with a well-timed, shrewd smile that unleashed an eruption of mirth. In 1898 he became one of the “resident ethnics” in Weber & Fields’ Music Hall company, gradually infusing the Jewish stereotype with humanity as he focused ever more precisely on the Polish Jew of New York’s Lower East Side.5 Warfield recalled that he had yearned to play serious roles even as a teenager selling programs and ushering in San Francisco theatres. His orthodox Jewish immigrant parents Sigmund (a cigar maker) and Louise Wohlfeld raised their five children in very humble circumstances and could not understand their eldest son’s attraction to the exotic world of theatre, although they had always enjoyed his knack for imitating the people he observed on the street. It was not until his first tour with the Weber & Fields company that Warfield, universally typed as a Jewish comic, unexpectedly gained confidence in his potential to become a serious actor. He later recalled that the realization came about when the troupe was waiting for a train at some “wayside Indiana station” and company members were getting impatient with the delay. Warfield suggested that as long as they were in Indiana, perhaps they should pass the time by reciting some James Whitcomb Riley for one another. The others had never heard of the Hoosier poet and assumed from the name that he was Irish. Reciting a couple of poems, Warfield found that he could indeed elicit tears as well as laughter. The incident strengthened Warfield’s resolve “to escape from musical comedy” and find a way into serious drama (The Washington Times 18 June 1905). It was Warfield’s good fortune that David Belasco enjoyed attending Weber & Fields Music Hall, where Belasco’s classy dramas were often burlesqued. Belasco sought out Warfield and told him that, whether he knew it or not, he had an acting ability beyond burlesque. With a year and a half left on his Weber & Fields contract, Warfield could not immediately make the leap. Belasco said that he would use the time to get “a play written around a Jewish character ... with a blend of decent humor and sincere pathos running through it.” The entire arrangement was concluded in ten minutes, without a written contract,

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and Warfield did not see Belasco again for fifteen months (Warfield, “My Own Story,” 67). The play that launched Warfield’s career as an actor able to sustain a fulllength role was The Auctioneer (1901). Although credited to the British-born dramatist Charles Klein, this play — like The Music Master— owed much to David Belasco, who tinkered endlessly with the plot and stagecraft, and to David Warfield, who had very definite ideas about his character. Ultimately, Warfield’s portrayal of Simon Levi in Act 1 of The Auctioneer retained a trace of the stereotypical Lower East Side Jew as a means of easing the audience through its comfort zone with ethnicity as established on the comedy-burlesque stage. Act 1 is set in Levi’s Hester Street shop, a business built up over many years since he arrived as an impoverished immigrant peddler. When he inherits money, Levi auctions off the shop and moves his family uptown. Act 2 is set in their fashionable new home, where Levi’s tender concern for his wife, daughter, and old friends allowed Warfield to bring more humanity into his portrayal. But Levi gets swindled by some bogus stock certificates and finds himself back on the Lower East Side in Act 3, taking up his old peddler’s basket with bittersweet bravado to start all over again. All ends satisfactorily when the wrongdoer is apprehended and Levi’s fortune is restored. The Auctioneer could have toured for many more than the two and half strong seasons it had on the road, but David Belasco fell afoul of the Syndicate, and the ever-loyal Warfield refused to perform again until the injustice perpetrated on Belasco had been righted.6 The ensuing lawsuits were widely reported with Belasco presented as the wronged party while the grasping monopolistic practices of Klaw and Erlanger’s agency found few defenders (Cook 110 –113). Belasco’s track record as a producer and sometimes playwright of spectacularlyproduced sentimental romances like The Heart of Maryland (1895) and Madame Butterfly (1900) had consolidated his reputation with theatergoers across the nation, and his courageous stand against the Syndicate added to his stature. He got good mileage out of the widespread perception of him as the David who dared to challenge the Goliath that had taken American theatre hostage. For example, the Evening News (San Jose, California, 28 October 1905) includes a cartoon drawing —captioned David and Goliah — of a plucky little David Belasco with his slingshot, facing a warrior three times his size wearing a breastplate labeled “Theatrical Trust” and a shield emblazoned with a dollar sign. The article’s headline proclaims: “Theatre Trust War/The Indomitable Belasco Giving the Show Combine a Fight for Its Life/Threatened With Extinction, He Has Organized an Opposition Which Has Attracted Some of the Brightest of the Theatrical Stars.” The two-column front-page story goes on to speculate that Belasco would win because he knows “how to produce a play with unsurpassed taste” and knows that “the American people will pay admission to witness an incomparable production all the more willingly because of the herculean efforts made to present it to them.”

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David Belasco’s rise to prominence in the American theatre and eventually to great wealth is well documented and need not be retraced here, other than to note that, like Warfield, Belasco was born in San Francisco to Jewish immigrant parents who had followed the Gold Rush. Belasco moved to New York City in 1876, at age twenty-three (when Warfield was only ten), but struggled for a decade before he began to earn recognition as a playwright and director (Leiter 1–2). Certainly, Belasco was skillful at managing his public image, but the image was undergirded by his magnetic personality, his indefatigable efforts to raise the standards of production, and the genuine box office appeal of what he presented. At the opening of The Music Master on 26 September 1904, the audience called for Belasco until he appeared before the curtain after Act 2. His remarks, as recorded by William Winter, culminated in some impassioned words: ...and, ladies and gentlemen, as long as I possess your confidence and friendship, no theatrical syndicate, with all their money and outside influence, can crush me or dictate to me in what way I shall conduct my business. I rejoice in Mr. Warfield’s success, and since this play pleases you, I will only say that our prosperity is just so much more ammunition with which to continue the struggle for Justice and the triumph of Right in American theatrical management! [Winter 121].

Belasco and Warfield remained devoutly loyal to each other’s interests throughout their careers. The third creator of The Music Master, Charles Klein, was born in London in 1867 and came to the United States at sixteen. He acted and collaborated on musical libretti before success came through his association with David Belasco and David Warfield on The Auctioneer, followed by the even greater success of The Music Master. By 1906 Charles Klein could boast the highest royalties ever paid to an author in a single week. For several months he was earning $3000 a week from the road companies playing The Lion and the Mouse and from his share in The Music Master (Wilkes-Barre Times 16 May 1906). But the American myth also required a saga of struggle and evidence of integrity. We find those attributes in Charles Klein, as corroborated by a little story, here taken from the Idaho Statesman (7 March 1909): The stories extant of how many of our millionaires of today were ‘grub-staked,’ and when fortune came a division was made with those who furnished the sinews, finds a parallel in the case of Charles Klein, the playwright, whose ‘The Lion and the Mouse,’ ‘The Music Master,’ and lately ‘The Third Degree,’ have made him the richest playwright in the world. It has not been so many years ago that existence with Mr. Klein was literally a hand-to-mouth affair. He wanted to write plays, and Charles Dickson, a comedian, suggested to his own brother, a tailor, named Doblin, that he ‘stake’ Klein; that he give him something like ten or fifteen dollars a week, just enough to live on, and take half of all Klein’s prospective profits from what plays he might write. That agreement was lived up to religiously by both Klein and Doblin. The budding playwright drew on the tailor from time to time for expenses, and the tailor kept an eye out for the possible success of his ‘investment.’ In time the Klein plays began to be accepted, and before the five years, the term of the contract, expired, David

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Warfield was playing Charles Klein’s ‘Auctioneer,’ and the royalties fairly poured in. Altogether Doblin drew for his share of the contract a sum approaching $50,000.

True or not, this story is what the public wanted as rightful affirmation for its embrace of Klein’s plays. The Auctioneer and The Music Master marked Charles Klein’s breakthrough to recognition as a playwright. Money matters continued to figure in the action of his subsequent plays. The best known, The Lion and the Mouse (1905), “on a vital theme — the dominant power of money in American politics” (“An Absorbing Play...,” 9), pits Shirley, an earnest young woman seeking justice, against a “financial Colossus” (“The Lion and the Mouse” IV, 3) known as ReadyMoney Ryder (characters evoking Ida Tarbell and Standard Oil’s Rockefeller in the minds of many). Ryder tells his son: “You asked me once why the wage of the idle rich was wealth, and the wages of hard work was poverty, and I told you that I work harder in one day than a tunnel digger in a lifetime. Thinking is a harder game than any.” Shirley writes of Ryder that “the machinery of his money-making mind typifies the laws of perpetual unrest — it must go on — go on—relentlessly—resistlessly—making money—making money—and continuing to make money — it cannot stop until the machinery crumbles.” This impels Ryder to ask what she thinks of him as a type. Her reply: “As the greatest criminal the world ever produced” (Klein 42–43, 47) In Klein’s The Daughters of Men (1907), Grace is a young woman from a wealthy family who falls in love with a clean-cut and intellectual strike leader. She tries to explain to her family the gulf between capital and labor: “Money is fast separating us. They hate us and it’s as much our fault as theirs.” She calls for something to be done “to bring the human family together” (“The Daughters of Men...,” 64, 73 –77). The increasing heavy-handedness of such moralizing moments in Klein’s plays took a toll with reviewers, but those views were clearly what fueled his writing. He later revealed, in an article on his conversion to Christian Science, that “success, fame, wealth” had once been his own “highest ideals,” but it was the pursuit of right thinking and brotherhood that had brought him peace of mind (Klein, “Christian Science,” 458 –463). His last play to reach the stage during his lifetime, before he died on the torpedoed Lusitania on 7 May 1915, was actually titled The Money Makers. Of it, the New York Times reviewer wrote: The spark of repentance which some commentators are wont to detect in the expansive benevolence which follows the accumulation of vast fortunes is the element with which Mr. Klein starts to work. For his purposes in “The Money Makers” he fans this spark into a consuming flame. The story is that of James Rodman, multi-millionaire, who has unscrupulously amassed a huge money pile, and who, seeing the eye of the needle only a year ahead of him, decides in a species of anticipated deathbed repentance to make wholesale restitution to the very persons who lost through his enrichment [“New Klein Drama...,” 11].

Although Klein did not live to see it, his most beloved play The Music Master

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enjoyed a successful Broadway revival, having “lost none of its strong and honorable appeal,” with David Warfield reprising “the memorable interplay of humor and pathos,” in 1916, twelve years after its premiere (“Warfield Revives...” 12). With The Music Master in 1904, Charles Klein and David Belasco cannily capitalized on David Warfield’s abilities by creating the role of a lifetime for him as Anton von Barwig. An advance story in the San Francisco Call (21 August 1904) on the casting of The Music Master noted that although Belasco had a policy of not providing advance information about his productions, it was gleaned that Warfield would appear “in an entirely novel character, radically different from any in which he has been seen heretofore.” This apparently was an oblique reference to the fact that Von Barwig was Warfield’s first non–Jewish role. Warfield had told Belasco that he wanted ‘to give the public a new type of German, quite different from the absurd stage type to which they were accustomed ... a gentle sort of man, who speaks correct English but still with a trace of German accent. I think a German artist in America, in distressed circumstances, is the character I want” (Warfield, “My Own Story,” II, 68). Warfield’s portrayal of Von Barwig is well documented. 7 Two general observations emerge from interviews, feature stories, and reviews of the play on tour. First, there is Warfield’s uncanny ability to elicit both tears and laughter virtually simultaneously as he shifted from intense emotion to a momentary comic touch and quickly back to the heart of the moment in time to unleash the tender anguish.8 Second, there is the insistence by both Warfield and his public on the truthfulness of the character and the story. Herr von Barwig’s optimism in the face of adversity — his character somehow actually sweetened by the sorrow that blighted his life — was utterly real to Warfield and made him lovable to audiences.9 Anton von Barwig existed as an avatar of David Warfield every bit as much as Rip Van Winkle did in Joseph Jefferson III or the Count of Monte Cristo in James O’Neill. Although Warfield declined to reprise the role for the 1927 silent film, the play had no life on the stage other than through him. Indeed, passing allusions to a “music master” and Warfield in an opinion piece on “the talent for money making” in The Duluth News Tribune (13 March 1910) suggests that the play and its performer still stood, six years after its premiere, as a universal frame of reference: It surely is as much to be the “music master” as to be the “banker philanthropist.” Few who saw David Warfield would hesitate in his choice, even though he knew it was the choice of poverty in money, for it would be untold riches of heart and brain. It would be the choice of the giving of himself, not of his money [6].

The character Anton von Barwig accepted his sixteen-year slide into poverty while searching for his daughter, because he was able to bring some cheer and comfort to his fellow residents of the boarding house. The actor David Warfield famously turned down princely sums to leave David Belasco’s management,

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because his choice returned a greater satisfaction — that of friendship and loyalty to the producer who had given him his big career break.10 For both Von Barwig and Warfield, doing the right thing ultimately brought financial gain as well as the moral high ground. Beyond such very broad parallels between the title character in The Music Master and the three “money makers” who profited from it, the text of The Music Master can be fruitfully mined for some nuggets of insight on the American obsession with money. The first of the three acts is set in Von Barwig’s modestly furnished yet spacious ground-floor apartment in a Houston Street rooming house operated by the genteel Miss Houston in a neighborhood that has seen better days. There are tall windows, a music cabinet, and a piano. Von Barwig has lived here during the sixteen years since he came to New York from Leipzic in search of his kidnapped daughter. But Miss Houston has noticed that Von Barwig’s valuables have gradually disappeared, and she alerts the other musicians residing in the building that he has been pawning his possessions while attempting to keep up a front of prosperity. She knows that the poor children in this declining neighborhood do not pay him for his piano lessons, yet he never fails to pay her his full rent every month. They all decide to treat Von Barwig to a dinner that very evening, but when he comes in and they propose it, Von Barwig turns the tables and arranges to treat them all himself to an ordered-in restaurant dinner in his apartment. Privately he sighs that his piano rental payment will have to wait. While the others are out, Von Barwig receives a visit from a flashily-dressed showman named Costello and we learn that the great classical music master is reduced to playing in a dime museum where Bosco the armless wonder (“Eats ’em alive!”) demands that her accompaniment be “good and thumpin’” (Klein, The Music Master, 26 –27). The bohemian supper with the Italian Fico, the Frenchman Pinac, and the German Poons is an occasion for comic business as well as high hopes when Von Barwig tells them he has been appointed as conductor of The Harmonie Society and he will hire them. The three musicians eagerly send their resignations to the café across the street. No sooner do they burn their bridges than a representative arrives from the brickmakers’ union, which has just affiliated with the musicians’ union; he explains that the Music Hall is being built with non-union bricks and therefore the musicians are obliged to strike. Von Barwig is devastated: “You ask me to resign? ... Mein Himmel — that is not fair. We wait for years and years, and then comes the Union. No, sir, I will not resign” (Klein 43). But ultimately he has no choice. “Wagner should be glad that he is dead!” (Klein 44). The worst of it is that his three friends are now out of work. But their years of struggle seem to have hardened them with a veneer of cynicism that we do not see in Von Barwig. As the Italian violinist Fico exclaimed earlier in the act: “What-a you care — getta da mon.’ Das all in this country — get-a da mon’—” (Klein 15). The first act ends on a bittersweet and defiant note. A simply but richly

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dressed young woman of nineteen arrives, having heard that Von Barwig gives music lessons. Her appearance and voice make a visibly profound impression on him, but he masters his emotions while she proposes to subsidize lessons for a talented child from a very poor family. Von Barwig insists that he cannot take money from her. She asks to hear him play, but just then the bill collectors come with a crew of movers to repossess the piano for non-payment. As the piano is carried out the door, Von Barwig gamely tells the young woman: “For three weeks I ask them to take it away. That was a poor piano” (Klein 51). She asks him to call at her house the following afternoon to audition her for lessons, and he agrees. The act ends with Von Barwig departing for his demeaning night job at the dime museum, an exit punched up by his curtain line: “Eat ’em alive!” Act 2 offers a voyeuristic glimpse into the lives of the rich and cultivated. Helen Stanton’s luxurious private sitting room has a baby grand piano, a bow window with expensive draperies, and connecting doors to her bedroom as well as to drawing-rooms. While Helen is called away to look over the florist’s work, her “father” Henry Stanton interrogates the liveried butler about Von Barwig who has tried several times to see Miss Stanton but has not been admitted, nor has she received the notes he left for her. Stanton’s discussion with his assistant Ditson reveals that he had known Von Barwig in Germany and had changed his name to Stanton when he came to America with Von Barwig’s wife and daughter. Stanton describes himself: “A man of my standing, Ditson, so closely identified with charitable and religious movements— at the head of a substantial banking house and so looked up to— must move very carefully.” He is wary because “In these days ... everybody without money has a prejudice against everybody with it.” But we also see his true character: “A lie, Ditson, is not contemptible if well told” (Klein 57). He is eager to see Helen married to young Beverly Cruger for the social validation, which would be jeopardized if the circumstances of his marriage to Helen’s deceased mother were known. The act culminates with the scène à faire, an explosive confrontation between Von Barwig and Stanton. Von Barwig would have been content to pay visits as Helen’s teacher, just to see her and have time with her, but when Stanton treats him like a dog, Von Barwig declares with long pent-up vehemence that he will make the truth known and claim his daughter. However, he checks his impulse when he sees Helen’s love for Cruger and hears Cruger’s father tell her: “we cannot give you the wealth of your father, but we can give you a name against which there has never been a breath — an honored name — a name which we would be very proud to entrust to you” (Klein 85). Von Barwig wishes the couple prosperity and exits. The contrast between the settings of Acts 2 and 3 could not be more striking. Some months have passed and Herr Von Barwig has had to take a cheap attic room in Miss Houston’s establishment. The broken skylight admitting gusts of winter wind and the inadequate little coal-burning stove were designed to recreate elements of the rented room in which Warfield experienced the most

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abject poverty of his life: when he first came to New York in November 1890. Warfield later described the attic apartment he rented on 38th Street off Eighth Avenue: “Sometimes it was so cold I had to undress under the bedclothes. If it stormed in the night the snow would sift down through the cracks in the skylight glass, and when I woke up in the morning the bed would be covered with it” (Warfield, “My Own Story, 42). One telling bit of business in this act of The Music Master is Von Barwig’s going up a ladder to stuff Pinac’s coat into the skylight hole, but a gust of wind blows the coat away. Warfield’s memory of such conditions surely contributed to the ache of truthfulness in his portrayal. In Act 3, Anton von Barwig has just returned from seeing his daughter married, which brings a kind of closure to the quest that brought him to America. He confides to Miss Houston that he has saved up to buy a first class steamer ticket back to Leipsic. She notices that the ticket is for steerage, and he pluckily replies: “Steerage? Oh, that’s first class steerage” (Klein, The Music Master, 100). He gives her his final rent payment, but when he is out of the room Miss Houston puts the money in his trunk. Fico and Pinac bring the good news that the strike is over, settled in favor of the musicians—“The artists win out against bricks!”— so they can anticipate decent livelihoods in classical music (Klein 103). And then the bride and groom unexpectedly visit Herr Von Barwig in his attic room. Helen tells the music master that she always wondered why she could learn nothing about her mother’s family except that her mother was from Leipsic. When she and Cruger told Stanton of their plans to honeymoon in Leipsic and search for her relatives, Stanton confessed the truth. And now Helen sees the miniature portrait of her mother in Anton Von Barwig’s hand. He blames himself for his angel wife’s leaving him, but Helen observes that her mother looks happier in the miniature than she ever was in her life with Stanton. The emotional recognition scene culminates in Helen telling her new-found father that he will be accompanying her and her husband on their honeymoon. Once again in the theatre the triumph of virtue comes with financial good fortune! And life parallels art. With The Music Master, Belasco, Klein, and Warfield became money-makers, but first they had to represent core American values of decency, self-reliance, hard work, optimism, fairness, and generosity. That kind of affirmation may be exemplified in a sentence from The Washington Herald (10 January 1907): “Mr. David Warfield has come and gone — and he has left Washington better than he found it.” Many feature stories reminded readers of the hardships these artists conquered: “[Warfield’s] family was poor, and he was poor, and his comrades were the boys of the neighborhood that knew no luxuries.” But, the San Francisco Call (30 August 1908) went on to assert, he worked hard, and now “Warfield is a man of wealth.” According to The Evening News (San Jose California, 12 January 1910), Warfield traveled in palatial private railroad car, ‘The Rainbow.’ “This product of the Pullman Company is perhaps the most palatial example of rolling stock that ever graced steel rails.” When

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Warfield gave his 1000th performance as Herr von Barwig at the Majestic Theatre in Boston, not only was there a special car of New Yorkers to attend, but also “Bronze busts of Warfield in character were distributed as souvenirs” (New York Times 25 June 1907). Further evidence of Warfield’s exceptional wealth (much of which he made through later investments with Marc Klaw) may be seen in the Parke-Bernet Galleries catalogue for his estate sale (French & Italian Furniture...). A reading of The Music Master today, with the objectivity lent by the passage of more than a century, reveals no literary merit. Any theatrical merit, as we have seen, resided in David Warfield’s performance. What resonates in this play is what it says about Americans. The United States has always been about the right to earn money and enjoy the fruits of it. But our national obsession with becoming money makers must rest upon bedrock values of fair play and honesty. Those who reap their rewards from playing by the rules are far more likely to look out for their fellow humans than those who unionize and take money that might have gone to the arts. A “practical idealism,” Charles Klein claimed in 1907, “applies to the individual, to the nation. The uplifting of the unit is the uplifting of all” (Klein, “Christian Science,” 463).

NOTES 1. The prevalence of money as a subject for the drama was noted also in the hinterlands. Under the headline “Money and Graft and a Square Deal,” the Duluth News-Tribune (13 May 1906) brought together capsule reviews of several current plays: Money Talks by Cleveland Moffat focuses on a “Western multi-millionaire, who comes east believing that wealth can have its way in almost every direction.” At first he is arrogant with “his power of wealth, but ready to learn that some things— indeed many things—can’t be bought.” A Square Deal by Edward E. Rose shows that a “landgrab boss,” who attempts to turn over public lands of Kansas to a trust, “has the millionaire mania in its most virulent form.” The Lion and the Mouse by Charles Klein is yet another antitrust play “on the problem of millionaireism.” The Embarrassment of Riches by Louis Kaufman Anspacher (a Columbia University professor of sociology) is an “intellectual comedy” and an “unantagonistic exposure of millionaireism.” 2. Numerous examples may be found in databases like America’s Historical Newspapers and Chronicling America: The Library of Congress. 3. According to Schanke: “In 1904 alone, four actresses—Mrs. Fiske, [Nance] O’Neil, [Mary] Shaw, and [Blanche] Bates—presented their version of Hedda Gabler either in New York or on tour” (36). 4. Not only was this asserted in newspaper reviews of the production in its day, but it was also the thoughtful judgment in hindsight of critic Montrose J. Moses in his 1925 book The American Dramatist (Little, Brown): “the fact that David Warfield could go so many years playing ‘the Music Master’ illustrates the childlike sentimentalism which still dominates our audiences. And, when these plays are read, they seem so flimsy in their content, so slight in their outline. They become a triumph for the actor, mere second-reader exercises for the dramatist. They add little to the dramaturgy of the nation. It was Warfield who made ‘The Music Master.’” 5. Fields & Fields 126, 144; Warfield, “My Own Story,” 13–15, 42; Part II (Oct. 1917), 16–17, 67–68. The appeal of Warfield’s awkward yet sly Polish Jews was evoked in a review of The Music Master in The Paducah Evening Sun (Kentucky, 19 November 1909): “Those, who remember David Warfield of a dozen years ago, when he was appearing in monologue, arousing peals of laughter by his very manner of walking to the footlights, and keeping his audience convulsed for minutes before he opened his mouth to speak, are not surprised at his power of compelling tears as well. In copying nature, his genius appears to lie, not only in his native talent for mimicry, but in his faculty of selection,

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unerringly rejecting non-essentials and employing only so much art as carries conviction.” Warfield’s close observation of the Polish Jews on Norfolk Street paid off not only in his 1901 portrayal of the title character in The Auctioneer, but also in his book of fiction, Ghetto Silhouettes. 6. For example, in the Salt Lake Herald (4 September 1904): “Mr. Warfield remains true to the Belasco standard, placing himself right on the fighting line in open opposition to the theatrical trust” (4). 7. Cook’s dissertation provides a useful survey of Warfield’s line interpretation and business at specific moments in the action; see especially pages 124 –135. 8. See, for example, Cook, p 126; Philadelphia Inquirer (11 November 1906); San Francisco Call 98 September 1908); The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, 26 October 1909); The Paducah Evening Sun (18 November 1909; 19 November 1909: “...we chuckled with a little ache in our throats ... and exploded a laugh into a handkerchief, raised for the purpose of wiping away a tear.”); Dallas Morning news (7 December 1909); The Tacoma Times (22 January 1910); Grand Forks Herald (1 March 1910); New York Times (11 October 1916). 9. Kansas City Star (28 April 1907); The Washington Times (18 June 1905). 10. For example, “‘Music Master’ Loyal to Belasco/David Warfield Refuses Yearly Salary of $100,000/Belasco Gave Him Chance,” The State (Columbia SC, 20 October 1907); “Daniel [sic] Warfield Is the Best Paid Actor/New York Player Refuses $1,000,000 to Leave Belasco for Ten Years,” Idaho Statesman (17 November 1907). The offer purportedly came from Philadelphia capitalist and theatre promoter Felix Isman, although we must skeptically allow the possibility that Belasco himself planted the story.

WORKS CITED “An Absorbing Play of American Life,” New York Times (21 November 1905). Cook, Gary Duane. David Warfield: A theatrical biography, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1975. “The Daughters of Men — Klein’s New Play,” Current Literature XLII, 1 (January 1907). Erdman, Harley. Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity, 1860 –1920. New Brunswick, NJ & London: Rutgers University Press, 1997. Fields, Armond & Fields, L. Marc. From the Bowery to Broadway: Lew Fields and the Roots of American Popular Theatre. With a Foreword by Helen Hayes. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. French & Italian Furniture and Works of Art Collected by the Late David Warfield. Public Auction Sale #1291, 1 December 1951. New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, 1951. Klein, Charles. “Christian Science: An Impartial Estimate,” The Cosmopolitan 42/4 (February 1907): 458 –463. _____. The Lion and the Mouse, a play in four acts. New York: Samuel French, 1906. _____. The Music Master, a play in three acts. New York: Samuel French, 1935. _____. The Music Master, novelized from the play as produced by David Belasco. Illustrations by John Rae. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1909. _____. The Music Master, novelized from the play as produced by David Belasco. Illustrated with scenes from the photoplay, a William Fox production. 1909. Dodo Press print on demand, 2010. Leiter, Samuel L. From Belasco to Brook: Representative Directors of the English-Speaking Stage. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. “The Lion and the Mouse,” New York Times (26 November 1905). Moses, Montrose J. The American Dramatist. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, and Co., 1925. “New Klein Drama Is Short of Truth,” New York Times (6 October 1914). New York Times (25 June 1907). The New York Times Theater Reviews 1904 –1911. New York: Arno Press Inc., 1975: 13 September 1904, 24 September 1904, 28 November 1904, 22 February 1905, 20 September 1910. Rachow, Louis A. “Klein, Charles,” American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, Volume 12. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Romeyn, Esther. Street Scenes: Staging the Self in Immigrant New York, 1880 –1924. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

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Schanke, Robert A. Ibsen in America: a century of change. Metuchen, NJ & London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. 1988. Warfield, David. Ghetto Silhouettes. New York: James Pott and Co., 1902. _____. “My Own Story,” McClure’s Magazine XLIX/5 & 6. Part I: (September 1917): 13 –15, 42–43. Part II: (October 1917): 16 –17, 67–68. “Warfield Revives ‘The Music Master,’” New York Times (11 October 1916): 12. The Washington Times (18 June 1905). Wilkes-Barre Times (16 May 1906). Winter, William. The Life of David Belasco, Volume Two. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 (originally published 1918). Woolf, S. J. “’The Music Master’ at 80,” New York Times (24 November 1946). Young, William C. Actors and Actresses on the American Stage: Documents of American Theatre History, Volume 2: K–Z. New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1975.

Performing “Amerikee” Rural Caricature and the George Washingtons of Percy MacKaye and Jacques Copeau MARK EVANS BRYAN

“Venerate the Plough,” commanded the Goddess of Plenty, escorted by prominent urbanites impersonating rural laborers, and followed by a parade of genuine farmers through the streets of Philadelphia on July 4, 1788. Immediately following the political and diplomatic attractions of the Grand Federal Procession, thousands of Americans paid tribute to the spirit of agriculture, celebrating a new national identity, in part, in the figure of the plow.1 As the procession commenced on the morning of the Fourth of July, private citizen George Washington visited the plantations of Mount Vernon, noting in his journal that that morning — perhaps just as the performing plowmen marched past what would shortly be his executive mansion — he had observed the “Plows” at work at Ferry Farm, his boyhood home (Diaries of George Washington, 356 –57). Like the peculiarly eighteenth-century American farmer that he was, Washington fretted, in the first days of July, about the rain and the dampness of his crops; kept careful record of expenses; and managed the labor of the slaves who maintained his farms, many of whom would do so, despite the popular myth, long after his death. His return to agricultural life had already become a part of the popular imagination in the United States; writers and public speakers celebrated him as an American Cincinnatus. But that popular imagination both fuelled and was transformed by the commercial theatre practices of the nineteenth century. The relationship between the urban theatre audience and the images of region, rurality, and commerce that had characterized early American literature changed tremendously in the modernizing United States. In Washington, The Man Who Made Us (1918), Percy MacKaye attempted to theatricalize this founding father as the emblematic American farmer, a Cincinnatus tending to his fields (MacKaye’s rustic Washington is a reluctant and benevolent slaveholder) and driven to lead his comrades by the same practical patriotism that brought the play’s pseudo-folk interlocutor, Quilloquon, to the urban playhouse of the prologue: 109

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in “Virginy ... Little us keers/For far-off up-and-doin’s, till we smells/Gunpowder in the wind” (7–8). And though MacKaye invokes the influence of academic folklorists and historians and the theatrical visions of Edward Gordon Craig and Robert Edmond Jones, performing what Quilloquon calls “Amerikee” is reduced in MacKaye’s “folk” play to the broad strokes of the caricatures on the commercial variety stage: Quilloquon is a yeoman rube in the vaudeville tradition, the marriage of George and Martha Washington recalls the “plantation spectaculars” of the minstrel stage, and MacKaye’s farmer-in-chief is less Cincinnatus than he is “Uncle Josh,” the rube character created by Denman Thompson in the 1870s and made popular by Cal Stewart around the turn of the century (the character combined avuncular, gentle comedy with the potential for shocking violence, particularly in Stewart’s version in recordings and popular publication). Constructed for “our theatre today,” but designed also for “our theatre tomorrow,” Washington, The Man Who Made Us is ultimately and characterized by our theatre yesterday (288). The great man’s cultivation of his boyhood fields while his urban countrymen celebrated the spirit of the farmer is a coincidence that Percy MacKaye would likely have embraced with some enthusiasm, as it harmonizes with the serendipitous events he maintained (and publicized) surrounded his completion of Washington, The Man Who Made Us, on the Fourth of July, one hundred and thirty years later. In the preface to the 1919 publication of the play, MacKaye notes that he “chanced” to have finished it on the very day of Woodrow Wilson’s address on “Voicing the War Objects of the Associated Peoples of the World” at Washington’s Mount Vernon estate (a similar occasion, set in a near “Futurity,” is portrayed in Washington, The Man Who Made Us) (x). Wilson asserted the participation of the U.S. “in this present war to be only the fruitage of what [the founders] planted”; that the American Revolution against Britain had, in fact, been “a step in the liberation” of the British people; and that “the spread of this revolt, this liberation, to the great stage of the world itself ” was his “confident hope” (499 –501). Washington, The Man Who Made Us follows Wilson’s script rather faithfully, situating the eighteenth-century war as an international and cooperative effort against German aggression and British/German mercantilistic domination, a struggle between good Englishmen (and Frenchmen and Poles and even two bellicose, though tolerable, Germans, who speak in the dialect of vaudeville “Dutch” characters) and the “Hanoverian tripe” (99) of the British king, “hir[ing] his own German breed to help suppress English freedom in both England and America...” (105) and profit from dominated markets. But despite the obvious nationalism of the play — MacKaye offers the leader of his own country’s war of independence as the model for a free twentieth-century world — its essential historiography is progressive, locating the forces of change in a generation of rural farmers (and, in one scene, urban artisans) moved as much by collective interest as ideology and heroic virtue, resuscitating the institutional Washington,

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“Sculptured in bronze, austere in nobleness” (15), and depicting instead, in the words of Quilloquon, a “human critter, Like most o’ folks.... Only grittier stocked” (18). The “ballad-play” of sixteen “Actions” is a symbolist collage of realist, often melodramatic, episodes and dreamlike “Transitions,” stitched together by Quilloquon, an ageless southern mountaineer who, when introduced, conforms remarkably to the “rube” type then extraordinarily popular on the vaudeville stage. During the Transitions, Quilloquon performs ballads drawn in part from English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians (1917), collected by Olive Dame Campbell and the controversial folk revivalist Cecil Sharp, and adapted and with some new verses by MacKaye. The figure of the balladeer, MacKaye argues, “introduces an opportunity in the new, growing movement of our native poetry” (291). Influenced by Gordon Craig and Jones (who designed Washington in its several initial performances), a new generation of artists might see in the transitions over which Quilloquon presides, MacKaye writes hopefully, “an art which, not excluding the nuances of rhythmic sound, is related through light to unexplored uses of the motion picture” and “new functions in dramatic art for what I may term a motivated vaudeville form” (291). Regrettably for MacKaye, the building blocks for his new vaudeville are the cultural caricatures of the old vaudeville. Where the constructed folk tradition of a European symbolist play might rely on a fairy-tale peasant tradition — see, for instance, Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird or A Full Moon in March by William Butler Yeats— MacKaye fashions his from a body of American burlesques of rural life. The haphazard invocation of these vaudeville and variety types in the “ballad play” shifts the balance of MacKaye’s Washington. It teeters awkwardly between the more commercial dramas of MacKaye’s career (“expression concentrated to a minimum, to include only the kind of expressional opportunity, within range of the fewest needful actors, and proportioned to their salaries for competence or reputation” [Washington, 288 –89]) and the experimental and anti-commercial civic and community masques for which he would later be known (“expression varied to its maximum to include expressional opportunity for the largest number of individual participants practicable” [288]). Kenneth Macgowan — who, in Continental Stagecraft, with co-author Robert Edmond Jones, would later include MacKaye among the artists most responsible for an antirealist “new theatre,” grouping him with Max Reinhardt, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Adolphe Appia, and Jacques Copeau (158 –60)—concluded, in his review of the 1920 season for Theatre Arts Magazine, that Washington “feels vaguely and promisingly forward to some new dramatic form” without finding it. He pronounced the play, finally, “far below” John Drinkwater’s “naturalistic” Whig interpretation of Abraham Lincoln, with which Washington shared the New York stage in 1920, “in all but intent” (103). It is quite clear, of course, that MacKaye had political as well as artistic intents for Washington. Too old to serve in uniform when the United States

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entered the First World War, MacKaye would later claim that his war work “consisted of contributing a Masque (‘The Roll Call’) for the Red Cross, a Christmas Masque (‘The Evergreen Tree’) for army camps and communities, and my play ‘Washington, the Man Who Made Us’ ...” (Percy MacKaye, A Sketch of His Life, 5). MacKaye writes that he was compelled to complete the play in the months prior to July 4, 1918, by “the human meanings illumined by our entrance into the Great War” (George Washington at the Delaware, preface). When a New York production planned for the “early Fall” of 1918 was cancelled, the production by Jacques Copeau’s Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier of Washington, Action Dramatique, Pierre de Lanux’s adaptation of the Act III “Valley Forge” episode of Washington, became the play’s (partial) professional premiere, running for one week in February 1919, at the repurposed Garrick Theatre in New York.2 Prior to the production, MacKaye had compared the work of the actors of Copeau’s theatre “with their trench-comrades in France,” sharing with them “the battle for the new civilization” (“Stirring Our Mystic Affluence,” 283). The French director would later confirm in an interview with Frederic Lefevre that his initial visit to the United States in 1916 had been “ordered by the French Propaganda Service” (715) and among his motivations for producing the play, according to Juliette Breffort-Blessing, were “diplomatic reasons” (149). The very brief run of Washington, The Man Who Made Us on Broadway at the Lyric Theatre in the spring of 1920 was preceded by a special performance to mark Washington’s birthday at the Belasco Theatre in Washington, D.C., for an audience of government officials including Edith Galt Wilson, representing the President. Published in English in 1919, after the end of the war, critics read its conclusion as an endorsement of the League of Nations. Perhaps crucially, these political intents appear to have motivated the discursive folk frames of Washington, The Man Who Made Us. In “Stirring Our Mystic Affluence,” MacKaye associated the imaginative world of Quilloquon and the folk Washington with American and French traditions of the pastoral, things “alive and organic, instead of that thing mechanical and galvanized, which for too long the moulders of American youth imported from the forges of Frankenstein” (283). “Var,” the Hessian commander reminds British General Howe in Washington’s Tenth Action, “is business” (200). Even MacKaye’s veneration of his farmer-hero parallels the publicity campaign of U.S. government agencies during the First World War, exemplified by William McKee’s “The Spirit of ’18” poster — in which the iconic musicians of the Archibald Willard painting, “The Spirit of ’76,” are transformed into farmers with baskets of vegetables and a sheaf of cradled wheat — and the stark U.S. Army recruitment poster “Your Country Calls,” designed by Lloyd Myers, in which the reader is enjoined to “Enlist,” “Buy Bonds,” or “Plow.”3 By the time of the U.S.’s entry into the war, American agriculture was in the midst of a decades-long crisis, shrinking at a constant rate and exporting its laborers and children into the urban workforce. Unchecked expansion, prompted by new lands and technology, led to

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perilous price declines and land productivity decreased by half between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century. The unemployed rural laborer, on the streets of American cities, personified a growing tension between rural and urban workers and urban audiences.4 The necessity of a campaign to glorify the farmer evinces the contested position of the farm laborer in the American imagination before the First World War. In Community Drama (1917), MacKaye, like other anti-commercial modernists before him, attempts to locate the spirit of a “communal dramatic art” in the “remnants and ruins of ... communal folk arts” spared by “the armored tanks of Machine Industrialism” (13). In the preface to his second Washington play, Wakefield: A Folk Masque of America (1932), he addresses the internal conflicts of the “American Folk-Mind” (xii) having spent some years after 1921 engaged in his own study of “folk life of the Kentucky Mountains.” “At that time,” MacKaye claims “the connotation of ‘folk’ had almost no recognition in American art and education” (107). Folklore studies in the United States, in fact, has its roots in nineteenth-century academe. But MacKaye’s claim might have been on much firmer ground had he focused on the American theatre, which in its regional traditions, national commercial culture, and Little Theatres, cannot be said to have had a folk tradition except in particularly local performances. The images, songs, and characters MacKaye employed in Washington, The Man Who Made Us preexisted his folk Washington in the long commercial history of the stage Yankee, the minstrel, the rube, and the backwoodsman, each of which reflected the dynamic position of the agricultural outland in the modernizing American experience. “Rube” caricature, though demographically similar to the eighteenthcentury “Yankee” character in American drama, originated in the performing traditions of minstrelsy in the late nineteenth-century. Like the other cultural caricaturists of variety and vaudeville, the rube performers of Percy MacKaye’s generation began their careers in “blackface.” But while elements of those performances— language elision and malapropism, certain narrative strains, the underlying themes of difference in the multiethnic and diverse American city of the twentieth century — underscore a range of vaudeville’s cultural burlesques, the rube acts appear to have evolved directly from minstrelsy’s distortion of rural life.5 The rube’s otherness, however, derived from a new divide between the rural and the urban in American culture. The comic “Yankee” had constituted a stage archetype, though not without nationalist controversy. William Dunlap famously excoriated the playwrights of Royall Tyler’s generation for misapprehending that a “Yankee character, a Jonathan, stamped” a play “as American, forgetting that a clown is not the type of the nation he belongs to” (85). Even the sober Cincinnatus was not always necessarily a figure of praise: William Smith invoked the Roman as he eulogized General Richard Montgomery in the winter of 1776 as “An American-Patriot! a Blanket-Hero! a General from the plough!” but observed that “all these are terms of ridicule and

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reproach among many” (15). Though clownish, the “Yankee” was hard-working, practical, generally trustworthy. The rube incorporated, in its yeoman face, these essential attributes of the “Yankee”; but the late nineteeth-century rube was also lazy, churlish, and potentially dangerous. Rube caricature, while superficially reminding American audiences of the “Yankee,” came instead to embody the anxieties of a modernizing and urbanizing audience. Washington, The Man Who Made Us begins with a metatheatrical dilemma. Attracted by the advertisement of a play on the life of Washington, fiddling Quilloquon and his two young acolytes knock three times on the stage to arouse the spirits of the theatre. They are refused by the “grotesque” Mask of Comedy (4), then again by the Mask of Tragedy. Finally, the “Third Mask,” a “serene” figure in deep-blue robes later revealed to be “The Theatre” personified, announces that there will be no performance (6). “They tell me there can be none,” he explains (8). “They” are the “Inhibitors,” historians who debate whether a horse Washington rode was “bay” or “dapple,” argue about how many times he attended church one December, and implore the spirit of the Theatre —“Built to exhibit the baubles of our age”— to leave the founding father to poets and sculptors. How, they ask, do the Masks “dare/To show the Father of His Country where/Puppets and clowns are shown?” (15). Ageless Quilloquon, however, recalls the Washington he knew, as “nuther a statye, nor a book,/Nor a statehouse paintin.’” “I wish,” the Theatre intones, “my art/Could serve his steady truth; but ... my hands are tied” (18). “Then s’pos’n I try my hand,” the balladeer replies (19). Because the commercial and traditional Theatre is paralyzed by academicism, convention, and commercial compromise, the play becomes Quilloquon’s. And it is his discursive control of the play, ultimately, that shapes MacKaye’s rube-folk Washington. Jacques Copeau and Pierre de Lanux, on the contrary, removed Quilloquon to a great extent from Washington, Action Dramatique, and MacKaye provided an alternate framing device for the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier production in New York. Adapted from the Eleventh Action of Washington, The Man Who Made Us, with songs from the Tenth Action, Eighth Transition, and Ninth Transition, Washington, Action Dramatique begins in “une obscurité completè,” with only the voice of Quilloquon (“La voix d’un chanteur de ballades (Quilloquon)”), singing with “une expression de tendresse étrange (11). As in the “Theatre” and “Festival” versions of MacKaye’s play, the scene concludes with Quilloquon emerging from among the Valley Forge characters (he had entered to deliver the letter from Franklin that announced the treaty with France), and singing “Gypsy Davy,” the score of their celebration and, in Washington, The Man Who Made Us, the ballad of the Ninth Transition. In Washington, Action Dramatique, Quilloquon (called “La Voix” in the script) closes the play as he had opened it, in complete darkness. Paired with Jean de La Fontaine’s La Coupe Enchantée, the production of Washington, Action Dramatique revisits the dilemma of the opening moments of Washington, The Man Who Made Us. In

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MacKaye’s original version, unable to do justice to the true Washington, the Theatre and his deputies had ceded authority to the folk memory personified in Quilloquon. But with Quilloquon heard but, generally, not seen in the French production, MacKaye returned to the previously impotent spirits of the theatre, who provide the frame for the evening of La Coupe Enchantée and Washington, “Two at Château Thierry,” written by MacKaye and translated by Copeau (5). Returned from the war in France (“Demobilizing, a slow business. We’ve reached the footlights.”), “Comicus” and “Tragicus,” the uniforms of Allied soldiers slung over their arms, describe to their “master” the morning after the Battle of Château Thierry during which they were visited by the ghosts of a young La Fontaine, then the ranger of the woods, and an older Washington, surrounded by “glimpse[s] of the marine blue and khaki brown of his grandsons.” The Theatre pronounces it “fitting” that Washington, “soldier and poet,” and La Fontaine, “maker of legends,” “do not die” and should be met together in the same wood in France. “So, also, is it not fitting, Master,” the Tragic Mask asks the Theatre, “that you should reveal them here — here in the house of our art, sacred to legends?” In Washington, Action Dramatique, the Theatre agrees, obviating Quilloquon and creating a very different Washington. The folk balladeer of MacKaye’s full-length play is squarely in the tradition of vaudeville’s rube, which, by 1919, had become a highly successful single and double act on American variety stages (Will Cressy & Blanche Dayne, Byron Harlan, Chic Sale), in the popular drama (rube comedian Frank Bell became famous as “Rube Whipple” in Way Down East), in the early recording industry (particularly the “Talking Machine Rube,” Cal Stewart), and in the popular cinema (such as in Victor Schertzinger’s 1917 feature, The Clodhopper). MacKaye’s rube is heard before he is seen in Washington, The Man Who Made Us. The playwright calls for an orchestral overture, including themes from the ballads that form the Transitions. As the overture concludes and the theatre grows dark, a single fiddle, playing “Bangry Rewy,” Quilloquon’s leitmotif, emerges from the back of the auditorium; it is a musical analogy for the arrival of the rube in the theatre, the humble “fiddle” contrasted with the orchestra’s violins. Quite purposefully, because MacKaye’s Quilloquon is the voice of the folk traditions that will tell Washington’s story, the balladeer’s entrance is a disruption (3 –4). But when he has roused the spirits of the theatre, Quilloquon, “in old time garb,” introduces himself as a stage rube: attracted to the city because “Gunpowder” is “in the wind,” he explains “I’m from/Virginy and Kentucky — all along/The ridge to Caroliny. I belong/Where folks still sing and fiddle and have fun/Jest feelin’ lazy in the mountain sun,/Atwangin’ dulcimers aneath the holly” (7–8). MacKaye’s specific expression of the American folk is invested in early twentieth-century representations of Appalachia and this drawling rube, fresh from the country with nothing but a hat and a fiddle and unfamiliar with the commerce and community of the city, was already a fixture on the commercial stage in 1919.6

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The performances of the ballads themselves, of course — without a living or historically acknowledged folk tradition in the American theatre audience — comprise much of the rural burlesque of Washington, The Man Who Made Us. Nostalgic and pastoral, they are also the sites of the majority of Quilloquon’s rustic and ungainly speech. In dialogue and ballads, Quilloquon’s peculiar stage dialect includes phonetic renderings of accented words (“you shet your eyes” [19], “Amerikee” [20]), acyrologic substitutions (“I swan” [5], “a hunderd” [7], “Axin’ your pardon” [17]), coronal pronunciations (“honkin’” [7], “s’pos’n” [19]), and the use of the antiquated pronoun “ye” instead of “you,” a substitution that is very typical of early twentieth-century rube performance. He shares aspects of this burlesque of working-class, regional speech with the AfricanAmerican characters (whose dialect is typical of the minstrel tradition on which MacKaye appears to rely) and the white farm laborers with whom Washington works in Act One, but it is the voice of the young Washington himself that echoes Quilloquon most closely (“Scart ye, did I,” “I’ve been a-fastin’ since sun-up” [38]). Quilloquon dominates twelve of the fourteen Transitions in Washington, The Man Who Made Us. He only accompanies the Fourth Transition on the violin and does not appear to participate in the Twelfth. The Fourth Transition, which leads into the Fifth Action —the wedding of George and Martha at Mount Vernon — begins with Quilloquon’s fiddle tune “deepen[ing] to an old plantation melody” as the “mellow voices of Negro Men begin to sing in choral harmony,” “Down in the lap of old Virgin-ee-ay” (78–79). “Like a moving frieze in the background,” MacKaye’s stage directions for the Fifth Action begin, “Negroes are passing; some in gay liveries, others with bright body-cloths, that set off the burnished ebony of their limbs,” all bearing “on their heads or in their hands, trenchers and trays, heaped with dishes”: a kind of reimagining of the “plantation spectacular” of the minstrel stage (79 –80). The wedding party for the Washingtons is glimpsed, predominantly, through the eyes of the slaves serving them and ends, as Act One ends, with the white characters dancing a “Virginia Reel”— a dance associated with many minstrel songs by the midnineteenth century — while, in “the background, the Negroes look on, grinning and excited” (85). The Twelfth Transition, which precedes Washington’s return to Mount Vernon after the Revolution, is a refrain of the Fourth Transition. There are echoes of this poisonous performative tradition in the Fourth Action as well: although white overseers and black slaves work, more or less, side by side in MacKaye’s egalitarian version of the plantations at Mount Vernon, when at relative ease, African-American laborers “commence a low, drowsy singing among themselves” (58). The Washington of Washington, The Man Who Made Us, is, occasionally, the gentleman farmer whom history remembers. Though he rejoices in honest labor (when asked if his agricultural work makes him perspire, Colonel Washington replies “Sweat buckets, Sir, thank God” [61]), he is also depicted, in

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some detail, as an innovative agronomist (his “experiment box” contains six different soil and manure mixtures, each planted with three grains each of wheat, barley, and oats [66]), and is described, accurately, as a “Southern aristocrat” by a New Englander during the Siege of Boston (139). His folksy proclamations that “War is a silly interruption of farming” and “If every king would raise his own vegetables, our military manuals might all be almanacks” (67), are followed by a surprisingly anticapitalist denunciation of war. “Gunpowder, they say, is rare snuff for the gentry,” observes Washington’s farmhand; “Yes, yes, it hets the blood,” agrees the future general, admitting that some days he would “rather hear the bullets whistling than the robins,” but, he concludes, warfare is “poor truck for farmers” (68). “Here’s our country,” Washington intones, “America — a big acre to garden: Not just the clearing, stumping, fencing, furrows to turn; not just ditching and ploughing God’s earth, mixing of soils: ’tis the right planting ... planting and mixing of men, aye, and the weeding — the sowing and harvest of peace and war” (70). But Quilloquon’s Washington is, by and large, the rube Washington. The young surveyor of the Third Action digs into his corn pone without removing his muddy boots. He describes his surveying expedition as “grand” despite “big woods, March winds, wonderful mountains, [and] villainous weather” (40) and declares, if challenged to a duel, he would “call the young gentleman an ass, and invite him to wrastle me” (43). When his older brother, Lawrence, questions him about his future, young Washington is quick to dedicate it to Mount Vernon: “The mud on my boots, Lawrence: this soil of America — home. Farming for me!” (51). By the Fourth Action, he is Colonel Washington, famous veteran of the Battle of Monongahela, but comically obsessed with his agricultural experiments and micromanagement of the plantation (he initially enters “wheeling a hand-barrow” and wearing “an old straw hat” [60]); when aristocrat George Fairfax arrives with three young women who want to meet the famous militia veteran, he imagines he’ll have to “tell him three ancient market-women are come to purchase his vegetables” (55). As the freshly-minted general-in-chief of the Continental Army, he interrupts a fistfight between a Virginian and a soldier from Massachusetts by striding into the conflict, “flinging men headlong in his wake,” “seiz[ing] the Combatants,” and “shak[ing] them fiercely” (143). He concludes by “knock[ing] their heads together” and “exploding”: “By the great horn spoon of Jehosaphat!— What’s this mean? What’s in your tarnal skulls— ha?— mule-bran, or brains?” (143 –44). And throughout the play, MacKaye keeps Washington risibly preoccupied with the draining of a swamp (a necessary, but especially unromantic agricultural responsibility). Having initially introduced Washington wet and muddy from swimming the creek by the swamp, the scene in which he pledges his future to farming and to Mount Vernon concludes with the “piping” of frogs and young Washington’s declaration, “That swamp by the creek must be drained” (52). As he philosophizes about war and farming with his

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foreman, Colonel Washington remarks wistfully that on the farms at Mount Vernon, far from European politics, “ploughing is full of stumps, and the old swamp only half drained!” (67). During the depths of the Valley Forge winter, in the Eleventh Action of Washington, the swamp was still at the front of his mind. While he and Alexander Hamilton deliberate on a response to the Conway Cabal — a genuine threat to Washington’s authority over the Continental Army — Washington abruptly changes the subject: “Did you write to my farm manager?” “About draining the swamp, Sir,” Hamilton replies, “Yes.” “Good,” says Washington, before returning immediately to the “cabal matter” (224). And, finally, after years of conflict he returns home only to hear the “frogs piping.” The character’s final line Washington, The Man Who Made Us is a forewarning to the frogs of Mount Vernon: “Now we can get back on the real job, and this time we’ll finish it. This time, Pats, — we will drain that swamp!” (274). A dozen years after Washington, The Man Who Made Us, in the preface to his later Washington play, Wakefield: A Folk Masque (1932), MacKaye addresses the tensions between a “creative age of history” to which Washington “belongs forever” and a “new world order, still in the pangs of birth”: “the Machine-Age” (xi). “George Washington, the man, lived to see his friend, Franklin, fly a kite of coiled wire into a thunder cloud, to enslave the lightning of the Folk-Age,” but, writes MacKaye, he “died before he could watch the lightning tighten its coppery coil to enslave its enslavers” (xii). But MacKaye wrote his drama of the farmer-in-chief for a romantic fiction of the U.S. audience, which had, in fact, always consumed Americanness in both agropastoral and urbantechnological effigies. In the Grand Procession of 1788, the parade of farmers had been followed by a pageant of technical and manufacturing trades; the “carriage of the manufacturers,” thirty feet long and thirteen feet wide and pulled by ten horses, on which machines carded and spun cotton; and the “machine” of the blacksmiths, with a “real chimney extending 3 feet above the roof,” a “manufactory ... in full employment” as it lurched through Philadelphia. 7 Rejecting the commercial theatre, MacKaye sought a new path for his “theatre tomorrow.” But inventing a folk theatre — seeking a primitive, pastoral and “creative age of history” somehow distinct from the urban, industrial culture of the city centers in the U.S.— was particularly complex for American audiences that had never accepted the agropastoral vision of American myth without complication and had consumed and contested theatrical spectacles of the farm and of the machine since George Washington was a private citizen.

NOTES 1. The Grand Federal Procession was documented over seven issues of the Times of London between August 27 and September 4, 1788 (“America. Grand Federal Procession”). The parades of the Agricultural Society and the farmers are described in the August 29 issue (issue 1154, p. 4). 2. “Washington Is Its Hero. Percy MacKaye’s New Play to be Produced by Arthur Hopkins,” New York Times (31 July 1918). Juliette Breffort-Blessing writes that the initial production was cancelled by Hopkins because the producer “felt that the end of the war in 1918 had made the play

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commercially unprofitable” (149). De Lanux was the author of Young France and New America (New York: Macmillan, 1917), which MacKaye referenced in the “Valley Forge” Action (“young America and new France,” [244]). 3. William McKee, “The Spirit of ’18” (United States Food Administration, 1918), “Documenting the American South,” http://docsouth.unc.edu/wwi/41907/menu.html; Lloyd Myers, “Your Country Calls” (Albert Frank & Co., c. 1916 –1918), Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/ item/00652167/. 4. See the Warren and Pearson Farm Products Wholesale Price Index for the years 1866, 1870, 1876, 1880, 1882, 1886, 1890, 1896, and 1900 (rpt. in The Encyclopedia of American History, 7th ed., Richard B. Morris and Jeffrey B Morris, eds. [New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996]: 679). 5. Frank Bell, for instance, who had been a highly successful “blackface” stump speaker, returned to the vaudeville stage after his success in Way Down East, as a “straw-chewing hayseed comic” (Douglas Gilbert. American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times [New York: Whittlesey House, 1940], 81) whose act was “practically ... the same old stump speech he used to deliver in black face only he now dresses in a ‘rube’ makeup” (anonymous manager’s report for the week of February 1, 1904, Keith-Albee Collection, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City). In 1902, the Crane Brothers & Belmont’s “Mudtown Minstrels” act was described interchangeably as a rube act and as a minstrel act (Tony Pastor Show Journal [January–May, 1902], Tony Pastor Collection of the Harry Ransom Humanities Center, University of Texas, Austin). 6. Quilloquon derives his peculiar name from the nonsense chorus of “Bangry Rewy”—“Cambokey,/Quiddledown, quilloquon” (53)— but the cadence of his name, and the suffix “quon,” point also to popular associations with Native America (and with them, the “noble savage” caricature of the melodrama). Native American languages rendered into phonetic English in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries make frequent use of the syllable “quon.” It is the “Conn” in Connecticut (“Quon-ch-ta-cut”); frequently used in Henry R. Schoolcraft’s translations of Ojibwa (see, for instance, Information Respecting the History, Conditions and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, vol. 2 [Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852], 459 –60, 470 –77, 505); and defined multiple times in multiple ways in James Waldo Colby’s How The Red Man Spoke: An Easy Introduction to the Old Indian Language of the Atlantic Coast (Waltham, MA: Colby Studio, 1906). The young Washington echoes this as well; in the Third Action, Washington enters disguised as “the immense Figure of an Indian” in “white-feathered headdress” and “painted wooden mask,” creeping up on “Mammy Sal,” an African-American “mammy” character on whom young Washington is playing a trick (36 –37). 7. “America. Grand Federal Procession,” Times n. 1154 (29 August 1788): 4; and Times n. 1155 (30 August 1788): 4.

WORKS CITED Breffort-Blessing, Juliette. “Washington, Action Dramatique: Jacques Copeau’s Tribute to FrancoAmerican Friendship,” Theatre Survey 30/1–2 (May–November 1989). Dunlap, William. A History of the American Theatre. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1832. Lefevre, Frederic. “An Hour with Jacques Copeau,” The Living Age (15 April 1927). Macgowan, Kenneth. “America’s Best Season in the Theatre,” Theatre Arts Magazine 4/2 (April 1920). _____ and Robert Edmond Jones. Continental Stagecraft. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922. MacKaye, Percy. Community Drama: Its Motive and Method of Neighborliness. Boston, MA : Houghton Mifflin, 1917. _____. George Washington at the Delaware. New York: Samuel French, 1918. _____. Percy MacKaye, A Sketch of His Life with Bibliography of His Works. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College, 1922. _____, “Stirring Our Mystic Affluence,” The New Republic 13 (5 January 1918). _____, “Two at Château Thierry,” New York Tribune (16 February 1919). _____. Wakefield: A Folk-Masque of America. Washington, DC: United States Commission for the Celebration of the Two-Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of George Washington, 1932. _____. Washington, Action Dramatique. Translated by Pierre de Lanux. New York: Brentano’s, 1919.

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_____. Washington, The Man Who Made Us. New York: Knopf, 1919. Smith, William. “An Oration in Memory of General Montgomery.” Philadelphia, PA: John Dunlap, 1776. Washington, George. “Friday 4th.” The Diaries of George Washington. Volume 5. Edited by Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1979. Wilson, Woodrow. “Address at Mount Vernon, Voicing the War Objects of the Associated Peoples of the World, July 4, 1918.” President Wilson’s State Papers and Addresses. New York: George H. Doran, 1918.

I Am Your Worker/ I Am Your Slave Dehumanization, Capitalist Fantasy, and Communist Anxiety in Karel Tapek’s R.U.R. PAUL MENARD

The theatre is rarely seen as the realm of the robot, a figure most often associated with pulp fiction, B-movies, or even automotive assembly lines. But the theatre, as well as other venues for modernist and avant-garde performance, was the birthplace of the robotic—the combination of dehumanized performance and increasingly integrated technology. With the rise of not only global technology, but also theatrical technology, European performance became a theatre of the machine. As electrified lights, revolving stages, and heightened special effects began to take more prominent roles, a the character of the European theatre underwent a significant shift from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century as stage technology became increasingly more sophisticated. It is no coincidence that the theatre, long a fantastical playhouse for cultural shifts and anxieties, became a reflection of collective mechanical excitement and fear at a time when the industrial workforce was becoming increasingly automated. Along with the rise of a mechanical theatre came the ascent of the director as total artist; various interpretations of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk established the director, rather than the playwright or actor, as primary theatre (and arguably literary) artist. Directors were keen to exploit the newly electrified stage and scenic design to increase emotional power and complexity of performance, while playwrights were primarily concerned with dramatically exploring the new complexities of an increasingly modernized world. No longer was character-based action at the center of dramatic performance, instead it became simply one element in a highly choreographed performance coordinated by a primary theatre artist. Like the systematized action of the factory assembly line, this important shift is consistent with the perceived loss of individual autonomy and the lack of agency in the face of increasingly complex networks of economic, social, and 121

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political power during the early twentieth century. With a more technologically evolved theatre reflecting a more technologically evolved world, certain theatre artists no longer desired to explore the human condition and man’s place in the world, but rather explore the dehumanized condition and man’s place as a cog in the increasingly industrialized world. The disenchantment of intellectual culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with a pursuit of the dynamic and revolutionary, dethroned the importance of the spoken word. Evolving from the Chekovian “pause” and the Symbolist static theatre, modernism became a movement of silence. With a vacuum created by the subversion of language, the void was filled by the unspoken language of the body. By the turn of the century it became increasingly clear that the role of the actor was changing dramatically, as was the role of corporeal communication. Physical performance became less of a reflection of human behavior and increasingly reflected the mechanized world of the early twentieth century. In fact, modernist performance sought to not simply distance itself from the realm of bourgeois reality, but to completely dehumanize it. By “dehumanized,” one is not merely suggesting the omission of natural forms but, as José Ortega y Gasset phrased it, the “...explicit act of dehumanization,” in effect, striving to “...paint a man who resembles a man as little as possible” (22–23). At a time when human laborers were becomingly increasingly replaced by machines (thanks, in part, to Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management studies that analyzed workflows), the capitalistic model of factory productivity was also becoming more closely aligned with theatrical perfection and efficiency: It became increasingly clear that the theatre was contaminated by its own vehicle, namely the human actor. In a medium comprised of extra-lingual elements (such as scenic design, movement, lighting, and sound design) manipulated by a central artistic figure, it should come as no surprise that the avant-garde turned its gaze to puppets. In 1908, E. Gordon Craig famously rallied for the abolition of the live performer, suggesting a life-sized puppet, or Übermarionette, as a replacement, thereby explicitly articulating the desire to replace the human actor with a mechanical one. But perhaps of greater importance than Craig’s prescription for the industrialized stage was its subconscious reflection of the industrialized world offstage. As Craig was demanding the human actor be replaced by a mechanical substitute onstage, factory owners were demanding the human laborer also be replaced by a mechanical substitute offstage. This increasing sense of automation, especially during the rise of global capitalist industrialism and the sweeping force of communist revolution, represented a loss of human agency. Here is where the seeds of the robotic are first sewn: As the automatism of the dehumanized theatre paralleled the mechanization of the human workplace and the perceived agential lack in these increasingly complicated economic, social, and political systems, the images of both the puppet and electrification were set on a collision course.

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The destined intersection of the puppet and technological modernity fell to the founder of the Italian Futurist movement, F.T. Marinetti; the Futurists were the first of the modernists to truly embrace technology and, more importantly, the concept of the machine-extended man. Established by the Founding Manifesto of Futurism in 1909, the movement was a reaction to the radical innovations in both technology and the arts. That same year, just a few months prior to the release of the Founding Manifesto of Futurism, Marinetti published his second play —Poupées Electriques (Electric Puppets). The concept of humanized mechanicals, or even mechanical humans, has long lingered in the realm of collective fantasy. Ancient interpretations of artificial man are echoed in the classical legend of Pygmalion and Galatea and the Jewish tale of Golem; Frankenstein and Pinocchio being more recent and perhaps better known examples. But in all of these cases, the transformative humanizing element has manifested itself through magic, alchemy, or sorcery. In 1908, Marinetti changed that element from the magical to the technological; by electrifying his puppets, he took the first major leap towards the concept of the robotic. Poupées Electriques was a result of the utopian Futurist vision of the machine-extended man, fundamentally outlining what would become the movement’s central aesthetic of mechanized performance. Though primitive in its exploration of the robotic, Poupées Electriques is the first onstage manifestation of manufactured mechanical people. Additionally, it defines electricity as the ultimate socio-technological element of change — a theme which would later pervade works throughout the Futurist canon, reflecting the movement’s fascination with the transformative forces of sweeping industrialization and fascist politics. Poupées Electriques is an otherwise traditional three-act play in which the electrified puppets appear only in the second act. Act I opens at a resortspa on the Cote d’Azure, and basically sets up a traditional love triangle situation common in drawing room plays of the period. It is also established in the first act that John Wilson, the main character, is an engineer in charge of several electrical plants and the celebrated inventor of electric puppets. But it is not until Act II that Marinetti introduces the mechanical puppet motif, where it becomes dominant. Two puppets— played by human actors— are now onstage, life-sized and given fully human names and occupations. John Wilson, who prefers their company to that of real humans, mostly enjoys making love to his wife, Mary, behind the puppets’ backs, fantasizing that they are in fact real people. After arguing with his wife, and himself annoyed by the puppets’ frequent coughing and snoring, John throws his creations into the sea. A fisherman witnesses the disposal of the puppets, mistaking them for real people; in order to clear himself of murder charges, John has a servant fish the mechanicals out of the water. The puppets are then stored in the attic where they remain for the rest of the play. While certainly notable as the theatrical genesis of the robotic concept, the puppets are limited to only one act and generally are not well integrated into the play’s action. Instead, they seemingly serve two dramatic purposes:

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They illustrate John’s peculiarity and aversion to society and offer a mechanized analogue to Mary, as John claims both Mary and the puppets are animated by electricity. When Poupées Electriques premiered in Turin on 15 January 1908 (under its Italian title, Woman is Fickle), it was constantly interrupted by the audience’s hisses and laughter. But in 1913, after Marinetti had more fully defined the Futurist aesthetic, he revisited Poupées Electriques. Renamed Elettricità (Electricity) or Elettricità Sessuale (Sexual Electricity), it was a compressed version of the original play’s second act. Distilled to a single act composed of three short scenes, Elettricità’s primary focus is the interaction between mechanized beings and humans. The role of the puppets is forced to the forefront; they are onstage as the curtain rises and before the appearance of any human characters. When those human characters do appear, the attention they devote to the puppets simply reinforces their centrality. John and Mary Wilson have been replaced by Italian counterparts named Riccardo and Maria Marinetti, and the puppets have been given monikers reflecting their role in the Marinettis’ heteronormative lovemaking: Professor Matrimonio and Signora Famiglia. Divergent from the original Poupées Electriques, a newly employed chambermaid is shown how the puppets are operated, allowing the audience to witness the mechanics of their manipulation. Apparently, the Marinettis have an ample supply of puppets stored in the attic, suggesting their mass manufacturing, although Professor Matrimonio and Signora Famiglia are the only two who ever appear onstage. Elettricità is also more explicit in its synthesis of electricity, sexuality, and puppetry than its predecessor, embodying the Futurist aspiration of bringing electrical power to all of Italy, technologically advancing national industrialism while advocating for a fascist political system. A further articulation of Futurist themes in Elettricità is the role of puppets as bourgeoisie, the first time the mechanized human is given a socio-economic identity. The servants’ manipulation of the bourgeois Professor Matrimonio and Signora Famiglia reads as Futurist role-playing, and the puppets’ presence (symbolizing propriety, heteronormativity, money, virtue, and social laws) is what lends the subversive erotic charge to the Marinettis’ lovemaking, further illustrating the Futurist obsession with electricity as the great social transformer. But while the Futurists’ first step to the robotic strove to create a utopian view of the integration of man and machine, its next great leap would paint quite a different image. Technology and dehumanization finally synthesized to create the ultimate vision of the man-machine in 1921 with the premiere of Karel Tapek’s R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). A product of post–World War I Czechoslovakia and its unstable political environment, combined with the industrial modernization of the world at large, R.U.R.’s future-view is anything but Futurist. And although it may differ radically from Marinetti’s Poupées Electriques, it is equally revolutionary. As Jarka M. Burian observed, “...to speak of an overall tendency or direction in the theatre during the twenty years of the First Republic, one

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must turn for guidance to events dominating life outside the theatre during that period, namely the sometimes meandering, sometimes rushing stream leading from the first heady days of Czech independence to increasing stability and prosperity, only to be followed by economic crisis and the growing threat of fascism and militarism...” (32). In essence, the creative spark that finally united man with machine in R.U.R. was not the technological optimism that had taken Marinetti to the brink of crystallizing the concept of the robot, but rather the anxiety Tapek faced from encroaching political, economic, and technological “advances.” R.U.R. opens in the central office of the factory of Rossum’s Universal Robots—named “Universal” to imply global sales, and “Rossum” recognized as an anglicized reading of the Czech term “rozum” meaning “reason.” Seen through the windows of the office are “...rows of factory chimneys, telegraph poles and wires” (Tapek 737) indicating the surrounding and invasive elements of contemporary modernity. The idealistic Helena Glory arrives at the remote island factory (conjuring up images of both Utopia and The Island of Dr. Moreau) and is introduced to both R.U.R.’s managing director, Harry Domin, and R.U.R.’s product, the Robot. Robots (always capitalized) are not the clanking mechanical devices composed of cogs and wires that the term implies, but rather, Tapek’s Robots are biological. Closer akin to products of bio-engineering, the Robots have been created through synthetic organs and closely resemble humans; they differ only by soulless emotion and mechanical movement and Helena has difficulty differentiating them from R.U.R.’s human employees. As Domin explains to Helena, the Robots were invented by the mad genius Old Rossum in his quest to prove that God was unnecessary. But it was his industrialist nephew, Young Rossum, who simplified the overly complex machine; by removing emotion and the soul he created an efficient and marketable product for mass consumption. Young Rossum founded R.U.R. to mass produce a strippeddown version of humanity to be sold as inexpensive workers, allowing man to finally free himself from labor and perfect himself. In a farcical moment at the end of Act I, Domin and his five colleagues all propose to Helena, the only woman on the island; given a five-minute ultimatum by Domin, she agrees to marry him. Act II is set in Helena’s bedroom, ten years after her arrival on the island; she is married to Domin but remains childless. Gradually, it becomes increasingly clear that disaster has struck the outside world — humans have given up working and the birth rate has mysteriously plummeted, and the Robots, first armed by humans as soldiers, have begun to turn against their masters. Radius, one of the modified Robots (given pain nerves and increased “irritability” at Helena’s request) has issued a global manifesto, echoing Marx’s own Communist Manifesto, calling for the extermination of the human race, but sparing “...factories, railways, machinery, mines and raw materials,” because “work must not be stopped” (Tapek 771).

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Act III still finds the humans holed up in the factory, realizing that the one key to their salvation — Old Rossum’s formula for Robot production — has been burned by Helena in the hopes of halting the spread of economic and political collapse. With their demise evident, the business manager, Busman, continues to count the firm’s money and later tries to buy his life from the Robots. Even at his final hour, man cannot embrace his humanity, preoccupied instead with a commodified capitalist view of human life. The Robots storm the factory, killing all the humans (offstage), but sparing the builder Alquist because “he works with his hands like the Robots” (Tapek 783), illustrating the proletarian importance of fungible labor. The Epilogue is set in the factory laboratory, and is the least domestic and representational act in the play. Alquist is the last human remaining on earth, spending his days futilely toiling to rediscover the formula for Robot production; the Robots realize that they will die out if unable to reproduce. Two Robots, Primus and Helena (created by Dr. Gall in the image of Helena Glory), have mysteriously become humanized and Alquist ventures that they are in love. The Robot Helena is the first of her breed to notice nature, and in an odd mix of lyricism, humor, and cliché, expresses typical bourgeois heteronormative desire: PRIMUS : I did not understand it myself, and yet I know I have never said anything more beautiful. And when I touched you I could have died. Even the place was different from any other place in the world. HELENA : I, too, have found a place, Primus. It is very strange. Human beings dwelt there once, but now it is overgrown with weeds. PRIMUS : What did you find there? HELENA : A cottage and a garden and two dogs. They licked my hands, Primus, and their puppies. Oh, Primus take them in your arms and fondle them and think of nothing and care for nothing else all day long, and when I am there in the garden I feel there may be something.... What am I for, Primus? [Tapek 787]

At the sounds of Helena’s laughter, Alquist awakes and realizes that nature will re-emerge triumphant as the Robots may, in fact, become human. He blesses them, christens them Adam and Eve, and sends them forth in the hopes that they will avoid the sins that destroyed their predecessors. R.U.R.’s greatest legacy is coining the word “robot,” which entered the global lexicon shortly after its premiere in 1921. Derived from the Czech robota, meaning servitude or forced labor, it also related to the Russian rabota, meaning simply “work.” (At one point, Tapek had apparently considered calling them Labori, though presumably this term would not have entered the English language due its linguistic proximity to “labor” and “laborer.”) But more explicitly, robota refers to the feudal days of Czechoslovakia when peasants were obliged to leave their fields and work for the nobles, without compensation; in more recent times, robota is used to describe work that is not done voluntarily. In R.U.R., the word is synonymous with function; the Robots are manufactured, soulless, and dehumanized forms of slave labor. “It is surely no coincidence that the rise of

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robot fantasy follows the demise of colonial slavery: the anthropomorphic machine promises an untroubled dream of power by offering the prospect of guilt-free slavery” (Goodall 446). With the rise of communism in the newly formed Soviet Union, combined with the shaky political structure of an embryonic Czechoslovakia, the dehumanization of the worker and the centrality of labor in R.U.R. take an anti-socialist bent. Although the individual worker is lauded by Tapek, it is the “soulless” masses dressed in gray tunics (the Robots’ uniform, differentiating them from humans but perhaps identifying them with the Soviet proletariat) that must be feared. Though a revolutionary force, labor in R.U.R. is devoid of moral purpose, technical skill, or even sense of genuine productivity. Absent is the socialist vision of labor as the true path to socioeconomic redemption; like the increasingly dehumanized factory workers of the early twentieth century, Tapek’s Robots lack craft or an idealized sense of higher accomplishment. Instead, R.U.R. presents a literal manifestation of labor without the possibility of transformation; the Robot masses are bereft of will, passion, history, or soul. Here, Tapek has set up a perverse wish-fulfillment scenario— a global slave structure with no colonialist ties. Despite their human appearance (and exclusively cosmetic gender differentiation), Tapek’s Robots are simply a commodified workforce that are bought and sold all over the world. Further, it is because of the Robots’ unpaid labor that rising productivity has ushered in a worldwide deflation to the point where Domin, foreshadowing capitalism’s dependency on multinational outsourcing, predicts that soon there will be “so much everything that things will be practically without price” (Tapek 752). But Tapek turns that fantasy into horror when the slave becomes lord. “It is through labor, through the shaping of the object, that the slave gains superiority over the master. In Radius, the robot who challenges the master, one can see Hegel’s master-slave dialectic at work. As Radius stresses, it is through active labor that he and the other robots have become superior to humans” (Kinyon 382). Tapek’s bourgeois anxiety manifests itself in the Robots’, or workers’, revolution; he makes it clear that it is, indeed, a revolution. Tapek’s Robot insurrection echoes the Russian Revolution beyond a simple revolt of the masses; embodying Marx’s thesis, R.U.R.’s bourgeois class introduces industrialization and is thereby destroyed by it. Throughout the world, Robots are uniting and the catalyst is language. Radius is the first Robot to master language and is therefore able to influence the masses through his use of propaganda. The concrete evidence that revolution has occurred is Dr. Fabry’s discovery of the globally distributed Robot manifesto, which has now invaded the domestic sphere, distributed to even “the Robots in the kitchen!” (Tapek 771). Tapek was not covert in his communist anxieties and portrays Radius as a leader who is primarily interested in self-serving power. In this sense, Tapek’s characterization of Radius is reminiscent of his similar characterization of communist leaders. Tapek’s concern for the misuse of Marxism by Czech communists may be seen in his 1924 essay

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To Have or Have Not “Why Am I Not a Communist.” Tapek writes: “The bourgeoisie, which cannot or does not wish to help, is foreign to me; but equally foreign to me is communism, which instead of help brings the flag of revolution. The last word of communism is rule and not salvation; its big slogan is power (“moc”), not help (“pomoc”).”

Radius follows this “last word of communism.” He facilitates the robot revolt because of his desire to rule, motivated by considerations of “moc,” not of “pomoc.” [Kinyon 386 –87]

But Tapek problematizes the Robots’ revolution, scripting an even more cautionary tale. Radius has become master of the humans but after their genocide, the power structure is rendered null and void. By eliminating the slave, the master loses his identity. On a more global scale, R.U.R. illustrates the obvious anxiety of dehumanization through burgeoning technology. The play is semi-allegorical and can be read as either future-projection of the present or as timeless myth. It is essentially a twentieth century reinterpretation of the Fall of Man, presenting the dystopian transformation of a utopian setting due to man’s hubris, greed, and quest for unholy knowledge. Alongside the Robots, nature also stages its own revolt against mankind. As the manufacturing of Robots increases, the birth rate plummets to zero, directly linking infertility to their mechanical creation. In a society of leisure, man no longer works the land, defying the Christian spiritualization of labor. But even nature’s rebellion is sparked by the same electrical current that gave life to Marinetti’s Poupées Electriques. The key element is R.U.R.’s cautionary vision of mechanistic dehumanization, where industrialism causes men to be treated like machines and thereby act like machines. Man is devalued, imprisoned, and threatened by his own man-made mechanized world where humans become Robots before ultimately being destroyed by Robots. But is it simply the rise of technology that instilled this anxiety in Tapek? No, R.U.R. is not a product of the fear caused simply by scientific advancement, but rather by the questioning of identity and the fear of communist assimilation. Tapek’s vision of the Robots seems, by his own account, to owe much to an acutely personal horror about the unknowability, the inscrutability, the facelessness of human beings viewed en masse, from the outside, especially in impersonal modern life. He stated that the idea of the Robots had appeared to him during a tramride. One day he had to go to Prague by suburban tram, and it was uncomfortably full. It astonished him how modern conditions had made people disregard ordinary comfort in life. They were packed inside and on the steps of the tramcar not like sheep, but like machines. He began to think of people not as individuals, but as machines, and on the way he searched for an expression which denote a person capable of working, but not of thinking. [Naughton 85]

But what caused Tapek to turn to machinery? It was an inevitable leap given the advancements made in technological intricacies and the lack of agency caused by World War I (further highlighted by Domin’s global expansion plans

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to create nationalized Robots programmed to hate other Robot ethnicities). The powerlessness and loss of identity caused by the political transformation and redistribution of previously established Eastern European countries found an outlet in the dehumanized. Whereas earlier literature had turned to the distanced yet humanized puppet form, the twentieth century discovered machinery to be a more representative signifier of human behavior. “What David Seltzer has called ‘melodramas of uncertain agency’ arose from this circuitry as ‘the machine-likeness of persons and the personation of machines’ evoked a strange mixture of politics, science, and sorcery. The mixture was at its most potent where machine circuitry was at its most intricate: in automata and calculating machines, whose behavior imitated human coordination and volition. As the automatic machine became increasingly suggestive of agency, any appearance of the automatic in human behavior conversely seemed to suggest a loss of agency” (Goodall 441). The circuitry through which machines and bodies could transfer agency, and even humanity, is not unlike the marionette’s strings. Both could be programmed or manipulated, be it by director, dictator, or factory manager. Further, as Jane Goodall suggests, a being that lacks agency must draw it from somewhere “and the only source to which it is connected is its own creator, who after all, deserves what is coming to him because, not content with making objects that are agency neutral, he has created an agency vacuum that must — automatically, so to speak — seek to fill itself ” (444). This revolutionary need to fill the communal agential void embodies Marx’s depiction of the bourgeoisie’s eventual overthrow by the proletariat; through their capitalistic exploitation, Tapek’s bourgeoisie is utterly destroyed by their own industrialized labor force. It was a long time coming, but the realization of man and machine finally coalesced in 1921. But it has never been fully resolved, partially stemming from its origins—Poupées Electriques’ notion that the robotic represents part of humanity (most explicitly through sexual electricity) or R.U.R.’s stalwart stance that the robotic is the antithesis of humanity. But both are revolutionary. As Harold B. Segel points out, “The love-hate dichotomy at the heart of the twentieth-century avant-garde’s attitude toward the mechanical is well known. The Futurists extolled the machine as the foundation of a postbourgeois Europe. The Expressionists viewed the new technological era with profound anxiety, fearing the domination of humans by machines. Whatever the differences between them in outlook, aims, and methods, both camps freely employed machine imagery to strike back at the perceived common enemy —the bourgeoisie” (311). One may argue that after World War I, the role of the machine changed dramatically — what was once the harbinger of a utopian future-state became the horrible destroyer of cities and human life. Granted, the war altered global perspectives, but it fails to fully explain the continued pursuit of the manmachine by the post-war Futurists (Italian and Russian), the Bauhaus, and, to a certain degree, the Dadaists. One may draw a dividing line between the basic premises of the individual versus the struggles of masses. Italian Futurists were

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aligned with fascism, supporting a heavily pro-war and nationalistic society. Tapek was staunchly individualist, fearing the invasive influence of communism and its soulless masses. R.U.R. specifically offers an allegory for industrial capitalism run amok, whereby the bourgeois class is destroyed by its introduction of hyper-industrialism. Tapek’s use of dehumanization and agential lack drive home R.U.R.’s realization of communist anxiety, its perverse fantasy of colonial exploitation, and its criticism of all-consuming capitalistic industrialism. Perhaps this fact is why American translations of the robotic (such as Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine or Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape) fall so heavily on the side of the Expressionists— in a society which reveres the individual, positive assimilation with mechanical circuitry is strictly forbidden. But no matter the approach, the staging of the robotic is always revolutionary to some degree. The theatre, with its Dionysian heritage, remains a distinctly human sphere; a realm of carnivalesque transformation. To remove the robotic from the factory and place it onstage confronts our communal angst — be it of assimilation, colonization, agency, or uncontrollable political or economic systems. The thrill and fear conjured by the robotic defines our conflicted feelings about the mechanical, veering between standoffishness and seduction. For all of its distancing and dehumanization, the robotic serves one essential task — through its definition of the other, it defines our collective humanity.

WORKS CITED Bohuslava R. Bradbook. Karel Tapek: In Pursuit of Truth, Tolerance, and Trust. Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 1998. Burian, Jarka M. Modern Czech Theatre: Reflector and Conscience of a Nation. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2000. Tapek, Karel. R.U.R. Translated by Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair. Sixteen Famous European Plays. Compiled by Bennett A. Cerf and Van H. Cartmell. New York: Random House, 1947. Goodall, Jane. “Transferred Agencies: Performance and the Fear of Automatism,” Theatre Journal 49/4 (1997). Kinyon, Kamila. “The Phenomenology of Robots: Confrontations with Death in Karel Tapek’s R.U.R.,” Science Fiction Studies 26 (November 1999): 379 –400. Kirby, Michael and Kirby, Victoria Nes. Futurist Performance. New York: PAJ Publications, 1986. Naughton, James D. “Futurology and Robots: Karel Tapek’s R.U.R.” Renaissance and Modern Studies 28 (1984). José Ortega y Gasset. The Dehumanization of Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968. Segal, Harold B. Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. _____. Pinocchio’s Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Automatons, and Robots in Modernist and AvantGarde Drama. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Home Away from Home Greed in Marco Millions THIERRY DUBOST

However, it will perhaps be generally offensive for these same people to see an aesthetic problem taken so seriously, if, that is, they are incapable of seeing art as anything more than a cheerful diversion, an easily dispensable bell-ringing in comparison with the “Seriousness of Existence,” as if no one understood what was involved in this contrast with such “Seriousness of Existence.” For these earnest readers, let this serve as a caution: I am convinced that art is the highest task and the essential metaphysical capability of this life, [...] — Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy, 19

For readers familiar with the writings of Eugene O’Neill, an opening quotation taken from Nietzsche’s works comes as no surprise as an initial reminder of the philosopher’s impact on the major American playwright. Although O’Neill’s interest in Nietzsche’s writings focused in particular on Thus Spake Zarathustra, which he re-read every year, the author undoubtedly subscribed to Nietzsche’s views expressed in The Birth of Tragedy regarding the vital importance of art. Throughout his career, O’Neill rejected the easy frame of wellmade plays, and attempted in various ways to create original works. With regards to the content of his plays, from the first to the late ones, the American playwright focused on what he thought were the major issues of his time, and often addressed them in challenging ways for his audiences, both thematically and aesthetically. Among the subjects he treated, one notes a particular interest in the fates of individuals reflecting class issues, a point which comes as no surprise from the son of immigrants, who felt they did not quite belong in American society, even in their summer home town. In his early works, the playwright staged poverty, and the suffering of the “have nots” realistically, even if in some cases he resorted to expressionism — see The Hairy Ape— to depict the different but hurtful alienations of the “have nots” and of “the haves.” With Marco Millions, O’Neill revisited Marco Polo’s journey east, but rather than focus on the explorer’s discovery of an unknown universe, he used Marco’s story to bring politics on American stages. 131

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As a playwright, O’Neill rejoiced when his works were published, but his main purpose was to see them produced. For his “Chinese” play, he changed his usual writing modes, but before analyzing how he combined new aesthetics with politics, some information about the initial conditions of production of his political play11 will be provided. Rather than focus on O’Neill’s biography or the social context of the time, it seems more interesting to see how his rewriting of Marco Polo’s story—together with the staging of an alien country—are used to depict and criticize American society. To call into question Marco’s culture, his social and mental backgrounds, O’Neill resorted to satire and humor. This means that, to some extent, the playwright started from what Nietzsche called “a cheerful diversion” to eventually address a major political issue, a paradox which justifies that one should raise the screen of exotic clichés to get a better understanding of what still remains a rather popular political play. In his O’Neill biography, Louis Sheaffer mentions the unexpected success of Beyond the Horizon, a first step towards future original creations of the American playwright. Putting O’Neill’s originality in perspective, the critic then alludes to the vitality of American theatre in the 1920s, a period he defines as: The most exciting decade the American theatre had ever known, [...]. Ahead lay in other words, What Price Glory? and They Knew What They Wanted, Craig’s Wife, and The Silver Cord, In Abraham’s Bosom and Porgy, Street Scene and The Front Page, the emergence, in short, of George Kelly and Sidney Howard, of Maxwell Anderson, S. N. Behrman and Robert E Sherwood [Shaeffer 481].

Shaeffer rightly recalls that other playwrights shared O’Neill’s doubts about the working modes of the social system. Regarding the presence of political theatre in the United States— apart from O’Neill’s works— , one need only mention Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine to show that political theatre could indeed be original and creative in the 1920s. As for aesthetics and O’Neill, some aspects analyzed in this paper will show that Marco Millions could justly claim to be one of the innovative political plays of the time.22 A few words about the context of production may help grasp the nature and significance of the tension between aesthetics and politics for Marco Millions. O’Neill finished writing the play in 1925, and the Theatre Guild produced it in 1928. In terms of possible productions, writing political plays means treading on dangerous grounds, but at an early stage of his career, O’Neill had been fortunate to see his works produced by daring theatre companies. Indeed, the Provincetown Players and the Washington Square Players had staged some of his political works. The Provincetown Players and the Washington Square Players shared a common intent: promoting native quality drama. They wished to bring to life genuine and intellectually respectable forms of American drama, which included political plays. The Theatre Guild may have shared similar objectives regarding quality —who would not?—, but their political commitment was far less perceptible. Their major aim was to be more professional, and by the time O’Neill finished Marco Millions, they already had the makings of a permanent

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company. Regarding their goals, Christopher Bigsby accurately summarizes the difference with the former amateur companies with which the young American playwright had collaborated: The Guild developed no social or aesthetic programme. It staged a propaganda play, Tretyakov’s Roar China, a political melodrama, Kirchon and Ouspensky’s Red Rust, but equally it staged Shaw’s plays, historical dramas by Maxwell Anderson, and frivolous revues [Bigsby 121].

The eclectic list, combined with the absence of predefined dramatic modes, shows that the board merely chose Marco Millions because they felt the play deserved a staging. The exotic aspect of the play may have accounted for their choice, together with the mixture of seriousness and satire which, at the time, may have been an interesting challenge to take. All these aspects may have appealed to the board, but Joel Pfister puts forth another side of the matter: The problem with Marco’s vacuous capitalism is not structural-who gets to be rich, who is kept poor-as much as it is spiritual and emotional. [...] Marco Millions seeks to convert the Theatre Guild’s materialistic professionals, not to specific social reforms, but to the gospel of depth and culture [Pfister 81].

Joel Pfister rightly insists on the fact that contrary to usual political plays, O’Neill does not seek to expose the suffering of the poor as such, or try to show the unfairness of the social system. Moving away from the United States, at least geographically, the playwright took a distance from these issues. It would indeed be very difficult to argue that the play aims to promote “specific social reforms,” but converting the Guild’s professionals to “the gospel of depth and culture” may not have been O’Neill’s real intent either. To phrase it differently, being slightly less optimistic than Joel Pfister, I would argue that O’Neill used satire in order to expose the shallowness of Marco’s life intent, which was actually the brand mark of his culture. Opposing eastern and western views, O’Neill contrasted the depth of eastern philosophy with the western disease of greed.33 Using depth versus shallowness, the playwright wrote a political play; he may not have tried to convert anyone, but he certainly hoped to challenge a prevailing American business culture, which was restricting the American dream to monetary values. To understand O’Neill’s writing mode, it may be useful to keep in mind what he wrote fourteen years later about his friend, Irish playwright O’Casey: The hell of it seems to be, when an artist starts saving the world, he starts losing himself. I know, having been bitten by the Salvationist bug myself at times [Bogard and Bryer, Letter to George Jean Nathan, 13 May 1939, 486].

In his early writings, in particular when he focused on the fate of immigrants, O’Neill may indeed have thought theatre could be a means of promoting social reforms. When he wrote Marco Millions, however, he had already matured — not merely technically — and was moving away from blunt political works. Obviously, O’Neill’s creative path was uneven, but in his ‘Chinese play,’ he was

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trying to address some key personal and social issues, while moving away from what one might anachronistically call “In-your-face theatre.” To understand what was taking place, one could compare All God’s Chillun Got Wings and Long Days’ Journey into Night. For today’s readers, his late autobiography reveals the nature of the love conflict which he had both staged and hidden in All God’s Chillun Got Wings. To some extent, the story of Marco Polo was also an exercise in masking (with Marco as a veiled portrait of O’Neill’s father44), a means of addressing vital issues, but not in the realistic way of his early works. Using masks to reveal the truth, having a political play performed at the Guild, O’Neill was thriving on paradoxes. In this respect, and if one bears in mind Nietzsche’s warning to his readers, another paradox of Marco Millions is that O’Neill resorted to a cheerful diversion in order to address a serious existential issue, implicitly rephrasing the famous Hamlet monologue into a more contemporary American form, namely “to have or not to have.” The case in point is that the pursuit of happiness— now restricted to the pursuit of financial success— , sees its relevance questioned. In other words, the “have” culture is condemned, not merely through its shallowness, but also as a way of hindering the coming to life of a “be” culture, more likely to fulfill the people who are becoming instead greed-minded individuals. One of the remarkable features of Marco Millions is that the playwright started from Marco Polo’s life story (Surprisingly, the last scene, for instance — the return of the Polos poorly dressed and then shown as rich merchants— is actually part of Marco Polo’s memoirs). The play follows the journey of Marco, first an inexperienced young man, and then a successful businessman. O’Neill’s choice of a chronological perspective on Marco’s journey helped him show the moves in space — through the changes in scenery — but his political critique also rests on his use of time: Like the younger Juan Ponce, Marco Polo at fifteen-when we first meet him-is endowed with two personalities. He, too, is an ambitious thinker and a romantic dreamer, a rudimentary businessman and a young poet-lover. Uncorrupted as yet by the merchants of Venice, he is youthfully handsome, displaying a quality of adolescent charm that we are not to encounter again till Ah, Wilderness! [Engel 137].

As Edwin Engel accurately points out, O’Neill carefully insists on the prime innocence of Marco. His gradual dereliction does not so much result from a personal downfall as from his acceptance of the values which his father and uncle embody. The time-span of the play enables the playwright to call into question a capitalist culture which prevails over individual nature, and which hinders the expression of young Marco’s most respectable humane features. This onesided critique of a dehumanized capitalist system brings an echo of the playwright’s bohemian years, during which O’Neill — and many of his friends— had somewhat assimilated a rejection of capitalist creeds with the path to happiness. Writing when some people were making the most of the easy wealth of the giddy 1920s, O’Neill’s move to China kept him surprisingly close to American

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issues. In fact, some critics have pointed out that spectators were more than likely to make connections between what they saw on stage and their daily lives.55 However, the playwright did not try to make a list of corresponding evils between the stage and real life. He hoped to embrace a more general reflection on the values of the western world, opposed to those of the East. To some extent, the title of the play — the beginning of O’Neill’s political discourse — summarizes the point. Instead of focusing on Marco Polo’s “travels,” in ways corresponding to the original title, O’Neill insists on the link between an individual and money. The traveler and discoverer are erased by Marco’s financial quest, and the exotic journey becomes a financial venture in which to have is more important than to be. KUBLAI: He has not even a mortal soul, he has only an acquisitive instinct. [...] He is only a shrewd and crafty greed. I shall send him home to his native wallow [MM 387].

O’Neill, who does his best to expose the shallowness of his main character, undoubtedly shares the Emperor’s concluding verdict.66 While The Travels of Marco Polo depicts the young man’s discovery of foreign countries, in Marco Millions the playwright resorts to an inverted process. He uses the Emperor and his main adviser to characterize (and criticize) the European traveler’s behavior. In addition to this, the two Chinamen’s conversation is interspersed with philosophical reflections, which contrast with Marco’s petty materialistic views. CHU-YIN : The noble man ignores self. The wise man ignores action. His truth acts without deeds. His knowledge venerates the unknowable. To him birth is not the beginning, nor is death the end [MM 401].

The play can in no way be summarized to an opposition between Taoism and capitalism, but one of Marco’s initiatives illustrates the gap between the Chinese and Marco’s perspectives on life and society: MARCO : Why, I even had a law passed that anyone caught interfering with culture would be subject to a fine! It was Section One of a blanket statute that every citizen must be happy or go to jail [MM 392].

Marco’s demand for a general compulsory happiness is but one example of his political “feats.” He remains oblivious to the reactions of the people surrounding him, who are stunned by his embarrassing creativity, and he gradually becomes a comic puppet. While spectators may not share the Chinese philosopher’s views, Marco’s grotesque behavior will help them side with the wise man who derides his greed. When the play was first staged, the audience was able to relate to O’Neill’s critical views of capitalism, which echoed those of his contemporary, Sinclair Lewis, whose famous novel had been published three years before O’Neill finished Marco Millions. As everyone knows by now, Marco is the story of Babbitt retold in ancient dress, wherein the smoking-car wit and the Rotarian complacency of the Polos, and particularly of

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the younger Polo, are set against the splendor and the mystic wisdom of the court of Kublai, the Great Kaan [Brown 181].

Brown notes the diverging perspectives between East and West, but beyond the “smoking-car wit,” the play focuses on a major issue — the evils of capitalism. Marco’s dream of a common and compulsory happiness is a reminder of his capitalist but un–American political principles. In Democracy in America, Tocqueville’s reflection on the “Social state of the Anglo-Americans” reads as follows: Several important remarks about the social state of the Anglo-Americans could be made, but one dominates all the others. The social state of the Americans is eminently democratic [Tocqueville 75].

Tocqueville mentions a basic principle of democracy, which sharply contrasts with Marco’s speeches. Focusing on that point, O’Neill extends his criticism of financial success to its political consequences, and the shadow of dictatorship looms over Marco’s views on social order. How should one interpret the playwright’s scathing attacks against his main character? Despite the strength of his critique, one can easily trace the limits of O’Neill’s political involvement, since he does not advocate specific social or political changes. Instead, he provides a philosophical outlook on a particular case. He uses the eastern model as a contrasting tool to expose the blindness of the young merchant, and to reveal that his one-dimensional financial quest could be characterized as a pursuit of emptiness. Politically, a remarkable feature of Marco Millions is its failure to deal with class issues, and it is significant that on stage the poor are invisible (One should note however that the Emperor refers to the poor who endure Marco’s harsh financial policies: KUBLAI. [With a chilling air] I have received a petition from the inhabitants of Yang-Chau enumerating over three thousand cases of your gross abuse of power! [MM, 392]). This noteworthy dramatic choice highlights that O’Neill focused less on the material consequences of Marco’s financial misbehavior than on his spiritual downfall. In order to get a clearer view of the playwright’s political standpoint regarding economics, one should bear in mind that in Strange Interlude he even made a positive depiction of two wealthy men. The reason for this is easily explained: through their financial detachment, Charlie Marsden and Edmund Darrell manage not to become the slaves of their money, a challenge which Marco fails to take up. In earlier works, O’Neill had occasionally resorted to crude realism or expressionism to convey his rejection of the ways of the world. In Marco Millions, within the context of the Guild Theatre, the playwright faced a real challenge: how to stage a political discourse before a public who would probably reject a simplistic moralizing tale. In his attempt at redefining the scope of American drama, O’Neill had violently discarded melodrama, claiming instead classical Greek works as models for his plays. In Marco Millions, the playwright

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resorts to comedy, but contrary to Aristotle’s negative views on non-tragic works, O’Neill’s use of humor to illustrate a lesson shows that he did not look down on comedy: In 1928 O’Neill moved to the Theatre Guild for his base of operations and the first outing was a marvelous display of sweeping staging and beautiful designs all in service of a minor play with grand aspirations. Marco Millions (9 January 1928) benefitted from a remarkable stage orchestration by director Rouben Mamoulian as the anticommercial themes of the play resonated ironically in an obviously commercial production [Wainscott 106].

“Anti-commercial themes” in an “obviously commercial production” sums up the paradox of the play. Writing Marco Millions and producing it at the Theatre Guild, O’Neill hoped to show how the desire for possession leads both society and individuals to a dead end, but he had to be cautious enough not to preach spectators away from the theatre. The “commercial production” implied — hopefully — that the audience would enjoy the play. The need to satisfy the public may have explained the Guild’s use of music (On this issue, see Shafer 145 – 154) when Marco Millions was initially produced, since a live orchestra gave a lighter touch to some otherwise uninspiring scenes. The political nature of the play reinforced O’Neill’s reflection on aesthetics, since it compelled him to define new frames to reach his aims: In Marco Millions all the people of the East should be masked — Kublai, the Princess Kukachin, all of them! For anyone who has been in the East, or who had read Eastern philosophy, the reason for this is obvious. It is an exact dramatic expression of West confronted by East. Moreover it is the only possible way to project this contrast truthfully in the theatre, for Western actors cannot convey Eastern character realistically, and their only chance to suggest it convincingly is with the help of masks [O’Neill, “Memoranda on Masks”; Cargill, et al. 119].

O’Neill’s wish to use masks finds its root in his hope to expose by contrast two diverging worlds, without letting actors fall into the trap of caricature. O’Neill’s need for different aesthetics, to address western issues through a confrontation with eastern mores and thinking modes, is easily explained. Still, without denying the necessity of such a choice, one should also take into account masking as part of his wish to hide his father’s implicit portrait in a non-realistic production. Despite the seriousness of his intent, O’Neill used a number of comic means to turn the actor into a ludicrous puppet (Bearing in mind — a vital point to understand what is at stake in the play — that Marco is also a victim of cultural forces [economic ones] which he fails to see as self-destructive, but his gradual transformation —comic as staged — represents the essence of his personal tragedy). Satire, the key-word to define his approach in the play, appears at different levels. For instance, when the Chinese philosopher depicts Marco’s loud arrival at the palace, O’Neill resorts to a running commentary to turn his character into ridicule:

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He slaps a policeman on the back and asks his name! He chucks a baby under the chin and asks the mother its name. She lies and says “Marco” although the baby is a girl. He smiles. He is talking loudly so everyone can overhear. He gives the baby one yen to start a savings account and encourage its thrift. The mother looks savagely disappointed. The crowd cheers. He keeps his smile frozen as he notices an artist sketching him [MM 389].

This is but one of the means through which Marco is exposed as a buffoon. O’Neill always insists on the shallowness of the man, whose blindness is due to his obsession for monetary matters. Satire is also used in his speeches, actually defined as those of a “child-actor” whom no one can take seriously, except the Princess, who is blindly in love with him. Still, in spite of O’Neill’s desire to give a strong comic touch to the play, he proves far less successful than in his later works77 (See for instance the confrontation between Shaughnessy and a millionaire in A Moon for the Misbegotten). MARCO : There’s nothing better than to sit down in a good seat at a good play after a good day’s work in which you know you’ve accomplished something, and after you’ve had a good dinner, and just take it easy and enjoy the wholesome thrill or a good laugh and get your mind off serious things until it’s time to go to bed [MM 399].

Here, the irony lies in the fact some spectators who attend a performance of Marco Millions may share his views on theatre. Apparently, O’Neill abides by Marco’s program “a good laugh and get your mind off serious things.” Unlike his character, however, the playwright loads Marco’s statement with a good dose of irony, as is shown by his shrewd writing technique. Indeed, regarding the links between entertainment and the writing of a political play, O’Neill’s stroke of genius was that he added an epilogue to Marco’s tale, which turned his satire into a serious work of art. Doing so, he made the audience realize that their cheerful diversion — to keep Nietzsche’s words— went far beyond their initial expectations, showing that they too were concerned by what they had seen: The play is over. The lights come up brilliantly in the theatre. In an aisle seat in the first row a Man rises, [...]. In fact, it is none other than Marco Polo himself [...]. He [...] walks in the crowd. [...] His car, a luxurious limousine, draws up at the curb. He gets in briskly, the door is slammed... [MM 439].

Then, the audience cannot but take the point and finally see the proximity between the eastern pageant and their every day realities. Aesthetically, for the young playwright, exoticism meant treading on unknown dramatic territory, but from a political point of view it also enabled him to address what he felt was a major American social issue: greed. Through his home-away-from-home strategy, O’Neill shunned usual realistic depictions of the daily lives of Americans. Doing so, he hoped to make them discover an image of themselves in unexpected ways, and force them to eventually acknowledge the connection. As a foreigner, O’Neill used clichés corresponding to his idyllic views of China, but the eastern country mainly serves as a background for the personal

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journey of the Italian explorer. Although O’Neill attempted to question American mores in an original way, “his” China also reflects the ideology of a time, built upon a simplistic (and dated) opposition between China and the United States.88 In spite of the inadequate and striking ethnic views of the playwright, one should not overstress this point. To characterize his political writing attempt, one should note that touristy images of China are matched in importance by romantic features: a love scene makes this clear: (...He bends over and looks into her eyes. She raises her hands slowly above his head as if she were going to pull it down to hers. Her lips part, her whole being strains out to him. He looks for a moment critically, then he grows tense, his face moves hypnotically toward hers, their lips seem about to meet in a kiss. She murmurs) Marco! MARCO : (his voice thrilling for this second with oblivious passion). Kukachin! MAFFEZO : (suddenly slapping a stack of coins into the chest with a resounding clank). One million! MARCO : (with a start, comes to himself and backs away from the Princess in terror) What, Uncle? Did you call? [MM 415].

This scene is actually the turning point of the play. The tension between the two sides of Marco reaches its apex when he chooses not to let his feelings prevail over his desire to become rich. For a moment, Marco is almost overwhelmed by his desire for a woman, a means of being himself, which he rejects. In O’Neillian terms, this is the moment when Marco’s fate turns into a tragedy. It is significant that this episode should take place while he is looking into the eyes of the Princess. Thus, his blindness becomes more obvious, a sign of his lack of perception of what really matters. Dramatically, this episode proves interesting since it corresponds to an inverted picture of a traditional melodramatic ending. In O’Neill’s father’s melodramas, the hero would have kissed the Princess, and they would have been true to themselves, even if that meant dying soon afterwards. Marco’s inability to express his love adequately and be himself illustrates western blindness, another perceptible trace of O’Neill’s romanticism. Despite his love, Marco is influenced by his culture, which gives prominence to financial success over personal happiness through shared love.99 Opposing money and love, O’Neill’s political statement implies that not only are individual lives influenced by economic issues, but that people are gradually brainwashed into believing that economics paves the true path to happiness. According to the playwright, who kept a good dose of romanticism in his early writings, love might be a cure for alienation (A rather surprising statement, but one should bear in mind that in The Straw, the hero tries to convince a nurse that love with provide an adequate cure against tuberculosis), but it is too late for Marco. The buffoon turns into a half-tragic figure, a blindly self-satisfied victim of his greed. O’Neill’s theatrical reflection on economics eventually leads to political and philosophical questionings, relevant in the 1920s United States, but not merely so. Although Marco Millions is not a very famous play, thanks to its complex aesthetics, it remains a fascinating dramatic attempt to stage politics.

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In terms of production, one of today’s surprising features is the continued interest of directors for this work, and not merely in the United States: It is indeed ironic that a play written to critique capitalism and greed should be used to challenge a political ideology that defines itself in terms of its opposition to capitalism. O’Neill himself might have been surprised when writing Marco Millions in the 1920s that it would be employed as a means to undermine a repressive Communist regime almost seventy years later [Porter 163].

Should one rejoice at the continued interest in the play? Some people might view it as unfortunate, since Marco Millions’ lasting relevance testifies to the unending need to question political systems which equate financial success—or other such chimera — with individual happiness, and doing so, hinder people’s fulfillment. Initially conceived as an astute means of forcing Americans to think about their social system — and view it critically — , the play now resonates all over the world. On that point, following Laurin Porter’s remarks, one may guess that O’Neill himself would have been aggrieved to note that, by a supreme irony, China has now become the country where the play should be staged.

NOTES 1. Theatre being part of the city, one could argue that any play could claim to be a political play. Still, in this paper, the use of political theatre or political plays is restrictive, in that O’Neill was explicitly calling into question a system which he did not consider as good as many people claimed it was. 2. As was often the case with the daring young playwright, he took up challenges which, both financially and in terms of staging, must have been worrisome for any producer or director. See for instance: “It is a tremendous big thing to stage with lots of crowds, silent and otherwise, to be trained perfectly — or they’ll fall flat. In fact, it involves everything a theatre can be made (let us hope) to give, and it will take some directing!” (Bogard and Bryer, Letter to Oliver Sayler, n° 168, 188). 3. A sometimes simplistic perspective, but which helps show that not all American writers favored an imperialistic vision of the word. “Every western writer,” insisted Edward Said in Orientalism, “in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric” [...] But it so happens that long before the contemporary literary theory, O’Neill, one of America’s first multicultural writers, set out to deconstruct the Western imperialist mind in Marco Millions (Diggins 84). 4. See in particular Long Day’s Journey into Night. TYRONE: Yes, maybe life overdid the lesson for me, and made a dollar worth too much, and the time came when that mistake ruined my career as a fine actor (149). 5. “The patent inequity of Marco’s flat tax reflects one aspect of the continuing popular discontent regarding fair taxation in the United States. A graduated federal income tax had only been constitutional since 1916, and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon’s 1920’s tax policies were notoriously preferential to the wealthy — Mellon gave those who did produce excess profits and who could afford luxuries the kind of treatment Marco’s taxation plan provides to the prosperous citizens of Yang Chau” (McCown 156). 6. This example is but one of a repetitive feature in the play, as James Robinson shows: “The play contrasts the materialism of Marco Polo with the spiritualism of China, dramatizing Marco’s journey to the medieval empire of Kublai Khan. O’Neill’s satirical portrait of Marco Polo as a vulgar (and very American) businessman shows the playwright’s sympathies with Eastern cultural values” (Robinson 86). I certainly agree with Robinson, while I feel that James S. Moy’s reading of the play does not reflect O’Neill’s views: “Good intentions aside, O’Neill could do little better than

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reinscribe the imperialist vision of an impotent romantic Orient whose wisdom fails when confronted by the power of the monied West. [This reinscription of the travelogue by a prominent literary figure affords the play yet another kind of authenticity, while also validating an imperialist, touristic view of Asianness, and indeed the world as a whole” (Moy 18). 7. In this, I would agree with Atkinson’s views on the play: “Too much of Marco seems flat and perfunctory in verbal expression and too much of it presupposes a sensitivity equal to Mr. O’Neill’s. Although he is writing satire, he is no wit, and he is a humorist only in the mirthless sense of the word” (Atkinson 100). 8. Ever since Marco Polo went to China, it has loomed large in the Western imagination and it has loomed large as the “other place” almost the ying yang opposite to Western culture, and I think this is one of the reasons that even Asians in this country born here, their families have been here for several generations, you still get kind of swept into that general perception of being part of a culture that is the “other one, over there” (Wang). 9. On this point, see: [...it characterizes Marco’s inability to free himself from the hold of his mental conditioning, which teaches him that the experience of pleasure is limited to the accumulation of worldly goods. Such a lifelong pursuit leaves no place for love. This attitude is symptomatic of the alienation affecting Western civilization, of which Marco is the symbol. The mercantile instinct dehumanizes people, and financial successes provide concrete expression to their baseness” (Dubost 70).

WORKS CITED Atkinson, Brooks J., “After the Battle,” in The Critical Response to Eugene O’Neill. Edited by John H. Houchin. Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1993. Bigsby, Christopher. A Critical Introduction to Twentieth Century American Drama 1900 –40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Bogard, Travis, and Jackson R. Bryer eds. Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Brown, John Mason. “Marco Millions,” in Oscar Cargill; N. Bryllion Fagin; William J. Fisher, eds. O’Neill and His Plays: Four Decades of Criticism. New York: New York University Press, 1961. Oscar Cargill; N. Bryllion Fagin; William J. Fisher, eds. O’Neill and His Plays: Four Decades of Criticism. New York: New York University Press, 1961. Diggins, John Patrick. Eugene O’Neill’s America: Desire under Democracy. Chicago, IL: The University Press of Chicago, 2007. Dubost, Thierry. Struggle, Defeat or Rebirth: Eugene O’Neill’s Vision of Humanity. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1997. Engel, Edwin. The Haunted Heroes of Eugene O’Neill. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953. McCown, Cynthia, “All the Wrong Dreams: Marco Millions and the Acquisitive Instinct,” Eugene O’Neill Review 27 (2005). Moy, James S. Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese in America. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa, 1993. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated by Ian Johnston. Arlington, VA: Richer Resources Publications, 2009. O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. _____, “Memoranda on Masks,” in Oscar Cargill; N. Bryllion Fagin; William J. Fisher, eds. O’Neill and His Plays: Four Decades of Criticism. New York: New York University Press, 1961. _____. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill. [Mourning Becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, All God’s Chillun Got Wings, Marco Millions, Welded, Diff ’rent, The First Man, Gold.] Volume 2. New York: The Modern Library-Random House, 1982. Pfister, Joel. Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Porter, Laurin. “O’Neill in the Czech Republic: Marco Millions and the Velvet Revolution,” Eugene O’Neill Review 26 (2004). Robinson, James A. Eugene O’Neill and Oriental Thought: A Divided Vision. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982.

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Shafer, Yvonne, “Marco Millions-not Theatrical Millions,” Eugene O’Neill Review 26 (2004). Sheaffer, Louis. O’Neill: Son and Playwright. 1968. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1990. Tocqueville, Alexis De. Democracy in America/De la démocratie en Amérique. Edited by E. Nolla. Translated by J. T. Schleifer. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc, 2010. Wainscott, Ronald. “Notable American Stage Productions,” in The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill. Edited by Michael Manheim. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Wang, David Henry. ABC News-Nightlife Upclose (2002). Princeton NJ:. DVD Films for the Humanities and Science 31139, 2004.

Babbitting Broadway Satire, the Gospel of Success, and Americanization of Expressionism JAMES M. CHERRY

In a 1938 article for the periodical The English Journal, Robert Cadigan outlined significant plays from the 1920s and 1930s that dealt with social and economic concerns. Cadigan intended the essay as a primer for high-school teachers whose school systems allowed for “both a liberal viewpoint toward the discussion of controversial issues and a certain degree of freedom in determining which subject matter should be studied” (558). For the most part, Cadigan’s piece is an annotated bibliography, divided into subject areas with each section listing several plays that capture the concerns of the period. The issues that Cadigan lists were controversial both in his own time and our own, and many of the plays that engage the topics have become part of the American dramatic canon. Race (as represented by Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, among others), war and peace (What Price Glory?, Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings), industrialization and “machine age” (The Adding Machine, Elmer Rice), and poverty (Awake and Sing, Clifford Odets) are all listed as pertinent subjects for socially-engaged drama. Cadigan also includes a section entitled “Of Success in Business” which includes plays that focused on the harmful consequences of an overly-materialistic American society. While Cadigan’s essay might be little more than a historical record of social concern, it reveals an interesting contradiction at the heart of the American narrative, a contradiction that haunted Broadway in the 1920s. On the one hand, capitalism was seen as a liberating force, allowing for innovation and upward class mobility. On the other, capitalism could lead a community astray, leading people to value material goods and success over simpler pleasures and familial relationships. The plays Cadigan describes all address this contradiction in one way or another but, significantly, some also deploy modernist dramaturgy, specifically an Americanized version of German Expressionism, to do so. These playwrights deployed a defanged and comedic translation of German Expressionism to poke gentle, but persistent fun at a capitalist system that also underwrote their success. 143

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Among the plays that Cadigan lists as concerning “Success in Business” are Beggar on Horseback (1924) by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, Mr. Moneypenny (1928) by Channing Pollock, Marco Millions (1928) by Eugene O’Neill, and Success Story (1932) by John Howard Lawson. From Cadigan’s position at the end of The Great Depression, these plays critiqued a society that valued financial success without regard to possible consequences. In these plays, loose credit, stock market speculation, and general “money-madness” of the 1920s were seen as a danger to the American family and national cultural life. Here, a single-minded focus on material success was, in fact, not a natural American social good, but a “social problem” (557). Of the four “business” plays that Cadigan cites, all appeared on Broadway, and all enjoyed at least a modicum of success. Interestingly, two (Beggar on Horseback, Mr. Moneypenny) explicitly included dramaturgical elements that suggest the wide influence of German Expressionism. In these plays, as in many German Expressionist plays like Georg Kaiser’s iconic From Morn to Midnight (1912), a single character stands against an unfeeling universe. Reality is distorted and filled with all manner of grotesquery. Language is often cut down to staccato bursts of disjointed syntax. Overall, human beings are shown as mere cogs in an unknowable, mechanistic universe. I would argue that these plays (to which I would also add the little-known God Loves Us! [1926] by J.P. McEvoy) represent a certain American Expressionism on the Broadway stage. But rather than express the alienation of the young avant-garde as Expressionism did in Germany in the early years of the twentieth century, the main thrust of these American Expressionist productions was to send up with a light touch of humor and satire the favored place that business has in America’s domestic life. Recently, Julia A. Walker has made a very convincing argument that American Expressionist playwrights were not reacting to German Expressionism per se, but instead were responding to changing modes of communication and performance (the advent of film and radio, in particular) in American culture (See Walker). Following this line of reasoning, Expressionism, in the hands of these American playwrights, became a dramaturgical tactic of reaction to changing times, a way to render their critiques lucidly and with humor, rather than with a philosophical or revolutionary bent. And through the distancing effects of Expressionism, playwrights were able to mock the target of their satire—the American businessman—from a safe distance. Through three productions from 1924 to late 1928, this essay looks at how Expressionism was used on Broadway to reveal how the materialist mindset and the “gospel of success” hurt the family, the culture, and the country as a whole. The picture of “The Roaring 1920s” as a time of ragtime, flappers, bathtub gin, clacking stock market tickers is a cliché with great cultural resonance. Yet, in the wake of the devastation of World War I, many Americans were anxious about what they perceived as a societal shift away from more “traditional” values, like frugality, prudence, and “clean living.” In the introduction to his section on business, Cadigan notes that:

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The decade following the World War was not unlike that which followed the Civil War. Both periods saw reaction from the false idealism which existed during war time to a materialistic philosophy, emphasizing the all importance of getting ahead. For the most part, getting ahead meant getting money. The possession of it stamped one as a worthy citizen, a good American, and an authority on morals, religion, education, art, and a dozen other things totally unrelated to the world of business [564 –565].

The “false idealism” that Cadigan notes “during war time” was no doubt a collective drive of patriotism and self-sacrifice. Having defended democracy from the Hun, the doughboys came back from Europe looking for the prosperous ex istence they had hitherto sacrificed for their country. Thus, Cadigan’s presumption that the American society of the 1920s was obsessed with wealth and “getting ahead” lays bare two contradictory national narratives. One is the rags-to-riches narrative popularized by Horatio Alger, in which industry, hard work, and faith paid off in material success, regardless of one’s initial place in the economic system. Alger’s stories of success were never hailed by literary critics but did sell widely, an estimated 17 million copies by World War II (Weiss 52–53). And while Alger’s stories never endorsed the culture of acquisitiveness that defined the 1920s, the rags-to-riches narrative his stories told came to represent it. The other narrative shows the costs of the single-minded focus on the accumulation of money and success. Sinclair Lewis perhaps best pricked the so-called Algerian “gospel of success” in his 1922 novel Babbitt. In Babbitt, Lewis describes the trials of a middle-aged businessman obsessed with his material goods and improving his station in life. George Babbitt does not “create,” but instead merely sells; Lewis describes him as someone who “made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but [...] was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay” (2). Through the course of the novel, Babbitt becomes aware of the shallowness of his life and sets off to find himself, cavorting with bohemians and the like. All the while, Lewis sends up the bourgeois American life of the period, and the slavish devotion to the tenets of good business. Babbitt eventually admits that he “would like to flee back to the security of conformity, provided there was a decent and credible way to return” and returns to his conventional, materialist life (378). Lewis’ novel and its satire of business became part of the national discourse about the centrality of success to the American story. These contrasting narratives of business and capitalism as vehicles for either spiritual redemption or spiritual degradation played out on the American Broadway stage in the 1920s. As Thomas Postlewait has noted, in American plays like Clyde Fitch’s The Climbers (1901), Edward Sheldon’s The Boss (1911), and Philip Barry’s Holiday (1928), the ambitious protagonist discovers that there is more to life than money (159). Often, Broadway audiences went to theater, apparently enjoying the fruits of their labor, while playwrights whose work they supported, critiqued a system that underwrote their audience’s marketplace

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success. But this critical perspective toward business and capitalism needed to be couched carefully. As Barrett Clark remarked in A History of Modern Drama, “Even as late as 1924 the theatre was apparently not considered a proper place to question the sacred aims and procedures of Big Business” (733). In the years that followed the Crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, playwrights like Clifford Odets and Marc Blitzstein made more pointed attacks on capitalism, but on the 1920s Broadway, critiques remained tame by comparison. This is unsurprising considering how Broadway audiences in many ways represented the lifestyles and values these plays critiqued. The success of Lewis’ Babbitt helped pave the way for these “business” plays; indeed, the term “Babbitt” entered the popular lexicon of the period (The Oxford English Dictionary defines “Babbitt” as “A type of materialistic, self-complacent business man conforming to the standards of his set.” The novel sold 141,000 copies by the end of 1922). Not surprisingly, reviews of the productions of these business plays frequently mentioned Babbitt as an influence, if not a direct progenitor. In his review of Beggar on Horseback, Alexander Woollcott exclaimed: “if you could mix J.M. Barrie and Sinclair Lewis into one strange person he would write a play like ‘Beggar on Horseback.’ And we all would enjoy it hugely” (“A Brilliant Comedy”). Of God Loves Us, Arthur Pollock wrote that “The play derides that gentleman Sinclair Lewis discovered and labeled by exhibition purposes, the Babbitt” (“God Loves Us”). Though Babbitt is a realistic novel, it is not a far leap from Babbitt’s narrative structure to the German Expressionists.1 Glen A. Love has noted that Babbitt’s “effect is to suggest a world not so much of business as of busyness— a crowded scene in frantic motion, yet without any real movement toward specific and worthwhile goals” (44). The manic frenzy of those in thrall to a powerful controlling force is a distinctive image in Expressionist performance. Structurally, Babbitt is essentially a series of vignettes centered on a single character. The novel is dominated completely by the character of George Babbitt, with the world seen largely from his point of view. As Harry Moore remarks in the preface to the first major work on American Expressionism on stage, Mardi Valgamae’s Accelerated Grimace, “in the expressionist drama the thoughts of the character could be presented by soliloquy or by slides thrown upon a screen” (viii). Babbitt’s thoughts are ever present in the novel. It seems natural that social critique as delineated by Lewis in the figure of Babbitt could be staged through the use of Expressionistic dramaturgy. The rise of Expressionism in America is usually tied to the arrival on its shores of Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, which had been produced in Germany in 1919, but did not have a wide U.S. release until 1921. Ronald Wainscott, in The Emergence of the Modern American Theater, puts forward Lenny Rubstein’s suggestion that since Caligari came out of “a hellish period viewed by most expressionists as an era of mass insanity [...] Perhaps the world we see is not the fevered view of a particular madman,” but as Rubenstein

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noted, “an abstracted view of a society on the brink of lunacy” (111). In depicting a society-gone-mad, expressionism reveals its affinity to social satire. As Walter Sokel has remarked in The Writer in Extremis, “in [...] Expressionist works, distortion reveals essence” (cited in Valgemae 6). The distorted expressionist universe on stage, as seen through the fevered consciousness of the protagonist, reveals a distorted essence at the heart of society. As described vividly by Mel Gordon, “expressionist theater revealed twisted but purer realities beyond the bourgeois facades of social piety and rationally-bound conscious life” (8). Prior to these plays, Expressionism had found its way to Broadway in the more serious forms of John Howard Lawson’s Roger Bloomer (1923) and Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine (1923). What makes the plays that follow significant is the mixture of Expressionism and comic satire. In all of these plays the characters and their families become prisoners of capitalism, in thrall to the free market. But the use of comedy to critique the place of business in the American life lessened the potential for preachiness and made the social commentary more acceptable to Broadway audiences. The first, Kaufman and Connelly’s Beggar on Horseback, stands as the most successful of these comic expressionist plays. Beggar opened at the Broadhurst on 12 February 1924 to mostly positive reviews, and closed six months later. Ronald H. Wainscott has noted that Beggar on Horseback is “often characterized as the first expressionistic Broadway hit”; its combination of brisk action and outlandish set pieces helped American audiences adjust to Expressionist theatre (128). As Bernard Hewitt noted about Beggar on Horseback: [...] it represents a through Americanization of expressionism, a style of writing and production which had developed in Germany out of the chaos and anguish which had followed World War I. German expressionism was grotesque, but seldom gay [355].

This “Americanized Expressionism” was a modernist artistic form turned to the very utilitarian bent of social satire. As Clark asserted that “[...] Beggar on Horseback was the first genuinely native satire of its kind that, without heat or moral indignation, attempted to expose the barren machine-age efficiency that had to some extent become a religion to Homo Americanus” (733). Without the preachiness of “heat,” but with the alienating effects of modernist dramaturgy, Beggar demonstrated how Expressionism might be deployed to satirize big business. Kaufman and Connelly were indebted to two major sources for the piece. The first is the German “original,” Paul Apel’s Hans Sonnenstossers Hollenfahrt (loosely translated, Jack Sun-basher’s Journey to Hell) in 1912. Kaufman and Connelly worked from the outline of the play, and as Ethan Mordden describes in All That Glittered, “their producer, Winthrop Ames, wanted nothing derivatively German but a native American piece, to bite into Babbitt and not Biedermeier” (76). The second is The Poor Little Rich Girl (1913) by Eleanor Gates, which depends upon an elongated dream sequence in the middle (The Poor

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Little Rich Girl is also significant for starting the career of Arthur Hopkins, who would later hire designer Robert Edmond Jones for the first time). Kaufmann and Connelly’s dream sequence delivered Expressionism in a packaging that did not foreground its avant-garde aesthetics, thus allowing them to use Expressionist dramaturgy without the darker philosophical underpinnings. The “beggar” of the title is a poor classical composer, Neil McRae.2 With no head for business, but enamored by a rich businessman’s daughter, Neil looks to fulfill the expectations of his money-oriented future in-laws while not selling out his artistic dreams. The play opens in Neil’s shabby apartment, where he attempts to manage an afternoon tea with the wealthy Cady family. While Mrs. Cady plays the talkative society matron, quizzing Neil on his background, Mr. Cady suggests that he write music that might be more successful than his “high-brow” classical compositions. On hearing snatches of a raucous jazz tune played in a downstairs apartment, a ditty called “The Frog’s Party,” Mr. Cady tells Neil: Great song! A man I played golf with yesterday tells me that for the first six months of the fiscal year that song’ll make a hundred thousand dollars. Write something like that and you’re fixed. That’s music [113].

For a businessman like Mr. Cady, art can only be understood in dollars and cents. This defies generational pigeonholing: the elder man is more interested in jazz—the music of youth —than the younger composer, if only for its capacity to sell. This conflict between high and low/art and commerce drives the plot. After the Cady family leaves, Neil decides to propose to Gladys Cady, even though it is clear to the audience that his true match is the poor, loving girl across the hall. Taking a pill for his nerves, Neil falls asleep and the majority of the rest of the play is the materialistic nightmare that awaits Neil when he marries the boss’s daughter. In the lap of luxury, the easy riches of writing cheap Tin Pan Alley songs rather than classical music tempt him. For Kaufman and Connelly, the lure of easy of money and the societal obsession with consumption both demeans artists and prevents them from realizing their ambitions. The dreamstate sequences reveal the possibilities of this potent mixture of expressionism, critique, and comedy. The dream begins with the wedding, a grotesque scene of extravagance and overkill. All the participants are clad in exaggerated versions of their realistic clothing, with Gladys “bearing proudly a bouquet that consists entirely of banknotes” (97). As would be a nightmare for one of Neil’s classicist temperament, the wedding march is a jazzy take on Lohengrin. The plot of the play moves shiftly from one scene to the next, playing off of quick-paced jazz rhythms, through the loud raucous ceremony to the imagined home life of Gladys and Neil. In the house, represented in the original production by large columns, butlers appear from everywhere, multiplying exponentially with each passing moment, inundating Neil with their presence. The whole Cady family is also present, arguing incessantly. Mr. Cady eventually enters with a telephone mounted on his chest; and throughout the scene, Mr.

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Neil barks orders to his workers through this telephone. The effect is absurd, and the mechanization of the organic is a classic element of Expressionism, instead in this case played for laughs. All of the actors slip in and out of the sequences in different roles. Neil’s doctor friend Albert, playing the officious maître d’ in a fancy restaurant, suggests that the only way out of this materialistic nightmare is to murder his wife and her family. Neil kills the entire Cady family with a giant letter opener, paradoxically recalling Mr. Zero’s murder of his boss in The Adding Machine, a play that had opened the year before. This comedic take on an popular Expressionist play further weds Expressionism and comic satire, but also parodies Expressionism itself. In parodying Expressionism with Expressionism, Kaufman and Connelly alleviate the possibility of audiences taking their project too seriously, and also allowed for its successful production. For his murders, Neil is sentenced to “hard labor” at the Cady Consolidated Art Factory. The climax of the dream takes place in this space, cells within a larger prison that dominates the entire stage. Each cell is the setting for artistic creation, the writer’s typewriter at the desk, the painter’s easel, the grand piano, The metaphor is clear — the moneyed world keeps its artists confined by the need for material goods. As Joseph Mersand wrote: “Art may not necessarily flourish in a freezing garret in Greenwich Village; neither will it develop in a Riviera villa furnished by all-powerful in-laws” (89). But Neil also discovers that the cell isn’t locked — we may escape from the rat race if we so choose. As the reviewer for the Boston Transcript wrote: “it is a dramatization of the familiar American who chains himself to a galley then weeps for self-pity” (“Wit, Humor, Satire, Fantasy — Beggar on Horseback to Bostonian Stage at Last”). If the pursuit of material success is inamicable with the pursuit of art, Kaufman and Connelly propose that we at least have a choice. And their use of an Americanized Expressionism demonstrates such a compromise that negotiated the complicated relationship of art and commerce. Kaufman and Connelly were theatre artists making money by critiquing money making — but they were still explicitly artists. Reviewers of the play suggested that the success of Beggar on Horseback, and its critique of the excesses of big business, is because it doesn’t take itself too seriously: Much admirable slashing has been done in the American theatres in the last two or three seasons, but the realists who led the attack have suffered heavy losses. They charged straight at their objectives, and in order to show that modern life was too prosaic it was necessary even for the crusaders to be themselves a little prosaic [...]. But Beggar on Horseback manages to ridicule things petty, things base, things boresome and remain in its own right spirited, imaginative and beautiful” [“Much admirable slashing [...]].

The oblique attack on business allowed for the production to succeed. In the Preface to the printed version of play, the New York critic Alexander Woollcott

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wrote that the play is “a relieving antidote to the worship of material prosperity [...] It is a small and facetious disturbance in the rear of the Church of the Gospel of Success” (11). Its “smallness” and “facetiousness” no doubt helped extend its Broadway run. The same success did not apply for another comedic mixture with Expressionism, J.P. McEvoy’s God Loves Us that opened at the Maxine Elliott on 18 October 1926 and closed the next month. The fault may be less dramaturgical than technical, however, as Alexander Woollcott described at length the problems with scene changes at the premiere, during which sounds of frustration were heard evidently in the house.3 The title of the play refers to an idiom created by the protagonist, Hector Midge, who God does not seem to love. Midge is a loyal worker for the greeting card firm of Dawson and Co. who is passed over for promotion to Sales Manager. Drunken, and whipped into a frenzy by the exhortations of speakers from the local “Go-Getter Society,” he challenges the bosses’ son and is fired. After looking unsuccessfully for work, Midge returns to the firm and, like George Babbitt, is forced to accept his life as a cog in the materialist system. Like the dream sequence in Beggar on Horseback, the entire structure of the play is designed to mimic the fast-paced culture of the time. There is meant to be a swiftly-shifting continuity from scene to scene that makes the performance almost filmic. As Darwin Turner has suggested, “Everything is designed to contribute to the impression of a briskly moving society which catches the Midges in its swirl, the drops them, weaker and unhappier than they were previously” (114). In God Loves Us, the sequences involving the Midge family are staged realistically while the ones involving business are not. The Expressionistic centerpiece of the play is the “Go-getters luncheon,” a send-up of Rotarian lunches complete with fevered speech-making. The desire for capital transcends occupation: the keynote is given by the Reverend Harold Klump, an opportunistic preacher willing to “run prize fights in the pulpit” in order to acquire parishioners. As the review from Time suggested, Klump endorsement of slick advertising techniques shows “large-scale production as applied to the spiritual side of life” (“New Plays”). McEvoy reveals a world shaped by the creation and manipulation of capital. The title of the Brooklyn Citizen review of the play “In the Web of Big Business,” refers to the dominant scenographic element, a twotiered stage built of girders. Production photographs suggest the original set was outlined by steel girding, framing even the domestic sequences in the hard realities of modernity. The reviewer from Time remarked that “Though many have essayed to deal out Menckian blows this season, nothing on the current stage satirizes so incisively, originally, the cruel banalities of ‘big business, gogetters’ as does this play about a man who is stuck for life at the assistant sales-manager level of a greeting card manufactory” (“New Plays”). Though Midge eventually gets his old job back at the end (with a raise), the ending is bleaker than that

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of Beggar on Horseback. McEvoy himself suggested as much in his program note: Mr. Midge is caught again in his steel web, and we can all go home taking such comfort as we may from the thought that life is only a comic supplement which the Great Humorist publishes daily to amuse the angels [Program].

Worse than flies to wanton boys, human beings become comic strip characters in a harried modernity (McEvoy was a cartoonist as well, originating the longrunning comic strip Dixie Dugan). The title was eventually changed to The GoGetters and the end altered so that Hector leaves the firm to become a book salesman with his son (Bordman 300). The attempt to create a more positive ending for the Broadway production of God Loves Us points toward a presumed need for a closure more like Beggar on Horseback. The choice that Neil McRae has at the end of Beggar on Horseback— to not join the Cady family’s pursuit of capital — is given to Midge as well. In the second version of the play, Hector Midge has some kind of agency at the end of the day. As a middle-aged man caught in a difficult circumstance, Hector Midge is a more sympathetic character than the youthful Neil McRae. Reviewers noted Midget’s piteous state: “But to this type of expressionistic drama, McEvoy has brought a fresh type of pungent, mocking observation, and, above all else, a deep spring of sympathy from which J.C. Nugent [the actor who played Midge] pours ample libations” (Vreeland “God Loves Us”). The ingredient of compassion and pathos also gestures toward a more serious critique on the part of McEvoy. Although later versions of the play bowed to pressure for a more optimistic ending, God Loves Us uses Expressionistic depictions of capitalism to attack materialistic excess, which is seen as troubling rather than something to be mocked. There is no fantastical dream sequence; in Hector Midge’s world, the Expressionist nightmare is real life. In Channing Pollock’s Mr. Moneypenny, the prospect of limitless material wealth drives everyman John Jones into a corrupt bargain with the embodiment of Mammon, the satanic figure Mr. Moneypenny. Described by Pollock as a “Verbal Cartoon,” with exacting echoes of Kaiser’s From Morn til Midnight, the play concerns the fall of a bank clerk who is tempted by the chance to move past the simplicity of his “home ... in Jackson heights ... and two mortgages, and a lawn mower” (6). Mr. Moneypenny first appears to Jones in the bank vault where Jones works, and encourages him to satisfy his “ambish” and therefore provide his family with a better life. After Jones agrees, Mr. Moneypenny declares that “I am the Lord, thy God! Thou shalt have no other gods before me!” and whisks Jones away to his future, one dominated by fast-paced commerce and the lust for money (23). The character of Mr. Moneypenny plays the Mephistopheles to Jones’ Faust. Enacting the Tempter in many disguises, the Mr. Moneypenny shifts physical characteristics throughout. At moment he is shown as the ringmaster of the

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economic circus, cracking his whip in time with the stock ticker. The next, an orchestra conductor waving his baton, the next a “Simon Legree,” driving Jones back to the office. The way that Mr. Moneypenny slips from one persona to the next suggests the pervasive nature of the greed for money and success. The office in which Mr. Moneypenny places Mr. Jones is described by Pollock as “not such an office as you would likely see every day. Rather it is the apotheosis of such an office—the office a super-tired-business man might vision in a nightmare. It screams, “Success!” (29). The room is dominated by the ticking of a gigantic metronome, which sets the tone for the scene, and causes the actions of the characters to be controlled by the pace. The metronome makes visible the lack of control that people have in the society. The stage is filled with characters all going about their actions and reveling in the shallowness of their office culture. As Pollock asserts in the stage directions, “the rhythm is the rhythm of life, as they know it” (32). And this is a rhythm of jazz, of fast-paced modernity, and it is set by an allegiance to the get-rich-quick ideals that Pollock understood to be dominant in the 1920s. The place of modern technology in the lives of the family is shown in nightmarish detail. They are overwhelmed by their newfound wealth. Carrie, Jones’ wife, orders that a film be projected in their lavish living room, crying to the maid: “Eph, turn on the movies!” Pollock then notes in the stage directions: “we are treated to a custard-pie moment in a movie” (76). Here Pollock weaves together the crassness of modern art (the movie) with the decadence that follows the pursuit of wealth. Film, fast-paced, edited together, is depicted as the artistic choice of those interested in money. Just as quickly, Carrie asks that the movie be turned off. As in Beggar on Horseback, “art” becomes disposable. It soon becomes clear that Mr. Moneypenny’s exultations to Jones to work harder to make even more money are driving Jones to an early grave. Carrie, at the end of Act II, orders Mr. Moneypenny from the house. But Mr. Moneypenny is able to hypnotize her, like her husband. Instead of making money, Carrie becomes obsessed with maintaining her beauty so that she might “hold her husband” (86). The shallowness of modern culture that is endorsed by Mr. Moneypenny is balanced in the characters of Jones’ daughter Molly and her beau, Professor Morn. These two form an image of an idealized household that is interested in the simpler, more conventional virtues. Toward the end of the play, the couple open a “Beauty Shop” different from the ordinary kind: it extols the higher forms of Beauty, an accessible avenue to classical culture. And eventually the two sides in the debate of art versus business, personified by Professor Morn and Mr. Moneypenny, square off in the climax of the play over Jones’ soul. The Professor wins the argument and Jones returns to his normal middleclass roots. However, Mr. Moneypenny has the last word on stage. Surrounded by crowds of his followers, he stands triumphant amid the trappings of modern life: skyscrapers, airplanes, ships, and factories. As Pollock describes it:

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And now, above the chant, in the dazzling light that beats upon the top of the throne, Money is talking ... boastfully, blatantly, without fear of contradiction [164].

Pollock’s contention that Money may speak without rebuttal is part of a larger indictment of contemporary society and culture. Culture, specifically an urban, cosmopolitan culture, is critiqued in Mr. Moneypenny as a dismal solution to workaday, middle-class life. In a whirlwind soiree at Jones’ home, stock characters come out — gossipy society matrons, flappers, captains of industry. Their names point toward their allegorical nature, the matron is named “Mrs. MannChaser,” the newspaper magnate who shapes public opinion is “Mr. Smudge,” and the man-about town “Sex A. Peel.” In one scene they gossip about the performance of the time: MRS. CHASER : Oh, a most delightfully dirty drama ... at the Bootlegger’s Theater! That’s the theater with a speak-easy on the roof, and a nightclub in the basement! This play’s just full of thrills! In the big scene, two men get into bed with the same woman! SMUDGE : [Above the appreciative laughter.] How clever! PEEL : [At the same time.] Expressionistic! MR . MONEYPENNY : Certainly one of our foremost authors.

Mrs. Chaser’s description of the drama points out its rejection of morality (drinking, sexual promiscuity), while Peel’s description of it as “Expressionistic!” points toward a critical element of Pollock’s satire, He is deploying Expressionistic methods as a way to critique cosmopolitan culture and morays, of which Pollock sees Expressionism (and one imagines, artistic modernism generally) as a part. This elision of cosmopolitanism and the Babbitt-like striving for success as a force antithetical to traditional American values marks the play, and also helped shape its critical reception. Designed by Robert Edmond Jones and directed by Richard Boleslavsky, the Broadway production of Mr. Moneypenny opened in October 1928 to mixed reviews and closed after 61 performances. Reviewers of the period noted the extravagant nature of the production noting that Pollock, “gathered together the world’s market” of theatrical talent in his actors and designers; the review for the Times referred to it as having “the elaborateness of a Reinhardt production” (“‘Mr. Moneypenny’ An allegorical play.”). Reviews of Mr. Moneypenny frequently commented upon its status as a “morality play” along the lines of the medieval Everyman or Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. The bold character types (Mr. Moneypenny as a manifestation of Satan or the medieval stock figure of Vice) work well within an Expressionist context. In a review of the play in Variety, the critic puts forth the idea that the mixture of moralism and Expressionism might appeal to the capitalist and artist alike. But some reviewers saw as hypocritical the fact that the play, which preaches against the supposed obsession with money, was also a huge Broadway production that cost a large amount of money to support. To further his financial difficulties and shorten the run, Pollock decided to keep ticket prices low so that ordinary

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people could afford to go to the theatre. Pollock’s idea for a democratic theater experience on Broadway was short lived. Indeed, William Grange has suggested that Pollock’s dismissal by critics “helped preserve in the minds of many ordinary people to this day the perception that theatre is an elitist exercise, a perception against which theatre practitioners in this country must continually struggle” (162). In his autobiography, Pollock explained that the critics’ dismissal of the play ended his career in the theatre. It is not with a small amount of bitterness that Pollock writes in his autobiography Harvest of My Years, “none of [the critics] mentioned or took into account our daring and purely altruistic effort to lower prices” (307). Indeed, reviewers took the accessibility of his plays as a mark against him. In her scathing review for The New Yorker, Dorothy Parker attacked not only the play, but also the hoi polloi: “It is difficult to do anything about Mr. Pollock,” she complained, “for say what one will — and one has— about his works, people attend them by the drove. I don’t know what people they are, but there are enough of them to cram a theatre for months [...] So there is little to be accomplished by railing” (cited in Grange 162). It is the preachiness of the play that seemed to not sit well with reviewers, “Mr. Moneypenny” might have a chance to get by on its ultra-modern method of presentation with the sophisticates, and on its dramatic preachment with Pollock’s clientele, but the two hardly mix well” (“Mr. Moneypenny.”). In Mr. Moneypenny, Pollock not only goes after the quest for materialism, but also a quest for cosmopolitanism. New York critics could not abide the elision of these two— it is one thing to go after the Babbitts of industry, quite another to assault the habitués of the Algonquin in the meantime. While the “Americanized Expressionisms” of Pollock, McEvoy, and Kaufman and Connelly differ from the larger Expressionistic canon due to their use of humor and satire, they do perform the same work: reflect an unease with a society seemingly gone mad. Sokel’s formulation that in Expressionism “distortion reveals essence” holds equally true whether the distortion is grotesque or ludicrous. In order to reveal a thorny “social problem,” these plays set out to operate at the conjunction of aesthetic modernism and social critique, art and capitalism. To varying degrees of success, comedy was used as a way to ease the apparent conflict between the affluence of the Broadway audience at the artistic critique of that affluence. As the critical responses show, comedy can only carry so much weight. Ultimately, these attempts were timely satires for an audience unknowingly on the precipice of financial calamity; by weaving together comedy and Expressionism, the playwrights sought staunch the rise of the Babbitt with a smile.

NOTES 1. Interestingly, there were no major stage productions of Lewis’ novel. Lewis’ most famous stage adaptation was It Can’t Happen Here (1936), about the rising threat of fascism in the United States. It was produced as part of the Federal Theatre Project, and opened simultaneously in twenty-one

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theaters in seventeen states. It was likely the largest coordinated theatrical opening in the U.S. until that time. 2. The full saying is: “Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll ride to the Devil.” The gist of this proverb is that one born without wealth becomes arrogant or lordly when one achieves it. There are many versions of this proverb, the earliest being in 1576 by G. Pettie Petit Palace (76): “Set a Beggar on horsebacke, and he wyl neuer alight.” 3. Woollcott’s description is cringe-inducing: “What made it all the more amusing to the disinterested onlooker was that after a most vociferous interlude, in which groans, bangs, curses, and low moans of despair issued from behind the charitable curtain, that the curtain would rise to reveal no sudden transformation to a palace in ancient Babylon, as we all felt entitled to expect. The moving of two desks, one radio set and a parlor lamp was a big scenic change for God Loves Us” (“The Stage: Mr. McEvoy’s Comedy”).

WORKS CITED Bordman, Gerald. American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama, 1914 –1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Cadigan, Robert J., “The Drama and Social Problems,” The English Journal. 28/7 (September 1939). Clark, Barrett H. and Freedley, George, eds. A History of Modern Drama. New York: D. AppletonCentury, 1947. Fulton, A.R., “Expressionism: Twenty Years After,” The Sewanee Review. 52/3 (Summer 1944). Gordon, Mel, “Expressionist Texts.” Expressionist Texts. Edited by Mel Gordon. New York: PAJ, 1986. Grange, William, “Channing Pollock: the American Theatre’s Forgotten Polemicist,” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik. 35/2 (1987). Harper, Ray W., “The Web of Big Business,” Brooklyn Citizen (1926). Rpt. in Clipping Folder, God Lives Us. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. Hewitt, Bernard. Theatre U.S.A., 1668 –1957. York, PA: Maple, 1959. Kaufman George S. and Connelly, Marc. Beggar on Horseback. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924. Lewis, Sinclair. Babbitt. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1922. Love, Glen A. Babbitt: An American Life. New York: Twayne, 1993. McEvoy, J. P. God Loves Us. 1926. MS. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. _____. God Loves Us (Program). New York: Maxine Elliott Theatre, 1926. Mersand, Joseph, “Introduction to Beggar on Horseback,” Three Plays about Business in America. Edited by Joseph Mersand. Fourth edition. New York: Washington Square Press, 1969. Mordden, Ethan. All That Glittered: The Golden Age of Drama on Broadway, 1919 –1959. New York: St. Martin’s, 2007. “Mr. Moneypenny,” Variety (1928). Rpt. in Clipping Folder, Mr. Moneypenny. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. “‘Mr. Moneypenny’ An allegorical play; Pollock’s Piece Assembled So Shrewdly as to Delight Audience,” New York Times (1928): 26. Rpt. in Clipping Folder, Mr. Moneypenny. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. “Much admirable slashing [...]” (1924), Rpt. in Clipping Folder, Beggar on Horseback. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. “New Plays,” Time (1 November 1926). Pollock, Arthur, “God Loves Us,” Brooklyn Eagle (1926). Rpt. in Clipping Folder, God Loves Us. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. Pollock, Channing. Harvest of My Years. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1943. _____. Mr. Moneypenny. New York: Brentano’s, 1928. Postlewait, Thomas, “The Hieroglyphic Stage: American Theatre and Society, Post–Civil War to 1945,” in The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume II 1870 –1945. Edited by Don B. Wilmeth and Christopher Bigsby. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Sokel, Walter. The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959.

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Turner, Darwin T., “Jazz-Vaudeville Drama in the Twenties,” Educational Theatre Journal 11/2 (May 1959). Valgemae, Mardi. Accelerated Grimace; Expressionism in the American Drama of the 1920s. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972. Vreeland, Frank, “God Loves Us,” The New York Telegram (1926). Rpt. in Clipping Folder, God Lives Us. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. Wainscott, Ronald. The Emergence of the Modern American Theatre, 1914 –1929. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997. Walker, Julia A. Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre: Bodies, Voices, Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Weiss, Richard. The American Myth of Success: From Horatio Alger to Norman Vincent Peale. New York: Basic Books, 1969. “Wit, Humor, Satire, Fantasy — Beggar on Horseback to Bostonian Stage at Last,” Boston Transcript (1925). Rpt. in Clipping Folder, Beggar on Horseback. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. Woollcott, Alexander, “A Brilliant Comedy,” New York Herald (1924). Rpt. in Clipping Folder, Beggar on Horseback. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division. _____, “The Stage: Mr. McEvoy’s Comedy,” New York World (1926): 13. Rpt. in Clipping Folder, God Lives Us. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division.

A New Approach to Revolution Artef and Hirsch Leckert in the Third Period JOSHUA POLSTER

In 1928, the Sixth Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) declared that Capitalism was entering its final phase called the Third Period. In this stage, it was believed that Capitalism would collapse and all rivaling non– Communist leftist groups, who were now considered allies of the Capitalists, should be eliminated in order to prevent a Socialist take-over and clear the way for the Communist Revolution. As a result, Communist theaters throughout the United States from 1928 to 1935 created plays that reflected the new militant policies of the Comintern’s Third Period. Arbeter Teater Farf band (“Workers’ Theatre Alliance” or Artef ) was one such theater. A New York Yiddish workers’ theater company, Artef openly admitted its ties to the Communist Party and was committed to theatrically portraying the left-wing ideology of the Comintern. Artef was the revolutionary voice and weapon for the Jewish proletariat and, in the United States, was one of the strongest political theatres that saw its plays successfully produced on both proletariat and commercial stages, such as the American Laboratory Theatre, Madison Square Gardens, Carnegie Hall, and Broadway. John Howard Lawson, president of the Screen Writers Guild and acknowledged leader of the Communist Party in Hollywood, acknowledged Artef as “one of the most vital forces in the development of the American Drama as a whole” (Lifson 432). In the early 1930s, though, Artef experienced a shortage of playwrights and plays that could meet the demands of the Third Period. They, therefore, imported the Soviet play Hirsch Leckert (1929), which dealt with the difficulties of Jewish proletarian life during the late eighteenth century, and adapted it to the Comintern’s policies. The 1932 production of Hirsch Leckert, based on the RussianJewish hero of the same name who tried to violently overthrow the Czar government and who helped to spark the 1905 Revolution, was one of Artef ’s most successful Third Period plays. Artef used Hirsch Leckert to create an analogy between what was happening in Russia leading up to the 1905 Revolution 157

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and what was currently happening in the United States; these similarities, they believed, could help incite a similar revolution at home. This strategy Artef used in Hirsch Leckert was a new Communist theatrical approach of inciting Jewish audiences to revolt against Capitalism. This study will explore the historical context of the United States in the early twentieth century to illuminate the forces and events that helped build Artef and its new theatrical approach to a Communist revolution. At the same time, it will rehearse the Jewish Diaspora from Eastern Europe to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century — the great exodus of Jews who fled the violent pogroms of the Czarist empire. Among them were those who saw the emergence of Communism as the answer to their problems and the need for a politically active Jewish theatre to strengthen community and resistance to further acts of anti–Semitism in the United States. These emigrants and their first generation U.S. children were people who devoted much of their energy not necessarily to return to their Eastern European home but to bring home — with its new Communist ideology — to the United States. What was happening to the Jews in the United States during the early twentieth century — and what Artef would use to ignite discontent and inflame revolutionary action through Hirsch Leckert— was a build up of oppressions similar to what many European Jews experienced and attempted to escape after the Bund and Socialism failed to protect them. The Bund originated as a branch of the Jewish Social Democratic Party (JSDP), which was a movement founded in the 1870s to fight ruthless government oppressions in the Czarist empire. The JSDP weakened politically throughout the years, especially after the assassination of Alexander II (1881), but regained strength with the rise in industry and exploitation of the impoverished Jewish workers at the end of the nineteenth century. During this time, the Jews suffered alienation and repression under the violent Czar government pogroms. Anti-Semitism was rampant; under the Pale of Settlement, Jews were forced to settle in specific areas assigned by the government and were also forced into specific jobs that had cruel working conditions. The Jews, who were mostly factory workers by trade, desperately needed help. In response, the Bund was established in Vilna (where half of the 3,000 Bundists lived) in 1897 to spread Socialism, to demand cultural autonomy for the Russian Jews, and to enhance the working conditions of the Jewish workers from textile, leather, tobacco and match factories. There were Bund strikes throughout the late nineteenth century that demonstrated against the oppressive Jewish work conditions instigated by the autocratic government. Despite the fact that the Bund advocated peaceful protests and opposed acts of violence and terrorism, many demonstrators were killed, arrested and deported to the harsh work camps of Siberia (Lifson 67–68). The Bund, for all its purposes, failed to prevent the persecution of the Jews. For instance, in 1902, the Bund was unable to save the prisoners who participated

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in the illegal May Day demonstration from being flogged by the Czarist government. The Bund was unable to save the revolutionary leader Hirsch Leckert from being hanged after he had attempted to avenge the disgraced May Day prisoners— this was the premise behind Artef ’s production of Hirsch Leckert. Moreover, in 1903, one year after Leckert’s death, the Bund was unable to save the Jews from the infamous pogroms of Kishinev, Bessarabia, which prompted over a million Jews to flee to the United States. After the failed Russian Revolution in 1905, the harsh treatment toward Jews only worsened. When Czar Nicholas II appeased the liberals with the Duma, a violent rise of anti–Semitism and pogroms swept through Eastern Europe killing thousands of Jews. In 1917, when the Czarist government was finally overthrown, civil wars broke out and violent pogroms spread again throughout Southern Russian and the Ukraine, killing tens of thousands of Jews. During this period of extreme violence (1881 to 1925), a mass exodus of over three and a half million Jews immigrated to the United States. Threefourths of these Jews came from either Russia or Poland and mostly settled at their port of destination — New York. In 1915, there were over one and a half million Jews living in New York, which was roughly thirty-nine percent of its population (Schappes 20). Many of the Jews that emigrated from the harsh conditions of Russia were disappointed to find new anti–Semitism and Capitalistic repressions waiting for them on U.S. shores. For them, the new Czars were J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. As a result, the majority of the Jews, in an act of protective insularity, formed their own community and settled in the lower east side of New York.11 This area became the center of the Jewish immigrant community and the future home of Artef. As in Russia, these Jewish immigrants did not co-exist with the other cultural communities in New York. They lived in a self-contained self-efficient community run by the garment industries where the majority of the workers were Jews who carried their professional trades over from Eastern Europe. This isolation from other communities prevented the benefits of cross-fertilization among cultures, but, at the same time, the Jews were strengthened and unified by being in this homogenized sub-culture, and it helped create their political identity as well as a politically active theatre community. A significant portion of the Jews that immigrated to the United States had pro-left sentiments. They were radicals, intellectuals, Socialists, and Bundists involved in the Jewish Labor Movement. Many of the immigrant Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century joined the American Socialist Party and provided the bulk of its support with their Jewish garment and needle trade unions, such as the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (In 1919, half of the Socialist Party’s 108,504 members were immigrants). Jewish unions were rapidly growing with the steady development of the garment industry, the rising number of immigrants settling in New York and the hazardous work conditions worsening in the factories.

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Poor work conditions and exploitations of Jewish workers in the United States were widespread throughout the early industrial years of the twentieth century, like those at the beginning of Russia’s Industrial Age. In the United States, these were the times before child labor laws, minimum wage and worker’s compensation. Men along with women and children worked seventy to eighty hours per week in dangerous work environments. In 1904, over 27,000 workers were killed because of work-related accidents. In 1914, 35,000 workers were killed and 700,000 were injured on the job. This was happening to families that, on average, were not making more than five hundred dollars per year. There was no compensation for death or injury, so if a member of a family died or was severely injured it was economically devastating for them. Perhaps one of the most tragic examples of the hazardous work environments in which Jews suffered was the disaster at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company (TSC) (Zinn 319 – 320). In 1909, over twenty thousand women from the TSC went on strike along with the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union against the unfair working conditions at the garment shops and factories. A former garment employee remembered her childhood experience working at a factory: [...] dangerously broken stairways [...] windows few and so dirty [...] The wooden floors that were swept once a year [...] Hardly any other light but the gas jets burning by day and by night [...] the filthy, malodorous lavatory in the dark hall. No fresh drinking water [...] mice and roaches [...] During the winter months [...] how we suffered from the cold. In the summer we suffered from the heat [...] In these diseasebreeding holes we, the youngsters together with the men and women toiled from seventy and eighty hours a week! Saturdays and Sundays included! [...] We wept, for after all, we were only children [Zinn 317–318].

The strikers held out for several months and won many demands that were implemented in over three hundred shops, but the conditions in the factories practically remained the same. Two years later, on 25 March 1911, a fire broke out on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the TSC factory. Many of the workers were unable to escape the fire because the owners routinely locked the doors to contain and keep count of their employees who were mostly immigrants and first generation Russian Jews, along with Italians, Hungarians and Germans. By the time the fire department arrived, they realized that their ladders could only reach the seventh floor and were unable to help the men, women and children trapped inside the flames. One hundred and forty-six people died that day and most of them were young Jewish women. After the TSC disaster, in which many in the Jewish community lost their lives, the Jewish trade unions grew in great strength. By 1914, over a hundred unions of 250,000 workers represented by the United Hebrew Trades were created (Binder 125). Many of the unions at this time were poorly organized, corrupt and infiltrated with government spies, like Sergei Zubatov, to break up

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the unions. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was the most notoriously corrupt. The AFL, headed by the extravagantly wealthy Samuel Gompers, was filled with high paid officials and “goon squads” that were used to beat up any dissidents within the unions. A great change was needed, and that change began in Russia. When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar in 1917, a massive pro–Bolshevik sentiment permeated throughout Russian and American Jewish communities. The corrupt Czar government and the violence caused by anti–Semitism and pogroms had come to an end. Russian Jewish Poet David Ignatoff wrote: All the coffee houses in the Russian quarter were over-flowing with people, with song, with bright eyes and bright gazes. It is the Russian Revolution! The Revolution has triumphed! The truth has triumphed! The truth of the folk, the truth, the great truth of humankind Of Revolution! [Nahshon 5].

The Bolshevik Revolution incited many of the American Jews to quit the Socialist Party and join the Workers’ Party, which was a front for the Communist movement. It was, after all, the Communist Revolution that helped to decrease anti–Semitism and end government pogroms. The Communists outlawed anti– Semitism and deemed it a crime against the state. Lenin himself gave speeches throughout the country in an effort to stop the spread of hatred toward Jews: It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for Socialism. Among the Jews there are kulaks, exploiters and capitalists, just as there are among the Russians, and among people of all nations. The capitalists strive to sow and foment hatred between workers of different faiths, different nations and different races. Those who do not work are kept in power by the power and strength of capital. Rich Jews, like rich Russians, and the rich in all countries, are in alliance to oppress, crush, rob and disunite the workers [...] Shame on accursed tsarism which tortured and persecuted the Jews. Shame on those who foment hatred towards the Jews, who foment hatred towards other nations [...] Long live the fraternal trust and fighting alliance of the workers of all nations in the struggle to overthrow capital [Lenin 252–253].

In the end, it was not the reforms of Socialism that saved the Jews but the Communist Revolution. Many of the Jews that fled to the United States would remember that, as would Artef. If Communism was the answer in Russia, then it would be the answer in the United States as well. In January of 1919, the Socialist leaders in the United States, fearing the rise of Communism, began to force out left-wingers from their party. Within six months, the membership of the Socialist Party went from 109,589 to 39,750. The people that left or were ostracized from the Socialist Party would go on to help create the bulk of the Communist Party, Artef and its audience.

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Artef originated in 1924 as a foreign-language theater club of the Young Worker’s League (YWL), the youth branch of the Communist Party. In the beginning of the 1920s, YWL developed clubs where its members could socialize and participate in artistic activities such as theater, dancing and music. Soon, ethnic clubs were created and over sixty Jewish clubs existed by 1924. Many of the original members of Artef got their start in a Jewish club affiliated with the Brooklyn Chapter Two of the YWL and quickly grew with the encouragement of the Jewish left newspaper Freiheit. In 1925, Freiheit proclaimed that the Jewish community needed to create a more radical Yiddish theater that reacted against the conservative old folk plays of Maurice Schwartz’s Fraye Yidishe Folksbine (Free Jewish People’s Stage) and the other popular, commercial, vaudevillian, melodramatic (and considered mindless) shund plays on Second Avenue.22 Freiheit believed that the Jewish people wanted a theater that reflected their contemporary social-political environment; they wanted a theater that would be the voice for the proletariat and reflect their class struggles— they wanted a revolutionary theatre. A group of actors from the Brooklyn Chapter Two of the YWL favorably responded to Freiheit’s call for a revolutionary theater and decided to create an amateur theater group that would represent the radical Jewish labor movement. They called themselves Freiheit Dramatishe Sektsye (Freiheit Drama Section) and succeeded to present a one night theatrical event that included several oneact plays, dramatized poems, music, and a considerable amount of Communist propaganda. Despite a successful first event, the Freiheit Dramatishe Sektsye decided not to continue with theatrical productions and instead focus their energy on creating a studio to help train and prepare its actors for a permanent Jewish workers’ theater. This studio was called the Freiheit Dramatic Studio and after only sixth months of existence, it quickly merged with the Communist members who were gaining strength in the Folks Farband far Kunst Teater (The People’s Association for Art Theatre).33 This wing of the Farband was composed of political, social and cultural groups affiliated with the Communist Party (such as the Jewish Federation of the Workers Party of America), including writers and other artists that were united by the common desire to create a serious Yiddish proletarian theater. In 1925, the Communists took over the weakening Farband and the Socialists left in protest, leaving the Communists in complete control. At a conference in November of 1925, the Communists renamed the organization Arbeter Teater Farband, better known by its acronym Artef. Inspired by Freiheit, its objective was to create a Yiddish proletarian theater that served the Jewish left. Under Artef ’s direction, the Freiheit Drama Studio, now called Artef Studio, flourished and eventually created a total of six different actor-training studios, training a total of 120 students from 1925 –1936; twenty-nine of these students became a part of Artef ’s permanent acting troupe. The students were

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shop and factory workers by day (a portion of their income would help support the studio) and attended classes at night. Students at the Artef Studios took a wide range of courses including Yiddish, acting, make-up, diction, dance, dramatic literature and history under the guidance of well-known artists and scholars such as Jacob Mestel (Artef ’s first instructor and director), Michel Fokine, Dr. Yankev Shitsky, Mendle Elkinand, and Benno Shnayder, who had the greatest impact on Artef. Benno Shnayder, who would later direct Hirsch Leckert, personally brought the Russian Revolution to the company. Shnayder was from Moscow and was a member of the famous Soviet Jewish folk troupe Habima. He was visiting the United States to direct a season at Foksbiene, but left the company after it closed to teach and eventually become Artef ’s second director after Mestel. While in Russia, Shnayder worked with the legendary directors Vakhtangov and Stanislavsky, and he observed and was inspired by Meyerhold’s Theatre, the Moscow Art Theatre, and Granovsky’s Moscow Yiddish State Art Theatre. The Russian Revolution and revolutionary theater had a profound influence on Shnayder and his work, and he carried these ideological and artistic principles from Russia to Artef .44 During 1927–28, the Artef studio started to produce several public performances. Despite the low budgets and amateur quality of the student performers, the productions were extremely popular. The Artef Studio performances were held in such notable places as Madison Square Gardens, in front of fifteen to twenty thousand people, and Carnegie Hall, in front of audiences totaling two thousand. This first season, they produced Masn shpil un balet fun der Rusisher revolutsye (Mass Play and Ballet of the Russian Revolution), Nathaniel Buchwald and Boruch Fenster’s Strike, Royt-geyl-shvarts (Red, Yellow, and Black), and Buchwald’s Miners. From 1928 –29, Artef, after a successful run of studio performances, was ready to launch Baym toyer (At the Gate), their first major production from which Artef emerged as a worker’s theater. The play thematically focused on the need to rescue people living under tyranny. The Freiheit proudly reviewed Artef ’s opening night in the article “Unzer groyser nitsokhn” (“Our Great Victory”): Our actor brings with him a new message — the message of a red sun on a pale horizon [...] I have seen him — our new actor, the carrier of the idea of the red Messiah. I looked him in the eye as he stood there, creating the first production that is our own [...] He is a toiler — this new actor of ours. His face — aflame, his eyes— burning, his hands— laced with veins [...] Our actor plays out the pain and anger of the masses. He himself is the masses and therefore he is part and parcel of those who sit across the footlights. Our actor throws theatrical fire into the masses. For such an actor we have waited, of such a theatre we have dreamed [14 Dec 1928].

The productions of Artef helped define the company not only as a Yiddish theater (Yiddish was the language used for their art.), but also as an artistic, social and political theater that served the Jewish working class. They were a theater

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made up of proletarians who portrayed proletarian interests for a proletarian audience (Their audience also included non–Jews and non-left wing patrons who were attracted to Artef ’s high quality productions.). Their plays, which were either written specifically for Artef or were politically adapted Yiddish folk plays, reflected what was happening to the workers off stage, showing strikes, marches, evictions, and riots in a range of styles influenced by Soviet theater. Artef was a left-wing didactic theater designed to help its workers become better aware of their socio-political environment, and it was an agitprop theater to help create a better social order. Artef became the revolutionary voice and weapon for the Jewish working class and, in the United States, one of the strongest political theatres to produce the Third Period policies of the Comintern.55 In 1928, Stalin was in control of the Comintern and declared, one year before the stock market crash that led the United States into the Great Depression, that Capitalism was entering the Third Period (The first stage was during Capitalism’s rise prior to World War I, and the second stage was after World War I when there was a decline of revolutionary activity and a stabilization of Capitalism). In this period, the United States would supposedly witness the deterioration of Capitalism and a fire of revolutionary uprisings that would rapidly spread throughout the country. Militancy was the new policy of the Comintern in order to destroy the ailing Capitalist and other non–Communist ideologies. No longer would the Communists advocate a United Front and align themselves or tolerate other leftist groups such as the Socialists. All ideological oppositions were physically and polemically attacked and expelled from Communist controlled unions. Reform and Socialism were not options; a violent revolutionary overthrow was needed to break through any remaining obstacles that would prevent “the final solution”— the complete destruction of Capitalism — and open the way for the new age of Communism in the United States. William Z. Foster, the U.S. presidential candidate of the Communist Party at that time, envisioned the new era of Communism: The “American Soviet Government will be organized along the broad lines of the Russian Soviets;” the capital would be relocated to an industrial capital such as Detroit or Chicago; courts would fight “against the class enemies of the toilers;” industry and farms would be nationalized; crime would be abolished, churches restricted and “organized religious training for minors prohibited;” education would be “controlled by the government;” and “the Communist Party [would be] functioning alone as the party of the toiling masses” (Klehr 90). In order to help bring about this new age, the Comintern directed artistic organizations affiliated with the Communist Party to concentrate on educating the workers about the final solution. They were to depict the horrors of Capitalism and present the solution to be armed uprisings against the government. A call for new plays reflecting the militant Third Period reforms was heard by communist workers’ theaters throughout the United States. Artef, who was the

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oldest and considered the preeminent foreign-language workers’ theater, was the most successful ethnic workers’ theater and perhaps the most successful workers’ theater in general to produce Third Period plays. The theater was always closely connected to the Communist Party, which made up the majority of its audience and sponsorship. The following Artef advertisement, for example, clearly displays its ties and purpose: “The Artef Jewish Workers Revolutionary Theatre Greets the Workers Theatre. While Concentrated More and More On Agit-prop Work, The Artef Realizes the Possibility and Necessity to Cultivate a Variety of Forms In The Workers Theatre For The Accomplishment of the Common Purpose — The Mobilization of the Masses of Workers For the Revolutionary Struggle Against Capitalism” (Lifson 442). Cultivating work for the Communist cause, however, was becoming increasingly difficult for Artef. When the Comintern decreed that Communist affiliated theaters needed to produce plays that reflected the militant Third Period ideology, Artef found itself at a loss of material for the 1931–32 season. Artef had turned its back on the Proletpen, a union of Yiddish proletarian writers that wrote militant scripts, deciding that the union was made up of inexperienced and inadequate writers. Artef, as a result, resorted to adapting already existing plays and emphasizing the political components of the material that satisfied the Third Period reforms. Artef ’s first attempt at adaptation for the 1931–32 season was Drought, Nathaniel Buchwald’s adaptation of Hallie Flanagan and Margaret Ellen Clifford’s American play Can You Hear Their Voices? The subject matter dealt with the 1930s drought in the southeastern states of the U.S. that brought incredible suffering to American farm workers who eventually revolted against the unsympathetic federal government. Though the Third Period message in Drought was clear, the play was considered unsuccessful. The Jewish audience, which was made largely of tailors, could not relate to the uncommon occupation of farmers. It was a play that did not speak to their profession or culture. As a result, Artef imported a Russian play that took place during the time leading up to the 1905 Revolution and adapted it to directly relate to the experiences of New York Jewish workers. Artef ’s production of Hirsch Leckert, the second play in the 1931–32 season, was Artef ’s most successful Third Period play. The play is based on the actual life of Hirsch Leckert (1879 –1902), a Jewish shoemaker in the town of Vilna, Lithuania. Leckert was a member of the Yidisher Arbeter Bund, a Jewish workers’ movement, and participated in the illegal May Day workers’ demonstration in 1902. Viktor Von Wahl, the newly appointed governor of Vilna who had implemented strict policies against political dissidents, ordered his police on the demonstrators. A riot quickly broke out and ended in the arrest of twenty-six protesters. The prisoners (twenty of whom were Jewish and the other six Polish) were publicly flogged on the orders of the governor. The Bundists were outraged at the public disgrace. Many of the Bundists demanded revenge against Von Wahl as an act to reclaim Jewish

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pride, but the Bund leaders denounced terrorist acts (possibly fearing more violence and deportations to the work prisons in Siberia) and opposed the idea. As a result, a faction of Bundists led by Leckert decided to revenge their disgraced comrades by killing Von Wahl. Leckert shot at and wounded the governor, but failed to kill him. Leckert was arrested and, as a result of his actions, was condemned and hanged on 10 June 1902. For years following his death, celebrations were held honoring his life. Leckert became a martyr, a source of inspiration for the Jewish workers. His memory was preserved in folk songs and lore, and in H. Leivick’s famous play Hirsch Leckert (1931) Leckert’s life and death became symbols of proletarian courage. He was a man willing to sacrifice himself for his principles and for his people. Many credit Leckert’s martyrdom as being the rallying cry that helped to spark the 1905 Russian Revolution against the Czarist government. Artef ’s Hirsch Leckert was written in 1929, by the Soviet Yiddish writer, Aron Kushnirov. Kushnirov’s straight-forward biographical depiction of Leckert was preferred by Artef over Leivick’s more “romanticized” portrayal; in Kushnirov’s play, Leckert was a “rank-and-filer who arrived at a particular historic moment as the embodiment of the desperation and heroism of the masses” (Nahshon 90). In the spirit of the Third Period, Kushnirov emphasized the clash between the workers and the government, the workers and their union leaders, the working class and the upper class, and the workers and the religious leaders who sided with the corrupt and oppressive government. It is the rabbi, in Kushnirov’s Hirsch Leckert, that suggested to Von Wahl to flog the prisoners. In addition, Kushnirov, true to life, portrayed the government’s efforts to destroy the Bund by planting spies within their organization to incite workers into abandoning the Bund and joining a government-organized Jewish labor movement, called Yiddishe Unabhengige Arbeiter Partie (One third of the Bundists left to join the YUAP before it disbanded in 1903). The character of Sonia Schereschevsky, a former revolutionary with Leckert, was fooled by Zubatov, the chief of the Moscow division of the secret police, into believing in a state-organized legal labor movement and decided to become his informant. At the end of the play, she realized Zubatov’s deceptive ploy and aided Leckert in his attempt to assassinate Von Wahl. When Artef ’s Hirsch Leckert opened in 1932, the U.S. was in the thick of the Great Depression. The Capitalist economy had been severely weakened by detrimental and poorly planned corporate and banking strategies, foreign trade, and distributions of income. According to historian Howard Zinn, “the highest five percent of the population received about one-third of all personal income” (377). Thousands of people found themselves homeless and hungry during this period. Men, no longer able to support their families, committed suicide; farmers auctioned off their land; and numerous families, no longer able to pay rent, were evicted and forced to live in small shacks built on garbage dumps, known as Hoovervilles. Anger, frustration and a great mistrust of the government were

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on the rise throughout the United States. In addition, anti–Semitism was also spreading rapidly in the north; the Ku Klux Klan experienced a rebirth in the 1920s and had a growing membership of over four million. In many ways, Artef saw comparisons between the present socio-political climate in the United States and the socio-political conditions for the Jews in Czar-ruled Russia as portrayed in Hirsch Leckert. The play served not just to remind its audience of the comparison between Czarist Russia and Capitalist United States, but to also agitate its audience to take revolutionary action and prevent history from repeating itself in their new home. When the final curtain of Kushnirov’s Hirsch Leckert was raised, the audience of U.S. Jews saw a replica of the Minsk monument of Leckert (In 1922, on the twentieth anniversary of Leckert’s death, a stature of Leckert was erected in Minsk. The statue no longer exists, but on the thirtieth anniversary of his death, a replica was made for the stage of Artef ’s 1932 production of Hirsch Leckert). The Artef actors then, in a display of reverence, placed flowers around the monumentalized revolutionary hero. In the true style of Communist agit-prop theater, Artef used the power of Leckert’s martyrdom to agitate the audience to revolutionary action against the American government. No Communist revolution, of course, fully occurred within the United States, but Artef played an important role in illuminating, radicalizing and inciting discontent in its audiences. Audiences and critics both hailed Hirsch Leckert as an artistic triumph, considering it provocative and high quality. New Masses reviewed the production as “strong and moving [...] a great leap forward along the path of the creation of a vital proletarian drama in this country [...] Here is a finished performance, a creative achievement that bites into the imagination and whips the emotions into play [... Hirsch Leckert is] the finest achievement not only of the Artef, but probably of the American proletarian theatre in any language” (Magil “Drama”). This Russian import created for Artef a new theatrical methodology of inciting revolt in their Jewish audiences. Artef created a clear analogy between what was happening in Russia prior to the 1905 Revolution and what was currently happening in the United States. For example, the Bund in Hirsch Leckert was clearly the Russian equivalent of the Socialist Party in the United States. Furthermore, the class conflicts, the fight against a corrupt government and the need for a Communist revolution, Artef believed, were universal messages in Hirsch Leckert that extended beyond time and place, and could be used to incite a similar revolution in the United States. In nineteenth century Russia and in the early twentieth century United States, Jews suffered from government brutality and were poorly protected from unions that were disorganized and bred political corruption and disunity among union leaders. Artef saw that, in both times and places, the workers had no choice but to violently revolt against the government. Nathaniel Buchwald, playwright, director and teacher at Artef, noted the similarities:

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The clerics [were] in ruthless collaboration with the representatives of oppressive government; the Jewish bourgeoisie [were] in a united front with the capitalist terror machine against Jewish and Gentile workers; the bloody whip [operated] with brutal power and nationalistic hatred against the solidarity of the working class; [and] the [ruling class continued its] regime of beatings, hangings and imprisonment [...] in order to safeguard its domination of the proletariat [Nahshon 91].

After the success of Hirsch Leckert, Artef continued producing Russian Imports— Fir teg (Four Days), Der Step brent (The Steppe on Fire), and Yegor Bulichev — but the stories of these plays took place after the 1917 Russian Revolution. The method of creating an analogy between Russia leading up to the 1905 Revolution and the current American socio-political situation, as seen in Hirsch Leckert, would not be used again until Artef ’s 1934 –35 Broadway hit production of Rekrutn (Recruits).66 The Third Period ideology, however, was not as present in this play as it was in Hirsch Leckert. In Rekrutn, the folkloric nature, dramatic content, romantic scenes, and theatrical spectacles detracted from its theme of class struggle. Artef ’s production of Hirsch Leckert best reminded its audience, comprised primarily of Russian Jewish immigrants, that their harsh lives in Russia and the Socialist failures under the Czarist government were analogous to their present socio-political situation in the United States. It showed the audience that only violent revolutionary actions, like Hirsch Leckert’s revolt, would save the Jews from further suffering. For the Jewish American immigrants, Hirsch Leckert was their Sacco and Vanzetti; he was their revolutionary hero, martyr, and a character to whom the Artef audience could relate. Leckert was a poor worker in the garment industry frustrated with the oppressive government, the poor work conditions, the corrupt unions and the inefficiency of the Socialists. Leckert, Artef emphasized, knew that a corrupt government could not be reformed; it could only be destroyed by a violent revolution. Artef ’s Hirsch Leckert was not only a revolutionary play, it was a new didactic approach of teaching the Third Period ideology and inciting a Communist revolution that — it was believed — would save the Jews from further Capitalist persecution in the United States. In the end, Leckert was no longer a man, but a symbol of the Jewish people. In Artef ’s production of Hirsch Leckert, Leckert said to Von Wahl, after shooting him, “There are thousands and thousands like myself. Remember that as long as you live.”

NOTES 1. Other cultural and economic factors contributed to the formation of a homogenous, selfcontained, Jewish community, such as the language barriers for the Yiddish-speaking immigrants and the accessibility of the predominantly Jewish garment industry that was usually located in Jewish neighborhoods and attracted Jewish immigrants to work and settle in the area. 2. Folksbine was a theatrical organization created from the merger of the Hebrew Dramatic League and the Workmen’s Circle in 1915 to create for the first time a Jewish people’s theater that was financially supported by the Jewish people from all labor parties. After a strong seven-year run, considered the second golden age of Yiddish theater, Folksbine shut down after a financially

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unsuccessful season from 1922–23. Maurice Schwartz, the theater owner and general director of the Folksbine, pleaded to the Jewish labor movement for help, and in response they created the Folks Farband far Kunst Teater in 1923. 3. The goal of the Farband was to aid Maurice Schwartz in re-establishing a Yiddish theater. It had a membership of 200,000 from Jewish unions, organizations and cultural groups of various political ideologies. During its brief two-year run, the Zionist-Socialists held the majority of power within Farband and denied the Communists from advancing to any important positions. Like the Folkbine, the Farband failed due to financial problems when the membership fees could no longer cover the rising costs of its organization. Farband’s failure, Freiheit believed, occurred because the theater did not represent what the people wanted — a proletarian theater. 4. Mestel and Shnayder were both influenced by the New Stagecraft — a stagecraft of simplification and suggestion — pioneered by Adolphe Appia, Gordon Craig and Max Reinhardt, who in turn where inspired by Richard Wagner’s principle of Gesamtkunstwerk (“total artwork”). These artists revolted against the scenic practices of traditional European acting companies and objected to three-dimensional actors standing on a flat floor surrounded by realistically painted canvases. They influenced the fashion towards a more simplified décor, three-dimensional settings, plasticity, directional lighting, and an emphasis on evocation rather than literal representation. Meyerhold’s theatre also inspired the display of large groupings and expressions, perfect for presenting a revolutionary collective. 5. Moreover, Artef was able to reach a larger radical theatre audience that surpassed other political theatre groups, such as The Group Theatre, by keeping ticket prices low, even on Broadway. Nathaniel Buchwald wrote in New Theatre how Artef successfully “blazed the way to audience organization” (8). 6. Rekrutn, written by Soviet Yiddish writer Lipe Resnick, focused on the hypocrisy of the upper class Jews in the town Niebivala who turned on and manipulated Jewish workers in order to protect their children from the Czar’s decree for the Jewish town to recruit one son to serve in the Russian army. This play was incredibly popular, but it was also popular with the non–Communists. As opposed to Hirsch Leckert, Rekrutn fit more neatly in a mainstream theater than a revolutionary proletarian theater. Rekrutn can be seen as Artef ’s bridge into the next period of the Comintern, the Popular Front, when Communists cooperated with the liberals and Capitalists and set aside their revolutionary objectives in order to deal with the growing threat of fascism.

WORKS CITED Backalenick, Irene. East Side Story. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. Binder, Frederick M. and Reimers, David M. All the Nations Under Heaven: An Ethnic and Racial History of New York City. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Bradby, David and McCormick, John. People’s Theatre. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978. Buchwald, Nathaniel, “The Artef on Broadway,” New Theatre (February 1935). Buhle, Mari Jo, Buhle, Paul and Georgakas, Dan. Encyclopedia of the American Left. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990. Flanagan, Hallie and Clifford, Margaret Ellen. Can You Hear Their Voices? Poughkeepsie, NY: The Experimental Theatre of Vassar College, 1931. Klehr, Harvey. The Heyday of American Communism. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Landis, Joseph. The Great Jewish Plays. New York: Horizon Press, 1972. Lenin, Vladimir Ilich. Lenin’s Collected Works. Volume 29. Fourth English Edition Translated by George Hanna. Moscow: Progress Publisher, 1972. Levine, Ira. Left Wing Dramatic Theory in the American Theatre. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985. Lifson, David. Epic and Folk Plays of the Yiddish Theatre. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1975. Magil, A.B., “Drama,” New Masses (June 1932). Mandelboym, A.M., “Unzer groyser nitsokhn,” Freiheit (14 Dec 1928). Hahshon, Edna. Yiddish Proletarian Theatre. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Sandrow, Nahma. Vagabond Stars. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

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Schappes, Morris, “Jewish Mass Immigration from Europe, 1881–1914,” Jewish Life (November 1954). “The First Ten Years of Artef Are The Hardest,” New York Times (7 March 1937). Thurston, Thomas and Woolner, David, New Deal Network. 15 Mar. 2004 http:// newdeal.feri.org/library/d_4m.htm. Veidlinger, Jeffrey. The Moscow State Yiddish Theater. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000. Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995.

“Television’s Comin’ In, Sure as Death” The Strange Consumer Paradise of Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost CHRISTOPHER J. HERR

When Clifford Odets burst onto the American theatre scene with four Broadway productions in 1935, the plays were immediately celebrated not only as exceptional theatrical achievements, but also as accurate reflections of the anxious American mid–Depression political and social landscape. Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times noted of Waiting for Lefty that “People who want to understand the times through which they are living can scarcely afford to ignore it,” and Awake and Sing! earned Odets critical praise for his depiction of ordinary people struggling against the dissolution of their dreams. These early plays are primarily concerned with trying to live in a world where, as Jacob says in Awake and Sing!, “Economics comes down like a ton of coal on the head” (Odets 71). At the same time, the plays also marked Odets in the public consciousness as an outspoken political playwright, a label the playwright initially embraced — and which, even as his work matured and changed, he never entirely shed. The focus on Odets as a political playwright, however, has often led to the assumption that his politics were radically leftist, that the indignant protest at the core of his plays would necessarily translate into a demand to transform an impersonal and exploitative capitalist system. But despite the praise he received from many who saw his work as revolutionary, his plays have troubled some critics— particularly leftist critics— because they did not feel radical enough. The leftist playwright John Howard Lawson, whose work Odets greatly admired and imitated, dismissed the ending of Awake and Sing! for avoiding conflict precisely because it did not advocate political change, and Stanley Burnshaw in The New Masses rejected Paradise Lost not only for bad dramaturgy but, even more tellingly, for bad politics: “It is the lack of Marxism which has deprived the play of its fundamental social truth” (cited in Weales, 93). However, any narrowly political view of Odets’ work is misguided because 171

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it ignores the fundamental utopian vision of Odets’ plays. Even at his most strident, Odets remains ambivalent towards consumer capitalism; he condemns unequivocally its tendency to compromise and cripple those who participate in it, but recognizes as well that consumer capitalism taps into a utopian impulse very much akin to that which underlies American democracy: freedom, abundance, and equality for all. It is the negotiation of the contradictions inherent in these visions that gives Odets both his subject matter and the imagery he uses to explore it, but his plays are never dismissive of the possibilities that America presented for its citizens. Indeed, Odets’ plays are written at a time of unprecedented abundance produced by the American economic system —characterized by the automobile, the assembly line, widespread electrification, the chain department and grocery stores— which he recognizes and, in part, celebrates. According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, productivity had increased dramatically during the 1920s and even into the 1930s: output per worker-hour in private non-farm occupations was thirty-four percent higher in 1935 than it had been in 1920 and in manufacturing, each workerhour was ninety-one percent more productive than it had been in 1920 and almost eighteen percent more so than in 1929 (Szostak, 19). Part of this increase was due to more pressure placed on workers in the early years of the Depression to produce more in fewer hours for less pay — with the threat of job loss as motivation — but the result was that more goods were being produced for American markets more cheaply with less labor than ever before. Even in the worst years of the Depression, then, American consumer capitalism was a marketplace stuffed with things to buy; such abundance made the widespread poverty, unemployment, hunger, and scarcity during the early and mid–1930s even more shocking. In many large cities, unemployment reached twenty-five percent, with rates for some groups (older workers in particular) much higher (Szostak, 23). At the same time, those who still had jobs were working less: by 1935, hours had been reduced to an average of eighty percent of 1929 levels (Szostak, 16). Ninety-five cases of starvation were reported in New York in 1931, with many others probably unreported, and widespread malnourishment was common (McElvaine, 18). It is not surprising, then, that Odets focuses his attention on the gap between the expectations built into American democracy — and fostered by consumer capitalism — and the struggles that faced ordinary people as they tried to achieve those expectations. His plays are a direct reflection of the tension between abundance and scarcity that is one of the peculiar features of the Depression era. For example in Paradise Lost, Pike comments that “it is not natural for men to starve while means to produce food are close at hand” (166); Leo agrees to the demands of his workers who ask for a fair work week and a “living wage” (186); Ben is reduced to selling Mickey Mouse toys on the street because he can’t find work. His characters are located on the borderline between having and wanting; their struggles to maintain connection with the American dream are a measure of extent to which material

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goods had become the sole mark of success in the new American marketplace. At the same time, their failures make it clear that material abundance carries a darker meaning: it is a clear symbol of exclusion for the have-nots. Odets suggests that those who could not buy what was offered could not fully participate in society; in effect, they were banished from the American Eden. As Ben Fine has argued, consumer goods have long been seen as a measure of equality; access to the marketplace gives consumers identity and marks them as participants in the larger society. Conversely, lack of access to those goods robs consumer citizens of their identity and their freedom: “what you consume and what it means to you, are heavily bound by how much you can afford, a sort of consumer democracy in which some have more votes and freedoms than others” (295). Odets creates characters both fascinated and repelled by the accelerating shift towards an encompassing American consumer culture during the 1920s and 1930s; they are deeply ambivalent about the way consumer goods were becoming the measure of American democratic progress, but they stop short of demanding that the system be changed, in part because the utopian vision inherent in American political conceptions of itself as a land of Edenic promise had already been adopted by consumer culture, particularly through the language and images of advertisers (Lasch 68; see also Lears, Fables and “From Salvation”; Fox). To reject the increasingly consumer-driven economic system, then, would in some sense mean to reject the American dream of plenty for all, and it would also mean rejecting a sense of identity within that culture. In Waiting for Lefty, for example, the disenfranchised cabbies contemplating a strike reveal desires (for food and shelter, but also for pleasure and luxury goods) that not only contrast their present situation with the corrupt union bosses, but also with the utopian promise inherent in consumer culture. Edna’s impassioned plea, “My God, Joe — the world is supposed to be for all of us!” (10), encapsulates both the promise and the failure of a system predicated on delivering material goods more cheaply and more widely than ever before. Similarly, in Awake and Sing!, there is an ongoing tension between necessity and desire; the characters are seduced by the material abundance that surrounds them but frustrated by a system that rarely seems to deliver what it promises. It was increasingly common in the Depression even for those suffering from want to see themselves as consumers; “luxuries,” such as movies or dining out were increasingly seen as necessary expenses even in the most minimal budgets (Barnard, 23). Thousands of Americans wrote heartbreaking letters to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and while many asked for help in meeting the bare necessities— a job, money for heating oil, a coat for the winter — others recognized that the American way of life was already intimately connected with consumer goods: We don’t want a revolution in this country where innocent men, women and children will be shot down like they are doing without mercy like they are doing in Spain and

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also like they did in Russia.... You know Mrs. Roosevelt with the majority of us poor people we desire good things as well as the higher classes of society. For instance we desire a nice home to live in with sanitary surroundings. We desire a nice refrigidaire, electric stove, fan, nice furniture, radio, a nice car with money to take a vacation [McElvaine 193].

Part of Odets’ success stemmed from what designer Mordecai Gorelik called Odets’ “amazing intuitive grasp of the American scene” (242); in essence, Odets was able to articulate in dramatic terms the desires of ordinary people like the writers of this letter, caught in the shift from a culture of production conditioned by the Puritan ethic of self-denial and fostered by the rags-to-riches mythology of capitalists like Andrew Carnegie to a culture of consumption fueled by advertising and an ethos of pleasure and self-fulfillment. Vacations, radios, and refrigerators were no longer seen as luxuries for the rich; they were the very basis of America’s promise. Paradise Lost, Odets’ fourth Broadway play of 1935, is a broad-ranging examination of the ways in which a developing consumer culture, manifested in both material goods and popular entertainment, rewrote the possibilities of an American Eden. Like Awake and Sing!, it is the story of a family —in this case, the Gordons: educated, well-mannered, middle class—in decline as the result of economic and social changes brought on by the Depression. But where Waiting for Lefty and Awake and Sing! focus directly on what Odets called “a struggle for life amid petty conditions,” Paradise Lost shifts to an allegorical examination of the utopian vision of American democracy. In the earlier plays, the struggle for existence is so overwhelming that even the smallest material desires expressed by the characters are always already deferred, out of reach; the black and white shoes Ralph craves in Awake and Sing! are as fantastical as the imaginary “dozens” of roses offered to Florrie by her boyfriend Sid in Waiting for Lefty. However, in Paradise Lost, we see the systematic decline of those used to having their desires fulfilled, but who now see their utopia stripped away. As Harold Clurman, who directed the initial production, commented: The play ... represented the search for reality. The little people of the small middleclass world were fumbling about in an environment they didn’t control or understand, their hearts full of fond dreams, their eyes beclouded with illusions inherited from the past, while their hands groped in a void that was full of terror. When facts finally confronted them with unmistakable concreteness, they were the facts of bankruptcy and destitution, a house empty of all its foolish and kindly furniture, forever shaken and damaged in its ancient comfort [Clurman 166].

Clurman recognizes that the loss of spiritual connection in Paradise Lost is manifested materially; as the family loses direction and hope, they lose their material comfort, and more importantly, they are forced to re-examine their simple relationship to the goods that surround them. In doing so, they are forced to re-examine the vision of America represented by those goods. Indeed, though economic forces are still important—the play chronicles the Gordons’ gradual financial failure and culminates with their eviction —Paradise

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Lost is ultimately less concerned with the effects of the Depression per se than he is with the deeper effects of consumer culture on the family, and by extension, on American life. The Gordons are depicted both sympathetically and unsympathetically in Paradise Lost; they are ineffectual, diffident, and disconnected, members of a middle class not only baffled and eventually defeated by their economic struggles, but also spellbound by a proliferation of consumer objects, from televisions to Mickey Mouse toys, that seem to offer comfort, stability, and identity. Thus, where Clurman places much of the blame for the Gordons’ fall on misdirected priorities— the desire for “foolish and kindly” material goods is the most obvious— Odets suggests that rejecting consumer culture is never a simple act of self-denial, not only because consumer culture was so powerful even in the 1930s, but also because material goods, whether possessed or simply desired, have value both in themselves and as a repository for utopian dreams, as Grant McCracken has argued: “They become a bridge to displaced meaning and an idealized version of life as it should be lived. When called to mind, these objects allow the individual to rehearse a much larger set of possessions, attitudes, circumstances and opportunities” (110). Perhaps more importantly, the investment of material goods with symbolic or ideological weight allows the consumer to maintain this utopian vision without subjecting it to direct challenge; the vision-object looks back to a golden past or a glorious future and so “makes displaced meaning accessible without also making it vulnerable to empirical test” (McCracken 110). In Paradise Lost, material goods do serve as a repository for the family’s utopian vision, a vision that may not exist but is always promised; thus, the family’s kindness and hope — which Clurman recognizes as their redeeming qualities— are transferred to material goods (Ben’s statue, Clara’s fruit, Gus’ stamp collection, Leo’s books) not because they are shallow people, but because it is a natural and relatively effective way to protect their dreams from the harsh economic realities they face. The play is allegorical, as the title suggests (and as all Odets plays are), and critics have often been frustrated with the heavyhanded symbolism: one capitalist character, Katz, is impotent while Julie, the Gordons’ youngest son who works in a bank, is dying of sleeping sickness. At the same time, the play teems with images of material goods and popular culture, objects and references that create an intimate connection between the symbolic “paradise” and the things that are its material manifestation. Thus, what has often been seen as a flaw is in reality a central theme and organizing principle of the play: the inextricable connection between American utopian vision and material goods. By situating his characters so directly within a web of consumer goods, Odets shows that all of their endeavors are subject to the rules of a new marketplace fueled by mass production, advertising, and popular culture. The play opens with the family doing relatively well, though even from the beginning, there is a sense of uneasiness and displacement, what Leo calls “a profound dislocation”

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in the world (161). News from Europe is troubling, but Leo does not know what to do, so he acts blindly and pointlessly: he gets rid of their German parakeet to do something to protest Hitler’s actions. Pearl’s boyfriend Felix is forced to leave town to find work, causing her to retreat into her room and console herself with her music. Ben reveals that he is unable to continue his running career and that he has married Libby without having secured the job he dreams of in Wall Street. Julie, the younger son, is suffering from a “sleeping sickness” that worsens over the course of the play and that will eventually kill him. Despite this sense of dislocation, the matriarch, Clara, attempts to maintain order by keeping a cheerful countenance and, to an extent, by demonstrating a forthright honesty that eludes the rest of the characters. Her constant refrain to Gus and others to “take a piece of fruit” offers a sense of maternal and material comfort, but at the same time, it projects a sense of determined idealism which establishes food as a grounding point for family stability. Though more pragmatic than her husband, Clara nevertheless cannot confront the impending reality of their situation directly; the fruit thus becomes a way to deflect reality into a maternal world where nourishment is easy and uncomplicated. It is thus both a real good and a symbol of goodness that cannot be as easily threatened by the “dislocation” that troubles the family from the beginning of the play. Clara’s emphasis on nutrition as the marker of economic stability is a direct reflection of several trends that had become part of popular culture in the 1920s and early 1930s; Odets uses them to show the intimate connection between the marketplace, America’s sense of itself as a land of abundance, and personal transformation. In 1924, for example, an advertisement first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post touting the idea that “good health is magnetism” and extolling the virtues of vitamins in maintaining good health (Green 171). Consumer goods were thus directly connected not only to health but also to social and economic success; they tap into the early twentieth century movement that focused on selling consumer goods by extolling their “therapeutic” value. (Lears, “From Salvation”). In the play, Ben is an Olympic champion runner whose statue remains on stage throughout the action, and who is celebrated as an exemplar of the vitality and spirit of American youth. He tells the newspaper reporter that his own athletic success— and by implication, his personal “magnetism” that everyone imagines will earn him a job in Wall Street — is due to the consumption of “cod liver oil and shredded wheat” (172). Clara similarly brags that she has raised her whole family on “grade A milk.” However, as Harvey Green has noted, by the 1920s, milk was not an unambiguous product of natural abundance; rather, it had been consciously promoted by large producing conglomerates as a “perfect” food, tapping into what had become a fetishization of healthy food as the avenue to success: “Cocomalt, Ovaltine, and manufacturers of all sorts of chocolate syrups and powders pitched their wares at the guilt feelings of mothers worried about their kids’ inability to make the big money later because they failed their offspring when

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they were tots” (173). What is important is that milk operates in the play and the larger culture both as a healthy food with real benefits and as the locus of an idealized narrative of success, which is almost always located either in the future (mothers imagine their children’s successes) or in the past (real achievements are attributed to a single cause in the past). Ironically, the Gordon family has so internalized the connection that Ben’s interview itself becomes another advertisement linking personal success with specific consumer goods. In fact, Ben is throughout the play an advertisement gone wrong. Good looking, charming, an Olympic champion, he counts on his personal magnetism to open doors and assumes there is a “swell berth waiting for [him] in Wall Street” (173). While nearly everyone defers to him —Kewpie and his father loan him money, Gus salutes his statue reverently —even his mother recognizes that he has never worked a day in his life. By Act II, his best friend, Kewpie, has started sleeping with Ben’s wife and supporting his household, while Ben is reduced to selling Mickey Mouse Drummer Boy toys on the street and later, to working for Kewpie in a robbery gang. Ben is lost, increasingly despondent over his inability to succeed in a world that requires more than charm: “What did I want? To be a great man? Get my picture on a postage stamp?” (203). In part, then, Odets draws Ben as a cautionary tale; his dreams are so deeply conflated with the images presented by advertising and popular culture that he can no longer find articulate them outside of consumer culture, even though he knows things have gone wrong. Instead, his story has been completely rewritten by newspapers and popular magazines. Furthermore, his partiality to manicures and haircuts marks him as a complete consumer; even at the nadir of his fortunes, he thinks about asking his father for money to go to the barber shop and “get the whole works— haircut, massage and manicure. Believe you me, I’d like that feeling again” (196). His first response is not restraint and self-denial, but therapeutic consumerism. As the economic noose tightens around the family’s neck, they cling more tightly to their visions, placing greater and greater talismanic power in those goods— Pearl’s piano, Ben’s haircuts, Gus’ stamps— that seem to fulfill their dreams. Odets’ insistence on Ben’s athletic prowess is particularly telling because Ben is passive throughout the play; he accepts what he is told and fails to fight back against adversity. Ben’s suicide by police gunfire is the final act of passivity in an arc that has seen him dominated by Kewpie, Libby, and his own unrealistic expectations. But by making Ben an Olympic runner, Odets also taps into an ideological connection between athletic success and a larger American idealism that contrasted American talent (natural and innate) with European (consciously cultivated and trained). S.W. Pope argues that because of their idealization of the past, the Olympics “provided an arena in which certain Americans could invent and popularize symbols of their political and sporting culture by linking athletic prowess to national mythology” (40). He goes on to note that the popularity of Olympic athletes as national heroes had to be actively “created” by press coverage, so that when Ben’s first act on stage is to commission a photo-shoot

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and interview, we see the explicit linking of mass media, the American mythology of success, and consumer culture. Unlike the rest of the characters in the play, Ben does not invest his dreams in objects; rather, as an Olympic hero, he becomes the object — an idealized consumer object created by press coverage and apotheosized in a statue of him that remains on stage throughout the play — in which dreams (most notably Kewpie’s but others’ as well) are invested. Kewpie says in Act III, “Don’t think I’ll ever forget my friend Ben. I carry him around like a medal” (223), a line that directly recalls the medals that Ben received for racing “the Finn at the Garden” mentioned in Act II. In Odets, then, even something as natural as health is inextricably intertwined with the marketplace, which urges— and expects— people to invest their personal and professional dreams in consumer goods. Early in the play, the neighborhood politician Foley offers the Gordons some advice: Lookin’ a bit dark under the eyes. What’s the remedy? Grapefruit juice! What’s the trouble? Too much acids, meats and stuff like that. The normal ratio of the human body ... [is] eighty-twenty. Instead the ordinary person fills his stomach with twentyeighty ... Grapefruit juice — there’s your answer — brings you back to normal —the way the Democrats will bring the whole country back to normal! [167].

Even though Foley is a minor character, a political factotum who only serves as an obstacle to the family, and even though his analogy between personal health and political health is immediately debunked by Pike’s acerbic retort, “This is about the richest city in the world. A person starves to death in it every other day. Not enough alkaline. That’s what it means!” (168), it nevertheless points up the increasing ease with which consumer health, personal health, and national health were conflated both by advertisers and consumers. Indeed, the disease that Foley diagnoses is called “acidosis,” a real and serious medical condition usually caused by kidney failure (and having little or nothing to do with diet), but which the marketing department at Sunkist in the 1920s had spuriously linked to diet in order to spur the sales of citrus fruit (Green 173; Sackman 110 – 112). Dismissing someone like Foley is easy enough, Odets suggests, but dismissing the power of advertising to identify consumer goods with universal, powerful human needs and desires is much more difficult. Apart from Leo, who remains aloof through most of the play, the other characters are also conscious and enthusiastic participants in the consumer culture surrounding them. In this way, Odets provides prescient insight into the effects of an economic system increasingly devoted to escape and entertainment. Gus, their neighbor and friend, refers constantly to popular music on the radio (“the song appealin’ to me most — is the Song of India [160]) and movies (“Marlene — she’s the intellect and artistic type ... I got her in the harem of my head [179]) that clearly mark him as a devotee of popular culture. To be sure, he is occasionally conscious of the falseness of the escape offered by such culture, but at the same time he realizes that the escape allows him to keep his dreams intact. Thus, almost immediately after he scoffs that “All the jazz bands and croon-

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ers in America singin’ one sad song—“Give Me Love, Baby.” Well, I never see that solve no problems,” he responds to Clara’s worries about the marriage of Ben and Libby with “Don’t you worry your head about them turtle-doves.” (162). Gus is the character most fully immersed in the consumer culture, and, except for Leo, whose approach is idealistic but vague, Gus is also the character most devoted to maintaining his utopian vision in the face of increasing economic adversity. Thus, though he is not the protagonist of the play, he is the character most concerned with its conflicts and themes. For example, nostalgia is one way in which a utopian vision can be maintained; it sets up a golden age of happiness, often symbolized by a material object either possessed or lost. In the play, Gus recalls his wife’s memory by her picture in his watch and later drifts into a drunken reverie about his father. But perhaps most importantly, he contrasts the uncertainty of the present with a golden past before World War I: I can’t explain it to you, Mr. G., how I’m forever hungerin’ for the past. It’s like a disease in me, eatin’ away ... some nights I have cried myself to sleep —for the old Asbury Park days; the shore dinners at old Sheepshead Bay. [...] How beautiful the summer nights before the Big War! [...] In those days God was in the heavens, It’s fierce today, somethin’ fierce. Hear them screamin’ all around me” [207].

Gus’ anxiety is only partly alleviated by using the past—symbolized most directly by the watch, the winding of which has become a nighttime ritual for him — as a repository for his ideals, however, because the past can only be reconstituted by direct action, of which Gus is manifestly incapable. What is interesting is that, unlike Gus’ other strategies to keep his ideals safe from the predations of history and economics, his nostalgia is not ridiculed in the play, but rather makes him more sympathetic. In fact, most of his attempts to articulate his ideals are met with resistance and even scorn, in part because they are so closely connected with consumer goods. For example, he is shown throughout the play as being current with the latest trends; furthermore, he is always trying to translate his fascination with technology into future gain, to connect consumer culture with a future (admittedly personal) utopia of economic ease and plenty. While Gus is a dreamer, he is also the only person in the household who fully recognizes the revolutionary effect that radio had had on American culture; as he tells the Gordons, “if someone told me five, ten years ago I’d be tinkering with a thing called radio, I’d ‘a said crazy. It’s progress, yes” (161). While Leo responds skeptically —“Progress!”— Gus is aware that popular culture had already transformed the American marketplace. Radio, for example, had exploded in the 1920s, and even in the early years of the Depression, when other industries struggled, it remained a growth industry; by 1934, sixty percent of all homes had radios (up from thirty percent in 1929), and build-your-own kits were popular for the working class so that what had been just ten years before a luxury item was quickly becoming a necessity (Green 188). Furthermore, the programming of popular music and radio dramas was

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driven by an increasing emphasis on advertising, so that by the early 1930s radio advertising was characterized as “the voice of America” (Barnouw 74). Thus, the people like the Gordons (and an increasing percentage of Americans overall) who become the audience for radio— which in Paradise Lost is also tangentially linked to a conservative, pro-war political agenda — are also the consumers of the mass-produced objects advertised on the shows it broadcasts; in this sense, Gus’ use of the radio as a means for economic success— he dreams of “tryin’ to put in a complete line of radios” (161)— directly ties together popular culture and music, consumer goods, advertising, and the American dream. What Gus suggests, and what is borne out by economic history, is that a consumer culture requires constant innovation to grow. Consumption increases not because later generations consume more of the same things their ancestors did, but because they spend their money on innovative new products and technologies (Szostak 68). It must always move beyond the consumer, who must remain dissatisfied in order for the economy to grow. Ironically, that dissatisfaction is part of the pleasure for the consumer as well, because those new, desired objects can become once again the repository for ideals that have not yet been realized in the present. For example, in Paradise Lost, Gus attempts to persuade the Gordons to invest in television: “Last week, a certain party and American Tel and Tel.... He was saying television’s comin’ in, sure as death. Yes, Mrs. G., I know some pretty important people. Dealers who’s prepared, they’ll reap a harvest on this television proposition” (161). Gus’ proposition is premature; while radio had exploded since the mid–1920s, in 1935, television had been in the works for over 30 years but had little to show for the investment and research apart from a few short-lived experimental stations. It wouldn’t be until 1941 that the FCC would license commercial television with uniform industry standards and not until after World War II that it would become a popular consumer item. More significant than Gus’ prescient interest in developing technology are the two metaphors he adopts to speak of it. By conflating the incoming technology with death, Gus accedes to the inevitability of consumer culture (some have argued that television was delayed in the 1930s because broadcasters wanted to make sure that advertising would be permitted) but connotes what can only be seen as a negative for the consumer. However, he also argues that the television boom would be a “harvest” for him and his investors, explicitly connecting technological innovation with the imagery of natural abundance that had long been adopted by advertisers. Odets couches Gus’ chance at the American dream in paradoxical terms, once more showing that the consumer culture carried within it the promise of the American dream — and the seeds of its failure. Gus’s stamp collection is also a significant object in the play. Philately was one of the most popular hobbies in the United States during the 1930s; Odets’ inclusion of it in the play shows Gus once again as an eager participant in popular culture. But the collection serves a further purpose, as one of the ways in

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which consumers in the play — and in American consumer culture by extension — invest their ideals in material objects while protecting them from harm. Because collections are never complete and collectibles are often difficult to find, they are always safe from disappointment; their true meaning and value are transported to a future time when the collection will be complete or until the rare object is found (McCracken 113). For Gus, the collection is directly conflated with escape from the daily drudgery of his life: “Only last night, I was thinkin’ about selling my stamp collection. I figger she’s easily worth a few thousand—But I guess I could just never do it.... Maybe some day, though —and go far away to the South Sea Isles and eat coconuts” (188). There are two things to be noted here: first, Gus’ dream of the South Sea Isles is the ideal invested in the collection. To achieve that goal, however, he would have to sell the collection, thereby putting his utopian vision to the practical test. Secondly, in confession that he cannot sell the collection, Gus shows that he cannot test that vision (what would he do if it failed?); rather, he falls back into the dream by repeating that “maybe some day” he will sell the collection and move. The collection, then, is able to carry the utopian vision of Gus’ escape only because he does not sell it. When, at the end of the play, economic necessity forces Gus to sell — the whole collection brings only two hundred and fifty dollars— it marks a shift in his thinking as profound as Leo’s final lyrical speech, and more convincing. The sale of the collection repudiates the utopian vision that Gus had invested in it, and by extension, it repudiates, at least temporarily, material objects as a suitable repository for the promise of the American dream. The ending of Paradise Lost has raised critical eyebrows since the play was first produced in part because it seems so much more hopeful than the events of the play seem to warrant. Finally evicted from their home, the family prepares to face a future that seems impossibly grim: Ben is dead, Julie is dying, and Pearl has withdrawn completely from life. The family business is bankrupt and their home has been foreclosed upon. After Kewpie leaves the family some money to expiate his guilt over Ben’s death, Leo calls two homeless men in to give them the money, which they reject, telling Leo, “You had a sorta little paradise here. Now you lost the paradise” (228). The bluntness of the metaphor is rejected by Leo, as is the permanence of the loss: No! There is more to life than this! Everything he said is true, but there is more. That was the past, but there is a future. Now we know. We dare to understand. Truly, truly, the past was a dream. But this is real! [...] Heartbreak and terror are not the heritage of mankind! The world is beautiful. No fruit tree wears a lock and key. Men will sing at their work, men will love. Ohhh, darling, the world is in its morning ... and no man fights alone! [230].

Leo’s last speech thus attempts to undo the pattern of the play; he wants to divorce the utopian vision of consumerism from the utopian vision of democracy by reclaiming the abundance represented by the image of the fruit tree. No one is packaging or selling the fruit, no one is buying it; it simply is available.

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As many critics have noted, the ending speech remains unconvincing for two reasons (Mendelsohn 38; Cantor 29; Weales 99). First, it is difficult to believe that Leo, who has been quiet and passive during the whole play, has been so transformed by events to make this lyrical renunciation of the present and hopeful vision for the future. Second, and more importantly, the Edenic vision expressed in the speech, the creation of an imaginary world where abundance is freely available to all, is not only at odds not only with the events of the play, but the course of action it proposes is so vague as to be virtually meaningless. Odets himself acknowledged later that the ending of the play might have been more leftist than the play warranted, but the real problem of the final speech is that it shows the difficulty in escaping the consumer ethos. Leo’s vision is set in the distant future and therefore — just like Gus’ nostalgia or his alwaysdeferred plan for the stamp collection — is not subject to challenge or loss. Until it is acted upon, it remains a beautiful dream. In this sense, his fruit tree, though explicitly cast as a non-consumer good, operates in the same way as consumer goods do throughout the play: as a repository for an unrealized utopian vision. Thus, the ending replays the biblical banishment from Eden that gave the play its title. The fruit of the tree has already been consumed, with the result that the possibility of Edenic plenty is already inaccessible, available only partially and only in exchange for toil and pain; ultimately, Leo’s romantic vision of an effortless future plenty seems as naïve as Gus’ dream of the South Sea Isles. Even if Odets’ play shows how difficult it is for his characters to reset the terms by which they see themselves as part of consumer culture, it offers a trenchant examination of the ways in which that culture had taken root by the 1930s. Because the consumer culture had already adopted paradisiacal imagery as its means, any use of that imagery, however earnest, is already connected to the marketplace it wants to escape. There are, to be sure, points of resistance, so it is wrong to suggest that the consumer culture is monolithic and inescapable. Ben’s suicide, Gus’ sale of his stamp collection, Leo’s speech: each attempted escape stands as a small refutation of the control of the market over individual choice. Perhaps, then, the best way to read Paradise Lost is neither as a grim consumerist dystopia where characters are forced to sacrifice themselves in order to participate in the marketplace, nor as a utopian vision of a post-consumerist paradise, but as a symbolic exploration of the power of consumerism’s utopian vision and the role of the individual in bridging the gap between the promises of American democracy and its reality. As Pike, the radical voice in the play says, “don’t you know it ain’t comin’, that land of your dreams, unless you work for it?” (199).

WORKS CITED Barnard, Rita. The Great Depression and the Culture of Abundance. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Barnuow, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

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Cantor, Harold. Clifford Odets: Playwright-Poet. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1978. Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties. New York: Hill and Wang, 1945. Fine, Ben, “Addressing the Consumer,” in The Making of the Consumer : Knowledge, Power and Identity in the Modern World. Edited by Frank Trentmann. New York: Berg, 2006. Fox, Richard Wightman, “Epitaph for Middletown,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880 –1930. Edited by Richard Wrightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Gorelik, Mordecai. New Theatres for Old. New York: E. P. Dutton: 1962. Green, Harvey. The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, 1915 –1945. Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2000. Lasch, Christopher. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Lears, T. J. Jackson. Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. New York: Basic Books, 1994. _____, “From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture 1880 –1930.” The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880 –1930. Edited by Richard Wrightman Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983. McCracken, Grant. Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Goods and Activities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. McElvaine, Robert, ed. Down & Out In The Great Depression: Letters From The “Forgotten Man.” Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Mendelsohn, Michael. Clifford Odets: Humane Dramatist. Deland, FL: Everett Edwards, 1969. Odets, Clifford. Six Plays. New York: Methuen, 1982. Pope, S. W. Patriotic Games : Sporting Traditions In The American Imagination, 1876 –1926. New York : Oxford University Press, 1997. Sackman, Douglas Cazaux. Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 2005. Szostak, Rick. Technological Innovation and the Great Depression. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Weales, Gerald. Odets, The Playwright. London: Methuen, 1985.

Back-Alleys to Basements Narratives of Class and (Il)legal Abortion on the American Stage CHRISTINE WOODWORTH

Young student nurse Barbara Dennin faces complications from a botched illegal abortion in Sidney Kingsley’s 1933 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Men in White. Determining that a hysterectomy is the only course of action to save her life, Dr. Hochberg poignantly summarizes the plight of poor and working class women, “Poor girl! ... Why do they go to butchers like that?” His colleague Dr. Wren replies, “Well ... she couldn’t have come to us.” “No,” affirms Dr. Hochberg, “that’s the shame! Ah, Wren, some of our laws belong to the Dark Ages! Why can’t we help the poor and the ignorant? The others will always help themselves— law or no law” (Kingsley 164). “The others” that Hochberg refers to are those with means, education, and access, namely middle and upper-class, white Americans who have the necessary privilege to “help themselves.” They also, unlike young Barbara, possess the privilege of privacy in regards to their reproductive health and sexual histories. Kingsley’s is one of several twentieth century plays that refract the issue of abortion through the lens of social class and economic disenfranchisement. Eugene O’Neill’s one-act Abortion, John Van Druten’s I Am a Camera, and Jane Martin’s Keely and Du all pay special heed to the unique challenges facing poor and working class women looking to terminate a pregnancy. O’Neill, Kingsley, and Van Druten dramatize a pre–Roe v. Wade world in which the virgin/whore dichotomy plays out across class lines. For some of the working class women in these plays, illegal abortion results in death, ultimately reinscribing narratives of poor women’s “dangerous” sexuality and serving as cautionary tales. Martin’s Keely and Du, written and set in the early 1990s also concerns itself with matters of reproductive rights and socio-economic status while exploring obstacles to legal abortion. Although historically women from all social strata obtained (and continue to obtain) legal and illegal abortions, the theatre has been especially attentive to working class and poor women. While these four plays in particular do explicate some of the inequalities in healthcare facing the working poor, 184

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they also reinforce some of the oppressive and damning narratives surrounding the sexuality of working class women. In her book Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America, Rickie Solinger traces the evolution of the narratives surrounding the sexual health of working class and poor women that shaped medical practice and ideology. She argues that the early twentieth century marked a transition to concerns for privacy, which became inextricably linked to middle and upperclass citizens (79). Solinger notes that prior to the twentieth century, “sexual and reproductive degradation” had almost exclusively been linked to race (80). But in the early twentieth century relatively resourceless girls and women of all races, whose sexual and reproductive lives were not governed and protected by privacy, were targets of degradation [...]. Indeed, access to privacy permitted some measure of female sexual and reproductive dignity [...]. When public policies and municipal policemen defined a woman’s body and her sexual and reproductive behavior as public matters, such a woman was denied both protection and value [80].

Nowhere was this lack of dignity, protection, and value made more evident than in the practice of “dying declarations.” As a woman lay dying from complications due to an illegal abortion, she was asked for the name and address of the abortionist as well as the name of the man “responsible.” This information was then printed in a newspaper. In the instance of a woman’s refusal to divulge that information, “police told the doctor in charge to walk out of the hospital room, leaving the woman to die unattended” (84). Solinger asserts that these “dying declarations” only “involved white, working-class women,” or, more pointedly, “those who could not buy privacy or protection but whose race made them objects of public interest and concern” (84). Eugene O’Neill’s Abortion recounts a variation on the dying declaration. Written in 1914, Abortion was one of O’Neill’s first plays. Dismissed by many scholars as “clumsy and melodramatic” (Ranald 4), “inconsequential” and a “cathartic indulgence” (Floyd 74), Abortion was not published until 1950, against O’Neill’s wishes. Appearing in the Lost Plays collection, Abortion has been largely overlooked by scholars and producers. In fact, Abortion was not produced for the first time until 1959. Some scholars have attempted to mine the play for autobiography, drawing parallels between the protagonist’s relationship with Nellie and O’Neill’s own relationship with wife Kathleen Jenkins, whom he rejected along with their child (Dowling 25). Abortion takes place one afternoon in the dorm room suite of a privileged star athlete at an elite university. Jack Townsend is engaged to the equally privileged Evelyn yet we discover he has been involved with a “townie” girl whom he has impregnated. Nellie, we learn from her brother Joe, has died from the illegal abortion that Jack arranged and that was paid for by Jack’s father. Prior to the revelation of Nellie’s death, Jack and his father have a frank discussion about the circumstances leading up to “the operation,” bringing into stark relief

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the elitist attitudes of father and son. Mr. Townsend asserts, “What I cannot understand is how you happened to get in with this young woman in the first place. You’ll pardon me, Jack, but it seems to me to show a lack of judgment on your part, and — er — good taste.” Jack responds, “(shrugging his shoulders) Such things usually are errors in taste.” Mr. Townsend goes on: “This young woman was hardly of the class you have been accustomed to associate with, I presume” (25). Of course Jack’s dalliance with this poor working girl — this stenographer, was an anomaly in his behavior. Evelyn, who O’Neill takes great pains to describe as “beautiful ... lithe and graceful ... dressed simply but stylishly in white” (16) is the suitable match for Jack. She stands in stark contrast to Nellie. Nellie never appears onstage, which situates her among what Judith Barlow refers to as the “vast number of O’Neill women who remain both faceless and voiceless” (172). Her brother Joe stands in as her proxy. He is so out of place on the campus that when he initially arrives to confront Jack, he is forced to wait outside. O’Neill describes Joe as “slight, stoop-shouldered, narrow-chested [...] with large, feverish black eyes, thin lips, pasty complexion, and the sunken cheeks of a tuberculosis victim” (14). His dark and “shabby” attire also sets him apart from the well-dressed coterie of Jack’s friends and family. Once left alone with Jack, Joe reveals the truth about Nellie’s death and offers a poignant perspective on class relations. He exclaims, “Yuh sneaked out like a coward because yuh thought she wasn’t good enough. Yuh think yuh c’n get away with that stuff and then marry some goil of your own kind, I s’pose, — some goil like I seen yuh come in with tonight” (30). Joe goes on, “I’ve always hated all your kind. Yuh come here to school and yuh think yuh c’n do as yuh please with us town people. Yuh treat us like servants, and what are you, I’d like to know?— a lot of lazy no-good dudes spongin’ on your old men and the goils, our goils, think yuh’re grand!” (30). Nellie, in fact, held on to that feeling up to the moment of her death, refusing to reveal Jack or the doctor’s identities to her brother. Ultimately, however, Joe discovers the truth, threatens the doctor who reveals Jack’s name and gives Joe the money Jack paid for the procedure in order to buy his silence. Although Joe has appeared in Jack’s room with a gun, his intent is not to kill but rather to reveal the truth. For Jack, the threat of revelation is more horrifying. Joe has discovered a means of revenge that will cause the most damage to Jack’s life. Jack exclaims, “My mother and father, my sister, Ev —(bites back the name) This would kill my mother if she knew. They are innocent. Do not revenge yourself on them” (32). Jack offers more money for Joe’s silence, which he refuses: “You want — to pay me —for Nellie!” (32). Following a brief struggle Jack wrests the gun from Joe but then gives it back, imploring him to shoot. Joe refuses and leaves with the intent of reporting Jack to the police. As the victory parade in honor of Jack’s athletic prowess approaches, Jack takes Joe’s discarded gun and shoots himself in the head. The play ends with Evelyn discovering his body and fainting.

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In the introduction to the Lost Plays collection, Lawrence Gellert asserts that with Abortion, “Young O’Neill demonstrates not only his keen perception of life on different social levels, but his full realization of the relationships as well, in terms of diametrically opposed interests and their inherent conflicts” (ii). Evelyn and Nellie (through the proxy of her brother) embody the dichotomy of the haves and the have-nots, the virgin (clad not-so-subtly in white) and the whore. Jack’s father even asks, “Are you sure — you know one’s vanity blinds one in such cases— are you sure, absolutely sure, you were the father of this child which would have been born to her?” (23). The implication is that Nellie is promiscuous and that a woman with a proper background would never behave in such a manner. Or, as Solinger explains, prior to the Depression “In professional journals, at charity agencies, in the courts, and elsewhere, experts described the sexuality of poor women and women of color as hot, rapacious and dangerous, a public menace, and an appropriate target of restraints” (80). In fact, Solinger goes on to claim “the sexual and reproductive misfortunes [of poor and working class women] were used in public to warn all women about the dangers of breaking the rules, and also as a form of instruction about the differences between classes in the United States” (83). Unfortunately, the melodramatic conclusion of Abortion does not allow for a nuanced critique of these elitist assumptions regarding working class women’s sexualities. Instead, as Margaret Loftus Ranald asserts, the final scene “arous[es] sympathy for the young man’s blighted promise, rather than for the ‘townie’ girl” (“Early” 54). Sidney Kingsley’s Men in White bears many similarities to O’Neill’s oneact. The pairing of the good girl and the bad girl is seen in the roles of the privileged fiancée Laura Hudson and the young student nurse Barbara. Dr. Ferguson’s sexual encounter with Barbara is merely a brief detour from his engagement to Laura. Barbara, not surprisingly, also ultimately dies. The overall focus of the play, however, as with Abortion, is on the repercussions on Ferguson’s life, rather than the victim of the botched illegal abortion. Men in White was remarkably different than Abortion in that it received a high profile production by the Group Theatre in 1933. Harold Clurman describes Men in White as a turning point for the Group in his book The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties (128). Men in White was the first financial and critical success for the Group. It ran for 367 performances in New York and also saw productions throughout the U.S., London, and Budapest. Featuring direction by Lee Strasburg and scenic design by Mordecai Gorelick, Men in White garnered critical acclaim and eventually even won the Pulitzer Prize for Kingsley. The Pulitzer competition that year was rife with controversy as the members of the Drama jury “voted unanimously for Maxwell Anderson’s ‘Mary of Scotland,’ produced by the Theatre Guild” (“Pulitzer” 1). Yet the jury was overruled by the Advisory Board and awarded the prize to Kingsley. Brooks Atkinson, while critical of the script, praised the production claiming that “After two years of real hardship, the Group Theatre is not only still in existence but still determined to keep the theatre in

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its high estate. This time they have a play worthy of their ambitions, and they have adorned it with the most beguiling acting the town affords” (“Men of Medicine” 24). Written in 1930, Men in White came on the heels of another paradigm shift in medicine which further reinforced class distinctions. In the 1920s, a professor of gynecology explicitly described differences in female sexuality based on class. Middle-class women were known for “self-control, high ideals, and a pure Christian faith” while working class and poor women were compared to a “road house,” a public drinking establishment catering to lowlifes, inviting patrons ‘down into the corruption pit’” (Solinger 84). This period also saw a flurry of abortion trials in which poor and working-class women were forced to answer deeply personal and wholly inappropriate questions about their sexual histories. In the event of death following an illegal abortion, family members were often brought in to address those questions (Solinger 84). As a young student nurse, Barbara Dennin is in a vulnerable position within the world of the hospital. Kingsley’s dramatization makes abundantly clear the strict hierarchies of doctors, interns, and nurses. These hierarchies hinge not only on training and experience but gender as well. Barbara’s youth and inexperience are made evident in her first appearance as she frantically tries to track down Dr. Ferguson for a young child in crisis while also appeasing the child’s panicky parents. When the “impressive” and bombastic Dr. Cunningham appears instead, Barbara is barely able to complete a sentence. This nervous, harried depiction of Barbara is preceded in the previous scene by the arrival of Laura Hudson. She arrives at the hospital to visit her father who is recovering from a heart attack. Kingsley describes her entrance: “Enter Laura, a spirited, chic young lady; lithe, fresh, quick, modern, and a trifle spoiled perhaps, but eminently warm, lovable and human” (116). Laura assumes an easy-going familiarity with stern Dr. Hochberg, her fiancé’s mentor and one of the most well-respected doctors at the hospital. Referring to him as Hocky, she later uses her familiarity and privilege to try and persuade Hochberg to discourage Ferguson from following in his footsteps. When Hochberg will not be persuaded, Laura arranges— through her father’s wealth —for the hospital to offer Ferguson a cushy assignment that would offer better work hours and more time at home. Laura’s inability to understand Ferguson’s chosen path in medicine continually becomes a point of conflict for the two of them. As someone outside the medical profession, there is a limit to her understanding. Presumably it is Barbara’s insider position within the profession that contributes to her assignation with Ferguson. Barbara arrives at Ferguson’s room in the hospital one evening to borrow some notes he has offered her. She discovers him at a point of emotional turmoil over the deaths of some of his patients. After sharing their fears, Ferguson abruptly kisses Barbara and then hurriedly leaves. Barbara is about to leave herself but instead returns “goes to the bed, sits down, takes off her cap, throws it on

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the bed and sits there ... waiting” (142). The assignation between Barbara and Ferguson —or, as Brooks Atkinson described it, “the bedraggled little love affair” (“Medicine Men” X1), results in a pregnancy that Barbara terminates with an illegal abortion. The septic abortion requires an operation which, in a melodramatic twist, Ferguson must help perform. In an even deeper descent into melodrama, Laura is invited into the operating room by Dr. Hochberg to witness her fiancé in action. Prior to the hysterectomy, Ferguson speaks with Mary, another nurse and confidante to Barbara. Mary explains that she had encouraged Barbara to keep her distance from him, not knowing that they had already had sex. Ferguson replies, “I see! I see! That’s why she — I thought after that night ... she’d just realized how crazy we’d both been ... crazy! I thought she at least knew how to take care of herself ” (163). Whether that knowledge of “taking care of herself ” would have come from her medical training or from his assumptions regarding her prior sexual history is unclear. As was the case with Nellie in O’Neill’s Abortion, the working class woman procures an illegal abortion alone. In this case, Barbara must also pay for the procedure herself. The consequences for Barbara are dire. She has no relatives or friends and because of her now public sexual deviance she will lose her job at the hospital. And, says Mary, “She won’t get into any other hospital, either. They’ll see to that” (164). Mary, foreshadowing the end of the play, goes so far as to say that Barbara would actually be better off dead given her dismal economic, social, and professional prospects. Following her hysterectomy, Ferguson makes the selfrighteous decision to marry Barbara. After all, he tells Hochberg, “It’s not as if she were just a tramp” (174), implying that were she a more promiscuous woman, he would have no compunction to help her change her status. Ferguson does not need to carry out this noble gesture because Barbara dies of an embolism, again paralleling Nellie’s bleak fate in Abortion. Although Barbara, unlike Nellie, does appear in the play, she does so very little. We see her in her opening scene, later that evening in Ferguson’s room, and then once more as she is wheeled into the operating room. Even in her final scene, however, the focus is on the “well-oiled machine” of medicine as personified by the doctors and nurses who go through elaborate rituals of sterilization. The emphasis is also on Laura, in the operating room as a medical tourist. As Barbara professes her love for Ferguson, the scene revolves around his reactions and Laura’s ultimate recognition. From that moment on we only hear about Barbara. In her study of the Group Theatre, Wendy Smith notes that for Clurman, Men in White marked something of a compromise. To date, Men in White had represented one of the most stylistically conventional pieces presented by the Group. Although, according to Clurman it was “not distinguished by any particular social comment or definite intellectual value,” it enabled the Group to raise some much needed money (Smith 159). The conventional nature of this

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production may partially account for the ultimately conservative message regarding Barbara’s sexuality. Barbara and Laura are constructed as polar opposites. Laura is afforded privilege and agency, and in the end, may even end up with Ferguson. Barbara loses everything — her job, the “man responsible,” her reproductive capacity, and her life. She also loses any fleeting chance at dignity and privacy once Laura is invited into the operating room to gawk at her on the table. Both O’Neill’s Abortion and Kingsley’s Men in White hearken back to an era of Victorian sexual repression wherein the fallen woman has no place and must therefore die. In effect, Nellie and Barbara were triply damned by virtue of their socio-economic positions. They were not suitable matches for the “man responsible” nor were they, due to their economic disenfranchisement, able to consider continuing their pregnancies. Following their abortions, their already tarnished reputations were destroyed and they would have faced additional hardships as a result of the stigma of their sexual histories. Poor, unsuitable, unchaste yet ultimately noble, Nellie and Barbara no longer fit within their worlds. Thus, their deaths are practically inevitable within these plays. John Van Druten’s I Am a Camera was produced in 1951 and garnered the NY Drama Critics’ Circle award for best new American play (“‘Camera’ is Choice” 28). Set in 1930 Berlin and based on the Berlin Stories of Christopher Isherwood, I Am a Camera was described by Van Druten as a “mood play” (1). Van Druten explained that his “aim was that the whole thing should become one portrait, taken camera-wise, of the life in Berlin in 1930 and of the handful of people selected as its protagonists” (“Mood” 2). Although Camera initially seems to bear similarities to both Abortion and Men in White, it soon diverges from them. There is a similar parallel construction of a woman of privilege — Natalia Landauer and a poverty-stricken bohemian — Sally Bowles. Natalia is the daughter of a local department store owner and Christopher’s only English language student. Natalia and Sally’s arrivals heighten the differences between them. Sally appears with a “page boy’s cap stuck jauntily on one side of her head. Her fingernails are painted emerald green” (15). She almost immediately asks for a drink. Natalia, on the other hand, “is about twenty-two, correctly dressed, very German, formal and decided” (19). Later in the play Sally sums up the differences between them, “You know, Natalia came to see me several times, as though she were doing district visiting and I were a fallen woman or something” (30). We soon discover that Sally is something of a fallen woman. Thrown over by her latest lover, she is pregnant. She refers to herself as a “betrayed whore.” She says bitterly, “Yes, I am. Just that. One who’s fallen in love with a swine, because he’s her type and then got caught. That’s all. Just a whore and a fool” (33). With the help of Christopher and Fraulein Schneider (her landlady), Sally arranges for an illegal abortion. In Germany, as in the United States, a woman could obtain

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a therapeutic abortion legally if she could prove some threat — physical or mental — to her life. In Germany in 1926, reformers were able to widen exceptions to abortion bans. A woman had to prove that a pregnancy presented a “serious threat to maternal health” and this threat also had to be verified by a medical commission (Ferree et al 27). Writing in the U.S. in the early 1950s, Van Druten may have been familiar with similar practices. Beginning in the 1940s, women could sometimes obtain legal therapeutic abortions if they could prove they were a suicide risk (Gold-Steinberg and Stewart 356). These practices which required a woman to involve a psychiatrist and appear in front of a medical board were time-consuming and degrading, marked by the “humiliation and powerlessness of having to convince someone in power of their legitimate need for a legal abortion” (362). While women of all social strata obtained therapeutic abortions in this manner, women of greater economic means were often able to bypass such protocols through money and influence, relying on the loyalty and discretion of family doctors. Fraulein Schneider arranges for Sally to buy a “certificate of health” from a doctor that will claim that she cannot run the risk of childbirth. As Fraulein Schneider leaves to make the arrangements, Sally exclaims, “There’s something so degrading about it, as well as dangerous” (34–5). Sally asks Christopher to come along to pose as the father because “it looks better to have him along” (35). Act I ends as they leave for the doctor’s office. Act II begins ten days later. Sally is “pale and ill” but ultimately suffers no physical repercussions from her abortion. This may be largely due to the fact that she obtains an illegal legal abortion, performed by a legitimate doctor, in a medical setting. We also find out later that Sally is a poor bohemian by choice and that she actually comes from a wealthy, titled English family. This privileged background breaks down the conventional haves/have-nots dichotomy as presented in Abortion and Men in White. Sally’s reputation as a promiscuous woman is intact, however. Reviews and articles (and even image captions!) refer to Sally as a strumpet (Hirsh 121), a trollop (Atkinson “I Am” 122), amoral (Atkinson “At” 38), and a heroine “who’s heart throbs for too many others” (Funke SM 18). Sally’s destiny is uncertain at the end of I Am a Camera. After a bit of turmoil, Sally and Christopher fondly part ways. Seeking an abortion in the era of illegality was rife with challenges and fears. Women faced the difficulty in finding a provider, worried about sexual abuse, injury, sterility, and death, and faced arrest. They also, as Sharon GoldSteinberg and Abigail Stewart assert “waited longer, paid more, and traveled farther than women who had legal abortions” (361). The legalization of abortion in the U.S. with Roe v. Wade in 1973 did not remove all obstacles, however. Jane Martin’s Keely and Du written in the early 1990s, followed a particularly volatile moment in reproductive rights history. Clinics were bombed, providers were murdered, clinic employees and patients were harassed and stalked. Groups such as Operation Rescue utilized ever more extreme tactics in promoting

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their anti-choice agenda. Keely and Du, reminiscent of the melodramatic approaches of Abortion and Men in White, takes place largely in a basement. Kidnapped by the Operation Retrieval anti-choice extremists on her way into a clinic, Keely is handcuffed to a bed where she is expected to stay until she carries the pregnancy to term. This does not happen as Keely manages to abort herself with a discarded wire hanger at the climax of the play. In spite of the extreme theatrics of this scene, the play revolves around the relationship between Keely and her principle captor, Du. In fact, the play ends with Keely visiting Du in prison. Martin specifically denotes the location of the play as a working class neighborhood. As the problematic relationship between Keely and Du evolves, we learn about Keely’s fraught socio-economic circumstances. She works two minimum wage jobs for seventy hours a week, has seventy bucks in the bank, and is a caregiver to her father who is partially paralyzed from a gunshot wound. Keely’s pregnancy was the result of a rape by her abusive ex-husband. She explains over and over why she cannot carry the pregnancy to term. “I can’t raise this baby, Du. I’m so angry and so fucked up, I just can’t do it. I dream how it happened over and over all the time. I’d be angry at the baby, I think so. I’d have hurt the baby sometime and might not even know it, that could happen. If I had a baby, my first one, and I gave it away, I’d just cry all the time, I would. I’m doing this on empty and, if I did that, I would be past empty” (40). What connects Keely to Nellie Murray, Barbara Dennin, and even Sally Bowles, is not just the desperate need to terminate a pregnancy, but the paternalistic systems they are trapped within. When Keely asks Du if she would chain a friend to a bed, Du replies, “On her behalf, I would.” Keely responds, “Funny how there’s always been somebody around who knew just what I needed and made me [...] and they were always men [...] I mean all the time. All the time [...] My dad, oh yeah, it was real clear to him, my brother, he picked it right up, boyfriends, my husband, my boss where I work, they got right in there on my behalf ... on my behalf ” (50). By taking her abortion into her own hands— literally — Keely revolts somewhat against this paternalism that has worked “on her behalf ” for so many years. Yet, in this instance, it is this repressive paternalism of her captors that forces her into an unsafe abortion procedure. In a sense, both Nellie and Barbara also took the termination of their pregnancies into their own hands by seeking out their illegal abortionists. While Jack procures the money for Nellie, he does not accompany her to the procedure. Barbara, on the other hand, is left completely alone to fend for herself, as Ferguson assumes that “she at least knew how to take care of herself ” (163). The contexts surrounding the abortions in these four plays are vastly different. Yet in each case, the economic disenfranchisement of the young women (or perceived disenfranchisement in terms of Sally Bowles) was an urgent factor in their need to terminate their pregnancies. Matters of gender, social status, employment, education, religion (but not, interestingly, race) also contributed

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in some manner to their decisions. The historical moments in which these plays were set or written clearly shaped the depictions of these “fallen women.” The three earlier plays in particular echo the problematic assumptions regarding poor and working class women’s sexuality that Solinger addresses in her study. Even as O’Neill and Kingsley subvert some of the received narratives surrounding the insatiable and, at times, predatory nature of working class sexuality by casting Nellie and Barbara as angelic, noble figures, they ultimately reinscribe the dominant tropes by “punishing” the women for their sexual transgressions through their horrific post-abortion deaths. Sally Bowles’ future is uncertain. However, her survival following her illegal legal abortion may have partly been due to the fact that she was not truly poverty-stricken herself and was instead playing at that role for a brief time. Her perceived promiscuity does not hold the same stigma, perhaps because of the economic safety net she has access to, in spite of her bohemian façade. Although Keely, as a fairly contemporary figure, has greater access to legal and safe abortion than her counterparts in the other three plays, her need to terminate her pregnancy stems primarily from economic hardship, exacerbated by a variety of personal challenges not the least of which are domestic abuse and solitary caregiving for a disabled family member. In some respects, Keely has more options than the other three women. Yet as Martin demonstrates, even in an era of legality, obstacles impede working poor women from terminating pregnancies. In each of these four cases, the privacy of these women was compromised as they sought out various means of abortion. Stripping away privacy also means stripping away their dignity and once again situating their “dangerous” and “uncontrollable” bodies in the public sphere where they need to be contained, controlled, or in the cases of Nellie and Barbara, destroyed. In effect, each of these plays perpetuates— even when attempting to subvert — the troubling myths surrounding the sexuality of economically disenfranchised women. While the circumstances of Keely and Du are extreme and melodramatic, the fears and challenges that Keely faces are not unlike those of the thousands of working poor women who obtain abortions in the twenty-first century. Privacy, in regards to reproductive health, has shifted over the course of the twentieth century. Solinger asserts that “in the late twentieth century, many middle-class women felt secure that Roe v. Wade and other public policy developments defined their ‘right of privacy’ to make reproductive decisions for themselves. Yet many late twentieth century public policies have had profound impacts on the ‘private’ reproductive decisions of poor and other resourceless women” (16). Lack of public funding for abortions and reproductive counseling services, mandatory waiting periods, consent and notification laws, and the staggering scarcity of providers are just some of the challenges that impact working class women especially. While notions of reproductive privacy have shifted over time — as evidenced by these four plays— real privacy remains the purview of the privileged.

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WORKS CITED “Pulitzer Awards Made for 1933; Juries Overruled on Two Choices.” New York Times (8 May 1934). Atkinson, Brooks, “At the Theatre,” New York Times (29 Nov. 1951). _____, “‘I am a Camera’: Julie Harris in a Play John van Druten Has Made from Isherwood’s Stories,” New York Times (9 Dec. 1951). _____, “Medicine Men,” New York Times (1 Oct. 1933). _____, “Men of Medicine in a Group Theatre Drama —‘Kultur’ of Modern Germany,” New York Times. 27 Sep. 1933: 24. Print. Barlow, Judith E., “O’Neill’s Female Characters.” Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill. Edited by Michael Manheim. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1998. “‘Camera’ is Choice of Drama Critics,” New York Times (9 Apr. 1952). Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties. New York: Da Capo Press, 1975. Dowling, Robert M. Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Vol. I. New York: Facts on File, 2009. Ferree, Myra Marx, William Anthony Gamson, Jürgen Gerhards, and Dieter Rucht. Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public Sphere in Germany and the United States. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Floyd, Virginia. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill: A New Assessment. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1985. Funke, Lewis, “Boy Meets Girl This Season,” New York Times (13 Jan. 1952). Gellert, Lawrence, “Introduction,” in Lost Plays of Eugene O’Neill. Edited by Lawrence Gellert. New York: The Citadel Press, 1963. Gold-Steinberg, Sharon and Stewart, Abigail J., “Psychologies of Abortion: Implications of a Changing Context,” Abortion Wars: A Half Century of Struggle, 1950 –2000. Edited by Rickie Solinger. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. Hirschfeld, Al, “Cartoon,” New York Times (25 Nov. 1951). Kingsley, Sidney. Men in White. Three Plays About Doctors. Edited by Joseph Mersand. New York: Washington Square Press, 1961. Martin, Jane. Keely and Du. New York: Samuel French, 1993. O’Neill, Eugene. Abortion. Lost Plays of Eugene O’Neill. Edited by Lawrence Gellert. New York: The Citadel Press, 1963. Ranald, Margaret Loftus. The Eugene O’Neill Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984. _____, “From Trial to Triumph: the Early Plays,” in Cambridge Companion to Eugene O’Neill. Ed. Michael Manheim. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990. Solinger, Rickie. Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Van Druten, John. I Am a Camera. New York: Dramatists Play Service, Inc., 1983. _____, “Mood of the Moment,” New York Times (25 Nov. 1951).

Peter Weiss’s The Investigation The Marxist View of the Holocaust GENE A. PLUNKA

Swedish playwright Peter Weiss made his Marxist message of primary importance in responding to the Holocaust. Weiss was a strict disciple of Bertolt Brecht, the most influential Marxist playwright/theoretician of the twentieth century, and he modeled his Holocaust drama, The Investigation, upon Brecht’s Marxist vision. Weiss uncompromisingly rails against those “socioeconomic systems” that led to the German exploitation of Jews, which supposedly eventually resulted in the genocide of the Holocaust. This essay argues that Weiss’s Marxist vision of the Holocaust is insufficient to explain Nazi genocide. Peter Weiss’s father was a Slovak Jew who converted to Protestantism when he married a German Christian. Peter grew up in Nowawes (Potsdam today), Bremen, and Berlin, but because his father was originally from Czechoslovakia and was not a German citizen, he was not allowed to salute Hitler in school. Although Weiss was baptized and, according to Jewish custom, would not be considered Jewish because his mother was Protestant ( Jewishness defined as matrilineal), Nazi law designated him as non–Aryan. Weiss admitted, “I never particularly thought of myself as a Jew. I was simply a Berliner and a German” (Clausen 128). To avoid Nazi persecution, the family emigrated to England in 1935, moved to the Czech town of Warnsdorf in 1936 (where Weiss learned for the first time that his father was Jewish), and after a brief sojourn in Switzerland, Peter rejoined his family in Sweden in January 1939. In exile from Germany, Weiss became a Swedish citizen, began writing in Swedish, and tried to establish himself as a painter, exhibiting his works in Stockholm. In his book on Weiss, Robert Cohen discusses Weiss’s alienation in exile: “Sweden, spared from war because of its strong anticommunism and its tolerant attitude toward Nazi Germany, showed little sympathy for emigrants, especially Jewish emigrants” (Understanding 14). During his exile in Sweden, Weiss’s intimate friend from his years in Czechoslovakia, Lucie Weisberger, perished in Theresienstadt after Weiss’s attempt at rescue by offering to marry her failed. Weiss, the seemingly eternal emigrant and wandering Jew who had escaped death while others died in the concentration camps, began to question his own identity. 195

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In March 1964, Weiss attended the Auschwitz War Crimes Trial held in Frankfurt am Main from 20 December 1963 to 20 August 1965, in which twentytwo defendants responsible for the operation of the extermination camp were being tried. During the court proceedings, Weiss read Bernd Naumann’s reports on the trial published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In the June 1965 issue of Kursbuch, Weiss published “Frankfurter Auszüge” (“Frankfurt Excerpts”), a transcribed fragment written as an account of the trial. On 13 December 1964, Weiss visited Auschwitz and wrote about the experience in an essay titled “Meine Ortschaft” (“My Place”). Weiss, feeling guilty about his inability to save Weisberger from death (Weiss, Notizbücher 306), wanted to examine the conditions that others like her had to endure at the hands of the Nazis. Moreover, as Jürgen E. Schlunk astutely observes, Weiss’s “special attraction of Auschwitz lies in the notion that there he might find an answer to his own identity” (27). After touring Auschwitz, Weiss wrote, “It is a place for which I was destined but which I managed to avoid. I have no relation to it, except that my name was on the lists of the people who were supposed to be sent there for ever” (Weiss, “My Place” 20). The Auschwitz trials were somewhat impersonal to Weiss; by visiting the extermination camp, Weiss attempted to identify more closely with the victims— one of which could have been him. After viewing firsthand the extent and capability of human barbarism, Weiss became intrigued by “an investigation” of why such atrocity could occur. Robert Holub sums up Weiss’s motives to turn what he learned upon visiting Auschwitz into a play: “He left with a debt to those who perished to understand their deaths and to make their sufferings known to a broad public” (730). Weiss returned to Frankfurt in early 1965 to attend the trial again and then, after a year of studying court transcripts, records, speeches, and interviews, attempted to present the facts of the trial as “documentary theater.” Weiss’s Die Ermittlung. Oratorium in 11 Gesängen (The Investigation: Oratorio in 11 Cantos), originally titled Anus Mundi in draft form, premiered in East and West Berlin and several other German cities on 19 October 1965. Seventeen major German theaters staged Die Ermittlung in 1965; the play was soon mounted in over thirty European cities (For information about the German productions in 1965, see Carmichael 30 –31 and Wiegenstein 33 –35.). Erwin Piscator directed the West Berlin production at the Freie Volksbühne, which featured the witnesses rising from an audience that was made to feel as if they were part of the courtroom proceedings; Piscator’s desired effect was to bring documentary theater directly to the masses (For more information on Piscator’s production, see Innes 172–173). Several of the theaters, such as those in Cologne and Munich, considered the play to be unwieldy and chose to recite it — albeit unsuccessfully. A week after the premieres, a few German radio stations broadcast the play without realizing that its theatrical effectiveness would be lost on the radio airwaves. Early notable productions of the play included Peter Brook’s staging at the Aldwych Theatre in London after a public midnight reading by

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the Royal Shakespeare Company in late 1965; Peter Palitsch’s 1965 Stuttgart version, the only West German variation that did not delete Weiss’s references to the then-present capitalist government that followed the Adenauer administration yet was controversial because of its use of actors cast interchangeably in the roles of the accused and the witnesses; and Ingmar Bergman’s eerie direction at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theater in February 1966 in which the audience, sitting in glaringly bright spotlights, was made to feel that it, too, was on trial. A film version of the play was directed by Peter Schulze-Rohr in 1965 as well. The most controversial rendition of the play was Thomas SchulteMichaels’s 1980 West Berlin production in which the setting was a sleazy nightclub where those on “trial” were cross-examined as if they were part of a television quiz show in which Jews, Nazis, and West Germans were equally vilified. The Investigation has been consistently popular worldwide during the last thirty-five years of the twentieth century, with productions in New York, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Montevido, and Tel Aviv. During the Auschwitz trial in 1965, Weiss published two essays about Dante and the Divina Commedia: “Vorübung zum dreiteiligen Drama divina commedia” and “Gespräch über Dante.” In his notebooks, Weiss consistently compared himself to Dante: both were Jewish, driven into exile from their native homelands, persecuted as victims, ill most of their lives, and emotionally attached to a dead woman (Beatrice for Dante and Weisberger for Weiss) (Garloff 86). In the warped world of Auschwitz, Weiss inverts Dante’s structure of the Divina Commedia. The Inferno of Dante’s world, strangely enough for Weiss, now becomes the managed world of capitalism and technology of postwar Germany, where war criminals are rewarded, rather than punished, for their crimes. Paradiso is deserted, empty — the world of the victims, the surviving “dead” of Auschwitz who await their liberation, living in eternity with the disaster through which they previously suffered. Purgatorio is the region of doubt, wavering, and eternal conflict with regard to which side to be on, thus offering the possibility of change.11 The structure of the play is consistent with the Marxist dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis; in other words, after the Inferno and Paradiso, in which the victims struggle with their executioners, the synthesis (Purgatorio) lies in the Marxist concept of change that is possible only through a socialist regime (A. V. Subiotto argues that the dialectic revolves around the structure of entrance, descent, and ascent, derived from the topography of Auschwitz. Weiss, however, does not use these terms. See Subiotto 74). Dante’s Divine Comedy is structured into thirty-three cantos that form the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, thus bringing the text to 100 songs (Actually, the Divine Comedy contains thirty-four cantos in the Inferno. Weiss eliminated one canto to create balance in the text). Weiss followed Dante’s model in The Investigation, which consists of eleven songs or cantos that correspond to eleven stations on a route of horror that follows the deportees on the ramp to their deaths in the crematoria; each song is divided into three parts, matching

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one-third of Dante’s overall structural output and corresponding to one section of the Commedia. Dante’s trek through the nine circles of hell eventually led to the ice that froze Lucifer; Weiss’s trek through the hell of Auschwitz leads to fire rather than ice. The tripartite structure employed by Dante is fundamental to Weiss’s use of the number 3. Weiss condensed testimony of 409 witnesses and 23 defendants at Frankfurt into a 5-hour play whose components were divisible by 3: 3 members of the court, 9 witnesses, and 18 accused (Christopher Innes also notes that the Third Witness “is the key figure who spells out the political significance of the facts.” See Innes 176). Moreover, the subtitle of Weiss’s play, “an oratorio,” corresponds to his designation of Dante’s Divine Comedy as an “oratorium” (Weiss, “Gespräch” 144). The title, The Investigation, represents the content of the play simultaneously depicted in the form of the Auschwitz trial and the search for the causes of how executioners exploit victims; the subtitle refers to a choral work consisting of recitatives, arias, and choruses— the structure of the play represented by judges, witnesses, and accused — in short, a work of art that contrasts with the juridical notion of the main title. Erika Salloch writes, “Thus, Weiss’s choice of the bureaucratic, unemotional sound of the main title, Die Ermittlung, designates the content, and with the elevated tone of the subtitle he refers to the form. They are to be understood as the thesis and antithesis of the play, its dialectic consisting of the relationship between content and form” (2). In short, Weiss essentially employed Dante to provide the form for the play in contrast to the Auschwitz trials, which provided the content, thereby solidifying the Marxist dialectic. Attempting to achieve literal authenticity, Weiss chose documentary theater as the form for The Investigation. In the “Note” that precedes the published text of the play, Weiss stated, “This condensation [of the trial] should contain nothing but facts. Personal experience and confrontations must be steeped in anonymity. Inasmuch as the witnesses in the play lose their names, they become mere speaking tubes” (Weiss, The Investigation ix. All subsequent citations from the play are from this edition and are included within parentheses in the text). According to Weiss, documentary theater is reportage, a means of adopting authentic material and presenting it on stage without any invention by the playwright. Weiss was uninterested in ascribing guilt to individuals since his goal was to indict the system that exploits them. In an interview conducted in 1968, Weiss stated that documentary theater flattens human character because “the point is not to depict individual conflicts, but patterns of socio-economic behavior” (Weiss, “Notes” 298). Therefore, the nine witnesses are assigned mere numbers to represent the hundreds who testified during the trial, whereas the eighteen accused retain individuality because they were named in the proceedings. Weiss focused on the original courtroom testimony, which he, at times, reproduced verbatim but also condensed and reconfigured without adding material of his own, although he did alter the sequence of court speeches. Rather than simulating closure, which was obviously achieved during the Frankfurt

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trial, Weiss’s play leaves us instead with only documented facts, for he wants the audience to think about the political system that is under indictment rather than about the guilt of individuals. Although the testimony in Frankfurt was often quite emotional, Weiss insists on the facts being sanitized of empathy so the audience can concentrate on thinking about the dialectic rather than being affected by feelings or sentiments. Obviously, individuals make history, yet Weiss prefers to view history as a continuum of political and economic movements. Weiss infers, “My plays do not have conventional lead roles. The lead roles are played by history and ideas” (Clausen 28). By writing documentary drama, Weiss, then, fashions himself to be a scientist objectively reporting events as they occurred during the Auschwitz trial. However, critics such as Hedy Ehrlich tend to view Weiss’s intentions as less than scientific: “He thus pretends to be merely a reporter of facts, a kind of impersonal mouthpiece, while in reality he distorts these facts by taking them out of context, by rearranging the testimony in an order that suits his thesis, and by stripping the trial of its emotional impact” (20). To counterbalance the strictly objective, scientific nature of documentary theater, Weiss set the play in free verse, providing an aesthetic poetic element. The irregular free-verse lines of three or four unrhymed and unmetered beats seem foreign to the everyday rhythm of five-beat idiom and instead create a staccato-like, laconic effect that inhibits emotional expression. Often, performances of the play were delivered by actors who functioned as automatons speaking the lines in monotone. Weiss eliminates any punctuation that might reduce the staccato effect and any italics that would provide emotional emphasis during dialogic exchanges. Weiss’s dialogue is essentially slow and flat, with a natural pause at the end of each line, thus inducing the audience to reflect on why Auschwitz occurred. By reducing the sometimes emotional speeches of the original Auschwitz defendants to the level of raw data, Weiss deemphasizes individual suffering and pathos to focus on his political ideology. The virtually toneless language thus is highly impersonal yet factual and objective; Weiss’s goal is to depersonalize the witnesses in order to indict the fascist system behind the individuals. Weiss, baptized and raised as a Christian, considered himself to be nominally Jewish to the extent that his Jewishness merely linked him with the oppressed who were victimized by colonialistic and imperialistic governments. Weiss, however, was a fully committed Marxist whose writings consistently conflated fascism with capitalism. Weiss first began reading Marx in summer 1965 but had come into contact with Marxism earlier through his reading of Brecht’s plays in grade school in Berlin during the early 1930s. When interviewed shortly after the premiere of The Investigation, Weiss admitted to Walter Wager that Brecht greatly impressed him and was a major influence on his work (Wager 197). Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, Weiss’s third wife who shared his life for nearly thirty years, stated that her husband particularly admired Brecht’s precise language, his

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music, his use of alienation effects, and his political frankness: “Peter knew all of Brecht’s work — also Brecht’s political writings, his poems, and of course his songs” (Ellis 150). In fall 1966, approximately one year after the debut of The Investigation in German theaters, Weiss admitted, “Brecht is the one who has helped me most, because he never wrote anything just for the sake of the dramatic event but rather to show how the world is and find out how to change it” (Gray 112). Weiss’s commitment to Brechtian Marxism was codified in “10 Arbeitspunkte eines Autors in der geteilten Welt” (“An Author’s Ten Working Points in the Divided World”), an essay he wrote a few weeks before the premiere of The Investigation. In that article, Weiss blames the fascist state and the capitalist system for Auschwitz, renounces his bourgeois origins, and claims socialism provides the ultimate truth. Weiss, like Brecht, believed that art is ineffective if it does not attempt to change life. In an interview for Encore in 1965, Weiss stated, “I think it’s absolutely necessary to write with the point of trying to influence or to change society” (Alvarez 18). A year later, in an interview for the New York Times, Weiss explained the fundamental tenet of his playwriting: “Every single word I put down and present to the public is political — i.e., aimed at achieving a specific effect” (Clausen 128). Weiss promulgated his desire for revolution to eradicate capitalism and replace it with socialism, inferring that the universal evil of modern society is predicated upon economic conditions that inevitably exploit individuals. Weiss was explicit about his affinity toward socialist regimes: “But I know exactly, as Brecht knew, that this society, the Western bourgeois and capitalistic society, is not a society I like to live in” (Alvarez 18). Weiss adopted Brecht’s concept of alienation effects to create a scientific theater in the format of a debate that would encourage the audience to think about the dialectic, rather than react to characters and plot emotionally. Weiss stated, “I wanted a scientific investigation of the reality of Auschwitz, to show the audience, in the greatest detail, exactly what happened” (Gray 108). Weiss’s documentary theater ignores plot and character in favor of the presentation of facticity. Weiss inundates the audience with statistics and precise dimensions— data that are based upon what could be measured and counted at Auschwitz. Weiss’s main purpose in the meticulous documentation of statistics is to equate the impersonalization of the fascist extermination machinery — a carefully calculated factory of efficiency — to capitalistic bureaucracy. Weiss told Walter Wager in May 1966, “But the extermination of the Jews during the German Nazi regime was so enormous and so well organized that it had a very special aspect, almost in the way of a factory” (Wager 205). The Auschwitz trials work well for Weiss’s ultimate purpose because individuals in the extermination camps were described as being treated as objects or mere pawns in a vast fascist machinery; indeed, individual pain and suffering become more anonymous as the statistics increase. Moreover, the constant barrage of data, minutiae, and statistics during the play’s five-hour span makes The Investigation unbearable,

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thus disallowing the worn-out audience to sustain any consistent emotional identification with the victims since the focus inevitably is on factual information (Weiss’s reliance on the statistics and raw data derived from courtroom testimony is fundamentally different than the approach taken by his mentor, Brecht, who preferred to shape the overall play’s dialectic [and dialectics within the various stationen] as parables). Erika Salloch astutely realizes that Weiss’s factual language eschews metaphor since everything is literal, while nothing is “transferred”: “Weiss, by contrast, contracts everything, chisels it to the degree that the listener cannot let his imagination roam but is forced to an exact viewing of the concentrated model” (8). After hours of testimony about shootings, deaths by injections, starvation, gassings, beatings, and tortures, the audience is numbed, totally drained of emotion, inured, and desensitized — pliable automatons for Weiss’s lehrstück. Moreover, Weiss ignores the verdict of the Auschwitz trials, offering the audience no chance for a catharsis in order for the spectators, sanitized of all possible purging of their emotions, to focus on an objective assessment of the reasons individuals exploit others. Weiss, following Brecht’s intentions, reduced the audience’s emotional empathy for characters to have them concentrate instead on rational thought. Although the deeds of individuals at Auschwitz were obviously on trial in Frankfurt, Weiss instead chose to universalize the atrocities as phases in a historical continuum. Thus, although The Investigation is obviously based on the Auschwitz trials and the names of the defendants were adjutants of Auschwitz and no other extermination camp, the setting of the atrocities is not mentioned. Moreover, although we recognize that the majority of those murdered in the extermination camp were Jews, the word “Jew” is not mentioned in the play; the executioners were Nazis, but the word “German” also goes unmentioned. The implications are that an Auschwitz could occur anytime during history, any fascist system could produce such executioners, and any similar socioeconomic system could exploit any race of people, whether they are Jews or not.22 In universalizing the play, Weiss eliminated the sometimes highly emotional testimony given in Frankfurt and reduced the witnesses to anonymous and virtually identity-less “speaking tubes.” Weiss’s treatment is based on objective courtroom testimony in which the statements of witnesses, the interrogations by the court, and the responses by the defendants are factual opinions that do not arouse our emotions. The danger inherent in the play, then, is, as Robert Skloot notes, the idea of subordinating Jewish suffering to a more universal statement about political ideology: “Weiss’s indictment of the capitalist system of the West for having produced Auschwitz, besides being dubious in the extreme, has produced a stage play of remarkably callous proportions, perhaps an ironic monument to the Marxist system he prefers” (105).33 Furthermore, as Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi infers, if Weiss had restored specific names to the witnesses, the effect would have been to give personality to them as well, thus creating audience empathy and therefore tainting his plea for scientific detachment (39).

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Weiss uses Brecht’s concept of distancing to prevent the audience from emotionally identifying with the victims of Auschwitz. In the “Note” that precedes the play, Weiss laments the impossibility of staging Auschwitz (ix), or, as he stated to Paul Gray, “having people ‘act’ the concentration camp” (Gray 110). Instead, the Brechtian concept of having events narrated44 allows Weiss the opportunity to distance the audience from the horrible reality of Auschwitz and focus instead on how l’univers concentrationnaire could possibly ferment. Weiss was talented enough as a playwright to represent Auschwitz on stage; the idea of not being able to depict the extermination camps realistically provides Weiss with an excuse to set the play in a courtroom where events are narrated, thus creating the distance that precludes emotional identification with the characters on stage. Since there is no set by means of props or decoration, we therefore never see Auschwitz and thus concomitantly are removed from the actual place of horror. Robert Cohen’s comment on the play is insightful: “The Investigation is not a historical drama about Auschwitz, but rather a play about the Frankfurt trial” (“On March 13” 724). By distancing the audience from Auschwitz and by numbing the spectators with hours of narrated statistics about the horrors of the camp, Weiss focuses on the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust and forces us to “investigate” rationally whether the event could occur again in capitalistic postwar German society. The Investigation is virtually devoid of stage directions, as well as emotional reactions from witnesses and defendants. The one stage direction and the sole emotion that is consistently portrayed on stage is laughter from the defendants. In essence, the laughter serves as the antithesis to the thesis of the accused (criminal defense), thus forcing the audience to make its own conclusions (synthesis) about the dialectic. The laughter of the defendants can only lead the audience to the idea that the system that produces such callousness is corrupt. Moreover, laughter is carefully choreographed to correspond to Weiss’s experiment with the form of the play. Hatja Garloff notes that Weiss’s emphasis on laughter as the only emotion represented in the play “recalls the musical form of an oratorio (which is in the subtitle of Die Ermittlung), functioning as the chorus, while the individual, whiny vindications correspond to the arias” (90). Weiss equates victims with executioners, thus removing individual responsibility from demonic activity in Auschwitz while concomitantly blaming the fascist system for the Holocaust. During his early years in the Gymnasium, Weiss was forbidden to give the Nazi salute because his family were Czech citizens; his classmates went on to become Nazis. As a Jew, Weiss could never be a Nazi, a perpetrator; instead, he could easily have been a victim destined for Auschwitz. Since Weiss did not know of his Jewish heritage until his exile, he later understood that his will had nothing to do with his actions; he simply could not have joined the National Socialist Party as his colleagues did. If his father had not been Jewish, Weiss, like his classmates who relished the attraction of Nazi power, may well have been one of the executioners. In his interview for

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the New York Times, Weiss admitted, “All my friends were ordinary, good Germans, and most of them were killed or wounded in the war. Some may even have obeyed orders at Auschwitz. Might I not, too?” (Clausen 128). Although Weiss’s fiction and his outspoken views expressed in interviews suggest that he identifies with the oppressed, including Jews, South African blacks, the Vietnamese, and other victims of colonialism, racism, and imperialism, his notion of the interchangeability of victims and executioners downplays individual responsibility and puts the onus on the fascist and capitalistic systems that inherently seek to exploit the weak and disenfranchised. Witness 3 echoes Weiss’s own sentiments: “Many of those who were destined/to play the part of prisoners/had grown up with the same ideas/the same way of looking at things/as those /who found themselves acting as guards” (107); to phrase it more bluntly, Witness 3 adds, “And if they had not been designated/prisoners/they could equally well have been guards” (107–108). Since Witness 3 is the most perceptive person in the play and one whose views were not part of the original Auschwitz trials testimony, these words, conspicuously added by Weiss, obviously convey not only the notion that individuals had no control over their actions, but also that the accused are no more guilty than the victims. The fact that no indictment is made at the end of the play suggests that the individuals on trial cannot be guilty of crimes committed by a socioeconomic system. The Song of the Death of Lili Tofler and the Song of SS Corporal Stark are the only cantos in The Investigation dramatizing the plight of individuals— one a victim and the other an executioner. Their positions in the play as cantos 5 and 6, respectively, out of the total 11, suggest not only their centrality but also intimate the significance of the conflation of victim and executioner in Weiss’s mind. Lili Tofler was a young typist who smuggled a letter to one of her fellow prisoners. Although Boger pressed a pistol to her head during a four-day torture period, she refused to reveal the name of the prisoner receiving the letter. Olaf Berwald argues that in the Lili Tofler episode, “The story of the courage and death of an individual Shoah victim emerges” (24). On the contrary, Lili Tofler’s death is a fait accompli that removes individual choice as an option. Tofler violated the rules of the lager (camp), which meant automatic death; the fact that she refused to name her friend and was thus tortured by Boger changed nothing, for she was shot anyway. SS Corporal Stark, only twenty years old, is, in contrast to victim Lili Tofler, the classic executioner. Stark is enamored with the poetry of Goethe, proud that he passed his exams at the Gymnasium in 1942, studied law, and became an instructor in an agricultural school after the War. His humanistic education plays no role whatsoever in preventing him from committing atrocities in Auschwitz. Instead of being able to think and act for himself, Stark’s individuality is subordinated to fascist ideology. Stark abrogates any notion of individual responsibility for his crimes, characterizing the executions thusly, “But it was an order/It was my duty as a soldier” (152). Weiss indicates that the system thus crushes the staunchest humanists, reducing individuals to

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ciphers. Stark candidly admits, “There were others around/to do our thinking for us” (158). The tales of Lilly Tofler and Corporal Stark suggest that the exploitative nature of the fascist system, and not individual responsibility, determined their roles as victims or executioners. Although the evidence against the accused is overwhelming, not one of them assumes individual responsibility for his actions. In an interview with Richard F. Shepard, Weiss discussed the refusal of the defendants to assume guilt: “I used their names, not to keep on trying them, but as symbols for the average, ordinary Germans who helped the machinery run” (A30). The defendants feel exonerated because they were part of the normalcy of a socioeconomic system that prospered in Germany at the expense of the victims. The play explores how individuals had no consciousness of their guilt because of the extreme abuse of power in a fascist government that is given ubiquitous approbation by its citizens— a system that alienated such people from their own actions. Weiss explained why the onus is on the fascist government rather than on the responsibility of the individual: “Why? Because their acts flowed inevitably from the nature of the society in which they lived” (Clausen 132). For the victims, the destruction of their humanity became “normal” in Auschwitz. The Fifth Witness confides, “It was normal/ that everything had been stolen from us/It was normal/ that we stole too/Dirt sores and diseases/were what was normal/ It was normal/that all around us people were dying” (39–40). Equating victims with executioners, Weiss portrays the defendants as losing their humanity as well. Robert Cohen writes, “The system, designed to destroy any humanity in the inmates, also destroyed the humanity of the camp personnel” (Understanding 92). Weiss goes to great lengths to portray the defendants as average citizens rather than as demons, sadists, deviants, or larger-than-life jackbooted perverts. Instead, Weiss focuses on the effective national brainwashing of the fascists and their ability to coerce human beings to surrender their humanity to conditioned thinking and total obedience to a system that has its own intrinsic rewards. Thus, although the witnesses argue that individuals could make choices, the defendants, politically conditioned, refuse to accept responsibility for the atrocities committed and instead make excuses for their actions: they were merely following orders (17, 152, 156, 193, 221, 272), never personally took part in the selections, hangings, or shootings (12, 26, 97, 163, 230), could not understand the accusations (19), empathized with the inmates (19, 25, 215), practiced passive resistance (27), could not recall any such brutalities (33, 49), had no authority to abuse prisoners (51, 91, 188), were strict but only did their jobs (52), conducted themselves the way everyone else did in the camp (54), maintained that witnesses lied about the atrocities (75), took severe measures merely against traitors and other enemies of the state (79), had responsibilities to one’s own family (95), never heard any complaints from the prisoners (99), were being confused with someone else (174), and murdered only because patients were incurable and endangered the health of the entire camp (191). The witnesses were merely numbers in the

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extermination camp, personified by the tattooed numbers etched into bodies that were removed of all personal possessions; the accused, although they have individual names, are given numbers by Weiss, for they are anonymous in their conditioned responses. Weiss wants to stress how the fascist system entices both victims and executioners into the normalcy of the quotidian. Weiss wrote The Investigation not to castigate National Socialism for its racial ideology that precipitated the Holocaust, but to indict a capitalist system that alienated individuals from their own actions; in that sense, the play “investigates” the for-profit industrialized venture of Auschwitz. Weiss noted, “A large part of it [the play] deals with the role of German big industry in exterminating the Jews. I want to brand Capitalism which even benefited from the experiments of the gas chambers” (Hilton 47). As Weiss traces the path of atrocities from the ramp to the crematoria, Auschwitz is depicted as a factory of destruction, a political and economic system of exploitation. Inmates were systematically relieved of their personal possessions, including jewelry and money. Gold was extracted from the teeth of the prisoners. Flesh carved from corpses was used in scientific experiments, while bones were pulverized into soap. Meanwhile, Weiss indicates that the Nazis, in the spirit of the commodification of entrepreneurship, kept careful inventories, including precise records of assets and production timetables; the only difference between the factory of Auschwitz and any other socioeconomic system was the raw material used to manufacture the product: human corpses. In short, according to Weiss, under the fascist system of exploitation, racial oppression served economic purposes. Auschwitz is not an aberration for Weiss, since any fascist or capitalist system based on consumption and production could produce similar results. Thus, as Otto F. Best suggests, Weiss prefers to place the blame not so much on the regime that ran Auschwitz as a factory but instead on the society that produced such a system of exploitation (90). Weiss corroborates what Best has concluded, clarifying the purpose of his “investigation”: “It is capitalism, indeed the whole Western way of life, that is on trial” (Clausen 134). At Birkenau, adjacent to Auschwitz, factories were created to work Jews to death systematically. In the play, the First Witness specifies the names of these industries: “They were branch plants/of I-G Farben/Krupp and Siemens” (4). Moreover, the Degesch Company is specifically earmarked for supplying the gas, while Topf und Söhne are cited for building the crematoria, thus further linking private enterprise with the death factory. The symbiotic relationship between the Buna factories and the SS who ran Auschwitz made for unscrupulous profiteering in the name of capitalist industrialization. The Prosecuting Attorney, cross-examining the Second Witness, who was responsible for assigning prisoners to the factories, charges that huge profits were made by exploiting the deportees: “By the limitless grinding down of people/you/as well as the other directors/of the large firms involved/made profits/that annually amounted to billions” (131–132).55 The implication is that theft, brutality, torture, and murder

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were essentially excellent business propositions— and perhaps nothing out of the norm in any society based on accumulation of capital.66 During the Auschwitz trials, testimony frequently focused on the Adenauer and Walter Ulbricht administrations as a continuation of the frame of mind imposed by National Socialism. By keeping in tune with the spirit of factually oriented documentary theater, Weiss uses the trial testimony as a pretext for his attack on the Federal Republic of Germany circa 1965. After the War, I-G Farben, Krupp, and Siemens— the industries that profited during the Shoah — remained financially prosperous. The Prosecuting Attorney admits that the firms that did business with the fascists made billions and remain successful in capitalist Germany after the War: “Let us once more bring to mind/that the successors to those same concerns/have ended up today in magnificent condition/and that they are now in the midst of/as they say/a new phase of expansion” (132). Moreover, individuals who exploited victims during the fascist reign that produced Auschwitz were living in comfort and luxury during the postwar capitalist regime. The First Witness, responsible for delivering “freight” to Auschwitz via cattle cars, is now in a high executive position as manager of the government railroads. The notorious Dr. Kaduk, feared for his ruthless beatings of inmates and for his stoical selections of prisoners for gassing, is now a hospital attendant beloved by his patients. The Second Witness, in charge of guards consigned to shooting prisoners who attempted to escape from the lager, is now the director of an insurance company. Knittel, a high school teacher who offered classes and entertainment for the SS officers in Auschwitz, has now been promoted to a principal. The First Witness, who worked prisoners to death as part of the war production effort of I-G Farben, currently holds a high advisory position in the government. Dr. Capesius, who operated the camp dispensary and was responsible for managing the use of the poison gas Cyklon B and the phenol used to inject prisoners in the heart, kept enough confiscated jewelry and extracted gold fillings to open his own pharmacy and beauty parlor after the War. A former chairman of the board of one of the Buna industries received a postwar pension that provided him with the luxury of collecting porcelain, paintings, and engravings while living in a luxurious castle. Weiss thus demonstrates how the exploitative nature of fascism made it easy for such criminals to transition into the capitalist society of the Federal Republic of Germany. The fascist system that created Auschwitz is not unique for Weiss; instead, it is as frighteningly “normal” as what one would find in any modern industrialized capitalistic system. The irony, then, is that the play demonstrates that the capitalistfascist systems exploit victims but allow mass murderers to flourish in splendor without reproach. Thus, as Catharine Hughes has perceptively realized, Weiss is concerned with the culpability of a system that, in the future, could again produce the same inhumanity in a “far more efficient guise” (142). Weiss’s premise that the victims and executioners are synonymous in a system that demands both for the purpose of exploitation has been challenged

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by Holocaust scholars. Primo Levi blatantly distinguishes between the executioners, who must be execrated, and the victims, who deserve help and pity: “We, the survivors, do not want confusions, blurs, morbidity, indulgences. The oppressor remains what he is, and so does the victim: they are not interchangeable, they do not overlap” (131). Moreover, Weiss’s argument further breaks down when one realizes that the Jews were systematically worked to death in concentration camps, not for profit, but because the Nazis did not consider them to be part of the master race and thus were expendable as humans without any utilitarian value. In his analysis of The Investigation, Alvin H. Rosenfeld wrote, “Far from exposing a profit motive for Auschwitz, the evidence all points the other way: to gratuitous waste and needless elimination of human resources. The camps, far from existing for the primary purpose of exploiting slave labor for cheap production, murdered their slaves en masse and produced little more than corpses” (157). As a matter of fact, matters of economy did not dictate the fate of those interned in concentration camps; instead, labor without any productive purpose was the norm for those marked for genocide. Historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has done an extensive study on how the Nazis worked Jews to death in what appears to be an economically self-injurious manner and concludes the following: If the Germans had used all the Jews as slaves, which they could easily have done, then they would have extracted great economic profit from them. But they did not do so. They were like slave masters who, driven by frenzied delusions, murdered most of their slaves and treated the small percentage whom they did put to work so recklessly and cruelly that they crippled the slaves’ capacity for work [427].

If profit had been the primary reason for using Jewish labor, the SS would have fed and clothed these individuals properly so as to get the maximum productivity out of them. Moreover, the Nazis murdered indigent Jews as well as wealthy ones; the impoverished Jews were executed certainly not because they were exploited (since there was little to exploit) but because they were Jews. Finally, Weiss’s intention to glorify the virtues of socialism through a critique of fascism and capitalism makes for a spurious argument. Weiss admits, “The great thing about Socialism is its promise of complete human freedom once economic exploitation and class barriers have been eliminated” (Clausen 130). Weiss conveniently chooses to ignore Jewish genocide during Stalin’s socialist regime. Weiss has certainly written a propagandist play, yet it is not without merit as effective theater of the Holocaust. During the play’s early performances in West Germany, audiences sat mesmerized and exhausted before filing out of the theater, stunned but without applauding. The play was a profound educational experience, a no-holds-barred exposé of the carefully calculated bureaucracy of Nazi genocide. Roger Ellis claimed that the play has been successful despite the fact that audiences may have misunderstood Weiss’s Marxist intentions: “It proved more important as a tragic oratorio on the horrors of Nazism

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than as a significant critique of Western capitalism” (53). Even today, when the play no longer has the same shock value that it had in 1965 when audiences were unfamiliar with the intricacies of the Holocaust, The Investigation offers a poignant reminder of a unique event that remains incomprehensible.

NOTES 1. Many scholars and theater critics are confused by Weiss’s intentions to model The Investigation on the structure of Dante’s Commedia. For the most accurate analyses of how Weiss structured the play as the antithesis to Dante’s model, see Best 93 –94 and Salloch 1–12. Weiss himself explains Inferno, Paradiso, and Purgatorio in an interview he gave to the New York Times shortly after Die Ermittlung premiered in Germany. See Alvarez, “Peter Weiss,” sec. 2: 3, 14. 2. In his book on Weiss, Olaf Berwald remarks, “Throughout his life, Weiss maintained an ambivalent relationship to his Jewish heritage. Not only did he refuse to see himself as a victim, but he rejected the importance of any national or ethnic categories for his personal identity.” See Berwald 6. 3. Susan E. Cernyak-Spatz disagrees with Skloot, arguing that Weiss’s exclusion of the word “Jew” from the play “can be seen as an extreme attempt at emotional objectivity, since Weiss himself is a German Jew.” See Cernyak-Spatz 84. 4. Brecht’s plays did not always match his theoretical concepts. In principle, Brecht preferred a narrator to create emotional distance. For example, in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, the setting is a kolchos of a village in the Caucasus mountains during the time of the Nazi invasion. The singer, Arkadi Cheidze, narrates the tale of The Chalk Circle, which occurs centuries earlier in Grusinia (Transcaucasia). Although the events seen on stage take place in Grusinia, the audience is constantly aware that the setting occurs during World War II because Russian peasants are performing the play, thus using makeshift props to represent the setting, and the acting by the peasants is obviously amateurish. As Brecht noted, amateur acting precludes emotional identification, thus leading the audience to think about the parable. The narrator’s function is essentially show and tell. However, in many of Brecht’s plays, no narrator is present. 5. During the initial staging of the play throughout Germany in 1965, representatives from Krupp, Siemens, and I.G. Farben protested being associated with a system that exterminated labor for profit. When the play was performed in Cologne, which is close to Krupp headquarters in Essen, all references to Krupp were excised from the script. 6. Here, Weiss’s conflation of victim and executioner becomes apropos. Audiences may subliminally associate Jews with capitalists and industrialists— the same values of acquisition shared by the fascists. Thus, the implication is that if Jews had outnumbered Nazis instead of being in the minority, they could easily have been the exploiters. Racial ideology entirely disappears from the Marxist view of the Holocaust.

WORKS CITED Alvarez, A., “Peter Weiss in Conversation,” Encore 12/4 (1965). _____, “Peter Weiss: The Truths That Are Uttered in a Madhouse,” New York Times (26 December 1965). Berwald, Olaf. An Introduction to the Works of Peter Weiss. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003. Best, Otto F. Peter Weiss. Translated by Ursule Molinaro. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1976. Carmichael, Joel, “German Reactions to a New Play About Auschwitz,” American-German Review 32/3 (1966). Cernyak-Spatz, Susan E. German Holocaust Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1985. Clausen, Oliver, “Weiss/Propagandist and Weiss/Playwright,” New York Times Magazine (2 October 1966). Cohen, Robert, “On March 13, in the Middle of Rehearsals for the Premiere of Marat/Sade, Peter Weiss Attends the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial,” in Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes, eds. Yale

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Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096 –1996. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1997. _____. Understanding Peter Weiss. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. Ehrlich, Hedy, “The Investigation,” Jewish Frontier 30/2 (1966). Ellis, Roger. Peter Weiss in Exile: A Critical Study of His Works. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1987. Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature. Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Garloff, Hatja. Words From Abroad: Trauma and Displacement in Postwar German Jewish Writers. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2005. Goldhagen., Daniel Jonah, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996. Gray, Paul, “A Living World: An Interview With Peter Weiss,” Tulane Drama Review 11/1 (1966). Hilton, Ian. Peter Weiss: A Search for Affinities. London: Oswald Wolff, 1970. Holub, Robert, “1965: The Premiere of Peter Weiss’s The Investigation: Oratorio in Eleven Songs, a Drama Written From the Documentation of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Is Staged,” in Sander L. Gilman and Jack Zipes, eds. Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture, 1096 –1996. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1997. Hughes, Catharine. Plays, Politics, and Polemics. New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1973. Innes, Christopher. Modern German Drama: A Study in Form. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Levi, Primo, “The Memory of Offense,” in Geoffrey H. Hartman, ed. Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986. Rosenfeld, Alvin H. A Double Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature. Bloomington, IN and London: Indiana University Press, 1980. Salloch, Erika, “The Divina Commedia as Model and Anti-Model for The Investigation by Peter Weiss,” Modern Drama 14/1 (1971). Schlunk, Jürgen E., “Auschwitz and Its Function in Peter Weiss’ Search for Identity,” German Studies Review 10/1 (1987). Shepard, Richard F., “Peter Weiss, Visiting Here, Talks About His Auschwitz Trial Play,” New York Times (22 April 1966). Subiotto, A.V., “Dante and the Holocaust: The Cases of Primo Levi and Peter Weiss,” New Comparison 11 (Spring 1991). Wager, Walter, ed. The Playwrights Speak. New York: Delacorte, 1967. Weiss, Peter, “Gespräch über Dante,” Rapporte. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968. _____. The Investigation. Translated by Jon Swan and Ulu Grosbard. New York: Pocket Books, 1966. _____, “My Place,” in Christopher Middleton, translator, and Christopher Middleton, editor. German Writing Today. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1967. _____, “Notes on the Contemporary Theater,” in Joel Agee, translator, and Margaret HerzfeldSander, editor. Essays on German Theater. New York: Continuum, 1985. _____. Notizbücher 1960 –1971. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982. Wiegenstein, Roland H., “Peter Weiss: Die Ermittlung, The Auschwitz Trial on Stage,” AmericanGerman Review 32 (December 1965 –January 1966).

Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls Postmodern Complicity and the Economics of Thatcherism DANIEL KEITH JERNIGAN

First performed in 1982, Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls was written three years after Margaret Thatcher became the first woman elected to serve as Prime Minister of Great Britain. The play’s central figure, Marlene, is explicitly identified as a Thatcheresque character, whose success in climbing the corporate ladder is characterized as a reward for her “pushy” and “ball-breaking” personality. Moreover, in an argument with her sister, Joyce, Marlene describes Margaret Thatcher as “a tough old lady” and defends Thatcher’s economic policies by suggesting that “Monetarism is not stupid” (84). On the basis of such a central character Michelene Wandor expresses concern that while Top Girls does indeed invoke a feminist dynamic, its “fundamental dynamic ... is the bourgeois feminist dynamic, coming through loud and clear and confidently” (172). According to Wandor, this “bourgeois feminist dynamic” is “Not to be recommended” since it is not concerned with class issues and is always defined by men as the norm (136). As it turns out, Wandor is not alone in her assessment; Jane Thomas provides a useful summary of the attitude of many of her feminist critics: Critical readings of Caryl Churchill’s plays as programmed for social advancement along socialist or socialist feminist lines are often unable to account for certain gaps and contradictions in the texts other than as oversights, aberrations or, in some cases, betrayals of the political paradigm. After juggling terms like “bleak,” “ambiguous,” “murky,” “worrying,” and “irony,” Michelene Wandor concludes that Churchill’s plays display “an equivocal attitude to change.” Helene Keyssar draws attention to Churchill’s “tricky political stance” and discusses “the absence of any positive strategy to change the dismal enslavement of women” [160].

This is quite a list of disgruntled academics for a playwright so commonly regarded as one of the leading feminist playwrights on the London stage in the 70’s and 80’s and, as such, this disgruntlement is deserving of critical analysis in itself. 210

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While Churchill’s feminist bona fides have also been championed by numerous critics (including Linda Fitzsimmons, who I discuss below), this essay seeks to understand what it is about Churchill’s work which makes it subject to such widely divergent opinions. To this end, it employs Linda Hutcheon’s theorization of postmodern fiction to argue for a more nuanced understanding of Caryl Churchill’s characterization of Marlene and of the play’s relationship with progressive feminism. Of particular importance in Hutcheon’s theorization of postmodern fiction in The Politics of Postmodernism is her careful acknowledgement that even while postmodern narratives seek to subvert dominant hierarchies, they retain their postmodernity by self-consciously announcing a certain degree of complicity with them: I have argued that postmodern art in other forms is art that is fundamentally paradoxical in its relation to history: it is both critical of and complicitous with that which precedes it. Its relationship with the aesthetic and social past out of which it openly acknowledges it has come is one characterized by irony, though not necessarily disrespect. Postmodernism’s relation to late capitalism, patriarchy, and the other forms of those (now suspect) master narratives is paradoxical: the postmodern does not deny its inevitable implication in them, but it also wants to use that “insider” position to “de-doxify” the “givens” that “go without saying” in those grand systems [115].

According to Hutcheon it is essential that postmodern narratives retain an ironic tone about their limitations; i.e., that they admit that they are, in some sense, complicitous with all those hierarchies that they claim to subvert. Hutcheon’s importance for understanding Churchill’s ironic attitude towards her subject is critical to understanding this issue, especially so for how careful Hutcheon is to acknowledge that even while postmodernism seeks to subvert dominant hierarchies, it also self-consciously announces a certain degree of complicity with them. Indeed, according to Hutcheon no postmodern theory is above such complicity: Recently, the same kind of questions about the complicity that goes hand in hand with the challenges of postmodern art have been asked of postmodern theory. Is the theorizing of Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Foucault, and others not, in a very real sense, entangled in its own de-doxifying logic? Is there not a center to even the most decentered of these theories? What is power to Foucault, writing to Derrida, or class to Marxism? Each of these theoretical perspectives can be argued to be deeply — and knowingly — implicated in that notion of center they attempt to subvert. It is this paradox which makes them postmodern” [13 –14].

Hutcheon employs this realization about the inconsistency implicit in postmodern forms of critique to argue that self-conscious complicity is an essential characteristic of postmodernism generally, including historigraphic metafiction. This essay finds common cause between the historiographic metafiction described by Hutcheon and Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls by arguing that Caryl Churchill is extremely adept at maintaining just such an ironic tone and that her success in doing so is essential to understanding how her work “de-doxifies” the grand capitalist system which has given rise to such figures as Thatcher

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(and to her theatrical alter-ego, Marlene). It also argues that it is Churchill’s commitment to retaining this ironic tone which Wandor and others misidentify as committing her to bourgeois feminism when, rather, she is simply adopting a postmodern stance towards the issues under consideration in her work. For as Hutcheon explains it, responses such as Wandor’s are only to be expected of a play which retains such ironic self-reflection: Postmodern representational practices that refuse to stay neatly within accepted conventions and traditions and that deploy hybrid forms and seemingly mutually exclusive strategies frustrate critical attempts (including this one) to systematize them, to order them with an eye to control and mastery — that is, to totalize [35].

Reading the debate concerning Churchill’s feminism through Hutcheon it becomes apparent that, failing a feminist totalizing take on Churchill, Wandor has offered a reductivist reading instead. Top Girls’ most formally innovative features (and the ones which most explicitly link the play with postmodern fiction) appear in the very first act of the play. Marlene, newly appointed as manager at an employment agency, celebrates her promotion by entertaining a strange mix of historical figures (Isabella Bird, Lady Nijo) and fictional characters (Patient Griselda, of Chaucer’s “The Clerk’s Tale,” and Dull Grett, from a painting by Brueghel); perhaps oddest of all is the appearance of Pope Joan, who is believed by most contemporary historians to be a myth. Hutcheon’s relevance for unpacking the postmodern implications of this meeting quickly becomes apparent: The present and the past, the fictive and the factual: the boundaries may frequently be transgressed in postmodern fiction, but there is never any resolution of the ensuing contradictions [69].

Hutcheon refers to fiction which blurs these boundaries as historiographic metafiction, and her central argument is that such fiction ultimately serves to draw attention to the way in which “the non-fictional is as constructed and as narratively known as is fiction” (73). In turn, this essay argues that raising these same epistemological questions about historigraphic and mimetic norms is the primary focus of Top Girls, and that any feminist implications of the work are secondary. To be sure, Churchill’s choice of these particular characters for Top Girls exhibits just the sort of precision that Hutcheon attributes to historiographic metafiction. That they are all (except, perhaps, for Patient Griselda) women who tried to make a go of it in a man’s world speaks to the metatheatrical tenor of the work and, as such, prepares the audience for the possibility that the play in its entirety is to be viewed ironically. Pope Joan disguised herself as a man to enter the priesthood, and, finally, to become Pope. Lady Nijo left her position as courtesan to the emperor and became an itinerant Buddhist nun. Lady Isabella Bird traveled the world alone in the nineteenth century. Dull Gret led

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a battle charge into Hell. And, finally, Marlene entered into corporate management. Each woman gave up something of their femininity in the exchange, typified most succinctly in the fact that Marlene, in order to succeed, came to exhibit all those same ruthless practices that her male cohorts value as a necessary means to success. Top Girls is a complex work that says much about the ideological behavior modification (i.e., the performances) which women must submit to in order to enter and succeed in the world of men (below we will see that such questions are meant to be asked even of Churchill’s success in the world of men). Given that Top Girls employs historical figures, it is not surprising that a particularly relevant understanding of the way in which Top Girls de-doxifies epistemological and ideological traditions comes in Hutcheon’s discussion of postmodern historical fiction, and of how it rejects the totalizing impulse of traditional historiographical methodologies: Whether it be in historical or fictional representation, the familiar narrative form of beginning, middle, and end implies a structuring process that imparts meaning as well as order. The notion of this “end” suggests both teleology and closure and, of course, both of these are concepts that have come under considerable scrutiny in recent years, in philosophical and literary circles alike [59].

As we will see, there is much about both the structure of the work — and of how it takes a ironic attitude towards historical accuracy — which, despite the certainty with which Churchill’s feminist critics have attacked the play, decries the possibility of closure. Moreover, Churchill ratchets up the scrutiny not only by making plots out of the sorts of sequences which are typical of traditional historiography, but also goes out of her way to make plots out of numerous different types of sequences including those from literary history. More than anything else, it is this collage of characters— and its overt meddling with chronological and ontological norms— which draws attention to the works constructivity and “highlights the areas in which interpretation enters the domain of historiographic representation” (70). As a near analogy to what takes place in Top Girls, consider Hutcheon’s description of Carlos Fuentes’s Terra Nostre, which: [...] deliberately and provocatively violates what is conventionally accepted as true about the events of the past: Elizabeth I gets married; Columbus is a century or so out in his discovery of America. But the facts of the warped history are no more — or less—fictionally constructed than are the overtly fictive and intertextual ones. [...] The realist notion of characters only being able to coexist legitimately if they belong to the same text is clearly challenged here in both historical and fictional terms. The facts of these fictional representations are as true — and false — as the facts of historywriting can be, for they always exist as facts, not events [73 –74].

Similarly, while not set in the past, Top Girls does play fast and loose with the historical record such that “the dramatic realist notion of characters only being able to coexist legitimately if they belong to the same text” is as overtly challenged

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by Churchill’s inclusion of both historical and fictional characters in a nominally realist contemporary setting as realist fiction is challenged by Fuentes. Hutcheon explains the full implications of dissolving such barriers as follows: Historiographic metafiction like this is self-conscious about the paradox of the totalizing yet inevitably partial act of narrative representation. It overtly “de-doxifies” received notions about the process of representing the actual in narrative — be it fictional or historical. It traces the processing of events into facts, exploiting and then undermining the conventions of both novelistic realism and historiographic reference [75].

In this context, the inclusion of Pope Joan becomes an increasingly poignant addition on Churchill’s part. In the Note on Characters for the play, Churchill provides a description: “Pope Joan, disguised as a man, is thought to have been Pope between 854 and 856.” “Thought to have been” is a revealing choice of words given the fact that most contemporary historians take the story of Pope Joan to be a myth with deep roots in an anti–Catholic literary tradition which culminated in the tellingly titled essay of 1675, A Present for a Papist: Or the Life and Death of Pope Joan, Plainly Proving Out of the Printed Copies, and Manscriptes of Popish Writers and Others, That a Woman called JOAN, Was Really POPE of ROME, and Was There Deliver’d of a Bastard Son in the Open Street as She Went in Solemn Procession. As titles go, it is hard to imagine one which more explicitly wears its agenda on its sleeve, making it — and the tradition that it is part and parcel of — ripe material for historigraphic critique. What Churchill gains by including Pope Joan in Top Girls is a character who, for several centuries, was considered by numerous scholars (including a fair number of catholic historians) to have been a real person; and about whom, with the benefit of historical distance and hindsight, historians have now adopted a much more skeptical (and even cynical) understanding of her importance to our historical legacy. Moreover, for a work already playing fast and loose with historical accuracy to include a figure whose very existence is a subject of such controversy, only serves to raise the stakes concerning what the play’s attitude is about traditional epistemological perspectives; i.e., what are we to make of the results of historiographical research generally except that all too often “like fiction, history constructs its object, that events named become facts and thus both do and do not retain their status outside language” (75). Hutcheon’s discussion of Christa Wolf ’s Cassandra—which specifically identifies one of the ways in which history is manufactured to serve the needs of the status quo—provides another compelling analogy to what we find in Top Girls: [W]e are asked to imagine that the usually accepted fact of Paris’s abduction of Helen to Troy might actually have been a fiction created by the Trojan council and the priests. If so, in Cassandra’s words: “I saw how a news report was manufactured, hard forged, polished like a spear” (Wolf 1984: 64) [...] what Wolf offers is the hypothesis that the war thought to have been fought over Helen was really fought over lying pride [75 –76].

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Of course Churchill’s treatment of Pope Joan isn’t nearly as explicit in how it problematizes the way in which consumers of historical information “infer meaning and grant factual status to [...] empirical data” (75). However, researching Pope Joan in 1982 it is more than likely that Churchill would have encountered historical treatments of Pope Joan which take a similar perspective towards her evolution as a historical figure as does Wolf of the various myths surrounding Helen of Troy. In turn, placing Pope Joan in conversation with overtly fictional characters (Patient Griselda, Dull Gret) and real historical figures (Isabella Bird and Lady Nijo) only serves to underscore the artificiality of historigraphic meaning making. As Hutcheon explains it, the way in which historiographic metafiction problematizes traditional epistemological perspectives is further complicated by the fact that in addition to suggesting that historical truths are always and already artificially constructed it simultaneously attempts to employ its formal innovations to put forward metaphorical truths which may well have greater historical validity than the various historical truths they replace and/or negate: The historical archive may verify the existence of Harry Houdini, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Emma Goldman, Stanford White, JP Morgan, Henry Ford, and other characters in Doctorow’s Ragtime, but it remains stubbornly silent about the ride Freud and Jung are made to take through the Coney Island tunnel of love, though that fictive incident might be argued to be historically accurate as a metaphor of the two men’s relationship [77].

Thus while the veracity of Pope Joan’s historical legacy is best read skeptically within the larger frame of the play, the fact that her narrative also offers up some fundamental truths regarding the plight of women in both medieval and contemporary society is not to be ignored. Certainly, she stands in as a compelling analogy to Marlene’s situation, who also sacrifices both her femininity and a child for the sake of her career. In turn, Top Girls further explodes and undermines “the conventions of both novelistic realism and historiographic reference (75). The value of Hutcheon’s understanding of postmodernism becomes increasingly useful for how it elucidates Top Girls’ concern with the way that history is ideologically determined: What is foregrounded in postmodern theory and practice is the self-conscious inscription within history of the existing, but usually concealed attitude of historians towards their material. Provisionality and undecidability, partisanship and even overt politics— these are what replace the pose of objectivity and disinterestedness that denies the interpretive and implicitly evaluative nature of historical representation [71].

With this in mind we would do well to consider Lady Isabella, who “always travelled as a lady and repudiated strongly any suggestion in the press that I was other than feminine” (8). Hers certainly is one of the stories which, if not for Churchill’s play, might go unsung, or, at least, continue to be employed in such

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a way as to imply that a woman such as Isabella was something “other than feminine.” However, as important as her character is in rejecting traditional historical norms, she is even more important for how she simultaneously shows complicity with those norms. For soon enough Isabella proves that she belongs to a similar totalizing tradition as her male peers in her consistent derision of Eastern belief systems, telling Lady Nijo at one point that “Buddhism really is most uncomfortable” (10) and on another occasion admitting that she sought atonement for her absence from her community by giving talks where she explains “how the East was corrupt and vicious” (18). There is little doubt, for instance, that if Isabella were to write Lady Nijo’s history (or Pope Joan’s, about whom she expresses condescending surprise that Joan had dressed as a boy in order to pursue an education) it would be largely negative. With this in mind, it is reasonable to recognize how each character’s attempts to narrate their own reality is part of a more general critical attitude towards historiography generally: The narrativization of past events is not hidden; the events no longer speak for themselves, but are shown to be consciously composed into a narrative, whose constructed — not found — order is imposed upon them, often overtly by the narrating figure. The process of making stories out of chronicles, of constructing plots out of sequences, is what postmodern fiction underlines. This does not in any way deny the existence of the past real, but it focuses attention on the act of imposing order on that past, of encoding strategies of meaning-making through representation [63].

Dull Gret’s one word requests at dinner (“potatoes,” “soup,” “bread”) and other stray comments (“pig,” “big cock,” “balls”) provide an interesting example of such “meaning making” at work for how the play relies on Gret’s apparent “dullness” for comic relief. Churchill’s other characters play along with the misnomer, with Marlene insisting on ordering the unfortunate Gret steak to go with her potatoes, and Isabella responding with mock good humor (“Oh Gret”) to Gret’s suggestion that Pope Joan perhaps was attracted to her lover because he had a “big cock.” How little even Marlene (who plays the part of host to her own party, introducing each of the characters to each other as they arrive) knows about Gret finally becomes clear at the end of the act, when Gret finally wrestles the party’s attention away from Joan in order to create a narrative out of Brueghel’s painting of her: GRET: We come into hell through a big mouth. Hell’s black and red./It’s like the village where I come from. There’s a river and MARLENE : (to JOAN). Shut up, pet. ISABELLA : Listen, she’s been to hell. GRET: a bridge and houses. There’s places on fire like when the soldiers come. There’s a bid devil sat on a roof with a big hole in his arse and he’s scooping stuff out of it with a big ladle and its falling down on us, and its money [27–28].

While nominally about invading hell, Gret’s narrative is full of markers which indicate it is really a response to the patriarchal power hierarchies which

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had so long kept her community in a state of war (“Well we’d had worse, you see, we’d had the Spanish”). It would seem, then, that Dulle Griet (to use the name from the title of the painting in the original Flemish) is not as dull as her role in the play would make her out to be, and the scene unfolds in such a way as to draw attention to how a phonetic historical coincidence served to construct Dull Gret’s character within art history and criticism and, finally, within Top Girls itself. When Gret finishes, Isabella takes the opportunity to narrate her own confrontation with a repressive patriarchal system (“I was the only European woman ever to have seen the emperor of Morocco”). And as the characters increasingly speak over each other, Marlene’s attempts to control her party as host are subverted, as are Churchill’s both as historian and playwright. Mirroring the way in which Isabella serves as a filter for how each of the other characters are to be read, Marlene, perhaps, is an even more active filter, especially in how she presses Patient Griselda into admitting that there was something abnormal in her husband which compelled him to send their children away: MARLENE : And at first he seemed perfectly normal? GRISELDA : Marlene, you’re always so critical of him. Of course he was normal, he was very kind. MARLENE : But Griselda, come on, he took your baby” [76].

The irony here, of course, is that Marlene has given up her own child, and rationalizes this fact by believing that if she hadn’t done so she would never have achieved all that she did. Thus, true to Hutcheon’s postmodern criteria, the play consciously “ ‘de-doxifies’ received notions about the process of representing the actual in narrative — be it fictional or historical. It traces the processing of events into facts, exploiting and then undermining the conventions of both novelistic realism and historiographic reference” (78). Indeed, Churchill appears skeptical both about the “processing” that occurred in that past, as well as that which continues to occur in the present, indicating that such processing might be employed by either gender and for a variety of ideological reasons. In addition to the various techniques of historiographic metafiction, many other methods that Hutcheon attributes to postmodern authors are also found in Churchill, not the least of which is the way in which it disrupts the “familiar narrative form of beginning, middle, and end.” For despite the fact that the second two acts in many respects comport with traditional theatrical realism, the chronology of the events are disrupted so that while Act Two Scene One is chronologically earlier than Act One, it occurs later in the play, while Act Three is a year earlier than the events of the first two acts. Even more notable for how it draws attention to “a structuring process that imparts meaning as well as order” (59), Top Girls, like her earlier Cloud Nine, requires non-traditional casting techniques, such as role-doubling and the casting of adults in the roles of children. However, as Hutcheon explains it such innovation in itself does little to de-doxify the trend towards totalizing master narratives:

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In all these cases, there is an urge to foreground, by means of contradiction, the paradox of the desire for and the suspicion of narrative mastery — and master narratives. Historiography is no longer considered the objective and disinterested recording of the past; it is more an attempt to comprehend and master it by means of some working (narrative/explanatory) model that, in fact, is precisely what grants a particular meaning to the past.... Historiographic metafictions ... ask ... whether the historian discovers or invents the totalizing narrative form or model used. Of course, both discovery and invention would involve some recourse to artifice and imagination, but there is a significant difference in the epistemological value traditionally attached to the two acts. It is this distinction that postmodernism problematizes [61].

Certainly Churchill takes a great deal of theatrical license with the historical, literary and artistic legacy left us by our forebears. The various anachronisms of the dinner party scene owe nothing to traditional methods of historiography (for instance, the fact that Joan orders an Italian dessert makes cultural sense until you discover that zabaglione is a 16th Century invention). But as such inventiveness in itself is insufficient to foreground the question of whether or not “the historian discovers or invents” the products of his work, so that we are left asking whether or not in these cases as well Churchill is intent on “problematizing” the differing epistemological values we attach to “discovery and invention.” In order to fully explain the potential for postmodern historical fiction to “problematize” the differing epistemological values we attach to “discovery and invention,” Hutcheon invokes Foucault: In Foucault’s terms discontinuity, once the “stigma of temporal dislocation” that it was the historian’s professional job to remove from history, has become a new instrument of historical analysis [...]. [H]istorians have been freed, Foucault argues, to note the dispersing interplay of different heterogeneous discourses that acknowledge the undecideable in both the past and our knowledge of the past. What has surfaced is something different from the unitary, closed, evolutionary narratives of historiography as we have traditionally known it; as we have been seeing in historiographic metafiction as well, we now get the histories (in the plural) of the losers as well as the winners, of the regional (and colonial) as well as the centrist, for the unsung many as well as the much sung few, and I might add, of women as well as men [63].

Churchill, apparently, has been freed as well, and we begin to see how Top Girls is indeed directed towards problematizing the differing epistemological values we attach to “discovery and invention.” For what does providing this particular collage of characters suggest except that generations of male dominated historical accounts are every bit as artificial as Churchill’s are. But what, then, are we ultimately meant to make of all that Marlene sacrifices in order to succeed? To ignore that Wandor does, in fact, point to the central tension of the play would be a mistake, even if we can reasonably account for it by invoking Hutcheon. Are we to see her success as an indication that women might do best to adopt “bourgeois feminism,” or are we meant to recognize her as such a traitor to feminism that she, implicitly, rejects the adoption of misogynistic bourgeois feminist norms? Linda Fitzsimmons defends this

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second possibility, explicitly rejecting Wandor’s notion that the play supports bourgeois feminism: I shall argue that Churchill’s Top Girls and Fen must, on the contrary, be seen as political texts, specifically as socialist-feminist texts. I take here Heidi Hartmann’s definition of socialist-feminism as “a practice which addresses both the struggle against patriarchy and the struggle against capitalism.” Top Girls and Fen should be seen as theatrical contributions to this practice, and as such they stand out against much contemporary women’s playwrighting in Britain which is “bourgeois feminist” (accepting society as it is, and focusing only on the question of how individual women can succeed within it) or sees itself as “post feminist” (seeing all the battles as having been won) [19].

Fitzsimmons’ interpretation couldn’t be more different from Wandor’s. The crux of Fitzsimmons’ disagreement with Wandor depends on showing how “the oppression of women under capitalism ... forms the focus of the rest of the play” (21). Fitzsimmons defends her position by pointing out that while Marlene thrives, she does so at the expense of her patrons, her family, and even her own well-being. Hutcheon becomes especially useful in helping to sort out this disagreement. On this score it is important to note that I agree with Wandor’s argument that “the play takes no moral or political attitude towards her [Marlene], any more than it does towards Joyce,” but suggest that she simply misses the point when she asserts that this characteristic of the work plays party to the bourgeois feminist dynamic. Apparently, Wandor had hoped to see an explicit indication that Churchill meant to valorize a “socialist feminist” solution to social ills and, failing this, she labeled the work “bourgeois feminist.” On the other hand, I should also note my agreement with Fitzsimmons that it is part of the purpose of Top Girls that it fails to “invisag[e] a female utopia,” but note that she misses the point when she argues that it “does look forward to the creation of a [socialist-feminist] society.” Rather, I see all of this ambivalence regarding where Churchill’s political sympathies lie as a sign of her postmodernism; as a sign that Cloud Nine, in Hutcheon’s words, is “politically ambivalent for [how] it is doubly coded — both complicitous with and contesting of the cultural dominants within which it operates” (Politics 142). And while this mixture of complicity and critique will become increasingly explicit in Churchill’s later work, here it is much more tenuous. Marlene is neither a hero to bourgeois feminism nor a villain to socialist feminism, but, rather, a manifestation of the complexity of a system that is extremely astute at reinstituting old rules in new ways. Hutcheon, however, not only provides for a poignant rejoinder of such critics of Churchill as Wandor (and of such defenders as Fitzsimmons), but also of those critics such as Helen Keyssar who, while not quite convinced that the work as in league with status quo interests, yet view the work as leaving the audience “with a sense of despair”: The women characters who most intrigue Churchill have no easy victory over their own constraints and terrors. [... ] The two sisters of Top Girls are able to resolve

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their own conflicts over their “daughter,” but the girl herself is doomed to a miserable life in which she can achieve neither self-respect nor community with others. The daughter stumbles from her bed to centre stage in the last image of the play, and her final cry is a terrifying shriek of isolation and need. The audience is left with a sense of despair, and while this is only one of the notes sounded in Top Girls, it does not provide the positive inspiration that many spectators crave. (98)

The accusation is as disconcerting as it is familiar, as Vincent Leitch reminds us in his summation of Foucault: [Foucault’s project] leaves little room for resistance or transformation, not to mention revolution. Implicitly, it counsels quietism, as many of Foucault’s critics note. [...] With Foucault the era of oppositional politics appears at an end; the subdued masses can be counted [131].

According to Hutcheon, however, this sort of ambivalent reaction to postmodern literature, while perhaps to be expected, becomes unwarranted once the works postmodern implications are recognized: Postmodernist fiction like this exploits and yet simultaneously calls into question notions of closure, totalization, and universality that are part of those challenged grand narratives. Rather than seeing this paradoxical use and abuse as a sign of decadence or as a cause for despair, it might be possible to postulate a less negative interpretation that would allow for at least the potential for radical critical possibilities [67].

It is from this perspective that Hutcheon defends such postmodern attitudes such as Foucault’s. And to this end, it is perhaps best to keep in mind Churchill’s known Foucauldian style epistemological skepticism (Foucault makes an early [and explicit] appearance in Churchill’s plays, as his Discipline and Punish provided Churchill with both the theoretical apparatus and narrative content for her own play, Softcops), which may well suggest that Marlene’s existence isn’t meant to reinforce bourgeois feminist ideals but, rather, to represent the way that power/ knowledge attempts to co-opt these ideals by accepting women into its ranks, rather than by changing the true nature of the status quo. What, then, does it mean that Churchill includes a character like Marlene, except that, once again, Churchill refuses to establish a new subject position from which to critique society — deciding instead to caution us about how feminist movements might themselves be compromised — and that it is only for this that she is accused of toadying up to a subject position that “is still absolutely defined by men as the norm.” Loren Kruger’s analysis of Churchill serves as a good final example of how confounding Churchill’s work can be to those who approach it with a desire to find a directive for the emancipation of women. Kruger is as frustrated as Keyssar by the pessimistic implications of Churchill’s aesthetics, ultimately criticizing Churchill’s work for failing to imagine emancipation scenarios more forcefully, and for refusing to use the work to “guarantee critical effect” (17). For Kruger, theater remains a predominantly patriarchal enterprise, where those works that are ultimately legitimated by the current system may strengthen

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rather than challenge the theater institution by expanding the range of ‘legitimate theatre,’ while maintaining its boundaries with illegitimate forms of entertainment” (18). Kruger’s message is clear. Progressive theatre should go out of its way to fight against a patriarchal system that has a tendency to subsume everything in its path. To follow Hutcheon’s advice — that “a less negative interpretation that would allow for at least the potential for radical critical possibilities”— it is worth noting that Kruger gives shortest shrift to the very Churchill play (Serious Money) that is even more given over to self-consciously examining patriarchy’s role in determining what constitutes legitimate theater than is Top Girls. Serious Money is set during the financial deregulation of the London Stock Exchange (the Big Bang, 1986), and, despite the fact that the play is largely critical of how London Financiers profited from the deregulation, the play proved to be a huge success within the very community it criticized. For this reason alone perhaps I should be less surprised by the fact that Kruger would so quickly dismiss Serious Money as all too easily reaffirming “the power of that audience [the business elite]” (19). However, a detailed analysis of the play indicates that Churchill uses Serious Money to investigate the way in which theater is increasingly complicit with this new audience, by not only considering those staging techniques which come together to create a theatrical production, but also those financial forces which increasingly play an important role in the creation of theatrical productions. Along the way Churchill devises a metatheatrical form able to describe the newly multinational processes involved in putting on a theatrical production, creating a dramatic experience which doesn’t merely break the fourth wall by enveloping the audience into itself, but which recognizes that the fourth wall is always and already broken in the other direction (as theatre is enveloped by multinational business). Thus, Churchill provides us with a theatre that understands that the theatre itself has, to paraphrase Brecht, become “business by other means” (For a more complete treatment of the way in which Serious Money sought to “challenge the theatre institution” by critiquing its collusion with multinational capitalism, see my essay “Theatrical Collusion with Multinational Capitalism in Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money,” Text and Presentation 21 (2001): 117–34.). What this reading of Serious Money means, ironically, is that Churchill’s critique of theatre is actually parallel to Kruger’s own critique of theatre, as the entire metatheatrical modus operandi of Serious Money is specifically directed toward exposing the way in which business interests sustain, collude, and interfere with theatrical productions, thus reinforcing the status quo of the dominant patriarchy. Similarly, while not as overtly metatheatrical as Serious Money, Top Girls can also be read as concerned with those forces which “sustain, collude, and interfere with theatrical production.” For the way in which the play identifies how women have to perform various roles in order to succeed escalates in Act

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2, as Marlene transforms from host (a kind of director in its own right) to acting coach, as she and her staff at the employment agency rehearse interview techniques with their clients: MARLENE : [...] Now Jeanine I want you to get one of these jobs, all right? If I send you that means I’m putting myself on the line for you. Your presentation’s OK, you look fine, just be confident and go in there convinced that this is the best job for you and you’re the best person for the job. If you don’t believe it, they won’t believe it. JEANINE : Do you believe it? MARLENE : I think you could make me believe it. JEANINE : Yes, All right [33].

Of course the fact that nothing in the hiring process (let alone, business) is quite what it seems can work against you as well as for you. One potential client comes in with such a good act that Nell, one of Marlene’s employee’s, is so taken in by her that she wants to hire her for the employment agency itself, telling her “I’m not in a position to offer, there’s nothing officially going just now, but were always on the lookout.” However, Shona’s performance soon falls flat and Nell has to retract her opinion: NELL : Christ what a waste of time. SHONA : Beg your pardon? NELL. Not a word of this is true, is it?

In stark contrast with the fiscally conservative mantra that monetarism rewards hard work and ability, Top Girls suggests, rather, that it is one’s ability to perform the various indicators of wealth and power that provides the surest path to success. Of course in addition to the fact that potential employees be male, for a particularly important employer Nell asks that the others in the office send her any of their “good lookers,” “high flyers” and “pretty bastards.” Marlene is even skeptical of what motivates her own success: “I’m not clever, just pushy” (72). Tellingly, she also sees a similar quality in Thatcher: “She’s a tough lady, Maggie. I’d give her a job” (84). To see the full metatheatrical implications of this one only need consider the roles Churchill herself would have had to adopt in order to bring her work to the stage. Indeed, to the extent that Churchill’s work has itself been defined by men — think of the number of men involved in making the decisions about what plays make it to The Royal Court Theatre as Top Girls did — any response to Wandor must consider the possibility that the play is concerned with how male dominated theatrical establishments expect playwrights such as Churchill to cow-tow to bourgeois feminism. Although Verity Hudson became Director of the Society of London Theatre in 1986 (too late to have helped Churchill), this was very much the exception rather than the rule. To quote from Katherine Worth on this issue: Women have difficulty getting there plays put on, announces Pam Gems (one of the few who has managed it) because they lack the “connections” men enjoy. Peter Hall provided unsolicited confirmation that women occupy a back seat in the theatre by

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failing to allocate to a woman even one of the five semi-independent groups into which the National Theatre Company was divided in 1984. Photographs of the company line-up published in the press at the time show serried ranks as at an old boys’ dinner. [...] There is often little room for women in their dramatic world, and those who do get in tend to have somewhat subordinate roles [Brater].

In Serious Money Churchill would go on to push this point further as she revealed how collusion with the arts was used to add class to individual corporations: DUCKET: What’s this about art? BIDDULPH : You don’t give a fart, I know it, they know it, you just mustn’t show it, We’re doing so well, Duckett, don’t you dare blow it. You’ve commissioned a mural called Urban and Rural, it’s sixty feet high —[274].

With theatres acting like corporations and corporations acting like they have a genuine interest in the theatre it may be increasingly difficult to see through the resulting muddle to “guarantee effect” but it should also be increasingly clear that to direct criticism towards Churchill on this score would be tantamount to shooting the messenger. To return one more time to Wandor’s critique, what does this perspective finally mean about how we should respond to Marlene except that we should remember that Marlene herself has been constructed in such a way as to meet various expectations in society at large about successful women. No doubt, Thatcher and her handlers constructed her political ethos in just such a way as to meet these same expectations, while also doing all she could to foster such a narrative about her in the press. Thatcher clearly filled the needs of a power hierarchy struggling to find its way in the face of socialist feminism: “Marlene: [...] First woman prime minister. Terrifico. Aces. Right on./You must admit. Certainly gets my vote” (84). Thatcher is famous for having said that “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.” Of course Thatcher gives herself away here; for apparently, just as it is always important to “act like a lady” in polite society it has become equally important in the postmodern era to “act like a woman of power” in political society.

WORKS CITED Brater, Enoch, ed. Feminine Focus: The New Women Playwrights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Churchill, Caryl, Cloud 9. New York: Theatre Communication Group, 1994. _____. Softcops and Fen. London: Methuen, 1986. _____. Top Girls. London: Methuen, 1982. Fitzsimmons, Linda, “‘I Won’t Turn Back for You or Anyone’: Caryl Churchill’s Socialist Feminist Theatre,” Essays in Theatre 6/1 (1987). Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972 –1988. Edited by Colin Gordon. Translated by Colin Gordon et al. Brighton, UK: Harvester, 1980.

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Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 1989. Leitch, Vincent B. Cultural Criticism, Literary Theory, Postructuralism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. Thomas, Jane, “The Plays of Caryl Churchill: Essays in Refusal,” The Death of the Playwright? Modern British Drama and Literary Theory. Edited by Adrian Page. Basingstoke, UK: MacMillan, 1992. Wandor, Michelene. Carry on, Understudies: Theatre and Sexual Politics. Revised edition. London: Routledge, 1986.

Excessive Greed, Excessive Visions Brenton and Hare’s Brassneck and Pravda JOHN E. O’CONNOR

Howard Brenton and David Hare, two of Britain’s most prolific and important playwrights, began working in the Fringe theatre movement in the late 1960s. Within five years each had had significant successful productions with the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Both have been committed to political change throughout their careers; Hare as a playwright, screenwriter, and director, Brenton as a playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. The two are socialist writers whose works explore the contradictions inherent in capitalism and the effects of those contradictions on individuals and society. Hare’s approach to this subject has been centered primarily on the individual; for him, the political is the personal. Brenton’s approach has been primarily in the opposite direction; his plays are much more public in orientation. Their purpose, however, is very much the same: “to write truthfully about the society I’m in and trying to intervene to help the good in it and discourage the bad” (quoted in Hay and Roberts 135). Brenton and Hare have collaborated twice, in 1973 with Brassneck and in 1985 with Pravda. These two plays are very large works, epic in scale and approach. Pravda is more polished and elegant, while Brassneck possesses a raw edginess that reflects the youth of its creators. The playwrights refer to Pravda as “a comedy of excess” (Pravda 1), a phrase which also aptly describes Brassneck. The theatrical “bigness” of the plays clearly coincides with the thematic issues presented in them, embodying the pursuit of wealth and power, the excessive and insatiable desire for wealth or gain. Brassneck focuses on an entire family’s pursuit of wealth and influence, Pravda on a single individual’s use of money and power to corrupt and control others. The plays reflect Brenton’s belief that “the western world is in thrall to a system that respects nothing but money and power” (Brenton xiv). 225

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The “heroes” of the plays are anti-heroes. Brenton’s and Hare’s approach to the protagonists causes the audience to feel both fascinated and appalled by their actions. Their excessive lust is at once admirable and disgusting in its excessiveness. The playwrights have combined their personal and public visions into a larger view which forcefully exposes the contradictions in the system they attack. In his essay “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” Bertolt Brecht posits a type of theatre that can both instruct and entertain: Let us suppose that great passions or great events have to be shown which influence the fate of nations. The lust for power is nowadays held to be such a passion. Given that a poet “feels” this lust and wants to have someone strive for power, how is he to show the exceedingly complicated machinery within which the struggle for power nowadays takes place? If his hero is a politician, how do politics work? If he is a business man, how does business work? And yet there are writers who find business and politics nothing like so passionately interesting as the individual’s lust for power [853].

In Brassneck and Pravda Brenton and Hare have succeeded in showing some of the machinery behind politics and business and its connection to an individual’s lust for power. The plays illustrate the complementary relationship between the machinery and the individual. They show how the two feed off of and are used by each other. Brassneck and Pravda work because Brenton and Hare have the ability to use the flexibility of the theatrical machine to its fullest potential. The formal, structural elements of the plays, their excessive “bigness,” work effectively to punctuate and highlight the thematic issues. The plays make the machinery of politics and business as passionately interesting as the individual’s lust for power. This essay provides an analysis of some of the significant structural and thematic elements in the plays to show how their interaction helps to portray the nature of avarice in contemporary capitalist society. Brassneck spans twenty-eight years in the life and times of the Bagley family. The play opens in 1945, shortly after VE day, with Alfred Bagley’s arrival in the Midlands town of Stanton. He purchases a van loaded with black market Luftwaffe parachute silk for sixty pounds, and parleys his new acquisition into a modest real estate empire, membership in the local Conservative Club, and election as Master of the Stanton Masonic Lodge. Bagley brings his nephew Roderick to Stanton, along with Roderick’s wife and three children, for the purpose of building a provincial empire. He uses blackmail to get Roderick his first big architectural contract and is able to see his empire begin to grow and prosper before succumbing to a fatal stroke on his grandniece’s wedding day. The seeds he planted have taken deep roots in the rich Midlands soil, and Roderick nurtures and fertilizes them with strategic bribes, kickbacks, and influence peddling. By 1969, twenty-four years after Uncle Alfred’s arrival in Stanton, the Bagley family controls a vast, multinational business conglomerate.

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Unfortunately for the Bagleys, the growth of their empire progresses too rapidly and haphazardly. Roderick goes bankrupt, and at his bankruptcy hearing, he talks about a “gift” which was awarded to “a friend in the Ministry of Education” (Brenton and Hare, Brassneck 89). Roderick is sent to prison and his family’s fortunes are disbursed. The play closes with Roderick’s sons and daughter, along with a few loyal family retainers, planning the next family enterprise, the importation and distribution of Chinese heroin. Brassneck celebrates individuals who are strong and sure enough of themselves and their resources to sink below common, petty corruption and arrive at a level of greed and amorality which is truly awe-inspiring, and theatrically compelling. The Bagleys have “brassnecks,” which is a Midlands slang expression meaning “cheek” or “nerve,” and which commonly carries criminal connotations (Brenton and Hare, “Author’s Notes” 7). Brenton’s and Hare’s excessive theatrical vision for the play parallels the characters’ excessive avarice. The playwrights greedily exploit the physical resources of the theatre to create images which are shocking, humorous, and frighteningly serious by turns. Brenton and Hare wrote Brassneck for the Nottingham Playhouse to mark Richard Eyre’s appointment there as Artistic Director. They took advantage of the Nottingham’s specific resources by using a bare stage with a small amount of three-dimensional scenery. Since the action of the play covers an extended period of time, with as many as sixteen years between scenes, they use projections and music at the beginning of most of the scenes to establish the time period. The projections and music also serve a documentary function, as they parallel the fortunes of the Bagley clan with the social and political climate of post-war England. These documentary devices put the specific corruption illustrated in the play into a broader context. For example, scene two is preceded by a series of photographs of Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee, the Conservative and Labor candidates for Prime Minister in the general election of 1945, along with images of Labor stalwart Ernest Bevin and the young Harold Wilson. These are followed by a photo of the front page of The Daily Mirror proclaiming a Labor Party victory. A recording of the “Red Flag” is heard. The stage directions indicate that it is being sung “joyously” (Brassneck 12). There were very strong hopes for the Labor government in post-war England, but by 1951 these had all been dashed on the rocks of political expediency, a crumbling empire abroad, and economic hard times at home. The joyous strains of the “Red Flag” and the smiling faces of Attlee, Bevin and Wilson resonate throughout scenes two and three, during which Alfred Bagley is introduced to Stanton’s Conservative elite, led by James Avon, and inducted into the local Lodge of the Brotherhood of Masons, which is controlled by the Tories. There is one prominent member of the Lodge, however, who is not a Tory: Harry Edmunds, the recently-elected Labor MP for Stanton. Throughout scenes two and three there is a great deal of tension and consternation

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expressed by the Tories over the recent ascendancy of Edmunds and his Party. And when the Tory Master of the Lodge resigns due to failing health, James Avon and Harry Edmunds meet to discuss the future of the Lodge leadership. The meeting takes place on a golf course. Immediately preceding the scene, projections of sporting occasions with action shots, golf swings, cheering crowds, and winners hugging trophies are shown. A recording of Bing Crosby singing “It Went Right Down the Middle” is played (26). These images reinforce one of the major themes of the play, the idea that decisions of great political, economic or social import are often made in social settings under the guise of informal rounds of golf, Masonic Lodge meetings, or business lunches. Avon and Edmunds agree to allow Bagley to become Master of the Lodge. Avon enumerates the advantages of their decision: Bagley is by no means a bad person. For either of us. He has— and this will please you, Harry — no visible public school education. But on our side we are willing to pass lightly over this— one’s mind has been broadened by the war —for he does now enjoy a sound financial basis in the town. Nothing spectacular. Nothing that will make him too pushy. Nothing to embarrass either of us. A decent, quiet stopgap who I think we will find will plug most of the holes [31–32].

After they make their agreement Edmunds and Avon walk off, Edmunds with his arm around Avon’s shoulder, while Avon says, “Now Harry, local affairs in general. And more specifically the business community. Your attitude to labor disputes. And how you can help us in areas where the long ... arm of ... government ... touches...” (33). These three scenes, in Avon’s home, at the Masonic Lodge, and on the local golf links, juxtaposed with the documentary footage preceding scene two, all work together to show the “extremely complicated machinery within which the struggle for power nowadays takes place” (Brecht). Additionally, one of the causes of the collapse of the Labor government, its willingness to compromise, has also been firmly established by means of the juxtaposition of documentary scenic elements and fictive textual elements. Brenton and Hare next use projections to emphasize the relationship between the post-war collapse of England and the rise of the Bagleys in scene seven. The projections shown prior to this scene are of food lines, ration books, slum houses, and a sign that reads, “This mine now managed by the government on behalf of the people” (40). The action of the scene is Alfred’s successful attempt to blackmail James Avon, which opens the door for his nephew Roderick. Avon’s and Edmund’s choice of Bagley as Master of the Lodge has obviously backfired, as Bagley is apolitical and amoral. He cares for nothing other than the accumulation of wealth, and he gleefully tells his grandnephew, Sidney, at the end of the scene, “I’m going to cram a silver spoon down your throat” (45). The projections ironically communicate the message of this scene on two levels. Avon and Edmunds, in their vain attempt to protect their own interests, have sold out to a force of avarice which is far more powerful than theirs. The projections also resonate with other “accomplishments” of the Labor government

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which are not specifically alluded to, such as the dismemberment of the British Empire. As the world empire crumbles, Bagley’s provincial empire begins to grow. Perhaps the most compelling application of projections and music occurs at the opening of act three. Act two ends with the announcement that Roderick Bagley is bankrupt. Anyone who is associated with the Bagley empire has run off to implement damage control. Act three opens with a recording of the Rolling Stones singing “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” The words of the first verse of the song are projected line by line, as they are sung. The lyrics suggest that while one cannot always obtain what one wants, with effort, one can obtain what one needs (87). The song immediately sets the date of the scene, 1969, and it also reinforces the action of the remainder of the play. Roderick goes to prison as a sacrificial lamb, the Labor Party succeeds in covering up most of the scandal surrounding the bankruptcy, and the remaining family members, friends and councilors find new roads of corruption which eventually lead to Chinese heroin. Documentary projections are not the only advantage of a bare stage. Brenton and Hare also use the flexibility of the empty space to create striking, excessive theatrical effects. The play opens with a van driven on to the stage. Alfred negotiates with the driver to purchase the van and its contents, and he drives off at the end of the scene. The play begins with a big image and a business transaction, immediately engaging the audience with two elements which are integral to the entire piece. The stage directions for subsequent scenes indicate the kinds of images and effects Brenton and Hare conceived as they wrote the play. Scene two takes place in the home of James Avon, where Bagley is discovered “alone in a huge hall” (12). Scene three recreates an authentic Masonic Lodge, “Pillars, desks, ashlars, etc. with globes, footstools” (18). The golf course of scene four is created with a pin and flag coming “up through the stage” (27), and later in the scene, “Enter a bunker. Avon, Clive and Rochester on its rim looking down on Bassett in the sand” (28). Scene five is a short fantasy in which Alfred equates his appointment as Master of the Lodge with the induction of Alonso de Borja to the Papacy as Callistus III. The scene is introduced with this stage direction, “Huge decadent fanfare. The stage bursts into colour. The Vatican. A huge altar and golden angels” (33–34). After a few lines spoken by two Cardinals, the stage directions continue, “Huge whispers all over the theatre, ‘BORJA, BORJA, BORJA,’ which rise and then explode into music. A huge organ burst. Narrow light on Alfred Bagley dressed as Callistus III, sitting on an enormous throne in a cloud of incense, his hand resting on a small white Hermaphrodite” (34). The large empty space also affords the playwrights the opportunity to portray a huge number of characters at once. The cast list for the piece numbers in excess of twenty-five people and as many as fifteen appear in a scene in a given moment. Scene eight chronicles Lucy Bagley’s wedding day reception, which

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is held in a huge tent. At one point in the scene the stage is emptied with the stage direction, “A dirty rush for the door” (48). A few moments later, “Everyone pours back” (50). The decadence which was established in scene five is reinforced in scene eight by devices such as these and by the introduction of a topless tap dancer in tassels who pops out of the wedding cake and dances on the table (58). Brenton and Hare juxtapose all this activity which brings act one to a close with a quiet, yet equally theatrical opening for act two. The stage directions read: A country scene. Some bushes. Bright sunlight. Birdsong. The sound of a hunting horn. Roderick Bagley gallops across the stage on a horse [60].

The content of act two centers on the annual Stanton Vale Hunt. This is the premier social event of the year, and Roderick serves as Master of the Hunt. Twentyfour years have passed since his uncle arrived in Stanton and the Bagleys now control a multinational conglomerate of many diversified operations. Significantly, Roderick’s appearance on the horse is the only one he makes in the entire act. Brenton and Hare show the results of Roderick’s dealings by presenting the people who have been affected most. James Avon is a drunk. Lucy Bagley is a manipulative beauty who controls Avon’s son Clive with sex. Edmunds is “obscenely large, 64, red in the face” (63). He has sold out completely and is now wallowing in self-pity, “We ‘ad a chance in 1945. Finest government this country ever ’ad. But not good enough. Not quite good enough by half. By the end, in rags. What am I now? I know. Don’t answer that, ’Arry Edmunds. ‘Ow can we ever forgive ourselves? I can’t forgive myself. Labour party, the party we all love. (Pause.) Can we go ’ome now?” (85) Tom Browne, a former member of the Communist Party and sometime Mayor of Stanton is now a member of the Labor Party and Roderick’s public relations man, “He looks like an estate manager” (64). These characters, along with others who hold various positions of power or grace in the Bagley chain of command, weave in and out of the act, talking about Roderick, making deals, exposing their own corruption, all in the quiet and idyllic setting of the English countryside. Ironically, shortly after one of them says, “Good old Rod. We’ve all done well” (65) the group is told of Roderick’s bankruptcy. In act two, Brenton and Hare use the open stage to juxtapose the corruption and decadence of the Bagleys and their retinue with the beauty and purity of the English countryside and the resonances of genteel, polite behavior which accompany the hunt. In the final scene of the play, they use the stage to reinforce the action, which takes place in Sidney Bagley’s strip club. The stage directions describe the scene, “Sidney’s plush strip club. Red velvet and champagne. A flashing sign: ‘The Lower Depths Club.’ A strip act with fans is in progress” (96). The year is 1973. Rochester, the family lawyer, now works for Sidney. Edmunds

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is a member of the House of Lords, sitting on the benches with “all the other refugees from scandal and debauch” (97). Tom Browne works for charity, and proudly confides, “I fiddle my expenses, you know” (97). Lucy and Clive are married, and he is completely demoralized. Martin Bagley, having studied business and politics in night school, is now a Eurocrat, working in Brussels for the EEC. Roderick is out of prison but not present, “He wants to live in a hut, in the countryside and grow runner beans, and talk to the birds” (99). Surrounded by this atmosphere of moral, physical, and economic bankruptcy, Sidney makes his proposal regarding Chinese heroin. As the characters all agree and enthusiastically join the enterprise, the stage directions read: The band strikes up. An extremely fast strip act begins. A girl comes on wearing Mayor’s robes. She starts stripping off. Underneath she toys with Masonic aprons. Then strips down to a bowler hat and away. This throughout the remainder of the scene. A Waiter distributes champagne.... Round the Stripper’s middle is a rubber tube which she detaches and wraps round her upper arm. The naked Stripper fixes, then raises her hypodermic. Fanfare. End of strip. The curtains on the small stage close. The band stops playing. Stagelights to dazzling brightness [101–02].

As the stage is flooded with light, Sidney proposes a toast, “As head of a great English family I give you all a toast. The last days of capitalism” (102). As the characters lift their glasses in silence, “The floor slowly gives way beneath them, and they descend as the lights fade and they are swallowed up” (102). The avalanche of images comprising this scene resonates in many different directions. The Stripper’s costumes connect with the events of the play, recalling the layers of hypocrisy worn by most of the characters which have been stripped away to reveal the corruption beneath. Brenton’s and Hare’s use of a Stripper to reinforce the Bagleys’ actions, aside from its inherent shock value, extends the significance of the moment beyond the bounds of the play by making implicit connections between sexual, gender, economic, and political exploitation. Sidney’s reference to the last days of capitalism and the descent of the group recall a reference made by Martin earlier in the play to Marx’s Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. In that work, according to Martin, “Karl Marx said, there are contradictions inherent in a capitalist system which in the end will destroy it” (95). All of these bold, expressive, excessive staging techniques are complemented by a bold, excessively rich language. Brenton and Hare are as effective in creating images with words as they are in using theatrical resources to create visually arresting images. A few examples will suffice to illustrate this point. When he is blackmailing Avon, Alfred Bagley explains why he wants Roderick to win the contract, “Then, when he’s won, I foresee: problems on the site, weather, that sort of thing, costs will rise during the building, we’ll have to revise the estimates. Revise the profits. Slightly. Often. Upwards” (43). The strength

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and simplicity of the words clearly shows Bagley’s ruthlessly cutthroat nature. He shows more of the same in this exchange with Avon: AVON : You will never work your will on this town, because you will never be allowed real power. You will never get on the Council. BAGLEY: I don’t want to run the brothel, son. I just want the girls [44].

Bagley’s boldness, his bald-faced honesty, are too much for James Avon and his accomplices to deal with. Although they are just as corrupt as Bagley, they cannot abide not playing by the established rules. They are hypocrites. But the war has changed the nature of the game, as Bagley graphically explains, “Saw a row of bomber boys in a music hall once. Interspersed with beautiful girls. Girls keeping their eyes on the stage. For each bomber boy had his face blown away. (He runs his hand over his face.) Sticks with you” (44). The rules have changed and for Bagley, on the surface at least, the motive has changed. Real power is no longer the goal. The spoils of war are what matter. And if you survive the battle, then the spoils are yours for the taking. Luftwaffe silk, or the girls in the brothel, these are all one for Bagley. But even though the spoils, profits, are the ultimate goal, the battle must still be fought, the game must still be played. At the very least, the machine must be manipulated properly. Sidney addresses this idea, “Three-quarters of the business is public relations. Tom Browne. Public relations means fixing contracts, arranging tenders, that sort of thing. A kind of banking. Human banking. Building up a pool of friends to be cashed at any branch” (82).Tom Browne emphasizes the importance of keeping the machine well-oiled after the damage has been done. He delivers this speech “cold and clear”: The day is coming when businesses will be run like high security prisons. No action that is not accounted, no gesture that is not cross-indexed, no indiscretion that is not costed and filed away... teams of accountants roam the grounds with savage dogs, checking each door and the movement of executives from cell to cell. Not for punishment, but for profit. Every item will be valued, every job will be priced. We can’t afford less if we’re to go on. Making profits [94 –5].

These speeches, full of straightforward, hard-edged images, are complemented by others which are more luxurious and fantastic in their language. While Roderick’s hearing is in progress, Browne tries to make it clear to him that his future looks very dim, even though some of the fallout resulting from his actions will be contained, “The Labour Party will whisper down the line. Builders, councils, Government Departments will gloss over fat bad debts ... vast sums you owe will disappear in the fog. Books will be fiddled and invoices burnt the length of the land ... so that everyone can sit back and enjoy the view. Of you. Skewered...” (92). When Sidney tries to convince Browne that the bribe charge can be made to disappear with more PR, Browne replies, “It’s gone to the Fraud Squad. The Everest of public relations. The hardest one a PR man can ever be asked to crack.... The Fraud Squad is outer space. They come from London in XJ12s, wearing oxygen masks. Their eyes are clear blue and when they

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see bad money they turn aquamarine” (93). These examples of excessive imagery in language illustrate the power of words to manipulate and control others. Browne is a consummate PR man, and campaign manager for the Labor Party, because he is an accomplished wordsmith. He uses language not only to define reality, but to embellish and enliven it. Brenton and Hare share this talent with the characters they have created. This point is not made with any more strength than in the closing moments of the play when Sidney makes his pitch to the family: I have a proposition. There is a commodity, sold in occasional market places, in these sad times, the world the way it is, a product for our times, the perfect product, totally artificial, man-made, creating its own market, one hundred percent consumer identification, generating its own demand, if there’s a glut the demand goes up, if there’s a famine the demand goes up, an endless spiral of need and profit. Endless profit for all human need is there. Gathering up all emotions in its moneyed path. Hates and loves, jealousies and deceits. True, it kills. But only in the end. So does washing up liquid and chocolate, in the end [99].

This speech is frighteningly real. It is made more frightening because Sidney, like his Great-Uncle Albert before him, is boldly, simply and honestly putting forth a purely business proposition. There is no emotion, no need to embellish. He simply presents the reality of the product. This speech is followed by comments from family and friends extolling the virtues of the proposition. Brenton and Hare employ language which contrasts with the cold, emotionless language of Sidney’s speech. The exchange between the characters is a riot of emotion, color, organic movement, sexual imagery, and celebration: BASSETT: As a brewer I like to see people smashed out of their minds. Logical thing, greed. CLIVE : I suppose if I felt anything at all I could think myself round to being disgusted. MARTIN : I’ve always dreamt of something that will give me free and wild expression. Like Scott of the Antarctic. VANESSA : I want to come alive again. CLIVE : Luxurious disgust. EDMUNDS : It’s oozing. It’s all beginning to ooze again. LUCY: Terrific. EDMUNDS : And I want to be there. My mouth open. LUCY: Terrifically hard. And sexy. And money.... ROCHESTER : Look at me. Bill Rochester. Naked with greed. I could take all my clothes off. Now. And greed would be blazoned across my bum [100–01].

This exchange is followed by the performance of the Stripper, culminating in her fix. As she fixes, Vanessa Bagley echoes the words of the Rolling Stone refrain heard at the opening of act three, “It’s so good to know what you want” (102). Ten years after the debut of Brassneck, Brenton and Hare took advantage of many of the same dramaturgical strategies and theatrical devices in their collaborative foray into the world of newspaper publishing, Pravda. While the

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play does not span as much time as Brassneck, it does sprawl through several years in the lives of its two central characters, Lambert Le Roux and Andrew May. Le Roux is a self-made millionaire from South Africa, a businessman with interests in hotels, ice-rinks, sportswear, and newspapers. Andrew is a young, naïve, idealistic, and conflicted newspaper man. The story begins with Le Roux’s purchase of The Leicester Bystander, a small provincial newspaper. Andrew is the Deputy Features Editor and Le Roux promotes him to the position of editor. On the evening of the announcement of the purchase, Andrew meets Rebecca Foley, daughter of the paper’s outgoing owner, who he eventually marries. Andrew has some success at The Bystander while Le Roux wields his money and power to influence an MP in order to purchase The Daily Victory, England’s flagship newspaper. Le Roux already owns the tabloid scandal sheet The Daily Tide and his purchase of The Victory is met with indignation by many. He appoints Andrew editor of The Victory as payment for Andrew’s support in the purchase of the paper. Andrew’s star continues to rise as he wins the prestigious “Golden Typing Finger” for Editor of the Year. On the evening of the award banquet Rebecca brings documents to the newsroom that prove the Minister of Defense has lied about the safe transit of weapons grade plutonium. Andrew waffles about whether or not to publish the story before finally agreeing to do so, only to be overruled by Le Roux, who terminates Andrew on the spot. Andrew and several others who have been sacked by Le Roux join forces to purchase The Daily Usurper and proceed to run stories alluding to Le Roux’s questionable past and current business dealings; stories provided by Le Roux’s business manager who feigns disenchantment with his boss. Le Roux sues the paper and Andrew, who is utterly defeated. He then appoints Andrew to the editorship of The Tide, welcoming him back into the fold. While subtitled “A Fleet Street Comedy,” and certainly focused on the contradictions and corruption inherent in the newspaper business, Pravda ultimately illustrates several fundamental characteristics of capitalism. Money and power matter more than morality; those with the most money have greater power and influence over politics and culture than those with solely political, business, or social connections; fundamentally good people will eventually be destroyed or co-opted by the system. Brenton and Hare once again use an excessive and expansive theatricality to expose the corruption of capitalism, creating in Lambert Le Roux a true force of nature and in Andrew May a quintessential example of the failure of liberalism in the face of the conservative capitalist juggernaut. Brenton and Hare wrote Pravda for the National Theatre’s Olivier Auditorium, a large thrust configuration with a huge stage equipped with a turntable and two elevators. The large flexible space allowed the playwrights to create fluid, rapidly moving panoramic action and stunning theatrical effects. Each of the ten scenes in the play transitions seamlessly into the next and the size of the stage provides opportunities for depicting scenes ranging from a huge newsroom

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to the Yorkshire moors. Brenton and Hare use the space to great advantage by filling it with many characters, juxtaposing scenes depicting the chaos of a newsroom five minutes before deadline with gaggles of reporters, television crews, and newsvendors rushing across the stage pursuing their next scoop or sale. The play’s structure is based in large part on contrasts that are made possible by the size and flexibility of the Olivier stage. Act one, scene one introduces Andrew and Rebecca in an English garden. All is peaceful and bucolic, but Andrew is discontented. He misses the energy and dynamism of the newsroom, “The distorting mirror of ambition. Personal cruelty” (Pravda 8). He has been out of a job for six months, having been sued by Lambert Le Roux, who Rebecca calls “that monster, that Satan” (9). The scene ends with Andrew forsaking his marriage and resolving to call Le Roux to try to get his job back. The scene then shifts, “At once the stage is filled with different activities. Men throw bales of bound-up newspapers onto the stage from vans. Newsvendors and reporters come onto the stage ... a female filmstar is pursued across the stage by reporters and cameras flashing ... on opposite sides of the stage reporters file copy from telephones simultaneously” (9 –10). The newsvendors hawk their product with headlines ranging from the lurid to the ridiculously innocuous, “HEADLESS MURDER CASE : WHOSE HEAD IS IT?” and “ROYAL HAIRDO: CUT OUT AND KEEP” (9). News reporters hound characters for an interview or, at least, a quick answer to a provocative question, “Cindy! Cindy! Look at me!— What about his wife?” (10) The playwrights utilize this documentary device in most of the scene changes to both cover the changes occurring upstage and to provide exposition, character development, and/or a critical perspective on the action of the play. When the change is complete the set is revealed, the editor’s office of The Leicester Bystander, rendered in painstaking realism, with Andrew downstage directly addressing the audience. The energy of the scene change embodies Andrew’s own sense of the exhilaration he feels working in the newsroom of The Leicester Bystander, “I love it. The smell of hot type. The thunder of the foundry.... Oh God I love it so. The romance” (10). But Andrew’s sense of romance is in sharp contrast to the reality of the business, for the scene proceeds to depict the cutthroat and insensitive manner in which Sir Stamford Foley and his son have gone about selling the paper to raise capital to purchase a share in a stud thoroughbred horse. When editor Harry Morrison vehemently protests Sir Stamford explains, “Harry, this is not an emotional thing. This is a business decision. I need money. It is not here. It is out in the Kentucky blue grass” (24). While the sale gives Sir Stamford financial leverage, for night editor Hamish McLennan it provides an opportunity for career advancement. He has brokered a backroom deal with Le Roux to become the new editor, replacing the now impotent Harry Morrison. When Andrew, Harry, and several others threaten to strike if the sale goes through, McLennan reminds them of their place in the larger scheme of things, “I just can’t believe the stupidity of this. You’re all talking as

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if you had some power. Do none of you even recognize basics? Divest yourself of your fantasies. We have a new owner. The business is sold” (26). The scene ends with Morrison climbing on top of his desk, attempting to cut his wrists. Brenton and Hare describe the ensuing attempt to stop him as “a great struggle on the desk” (28). They all stop the melee when the phone rings. McLennan answers it and the party tells him he is no longer editor. He drops the phone, Rebecca picks it up, says “Hello” then, holding out the receiver toward Andrew she says, “Andrew, it’s you” (29). The contrast of the violence of the takeover and its effect, especially on Morrison, with the quiet moment of Andrew’s anointing is chillingly calculated. But the playwrights pause only briefly before rushing the action forward. From Le Roux’s presence in the outstretched phone receiver they introduce the man himself in another swift and stunning scene change, contrasting the cluttered editor’s office of scene two with its polar opposite, vast empty space, “At once the stage clears. And deepens. And heightens. Onto the empty space walks Lambert Le Roux” (29). The simplicity of the empty space and Le Roux’s lone presence embodies the man’s simple, straightforward engagement with the world, expressed in a speech directed to the audience, “What I do is a natural thing. There is nothing unnatural about making money. When you are born where I was born, you do have a feeling for nature. What I admire about nature is— animals, birds, plants, they fucking get on with it and don’t stand about complaining all the time” (30). Following his singular declaration the stage transforms once again with a few swift strokes that deftly illustrate what Le Roux admires about nature, action without hesitation, “[Le Roux’s] wife Donna skates onto the stage.... Above the arena a huge flag unfurls with the legend: Sportwear International, Welcome to Frankfurt.... Music plays in the style of Chariots of Fire. Athletes of various disciplines come on. A boxer, a skier, the skis on wheels, a swimmer in silver and very brief trunks with a ‘Le Roux’ skull cap, ‘swimming’ and ‘diving.’ The music climaxes” (30). The action of the play moves from the editor’s office to “a huge featureless exhibition hall. An enormous open space, totally unfurnished” (30). Le Roux is, in effect, back home on the South African veldt, the master of all he surveys. No longer the master of a provincial newspaper, he now wields greater power on a larger stage. He meets Michael Quince, an MP who he has flown in and put up in a Holiday Inn. Quince admits to shamelessly enjoying the freebies MPs are often offered, and he possesses two attributes Le Roux takes full advantage of: he is attending the trade show as a representative of the British Olympic Committee in order to award the sportwear concession for the British Olympic team; his mother owns twenty-one percent of The Daily Victory newspaper. When Quince asks Le Roux if he, a South African, can buy “a piece of England,” he responds, “We have the England cricket captain.... And if we succeeded, a friendly Victory might assist your career.... As a politician? Not even a politician, no longer a politician, with The Daily Victory behind you, a statesman” (38).

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Le Roux is the ultimate businessman and power broker. He ruthlessly pursues what he wants and knows how to manipulate the system and the cogs that are a part of it in order to achieve success. He tells Quince, “There is only one criterion in life, Michael. To succeed” (35). Brenton and Hare end the scene with an image that forcefully shows the audience the essential nature of the Quince/Le Roux relationship. Quince asks if he might sit down and one of Le Roux’s lackeys provides him with “an extremely small stool of garish modern chrome design. It is nine inches high. Quince sits down, a little gnome” (39). The scene quickly shifts from a great hall representing economic power to a hallowed hall representing political and social power, the Irving Club, whose prominent members are lawyers, editors, and politicians. The stage direction describes the scene, “A gentleman’s club of the utmost distinction is suggested by twenty high leather armchairs. They face in many different directions, some all together turned away from us” (41). Andrew and Rebecca enter this sanctuary like school children sneaking into the principal’s office. Andrew has enjoyed success at The Bystander, increasing circulation and profits. Rebecca, although she has a degree in investigative journalism, is happy teaching elementary school, “I like not being in a world of money and ambition” (43). Le Roux has asked Andrew to be present at the meeting of the Board of Trustees of The Daily Victory essentially to speak on his behalf as a witness to his qualities and behavior as the owner of The Bystander. The trustees are suspicious because of the nature of Le Roux’s other newspaper, the tabloid scandal sheet The Daily Tide. Andrew even wonders if the trustees will let Le Roux in and he answers, “Ever let me in? Let me in. Let me in. Moral feelings? They pass. A second. What are they? Little chemical drops in the brain. A vague feeling of unease ... then in the morning it’s gone. You’re there. You’re the owner. You’re a fact. People adjust. The unthinkable yesterday becomes the way of things. New moral attitudes.... It all passes. Pass and move on” (45 –6). Le Roux is secure in the knowledge that the trustees will approve the sale, in part because he knows Andrew will speak favorably on his behalf, and in part because Quince is present at the meeting acting as his mother’s proxy. He solidifies his position by offering Andrew the editorship of The Victory. At this, Rebecca tries to convince Andrew to leave, but she is too late; he is caught in Le Roux’s net. Le Roux is in complete control of Andrew, Quince, the trustees, and the meeting. He dictates the terms of the sale, one of which is his guarantee of “editorial independence,” and the board quickly votes in favor of the transaction (54). The scene ends with Rebecca extracting a promise from Andrew, “Promise me you’ll never tell the same lie three times in a day” (56 –7). Brenton and Hare quickly transition from the quiet dignity of the Irving Club and its civilized business transactions to the contrasting noise and animal energy of The Victory newsroom, where Le Roux has begun his reign of terror. The stage direction describes the scene:

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To Have or Have Not The newsroom of The Victory has been assembled. It is of modern design. Twenty desks stretch away into the distance like a maze. They are piled with typewriters, papers, files, reference books, telephones. At the very centre of the stage Le Roux is standing, surrounded by newspapers and shouting at the top of his voice. All round the working area are many journalists who are frantically scurrying around, pushing into each other like circus animals answering the ring master’s call. Telephones are ringing loudly and being answered in a spirit of open panic [58].

Le Roux is the ring master, the doctor in the lab controlling his rats in their maze. He rants his way around the newsroom indiscriminately firing reporters, marketing executives, and file clerks. No one is safe. The Victory has been losing fifty million pounds a year, and Le Roux, assisted by his business manager Eaton Sylvester, is prudently cutting the fat in the payroll budget. Andrew and Rebecca, having just been married, enter into the midst of the bloodletting with their close friend Bill Smiley. Le Roux appreciates Andrew’s independent spirit and sense of humor, and holds him up as an example for the remaining employees. Act one ends with Le Roux’s declaration of a new chapter in the life of England’s flagship newspaper, “We have cast out the bad. There was bad on this paper. Life is a fight between the good and the bad. We all of us, may now work together in a warm and friendly atmosphere. Let’s make a good, a lovely paper, a family paper full of love” (62). Brenton and Hare follow the same pattern in Pravda that they utilized in Brassneck, presenting a chaotic scene before the interval and a quiet one after. Act two opens on The Victory newsroom, but the chaos of Le Roux’s purge has been replaced by a “calm and orderly” atmosphere “of quiet efficiency” (63). The state of the newsroom parallels the state of the newspaper under Andrew’s editorial leadership, and this is his night of triumph. Andrew enters the newsroom with a retinue of admirers, having just received Editor of the Year honors. He triumphantly displays his prize, the Golden Typing Finger. Andrew has been given the finger, and he no sooner achieves this pinnacle of success and power when he suffers a precipitous fall from the grace bestowed upon him. The foundation of Andrew’s success begins to show signs of deterioration when labor union representative ‘Breaker’ Bond interrupts the celebration with news of a work stoppage due to dissatisfaction with wages and working conditions. Breaker has no sympathy for Andrew nor respect for his journalistic acumen, “... it’s all such shit you’re writing, why shouldn’t a few working men make two thousand a week? ... I mean if there were anything in the paper, like a bit of good writing now and then, we’d roll up our sleeves and help you” (69). At Andrew’s insistent plea for help, Breaker offers to have a chat with Le Roux, saying as he exits, “Lambert understands us” (69). As he leaves, Breaker runs into Rebecca, who has been conspicuously absent from the award celebration. She enters with documents leaked to her by a friend in the Ministry of Defense that unequivocally implicate the Defense Min-

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ister in a cover up of inadequate safety measures in the transport of weapons grade plutonium. A debate ensues during which Andrew hesitates to run the story, much to Rebecca’s dismay. She reminds him of the promise he made at the end of act one, and just at the moment he makes the decision to print the documents Le Roux appears with Quince, having been fetched by the night editor Doug Fantom. Quince is now firmly ensconced in Le Roux’s pocket and authors a regular column for The Victory. Andrew states his reasons for running the story, “I see this as an issue of public safety. And public morality...” (79). He has obviously forgotten the conversation he had with Le Roux in the Irving Club, at which time Le Roux told him that morality was flexible and conditional. Andrew appeals to Le Roux, “And what can they do? All they can do is fine us. Money. Just money.... (There is a pause.) Money isn’t everything, Lambert, surely, come on” (79). In the pause, Andrew sees the writing on the wall. He is correct in believing that money is not everything for Le Roux; power, influence, and political alliances are equally important. Le Roux suggests sending the document to the Minister and exposing the informant as a criminal. Rebecca refuses to reveal her source and says she will take the documents to The Usurper. Le Roux fires Andrew, telling him, “You’re confused. You’re a very confused person. You have a left-wing wife and a right-wing proprietor. The tensions in your life are irreconcilable” (81). The scene ends in a tableau strongly reminiscent of the end of act one, scene two, in which former Bystander editor Harry Morrison climbs on top of his desk as if it was a lifeboat. Andrew stands on a table vowing revenge as the owner gleefully dictates editorial content to Quince, Fantom, and the rest of the reporting and editorial staff. Brenton and Hare continue their strategy of creating extreme contrasts as the newsroom disappears to be replaced by the austere Oriental simplicity of Le Roux’s home. The stage direction describes the scene: As the Newsvendors clear there is revealed the large workroom of the Le Roux’s two million pound bungalow in Weybridge. It is decorated entirely in the Japanese style. A bare, slatted wooden floor with rush mats, tiny folding wooden stools approximately seven inches off the ground. Sliding paper screens for walls. There is a small pond in the floor with a Japanese bridge over it. At the centre of the room Lambert Le Roux is standing with a long, black pole in his hand. He is dressed in a dazzling white robe with a red sash and a bandela round his head. Donna Le Roux, also in white, warrior robe, is standing with her pole locked against his ... suddenly Le Roux whirls his pole above his head with a mighty Japanese shriek. She holds her pole horizontally above her head and takes one step to the right. His pole crashes against hers. They freeze in that position [87].

Le Roux, formerly seen only in his many business environments is revealed at home. He and his wife are learning Toyinka, the Japanese art of personal attack (87) and Le Roux is characteristically, ruthlessly, completely in control. During the scene Le Roux and Eaton Sylvester discuss business, specifically Quince’s increasingly embarrassing behavior and the threat posed by the many former

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employees seeking revenge on Le Roux. Sylvester wants to retain Quince, Le Roux does not, “No, ditch everyone. You don’t need anyone” (91). Sylvester is genuinely worried that his boss has alienated himself to the point of being totally out of touch with the world. He warns Le Roux that many are seeking revenge, not just Andrew, “Fact is you’ve sacked so many people they have football teams, have you heard? And there’s a club. For the ex-employees. There’s a tie. With little guillotines on it” (92). Le Roux is at once secure in his belief that his adversaries are all “powerless wimps” (93) and frustrated by their cowardice, “Come out of your little holes! Fight me you bastards, fight me!” (94) He is especially disappointed in Andrew, having believed he would be a stronger adversary. In fact, he misses Andrew, “He had a talent — so few of them do” (93). The scene ends with Le Roux’s decision to purchase the rival left-wing newspaper, The Daily Usurper, which had run the Defense Ministry story and is now nearing bankruptcy, “I shall buy it and then close it down” (95), which will effectively remove all opposition to Le Roux’s newspaper empire. The bungalow workroom disappears and Quince, Andrew, Rebecca, and Bill Smiley appear facing front with a line of seven men behind them. The stage directions describe the scene, “The front group all have betting slips and programmes in their hands and are shouting and waving with excitement as round the front of the stage comes a hare pursued by six dogs. Huge arc lights blaze down on the stage” and a track announcer blares the commentary of the race. Immediately after the race the scene changes to the area behind the stadium. “...a concrete wall covered with graffiti.... A padlocked gents on the other side. Barbed wire. Piles of burst black rubbish bags” (96). From the quiet serenity and purity of Le Roux’s austere workroom the authors transport the audience to “A scene of urban desolation” (96). This is a fitting setting for the machinations of the disenfranchised former employees who gather to plot their revenge. The contrast between Andrew’s triumph in The Victory newsroom and the squalor of the dog track powerfully embodies how far he has fallen. Elliot Fruit-Norton, former editor of The Victory who was replaced by Andrew, tells the plotters, “I have assembled certain senior statesmen, sound men all. Like us, disinherited. Men who have done good service for their country, but now find themselves spurned by Downing Street, out of step with the spirit of the age. With time on their hands. By hazard also victims of hurtful editorials in The Victory. A small guerrilla force of ex–Prime Ministers” (101). These men, all financially well off, will provide the cabal of plotters with the resources to purchase The Usurper. The money, combined with Eaton Sylvester’s offer to sell them “the dirt on Lambert Le Roux” (106) will give them the opportunity to publish, in Bill Smiley’s words, “stories about what a shit he is” (102). Andrew supports the plan. He is desperate to return to the newspaper business, and he refuses to heed Rebecca’s insistent plea to give up his Quixotic mission. Instead, he tells her, echoing Le Roux’s words at the end of act one, “Now at last we can found a paper that’s decent and honest and will be ... the end of Lambert

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Le Roux” (108). The scene ends with Rebecca standing apart from Andrew. “There are tears in her eyes but Andrew does not see” (108). The stage is cleared and the scene shifts to the Yorkshire Moors. Le Roux is out hunting and he comes across Andrew, who is on a back-packing holiday, alone. Andrew says he does not want to talk, but feels compelled nonetheless to do so. He condemns Le Roux for sacking brilliant people like Fruit-Norton and Quince. Le Roux replies, “[Fruit-Norton] is a fool. A joke. Mickey Mouse has a Fruit-Norton watch.... Quince is simply the urinal in which the British establishment leaks” (112). He then serves Andrew with a suit for libel, revealing that Eaton Sylvester had fed The Usurper lies, and explaining the nature of things to Andrew: LE ROUX : I am a man on a moral mission. I want people to see life as it is. I want them to see their real situation.... See things as they truly are. I bring you reality. None of you admit it. See it as it is. To everyone I pose a question. I am the question. ANDREW: And what is the answer? LE ROUX : People like you [116 –17].

The scene ends with Andrew on his knees in the middle of the desolate moor as Le Roux walks away, humming. The scene is reminiscent of act one, scene three in its use of vast space and its final image, a defeated man made to look tiny in the vast expanse; Quince on his stool, Andrew on his knees. The vast space of the African veldt is once again conjured, as Le Roux goes about behaving naturally, getting on with life. He has destroyed his enemies as deftly as a lion on the hunt. But even as he has utterly vanquished Andrew, he still desires to win him over. And he succeeds. The final scene of the play takes place in the newsroom of Le Roux’s tabloid scandal sheet, The Daily Tide. Once again, Brenton and Hare contrast the quiet of the previous scene with chaotic movement and noise. The change from the moor to the newsroom is covered with the celebration of the paper’s million pound contest winner, “a scruffy, bewildered working man” who is presented with “a huge, twelve foot long cheque signed ‘Lambert Le Roux’” (119). The moment provides a chilling contrast to Andrew’s defeat and illustrates the extent of Le Roux’s power and influence. As the contest winner and his retinue exit, the newsroom of The Tide is revealed. “White tiles. Green paint. Scruffy. An atmosphere of hectic activity in contrast to the antiseptic calm of The Victory. Le Roux is standing at the centre of the room barking out orders” (120). Andrew enters the scene and the frantic activity ceases immediately. Le Roux, characteristically alluding to himself as God, introduces Andrew to the newsroom, “There is more rejoicing in heaven over the one who returns to me than there is over the two hundred lazy bastards who are loyal” (121). He names Andrew the new editor of the paper and Andrew accepts, forsaking Rebecca and his friend, Bill Smiley, “You’re as bad as Rebecca. I don’t want a best friend, I don’t want a wife. I want this job! Why don’t you fuck off?” (123) Andrew

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immediately immerses himself in his first editorial task, presiding over the newspaper’s big tits competition. As he is poring over photographs of barechested women he “suddenly goes into a hysterical rage” saying, “These tits are terrible! These tits are terrible! (Then he turns raising his hands above his head like a boxer.) Oh God , I feel better” (123). Andrew’s rehabilitation, or damnation, is complete. The final moment of the play references Andrew’s opening speech to the audience in act one, scene two, in which he likens the noise of the newsroom to “the thunder of the foundry” (10). Brenton and Hare once again utilize extreme contrasts in activity and sound to underscore the journey Andrew has completed: Andrew has sprung to life. He slams the photographs down on the desk and shouts at the top of his voice. ANDREW. Stop all this chatter! Work! Work you bastards! Get to work! Everyone in the room turns. There is total silence as they all stare at him. Le Roux points at Andrew. LE ROUX. Gentlemen. We have a new foreman. Welcome to the foundry of lies. The stage darkens [124].

Lambert Le Roux has the same effect and influence on Andrew as the playwrights’ protagonist has on the audience; we are at once fascinated and appalled by his attitudes and actions. Andrew even admits this when he is questioning Eaton Sylvester’s sincerity in betraying his boss, “You don’t secretly admire him? Think in a way he’s got a point? ... That’s a phase I went through” (105). Le Roux and men like him are the question capitalism poses, we are the answer. He asks us if we will fight or, like Andrew, succumb. Le Roux is a compelling force of nature who is absolutely sure of himself; his money, his power and influence, his place in the world. He very precisely describes himself in the climactic scene of the play, when he defeats Andrew by suing him: I come to this country to organize your lives. I do nothing. People fall before me as if they had been waiting. Why should I lift a gun? People disgrace themselves around me. Sell their property, emigrate, betray their friends, even before I ask them. Give in. ‘Oh he’s not as bad as I expected.’ From you alone there is a trace of resistance. But you seem to have no idea how to use it, how to destroy. You should hit a man in the face to make his face disappear. In England you can never fight because you do not know what you believe. A pause. Then Andrew sinks to his knees. Le Roux smiles. You are always reading books and disagreeing and arguing, and taking votes. In my house in Weybridge I have a thousand books. But I don’t need to read them. Because my mind is made up. ... I’m still not interested in papers. I like The Victory’s name. I’m thinking of concessions. Tea-towels, pillow cases, exploitation. That’s what I like. (He shakes his head.) Good papers are no good. There’s no point in them. All that writing. Why go to the trouble of producing good ones, when bad ones are so much easier? And they sell better too [118].

Like the Bagley family in Brassneck, Lambert Le Roux is adept at “manipulating the machinery within which the struggle for power takes place” (Brecht). He

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plays the politicians and the press with the ease and finesse of a concert pianist. He can be subtly persuasive one moment and cruelly menacing the next. As he gets on with his life, he leaves in his wake countless victims who are too weak or too stupid or too proud to resist him. Like the Bagleys, he is the embodiment of capitalism; success— the accumulation of wealth and power — is all that matters. Brassneck and Pravda are at once condemnations and celebrations of excess; of late capitalism’s propensity to foster excessive, avaricious, corrupt behaviors. Brenton and Hare successfully exploit the tools and tricks at their disposal to create a definition of avarice in theatrical terms. They use language not only to define characters and create settings. Words are also weapons that characters use against each other and that the playwrights use to assault the sensibilities of their audience. They combine documentary techniques with scenes designed and envisioned in bold, broad strokes. They manipulate the machine of the theatre to create arresting works that explore excessive greed on an excessively grand scale.

WORKS CITED Brecht, Bertolt, “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” (translated by John Willett) in Dramatic Theory and Criticism. Edited by Bernard F. Dukore. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974. Brenton, Howard, “Preface,” Plays: One. London: Methuen London Ltd., 1986. Brenton, Howard and Hare, David, “Authors’ Note,” Brassneck. London: Eyre Methuen, 1974. _____. Pravda: A Fleet Street Comedy. London: Methuen London Ltd., 1985. Hay, Malcolm and Roberts, Philip, “Howard Brenton: An Introduction and Interview,” Performing Arts Journal 3/3 (1979).

The Absence of Wealth in Recent British Plays about Business AMELIA HOWE KRITZER

The output of contemporary British playwrights reflects considerable fascination with the inter-relationship of local and global economies. Addressing the full range of economic activity, from the local shop to the multinational corporation, these recent plays probe changes in the business world brought about by factors such as deregulation and globalization. Their focus on business means that the plays center directly or indirectly on making money, often presenting characters engaged in frenzied competition for monetary rewards. Remarkably, however, none highlight the realization of wealth or even create a tangible sense of money being accumulated. They present wealth as a maddening chimera that draws men and women to pursue it with fierce energy, single-minded cunning, and reckless abandon, only to disappear just when the reward is expected to materialize. Current modes of business stem from changes in the British economy that began when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of Great Britain in the 1980s. These changes included deregulation of the stock exchange, dismantling labor union power, privatizing utilities and services, closing state-run businesses, and the sale of much government-held property. A predictable, if rigid system based in the tradition of Britain as a community suddenly became irrelevant as business became global, operated under new rules or ignored rules entirely, and held out the promise of unprecedented rewards for those who could scramble to the top of its pyramidal structure. Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money (1987) led the way in dramatizing changes in the British business environment. Though the play shows some nostalgia for the past, when “[t]he stock exchange was a village street,” (Churchill 29), it focuses on the excitement, energy, and danger generated by a new ensemble of traders from a diversity of backgrounds and nationalities, all determined to take advantage of new forms of doing business. In rhymed, often obscene dialogue, Serious Money portrays takeovers, monopolies, and insider deal-making, highlighting the acquisition of a corporation symbolically named Albion (an archaic name for England) as a means of pointing to the power of growing multinational corporations and 244

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the diminishing significance of nations. The play represents individual traders and brokers reveling in their freedom and power, but the recitation of the characters’ eventual fates at the end mixes stories of loss, continued striving, and hoped-for gains, while suggesting that the money has moved elsewhere and those who want it will just have to keep running after it. The tumultuous era of multinational mergers and acquisitions dramatized in Serious Money continued into the 1990s, but its momentum was taken over by the financial sector. Roaring Trade (2009) by Steve Thompson captures the feverish activity in one of London’s largest investment banks, centering on bond trading. Characters include Donny, an experienced trader at the top of his game; Jess, a younger woman determined to prove her toughness; Spoon, a recent Cambridge graduate just starting on the trading floor; and PJ, a middle-aged man with fading energy. The opening scene, which takes place in a darkened office at the end of the business day, initially seems to be a job interview but is soon revealed as a sexual role-playing game in which Jess dominates Donny. This scene establishes a dynamic of tense and warped competitiveness while demonstrating blurred boundaries between work and personal life. Subsequent scenes show bond trading as a form of high-stakes gambling with others’ money in which the traders manipulate the illusion of wealth in a continual battle to come out on top at the end of the day’s trading. The action of the play gives each of the four main characters a clear trajectory. Increasingly frustrated by the work and humiliated by his diminishing success, PJ retires, but the reduction in income means difficult adjustments in style of living and a barrage of resentment from his materialistic wife. Donny flaunts his success, plays games with Jess, mocks Spoon while taking advantage of Spoon’s inexperience to augment his own winnings, and treats PJ with utter contempt. Fueled by his own arrogance, Donny risks ever more outrageous sums of money until he loses nine million pounds sterling in one day and is subsequently fired from the bank. Spoon, so nicknamed by Donny to refer to his privileged, “silver spoon” background, quickly finds his ideals of collegiality smashed in the brutal competition among the traders. He learns quickly, though, and makes three and a half million on the same securities fund that delivers Donny his disastrous loss. In the wake of this victory, Spoon courts Jess— not for romance, but as a partner in his plan to move to another bank, taking Jess and other traders with him. The only female among the traders, Jess views herself and others with total cynicism, and she proves able to outlast her male competitors. When Spoon confides his plan, she agrees to go with him and recruit others for the move, but in the end she reveals his plan to their superior and gets Spoon fired. Rather than presenting stereotypically avaricious bankers, Roaring Trade characterizes its traders more in terms of personal competitiveness than of greed, portraying the financial sector as an arena of game-playing and empty glamour. In scenes where they are working, the traders sit at a line of desks

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simultaneously talking on phones to clients, watching computer screens, and making side comments to one another. Their tense interaction with abstract and unseen elements, combined with the juvenile outbursts of emotion in response to gains or losses, gives this business the appearance of a game played for its own sake. As Jess observes, “It’s not a job — it’s a fucking addiction” (Thompson 63). Self-conscious references to well-known brands of expensive automobiles and designer business attire point to a striving for the illusion of wealth, and the superficial prestige conferred by it, through conspicuous consumption. While the traders refer to huge sums, the actual amounts of money they are observed to handle are quite small. Though he scores the largest gains in the course of the play’s action, Spoon leaves with nothing after he is fired, heading toward a nearby food vendor that sells breakfast for two pounds. By the end, PJ, Donny, and Spoon have all either quit or been expelled from the game, and thus have lost the role or identity that previously defined them. Once outside the world of trading, they see its emptiness. PJ observes, “It’s not real — it’s so fragile. It’s nothing. Pretend games. Promises. Pushing IOUs around the room” (Thompson 39). Donny changes markedly, viewing himself in hindsight as a “scumbag” (Thompson 97) and beginning to recognize moral obligations to others. The collapse of Enron in 2001 demonstrated the danger inherent in the kind of reckless speculation and rampant expansion presented in Serious Money and Roaring Trade. Lucy Prebble’s play Enron (2009) dramatizes the rise and fall of the American company that epitomizes the era of free-wheeling economic expansion and foreshadows the downfall of powerful investment banks around the globe, with resulting economic contraction in the first decade of the twentyfirst century. Drawing from the factual record, Prebble traces the company’s construction of an illusion of wealth and the attempt to substitute this illusion for actual wealth. Enron executives Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling, and Andy Fastow — ordinary men with nondescript backgrounds— transform a Houston-based gas and oil company into a global energy trader and create near-mythical images of themselves through a series of increasingly illicit maneuvers. Touting this move as the reinvention of business, they institute the “mark-to-market” (Prebble 7) system in which expected future profits are recorded as current profit. Immediately, the price of the company’s stock skyrockets. They de-emphasize production and lobby politically for deregulation of electricity, planning to profit by hoarding electric power, creating shortages, and then auctioning this power to the highest bidder. The principal players revel in a growing sense of omnipotence; but with little actual income, the company’s profits, already declared using the mark-to-market system, fail to materialize. Soon Enron faces the threat of bankruptcy, despite its still-high stock prices and the adoring attention of the media. To stave off this threat, its executives, aided by compliant attorneys and accountants, create bogus corporate structures to buy Enron’s bad assets and prop up the price of its stock. While shedding light on obscure financial operations by having characters

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explain them in conversations with one another, the play theatricalizes Enron’s rise by means of music and lavish spectacle. Constantly moving numbers on digital electronic displays and images on large screens emphasize the high stakes of the enterprise and the importance of the electronic media. Raucous, elaborately staged parties punctuate each phase of the company’s growth, creating carnivalesque bouts of activity alternating with strategy sessions that evoke Enron’s marriage of excess and emptiness. At one party Ken Lay hands out fiftydollar bills to celebrate the rise of Enron stock to fifty dollars per share. At another, the sole woman among Enron’s top executives makes a dramatic entry riding a motorcycle and wearing a leather outfit emblazoned with the company name. The multi-level set representing the company literally elevates the avuncular Lay and fiendishly driven Skilling to the status of financial demigods who manipulate the world’s wealth from its heights. Their power, however, rests on the shadowy operations of the magician-like Fastow, whose red-lit subterranean domain comprises the foundation of the Enron structure. Human-sized but humorously nonrealistic velociraptors creep around Fastow’s underground domain. While those on the upper levels exult in their power, Fastow works in isolation below, feeding reams of paper to the velociraptors, which represent the corporate structures designed to hide Enron’s debt. Board members with the heads of mice and a Lehman Brothers duo stuffed into one over-size suit suggest puppets being manipulated by the Enron executives. The company’s peak moment and precipitate fall occur in rapid succession. Enron reaches its apex of power with the election of George W. Bush and the go-ahead to unleash the free market on the electricity consumers of California. Traders gleefully inflate the price of electricity by creating artificial shortages during times of heavy demand, while Ken Lay uses the resulting crisis to move his favored candidate into the state’s governorship. At the same time, Enron’s essential framework of support begins to crumble, as journalists probe its operations. When the stock price starts falling, the chummy facade maintained by the executives crumbles, as each responds by pressuring the one directly under him: Lay orders Skilling to bolster confidence, and Skilling orders Fastow to deal with the questions of journalists. Confronted with demands for a balance sheet, which he cannot produce, Skilling loses his temper and in that moment loses control of the illusion of wealth that he has created. Enron stock goes into free-fall. Unable to halt the plunge, Skilling phones his wife instructing her to sell all their shares, and then resigns from his position as CEO. A large-screen broadcast news report comparing the collapse of Enron to the sinking of the Titanic, combined with a blizzard of paper from shredded documents, testify to the bursting of the bubble. A series of grim-faced announcements and meetings, a Senate hearing, and legal indictments bring the drama to a quiet and bitter conclusion. Because Fastow turns state’s evidence, and Lay dies suddenly, Skilling becomes the primary target for public outrage over the huge losses inflicted on individuals and communities by the company.

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Stripped of power, Skilling appears in one scene as an out-of-control drunkard, and in the following scene as an isolated outcast wearing pajamas and an ankle monitor. When he tries to attend Lay’s funeral, former Enron employees confront him angrily. Though he insists that he did only what any corporate businessman would do in pursuit of profit, Skilling receives a sentence of “twenty-four years and four months in prison ... the longest sentence for corporate crime in history” (Prebble 113). Enron portrays the company as an illusion consciously created and maintained through the hubris of those who claimed to reinvent business, but were actually merely dodging established legal and moral restrictions. Blinded to the end by his self-limited vision, Skilling locates the entire identity and history of humans in the Dow Jones index. His single-minded energy fuels the company’s rise. Yet, at the point when the company’s worth is reported to be sixty billion dollars, a question from another executive about where the profits are coming from prompts enough doubt that he actually takes bills out of his pocket and examines them, as though to verify the existence of money. At one point, Skilling counts out bills to explain to his daughter the difference between a million and a billion. Later, the girl counts bubbles as she blows them. The correspondence between money and bubbles becomes clear when the company is first threatened by its losses and a panicking Skilling tells Fastow that the company needs four billion dollars. Fastow pleads, “This is structural finance. This is how it looks ... I can’t make real money just appear” (Prebble 74). The unseen executives who receive bonuses as the company stands on the brink of collapse stand as the only winners in the Enron story. When the collapse occurs, the losses borne by Enron’s investors, employees, consumers, and creditors reach a magnitude that almost defies measurement. The play’s final moments juxtapose evidence of personal and societal loss. Two former employees confront Skilling with their losses: one cannot now send his daughters to college, and the other faces retirement with nothing. In an epilogue narrating subsequent events, a business analyst announces that the United States government has been compelled to prop up the financial system with more than ten trillion dollars. Though Enron dramatizes the rise and fall of an American company, events dominating the news at the time the play opened confirmed its relevance to British audiences. The trillions of dollars in expenditures mentioned in the Enron epilogue refer to governmental attempts to cope with the crisis that occurred in 2008 –2009, as financial institutions and even governments around the world went bankrupt or approached insolvency. Prominent British playwright David Hare decided to seek out an explanation of how this widespread disaster occurred. His play, The Power of Yes (2009), seeks to explain the factors that led to this crisis. This piece consists of documentary-style scenes in which a variety of people with knowledge and opinions, including journalists, scholars, a banker, a lawyer, a hedge fund manager, a bond trader, government officials in the U.S. and Britain, and an internationally known billionaire philanthropist

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offer their perspectives on the situation to a patiently listening author, written into the play as one of its characters. Some explanations refer to general principles, such as this one from a mortgage lender: “Capitalism works when greed and fear are in the correct balance. This time they got out of balance” (Hare 6). Others zero in on the specific problem associated with the crisis— the expansion of subprime mortgage lending and the invention of “securitized credit arrangements” (Hare 26). According to one banker, these “new instruments” encouraged banks “to provide money for all of us who wished to live beyond our means” (Hare 26). Dealing as it does with the aftermath of the crisis, the piece finds many sources of blame for the financial losses, disruption, and change in outlook that were caused by the failure of many banks, the destabilization of nations, and the near-collapse of the global financial system. The United States ran up “bigger and bigger national debts” in the belief that it was “too big to fail” (Hare 27). Individuals founded banks in unlikely places, such as Iceland, for the sole purpose of increasing their borrowing limit. Executives of large banks ignored the implications of balance sheets that showed “unobservable profit” (Hare 38). Financial experts insisted that capitalism’s market would regulate itself, while millions of individuals and institutions came to depend on rising prices in real estate, without considering the possibility that real estate could decline in value. When the liquidity crisis occurred, governments failed to act immediately because of an ingrained belief that “[c]apitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell” (Hare 47). Ordinary consumers, as one former banker points out, gained from the increased competition among banks propelled by the increased risk-taking, until the financial collapse, like a “tsunami” (Hare 50) swept over both high-risk and more conservative players. Finally, politicians, who could have averted the crisis through enacting strict regulations, benefited from the tax revenues generated by expansion and lack the will to curb excesses even after experiencing the disastrous meltdown. The startlingly simple picture that emerges through Hare’s careful arrangement of the evidence he collected bears a strong resemblance to that of Enron’s rise and fall: the collapse occurred because the decision-makers of financial institutions were allowed to pretend that money existed where, in fact, there was none. The illusion of wealth became a dangerous addiction pursued not just because of greed or even power, but, as one speaker asserts, for the sake of “the thing itself ” (Hare 61). The most arresting moments of this piece, however, occur when a speaker acknowledges the emptiness that results from the loss of the illusion when “the music stopped” and banks realized they had been dancing in a building that was “falling down,” its “roof open to the sky” (Hare 39). A journalist describes departing workers at Lehman Brothers using credit at the company cafeteria to stock up on candy bars. A young bond trader expresses anger at the previous generation: “You’ve taken everything and you’ve left us with nothing. Only debt and more debt, with years to pay it off ” (Hare 68). The sobering

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final scene, in which one speaker suggests that the cost of paying off that vast debt might entail political subjection to China, ends with the statement, attributed to George Soros, that “the people who end up paying the price are never the people who get the benefits” (Hare 76). The glimpse of future generations paying for the excesses of the present one at the conclusion of The Power of Yes reinforces the irony of the parentchild bonds in both Enron and Roaring Trade. These plays present male traders who, despite their obsessive pursuit of wealth, interact with their children in a caring manner. Enron’s Skilling tries to teach his daughter to imagine wealth by counting out one-dollar bills while informing her that it would take eleven days to count out a million at the rate of one per second, and then revealing that it would take thirty-two years to count out a billion dollars at the same rate. Later he assures his daughter that he will provide for her, but the same scene shows Skilling controlled by, rather than exercising control of the Enron stock price. His losses, of course, prevent him from supporting his daughter; moreover, the “ten trillion” (Hare 113) dollars reported in the epilogue laid out by the U.S. government to save the financial system will undoubtedly impact his daughter’s future more than Skilling’s. Donny in Roaring Trade similarly tries to teach his son the rudiments of trading. While dining at a fast food restaurant, Donny explains to the boy how to use a shortage of French fries to compel his customer — in this case, a still-hungry Donny — to pay more for them than they had originally cost. However, when the boy later shows off the money he has gained by selling his drawings to his grandmother, even revealing that some of the art work is that of classmates rather than his own, Donny expresses disapproval. Since this conversation coincides with Donny’s reassessment of his own actions, he applies the word “scumbag” to both his and his son’s dealings, suggesting further that they discuss a subject other than money (Thompson 97). In this play the closing image suggests the possibility of a better future for father and son, but does not acknowledge the extent to which the future may be limited by the failures of the father’s generation. Although The Power of Yes contains one reference to “people in China” enabling Western nations to enjoy low inflation by “working for 46 cents an hour” (Hare 32), the plays focused on financial dealings scarcely acknowledge the productive industries or their workers. As can be seen in Enron, the hubris of those obsessed with the illusion of wealth manifests itself in the refusal to value those who actually produce goods. Even during the business expansion of the 1990s, such workers lost ground in developed countries as some industries declined and others moved their production operations, along with associated jobs, to locations with cheap labor. A number of plays written around the turn of the millennium highlighted the loss not only of jobs, but of entire communities and their ways of life. Richard Bean’s plays Toast (1999) and Under the Whaleback (2003) focus on the decline of traditional occupations such as commercial baking and fishing. While workers in those jobs endured discomfort and danger,

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they also shared a community that encompassed both work and home life, and the sense of worth connected with producing something tangible. Michael Wynne’s The People Are Friendly (2002) highlights the disintegration of a family after the closing of a shipyard that had provided the region’s economic stability. Gregory Burke’s Gagarin Way (2001) shows young men responding to a factory closing with inchoate violence, stymied by their inability to identify their enemy in this context or mobilize coherent opposition to the changes occurring in their world. In contrast to those who manipulate the money of others, wage laborers’ only access to wealth lies in their hands-on work with tangible products or services. While their work draws comparatively small rewards, the goods and services they produce and deliver constitute the actual wealth upon which societies are founded. Although their chances of accumulating personal wealth are small, those near the bottom of the economic pyramid do not lack dreams and ambitions. Recent plays about wage laborers highlight energy and hope as a counterweight to poverty and economic struggle. Market Boy (2006) by David Eldridge centers on an adolescent boy who comes of age while working in a literal marketplace during the late 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister was promoting the free market economy. Set in the Romford Market, an outdoor market fair that has operated on its site since the thirteenth century, the play immerses its main character in a world of material goods, As the boy masters the art of selling shoes from a stall and learns the rhythms of commerce in this paradigmatic environment, the material of existence, from shoes and compact discs to fish and hot dogs, frames his perspective. Yet, it is not the manufacture of these types of goods, but rather the ability of a vendor to attribute value to them through effective salesmanship, that dominates his consciousness as he matures and encounters abstract issues like friendship, sex, freedom, authority, history, politics, love, and loyalty. The outdoor markets typified by Romford serve the working poor both as vendors and customers. They specialize in low-priced goods, such as wristwatches being hawked at “two quid each or three for a fiver” (Eldridge 46) or chicken a vendor claims is “so cheap I’ve hurt its pride” (Eldridge 84). Therefore, while the merchandise is plentiful, it does not represent wealth. The boy’s earnings consist of a few pounds per week, and even the trader who owns the shoe stall seems to have little more than the stock of shoes and the van in which he hauls them from one market to another each week. Some of the market’s sellers, nevertheless, aim for wealth, or at least economic improvement. Snooks, one of the shoe stall workers, quits his job and heads for London to work in the City, England’s financial hub. After a short absence he returns to show off an expensive car, a handful of cash, and a fashionably dressed girlfriend — and to brag that he will soon be earning “fifty grand plus bonus” (Eldridge 80). A few scenes later, however, Snooks comes back again, this time begging to have his old job back because he’s “been laid off ” and is down to his “last five quid”

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(Eldridge 108). Early in the play the Meat Man invests in a new trailer, referring to it as a symbol of prosperity and pride; later, when a recession cripples business, bailiffs repossess the trailer while the market crowd looks on. Expansion followed by recession exemplifies the kind of outside force that can disrupt the stability of Romford Market, which has been maintained through the centuries according to rules enforced by its overseer, the “Toby” (Eldridge 29). Prosperity thus serves only to raise hopes that are dashed in the downturn. By the end, business has fallen so far that the shoe stall trader lays off all his assistants. For the working poor in the global economy, the work that provides their only source of money proves ephemeral. Losing his job convinces the boy to move on. In the epilogue, he states that he has obtained a university degree, tried working in the City, decided it was not for him, and found a job in technical support. Though not wealthy, he earns enough to consider himself fortunate. He understands, however, that his success in escaping poverty is unusual, observing that “there are limits to what the free market can achieve” (Eldridge 126). Accordingly, he contributes to “five charities” (Eldridge 126) to help those who come face to face with the limits. The market itself continues as before, with historical figures appearing among the crowd from time to time to remind the audience that, regardless of political and economic changes, conditions remain more or less the same in this archetypical local environment. Oxford Street (2008) by Levi David Addai uses the setting of London’s best known retail center to highlight the daily work of those employed in selling consumer goods produced and marketed in the global economy. The characters, who work in a sportswear shop owned by the “Man from Dubai” (Addai 20), occupy a middle ground economically. They are not as poor as the workers who manufacture the merchandise, and not as affluent as the customers who purchase it. Compared to the traders of the open-air market, the employees of the shop have little freedom or scope for personal initiative. Confined physically, they are subjected to surveillance and control by the manager, who threatens them if they are late, and the security guards, who monitor the employees’ entrance. Unlike the Romford traders, they do not attribute value to the merchandise through their skills in presenting it to customers; instead, they merely manage customers who have been drawn in by the shop’s advertising and location. Much of the work visible in the play aims at preventing theft. Thus, the shop assistants watch customers, and loss prevention officers who have a space overlooking the shop floor, monitor both the customers and the other employees. Upon entering or exiting, each employee must sign a log and submit to a search. The original production of the play at London’s Royal Court Theatre placed members of the audience in seats among the racks and shelves in the shop, perhaps to give them a taste of being constantly watched within a confined space. The employees of the shop, who exemplify the multi-ethnic nature of the London workforce, including black Londoners and immigrants from Africa,

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Eastern Europe, and South America, view the shop as a temporary way station in their working lives. While working full or part-time at jobs that pay more than minimum wage and carry white-collar status, most are engaged in study or some other form of self-development that points to the desire for a better life. The dramatic action centers on Kofi, who has worked as a part-time loss prevention officer while attending university. He has now completed his degree, and would like to be a journalist, but has not ventured to find opportunities in journalism. Kofi enjoys the familiarity and social relationships of this workplace, but those comforts disappear when Darrell, who is from the neighborhood in which Kofi grew up, is hired as a temporary shop assistant during the Christmas season. Darrell, it soon becomes clear, has taken the job with the intent of stealing merchandise. Using threats backed up by a pair of thuggish teenagers who, Darrell reminds Kofi, “know where you live” (Addai 75), Darrell pressures Kofi to cooperate. The crisis occurs one evening at closing, when Darrell and the teenagers, who have entered the shop posing as customers, try to remove a load of merchandise. Attempting to prevent the theft, Kofi gets caught with the goods. Although his sympathetic supervisor gives Kofi a chance to explain the situation, Darrell still hovers threateningly, and Kofi accepts being fired from his job rather than turn Darrell in. The action in Oxford Street emphasizes the futility of attempting to control a marketplace inhabited by humans. Regardless of how stringent the attempts to insulate the shop from loss, chaotic and destructive elements may enter in a number of ways. The play also illustrates the difficulty faced by an individual who strives to move beyond poverty — and more significantly, beyond a community formed through economic disadvantage. Kofi has obtained a university degree, but in the relatively small world of London, he has little chance of completely cutting ties to those from his original community who have the power to pull him down into hopelessness. The play ends on an ambiguous note. Kofi insists to his supervisor that he has “bigger plans” (Addai 82), though he provides no clear indication that he will be able to pursue his ambitions. At the same time, Kofi’s final exit through the customer door suggests a new sense of freedom, and the same kind of unpredictability that has resulted in the loss of his job might aid him in the next phase of his life. Furthermore, the play’s action does not validate Darrell’s approach toward wealth; despite his bold attempt at theft, he fails to obtain anything beyond a pair of child’s sneakers. In a broad sense, the play makes the point that the global economy cannot insure itself against the influence of local conditions, especially the yearning for freedom and power among workers it rewards only with wages. The internationalization of labor, one of the most important aspects of economic globalization, affects local economies not only through the outsourcing of jobs but also through the importation of cheap labor. Of all workers, those who receive the most meager rewards for their labor, coupled with working conditions that fail to provide the most elementary forms of safety and

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security, are the migrant workers without permits to work in the countries to which they have migrated. Fast Labour (2008) by Steve Waters focuses on illegal workers in Britain through the character of Victor, who arrives from the Ukraine without documentation or possessions, covered with bruises, dressed in rags, and speaking no English. He joins others from non–European Union countries such as Belarus and Russia in working at a fish-processing plant on the coast of Scotland. The labor contractor, Grimmer, complains of the low numbers, as well as the poor condition of the workers he receives from the Russian who arranges for their transport to Britain. Anita, the factory’s human resources director, amplifies these complaints, describing recently arrived workers as “eight deadbeats, three of whom couldnae read the back of a fag packet that wasnae in Cyrillic script and one of whom in my view should be in [an emergency room] for second-degree burns” (Waters 6). Though Anita initially rejects Victor, the pressing shortage of labor in the face of “[f ]ive refrigerated trucks waiting in Goods Outwards ... [f ]ive competitor companies in a fivemile radius, five pallets of shellfish defrosting in the loading bays” (Waters 8) compels her to reconsider. Victor, who owned a sausage factory in the Ukraine before a fire destroyed it, leaving him penniless, has endured the two-thousand-mile journey, injuries, and indignities for one purpose, which he states in the first words he speaks: “Want work” (Waters 8). Repeating the word “work,” he desperately makes his bid for a job the locals “don’t reckon’s worth the bus fare” (Waters 8). In spite of her reservations, Anita agrees to let him start work, but the hire, like that for all illegal workers, is off the books. Victor begins a life of double shifts cleaning and deboning fish, living in an unheated trailer shared with seven others. He receives his wages from Grimmer, the labor contractor, rather than from the company, and Grimmer takes a large percentage of the money. Victor and the other illegal laborers lose all their compensation for a month’s work when the factory manager calls in the immigration authorities just before payday. Victor avoids deportation only because Anita, who has taken a fancy to him, protects him. She also shows him the contract with Grimmer, which reveals the extent to which he and the others are being exploited. The loss of wages, which also brings full realization of their powerlessness, causes Victor and two companions, Andrius and Alexei, to consider returning to their own countries. Alexei, however, recalls dangerous and arduous service in the Russian military for which he was paid nothing, and Andrius states that his brother, a history professor at a major Lithuanian university, earns less than he does as a migrant laborer in Britain. Propelled only by determination, Victor, Alexei, and Andrius begin to plot their escape from poverty and powerlessness. Their campaign begins with flattering Grimmer and doing favors for him. It culminates in an agreement with Grimmer that they will provide workers from the Ukraine, invoicing him under the company name Fast Labour and thus keeping him at a distance from illegal

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operations. By this time, Victor has learned to speak English fairly well. He has also learned, as he confides to Anita when he recruits her for the company, that “there is no good reason to be poor,” and in a world of “sharks” (Waters 26) one must either eat or be eaten. Despite her doubts, Anita joins the enterprise because she feels that the black market in workers will continue with or without her involvement, and she trusts Victor, who has been in the place of the illegal workers, to give them better treatment than they would get from someone else. Soon the four companions are living in a rented house, eating well, and even indulging in premium vodka to celebrate the expansion of their business. In spite of his illegal status, Victor flourishes, but the scene in which he shows off his success concludes with the same kind of precipitous fall that occurs in Enron and Roaring Trade. In Victor’s luxurious but unfinished house with a view of the sea, an abundant outlay of food and drink seems to signal a triumphant celebration of the arrival of Victor’s wife Tanya. Alexei, however, brings the devastating news that a fire in one of the substandard and overcrowded buildings used to house the workers has resulted in injuries and a death. Anita, already angry at Victor because he had lied about being married, realizes that he is exploiting his fellow workers no less than he was exploited, and declares her intention of going to the police and making a full disclosure of the operation. Grimmer arrives with Andrius, informing Victor that he will henceforth only deal with legal Eastern European workers, using Andrius as his primary contact. In the end Victor hurriedly burns incriminating documents and heads back to the Ukraine with Tanya. Significantly, in a belated acknowledgment of responsibility to others, he gives bags of cash to Alexei for distribution to the illegal workers “according to their needs” (Waters 101). Victor, like Jeffrey Skilling in Enron, or Spoon and Donny in Roaring Trade, or Kofi in Oxford Street, finishes with nothing to show for the work he has performed. Nevertheless, the potential source of all wealth — people who want to work — remains a tantalizing dream for Victor. Pausing to share some of the food and reflect on the past, Victor and Tanya agree to pursue that dream by returning to the Ukraine, where fate decreed that they would be born, and where, as Tanya observes, they “know the rules” (Waters 98). This group of recent plays unites in depicting business as a dramatic contest propelled by individualistic desire. The intensity of this desire leads to seemingly superhuman efforts and the accumulation of what appears to be wealth. Much of this action occurs outside of and in opposition to the institutions of community and the attendant rules for conducting business. Defiance of rules and obligations, in fact, seems to lead to the most dramatic business success. Wealth, however, cannot be created and maintained through individual efforts alone; it requires the interaction of the individual with a system of production that goes far beyond what any one person or isolated group, no matter how energetic or obsessed with money, can encompass. The creation and maintenance of wealth, as becomes clear in the analysis that unfolds in The Power

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of Yes, requires a variety of societal structures, including a functioning system of laws and moral principles. These plays testify to the failures of an era of opportunism, spawned by rapid change in global and local economies, in which individual adventurers sought to bend or ignore laws while scorning any limitation on their action that might be prompted by concerns for maintaining the common good. The endings and new beginnings signaled by such characters as Donny in Roaring Trade, Kofi in Oxford Street, and Victor in Fast Labour may suggest a reassessment of this era and a revised attitude toward community. A functioning balance between the individual, the systems of production, and the social structures supporting economic activity, within the changed context of the global economy, must be constructed if wealth is to become a tangible benefit to many rather than a chimera to be pursued by the few.

WORKS CITED Addai, Levi David. Oxford Street. London: Methuen, 2008. Churchill, Caryl. Serious Money: A City Comedy. London: Methuen, 1987. Eldridge, David. Market Boy. London: Methuen, 2006. Hare, David. The Power of Yes. London: Faber and Faber, 2009. Prebble, Lucy. Enron. London: Methuen, 2009. Thompson, Steve. Roaring Trade. London: Nick Hern Books, 2009. Waters, Steve. East Labour. London: Nick Hern Books, 2008.

Between Want and Wealth The Failure of Upward Mobility in José Rivera’s Early Plays J. CHRIS WESTGATE

Upward mobility, the promise of improving one’s socioeconomic standing by ascending the class structure, became a defining crux in the early plays of José Rivera. For purposes of this argument, “early plays” refer to the works produced during the initial decade of Rivera’s career as a dramatist: from 1983 when The House of Ramon Iglesia debuted to considerable praise until 1992 when Marisol became his most successful play. Already evident in The House of Ramon Iglesia is this concern about upward mobility, which is defined — by Javier, the oldest son of the eponymous Ramon — against the poverty of the Puerto Rican family living in Long Island. Returned from college to help with economic troubles, Javier chafes against their lives: living in a nearly derelict house, not having money to meet basic needs, and tying all their hopes to a return to Puerto Rico. What Javier wants is escape—from his father’s broken English, from his parents’ yearning for Puerto Rico, from the humiliation of business failures. In this way, he celebrates mobility as way of achieving freedom and fulfillment, though it means abandoning his family. This definition of mobility changes radically during the rest of this decade, however. With The Promise (1987), Each Day Dies with Sleep (1992), and Marisol, Rivera reconceives not just his plays’ relationship to mobility but further the definition of mobility itself, which becomes less about what it promises individuals and more about how it reifies harsh judgments about poverty. No longer solution to problems of socioeconomics or self-definition, mobility becomes instead the ideological problem of these plays. On the one hand, they reflect a disillusionment Rivera felt with The House of Ramon Iglesia, which made him “wince” (See the introduction to The House of Ramon Iglesia in On New Ground: Contemporary Hispanic-American Plays, 194). On the other, they represent his cynicism with how mobility defined the distance between want and wealth. With this last point, it is obvious that upward mobility demands further definition than the appositive phrase offered in my opening. In fact, mobility 257

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endorses its own discourse about the class hierarchy that has far-reaching implications for Rivera’s early plays and society. As J. Emmett Winn notes in “Moralizing Upward Mobility: Investigating the Myth of Class Mobility in Working Girl,” mobility is founded upon two incongruous myths. The first “posits that no structural class limitations unfairly hinder an individual in the U.S.,” that we live in a “classless society,” and therefore “are only limited by ... personal ability and drive to succeed” (40 –41). The second “requires that classes must exist in order for upward mobility between classes to occur” (41). Behind such competing myths are contradictions about U.S. society that must be rationalized, if not resolved. The way that they have been rationalized, historically, is through competing definitions of the poverty from which individuals try to rise, definitions that fall within two categories: the restricted opportunity and flawed characters arguments (Jennings 14). Under the first, attention goes to the material, structural limits that produce and reinforce class boundaries: what limits individual success according to this model is the capitalist, class-based system. Under the second, by contrast, the system is exonerated through the argument that the poor are poor due to an inherent or pathological problem. While sociologists have, at least since the 1960s, argued for the former explanation, it is the latter that has taken root in class epistemologies in the U.S.: socioeconomic failure derives from a moral failure, implying that the upper class enjoys material and moral advantages (This progressive period of sociological concern began with Michael Harrington’s The Other America in 1969 and corresponded with Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. For discussion of this period, see Michael B. Katz’s The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare [1989]; James Jennings and Louis Kushnick’s A New Introduction to Poverty: The Role of Race, Power, and Politics [1999]; Gavin Jones’s American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840 –1945 [2008]). In other words, the class hierarchy becomes an index of values that condemns the poor for not living up to the values of the rich. Mobility, in effect, becomes not just a language of success, as Javier defined it, but of failure. This judgment was particularly virulent during the years of Rivera’s early plays, or what I describe hereafter as the Reagan/Bush decade. When the Reagan administration took office in 1980, the goal was “nothing less than the reversal of five decades of liberalism” (Stricker 183). Central to this goal was redefining the obligations of the government toward the poor. This campaign was initially legislative and involved slashing social services such as “food stamps, disability insurance, unemployment insurance,” reductions which justified by the argument that “social programs should be cut to make unemployment harder to endure” (187–188). In other words, the responsibility of government was to encourage those who could work to do so and punish those who could not. In The Undeserving Poor, Michael Katz confirms these conclusions (See Katz’s discussion of the war on welfare and the corresponding cuts made to HUD [Housing and Urban Development], 189) and, more notably, suggests the second part

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of the administration’s campaign: the ideological argument about class, wealth, and poverty. Behind many of the aforementioned cuts was an effort to refute the liberalism behind Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” and redefine what poverty means. “Because the language is a vocabulary of invidious distinction,” contends Katz, “poverty discourse highlights the social construction of difference” (5). The poor were not simply people with lower income; they were of lower values, undeserving of government aid because they were lazy or parasitic. Welfare was defined not as a safety-net but as a form of indulgence. In effect, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sought to rebuild the “wall of affluence” that endorsed indifference or hostility toward the poor, which Michael Harrington described in The Other America in 1969. And, of course, upward mobility played a key role in this ideological redefinition of class, wealth, and poverty: with mobility, the administrations could champion individualism while obfuscating material disadvantages. In effect, mobility was used as justification for class warfare during the Reagan/Bush decade. Considered against this milieu, it is obvious why Rivera winced at the words of Javier in The House of Ramon Iglesia in 1987 and why upward mobility became a defining crux in his early plays. The language employed by Javier, which defines mobility in contrast to “stupidity” and business success in contrast to “thinking like a peasant” reflects the ideological campaign of the Reagan administration, specifically, the notion that the poverty of the family comes from their inherent failures as Puerto Ricans to attain the American Dream (These quotes come from a scene where Javier is confronting his father with the most conservative definitions of the family’s failure, definitions that suggest indictment the family’s failure to assimilate by dropping their linguistic and emotional ties to Puerto Rico.). They remain trapped in poverty because there is something wrong with them, not because there is something wrong in the capitalist system that may inhibit the success of Puerto Ricans. While the play is structured as a conversion narrative, with Javier coming to see how shortsighted his perspective is, Rivera was troubled by Javier’s limited periperty (In On New Ground: Contemporary Hispanic-American Plays in 1987, Rivera writes, “Javier does learn his lesson in the play, but ... I think he doesn’t learn enough” [194]). In the anthology On New Ground: Contemporary Hispanic-American Plays in 1987, Rivera goes on to admit that The House of Ramon Iglesia is an immature work, one that didn’t fulfill the philosophy of writing that he had defined for himself: “a good writer must be critical of his times and of his culture” (194). Notably, it was 1987 when The Promise debuted, the first of the plays that would reconsider how mobility relates to class, wealth, and poverty. Openly critical of their times, the early plays try to teach the lesson that Javier never fully learned: that mobility was used to bludgeon those in poverty during the Reagan/Bush decade. It endorsed the flawed character model in its emphasis on individualism without acknowledging class-based limitations facing the poor. Making mobility a crux in his early plays may have been the key decision in

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the evolution from the immaturity of The House of Ramon Iglesia to the mature Rivera of today who is one of the most outspoken critics of class and poverty (For details of Rivera’s concerns about class and poverty, see “Poverty and Magic in Each Day Dies with Sleep” Studies in American Drama, 1945 –Present [1992]; “An Interview with Jose Rivera,” by Norma Jenckes, American Drama [2001]; “‘An Urgent Voice for Our Times’: An Interview with Jose Rivera.” By Caridad Svich. Contemporary Theatre Review [2004]). In effect, his philosophy was defined and redefined in the crucible of this decade. Naturally, the question that follows is this: how did this change in philosophy translate to the depiction of mobility in relation to class, wealth, and poverty? Not alone in addressing such concerns, Rivera’s plays share subjects with Mike Nichols’s Working Girl (1988), Josefina Lopez’s Real Women Have Curves (1987), Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street (1984), and Richard Rodriguez’s The Hunger of Memory (1983). What differentiates Rivera’s plays from these works is that they do not implicitly affirm upward mobility, as do Working Girl and Real Women Have Curves (See J. Emmett Winn’s “Moralizing Upward Mobility: Investigating the Myth of Class Mobility in Working Girl” in Southern Communication Journal and Christie Launius’s “Real Women Have Curves: A Feminist Narrative of Upward Mobility” in American Drama.). Nor do they limit their criticism to liberal humanist assumptions that focus on individual fulfillment as a gauge of success, as do The House on Mango Street and The Hunger of Memory (See Jason Frydman’s “Upward Mobility as a Neurotic Condition in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street” in Exit 9: The Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature and Renny Christopher’s “Rags to Riches to Suicide: Unhappy Narratives of Upward Mobility: Martin Eden, Bread Givers, Delia’s Song, and Hunger of Memory” in College Literature). Instead, The Promise, Each Day Dies with Sleep, and Marisol, with greater and lesser degrees of success, interrogate mobility as a means of negotiating the class hierarchy in the U.S. and that hierarchy itself. They do this through two means, the first of which involves defining poverty in terms of what Gavin Jones has characterized as a “mode of socioeconomic suffering,” which focuses on material disadvantages (3). Not about eliciting sympathy, this tack involves challenging the “flawed character” model behind conservative definitions of poverty which upward mobility affirmed. With this locating poverty in a structural definition, the plays make it more difficult to blame the poor. This leads to the second way the plays interrogate mobility: by challenging the notion that class status serves as an index of morality. In other words, the plays question the notion that being middle class means having better values, a key way the distance between want and wealth was regulated. If Winn is right and literature can “provide a way for individuals to understand their own struggles and class identities,” then Rivera’s plays serve a crucial ideological function in this decade in their determination to redefine mobility as part of the class warfare being carried out by the Reagan/Bush administrations (41).

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The first of the early plays to reconceive mobility, The Promise may be noteworthy more for its attempt than its accomplishment. About another Puerto Rican family that immigrated to the United States in the 1950s and took up residence on Long Island, in this case, the waterfront village of Patchogue, the play dramatizes the struggles of Pedro Guzman and his children, Lilia and Milton, to find a place in U.S. society. During the prologue this struggle manifests itself in Guzman’s appearance: he is dressed in his “factory uniform” that says “Lockheed” on the back, and his fingers are heavily bandaged. If not evident from these sartorial signs, this exposition is furthered through a monologue: “Lockheed is killing Pedro Guzman. They don’t use my true talents: my unquestioned links to God, the Holy Ghost, and dead people. They got me grinding magnets all day on an emory wheel ’case I’m a spic” (11). More evidence of marginality comes with the setting: Guzman owns a small bungalow surrounded by a “battered picket fence” that separates the house from the bulldozers which are “digging a pit which has devoured half the neighborhood” (2). In this exposition, Rivera defines Guzman through interlocking networks of class and culture: first in terms of his labor, suggested by his clothing which defines him as just another name in the business; and conveyed through the bandages on his fingers. He is further defined in terms of institutional racism that relegates Puerto Ricans to low-status, blue-collar jobs (See Susan S. Baker’s Understanding Mainland Puerto Rican Poverty [2002] for details here). And finally, through the scenic environment: the “battered picket fence” and giant “pit” which suggest how threadbare the American Dream has become. In effect, Guzman is reduced to his labor, limited by racism, and tantalized by the ironic symbology of the American Dream. No wonder Guzman pursues the promise of upward mobility without qualms for what it costs. Mobility offers, theoretically, a way of redeeming body and spirit as well as resisting a class system that relegates those like him to debilitating positions in society. His determination to realize mobility manifests itself, initially, through his planned marriage of his daughter, Lilia, to Hiberto Muñoz, the son of a wealthy family. When Guzman informs Lilia about the plan, she reacts with incredulity: he is hardly a man, much less a man worth marrying. Her conclusion is corroborated in a later conversation when Hiberto suddenly begs for sexual favors (“Fuck me right now!” [20]) and then asks her to humiliate him (“make me grab my ankles and bark like a dog” [21]). Although Guzman justifies the marriage through sentimentality, underscoring that Hiberto “stayed single thirty-three years for you,” his real motives emerge as the debate reaches a fevered pitch (7). “I know the Muñoz family isn’t perfect. His father’s a pig. His mother’s a convicted felon,” he admits, “But ... there’s fame and fortune in that family” because when “old Muñoz dies, in the autopsy they’ll find his bones stuffed with money” [original emphasis] (8). Putting it bluntly, he insists, “What’s wrong with getting a piece of that?” (8). Considering the material disadvantages that Guzman and his family confront, there may

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seem to be little wrong with “getting a piece of that,” in the abstract. But the reality goes to The Promise’s interrogation of mobility: this mercenary marriage of Lilia to Hiberto is contrasted with the almost Platonic love of Lilia and Carmelo, her “predestined husband,” the boy to whom her mother betrothed her in an improvised ceremony when they were young. When Carmelo returns from his travels throughout South America, he and Lilia revive their love and consummate their desires. Not interested in her happiness, Guzman puts a curse on Carmelo, as he did Carmelo’s father years before, a curse that ultimately kills Carmelo, leaving Lilia free to marry Hiberto. If The Promise initially defines mobility through the invigorating promise of escape from the debilitating class system (and thereby echoes The House of Ramon Iglesia), it quickly redefines it through ruthlessness in individual ambition. Guzman never blinks in plotting to kill Carmelo and destroying his daughter’s happiness because doing so prove necessary for his chance at the Muñoz wealth. Already something of the play’s criticism of the values hierarchy endorsed by upward mobility emerges: mobility invites and perhaps endorses acts of immorality in order to ascend the class hierarchy, which is exactly how Guzman describes the wedding at the opening of the ceremony. To the assembled guests, he says “You’re going to see the fabulous marriage of my little girl and this upwardly mobile young Hiberto” (44). But The Promise makes clear the corruption of values in this ambition through the alarming events that precede and disrupt the wedding. Before the ceremony even begins, the coffin of Guzman’s grandmother arrives from Puerto Rico because he has not paid for its maintenance. This incident introduces the interplay of money, family, and death which, of course, is doubled in his insistence on marrying Lilia to Hiberto for a chance at the money in old Muñoz’s bones. Moreover, the arrival of the coffin introduces death, thematically, into the ceremony in that it stays onstage, serving as a darkly comic counterpoint to the celebration, suggesting what will happen literally or symbolically if Guzman follows his ambition. This link to the dead is furthered by Lilia’s visit to the cemetery before the wedding to “invite” Carmelo. While Lilia is there, Carmelo’s spirit enters her body and later when Guzman tells Hiberto to kiss the bride, Carmelo takes possession of her body, forcing “Hiberto away with incredible strength” and crying “Nooooooo! Leave my wife alone!” (46). Through this incident the play once again contrasts ideal love with mercenary marriage. Afraid of these events, Hiberto flees, leaving Guzman’s ambitions frustrated. “Took his money with him,” he complains, “I have to go back to Lockheed and grind my fingers to pulp” (49). Clearly The Promise contrasts two plots— the mobility plot of Guzman and the marriage plot of Lilia and Carmelo— with the ambition of highlighting the contrast of values necessary in both: one about love and devotion expressed through highly stylized scenes that include poems falling from the sky, the other about fame and fortune expressed through traditional, somewhat bland realism. However much this contrast condemns the mobility plot, Rivera does not allow

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the marriage plot to triumph over Guzman’s ambitions for mobility. In fact, the failure of the union with the Muñoz family prompts him toward new strategies to achieve mobility, which focus on the metaphysical curiosity of his daughter’s condition. The first involves turning Lilia into a sideshow attraction which is conveyed through the lowering of a “movie marquee” that reads “Touch the Miracle. Ten Dollars” (53). Defining mobility in terms of commodification — of Guzman’s daughter — this is only the first step toward Guzman’s real ambition: selling the story of Lilia’s possession by Carmelo to a Hollywood. Not long after the wedding, Guzman enters in a tuxedo and wearing “big expensive rings and gold chains” while the bandages on his fingers are gone (54). Here, Rivera returns to the trope of clothing as a marker of class status, though inverted: instead of defining him through his labor, his clothing defines him through comfort and wealth. When Milton returns from his travels, Guzman describes the details of selling Lilia’s and Carmelo’s story: “I quit my job at Lockheed. Goya Foods wants me to endorse their new line of beans. I’m on the cover of six magazines” (55). When Milton tries to make him appreciate that Lilia may be dying because of what he is deliberately marketing, his response is revealing: “I’ve been poor all my life! Let me enjoy myself this one time!” (58). In this contrast Rivera advances the criticism of the values hierarchy implicit in mobility. The contrast is between his duty as Lilia’s father and his ambition to enjoy himself through the wealth, freedom, and power achieved through mobility —here and throughout the play. Since he remains deaf to Milton’s argument, it’s clear which Guzman chooses: his own success even if it comes at the expense of family, a darker version of the same conclusion made by Javier. What The Promise suggests that exceeds the limitations of The House of Ramon Iglesia is that Guzman’s rise into the middle class is comes not despite but because of his disregard for the lives of others around him. Milton made this point during an argument before leaving for his travels, when he asked if Elena, their dead mother, “see[s] you selling her daughter to Muñoz like a prostitute?” (23). Not chastened by this indictment at all, Guzman did not even acknowledge his duty to his daughter but instead stressed the work that went into selling her: “I broke my back cruising that toad-like substance Muñoz boy” (25). In other words, his relationship to Lilia has long been defined by something like the Marxist premise of “exchange value” where value is determined entirely by what can be gotten for what is being sold. In fact, the trope of selling his daughter underlies each of Guzman’s strategies for mobility: selling her love and body to Hiberto; selling her story and life to Hollywood. To him, she is something to facilitate his mobility from the poverty he has known all his life to the enjoyment that follows from upward mobility. Instead of adopting better values linked with the middle class, he becomes increasingly ruthless. The point seems to be that this ruthlessness is necessary to ascend the class hierarchy. Certainly the fame and fortune of the Muñoz family —where the mother is a felon, the father is a hoarder, and the son a toad-like substance—is hardly associated with any superior morality.

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However much these criticisms can be discovered, when sought, The Promise is not that successful in questioning upward mobility because it struggles to locate its criticism within the class system itself. Take the concerns with institutional racism suggested at the beginning of the play. Behind the reading of Guzman’s willingness to sacrifice both values and his children for success is the notion that Puerto Ricans, more than other Latino groups, have suffered with institutional racism in the U.S. that denies them opportunities to succeed. Guzman, of course, mentions this more than once during the play and Rivera even introduces Guzman wearing his Lockheed uniform, suggesting that the play will focus on material disadvantages confronting Guzman, which would include racism. Certainly the second-class status of Puerto Ricans has been documented by research, but the play ultimately undermines this premise by defining Guzman’s disadvantage not in contrast to “white” wealth but rather to the wealth of other Latinos. It is the Muñoz family that serves as the model for Guzman, suggesting that they were perfectly able to negotiate whatever institutional racism might exist. More importantly, Rivera makes it clear that the Muñoz family is not an exception to the rule after the wedding’s bizarre ending. With Hiberto out of the picture, Guzman introduces another marriage-plot (which the play never pursues): “I want to tell you about Luis Santana,” he tells the nearly-catatonic Lilia, “a nice boy whose father owns a Mobil station in Ronkonkoma” (49). Intended to reaffirm his determination to rise in society by “selling” his daughter, this second-marriage plot confirms, simultaneously, the possibility of Latino material success in the world of The Promise. In effect, it defines Guzman’s poverty as more of the exception than the rule, suggesting that institutional racism provides a rationalization for his material disadvantage instead of an explanation. This leads to the more significant weakness of The Promise: the reality that the criticism therein falls primarily upon Guzman’s ambitions for mobility instead of mobility and the class system. Clearly, the play is trying to define the values of the middle class in Guzman himself: the notion is that he adopts the values of that class to rise socioeconomically and certainly there is something implicitly true in this. After all, his success in selling his daughter’s story depends upon an audience willing to consume the story. But the problem is that Guzman’s immorality precedes this mobility — by decades. Long before the play begins, he has committed sins that define him as being one of the tyrannical men of Rivera’s plays (Many of these men are fathers. See Miriam Chirico’s “José Rivera” in Dictionary of Literary Biography (2002) for discussion of these fatherfigures in Rivera’s plays). When he learned that his wife was not a virgin on their wedding night, he bullied her to the point that she starved herself to death; then he created the “myth” of the perfect marriage in order to manipulate his children. Moreover Guzman cursed Carmelo’s father, Alegria, leaving him crippled with pain and living in poverty because it was he who had the affair with Elena even though it was years before they were married. Guzman’s immorality

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cannot be attributed to the class system because it was evident before his desires for mobility manifested themselves. If anything, his immorality marks him as dangerous, as undeserving of the benefits of mobility, and consequently may justify his punishment (he eventually reneges his power to stay young) and the class system. What success he had with mobility is belied by his fall, which originates from his immorality, a conclusion that suggests the flawed-character model of poverty. In other words, his poverty may have less to do with material disadvantages than with corrupt values, a conclusion that exonerates the class system. In short, The Promise condemns the immoral individual for striving for mobility, rather than mobility itself. In this first of the early plays, then, Rivera had more of a beginning to his concerns with upward mobility, class, and poverty than a conclusion. With the publication of Each Day Dies with Sleep, originally in Studies in American Drama, 1945 –Present in 1992 and later in Marisol and Other Plays (1997), Rivera reaffirmed the underlying concerns behind the early plays. “One can never ignore the pure facts here,” he says during the 1992 introduction, “millions of Puerto Ricans in this country grow up and die in poverty. They grow up sleeping two and three to a bed. There is despair, anger and the constant presence of hunger” (163). These facts have been corroborated in studies like Susan Baker’s Understanding Mainland Puerto Rican Poverty, which documents unemployment, lack of education, as well as discrimination. Importantly, though, Rivera’s claim that “one can never ignore” these facts of poverty means something close to what Harrington meant in The Other America decades before: one cannot morally ignore the facts of poverty once confronted by them. The truth is that many in the middle class were comfortably ignoring poverty in the Reagan/Bush decade because of the ideological redefinition of poverty. In Each Day Dies, Rivera clearly recognizes that the facts about poverty are never enough because they are unavoidably interpreted through ideological assumptions, in this case, those behind mobility as the defining trope for the distance between want and wealth. It is this ideological perspective on poverty, being fashioned by the Reagan administration, that Rivera’s plays must challenge, not just the facts. Because of this, Each Day Dies involves a change in method from The Promise. Instead of defining problems of mobility through an individual’s ambitions, the play invokes and interrogates assumptions behind class ambitions, in this case, those held by Nelly, another doubling of Javier. In particular, the play introduces the idea that the socioeconomic hierarchy does function as an index of morality that divides middle from lower class, only to expose this to be untenable and self-serving. Each Day Dies begins with the abysmal poverty in which Nelly lives in another house on Long Island, this one as dilapidated as that in The House of Ramon Iglesia. A woman in her early twenties, Nelly is sitting on the floor, trying to find matching pairs from a “mountain” of socks even though she is “in desperate need of sleep” (73). Suddenly “feeling hungry,” she crawls to the sofa

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and she finds food “under the cushions,” food which she eats “fast” and with palpable anxiety about being discovered (73). Notably, her moving reveals Nelly’s unique locomotion: she crawls on all-fours and, later it’s revealed, talks in broken sentences as if her development had been fixed as an infant, or an animal under more Social Darwinian thinking. In this, Rivera defines Nelly’s poverty in terms similar to what Jones describes in American Hungers, where poverty is “intertwined with questions of selfhood, being, and language” and begins from “an understanding of need as a specific kind of suffering that is at once materially bounded, socially inscribed, and psychologically registered” (4). In Nelly’s case, her poverty is defined in relation to needs for rest, which is contrasted with her Sisyphean labor with the socks; for food, which is contrasted with scarcity and competition for resources; with her humanity, which is contrasted with her stunted maturation. Although Jones focuses on fictional depictions of poverty, Each Day Dies makes it clear that the aforementioned definition benefits considerably from theater. After all, elements of Nelly’s poverty are defined through the body, which serves as locale of suffering under Jones’s definition and which foregrounds performative aspects for the actor playing Nelly to bring these materially-bounded conditions to the surface through movement and gesture. If the harshness of Nelly’s poverty weren’t clear enough, it becomes so with the entrance of her father, Augie, whose disregard for his children rivals that of Guzman. Against this nightmarish poverty come Nelly’s aspirations for upward mobility, which she first describes to Johnny Amengual, a lothario who has seduced many of Nelly’s sisters but unexpectedly finds himself intrigued by her ambitions. “I haven’t left this house in two years,” she explains, “I want prospects. I want better” [original emphasis] (83). “My plan is this: I can fall asleep and dream winning lottery numbers,” the proceeds of which can facilitate their moving to California where they can “open a garage. Fix Porsches, Mercedes, Jaguars” (83). Notably, it is during this description of their future that Nelly first stands upright, a transformation usually attributed to her need for love but which additionally suggests something about mobility and her humanity (See Chirico in Dictionary of Literary Biography and Rivera himself in “Poverty and Magic in Each Day Dies with Sleep” in Studies in American Drama, 1945 – Present [1992] for this reading of Nelly). This link is corroborated in scene three, when she tells Augie of her plan to leave for California while walking and talking normally and, even more importantly, in scene five when she returns to attend to Augie who is now in a wheelchair: “Johnny’s in Los Angeles waiting for me. He opened a garage and bought a pretty little house on Laurel Canyon Blvd” (88). The implication here is that mobility translates to her growing humanity: her rise in class corresponds with the healing of the wounds of poverty through its new opportunities and new freedoms, a conclusion illustrated in scene six in Los Angeles. In contrast to the dreary house on Long Island, “lots of sunshine streams in through the windows” of their new house while “growing

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out of the floor is the orange tree, heavy with ripe oranges” (90). Symbolically, the contrast is clear: their lives after mobility are marked by abundance: food grows from the floor, opportunity fills their lives, and Nelly talks and moves with the same freedom as anyone else, which is conveyed by Nelly chasing Johnny and spraying him with champagne. They have achieved the American Dream, the details of which emerge when Nelly brings Augie to L.A.: they opened “a third ‘Nelly and Johnny’s,’ [and] ... have quadrupled [their] net worth” (99). In this contrast of Nelly’s life in California with her life in New York, Rivera defines the terms and trajectory of upward mobility in Each Day Dies with Sleep. Initiated through “magic,” or Nelly’s ability to dream lottery numbers, this mobility takes a conventional course thereafter: the winnings provide seed money surely, but their success is tied to hard work, determination, and entrepreneurship. With her rise in society, Nelly gets the “better” life that she demanded of Johnny and herself in terms of socioeconomics, but Nelly’s intriguing term “better” means more than champagne, garages, and freedom. It, likewise, suggests a life morally better, a life defined by better values in the middle class, which is suggested through the aforementioned contrast of poverty and wealth. What Nelly was escaping in New York was, after all, not just the material deprivation established during the opening scenes, but further, the moral vacuum that defined this poverty. The Long Island house is Augie’s world, a world defined by grotesque values as suggested during his initial entrance: preceded by gunshots, he comes on stage outraged about his children shooting at him. “What’s wrong with those animals?” (74). The answer, of course, is that Augie has taught them such violence through his omissions (never teaching them to talk or walk much less providing them with food or love) and his aggressions (his cruelty of calling Nelly “pinhead” or his promise to “launch a preemptive strike and erase all you kids from the world” [original emphasis 75]). Defined by violence, cruelty, and self-indulgence, his world is a without recognizable notions of love, nurturance, or family (subjects that became politicized with the conservative right). This world of grotesque values contrasts markedly with the world of Nelly and Johnny in Los Angeles. Their lives are defined, initially, by love, desire, mutual respect, and even loyalty, as conveyed by Nelly taking-in Augie. Nelly’s life in the middle class seems both materially and morally “better” than anything that she had known in poverty. More significantly, this contrast represents a rather audacious gambit on Rivera’s part in terms of representing class, poverty, and mobility because it seemingly substantiates the moral hierarchy that the Reagan and Bush administrations were defending. It does by imbricating the mobility between classes directly with “better” values. Because Nelly has proper values in terms of hard work and determination, she is able to rise from one class to another, unlike her father, who doesn’t work at all and depends on welfare to finance his life of debauchery. In other words, he can never rise into the middle class because

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he, like Guzman, lacks the values necessary for admittance. In this, Each Day Dies engages with transhistorical concerns about poverty, in this case, with the deserving/undeserving poor dichotomy that goes all the way back to Victorian England and functioned as a powerful tool for regulating class boundaries then — and during the Reagan administration (See Gavin Jones’s American Hungers for discussion of the deserving/undeserving dichotomy of the Victorian and early twentieth-century). Moreover, Each Day Dies apparently confirms the more cynical implication of this reasoning: that the poor become adapted to their poverty, including the values that they do or don’t have. Long part of the discourse on poverty, this argument had a particularly relevant iteration in Edward Banfield’s The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis (1968). Drawing on Oscar Lewis’s “culture of poverty” thesis, Banfield argued that the poor become so adapted to poverty that they welcome their misery and destroy anything that might improve their lives, like schools, parks, and libraries (62–63). A particularly virulent instance of Social Darwinism, this notion echoes the lives of poverty depicted in Each Day Dies with Sleep, especially during the early scenes where Nelly and her siblings are defined as moving like animals, and the Long Island house is described as full of wild beasts. Such depictions of poverty potentially become definitional: they endorse the class hierarchy as a measurement of morality. If this were the whole story about mobility, then Each Day Dies would actually reify the inoculating distance between want and wealth. But this is not the end of Nelly’s mobility, only the beginning. In fact, her dreams of the “better” life, her lottery winnings, and her opening garages all take place during the first act; the second, by contrast, examines the process of acculturation into the middle class. For Nelly, her dream of “better” becomes less about having the opportunity to “make something” than about buying and owning possessions (83). Even during scene three, when telling Augie about their plans, she has begun to confuse her dream of entrepreneurship with a more crude materialism. “From now on my life will be filled with transmissions, batteries,” she exclaims, “and money, money, money” (86). Once they become established in the middle class and Nelly decides to bring Augie to L.A., she defines her success through metonyms for middle-class consumption: “We have money. A VCR. A side-by-side refrigerator stuffed with mangoes and arugula” (99). Importantly, Nelly’s definition of her “better” life becomes increasingly defined by materialism: with property and possessions that become displays of her newfound financial freedom. While understandable given the poverty from which she has come, this materialism stands in contrast to her ambitions for work, security, and making something with her effort. Quite the opposite is true for Johnny who, once he becomes mechanic for the stars (clients include Sean Penn, Marlon Brando, and Jack Nicholson), regresses to his earliest ambitions. During a monologue, Johnny describes his dream of modeling: “I know the business is hot.... But I’ve been thinking of other things. In a city that worships

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beauty like mine ... I’m no longer content putting my eight-by-ten glossies in people’s glove compartments” (95). After a woman who runs a modeling agency leaves her card, Johnny becomes obsessed with his “true career as a model because I will never be better looking than I am now” (110). Initially framed by the language of fulfillment, Johnny’s ambitions become defined through his narcissistic interests with fame and beauty. Unlike The Promise, Each Day Dies with Sleep defines the problem of mobility not through individual failure to life up to “better” values of the middle class but instead through successful acculturation to dubious values. After all, Nelly’s materialism corresponds with some financial success: her desire for “money, money, money” precipitates the opening of garages in L.A.; her description of the accoutrement of a middle-class lifestyle corresponds with the development of the franchise. Anything but abnormal, her desire for money, property, and possessions goes to the essence of the middle class: a class defined by what it can buy or own. If anything, Nelly is the model middle-class businesswoman as she merges her values on work and determination with ownership and consumption. Likewise, Johnny’s modeling ambitions, which certainly relate to his egoism and vanity, reflect something about the class they have entered. As Johnny observes, they live in a city that “worships beauty,” a city that they inhabit because of mobility. He was recruited by a woman representing an industry that is admittedly devoted to selling fame and glamour through superficiality, but nevertheless, this industry is endorsed in society and marketed toward the middle class. The point is that whatever deviation we find in the values of Nelly and Johnny in the second half of the play, occur after and presumably because of their rise into the middle class. Materialism and narcissism are nested in the class structure, suggesting a contrast between values before and after mobility. In Johnny’s case, the change is back to his self-indulgent, egotistic self that Nelly attempted to change through their reversed Pygmalion relationship. In Nelly’s case, the change is from her privileging hard work and determination to her desire for ownership and consumption. In this contrast of values before and after mobility, Each Day Dies offers some challenge to the conservative notion that the values of the middle class (and those inhabiting this class) are inherently “better.” This challenge becomes even more glaring following Johnny’s forays into the modeling world. When he returns from his initial modeling job, he “staggers into the center of the room, guitar shattered, clothes torn and face bloody” (113). He was attacked by “six jealous husbands ... at least seven feet tall” who didn’t like his female “fan club,” which was constituted by their wives (113). Violence like this isn’t unprecedented in Each Day Dies; it’s the sort of violence that Nelly knew during her childhood, and in this contrast emerges the Rivera’s most potent critique of the values hierarchy. Not “better” in terms of the values that defined poverty during act one, this violence by middle-class husbands is, in fact, not appreciably different from that threatened by Augie against his children

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and against a social worker that he brags he threw out a second-story window. If anything, this violence of the middle class is worse since it is not bound by constraints, legal or moral, that would prevent escalation. Not long after Johnny returns beaten, the “jealous husbands” burn “him in effigy on La Crenega Blvd” (114). Worse, Nelly discovers a woman’s severed hand in their garage (115). After the severed hand, they plant explosives in Johnny’s car, burning him, and then take out a “full page ad congratulating themselves” in the L.A. Times (122). Defined by patriarchal aggression, the middle class men are, at best, as bad as Augie, who epitomizes the immoral poor and presents some justification for the kind of cultural condemnation seen in the Reagan/Bush decade. At worst, they exceed his immorality through their disregard for reprisal. It is Johnny who makes the most revealing comparison when he describes them as “six animals in black tie and brass knuckles,” imagery that links them with the animals and savagery associated with the poor under Social Darwinist arguments like that made by Banfield and invoked during the Reagan administration (113). In this contrast, the “better” values attributed to the middle-class become little more than a façade. The longer Nelly is part of the middle class, in other words, the less “better” it becomes. Full of materialism, narcissism, and violence, the world of the middle class as depicted in Each Day Dies has more in common with the world of poverty, instead of providing a distinguishing contrast. This conclusion goes to the core of Rivera’s gambit in setting up the contrast of want and wealth in terms of both socioeconomics and morality: it becomes a way of thematizing the ideological perspective underlying mobility, the perspective that makes it not only possible to ignore the facts of poverty but perfectly justified. If the poor are poor because they are defined by immorality, then the “wall of affluence” being fashioned by the Reagan administration will protect the middle class against the Augies of the world. The question posed by Each Day Dies with Sleep, however, is what does it suggest that the middle class is equally immoral? Are they middle class despite this immorality? Or because of it? In this play, Rivera only answers this question implicitly, that is, through the acculturation involved in mobility that corrupts what positive values Nelly had before mobility. Because of this, her rise into the middle class ends not with fulfillment but with disillusionment, with the loss of her dreams about where to find a world “better.” Linked with this disillusionment is Nelly’s struggle with control over her body as she begins to regress to her child-like (or animal-like) posture in the scene where she finds the severed hand. “Upright, Nelly,” she tells herself, “Be upright. Don’t sink back” [original emphasis] (115). What Nelly had believed, like Javier, about mobility and morality is proven untenable during the play, forcing her to see that the dichotomy she had believed was not just false but self-serving. What Nelly faces is what Rivera wanted audiences of the early plays to learn: mobility is a way of reinforcing material privilege, not defending moral superiority. While Each Day Dies with Sleep offers a real improvement on The Promise

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in terms of its criticism of upward mobility, there are important limits to its success. First of all, Each Day Dies is not linked to a sociohistorical context and instead is allegorical in its representation of class, poverty, and mobility. Alone, this hardly proves detrimental to the play or its themes, but it makes it much more difficult for audiences at performance to recognize some of the connections to the Reagan administration suggested here. Second, the play’s criticism of mobility depends on Nelly rising into the middle class and being corrupted by its dubious morality. But Rivera cannot bring himself to condemn Nelly in the larger interrogation of mobility. Because of this, the play cannot stay consistent in its focus on mobility but instead considers her dreams and hopes and her need for love, all of which suggest his fondness for Nelly as much as his concerns with mobility (This is evident in his writing about Each Day Dies. See “Poverty and Magic in Each Day Dies with Sleep”). Finally, the major weakness of Each Day Dies as a criticism of mobility is that its conclusions are too tentative. While the play makes it clear that immorality is not exclusively linked with poverty, the best it can do is suggest that immorality is possible in the middle class. It never makes the more compelling argument that immorality may be a constituent part of the middle class, a key idea in the larger concern about the campaign against the poor during the Reagan/Bush decade. In truth, these weaknesses outlined here may not be fair criticisms since Rivera admits that it Each Day Dies was not “political in its intent” (163). Instead, it addresses themes of love and family, dreams and survival, magic and misery, all of which make it “more interior and introspective” (163). This is probably why with the exception of Rossini (See Rossini’s Contemporary Latina/o Theater: Wrighting Ethnicity [2008]) few have considered mobility. Nevertheless, Each Day Dies with Sleep represents a key development in the ways of depicting class, poverty, and mobility — especially thematizing the ideological perspective of class— that is ultimately realized in the last of the early plays, Marisol. With Marisol, which originally debuted in 1992 at the Humana Festival and had its New York premiere the following year, Rivera brings to fruition the defining concerns about mobility behind the early plays. In Marisol are two shifts in representation that, interestingly, imply that Rivera perhaps recognized the limits of Each Day Dies. The first involves narrowing the focus from poverty to homelessness, which Rivera told Lynn Jacobson in a 1990 interview was “the political essence of the play” (55). In this, he moves from allegory and toward a sociohistorical context, invoking the rise of homelessness during the 1980s in numbers not seen since the Great Depression and when conservatives were carrying out a campaign against the homeless (This enormous rise in the numbers of the homeless has been attributed, nationally, to the Reagan administration’s cuts to federal programs and funding: HUD losing 80 percent of its budget, support for low-income families being slashed, etc. For more details see Arline Mathieu’s “The Medicalization of Homelessness and the Theater of Repression” in Medical Anthropology Quarterly. Mathieu’s article also includes best estimates

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for the growth of homeless.). As Katz contends, homelessness altered the nature of the debate about poverty because of its “visibility” (193). With homeless persons appropriating public spaces like “railroad stations, subways, lobbies, and doorways,” the crisis in the 1980s “could not be ignored” (193). More accurately, this dilemma could only be morally ignored by vilifying the homeless as a threat to middle class persons and their middle-class lifestyle. In this shift, Marisol engages with what Rossini describes as “contemporary critiques that suggest identity politics ignore the structural realities inherent in class differences” by revealing that these campaigns against the homeless were grounded in class warfare (150 –151). How Rivera does this brings us to the second shift in method: where in the trajectory of mobility the play begins. Continuing the trend in The Promise and Each Day Dies, Marisol begins later still in the progression of mobility, with the eponymous character Marisol Perez already established in the middle class. Instead of addressing Marisol’s rise into that class, the play is concerned with the question of what is necessary, psychologically and epistemologically, to occupy this class during this period of class warfare. And in so doing, Marisol does what Each Day Dies could not: it implicates the class hierarchy directly in criticism of morality and values that undermine the abiding premise behind mobility in this decade. This interrogation of class hierarchy emerges from two encounters between the middle class and the homeless in New York City, encounters which thematize and ultimately question assumptions about class, poverty, and morality. The play begins with the first encounter, had by Marisol Perez, a Puerto Rican woman on the subway, going home from her Manhattan job. Before we learn about this job, she is defined, semiotically, as a member of the middle class: “smartly dressed,” she is marked through clothing as well as her reading The New York Times, behind which she tries to ignore the homeless man carrying a golf club who has entered her subway car (6). Named only Man with Golf Club, he wears filthy and torn clothing, has rags for shoes, and rambles on about his “god-blessed little angel” (6). His language draw attention to the Angel sitting atop a ladder downstage: the Angel will play an important role in Marisol, the conflicts of which are metaphysical as much as they are sociopolitical, with the angels planning a siege of heaven to dethrone a senile god. But for now, she observes silently. Apparently alone with this man on a late-night subway, Marisol initially pretends she doesn’t see him, but when he approaches her, she responds with aggression: “God help you, you get in my face” (7). When this strategy fails, she turns to indifference: “I have no money” (7). Not interested in panhandling, he continues rambling about sleeping in a box on 180th Street, being visited by his guardian angel, and being set on fire in Van Cortlandt Park (7). Afraid but angry, Marisol yells for the heavens to strike him dead, but when nothing happens, he lunges at her with the golf club. Before the attack lands, the Angel lets out an “ear-splitting scream” that brings the car to a crashing halt. The first to recover, Marisol shoves past him and escapes as the scene dims.

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Introduced in this encounter, homelessness is defined through what can be recognized as a middle-class perspective about homelessness in the 1980s. Man with Golf Club’s presence, first of all, is an intrusion in the life of Marisol, something that she, as a member of the middle class, doesn’t want on her trip home. From the moment that she has to share space with him, therefore, she attempts to minimize his presence in ways that correspond with Harrington’s wall of affluence. Trying to pretend he’s not there, she digs deeper into her newspaper and when that does not work, she turns to ready-made phrases meant to underscore the cultural and existential distance between them. Proximity, in other words, produces aversion. But aversion quickly becomes anxiety, for Marisol and audiences, when he talks about angels, Nazi skin-heads, and immolation. Without further exposition, audiences know nothing more than what is occurring during this cross-class encounter. His incoherent rambling and blazing eyes suggest mental imbalance, if not pure insanity, and therefore he becomes as much threat to her life as intrusion into her way of life, a blending of two class-based anxieties. Sharing space with this man becomes increasingly dangerous, especially since he is wielding a golf club, an object that suggests phallic power and class usurpation. For audiences, Marisol’s endeavors to distance herself from this homeless man are, no doubt, justified and, if anything, not aggressive enough. When he says, “I could turn you into one of me,” his language convey the erasure of existential distance that Tropman contends produces hatred of the poor (7; see Does America Hate the Poor? The Other American Dilemma: Lessons for the 21st Century from the 1960s and 1970s [1998]). The opening of Marisol, then, seemingly endorses the ideological perspective behind the war against the poor during the Reagan/Bush decade. Intrusion, threat, and insanity become synonymous with homelessness. But this conclusion, which legitimizes indifference or hostility toward the homeless, is exactly what Marisol intends to challenge. As with Each Day Dies, Rivera invokes assumptions behind the ideological definition of the poor in order to interrogate them, to demonstrate how they endorse self-serving apprehensions about class and poverty during a period of economic upheaval. This begins with making visible the ideological perspective behind such reactions, something Rivera accomplishes through the doubling of the initial encounter outlined above. When the lights come up at the beginning of act two, Marisol has narrowly escaped another assault, this one from Lenny, the brother of her friend June, and carries the golf club that she wrestled from him. When the Woman with Furs, a well-dressed and confused woman enters, Marisol approaches and asks, “Where the hell are we?” [original emphasis] (42). To this, Woman with Furs answers, “God help you, you get in my face” (42). Notably, her words are exactly the same as those used by Marisol during her encounter with Man with Golf Club. When Marisol continues talking about what’s wrong with the city after the angels launch their assault on the heavens— the lack of noise, of cars, of police — Woman with Furs again repeats the language of the

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first encounter: “I have no money” (42). Obviously, Rivera means for the encounters to be read against each other. During the first, Marisol’s words were perfectly appropriate for her situation: confronted by a raving homeless man, she tried to reestablish distance from him. During the second, though, Woman with Furs’s responses are non-sequiturs: they don’t match the situation but emerge mechanically, as “if in a trance” (42). As it becomes quickly clear, she mistakes Marisol for a homeless person and fears an assault. But this only compounds the dissonance between language and situation since audiences know Marisol is not a threat. Made strange by this doubling, the Woman with Furs’s response needs inquiry. What elicits such reaction against the homeless? The way she delivers her response suggests that her aversion is something that she has been conditioned to accept based upon how it is defined in Rivera’s version of New York City. In fact, it’s Woman with Furs who brings the news that the city’s answer to the crisis of homelessness is criminalization, shortly after she and Marisol have been joined by Scar Tissue, another homeless man whose skin has been horribly burned. This legislation is the most overt reference to the war against the poor during the Reagan/Bush decade, in this case to the campaign against the homeless waged by Mayor Ed Koch of New York City. As Tim Cresswell demonstrates in In Place/Out of Place, Koch’s efforts to exclude the homeless from Grand Central Station involved conflating crimes associated with the homeless with homelessness itself: that is, the campaign meant defining the homeless as threats not just for the bad things they could potentially do (like attack women in the IRT) but merely for being homeless. This is a perfect instance of what Katz terms the “social construction of difference” between the middle class and the poor (5). The poor are different not just because they lack the resources of the wealthy but instead because they lack the morality of the wealthy as illustrated by the litany of aberrant behaviors cited by Koch: “defecating, urinating, talking to themselves” (quoted in Creswell 4). No wonder the Woman with Furs reacts to Marisol with hostility: she has been conditioned by this sort of ideological dichotomy that defines the homeless as threatening. Read without the menace from the initial encounter, this one demonstrates how the social construction of difference depends upon a language of “invidious distinction” (Katz 5). In fact, Marisol’s response to Woman with Furs’s anxiety speaks to this distinction: “No, no, no, I’m okay I don’t belong out here ... I’m middle class” (44). Naturally, this provokes the question, how are the middle class defined against those who “belong out here?” More notably for the concerns behind Rivera’s early plays, what becomes necessary to inhabit this ideological dichotomy? If answered by Woman with Furs, this becomes humorously evident once she and Marisol are joined by Scar Tissue, whose horrifying deformity elicits no reaction in her beyond further anxiety. The irony is telling: she is wearing “furs” because she was on her way to Les Misérables, the stage adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel,

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before the angels began their siege of heaven and distorted reality. However much she is willing to watch a romanticized spectacle of nineteenth century French misery, she cannot even recognize misery right in front of her. In this, Rivera reveals the disregard for the poor that he described in the introduction to Each Day Dies and in interviews about Marisol (See Lynn Jacobson’s “An Interview with Jose Rivera” in Studies in American Drama, 1945 –Present [1991]). Woman with Furs allegorizes the middle class of the Reagan/Bush decade, a class that discovered ways to ignore the growing evidence of poverty manifested through homelessness in cities like New York City. But this ignorance is redefined as ideological perspective in this second encounter since it is quite impossible for the Woman with Furs, or audiences, to literally ignore Scar Tissue; they can only do so deliberately. In this emerges the defining characteristic of the middle class that Rivera interrogates in Marisol: a purposeful callousness towards the plight of the poor that is maintained by hiding behind the wall of affluence advocated by Reagan, Bush, and Koch. Underlying this indifference is an unwillingness to acknowledge the fundamental humanity of those who “belong out there,” in the streets, that suggests not just a breakdown of social services but of social justice. Importantly, Marisol stresses her allegiance with the Woman with Furs rather than with Scar Tissue during this scene and, therefore, defines herself within this dichotomy. As with the scene with Man with Golf Club, Marisol wants nothing to do with those who “belong out here” because she has long aspired to the middle class. Although her mobility took place before the play begins, her rise in the class hierarchy plays a significant role in the play’s interrogation of class, mobility, and morality. Born in the Bronx, she managed to go to Fordham University, majored in English, and “went into science publishing” and because of this, she now “make[s] good money” (48). Defined by hard work and sacrifice, this narrative of mobility is traditional, but Rivera puts considerable stress on the acculturation involved in moving up the hierarchy. “I learned new vocabularies,” Marisol says, “wore weird native dress ... mastered arcane rituals” and ultimately “amputated neat sections of my psyche” (48). In this, Rivera draws attention to the denial of ethnicity that is frequently necessary for mobility, as evidenced in The House of Ramon Iglesia. Moreover, Marisol suggests that what was so neatly “amputated” as part of her acculturation into the middle class was her compassion and empathy for those of living in lower class, many of whom are minorities, even Puerto Ricans. Evidence of this loss comes during this scene with Scar Tissue after the Woman with Furs exits. When he tells the story of being immolated by skinheads in Van Cortlandt Park, she makes the connection to Man with Golf Clubs and from that moment, she doesn’t want to listen. Her denial comes from her fear to recognize not just that the homeless are suffering but that they are suffering right in front of her. Once Scar Tissue leaves, Marisol longs for her “intellectual detachment — my ability to read about the misery of the world and not lose a moment of my busy day” (55).

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This “intellectual detachment” goes to the essence of the definition of the middle class in Marisol. Before this moment, it defines Marisol’s perspective regarding what was happening in the city: she could come and go without even acknowledging people like Man with Golf Club or Scar Tissue, or if she acknowledged them, it was just as intrusions or threats. Beginning with this moment, though, this intellectual detachment is exactly what is denied her. Is it possible that Man with Golf Clubs wasn’t raving when he talked of skinheads immolating the homeless? Or that his raving began from this very real atrocity in this city? Once Scar Tissue leaves, she wanders the streets, making discoveries about the nature of suffering that has been going on for years while she indulged in middle class detachment. The first discovery comes when Marisol, suddenly overcome by hunger, digs in a garbage dumpster and exhumes some moldy French fries. Just knowing such hunger that she can override her natural disgust toward decomposing food is one discovery about the demands put upon the homeless, but another comes when she is stopped from eating them by Lenny, who no longer poses a threat but offers protection. “Don’t eat anything from that pile,” he warns, “Man who owned the restaurant on the other side of that wall put rat poison in the trash to discourage the homeless from picking through the pile” (56). It should be noted that in the bizarre logic of Rivera’s dramatic world (defined as surrealism and magical realism), Lenny is pregnant and when he delivers a stillborn baby immediately after this scene, he leads her to the next discovery. On a Brooklyn sidewalk, Lenny moves aside slabs of concrete to reveal a cemetery for the children of the homeless, for what he defines as the most “fragile of the street people” (62). If the discovery of a makeshift cemetery beneath the sidewalk wasn’t surprising enough, Lenny adds, “The city provides these coffins. There are numbers on them. The city knows how [homeless people] live” (61). Notably, each of Marisol’s discoveries during her journey through the city are doubled. On the one hand, she is confronted by the “misery of the world” that she was ignoring, whether naively or deliberately, through her middle-class detachment. This alone makes rather dubious the equation of middle-class status and superiority morality. On the other hand, Marisol is not merely confronted by what her detachment did not allow her to apprehend; she is additionally confronted by what happens because of this sort of detachment. Behind these acts of violence — immolation, poison, and denial of the lives and deaths of homeless people — is the indifference toward the socioeconomic “other” demonstrated by the Woman with Furs and Marisol during the first half of the play. Because those who “belong out here” are defined through contrast to the middle class, they are never granted the same rights and opportunities or basic humanity. The actions of the businessman who poisons his trash is particularly illustrative: the homeless are defined, implicitly, as vermin that he willingly destroys in order to protect his business and customers from encounters with them. The wall described by Lenny that separates business from the garbage is literal and figurative, an ideological wall of affluence between want and wealth. Anything

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but an anomaly, this businessman is encouraged by municipal authorities that do not stop immolations, that criminalize poverty, and that bury the dead under sidewalks. Morality is either absent or conveniently redefined according to classbased interests. What emerges during Marisol’s journey, then, is an apocalyptic manifestation of the class warfare that was underway during the Reagan/Bush decade. At best, horrific violence is carried-out in the name of the middle class; at worst, it is carried-out by the middle-class itself. This is the harsh lesson that Marisol cannot fully fathom until she stands over the coffins of the “most fragile of the street people,” the cynical endpoint of the “intellectual detachment” that she had cherished. With this, Marisol does what neither Each Day Dies nor The Promise could accomplish: it undertakes a systematic interrogation of class, poverty, and mobility by locating (im)morality directly in the class hierarchy. To join the middle class, Marisol had to “amputate” not just her ethnicity but further her sense of social justice that should extend to those living below what I have elsewhere described as “thresholds of visibility” (See “Toward a Rhetoric of Sociospatial Theater: José Rivera’s Marisol” in Theatre Journal [2007]). To stay in the middle class, she would have to look at the miseries of the homeless and not flinch, not concern herself with their lives. But this is what she cannot do and that’s why the play develops a motif of rebellion that begins when the Angel visits her and urges, “You have to fight. You can’t endure anymore” [original emphasis] (17). Repeated several times in the play, this impulse to “fight” and not “endure” speaks to the callous indifference toward the plight of the poor, in particular the homeless, an indifference that Rivera found appalling on its face (See Rossini’s “Marisol, Angels, and Apocalyptic Migrations” in American Drama [2001], 9) and evidence of a larger, potential breakdown of liberalism during this decade. Knowing that his audience is invested, however naively, in the class war being waged in their name by Reagan and Bush, he makes Marisol’s conversion daunting: both what she must see to learn the lesson about her rise into the middle class, and the sacrifice of her life for the greater cause that precipitates the rebellion imagined within the play. Interestingly, this rebellion is figured as a lone homeless person who comes on stage and begins throwing rocks at the sky, a gesture of madness or futility perhaps, but also one of defiance, one that triggers a counter-offensive within this class war: “billions of poor, of homeless, of peaceful, of silent, of angry ... fighting and fighting as no species has ever fought before” (68). In this imagery of rebellion comes Rivera’s most significant criticism of class and mobility: it is not merely something that individuals must negotiate but something that society must redefine if there is ever to be the possibility of social justice beyond parochialism.

WORK CITED Baker, Susan S.. Understanding Mainland Puerto Rican Poverty. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2002.

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Chirico, Miriam, “José Rivera,” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Volume 249. Twentieth-Century American Dramatists. Third Series. Edited by Christopher Wheatley. Detroit, MI: Gale Group, 2002. Christopher, Renny, “Rags to Riches to Suicide: Unhappy Narratives of Upward Mobility: Martin Eden, Bread Givers, Delia’s Song, and Hunger of Memory,” College Literature 29/4 (2002). Cresswell, Tim. In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Frydman, Jason, “Upward Mobility as a Neurotic Condition in Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street,” Exit 9: The Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature 8 (2007). Gans, Herbert J. The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Jennings, James, “Persistent Poverty in the United States: Review of Theories and Explanations,” New Introduction to Poverty: The Role of Race, Power, and Politics. Edited by Louis Kushnick and James Jennings. New York and London: New York University Press, 1999. Jones, Gavin. American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature, 1840 –1945. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2008. Katz, Michael B. The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. New York: Pantheon, 1989. Launius, Christie, “Real Women Have Curves: A Feminist Narrative of Upward Mobility,” American Drama 16/2 (2007). Lewis, Oscar, “The Culture of Poverty,” in On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences. Edited Daniel P. Moynihan. New York and London: Basic Books Inc., 1969. Rivera, José. Each Day Dies with Sleep. Marisol and Other Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1997. _____, “An Interview with José Rivera,” by Norma Jenckes. American Drama 10/2 (2001). _____, “Introduction,” The House of Ramon Iglesia. On New Ground: Contemporary Hispanic-American Plays. Edited by M. Elizabeth Osborn. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1987. _____, “An Interview with José Rivera,” by Lynn Jacobson, Studies in American Drama, 1945 – Present 6/1 (1991). _____. Marisol. Marisol and Other Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1997. _____. The Promise. New York: Broadway Play Publishing, Inc., 1989. _____, “Poverty and Magic in Each Day Dies with Sleep,” Studies in American Drama, 1945 –Present 7/1 (1992). _____, “‘An Urgent Voice for Our Times’: An Interview with José Rivera,” by Caridad Svich, Contemporary Theatre Review 14/4 (2004). Rossini, Jon. Contemporary Latina/o Theater: Wrighting Ethnicity. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. _____, “Marisol, Angels, and Apocalyptic Migrations,” American Drama 10/2 (2001). Stricker, Frank. Why America Lost the War on Poverty — And How to Win It. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Tropman, John E.. Does America Hate the Poor?: The Other American Dilemma: Lessons for the 21st Century from the 1960s and 1970s. Westport CT and London: Praeger, 1998. Westgate, J. Chris, “Toward a Rhetoric of Sociospatial Theater: José Rivera’s Marisol,” Theatre Journal 59/1 (2007). Winn, J. Emmett, “Moralizing Upward Mobility: Investigating the Myth of Class Mobility in Working Girl,” Southern Communication Journal 66/1 (2000).

Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Under America How Mainstream Reviews Represent the Guilty and Obscure the Economics of the U.S. Prison Industry JACOB JUNTUNEN

During the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons, two strikingly similar prison plays were produced in storefront theatres in Chicago: Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train at the Raven Theatre and my script Under America at Mortar Theatre. Though most critics, including myself, would agree that Guirgis’ work is the superior, the parallels are illuminating. Both use direct address; both utilize a mixed-race cast; both involve prisoners; both present a character from the professional class who wants to help the accused; and, most importantly, both show sympathy for characters who have both committed crimes and who suffer at the hands of the criminal justice system. While this last point may not seem radical, it often confuses reviewers. While remaining undaunted in the face of productions that argue that the criminal justice system fails the innocent, reviewers struggle when compelled to examine the justice system fails the innocent — inconsistencies of justice for the guilty. In short, they have little sympathy for those who commit crimes. This over-focus on the guilt of the individual obscures the guilt of the system — its racism, violence, and economic exploitation. After laying out my methodology, I present evidence demonstrating that the prison industry is a formidable economic force in the United States. Transitioning, I examine the plots and receptions in Chicago of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Under America to demonstrate that the current dominant ideology has difficulty accepting the guilty as sympathetic. Finally, I argue that this inability obscures the economic incentives of incarceration by suggesting criminals “get what they deserve.” Rather than analyzing the ideological transaction made by those who saw the performances, examining how the mainstream media understood the Chicago performances in their historical contexts highlights an oft-ignored aspect of 279

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the conditions of reception. This is because the conditions of reception — particularly a production’s reception in the mainstream press—give the most insight into how productions are interpolated into the mainstream ideology. Reviews often “determine a very specific set of expectations in the audience and thus determine how that audience will receive the play” (Kershaw 122). For instance, if a review states that the play is the greatest musical since West Side Story, one may be skeptical, but it may also be difficult to see the production without the comparison in mind. Hence, reviews are important artifacts for understanding how a production was received in its time. Further, the discourse of a play frequently extends beyond the bounds of the theatre through its reviews; in fact, more people may read a review than see a particular production. The reviews of a production are also evidence of how a production was integrated into a particular periodical’s ideology. By looking at reviews, one can speculate on spectators’ expectations of the production, how the production’s discourse was incorporated into a periodical’s ideological discourse relative to the worldview of its periodical. A review of a production is archival evidence of how a periodical incorporated into its ideology an idea made material by art; by documenting one spectator’s— that is, the critic’s— reaction to the production, the review suggests the reaction of a group of spectators. This argument can be made by utilizing the media theories of James Carey. In his work, Carey posits that there are two ways to analyze a newspaper: using the transmission view of communication or the ritual view of communication. At the center of the transmission view of communication is “the transmission of signals or messages over distance for the purpose of control” (Carey 15). This view posits that the producer of communication has information, like a good to be transported, that is sent via the medium to the audience, who receives that information like a product. The ritual view of communication “is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but towards the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs” (Carey 18). The goal is not to disseminate information as far as possible for reasons of control and persuasion, but instead to make society as unified as possible. Carey argues: This projection of community ideals and their embodiment in material form — dance, plays, architecture, news stories, strings of speech —creates an artificial though nonetheless real symbolic order that operates to provide not information but confirmation, not to alter attitudes or change minds but to represent an underlying order of things, not to perform functions but to manifest an ongoing and fragile social process [19].

One can look at “news stories”—for example, reviews of the Raven’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Mortar’s Under America— not as “information” that is disseminated to people outside the community of readers. Instead these may be approached as “confirmations” to the already extant community of readers about how the performances are related to the community’s view of the “underlying

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order of things,” what one might refer to as the community’s “ideology.” To clarify, a subscription to The Nation will not only transmit information but will also confirm a liberal ideology; likewise, a subscription to The Wall Street Journal will transmit information while confirming a more conservative ideology. Thus, one can see that the ritual communication taking place in the reviews of these two Chicago prison plays confirmed an ideology that believed the prison system to be about punishing the guilty rather than continuing an economic structure based on warehousing human beings. In order to understand these reviews, however, we must first examine their historical context. In his groundbreaking 2002 analysis of the death penalty, Dwight Conquergood describes the U.S. prison industry as a “multibillion dollar business of incarceration with ... ramified rituals of punishment [that] provides the bodies— and they are disproportionately racialized and working-class bodies— that serve as the concrete referents for society’s ideas about ‘justice,’ ‘law and order,’ and ‘public safety’” (350). Since then the prison industry and its targeted use of “racialized and working class bodies” for profit and its ideological justification based on “law and order” has only increased. According to the Sentencing Project, an African American male has a one in three chance of serving time in prison (quoted in Kristoff ), and Latinos are targeted by a 2010 law in Arizona literally written by the Corrections Corporation of America for the purpose of keeping prisons full of immigrants from Mexico (Sullivan). The legislators supporting these laws written by corporations, however, deny that there is an economic incentive and instead tout the need for “law and order.” Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce says of the Arizona law he helped draft, “‘People need to focus on the cost of not enforcing our laws and securing our border. It is the Trojan horse destroying our country and a republic cannot survive as a lawless nation’” (quoted in Sullivan). The status quo imagined in Pearce’s logic is made by physically punishing the bodies of certain classes of citizens, much like Conquergood pointed out eight years earlier. In The Nation, Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrown writes, “Any assessment of the U.S. prison system is incomplete without considering the prison-industrial complex, a network of private corporations with a direct interest in increasing the number of prisoners” (Tuhus-Dubrown). She goes on to itemize the talking points and necessities for prison reform on a moral and economic level. And it is not only media on the progressive end of the spectrum like The New York Times, National Public Radio, and The Nation that rail against the prisonindustrial complex. The American: National Catholic Weekly reports in an article titled, “Prison Nation”: Although it might be tempting in a time of rising unemployment for states to build more prisons, such an approach is no remedy. Ryan King, a policy analyst at the Sentencing Project, told America that the problems at the root of the overcrowding — hasty parole revocations, mandatory sentence laws and lack of re-entry plan-

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ning — would remain in an expanded prison system, with the same nonviolent offenders cycling through and filling the prisons. What is needed is a humane and cost-effective restructuring [Editors].

While Catholic ideology tends towards relative conservatism on social issues, the editors of this magazine realize the economics of the current prison system are untenable, searching instead for a “cost-effective” way to structure prisons. American: National Catholic Weekly finds an unlikely ideological ally in the pages of the completely economically-based ideology of Forbes magazine: Federal and state governments spend more than $35 billion a year to lock up a greater portion of the population — one out of 138 Americans— than any other country on earth. The prison population keeps growing, mainly because our recidivism rates are sky-high. Half of former inmates return to prison. It is time to ask: What are we getting for the dollars spent on this growing revolving-door system? [Jones].

Neither the Forbes nor the America: National Catholic Weekly article are particularly “soft on crime,” but these articles make it clear that periodicals with an ideological spectrum from Left to Right agree that the prison-industrial complex is a drain on the U.S. economy. These articles show that the media is capable of attacking the U.S. prison-industrial complex and the laws that make it possible. But when faced with plays that suggest this system is unfair to incarcerated individuals who are guilty and put in prison in part due to economic motives, reviewers reveal the dominant ideology. It may be that the prison industry is a problem in the abstract, but on the level of the incarcerated individual, “prisoners should take personal responsibility for their own actions and their own rehabilitation,” as the Forbes article puts it (Jones). In other words, if one is guilty of a crime, one deserves what one gets, and this punishment is somehow separate from the economic abstractions currently driving legislation and prison economics in the United States. This situation is made even more complicated when plays present guilty, incarcerated individuals who are there partly because of racial and class prejudices alongside economic motivation. Hence reviewers balked at the message of potential redemption for the guilty in the Raven Theatre’s 2008 production of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and at the suggestion that prisons have more to do with economics than punishment or rehabilitation in Mortar Theatre’s 2010 Under America. Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train is less directly about economics than morality and redemption, but the reviewers’ skepticism about redemption for the guilty reveals the lacuna where economics should be. The plot centers on three characters: Angel Cruz, a young Puerto Rican man in prison for trying to rescue his best friend from a cult and accidentally killing the leader in the process; Lucius Jenkins, an African American man in prison with Angel who freely confesses to the murder of eight innocents, but has now found Christianity; and Mary Jane Hanrahan, Angel’s public defender who perjures herself attempting Angel’s acquittal. There is also, briefly, in the first scene and in one later monologue,

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D’Amico, a guard who has befriended Lucius to the point of spending thousands of dollars to see Lucius’s execution, and Valdez, the sadistic guard who replaces D’Amico in the first scene. The plot hinges around the tug of war between Lucius and Mary Jane for Angel’s heart and mind. Mary Jane sees nobility in Angel’s actions, even if they caused a death, because he was trying to save a friend. She believes the justice system is acting unfairly, though Angel is guilty. Lucius, on the other hand, eventually convinces Angel that he must admit that he killed the cult leader, even if accidentally, and get right with God; unfortunately for Mary Jane, Angel does this on the witness stand and she is disbarred for perjuring herself. Though the plot is not expressly about economics, every character comes from working-class origins, and this is the pivot on which the story turns. The indications that this play is questioning the role of morality within the judicial system and how one’s economic circumstances affect punishment come early. In Mary Jane’s first monologue, she states that “one man’s neurotic is another man’s hero,” and questions, “who, ultimately, can say which one’s which with any real certainty at all?” (19). She is telling a childhood story about going with her working-class father to a father-daughter dance at the private school where she was a scholarship student; after an upper-class father of another child made a racially insulting remark, Mary Jane’s father stabbed him with a fork. Her father could not comprehend when the party fell into chaos, saying, “It was just a fork” (19). This is Mary Jane’s attitude about Angel’s crime; he only shot the cult leader “in the ass,” and the man died of complications on the operating table (18). Because she relates to Angel’s logic on a class level — and, to some extent, finds nobility in it — she yearns to help him. Early in the play, the audience is on her side and rooting for Angel’s release. As it continues, however, spectators start to see Lucius’s point of view that, regardless of Angel’s intent, a death was caused by Angel’s action. In the second scene of the second act, Angel denies his culpability in the cult leader’s death. He and Lucius exchange the following words: LUCIUS : ANGEL : LUCIUS : ANGEL : LUCIUS :

Did he die? Not ’cuz a me. If ya didn’t shoot him, would he be dead now? You killed eight people mothafuckah! Who you talking to? You shot a man. The man died. Ain’t no man no more [47].

Angel refuses to admit his guilt, continuing through the scene to say it was not his fault and that his crime does not compare to Lucius’s killing of eight people. But, for Lucius, this is not about comparing crimes. For Lucius, Angel killed a man, regardless of circumstance, and that is a crime. When Angel says he did it for his friend, Lucius replies, “Then accept it then! You man enough to do it, then, be man enough ta stand behind it! But you can’t really stand behind it, ’cuz you know it’s wrong! You know it!” (47). The audience, like Angel, cannot argue with the fact that killing someone is wrong, but killing someone by accident to help a friend does seem different than Lucius’s psychopathic killing spree.

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As the play continues, the ambiguity of the situation grows with Mary Jane continuing to argue for a relativist morality and Lucius proclaiming Christian absolutes. This is when D’Amico has his monologue about attending Lucius’s execution. D’Amico is ultimately disillusioned because, for all of Lucius’s talk of going clean and relying on his faith in Jesus, Lucius is “high as a kite” during the execution (Guirgis 57). After that, every argument Lucius made is put in doubt. In the end, Mary Jane is disbarred because she broke the law, Lucius is dead because he broke the law, and Angel is sentenced to twentyfive years in prison because he broke the law. Who deserves punishment and what is possible through redemption is the question the play leaves the audience. Implicitly economics is what draws these characters together — including the guards who are paid to be there. But even without explicitly positing an economic incentive for incarcerating these characters, the Raven production of ‘A’ Train challenged the mainstream ideology in Chicago as expressed through its theatre critics. The reviews of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train reveal an ideology largely uncomfortable with ambiguity of guilt that demands a black and white binary. The critic most comfortable with the doubt, Kris Vire of TimeOut Chicago, writes, “There are no easy answers here, but the questions are well considered” (“‘A’ Train” Vire). However, he begins his article writing that ‘A’ Train “traffics in religious tenets of faith, redemption and free will; it also takes on such minor matters as the penal system and the death penalty” (“‘A’ Train” Vire). While obviously facetious, this quote does nevertheless reveal a priority in his reading of the play. The question, for Vire, is not whether the characters deserve their sentences in “the penal system” but whether “faith, redemption and free will” can save them. Thus, even the critic who embraces the play’s questions leaves a void where the play’s economics are concerned. More obviously ill at ease with the play’s portrayal of guilty characters’ who may not deserve their fates are several reviews that call the script “selfcontradictory” (Chyr). Nina Metz, writing for the Chicago Tribune feels that Lucuis’s “remorse is a private, perhaps non-existent thing” and this makes him “the ultimate conundrum” (Metz). What is so vexing to Metz is that she cannot decide in her review if we are meant to care for these characters or not. After all, they are guilty, and yet they are portrayed sympathetically, for her, a “conundrum.” She ends her review writing, “Good luck caring about them in a meaningful way” (Metz); so ultimately, for Metz, the guilty verdict outweighs any other circumstance, including the economics. Tom Williams, an ex-police officer who writes for ChicagoCritic.com, is even harsher, stating that this play is about “two men unable to take moral responsibility for their actions” (“‘A’ Train” Williams). That reading says far more about Williams than it does the play, for Lucius repeatedly states that he takes responsibility for what he did in the past and now follows God. Even if Lucius did take drugs before his execution, perhaps a sign of his faith’s falsity,

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another possible reading is simply the desire to not be “present” during his own death. More drastic, though, is Williams’ misreading of Angel. The whole crux of the play, the reason Mary Jane is disbarred, is that Angel on the witness stand admits his guilt, takes “responsibility,” and begins serving the prison sentence for his crime. Williams, however, does not grasp that. Instead, he simply sees two guilty men who deserve what they get, and any ambiguity simply clouds the fact that these are criminals. This reveals, as all these reviews do, that while the media may criticize the justice and penal systems in the abstract, when it comes to guilty individuals, the press will not write about how the system fails them. This is explicitly written in Blythe Landry’s review for Edge. In it, he mentions that this “dark” play about prison indicts the system accurately but “fail[s] to show the many amazing things that public defenders, minorities, former criminals, and people with mental illness are able to accomplish. Where are those plays? Where are the plays that show that there are people who make it through this, regardless of the misery with which they are faced?” (Landry). In other words, where are the plays about those who are innocent, who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, who are the deserving poor? Landry continues, “It is incumbent upon the playwright to provide alternatives to despair. Those who can afford $25 a ticket are not incapable of empathizing with such misery as it is depicted. That seems more interesting than just fostering debate on the hamster-wheel of injustice” (Landry). Bringing material conditions into the conversation for the first time with the mention of ticket prices, this review argues that those who have some material advantage, those who can afford theatre tickets, can empathize with the deserving poor, but that seeing representations of those trapped by circumstances is just furthering “the hamster-wheel of injustice,” presumably by simply showing the guilty rather than inspiring innocents. The review implies that heartwarming tales of escape from dire circumstances will inspire, but showing problems does nothing. Such logic is counterintuitive because there is no need to act if people less fortunate can simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and the play is then merely a nice night out. However, it is clear that the play’s argument that the guilty also need help out of the “hamster-wheel of injustice” challenges the ideology of the mainstream media as represented by the reviewers. This challenge exists even without bringing economic incentives for incarceration into the situation. Under America focuses on some of the same themes of ‘A’ Train, particularly questioning what punishment a guilty protagonist deserves, but it does so while exploring the economic underpinnings of the U.S. prison industry. Doing so made the reviewers even more uncomfortable. Under America follows the journey of Sam, a lesbian reporter living in Chicago’s upscale Gold Coast who will lose her job if she does not produce an interesting series on public housing. She becomes obsessed with the infamous,

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violence-ridden Cabrini Green projects “just down Division Street” from her condo ( Juntunen 21), and, eventually, rashly moves into them. There she befriends Dorothy, grandmother of Michael, a seventeen-year old struggling to get out by any means necessary. Michael is arrested for possession of marijuana with intent to distribute — just like his long-absent parents— and Sam gets her girlfriend lawyer to help with the case. In the end, though, the articles Sam writes shine too much light on Michael’s case, and he gets jail time instead of probation. In the process, Sam’s idealistic notion that Cabrini is a struggling community with a few bad apples shatters, especially in the final moments of the play when she learns from Michael that his grandfather was killed during, and perhaps perpetrating, an armed robbery of a liquor store. If that were the whole story it would have been more satisfying to reviewers who called its subplots “unnecessary” (Bullen), but the subplots surrounding the primary story are what connects Michael’s individual incarceration to the economics of the prison-industrial complex. First, there’s Michael’s older brother, Abe, who works in a local flower shop which he dreams of owning. Michael sees Abe’s poorly-paid occupation and unrealistic expectations as insufficient to get out of Cabrini’s grasp, so he turns to what he hopes will be higher paying crime. This brings in Michael’s economic motivation and, by extension, exposes the economics of the drug law that Michael breaks with his five ounces of marijuana. Sam’s girlfriend, Helen, is an appellate lawyer for the state, and her taking on Michael’s case shows the audience how middle-class citizens directly profit from crimes like the one Michael commits. In Helen’s case, her salary literally comes from the enforcement of these laws. Helen’s best friend, Jackie, is a social worker for juvenile court, so she, too, represents part of the bourgeoning prison industry. In Jackie’s first monologue to a group of young African Americans on public transportation, she advises them, “Be a parole officer./Two year program at the city college;/Tough job, needs tough guys cause it’s hard to stay out/Once you been in./And boys: they ain’t gonna stop locking us any time soon,/So turn this country’s bullshit into job security” (11). This direct address to the spectators explicitly ties “this country’s bullshit”— that is, its high incarceration rates of minorities— to “job security.” Jackie simply acts pragmatically and advises these young men to turn the situation to their advantage, again directly addressing issues of guilt, economics, and the prison industry. The final subplot is between Sam and her suburban parents, Rob and Linda, and it shows how even the most privileged of U.S. residents benefit from the prison industry. Rob is in the Illinois House of Representatives, and Linda is a homemaker with chronic fatigue syndrome. Both Sam’s parents idealize her offstage younger sister, Elizabeth, who is a successful venture capitalist in California. Sam, in her fear of disappointing her parents further, has not disclosed her sexuality, and much of her motivation for the articles on Cabrini comes when her father begins to take an interest. Throughout the play, Sam argues that Rob

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could do something to change the system; for instance, when discussing prison labor, she states, “If companies want to use their labor, they should be forced to pay minimum wage. That’s the kind of bill you could introduce” (62). By the end, her father is not convinced to act in the Illinois House, but he does volunteer at a local program for reintroducing ex-offenders into society. Sam’s mother, however, never comes around, even though it becomes clear through Sam’s articles and arguments that much of their comfort is built on the backs of prison labor. Between directly tying legislation to incarceration and showing how the privileged tend to remain uninterested in the prison-industrial complex even when informed, this subplot is crucial to the play’s economic argument. Taking this play from realism to the epic, and, thus, enlarging the scope from the local to the national are Sam and Michael’s journeys “under America.” When Michael is put in solitary confinement, he hallucinates his long-absent father and chases him through a tunnel system that connects every prison in America. Similarly, Sam takes Xanax to help get her through the nights at Cabrini and hallucinates a journey from being attacked to meeting her mugger in juvenile court. Both these journeys expose the unconscious fears and desires of the characters and extend the play’s reach to a national level by showing the circumstances in U.S. prisons and courts beyond Chicago’s. While much of the connection between lives of individuals and the economics of the prison industry in Under America was made through its “unabashedly didactic” plots (Weissmann), its many unreliable narrators also contributed. For instance, during Sam’s first visit to Cabrini when she still has naïve beliefs about its functionality, two young men take her bag and throw it around, keep-away style, until Dorothy intervenes. Just a few lines later, Dorothy complains “you go anywhere, tell ’em you’re from Cabrini, and they grab their purses, like we’re just going to snatch ’em;” and if Sam is going to write an article like that, she should just “run along” (31). Sam agrees not to pre-judge the community, but spectators may observe that Dorothy’s complaint has literally just happened before their eyes, and Sam has reason to believe the community may not be as functional as Dorothy posits. Thus, the high incarceration rates of its residents may not be “for nothing” as Dorothy later argues (116). Similarly, when Helen is interviewing Michael before his court date, he insists on pleading not guilty despite Helen’s attempts to get him to plea bargain. Michael says he did not commit a crime utilizing the flimsy logic that he never offered to sell drugs to an undercover cop; instead, he simply said he “knows where to get some” (67). When Helen points out Michael was carrying five ounces of marijuana, enough to make a case for intent to distribute without the police officer’s testimony, Michael simply shrugs it off. The point of Michael’s unreliable narration of events is, like Dorothy’s, not to convince spectators of his innocence, but, rather, to show his guilt. He certainly was intending to sell

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the marijuana and was carrying enough to go to jail; Helen wants him to plea bargain to minimize that jail time — perhaps even get probation since he is a minor and this is his first offense — but Michael refuses. Either way, the play shows that Michael’s guilt is causing the employment of a whole host of people: Rob creating the laws that inscribe “rituals of punishment [on] ... bodies” (Conquergood), Helen “defending” these bodies, Jackie working for the courts, Sam writing about the situation, and, by extension, the playwright and theatre company similarly selling tickets by describing the ramifications of the prisonindustrial complex. It even provided jobs for the critics reviewing the play and interpolating its ideology into mainstream discourse. While reviewers by and large did not like the inclusion of so many subplots and had mixed feelings about the epic elements of Sam and Michael’s journeys, they generally had an inability to recognize the unreliable narrators. This showed the critics’ unwillingness to accept the liberal argument about prison reform alongside a more conservative viewpoint that at least some of these characters are guilty. This is a similar “conundrum” to what critics faced with ‘A’ Train (Metz), but now explicitly in the economic realm. The reviews roughly fell into three categories, with one outlier. The first set of reviews felt too many issues were tackled by the play; the second questioned the play’s facts; the third took issue with Sam’s plausibility while seeming to accept much of the rest of the play. The one outlier, written not by a theatre critic but by a social worker specializing in public housing, felt the play was completely accurate. In the category of reviews stating the play’s scope is too broad, Katy Walsh writes on her blog that Under America was “OVER [her] head” [sic] (Walsh). She describes the reaction of her companion to the show with three words: “frustrating, helpless, real” (qtd in Walsh). It is unclear, then, whether her companion understood more than Walsh, but he does describe the primary emotions of the play’s characters. On the Chicago Theatre Addict blog, Robert Bullen writes that “Juntunen ... undermined himself here by embracing too many ideas—and approaches for exploring those ideas—than one play could ever possibly support” (Bullen). He goes on to suggest that the hallucinatory journeys could be cut entirely because they are “confusing” and that Sam’s sexuality is outside the point of the play (Bullen). In a response to his blog someone writes, “Did you think that the [coming out] subplot was unnecessary to the point that it should have been completely cut out? Did you already gather that there were enough conflicts between Sam’s personal life and the assignment?” (quoted in Bullen). Bullen’s response is illuminating; he writes, “if the play wants to be about the struggle with Sam trying to effectively find the ‘real story’ in her expose, it should focus on that ... I’m usually a fan of simplicity in storytelling” (Bullen). The difficulty, of course, is that trying to connect lived experiences of individuals to a nation-wide crisis is unlikely to be simple, unless it is straight agit-prop. Barry Eitel recognizes that in his review on Chicago Theatre Blog when

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he writes that “Juntunen deserves some props for diving headfirst into territory many writers nowadays fear to tread — the world of epic theatre” (Eitel). Nevertheless, Eitel decides “the play unravels due to its lack of focus. Angels in America succeeds so well because all the stories plug into each other thematically. Here, it is less compelling” (Eitel). A fair point of view, and, unlike the other reviews in this category, Eitel finds the hallucinations of Sam and Michael “unnerving, unpredictable, and fascinating. It was the tale I wanted to watch play out most of all” (Eitel). Thus Eitel posits that the play contains too much, but is at least recognizable in its genre, the epic. This is the closest a review comes to incorporating the play’s ideology unchallenged into its text. There are two reviews that question the play’s basic facts, both on ChicagoCritic.com. Timothy McGuire, writing the first review for the website, argues that The life in Cabrini Green was not beautiful and safe for long once the projects were constructed. There was a strong sense of community and neighborly help, but lack of funding and over crowding created major health and safety problems along with an abundance of criminal activity ... that is part of the story that shouldn’t be ignored [McGuire].

Oddly, the play alludes to the issues raised by McGuire from the first scene in which Sam visits Cabrini Green. This is the scene when Sam’s bag is nearly stolen before Dorothy comes to her rescue. And Sam’s journey is nearly exactly what McGuire describes— believing at first in the “strong sense of community,” but finally realizing Cabrini’s “major safety problems” (McGuire). Further, McGuire finds Michael’s plot equally unrealistic. He writes, 5 ounces of marijuana ... come on. That is easily enough to roll over two hundred blunts. An innocent dealer is not walking on the side walk with that amount, nor is that amount for personal use (Although I do believe that Marijuana should be decriminalized altogether) [sic] [McGuire].

Again, never does the play suggest Michael is the oxymoron: “innocent dealer.” His lawyer wants him to plead guilty, and even Sam, who is most sympathetic to Michael, writes in her article that “Michael is guilty and the system’s at fault” (Juntunen 104). Besides McGuire’s misreading of the play, he seems to think one could be innocent and guilty at the same time — that there could be an “innocent dealer,” as long as he does not carry enough marijuana to “make hundreds of blunts” (McGuire). Later in the review he explains, “The real problem is that kids are incarcerated for small amounts, and their life changes for the worse due to unjust jail time” (McGuire). Apparently, then, it is simply a matter of scale. Five ounces of marijuana is too much; carrying a small amount for “personal use ... should be decriminalized all together” (McGuire). Like critics of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, McGuire, here, cannot reconcile a protagonist who is both guilty and treated unfairly by the justice system. Instead, he needs a binary —five ounces is a crime; personal use should be decriminalized.

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The most dramatic review that argues the play’s facts are wrong is that of Tom Williams, also on ChicagoCritic.com. In its entirety, it reads I was a Chicago Police officer assigned to Cabrini Green (1973 –75) and I witness [sic] a murder, was shot at several times and I experienced the filthy conditions of those Projects. Therefore, I could not possibly be impartial to Juntunen’s play. If he had seen the terrible conditions and the utter disregard for human life that I witnessed, his play would have been written differently, I’m sure. I have decided not to review the work since my memories of that place still produces [sic] nightmares. I do believe that Under America [sic] tries to cover too many themes [“Under America” Williams].

The totality of the text is worth quoting because it, more than any other review, lays bare its ideology. Surely being a police officer in Cabrini would give one a strong perspective, but, as with Williams’ review of Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train, he cannot see characters in this play who are both guilty of a crime and fully human. Instead, for him Cabrini Green should only be populated with characters showing an “utter disregard for human life” (Willams). There is no doubt that this lethal area had more than its share of murderers, gang members, rapists, and all the other well-documented criminals. And that is explored in Under America— after all, even Dorothy, who for self-serving reasons positions herself to be Sam’s “kindly matriarch,” had a husband who was shot and killed during an armed robbery. Williams believes no one could live in Cabrini who is not a product of his “nightmares” (“Under America” Williams). He cannot possibly see — and perhaps should not be expected to be able to see — that the people who shot at him are, nevertheless, human. What the reviews of Williams and McGuire reveal is an ideology that sees crime in the abstract as something to fix, and crime in the concrete as something to fear and punish. The final category of reviews is that which found Sam an implausible character. This implausibility, in turn, negated the message of the play. Timothy McGuire overlaps in this category, stating in his review that Sam’s Caucasian family is unrealistic because they are “so out of touch, you would think that they have never conversed with a black man or woman” (McGuire). And yet, given the ethnic composition of Chicago’s North Shore suburbs from which Sam hails and the demographics of her Northwestern University, it is very possible to imagine that she and her parents have never had a substantive conversation with an African America. The Chicago Reader review also believes that Sam’s shock to discover the poverty so near her condo is “gratingly implausible” (Weissman). However, in a comment on the Reader’s website, Steve Spencer writes, I used to live in the Gold Coast. Its residents were only dimly aware of the existence of Cabrini Green and had precisely zero interest in life there.... You find it implausible that [Sam] wouldn’t know that black men go to prison at higher rates [than whites]. Again, most people I know are aware of it, but it usually only comes up to either justify barely concealed hatred or as just another sad fact, nothing to see here, move on. You find it implausible that Gold Coasters wouldn’t know about these issues. Well, they don’t [Spencer].

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This is one reader’s view versus one critic’s perspective, but it shows the mainstream media’s resistance to the idea that privileged Caucasians might be ignorant. Kris Vire, in a very fair review of the play, writes that asking audiences to believe Sam’s obliviousness is “an insult to journalists everywhere” (“Under America” Vire). That insult comes from the idea that journalists must be informed, educated, and, of course, have the facts at their disposal. Yet noting how often journalism is prejudiced, ignorant, and simply wrong —for instance, the well-documented errors in the New York Times coverage leading up to the 2003 Iraq War — makes Sam seem nothing more and nothing less than a bad journalist who is the privileged daughter of a wealthy politician. In the play Sam works for the Chicago Tribune; its review of the play specifically states that Sam “lets her politician father pay her bills and intercede with her editors (which really wouldn’t happen, by the way)” (Reid). But of course a well-connected politician could help his daughter get into Northwestern’s prominent Medill School of Journalism, gain entry into prestigious, unpaid internships at the Tribune (and it is crucial that her father could support her in those unpaid internships), and, finally, help her get and retain a job through his economic and political connections. To suggest that journalism is somehow outside the influence of politics, economics, and nepotism again comes from a journalist’s desire for her occupation to somehow remain above the fray of the issues this play addresses. Instead, journalism and its coverage of public housing and the prison-industrial complex is an important part of the story. Finding it insulting that Sam is not a very good reporter who got her job, in part, because of her father and that a privileged white woman might not have much contact with black people demonstrates the mainstream media’s defensiveness about its role in the continuation of the prison industry’s success. The one outlying review was written by Megan Cottrell, not a theatre reporter, but someone who covers public housing and social issues in Chicago, and she found Sam and the facts of the play extremely realistic. In fact, her review begins, “It’s an odd experience to see a play that so closely mirrors your own life that it’s like seeing yourself ” (Cottrell). Though Vire and others find Sam implausible, Cottrell writes directly, “That’s me” (Cottrell). She also makes clear that she, like Sam in the play, has evolved in her understanding of public housing, crime, and the prison industry. In her view, Juntunen sails past ... clichés, not content to hand the audience a happy-ending story that makes the them [sic] feel good but reflects none of the complexities of life. Instead, he delves into a complicated world of violence, good intentions, mental illness, and tense race relations, bringing the audience along with him on a journey through the lives of a misguided journalist, a troubled young man, and the families that surround them [Cottrell].

Though Wolfgang Iser posits the “ideal reader” as a construct only for the definition of “the potential effect of the literary text” (160), Cottrell’s experiences in the world seem to prime her to hear the message of this play. This is in direct

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opposition to the way Tom Williams’s experiences as a police officer made it impossible for him to experience the play as intended. Cottrell then presciently wonders “if audiences will choose to sit down in Juntunen’s world and consider the important ideas he presents. I’ve learned that no one much cares to hear about public housing, except to talk about how terrible they think it is” (Cottrell). Certainly that seems to be the critics’ reaction when they discussed Under America’s politics— though, to be fair, their criticisms of the play’s structure and complexity had valid points. The non-professional spectators who saw the play, however, had a very different response from critics. The audience of Under America was over one-third African American, and that population of audience, in particular, responded that the play was accurate and important. They did so both in talkbacks and in private conversation with members of Mortar Theatre. That’s not to say audience members of other races did not respond well; in fact, despite critics’ lukewarm response to the play, word of mouth spread so well that the production made back 76 percent of its costs in ticket sales, an extremely high percentage for a new work by a new company in Chicago (it was Mortar Theatre’s second production). More important for me than evidence of achievement through ticket sales is the behavior of a number of my young male African American students from the University of Illinois, Chicago. Several told me how much they had enjoyed the work and how important they found it. One insisted on shaking my hand in gratitude; another, a first-year from a rough part of town, came to my office and handed me a newspaper article about the final closure of Cabrini Green. This level of engagement is, for me, success. Prison drama is a difficult genre to utilize for piercing the prevailing ideology that the guilty are somehow not abused by the justice system, despite the glut of articles stating that the prison industry requires fixing. Instead, the reviews of the Raven Theatre’s Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Mortar Theatre’s Under America show that the dominant ideology recognizes a problem with the prison-industrial complex in the abstract, but not at the level of the guilty individual. Without the willingness to translate the large-scale problems reported in the press to the lived experience on the street, the dominant ideology obscures the economics of one of the fastest growing industries in the United States: the incarceration of men and women.

WORKS CITED Bullen, Robert, “Mortar Theatre’s ‘Under America’ Digs Deep, But Comes Up Empty,” Chicago Theatre Addict (4 September 2010; Web. 28 October 2010). Carey, James W. Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman, 1989. Conquergood, Dwight, “Lethal Theatre: Performance, Punishment, and the Death Penalty,” Theatre Journal 54/3 (2002). Cottrell, Megan, “Mortar Theatre’s ‘Under America’ Explores Complexities of Public Housing,” Roscoe Journal (14 September 2010; Web. 27 October 2010).

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Chyr, William, “Solid Perforances Escape Confinces of Shaky Script: Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train Confronts Issues of Faith, Justice, and Morality in the American Prison System,” Chicago Maroon. Editors. “Prison Nation.” American: National Catholic Weekly (9 March 2009; Web. 27 October 2010). Eitel, Barry, “Under America,” Chicago Theatre Blog (8 September 2010; Web. 27 Oct. 2010). Guirgis, Stephen Adly. Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 2002. Iser, Wolfgang, “Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader,” in The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Rpt. in Contexts for Criticism. Edited by Donald Keesey. Third Edition. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1998. 158 – 65. Jones, Van, “Con Game.” Forbes (24 April 2006; Web. 27 October 2010). Juntunen, Jacob. Under America. Unpublished. 2010. Kershaw, Baz. The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard. London: Routledge, 1999. Kristoff, Nicholas D., “End the War on Pot.” New York Times (27 Oct. 2010; Web. 27 Oct. 2010). Landry, Blythe, “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” Edge (16 October 2008; Web. 27 October 2010). McGuire, Timothy, “Under America,” Chicago Critic (7 September 2010; Web. 27 October 2010). Metz, Nina, “Raven’s Prison Drama is ‘A’ Train to Nowhere,” Chicago Tribune (11 November 2008; Web. 27 October 2010). Reid, Kerry, “Under America,” Chicago Tribune (9 September 2010; Web. 27 October 2010). Sullivan, Sarah, “Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law,” National Public Radio (28 October 2010; Web. 28 October 2010). Tuhus-Dubrown, Rebecca, “Prison Reform Talking Points,” The Nation (5 January 2004; Web. 28 October 2010). Walsh, Katy, “Review: ‘Under America’: IN Range But OVER Target,” The Fourth Walsh (4 September 2010; Web. 28 October 2010). Weissmann, Dan, “Under America,” The Reader (4 September 2010; Web. 27 October 2010). Williams, Tom, “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” Chicago Critic (16 October 2008; Web. 27 October 2010). _____, “Under America,” Chicago Critic (8 September 2010; Web. 27 October 2010). Vire, Kris, “Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train,” TimeOut Chicago (16 October 2008; Web. 27 October 2010). _____, “Under America.” TimeOut Chicago (15 September 2010; Web. 27 October 2010).

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About the Contributors Rosemarie K. Bank is an associate professor at Kent State University’s School of Theatre and Dance. The author of Theatre Culture in America, 1825 –1860 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), with Harold J. Nichols she co-authored The Status of Theatre Research, 1984: A Project of the Commission on Theatre Research of the American Theatre Association (1986). She has published essays in Theatre Journal, Nineteenth-Century Theatre, Theatre History Studies, and Feminist Rereadings of Modern American Drama and has served as president of the American Theatre and Drama Society and on the executive board of the American Society for Theatre Research. Mark Evans Bryan is an associate professor at Denison University where he teaches playwriting and the history, literature and theory of the theatre, especially the revolutionary period and the nineteenth century in the United States. His articles have appeared in the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, William and Mary Quarterly, Performing Arts Resources and Blackwell’s Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama, and another is forthcoming in the Journal of Popular Culture. His creative work has appeared in the Kenyon Review and his plays have been produced in the United States and abroad. James M. Cherry is the Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of Theatre at Wabash College, where he teaches classes in theatre history and film. James earned his Ph.D. in theatre from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2005; his dissertation examined dramatic parodies of nineteenth century American melodrama. He has published numerous reviews and articles in Theatre Journal and The Journal of American Popular Culture. His essay “In Edgewise: Parodic Responses to David Mamet” was published in Crossings: David Mamet’s Work in Different Genres and Media (Cambridge Scholars, 2009), edited by Johan Callens. Eileen Curley is an assistant professor of English and theatre at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she teaches dramatic literature. Her research interests include nineteenth-century British and American theatre, gender and nationhood. She has published in Theatre Symposium and The Journal of American Drama and Theatre and holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in theatre history, theory and literature from Indiana University. Thierry Dubost is a professor at the University of Caen Basse-Normandie, France. He is the author of Struggle, Defeat or Rebirth: Eugene O’Neill’s Vision of Humanity (McFarland, 1997), and The Plays of Thomas Kilroy (McFarland, 2007). He has coedited four books, La Femme noire américaine; George Bernard Shaw, un dramaturge engagé; Du dire à l’être: Tensions identitaires dans la littérature nord-américaine;

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and Regards sur l’intime en Irlande, all published by Caen University Press. His research interests include Irish, American and African drama. James Fisher is a professor of theatre and head of the Department of Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He previously edited Tony Kushner: New Essays on the Art and Politics of the Plays (2006) and “We Will Be Citizens”: New Essays on Gay and Lesbian Theatre (2008) for McFarland. He has authored several books, including Understanding Tony Kushner (University of South Carolina Press, 2008), Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism (Scarecrow, 2007; coauthored with Felicia Hardison Londré) and Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater: 1930 –2010 (Scarecrow, 2011). He is the recipient of the 2007 Betty Jean Jones Award for Excellence in the Teaching of American Theatre from the American Theatre and Drama Society and was inducted into the National Theatre Conference in 2010. Robert F. Gross is a professor of theatre at Hobart and William Smith, where he has directed over fifty productions, including Neal Bell’s McTeague. He has published a wide range of articles on modern drama, from plays by Ibsen, Strindberg, and Hauptmann to ones by Howard Brenton, A. R. Gurney, and Nicky Silver. His two most recent articles have been studies of James Purdy’s Narrow Rooms (in The Philosophy of Horror, edited by Thomas Fahy), and Edward Albee’s The Play About the Baby (in Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies). Christopher J. Herr is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Missouri State University. His research centers on twentieth century American drama; he published Clifford Odets and American Political Theatre in 2003. He also writes on satire in modern and contemporary drama and on American political theatre in the interwar period. He has published and presented papers at the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the American Society for Theatre Research, SETC’s Theatre Symposium, and the American Theatre and Drama Society. Valleri J. Hohman teaches theatre history, historiography, and dramaturgy at the University of Illinois. She writes about adaptation and Russian performance in America. Her book Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891– 1933 is forthcoming and her articles appear in Theatre History Studies, the New England Theatre Journal, Contemporary Theatre Review, the Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Theatre Journal. Daniel Keith Jernigan is an assistant professor of English at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His research interests include drama and theatre studies, postmodernism, creative writing and technical theatre. His critical work on Caryl Churchill and Tom Stoppard has been published in Modern Drama and Comparative Drama. His book, Tom Stoppard: Bucking Postmodernist Trends is forthcoming. His technical theatre projects have been staged in Singapore and Toronto. Jacob Juntunen is a founding member and managing director of Mortar Theatre. He was named a senior network playwright at Chicago Dramatists for 2010 –2012; he was also playwright in residence at Scrap Mettle SOUL, Uptown Chicago’s only theatre for development, from 2006 to 2008. His play Under America was submitted to the Sundance Institute Theatre Program Chicago Roundtable and also enabled him to receive Lee Blessing and Tennessee Williams Scholarships. He trained as a

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playwright with Edward Albee at the University of Houston and attended Clackamas College (A.A. 1996), Reed College (B.A. 1999) and Northwestern University (Ph.D. 2007). Amelia Howe Kritzer is a professor of English and theatre at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is the author of Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain: New Work, 1995 –2005 (Palgrave, 2008) and The Plays of Caryl Churchill: Theatre of Empowerment (Macmillan, 1991). She also edited Plays by Early American Women, 1775 –1850 (University of Michigan Press, 1995) and her essays have appeared in a wide range of journals and edited collections. Felicia Hardison Londré, Curators’ Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, is a theatre historian specializing in American, French, and Russian theatre and Shakespeare. She is honorary co-founder of the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival and dramaturg for the Nebraska Shakespeare Festival. She earned her M.A. at the University of Washington, and her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. In 1999, she was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and has served as secretary of the board. In 2001 she received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s Outstanding Teacher award. For 22 years (1978 –2000), she was dramaturg for the Missouri Repertory Theatre. Paul Menard teaches at SUNY’s Purchase College and is a theatre professional and critic living and working in New York City. He is a theatre critic with Time Out New York and Back Stage; his writing has also appeared in the Village Voice and The Brooklyn Rail. His chapter “The (Fe)Male Gays: Split Britches and the Redressing of Dyke Camp” appeared in “We Will Be Citizens”: New Essays on Gay and Lesbian Theatre (McFarland, 2009), edited by James Fisher. A former panelist and presenter for the International Federation of Theatre Researchers, he received his M.F.A. in dramaturgy from Columbia University. John E. O’Connor is a professor of theatre at Fairmont State University. He has directed plays by Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Moliere, Ibsen, Chekhov, Arthur Miller, Stephen Sondheim, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter, Howard Brenton, and Caryl Churchill. His research interests include contemporary American and British theatre, feminist theatre, and spirituality and performance. He has presented papers at annual conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the Southeast Theatre Conference, the Midwest Modern Language Association, the Northeast Modern Language Association, and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. Gene A. Plunka is a professor of English at the University of Memphis, where he teaches courses on modern and contemporary drama. His books include Peter Shaffer: Roles, Rites, and Rituals in the Theater (1988); The Rites of Passage of Jean Genet (1992); Antonin Artaud and the Modern Theater (ed., 1994); Jean-Claude van Itallie and the Off-Broadway Theater (1999); The Black Comedy of John Guare (2002); The Plays of Beth Henley (2005); and Holocaust Drama: The Theater of Atrocity (2009). Joshua Polster is an assistant professor of theatre studies in the Department of Performing Arts at Emerson College. He is president of the Arthur Miller Society and the author of several articles in scholarly journals and books on theatre. His most

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recent books include Reinterpreting the Plays of Arthur Miller and a critical edition of Arthur Miller’s A Memory of Two Mondays. Laurence Senelick is Fletcher Professor of Drama at Tufts University and a recipient of the St. George medal of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. He is the author of Anton Chekhov (Macmillan, 1990) and The Chekhov Theatre: A Century of the Plays in Performance (2000), winner of the Barnard Hewitt Award of the American Society for Theatre Research. He edited and translated The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov (2005) and among his other publications are Gordon Craig’s Moscow Hamlet (1982), National Theatre in Northern and Eastern Europe, 1746 – 1900 (1991), Wandering Stars: Russian Émigré Theatre, 1905 –1940 (1992), Lovesick: Modernist Plays of Same-Sex Love, 1894 –1925 (1999) The Historical Dictionary of Russian Theater (2007), and The American Stage: Writing on the Theater from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner (2010). J. Chris Westgate is an assistant professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at California State University Fullerton, where he teaches courses in contemporary and modern drama and American literature. He has published several articles in The Eugene O’Neill Review and in Modern Drama, American Drama, and Theatre Journal. He has edited an anthology of essays entitled Brecht, Broadway, and United States Theater for Cambridge Scholars Publishing. He is writing a book on slumming and realism in Progressive Era theatre. Christine Woodworth is an assistant professor of theatre history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she also serves as departmental dramaturg. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Theatre Symposium, Theatre Journal, Theatre Annual, Text and Presentation, Theatre Topics, and Broadside. Other recent scholarship includes “Suzan-Lori Parks and the Traumas of Childhood” in SuzanLori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works and an essay on birth control crusaders in the Harlem Renaissance in Public Theatres and Theatre Publics (edited by Robert Shimko and Sara Freeman, forthcoming).

Index Balzac, Honoré de 62 Banfield, Edward 268 Bank, Rosemarie K. 7, 9 –21 Banking Panic of 1893 59 Barker, Harley Granville 3, 27 Barnard, Charles 18 Barrie, J. M. 146 Barry, Philip 4, 7, 22–40, 145 Baym toyer 163 Bean, Richard 250 The Bear 76, 77, 78, 80, 84 Beggar on Horseback 143 –155 Behind a Curtain 41, 47, 48, 49 Behrman, S. N. 28, 132 Belasco, David 18, 44, 96 –108 Bell, Frank 115 Bell, Neal 57–74 Bennett, Arnold 62, 84 Benny, Jack 61 Berkovsky, Naum 83 Berlin Stories 190 Best, Otto F. 205 Bevin, Ernest 227 Beyond the Horizon 132 Bigsby, Christopher 133 Billy the Kid 18 Binswanger, Hans Christoph 71 Birkenau 205 The Birth of Tragedy 131 Blitzstein, Marc 146 The Blue Bird 111 Boas, Franz 19 Boleslavsky, Richard 153 Booth, Michael R. 27, 28 The Boss 145 Boucicault, Dion 27, 28 Bowles, Paul 72 Brando, Marlon 268 Brassneck 7, 225 –243 Brecht, Bertolt 73, 90, 195, 199, 200, 201, 202, 225 –243 Breffort-Blessing, Juliette 112 Brenton, Howard 7, 225 –243 Brook, Peter 196 Brothers and Cousins 61 Brueghel, Pieter 212 Bryan, Mark Evans 7, 109 –120 Buchman, Sidney 34 Buchwald, Nathaniel 163, 165

Abigail 96 Abortion 7, 184 –192 Abraham Lincoln 111 Accelerated Grimace 146 Adams, John Quincy 11 Addai, Levi David 252 The Adding Machine 130, 132, 143, 147, 149 Adenauer, Konrad 197 Adler, Celia 86 Adler, Jacob 86, 88 Ah, Wilderness! 134 Albee, Edward 6 Aleichem, Sholom 84 Alger, Horatio 145 Alighieri, Dante 197, 198 All God’s Chillun Got Wings 134 All My Sons 5, 24 All That Glittered 147 The American Beaver 13 American Buffalo 6 The American Dream 6 American Dream 5, 6, 69 American Hungers: The Problem of Poverty in U.S. Literature 258, 266, 268 American Revolution 109 –120 Ames, Winthrop 147 Ancient Society 9 –21 Anderson, Donald R. 28, 29, 39 Anderson, Maxwell 132, 133, 143, 187 Angels in America 6, 289 Annunzio, Gabriel de 75 Antonioni, Michelangelo 72 Apel, Paul 147 Appia, Adolphe 111 Aristotle 137 Arizona 18 Artef 7, 157–170 Atkinson, Brooks 171, 187, 189 Atlee, Clement 227 Au Bonheur des Dames 68 The Auctioneer 99, 100, 101 Auschwitz 195 –209 Awake and Sing! 4, 24, 29, 143, 171, 174 Babbitt 143 –156 Bacon, Francis 72 Baguley, David 58 Baker, George Pierce 28 Baker, Susan 261, 265

299

300 Bullen, Robert 288 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward 1, 2, 7, 22–40 Bunin, Ivan 84 Buñuel, Luis 58 Burian, Jarka M. 124 Burke, Gregory 251 Burnshaw, Stanley 171 Bush, George H. W. 258, 259, 260, 265, 267, 270, 271, 274, 275, 277 Bush, George W. 6, 247 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 146 Cadigan, Robert 143 –156 Cahan, Abraham 95 Campbell, Bartley 18 Campbell, Donna 66 Campbell, James L. Sr. 24 Campbell, Olive Dame 111 Camus, Albert 72 Can You Hear Their Voices? 165 Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! 3 Tapek, Karel 7, 121–130 Carey, James 280 Cassandra 214 Caste 27 Catlin, George 19 Cayugas 9 –21 The Celebration 80 Chalmers, Kellett 96 Chariots of Fire 236 Chaucer, Geoffrey 212 Chekhov, Anton 7, 75 –85, 122 Cherry, James M. 7, 143 –156 The Cherry Orchard 79, 83, 84 Chester, George Randolph 96 Chirico, Miriam 264, 266 Christopher, Renny 260 Churchill, Caryl 7, 23, 27, 210 –224, 244 Churchill, Winston 227 Cisneros, Sandra 260 Civil War 13, 14, 15, 17, 59, 62 Clark, Barrett 146, 147 Cleveland, Grover 59 Clifford, Margaret Ellen 165 The Climbers 145 The Clodhopper 115 Cloud Nine 217, 219 Clurman, Harold 174, 175, 187, 189 Cobrin, Patricia 42 Cody, William F. “Buffalo Bill” 14, 15, 18, 19 Cohan, George M. 96 Cohen, Robert 202, 204 Columbia Pictures 34 Columbus, Christopher 213 Comédie humaine 62 Community Drama 113 Connelly, Marc 144, 147, 148, 149, 154 Conquergood, Dwight 281 Contemporary Latina/o Theater: Wrighting Ethnicity 271 Continental Stagecraft 111

Index Copeau, Jacques 7, 109 –120 Cottrell, Megan 291, 292 La Coupe enchantée 115 Craig, Edward Gordon 110, 111, 122 Craig’s Wife 132 Cressy, Will 115 Cromwell 24 Crosby, Bing 228 Curley, Eileen 7, 41–56 Cushing, Frank 19 Custis, George Washington Parke 12 Dalcroze, Émile Jaques 111 Dalí, Salvador 58 Daly, Augustin 18 Darwin, Charles 9, 13, 266, 270 The Daughters of Men 101 David Copperfield 26 Davy Crockett 17 Dayne, Blanche 115 Death of a Salesman 5, 24 Degeneration 62 Deleuze, Gilles 58 Deloria, Philip J. 9 –21 DeMille, Henry C. 18 Democracy in America 136 Derrida, Jacques 211 The Descent of Man 13 Dickens, Charles 2, 23, 26, 27, 64 Dickson, Charles 100 Dictionary of Literary Biography 264, 266 Dillinger, John 4 Discipline and Punish 220 Divina Commedia 197, 198 Dixie Dugan 151 Dr. Faustus 153 Doctorow, E. L. 215 A Doll’s House 3, 73 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 61 Dow Jones 248 Drinkwater, John 111 Drought 165 Dubost, Thierry 7, 131–142 The Duchess de la Valliere 24 Du Maurier, George 64 Dunlap, William 113 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich 3 Each Day Dies with Sleep 257, 260, 265 –273, 275, 277 L’Education sentimentale 58 Ehrlich, Hedy 199 Eitel, Barry 288 Eldridge, David 251 Elettricità sessuale 124 Elizabeth I 213 Elkinand, Mendle 163 The Emergence of the Modern Theater 146 The Emperor Jones 143 An Enemy of the People 3 Engel, Edward 134

Index Engels, Friedrich 7, 9 –21 English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians 111 Enron 246, 247, 248, 249, 250 Enron 246, 247, 248, 250, 255 Epstein, Melech 95 Erlanger, Abraham 99 Ernst, Max 58 The Ethnological Notebooks 16 Eugénie Grandet 61, 62 Evening in Sorrento 77 Everyman 153 Evolution: Its Nature, Its Evidence, and Its Relation to Religious Thought 62 Expressionism 143 –156 Eyre, Richard 227 Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven 201 Fashion 27 Fast Labour 254, 256 Fastow, Andy 246, 247 Fen 219 Fenster, Boruch 163 The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the Thirties 187 Fields, Lew 98 Fine, Ben 173 Fir teg 168 Fiske, Harrison Grey 92 Fiske, Minnie Maddern 44 Fitch, Clyde 96. 145 Fitzsimmons, Linda 211, 218, 219 Flanagan, Hallie 165 Flaubert, Gustave 58 Fo, Dario 3 Fokine, Michel 163 Ford, Henry 215 Forrest, Edwin 12, 14 Forty-Nine 17 Foster, William Z. 164 Foucault, Michel 211, 218, 220 Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 231 Founding Manifesto of Futurism 123 Four Anthropologists 4 Frankenstein 123 Freeman, Mary Wilkins 66 Freie Volksbühne 196 Freiheit Dramatishe Sektsye see Artef Freud, Sigmund 9, 215 From Morn to Midnight 144, 151 The Front Page 132 Frydman, Jason 260 Fuentes, Carlos 213, 214 A Full Moon in March 111 Fyles, Franklin 18 Gagarin Way 251 Galsworthy, John 27 Garloff, Hatja 202 Gates, Eleanor 147

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Gellert, Lawrence 186 Gems, Pam 222 The German Ideology 16 Germinie Lacerteux 58 Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford 96 Gilbert and Sullivan 42 The Girl I Left Behind Me 18 The Girl of the Golden West 18 The Glass Menagerie 5 Glengarry Glen Ross 6, 23, 26 The Go-Getters 151 God Loves Us! 144, 146, 150, 151 God, Man and Devil 86, 89, 90 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 203 Gold-Steinberg, Sharon 191 Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah 207 Goldman, Emma 215 Goldoni, Carlo 61 Goldsmith, Oliver 26 Goncourt Brothers 58 The Good Person of Setzuan 90 Goodall, Jane 129 Goodwin, Nat 96 Gordin, Jacob 7, 86 –95 Gordon, Mel 147 Gorelik, Mordecai 174, 187 Gorky, Maxim 75 Grange, William 154 Granovsky, Alexander 163 Grant, Cary 34 Granville-Barker, Harley see Barker, Harley Granville. Gray, Paul 202 The Great Depression 1, 4, 5, 6, 22, 24, 39, 144, 146, 166, 171–183, 187, 271 The Great Divide 18 Greed 57, 58 Green, Harvey 176 Gross, Robert F. 7, 57–74 The Group Theatre 171–183, 187, 189 Guirgus, Stephen Adly 8, 279 –293 Habima Theatre 163 The Hairy Ape 130, 131 Hall, Peter 222 Hamilton, Alexander 118 Hannele’s Ascension 82 Hans Sonnenstossers Hollenfahrt 147 Hansberry, Lorraine 5 Hare, David 7, 23, 225 –243, 248, 249, 250 Harlan, Byron 115 Harrington, Michael 258, 259, 265 Harrison, Mrs. Burton N. (Constance Cary) 41–56 Harvest of My Years 154 Hauptmann, Gerhardt 82 The Heart of Maryland 99 Hellman, Lillian 4 The Henrietta 2 Henry, Joseph 13, 15 Hepburn, Katharine 34

302 Herr, Christopher J. 7, 171–183 Hewitt, Bernard 147 Hirsch Leckert 7, 157–170 A History of Modern Drama 146 Hitler, Adolf 176 Hohman, Valleri J. 7, 86 –95 Holiday 4, 7, 22–40, 145 Holocaust 195 –209 Holub, Robert 196 Hopkins, Arthur 29, 148 Horizon 18 Houdini, Harry 215 The House of Ramon Iglesia 257, 259, 260, 262, 263, 275 The House on Mango Street 260 Howard, Bronson 2 Howard, Sidney 132 HUD (Housing and Urban Development) 258, 271 Hudson, Verity 222 Hughes, Catherine 206 Hugo, Victor 274 The Hunger of Memory 260 Hutcheon, Linda 211–224 I Am a Camera 7, 184, 190 –192 Ibsen, Henrik 2, 3, 29, 73 Improved Order of Red Men 11, 12 In Abraham’s Bosom 132 In Place/Out of Place 274 In the Jungle of Cities 73 Industrial Revolution 1, 22 The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures 6, 24 The Investigation 7, 195 –209 An Involuntary Tragedian 84 Iroquois 9 –21 Iser, Wolfgang 291 Isherwood, Christopher 190 The Island of Dr. Moreau 125 “It Went Right Down the Middle” 228 Ivanov 76, 79, 80, 84 Jackson, Russell 27 Jacobson, Kurt 92 Jacobson, Lynn 271, 275 The Jazz Age 1, 4, 22 Jefferson, Joseph, III 97, 102 Jenckes, Norma 260 Jennings, James 258 Jernigan, Daniel Keith 7, 210 –224 Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train 8, 279 –293 The Jewish King Lear 86, 88, 89 John Gabriel Borkman 73 Johnson, Lyndon B. 258, 259 Jones, Gavin 258, 260, 266, 268 Jones, Robert Edmond 110, 111, 148, 153 Jung, Carl 215 Juntunen, Jacob 8, 279 –293 Kaiser, Georg 144, 151

Index Kalich, Bertha 86 Katz, Michael B. 258, 272, 274 Kaufman, George S. 144, 147, 148. 149, 154 Keely and Du 7, 184, 191–193 Kelly, George 132 Kessler, David 86, 91 Keyssar, Helene 210 King, Ryan 281 Kingsley, Sidney 7, 184, 187, 190, 193 Kipling, Rudyard 75 Kirchon, V. 133 Klaw, Marcus 99 Klein, Charles 7, 96 –108 Koch, Ed 274, 275 Kresswell, Tim 274 The Kreutzer Sonata 86, 91, 92, 95 Kritzer, Amelia Howe 8, 244 –256 Kruger, Loren 220, 221 Ku Klux Klan 167 Kushner, Tony 6, 23, 24, 27 Kushnick, Louis 258 Kushnirov, Aron 166, 167 Lacan, Jacques 211 The Lady of Lyons; or, Love and Pride 24 Landry, Blythe 285 Lanux, Pierre de 114 La Shelle, Kirk 18 Launius, Christie 260 Lawrence, Alice 42, 43 Lawrence, Rita 42, 43 Lawson, John Howard 144, 147, 171 Lay, Ken 246, 247, 248 The League of the Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee, or Iroquois 12, 13, 14 Le Conte, Joseph 62 Lehman Brothers 247 Leitch, Vincent 220 Les Misérables 274 Levi, Primo 207 Lewis, Oscar 268 Lewis, Sinclair 135, 143 –156 Liberty Jones 29 The Lion and the Mouse 100, 101 Lippman, Monroe 29, 34 The Little Foxes 4 Lombroso, Cesare 62 London Assurance 28 Londré, Felicia Hardison 7, 42, 96 –108 Long Day’s Journey into Night 134 Look Back in Anger 3 Lopez, Josefina 260 Losey, Joseph 58 Lost Plays (O’Neill) 186, 187 Love, Glen A. 146 Lusitania 101 Lyotard, Jean-François 211 Macgowan, Kenneth 111 MacKaye, Percy 7, 109 –120 Macready, William Charles 24, 25, 27

Index Madame Butterfly 99 Madoff, Bernard 26 Maeterlinck, Maurice 82, 111 Main Line 18 Major Barbara 3 Mamet, David 6, 23, 26, 27 Mamoulian, Rouben 137 Marco Millions 7, 131–142 Marinetti, F. T. 123, 124, 128, 129 Marisol 257, 260, 265, 271–277 Mark, Joan 9 Market Boy 251 Marks, Adol’f 75 Marlowe, Christopher 153 Martin, Jane 7, 184, 191–193 Marx, Karl 1, 7, 9 –21, 125, 127, 195, 199, 200, 231 Mary of Scotland 187 Masn shpil un balet fun der Rusisher revolutsye 163 The Matchmaker 61 materialism 270 Mathieu, Arline 271 McCracken, Grant 175 McEvoy, J. P. 144, 150, 151, 154 McGuire, Timothy 289, 290 McTeague 7, 57–74 Men in White 7, 184, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192 Menard, Paul 7, 121–130 Mencken, H. L. 150 Mersand, Joseph 149 Metamora; or, The Last of the Wampanoags 12 Metz, Nina 284 Meyerhold, Vsevolod 163 Miller, Arthur 5, 24 Miller, Joaquin 17 Miners 163 The Miser 61 Les Misérables 274 Mr. Moneypenny 144, 151, 152, 153, 154 Mitchell, Langdon 91, 92 Mohawks 9 –21 Molière 61 Money 1, 2, 7, 22–40 Montgomery, General Richard 113 Moody, William Vaughn 18 Moore, Harry 146 Mordden, Ethan 147 Moretti, Franco 73 Morgan, J. P. 59, 159, 215 Morgan, Lewis Henry 7, 9 –21 Morris, I. N. 96 Mortar Theatre 279, 282, 292 Moscow Art Theatre 163 Moses, Daniel Noah 9 –21 The Mouse-Trap 45, 46, 47, 49, 53 Mowatt, Anna Cora 27 Mrs. Warren’s Profession 3 Murdock, Frank H. 17

303

The Music Master 7, 96 –108 My Partner 18 National Theatre of Great Britain 223, 225, 234 Native Americans 9 –21 Nauman, Bernd 196 Nazi Germany 195 –209 Nevezhin, Pyotr 84 The New Introduction to Poverty: The Role of Race, Power, and Politics 258 Nicholas II, Czar 159, 161 Nichols, Mike 260 Nicholson, Jack 268 Nietzsche, Friedrich 131, 138 Nordau, Max 62 Norris, Frank 7, 57–74 Northwestern University 291 Nugent, J. C. 151 Obama, Barack 6, 7 O’Connor, John E. 7, 225 –243 Odets, Clifford 4, 7, 24, 29, 31, 143, 146, 171– 183 Oliver Twist 26 On New Ground: Contemporary HispanicAmerican Plays 259 Oneidas 9 –21 O’Neill, Eugene 3, 4, 7, 29, 130, 131–142, 143, 184 –193 O’Neill, James 102 Onondagas 9 –21 The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State 9 –21 Ortega y Gasset, José 122 Osborne, John 3 The Other America 258, 259, 265 Other People’s Money 6, 23 Ouspensky, A. 133 Oxford Street 252, 253, 255, 256 Palitsch, Peter 197 Palmstierna-Weiss, Gunilla 199 Paradise Lost 7, 171–183 Parker, Dorothy 154 Parker, Ely 11, 14, 15 Pathé Pictures 34 Paul Clifford 24 Pearce, Russell 281 Penn, Sean 268 The People Are Friendly 251 The Petrified Forest 4 Pfister, Joel 133 The Philadelphia Story 4, 28, 29, 31, 37, 39 Pinero, Arthur Wing 27 Pinocchio 123 Pirandello, Luigi 29 Piscator, Erwin 196 Platonov 78, 79, 80, 84 Plautus 61 Plunka, Gene A. 7, 195 –209

304 Pocahontas; or, The Settlers of Virginia 12 Poe, Edgar Allan 27 The Politics of Postmodernism 211 Polk, James Knox 11 Pollock, Arthur 146 Pollock, Channing 144, 151, 152, 153, 154 Polster, Joshua 7, 157–170 The Poor Little Rich Girl 147 Pope, S.W. 177 Porgy 132 Porter, Laurin 140 Postlewait, Thomas 145 Pot of Gold 61 Potter, Mrs. James Brown 42, 43 Poupées electriques 123, 124, 128, 129 The Power of Yes 248, 249, 250 Pravda 7, 225 –243 Prebble, Lucy 246 Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America 184 A Present for a Papist: Or the Life and Death of Pope Joan 214 Profiles of Eleven 95 The Promise 257, 259 –265, 269, 270, 272, 277 Provincetown Players 132 Pygmalion 3 R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) 7, 121– 130 Ragtime 215 A Raisin in the Sun 5 Raven Theatre 279, 280, 284 Reade, Charles 27 Reagan, Ronald 6, 23, 26, 60, 61, 258, 259, 260, 265, 267, 270, 271, 274, 275, 277 Real Women Have Curves 260 Red Rust 133 Reinhardt, Max 111 Rekrutn 168 Reynolds, Ernest 27 Rice, Elmer 4, 130, 132, 143, 147 Riceyman Steps 62 Richelieu, or the Conspiracy 25 Riley, James Whitcomb 98 Rivera, José 8, 257–278 Roar China 133 Roaring Trade 245, 246, 250, 255, 256 Robertson, T. W. 27 Rockefeller, John D. 101, 159 Rodriguez, Richard 260 Roe vs. Wade 184, 191, 193 Roger Bloomer 147 The Rolling Stones 229 Roosevelt, Eleanor 173 Roosevelt, Franklin 173 Rossini, Jon 271 Rowell, George 27 Royal Shakespeare Company 197, 225 Royle, Edwin Milton 18 Rubstein, Lenny 146

Index A Russian Honeymoon 44 The Russian Jew in America 95 Russian Revolution 127, 161, 167, 168 Sale, Chic 115 Salloch, Erika 198, 201 Schertzinger, Victor 115 Schlunk, Jürgen E. 196 Schnayder, Benno 163 Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe 11, 13 Schulte-Michaels, Thomas 197 Schultze-Rohr, Peter 197 The Sea Captain; or, The Birthright 25 The Seagull 82 Second Youth 84 Seltzer, David 129 Senecas 9 –21 Senelick, Laurence 7, 75 –85 Serious Money 23, 221, 223, 244, 245 Shaftymov, A. P. 84 Shakespeare, William 27, 42, 89, 96 Sharp, Cecil 111 Shaw, George Bernard 3, 27, 75, 96, 133 Sheaffer, Louis 132 Sheldon, Edward 145 Shepard, Richard F. 204 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley 42, 96 Sherwood, Robert E. 4, 29, 132 Shitsky, Yankev 163 Short Comedies for Amateur Actors 41, 44 The Silver Cord 132 Simmel, Georg 61 Skilling, Jeffrey 246, 247, 248, 250 Smith, Adam 2, 22 Smith, Ben 29 Smith, Wendy 189 Smith, William 113 Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll 49 Society 27 The Society for Russian Dramatic Authors and Operatic Composers 76, 77 Softcops 220 Sokel, Walter 147, 154 Solinger, Rickie 184, 193 Spencer, Steve 290 The Squaw Man 18 Stallings, Laurence 143 Stanislavsky, Constantin 163 Der Step brent 168 Sterner, Jerry 6, 23 Sternheim, Carl 61 Stewart, Abigail 191 Stewart, Cal 115 Stewart, Donald Ogden 34 Stock Market crash 4, 34, 146, 163 Stone, John Augustus 12 Stone, Oliver 23, 26, 30 Stoppard, Tom 23 Strasberg, Lee 187 The Straw 139 Street Scene 4, 132

Index Strife 27 Strike, Royt-gel-shvarts 163 Stroheim, Erich von 57, 58 The Strongbox 61 Subiotto, A. V. 197 Success Story 144 Sumbatov-Yuzhin, Alexander Ivanov 81 Suvorin, Alexei 82 Svitch, Caridad 260 Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity in the Human Family 13, 14 Tanner, Kathryn 60 Tarbell, Ida 101 Taylor, Frederick Winslow 122 Taylor, Tom 27 Tea at Four O’Clock 44, 45 Terra Nostre 213 Thackeray, William Makepeace 26, 27 Thatcher, Margaret 7, 23, 210 –224, 244, 251 Theatre Arts Magazine 111 “Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction” 226 Theatre Guild 132, 133, 137 Thérèse Raquin 58 They Knew What They Wanted 132 The Third Degree 100 Thomas, Augustus 18 Thomas, Jane 210 Thompson, Steve 245 Three Sisters 83 Thus Spake Zarathustra 131 Ties That Bind 81 The Times 27 Toast 250 Tocqueville, Alexis de 136 Tolstoy, Leo 87, 91 Tonawanda 11 Top Girls 7, 210 –224 The Travels of Marco Polo 135 Tretyakov, Sergei 133 Tuhus-Dubrown, Rebecca 281 Turgenev, Ivan 77 Turner, Frederick Jackson 17 Tuscaroras 9 –21 Two Strings to Her Bow 44, 54 Tyler, Royall 113 Uncle Tom’s Cabin 97 Uncle Vanya 81 Under America 8, 279 –293 Under the Whaleback 250 Understanding Mainland Puerto Rican Poverty 261, 265 The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare 258 The Unheavenly City: The Nature and Future of Our Urban Crisis 268 The Unwelcome Mrs. Hatch 44 The Usurper 96 Utopia 125

305

Vakhtangov, Eugene 163 Valgamae, Mardi 146 Van Druten, John 7, 184, 190, 191 Vineberg, Steve 30 Vire, Kris 284, 291 The Virginian 18 The Visit 3 The Voysey Inheritance 3, 27 Wagner, Richard 103, 121 Wainscott, Ronald H. 146, 147 Waiting for Lefty 4, 24, 29, 171, 174 Wakefield: A Folk Masque of America 113, 118 Walker, Julia A. 144 Wall Street 1, 2, 6, 176 Wall Street 23, 26, 30 Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps 30 Walsh, Kay 288 Wandor, Michelene 210, 218, 219, 222, 223 War on Poverty 258, 259 Warfield, David 96 –108 Washington, George 7, 109 –120 Washington, Martha 109 –120 Washington, Action Dramatique 114 Washington Square Players 132 Washington, the Man Who Made Us 109 – 120 Waste 27 Waters, Steve 254 Way Down East 115 Wealth of Nations 2, 22 Weber, Joe 98 Weeping Wives 49 –55 Weine, Robert 146 Weiss, Peter 7, 195 –209 Westgate, J. Chris 8, 257–278 What Price Glory 132, 143 White, Stanford 215 Wilder, Thornton 61 Williams, Hope 29 Williams, Tennessee 5 Williams, Tom 284, 290, 292 Wilson, August 5 Wilson, Edith Galt 112 Wilson, Harold 227 Wilson, Woodrow 110, 112 Winn, Emmett 258, 260 Winter, William 100 Wister, Owen 18 Wolf, Christa 214 Wolfe, Elsie de 42, 43 The Wood Goblin 81, 83, 84 Woods, Walter 18 Woodworth, Christine 7, 184 –194 Woolf, Virginia 84 Woollcott, Alexander 146, 149, 150 Working Girl 258, 260 World War I 1, 3, 28, 110, 112, 129, 144, 145, 147, 164 World War II 1, 3, 4, 5, 145

306

Index

Worth, Katherine 222 The Writer in Extremis 147 Wynne, Michael 251

You and I 28, 29 “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” 229 The Youngest 28, 29, 33

Yeats, William Butler 111 Yegor Bulichev 168 Yekel 95 Yiddish theatre 7, 86 –95, 157–170

Zinn, Howard 166 Zola, Emile 58, 66, 68 Zubatov, Sergei 160