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Toon meer Toon minder. Lees de eerste pagina's. Reviews Schrijf een review. Start direct met lezen Digitaal lezen is voordelig Dag en nacht klantenservice Veilig betalen. Sam Cheever Yesterday's Tears 4, A competent one by a person outside the O'Neill family cannot be forthcoming until the Yale collection is re- leased for study.
We must rely on other sources for the time being. Clark was the first to regard the young play- wright as a worthy subject for biography. From to he issued a series of volumes entitled Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays. They discuss O'Neill's successes, his failures, artistic ideas and philosophies as expressed in personal letters and conversations. As biography the books are a disappointment.
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They suflFer from the same limitations found so frequently else- where in placing judgment too closely on the plays alone. O'Neill supplied Clark with a summary of his own early history, but both O'Neill's report and Clark's interpolations are remarkably deficient in precise date and detailed fact. Of the man, we learn little. The obvious vagueness did not displease O'Neill. When Clark revised the book in and sought clarification of certain anecdotes, Mrs. O'Neill suggested that her husband assist him in getting the stories straight. O'Neill replied "Non- sense!
A Poet's Quest of Its value is significant but limited. As critic of the Catholic weekly. Commonweal, Skinner frequently reviewed and often praised O'Neill's plays. In his book, he chose to explore them in terms of his own concept that O'Neill was a poet on a quest similar to the quests of Catholic saints who sought truth and meaning in life and man's relationship to God.
O'Neill sent Skinner the most important section of the book, a chronology of composition of every major play. In wishing Skinner suc- cessful hunting, he admitted that the undertaking could well reveal aspects unknown to himself. Skinner hunted, and found much, but the discoveries and revelations presumed acceptance of Catholic doctrine and its attitudes toward saintly behavior.
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Skinner's comparison with the saintly pilgrimage was certainly original and did represent a new approach to O'Neill criticism, although the protests that the character of the writer cannot be judged by the plays alone were, and still are, valid. Most of the other full-length books before cannot be counted as biography. A Critical Study, , is an excellent discussion of the plays without biographical emphasis. It is weakened, as well, by Win- ther's inclination to find the entire O'Neill canon successful in one way or another. Doris Falk's Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension of comes closest to biography through its criticism, tracing the development of O'Neill's tragic theme through all the plays as the reflection of the "lifelong torment of a mind in conflict.
Of all the proposed books awaited during the O'Neill revival only two are purely biographical. The first, Agnes Boulton's Part of a Long Story fits more properly into the cate- gory of recollections by a personal acquaintance, and is there- fore treated later. The other, by journalist Croswell Bowen, assisted by Shane O'Neill, is the most complete and accurate that we yet have. Both, however, have their limitations. Bowen's The Curse of the Misbegotten, , does more than any other single volume to pinpoint names, dates, times and places, and is a major contribution to our knowledge of O'Neill, the man.
For the first time we can begin to form a coherent picture of the artist's life and the ideas and philosophies that grew into the written play. The impression that emerges is one of a man who searched his entire hfe for happiness and security, but who was never able to find it long enough at one time or in one place to remove the sense of pursuit by a re- lentless fate.
Passwort vergessen?
Simultaneously, the book evokes tremendous re- spect for the man's intense desire to be left alone and for the remarkable body of work which emerged. Bowen's eflFort is, on the other hand, of limited value. The side we see of O'Neill, particularly his relationship with his wives and children, must necessarily come from Bowen's close work with Shane O'Neill, whose life in so many ways paralleled the aimlessness of his father's youth.
The almost cruel neglect and calloused indiflFerence of O'Neill toward his family must be taken as a fairly one-sided interpretation. Al- most certainly there is another viewpoint we have not yet been allowed to see. Also, Bowen pauses far too long to evaluate the individual plays as they appeared in O'Neill's lifetime.
O`Neill, Eugene Gladstone
The book loses interest as biography while contributing nothing of significance to O'Neill criticism. This, with Miss Boulton's book, completes the list. It is a gradually growing library, but it needs more solid contribu- tions to fill it out completely. Perhaps the next decade will provide them. The Personal Acquaintance O'Neill's personal friends supply little of additional bio- graphical value. The reasons are not diflBcult to find. O'Neill was never a person who could easily welcome anyone into his confidence.
The requirement for intimate friendship was a willingness to be a friend on his own terms, which presumed unconditional acceptance of and adaptation to the O'Neill mode of life. While this could include a long and diflBcult journey over the Provincetown sands by foot or on horseback, a hair- raising trip in a powerful car on narrow French roads with O'Neill at the wheel, or a fish-like devotion to the water in nearly all seasons, more than anything else it involved a respect for O'Neill's strongest wish: Nevertheless, O'Neill fostered some very unusual friend- ships.
These might include the Hudson Dusters, a decaying underworld gang of his Greenwich Village days, who welcomed the somber, mysterious young man so far removed from their own kind, but who could drink many of them under the table.
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Or it could be the small band of intellectuals led by George Cram Cook and wife, Susan Glaspell, whose Provincetown Players started O'Neill on his way, as he, equally, started them. Noted among others are the names of H. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. Their Smart Set magazine published and praised the early eflForts of the young writer, and Nathan's criticism in its whiplash fashion stung playwright and public alike. Kenneth Macgowan, producer, critic, and later college professor, worked closely with him; Robert Edmond Jones was his devoted designer and one-time producing partner; and we have already mentioned Clark and De Casseres.
Before Provincetown After his emergence as a successful writer O'Neill seldom encountered those who had drunk, sailed, or lived with him in the years before. He did not pointedly avoid his old friends, but his way of living became so different and his contacts so remote from his earlier acquaintances that there was no com- mon ground for intercourse.
There is no indication that O'Neill himself avoided his erstwhile com- panions because of any changed attitudes of his own; rather it was their avoidance which marked the separation, for there was the feeling by some that "Gene" had risen above them. The continual traveling of the parents and the sort of "second-class" position which they held in New London society during the summers prevented the establish- ment of close and friendly contacts.
We are given a picture of a household into which friends never dropped, callers never came. Of O'Neill's personal behavior. Latimer, under whom O'Neill had worked on the New London Telegraph in , once said that he was the most "stubborn and irre- concilable social rebel" the Judge had ever met. Clayton Hamil- ton, well-known critic and author, was a close friend of the family, but unfortunately he wrote almost nothing about this wild young boy he must have known so well.
Gladys Hamilton, his wife, has recalled the inarticu- late young man whose eyes seemed to speak what his tongue could not. Of O'Neill's friends and cronies on his many voyages we know almost nothing. Certain of his acquaintances became characters in his early plays, but none of them were literate enough to write any informative articles after O'Neill achieved his fame. Nearly all that we do know about the seagoing ad- ventures comes from O'Neill himself. Weaver wrote one of the most detailed reports of this period in an item for the New York World in O'Neill, according to Weaver, stood out in the class "like an oyster in a lunchroom stew.
His withdrawal from the group and reluctance to speak prevented for some time his expression of opinion about the classroom studies, but once he spoke, sug- gesting that the piece under discussion might, with a few tunes, become "sure-fire burley-cue," he became more of a member of the crowd in their drinking, bull sessions, and other activities. Weaver also relates that O'Neill's attractiveness to women was apparently irresistible.
The class was appalled at O'Neill's "savage radicalism," but all were confident that he would some day be America's greatest playwright. When O'Neill did go on to his fame. It included, first, a statement from Barrett Clark, quoting a letter by George Pierce Baker, which found O'Neill a steady worker, able to write one-act plays, but no good in three acts. He seemed aloof, but a nice person when you knew him. Next was a statement by O'Neill, who said that most of his own stuff was "terrible" and that he received far more from Baker personally than from the class.
He recalled that O'Neill trembled, as if trying to keep from stuttering, but was likeable enough. After Provincetown From the start of O'Neill's fame in Provincetown until his death, his many friends contributed extensively to our knowl- edge of O'Neill as a person, and they have equally strengthened our awareness of what we do not know.
Over and over again the point is reiterated that it was virtually impossible to be- come, in the generally accepted sense, a "close" friend of Eugene O'Neill. First, what is learned from the partners of his work — those of Provincetown and of the later producing companies? The book does not dwell on O'Neill and his place in the expanding fortunes of the Players any more than it does the other members, but it provides the only com- plete account of the famous group's development and O'Neill's entry into it.
O'Neill was never a close member of the Players and seldom appeared on the scene except during rehearsals of his own plays. When the organization lost the services of its president and guiding angel, George Cram Cook, O'Neill, always unsuited for any executive position, was never one of those considered as a possible replacement.
In Theatre magazine in , poet Harry Kemp, an early Provincetowner by way of Kansas, recalls that his first impres- sion of O'Neill reminded him of Edgar Allan Poe, dressed like a sailor who had jumped ship. He relates how O'Neill would write his plays in bed, covered with blankets, warming his fingers over an oil stove in a Provincetown flat over a grocery. His magnificent independence constantly as- serted itself, as on the occasion when David Belasco sent a message that he wished to talk with O'Neill at the Belasco studio.
O'Neill replied that his studio was the third back room of the Hell Hole if Belasco wanted to see him. The play was a sensation, O'Neill was on his way, and from then on he and the Provincetown Players gradually lost touch. O'Neill, says Hansford, was aloof, had an elusive mind, and always conveyed the feeling of great distance, appearing almost anti- social. He nevertheless welcomed those who had something to say or were doing something worthwhile, but intensely dis- liked any discussion which did not have a definite point or reach a conclusion. He was completely unable to find his way through conventional social banter; in the midst of a conversa- tion he might get up from his chair, and immediately become absorbed in a book.
He had a sort of physical helplessness, not knowing what to do with his body, and would flit from mood to mood in a manner at times almost comic. In a group of his closest friends, however, he could be entirely at ease, but would seldom discuss his own plays, preferring sports and current events. Those who knew him had the constant feeling that he was never at home with anybody and nobody was quite at home with him. There are other scattered reports of the "real" O'Neill, among them accounts by Harold de Polo and David Karsner, both of whom spent fishing holidays with O'Neill and family in the Maine woods in Theresa Helburn of the Theatre Guild has likened O'Neill to Lindbergh, a "lone eagle" in the drama, with courage and intense conviction and the same kind of desire for privacy.
Lawrence Langner, patent attorney and leading light in the Theatre Guild, wrote his own biography. The Magic Curtain, in Entire chapters are devoted to O'Neill and his contacts with the Guild during that organiza- tion's tenure as his Broadway producer. The picture Langner paints is no different and no more complete than any other.
Generous portions of the extended correspondence between O'Neill and Langner reinforce the impression of warm, informal friendliness gained from similar examples elsewhere. A second group, those who did not work directly with O'Neill in the staging of his plays, have also written a substantial volume of interesting comment. Outstanding was the poet and journalist, Benjamin De Casseres. So enthusiastic were his feel- ings for the playwright that many of his articles between and must be read with a good deal of caution.
The genius of O'Neill headed "into the light of eternal cosmic and human laws" and could be mentioned only in companionship with Shakespeare, Strindberg, Ibsen and Pirandello. O'Neill smashed through the morons and brought mountains to Mohamet, always the dissenter, the outsider, the "enemy of social convention" which only the strong Dionysiac could get away from. O'Neill, said De Casseres, was beyond good and evil, as inexorable as Sophocles or Hardy, storming and conquering life.
When this flow of ecstatic praise has been penetrated, one can find some biographical facts from De Casseres' reports, particularly the account of their first meeting in a theatre. He was not prepared for the personality he was to encounter. The "volcanic black eyes" seemed to say, "Excuse me for not being nice, but I've just returned from Hell. His portrait offers much more information about O'Neill's true character, although Nathan's vigorous style often seems to be working for an effect, rather than for truly objective reporting.
Only once, says Nathan, did he ever hear O'Neill laugh out loud. De Casseres had described O'Neill's smile as "lightning across a black cloud. His outward appearance was cold, even icy, but to those who knew him, he displayed a "naturally boyish quaUty" and an innocent artlessness. Contrary to the popular impression that he was completely withdrawn into a dark, sunless and tortured world, Nathan emphasizes O'Neill's delight in Hght detective fiction, Damon Runyon, the sports column, swimming, prize fighting, garden work, his nickelodeon piano Rosie, and the latest music hall jokes.
There are other personal reminiscences, some long, some brief, each presenting a genuine friend but a constantly distant companion. Russell Grouse, Pierre Loving, Alfred Kreymborg, Kenneth Macgowan, Mary Heaton Vorse — friends, companions, co-workers — all have described, as best they can, the strange and enigmatic man who walked among them. Few could pene- trate the mask of the dark, brooding face, but all saw in their friendship something unique and valuable. Perhaps it is not accurate to include Agnes Boulton's Part of a Long Story as the writing of a "personal acquaintance," but because it is not, strictly speaking, "biography," and because it came from one who, above all, should have been best "ac- quainted," it seems to fit.
When one has finished her absorbing story, there is the same impression that strikes the reader of the items by those who knew him less intimately: Eugene O'Neill remained impossible to fathom, and his distance, whether in an alcoholic haze, submerged in his writing, or as a husband and parent, was always just beyond one's ability to cross and reach the true man.
Part of a Long Story, engrossing as it is, remains a curiously unsatisfactory report of the early years of acquaintance and marriage. Its signal value is, of course, its intimate portrait unavailable from any other source. The picture they form of life with a genius emerges best described as night- marish. The book is one of mood, more than of fact, as was probably Miss Boulton's original intent. Its disappointing lack of exact date and time, its distressingly casual "I don't remem- ber" attitude toward important matters, and its often repeated hour-by-hour recounting of a week-long drinking spree become disturbing.
Yet it must be read as one of the most vital links in our very weak chain of O'Neill's personal history. O'Neill's brother James, his parents, the habitues of the Provincetown theatres, the Hell Hole and elsewhere, those of both sexes who sincerely loved O'Neill for all his exasperating inconsistencies and unpredictable temperament are all here, each treated with fairness and equality. Perhaps it is best that Miss Boulton leaves us only with a mood, for certainly her ten year life with this man must stand out in her own mind not as one of a series of orderly events, clearly placed in time, but as a decade spent in an ultimately fruitless attempt to reach out to an agonized soul that searched for, but eventually rejected, the kind of love she had to offer.
The Interviewing Journalist Magazine and newspaper articles, complete with illustra- tions, began to appear regularly as early as , while O'Neill was still considered little more than an effective writer of one- act plays. The accumulation of these reports from professional journalists is much greater than from those who knew him as a personal friend.
They lack the intimacy of the others, and at the same time fail to contribute any more significant information. In O'Neill was already a legend of sorts, and there was a demand to know just who the "real " person was. His harshness, said Sayler, came from lack of maturity instead of striving for effect, but it may be softened in the future. Until that time, he would be forced to create something which audiences insisted on calling "unhappy" because his personal views permitted of nothing else. As an explanation of O'Neill's dramatic philosophy, the article remains of considerable value even today.
In , Charles Merrill, interviewing O'Neill at his Cape Cod home, waxed extremely sentimental with a picture of cozy domesticity and peaceful isolation from the world. By , when plays were appearing at the rate of two or three a year, Carol Bird wrote about "Eugene O'Neill: The Inner Man" in Theatre for June.
O'Neill was described as taci- turn, laconic, reserved, shy, compassionate, with one outstand- ing feature, the somber, tender, melancholy eyes. As so many were to do. Miss Bird discovered O'Neill's hatred of superficial veneer. His silences were the product of genius. He was a man who was able to project the thoughts of those who hear in the silences. In Walter Prichard Eaton, acknowledging O'Neill's "irreconcilable rebellion," could not, however, find his personal behavior arrogant. Living in his own imaginative world and putting it in dramatic form, he increased the dignity of the dramatist's craft in this country.
Like Emerson and Thoreau he retired to his Cape Cod dune home where he found "night stars are more important. To Newsweek he was still the "shy, dark boy. A new O'Neill play was almost like something out of a distant historical past; in fact, it seemed downright anachronistic. One of the notable events of his return to New York was a press conference, something O'Neill had never before at- tempted.
It was held in June in the oflBces of the Theatre Guild. O'Neill discussed his much-heralded but unseen "cycle" and his belief that the United States was at once the greatest success and the greatest failure as a nation in the world. Both described O'Neill's in- creased gauntness, his palsy, the piercing eyes, and underlying humor. His cordiality was universally acknowledged.
Kyle Crichton of Collier's later gained a personal interview in O'Neill's apartment. He looked less like a ghost than one might imagine, said Crichton, and possessed a "sense of humor that will make a monkey out of you if you don't keep your guard up. Other days, other moods. She realized that O'Neill created a legend about himself with the help of no publicity agent or outside assistance. Nobody was so well loved and liked by his friends, a man who always remained above little spites and prejudices.
Typical of that magazine's biographical sketches, it was long, interestingly written and comprehensive. Part I was completely historical and, because of accurate factual detail, far better as biography than Clark's Man and His Plays volumes. Part III dis- cussed various opinions about O'Neill as a man, from the pejorative term "black Irishman" to the highest artistic praise, and added O'Neill's own opinion of himself as a seaman who had taken up writing, rather than a writer who had been to sea. Then, near the closing page. The Dramatic Historian Dramatic and theatrical histories are poor assistance in analyzing the personality of Eugene O'Neill because of the obvious need of such works to speak on broad general terms.
The following selected examples, taken from books which devote considerable space to O'Neill, show how Httle additional information can be gained from them. Remarking on O'Neill's inability to express himself precisely, Krutch pointed out the writer's diflBculties in thinking in abstract terms and his inability to communicate clearly.
Krutch saw O'Neill as truly a mystic, concerned with the fundamentals of conflict between good and evil, which he continually inserted into his plays. He asserted that to know the plays we must understand the man. Quinn saw O'Neill primarily as a poet, but also as a playwright, and a great drama- tist because he was "more than a dramatist. John Gassner's excellent Masters of the Drama called this unique personality "a verit- able seismograph of the ideas, viewpoints, and promptings of the new age" who reflected the younger generation's discontent with a materialistic America.
Other historians contribute very little more which could guide us beyond what we already know. There is always the feeling, as Quinn indicates, that to know the plays one must know the man, but no carefully thinking critic or historian will ever restrict the enjoyment of the collected works of any literary artist to an understanding of the writer's life. So far, the search has not brought its expected re- ward; there is no way of knowing if it ever will.
Nobody would yet ofiFer an estimate of his final place in Ameri- can stage literature until his work was complete, and in it appeared far from done. The production or active prepara- tion of at least three new O'Neill plays was familiar theatrical news. Nobody, therefore, could have suspected that O'Neill's writing career actually was finished.
Each of the "new" plays had been written at least three years previously. The future which Gagey and Clark hopefully awaited had already passed. None of these plays restored the reputation which had begun to suffer more than ten years earlier. His last plays had shown nothing new. The rich vein of dramatic and theatrical technique, which had served him well during his career, had finally become so diluted that its immediate market value was of little worth.
After the product seemed to find a market. Was this the start of that future once so strongly hoped for, or the last rush of a one- time strong dramatic force, a kind of shout from the grave, before its final disappearance? No suggestion of impending growth was, of course, possible, for Eugene O'Neill was dead.
But perhaps there was, in these last plays, something new in dramatic style and theme which would exert some kind of guiding influence upon the theatre of the moment, would emerge from the deep reservoir of O'Neill's many and varied skills to point a new and better way. The truth is that no such thing happened, and the indication is that if O'Neill is to sur- vive in our active stage literature it will probably be in spite of, and not because of, the technical contributions of these or any other of his plays.
There was really nothing new. Only two plays had previously been unseen, and they showed nothing beyond extreme length this was old hat and heavy-handed "realism" an early O'Neill trademark. The plays proved, if they proved anything, that the latter day O'Neill had exhausted the deep well of genuine originality which at one time had sustained him; stylistically there was nothing new.
Consistency in style was never a part of O'Neill's strength. Critics were always seeking the proper niche for his perma- nent mounting, but they were continually unable to find it. Masks, half-houses, thirteen acts, and spoken thoughts brought playgoers and critics through a labyrinth of stage efiFects. None of these, in writing or production, ever solidified or developed into a specific "O'Neill style. In an artist's development from his apprentice to his master works, varied experimentation along the way can be expected, O'Neill was aware of this, and defined his own nascent art as "mere groping" in a letter to George Jean Nathan in His definition can excuse the uncertainties of his approach before , during his trials with intensely grim irony, reahstic melodrama, and expressionism.
The groping, unfortunately, never ceased, and a cogent philosophy never evolved. By the middle of the decade some sort of levelling off in idea or style should have been forthcoming. Instead, O'Neill subjected the playgoer to more bewilderment and novelty as each play brought a fresh approach. If O'Neill was groping, he was simultaneously attempting to overcome this disadvantage through his intimate knowledge of what constituted good theatre.
Although he forced upon the producer some extraordinary tasks in design, direction and acting, responsible critics never accused him of using trickery for its own sake. They knew he employed whatever medium he felt to be most appropriate for what he had to say with no appeal to the box oflBce or public feelings in mind. But there were warnings, at this middle period in his career, that O'Neill must emerge with something more substantial.
The dangers were too apparent that the theatricality which so often threatened to engulf him would prevent his achieving the artistic strength of which he seemed capable. John Ervine, one of O'Neill's most astute English critics, sounded this note of caution. O'Neill, he asserted, was too fond of making ex- periments. Because he had a lot to say, he should have stuck to a single approach, along a steady path. Showing a kind of "wilful extravagance" and a refusal to use his material with any kind of economy, O'Neill dissipated his strength, despite the astonishing fertility and high imagination exhibited in the plays.
All this was becoming a perversion of his talents, said Ervine, and he should get away from being the faddist and get down to being an accomplished dramatist. There is no need to discuss in detail the well-known O'Neill surprises of beating drums, masks and soliloquies. Critical Response Early Plays, Critical reaction during the first eight years of O'Neill's career forms the first pattern. As the one-act plays appeared in the Greenwich Village "art" theatres, O'Neill was greeted as the new realist on the American stage, the challenger of the trite sentimentalists and romanticists, unafraid to face life as he saw it.
Critical confusion entered with the longer plays after , when O'Neill occasionally diverged from his expected path, but the professional reviewers readily accepted his posi- tion as a vivid, forceful creator of stage realism. The significant factor is that the reviewers themselves placed O'Neill in this position and were unable to realize that his aberrations were the beginnings of the overt theatricality that became his medium of expression after Opinion of the permanent value of O'Neill's first plays was varied, but there was consistent agreement about his strength and style.
The early sea plays received almost uniform com- ment from the daily press and various national magazines. They were as realistically eflFective as Conrad, tense, grim, with the sense of tragedy. They were almost brutal, made audiences gasp with their impact, displayed "rugged craftsmanship" and hard, virile pathos.
They were further convinced of their first judgment. Here was great power, the essence of tragedy, a digging at emotional roots of real people in a real play. Terms like "greatest American drama within recent memory" were not uncommon. The names of Ibsen, Synge and Chekhov were used to describe this unusual new writer.
It was an "extraordinary drama of imagination," admirable in its craftsmanship. While finding it "highly interesting" one newspaper commentator questioned if O'Neill was actually better than George M. Cohan or Eugene Walter. It was, to another, "possibly" a profound piece of work. Charles Gilpin, the first Negro in a leading dramatic role in New York, drew far more extravagant praise and com- manded more column space than the play itself.
The "realistic" plays continued to dominate O'Neill's early writing. The antithetical opinions that grew commonplace in later years now began to appear. Said the New York Clipper: Another found the hero sufiFered and died of "O'Neillitis," the instinct for violent death; Variety said the play should never have been written and that O'Neill ought not be produced again until he gains restraint. Sayler, who was to review many O'Neill plays, said it was one of his best, a great "naturalistic" play. GOLD, in June , brought the critics no closer together.
The unsuccessful tale of madness was a thrilling yarn of ad- venture and crime, or it was feeble, crude melodrama. In some ways it was O'Neill's most impressive, but it had too many "chunks of gloom. The Sun called it merely an unconven- tional play that "dwindled" to a conventional ending. The Herald found there was too much "realism" and the sea a fantastic protagonist, while Burns Mantle in the Mail decided the "sheer realism" was all to the good.
O'Neill himself could lay permanent claim to fame on this play alone, or, depending on the paper one read at the time, he displayed only "great promise. It was, on the other hand, "a parody of a play," unbearable, strangely beautiful, lugubrious, depressing, and vital.
There was "no glory here," no excuse for this revolting and abhorrent treatment of gestation. The majority, in this case, were disheartened by the grimness and despair and the too-strong "naturalistic" tendencies. Two Pulitzer Prizes had not eliminated the critical reluctance to welcome him as the complete answer to American dramatic prayers. It was beginning to be a case of damnation through lack of praise, rather than condemnation through adverse opinion.
Then in March , O'Neill finally drilled straight into the strong vein of imagination from which he was to draw for the next ten years. The play also evoked sensation and violent response as no other O'Neill play had thus far done. The uneven critical reaction remained, but it becomes more interesting because of the confusion. Convinced that O'Neill was a firm realist who only slightly dabbled in foreign expressionistic techniques, some writers were almost completely blinded by what they saw.
The World said it was not as good as JONES because it was less articulate; Bums Mantle said it was better because of more intimate contact with the modem world. Maida Castellun in the leftish Call found it one of O'Neill's finest achievements, powerful and shattering; J. The inability to recognize the style was evi- dent when Arthur Pollock of the Brooklyn Eagle found enough realism to make Belasco weep, and Brock Pemberton in the Globe said the similarities between this and Tollers expres- sionistic Masse Mensch were uncanny. Others were confused by the shift from the "realism" of the first half to the "fantasy" of the second, but did not realize that O'Neill never intended a single part of the play to be realistic in any sense whatever.
Those the furthest removed from comprehending O'Neill's intent were critics like R. Bobbins praised this defense of the I. He compared the drama's "realism" to swill wagons and slaughter houses. He could find no place on the stage for such a play and determined that it was the lowest point of modem drama in its vile language and revolting sub- ject matter.