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Two-way mirror: A double-bill of Elegy for a lady and Some kind of love story
Two-Way A Double-Bill Elegy for a Lady and Some Kind of Love Story
- GenresPlays
70 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
36 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Miller
538 books3,182 followersWorks of American playwright Arthur Asher Miller include
Death of a Salesman
(1949), for which he won a Pulitzer Prize, and
The Crucible
(1953).
This essayist, a prominent figure in literature and cinema for over 61 years, composed a wide variety, such as celebrated A View from the Bridge and All My Sons , still studied and performed worldwide. Miller often in the public eye most famously refused to give evidence to the un-American activities committee of the House of Representatives, received award for drama, and married Marilyn Monroe. People at the time considered the greatest Miller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...
This essayist, a prominent figure in literature and cinema for over 61 years, composed a wide variety, such as celebrated A View from the Bridge and All My Sons , still studied and performed worldwide. Miller often in the public eye most famously refused to give evidence to the un-American activities committee of the House of Representatives, received award for drama, and married Marilyn Monroe. People at the time considered the greatest Miller.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_...
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 22, 2019
Two-Way Mirror comprises two short plays by Arthur Miller. It is difficult to say what consistent theme links them, but the title suggests that of people seeing themselves through their relationship with others.
Both plays involve a man whose conversations with a woman reveal things about himself, although the first play might easily be read as being the other way round. Both plays have only two characters in them, a man and a woman.
Miller provides us with a few explanatory words before the beginning of Elegy for a Lady, but he need not have bothered. As ever, intellectuals have a habit of providing explanations that are so opaque that they only muddy the waters further. Perhaps that is the intention.
The best place for understanding the two plays is by reading the actual texts. Elegy for a Lady concerns a conversation between a customer and the proprietress of a shop. He is looking for a gift for a woman with whom he has been intimately involved, but he is struggling to find something that tactfully and tastefully expresses his feelings because she is perhaps dying.
The problem is complicated by the fact that the dying woman is not his wife, and that she does not wish to share the unhappy details of her illness with him. The shop-owner is incredibly sympathetic to the man, and takes considerable time discussing suitable gifts and helping him to understand what this other woman may be feeling.
The problem appears to be those two facts together. He has chosen not to give himself whole-heartedly to her (as he is remaining with his wife), but for her to open up about her health problems to him is to imply that level of intimacy that they have never shared before.
In an astounding move, the man and woman embrace and kiss passionately at the end, as he chooses the gift. Is she in fact the dying woman, and are they talking around the issue? Is this a real encounter, or does it exist in his head? Perhaps he is projecting a conversation with his dying lover, and working out the problem inside himself. Or is this a situation in the head of the dying woman, in which she imagines herself the proprietress, and is mentally helping her lover to understand her?
Ambiguities also exist in the second play, beginning with its deliberately vague title, Some Kind of Love Story. Again everything is not how it first seems, but it is not certain how it really is. This time the characters have names. There is a private detective called Tom O’Toole, and he is questioning a prostitute with a split personality called Angela.
Perhaps she has a split personality, or perhaps she is assuming aliases to avoid answering questions, or to prevent him from leaving. Perhaps his only personality is equally fractured, and his own mental health is as uncertain as hers.
The nominal story involves him questioning her about a murder case, where he is trying to free an innocent man from prison by finding out what she knows. She appears to be throwing vague clues at him without revealing anything, and he occasionally phones in with what he knows.
However this set-up proves to be a delusion. Tom admits to not even remembering how she became involved in the case. It seems that he saw her in court taking notes, and followed up on her there. Does she really know anything, or pretend in order to keep Tom close to her? The two of them were once lovers.
For that matter, does Tom really want her to tell him the details of the case, or does he not care either? It turns out that his phone calls are not being made to the police but to his psychiatrist. Perhaps he is perpetuating the case indefinitely because he is obsessively infatuated with Angela, and this behaviour ensures that the two of them will continue their strange sexual game forever.
As a result, this is an enigma without an answer, a crime investigation that will never reveal the real culprit. What is important here is the twisted and unhealthy relationship between two unstable people, not the murder that brought them together.
Both plays are brief and minor sketches by Arthur Miller, and a long way from his serious full-length plays, but they are fascinating in their way, and well worth a read.
Both plays involve a man whose conversations with a woman reveal things about himself, although the first play might easily be read as being the other way round. Both plays have only two characters in them, a man and a woman.
Miller provides us with a few explanatory words before the beginning of Elegy for a Lady, but he need not have bothered. As ever, intellectuals have a habit of providing explanations that are so opaque that they only muddy the waters further. Perhaps that is the intention.
The best place for understanding the two plays is by reading the actual texts. Elegy for a Lady concerns a conversation between a customer and the proprietress of a shop. He is looking for a gift for a woman with whom he has been intimately involved, but he is struggling to find something that tactfully and tastefully expresses his feelings because she is perhaps dying.
The problem is complicated by the fact that the dying woman is not his wife, and that she does not wish to share the unhappy details of her illness with him. The shop-owner is incredibly sympathetic to the man, and takes considerable time discussing suitable gifts and helping him to understand what this other woman may be feeling.
The problem appears to be those two facts together. He has chosen not to give himself whole-heartedly to her (as he is remaining with his wife), but for her to open up about her health problems to him is to imply that level of intimacy that they have never shared before.
In an astounding move, the man and woman embrace and kiss passionately at the end, as he chooses the gift. Is she in fact the dying woman, and are they talking around the issue? Is this a real encounter, or does it exist in his head? Perhaps he is projecting a conversation with his dying lover, and working out the problem inside himself. Or is this a situation in the head of the dying woman, in which she imagines herself the proprietress, and is mentally helping her lover to understand her?
Ambiguities also exist in the second play, beginning with its deliberately vague title, Some Kind of Love Story. Again everything is not how it first seems, but it is not certain how it really is. This time the characters have names. There is a private detective called Tom O’Toole, and he is questioning a prostitute with a split personality called Angela.
Perhaps she has a split personality, or perhaps she is assuming aliases to avoid answering questions, or to prevent him from leaving. Perhaps his only personality is equally fractured, and his own mental health is as uncertain as hers.
The nominal story involves him questioning her about a murder case, where he is trying to free an innocent man from prison by finding out what she knows. She appears to be throwing vague clues at him without revealing anything, and he occasionally phones in with what he knows.
However this set-up proves to be a delusion. Tom admits to not even remembering how she became involved in the case. It seems that he saw her in court taking notes, and followed up on her there. Does she really know anything, or pretend in order to keep Tom close to her? The two of them were once lovers.
For that matter, does Tom really want her to tell him the details of the case, or does he not care either? It turns out that his phone calls are not being made to the police but to his psychiatrist. Perhaps he is perpetuating the case indefinitely because he is obsessively infatuated with Angela, and this behaviour ensures that the two of them will continue their strange sexual game forever.
As a result, this is an enigma without an answer, a crime investigation that will never reveal the real culprit. What is important here is the twisted and unhealthy relationship between two unstable people, not the murder that brought them together.
Both plays are brief and minor sketches by Arthur Miller, and a long way from his serious full-length plays, but they are fascinating in their way, and well worth a read.
August 12, 2024
ok im giving this 4 stars even though there were bits of it i didnt like. like the fact i didnt like bits is making me rate it higher? idk. ]
ok so i read this in an hour on the train to london. i actually remember quite a lot of it surprisingly. actually unsurprisingly because it was litch like 20 pages.
what first intrigued me about these plays were how they were in communication, but actually nothing to do with each other like completely different stories. tbh i feel you either need to be an adult with more love experience or a clever literature person (which im humbly becoming xx) to properly understand the overlaps. i could think about it for maybe 10 mins and easily gain a deeper understanding but i dont really want to!
there were words on pages and they were intense and fast and quite raw conversation but also programmed? i liked how elegy of a lady had a material kind of thread holding the relationship between the man and woman together whereas in some kind of love story it was an immaterial, intangible longing for something kind of like love (i think desperation for self fulfillment in whatever way the character was willing to receive it).
some kind of love story: the way the woman was described in some kind of love story was like. i was almost shocked that it was so the epitome of the idea of the female. she's hysterical (obviously) and only -might- be clever from solely knowing secrets (high level goss). when she shifts personality she's either a little pigtail girl who cant form thoughts or a f*cking whore. cant tell whether miller did that on purpose or why he'd do it on purpose. to hate women maybe. to maybe try be soo clever and critique society but actually just surface level play into it (why cant i think positively about men)
elegy for a lady: and actually thinking back to the material thing. i feel this one must be more purposefully satirical. it defo is. hilariously actually i forgot about that. because this man is being sooo man in literally not .. TALking. to his partner. like literally didnt talk to her therefore didnt know whether she was dying or not? like come on man. and he tried to connect with her with material. which he couldnt even understand. obvs the women present in this one was a pretty shopkeeper xxxx like it's giving miller ok u did something but also sexist.
also the fact miller called her a 'lady' in elegy for a lady while also not revealing the lady at all, and having the female character be literally a 'other woman' is giving. it's giving. idk the only way to admire a lady is to not know her at all. all women are the same. blah blah.
overall. passionate plays. very passionate and kind of fiery way of speaking. me like x feel i could analyse deeper. wont. i guess i am now a clever literature person xxxx
ok so i read this in an hour on the train to london. i actually remember quite a lot of it surprisingly. actually unsurprisingly because it was litch like 20 pages.
what first intrigued me about these plays were how they were in communication, but actually nothing to do with each other like completely different stories. tbh i feel you either need to be an adult with more love experience or a clever literature person (which im humbly becoming xx) to properly understand the overlaps. i could think about it for maybe 10 mins and easily gain a deeper understanding but i dont really want to!
there were words on pages and they were intense and fast and quite raw conversation but also programmed? i liked how elegy of a lady had a material kind of thread holding the relationship between the man and woman together whereas in some kind of love story it was an immaterial, intangible longing for something kind of like love (i think desperation for self fulfillment in whatever way the character was willing to receive it).
some kind of love story: the way the woman was described in some kind of love story was like. i was almost shocked that it was so the epitome of the idea of the female. she's hysterical (obviously) and only -might- be clever from solely knowing secrets (high level goss). when she shifts personality she's either a little pigtail girl who cant form thoughts or a f*cking whore. cant tell whether miller did that on purpose or why he'd do it on purpose. to hate women maybe. to maybe try be soo clever and critique society but actually just surface level play into it (why cant i think positively about men)
elegy for a lady: and actually thinking back to the material thing. i feel this one must be more purposefully satirical. it defo is. hilariously actually i forgot about that. because this man is being sooo man in literally not .. TALking. to his partner. like literally didnt talk to her therefore didnt know whether she was dying or not? like come on man. and he tried to connect with her with material. which he couldnt even understand. obvs the women present in this one was a pretty shopkeeper xxxx like it's giving miller ok u did something but also sexist.
also the fact miller called her a 'lady' in elegy for a lady while also not revealing the lady at all, and having the female character be literally a 'other woman' is giving. it's giving. idk the only way to admire a lady is to not know her at all. all women are the same. blah blah.
overall. passionate plays. very passionate and kind of fiery way of speaking. me like x feel i could analyse deeper. wont. i guess i am now a clever literature person xxxx
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 18, 2024
i was really on a short book kick in june i guess
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews