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A Touch of the Poet
Written in 1936, but first staged posthumously in the late fifties, this play is the sole survivor of an ambitious cycle of plays spanning several generations of one "far from model" American family. The author received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936 and four Pulitzer Prizes.
72 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1957
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About the author
Eugene O'Neill
528 books1,246 followersAmerican playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored
Mourning Becomes Electra
in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for
Long Day's Journey into Night
, produced in 1956.
He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 21, 2016
Like Tennessee Williams and Faulkner, O'Neill was obsessed with themes of dreamers and romantics, people who sacrifice the present to the past or some idealized version of themselves, and the way that affects the people around them. This play is very much takes up the topic.
In this case, the dreamer with 'a touch of the poet' is Con Melody, an Irish immigrant to the Boston area in the 1820's, a self-styled gentleman and alcoholic, who was raised in a castle, fought under Wellington, and but now, scrambles for his pride though his situation has reduced him to tavern-owner. He cannot give up his vanity and pride to accommodate his new station--he preens, he owns a thoroughbred horse which eats better than his family does, he recites Byron, "a touch of the poet"--and has turned his wife into a scullery maid, his embittered daughter into service as waitress and credit-beggar to the grocer and butcher. The character of Con reminded me a great deal of James Tyrone, the actor in Long Day's Journey into Night.
Though not as complex as O'Neill's great plays, it is a wonderful compression of the theme and I had no trouble visualizing the action--plays for me are sometimes difficult to read if I haven't seen them first.
In this case, the dreamer with 'a touch of the poet' is Con Melody, an Irish immigrant to the Boston area in the 1820's, a self-styled gentleman and alcoholic, who was raised in a castle, fought under Wellington, and but now, scrambles for his pride though his situation has reduced him to tavern-owner. He cannot give up his vanity and pride to accommodate his new station--he preens, he owns a thoroughbred horse which eats better than his family does, he recites Byron, "a touch of the poet"--and has turned his wife into a scullery maid, his embittered daughter into service as waitress and credit-beggar to the grocer and butcher. The character of Con reminded me a great deal of James Tyrone, the actor in Long Day's Journey into Night.
Though not as complex as O'Neill's great plays, it is a wonderful compression of the theme and I had no trouble visualizing the action--plays for me are sometimes difficult to read if I haven't seen them first.
January 2, 2019
A family drama illustrates the human condition and the history of freedom. When false romantic poses shatter, they leave only greed and possessiveness.
September 15, 2018
A Touch of the Poet sounds like an American response to Luigi Pirandello’s Henry IV. Con Melody and Henry IV are quixotic—even mules play a central role to their narratives, like Rocinante. They are consumed by illusions of grandeur, which then consume those around them. Other characters too, like Sara Melody and Frida, look and act like their mothers (but don’t tell them that). Mirrors are a symbolic prop; the dialogue alludes to dreams, reading, play-acting and madness. Also, too, is the little recognition paid these two plays with regard to their writers’ oeuvres.
I haven’t seen O’Neill performed, so I can’t attest to his work on the stage, but his skill on the page is telling. His characters are fascinating, especially Con Melody, who has an Ahab-like aura of not appearing until the end of act one. From Cregan’s bar-talk with Maloy, we learn that Melody’s father raised him as a gentleman, yet he was a “thievin’ shebeen keeper who got rich by moneylendin’ and squeezin’ tenants” (11), which offers an interesting parallel to Con’s current problems with rent, along with his constant need to rewrite his past.
Cregan clarifies that Melody’s love for Nora wasn’t because “the priests tricked him into marrying her.” Rather, “he’d fallen in love with her, but he was ashamed of her in his pride…because her folks were only ignorant peasants on his estate.” After they married, he “left her alone in the castle to have her child…[then he] took her and Sara to America where no one would know him.” (14). Based on this, we know the play will comment on the nature of illusions and class, with hints of the Greek “hamartia,” or tragic flaw, in Melody’s pride.
By the next page, we see what O’Neill is famous for: family drama. Daughter Sara enters and readers see Melody replicated his upbringing when Maloy says to her, “You’ve got your airs of a grand lady this morning, I see.” (16). Sara despises her father’s “pretensions” (12) and his infatuation with his thoroughbred. But throughout the play, we see how similar she is to her parents, and Maloy is the first to cue us in with lines like “come down from your high horse.” (17). I’m curious if these phrases slip under the radar on the stage.
Nora enters and defends her husband, saying he can’t tend his bar to save money because it’s not what gentlemen do. Sara bursts, “A gentleman! Och, Mother, it’s all right for the two of us, out of our own pride, to pretend to the world we believe that lie, but it’s crazy for you to pretend to me.” (24). What Sara learns, with readers, is that Nora isn’t pretending; she loves him so much that his illusions become hers. Sara says that her mother doesn’t have enough pride, otherwise she’d leave him, and Nora says “I’ve pride in my love for him.” (25). Things get complicated for Sara when she has to explain what makes her love for Simon Harford any different.
The “rich gentleman’s son” (28) isn’t “like his kind,” says Sara, “or like anyone else at all. He’s a born dreamer with a raft of great dreams, and he’s very serious about them.” Simon wants to “prove his independence by living alone in the wilds, and build his own cabin, and do all the work, and support himself simply, and feel one with Nature, and think great thoughts about what life means, and write a book about how the world can be changed so people won’t be greedy to own money and land…” (29).
Teenagers. I’m sure it’s one of the more endearing stage moments for parents in the audience. It certainly is for Nora, who “soothingly” responds that Simon has “a touch av the poet in him—the same as your father.” (30).
Enter Melody for the first time, with a guilty look; Sara said he gets drunk nightly and he was likely listening at the door. Also curious how the stage conveys this, especially since Sara says she listens at Simon’s door later on. Stage directions say he’s an “embittered Byronic hero” whose “polished gentleman” manner overplays “a role which has become more real than his real self to him” (34)—something you’ll only see so explicitly stated on the page. Sara leaves to put on a nice dress for Simon, who is resting from an illness upstairs, and Melody stands in front of a mirror reciting “Childe Harold” when she comes back, prompting Melody to admit “Every day you resemble your mother more, as she looked when I first knew her.” (45).
Nora has a vicarious dream for Sara: “she’ll be happy because she loves [Simon] dearly, a lot more than she admits. And it’ll give her a chance to rise in the world. We’ll see the day when she’ll live in a grand mansion, dressed in silks and satins, and riding in a carriage with coachman and footman.” (63). Another example of horses as a status symbol. And these lines sound similar to Sara in the first act, when she describes America as “a country where you can rise as high as you like,” wishing she was “a man with the chance [father] had” because “there wouldn’t be a dream I’d not make come true.” (27). In classic tragic fashion, we see how difficult it is to escape your fate (more so if you’re a woman) except O’Neill replaces the mystical element of fate with social mobility.
Simon’s mother, Deborah, enters. As Melody fits into his wartime uniform like Sara slipping on her dress for Simon, and as Sara tries to sound like a gentlewoman, i.e. “Yes, me and—my mother and I” (73), Deborah reflects on her family. Early in the play, Simon tells Sara that his mother “never goes out at all but stays home in their mansion, reading books, or in her garden” (31), and you can see her reading habit has the opposite effect on her than with characters like Don Quixote or Emma Bovary: she recognizes the fantasy and the allure but remains grounded in reality. She shows it when she lingers into a five-page monologue to Sara:
Sara doesn’t follow, and resents Deborah for it, thinking she’s “carrying airs.” Sara responds, “I don’t think Simon imitates Lord Byron. I hate Lord Byron’s poetry,” likely thinking of her father in front of the mirror. “And I know there’s a true poet in Simon.” Deborah is “vaguely surprised:”
Deborah is about to leave but adds:
So Simon’s new dream is romance, manifest in Sara; Simon’s father’s dream, hinted here but unveiled in act four, is a high-bred wife for his son. His father is “practical” in defending his dreams—a foil to Melody. Deborah is self-aware and frank about dreams—a foil to Nora. The differences between the families are etched along class lines; Deborah has the option to remove herself to her garden and books when things get tough, the others don’t. Ending with Cato and his horses illustrates this divide. And later, when Con breaks the whip “over his black skull and knocked him to his knees” (156), we’re reminded of the year, 1828. Though as an American drama, the year matters much less than it might elsewhere.
Melody misses his chance to impress Deborah in his scarlet uniform, and he accidentally, symbolically, snaps the chair back that she sat in. Act three begins, and he is drinking with the regulars, who say “Ain’t he the lunatic, sittin’ like a play-actor in his red coat, lyin’ about his battles with the French!” (100). Melody repeats the verse from “Childe Harold” before looking at each man’s face around him and says, “What? You do not understand, my lads? Well, all the better for you. So may you go on fooling yourselves that I am fooled in you.” (101). Like Pirandello’s Henry IV, Melody is fully aware of his façade, and others, but he’d rather play the part than admit what he isn’t.
Like any prideful person cornered and vulnerable, Melody doubles down and lashes out after Sara’s “taunts.” He declines Simon’s offer for Sara’s hand in marriage because the “old established custom” (111) of financial arrangements requires the consent of his father first. But it’s obvious Simon’s father wouldn’t agree, and rather than admit it, Melody rationalizes he wouldn’t have said yes anyways, because he “hold[s] young Harford in too high esteem.” He continues, “I cannot stand by and let him commit himself irrevocably to what could only bring him disgust and bitterness, and ruin to all his dreams.” (113). Then he dares Sara into sleeping with Simon, so Simon would feel forced into marriage. Sara, along with the audience, knows he says this bitterly about Nora.
Few tragedies feel so blunt in the use of their storytelling tools, but the climax feels surprisingly natural. The lawyer Gadsby enters and Melody denies the person attending him is his daughter: “Do I look to you, sir, like a man who would permit his daughter to work as a waitress?” (118). Melody reverses course after Gadsby offers 3,000 dollars to end Sara’s relationship with Simon, and he runs Gadsby out of the bar. Suddenly, Melody has to defend his daughter’s honor, and he races to the Harford mansion. The family’s chance to rise above poverty is gone because of Melody’s pride; at the same time, if Melody didn’t have his illusions, Sara may not have inherited the loftiness that drew her to Simon. A catch-22. Of course, all this speculation is moot since Simon wanted to renounce money and live simply anyways.
Like any prideful person cornered and vulnerable, Sara takes matters into her own hands before her future slips through her fingers:
The mark of a great tragedy is in the fall. What makes O’Neill’s plays so remarkable, what prompted the Nobel committee to highlight his “original concept of tragedy,” is that the tumble is almost intangible. Odysseus’ tragedy in The Odyssey is lost power and exile. Okonkwo’s tragedy in Things Fall Apart is also lost power and exile. Both stem from hubris, but they don’t have to—the tragedy of Hamlet is hesitation, and it results in the collapse of Denmark and the death of almost everyone. But when Melody returns from his fight with his uniform “filthy and torn and pulled awry,” looking through “lifeless” (152) eyes, never having challenged Harford because “The days of duels are long past and dead” (125), there isn’t much for an observer to point to that has changed. He’s still a barkeep, he’s still poor, his family is still in disarray. What Melody does lose is his illusions, or more accurately, his pride.
Does losing a vice constitute as tragic? Not normally. But O’Neill wrote a convincing tragedy nonetheless. While Melody fought, Sara slept with Simon and delivered a long speech on selfless love, sounding like Nora. Nora insulted Melody’s pride and instantly regretted it: “It would break his heart if he heard me! I’m the only one in the world he knows nivir sneers at his dreams!” (138). Melody returns and is unresponsive, then immediately grabs his dueling pistols and leaves. Sara goes through a mix of emotions: she’s proud when she thinks he’s going to kill Harford, then bitter at him for being in this situation in the first place. For a moment, she wishes he was dead. But a shot rings out, and she takes it back immediately, thinking he killed himself. Cregan fetches him from the shed. Melody killed the mare. He’s spiritually broken and speaks in brogue. He’s about to leave for the bar, but Sara stops him. “No! I won’t let you! It’s my pride, too!” (178). He hits her for “tryin’ to raise the dead” (179) and leaves to drink. The play ends with Sara sobbing:
The play ends on this wry note. We don’t know if Simon will marry Sara, and we’re also not sure if the pride she felt for his dreams remains intact. Regardless, their family is socially stagnant and their dreams are shattered. We also get the sense this isn’t an altogether unique night, apart from the mare dying: Con gets drunk with Cregan and the gang in the end, and the play begins with Cregan saying his head hurts from a hangover. It’s a never-ending cycle.
When A Touch of the Poet premiered at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1957, critic Henry Hewes had an interesting interpretation of the play, as reprinted in O’Neill and His Plays: “While the four-hour work…follows a conventional play form, its nature can only be described as a human comedy hovering dangerously near the fires of tragedy.” By reading the play, you get the opposite impression: a human tragedy hovering dangerously close to a comedy. Hewes continues:
When Hewes describes the actors and actresses, he commends Sif Ruud’s performance of Nora for her “uncomplicated overflow of indestructible love that immunizes her to our pity.” I wonder if the Stockholm performance depicted Deborah as mad since she serves as Nora’s counter. Of Eva Dahlbeck, playing Sara, her best scenes were “after she ha[d] given herself to love.” (223). What’s interesting to me is the way he quotes the last line of the play: there isn’t any of the “brogue” from the original writing. It gives stage Nora a more refined voice. Whether it was the director’s decision to change “lad” to “man,” or Hewes memory deceiving him, the implication is the same.
As audiences become more progressive, moments like Melody hitting Sara are more horrifying, and the emphasis on love, especially in the end, becomes hollower. That’s why I agreed with another critic’s response to O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and then almost immediately disagreed with his follow-up 35 years later. In April 1926, T.S. Eliot wrote:
With the 1961 reprint of his review for the O’Neill and His Plays collection, Eliot asked the editors to include this side note:
Critical reception can be a useful barometer of success if you ignore a few opening night reactions, such as Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. But sometimes productions are successful because they placate a certain atmosphere in the audience rather than challenge it. When I took a class in England studying Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and (coincidentally) Henry IV Part Two, and then saw the weekend productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, we compared differences in the director’s interpretation of the text against our own. It was usually obvious—references to Twitter, flashy props. But sometimes the stage characters would say a line sexually that on the page had the potential for sincere pathos instead.
Ultimately, a stage production is nothing more than an interpretation, the same with a critic’s analysis. And every performance from every era has to appeal to the audience—even Shakespeare had his groundlings. But if the segue from page to stage determines the kind of art produced—if reading makes it a tragedy and acting makes it a comedy—is it worth staging?
I’m not sure. Attendance numbers are up for plays. It’s hard not to see the public hearsay of a “dying theatre” as a harbinger of what’s to come—maybe not of seats sold or classics performed, but original, high-quality art created. Today, most productions have gone the way of musicals, concerts, and acrobatics shows like Cirque du Soleil. These aren’t bad in their own right, but they will deprive other art of precious time slots on the stage. And as Mario Vargas Llosa argues in Notes on the Death of Culture, we are, now more than ever before, subject to a sensibility that holds salience hostage to spectacle.
The saving grace of the stage is that it is more effective in eliciting emotions than reading alone in the quiet of your home. That’s where I agree with Eliot and his opinion of A Long Day’s Journey into Night. At the same time, when it comes to certain work, I’m not sure that sullying the message is worth it. Or maybe Eliot is right in a fundamentally different way; the truth of a tragicomedy lies in its status as a red herring: the only way to appreciate one is to watch its message glide, barrel roll, and tail slide over someone else’s head.
I haven’t seen O’Neill performed, so I can’t attest to his work on the stage, but his skill on the page is telling. His characters are fascinating, especially Con Melody, who has an Ahab-like aura of not appearing until the end of act one. From Cregan’s bar-talk with Maloy, we learn that Melody’s father raised him as a gentleman, yet he was a “thievin’ shebeen keeper who got rich by moneylendin’ and squeezin’ tenants” (11), which offers an interesting parallel to Con’s current problems with rent, along with his constant need to rewrite his past.
Cregan clarifies that Melody’s love for Nora wasn’t because “the priests tricked him into marrying her.” Rather, “he’d fallen in love with her, but he was ashamed of her in his pride…because her folks were only ignorant peasants on his estate.” After they married, he “left her alone in the castle to have her child…[then he] took her and Sara to America where no one would know him.” (14). Based on this, we know the play will comment on the nature of illusions and class, with hints of the Greek “hamartia,” or tragic flaw, in Melody’s pride.
By the next page, we see what O’Neill is famous for: family drama. Daughter Sara enters and readers see Melody replicated his upbringing when Maloy says to her, “You’ve got your airs of a grand lady this morning, I see.” (16). Sara despises her father’s “pretensions” (12) and his infatuation with his thoroughbred. But throughout the play, we see how similar she is to her parents, and Maloy is the first to cue us in with lines like “come down from your high horse.” (17). I’m curious if these phrases slip under the radar on the stage.
Nora enters and defends her husband, saying he can’t tend his bar to save money because it’s not what gentlemen do. Sara bursts, “A gentleman! Och, Mother, it’s all right for the two of us, out of our own pride, to pretend to the world we believe that lie, but it’s crazy for you to pretend to me.” (24). What Sara learns, with readers, is that Nora isn’t pretending; she loves him so much that his illusions become hers. Sara says that her mother doesn’t have enough pride, otherwise she’d leave him, and Nora says “I’ve pride in my love for him.” (25). Things get complicated for Sara when she has to explain what makes her love for Simon Harford any different.
The “rich gentleman’s son” (28) isn’t “like his kind,” says Sara, “or like anyone else at all. He’s a born dreamer with a raft of great dreams, and he’s very serious about them.” Simon wants to “prove his independence by living alone in the wilds, and build his own cabin, and do all the work, and support himself simply, and feel one with Nature, and think great thoughts about what life means, and write a book about how the world can be changed so people won’t be greedy to own money and land…” (29).
Teenagers. I’m sure it’s one of the more endearing stage moments for parents in the audience. It certainly is for Nora, who “soothingly” responds that Simon has “a touch av the poet in him—the same as your father.” (30).
Enter Melody for the first time, with a guilty look; Sara said he gets drunk nightly and he was likely listening at the door. Also curious how the stage conveys this, especially since Sara says she listens at Simon’s door later on. Stage directions say he’s an “embittered Byronic hero” whose “polished gentleman” manner overplays “a role which has become more real than his real self to him” (34)—something you’ll only see so explicitly stated on the page. Sara leaves to put on a nice dress for Simon, who is resting from an illness upstairs, and Melody stands in front of a mirror reciting “Childe Harold” when she comes back, prompting Melody to admit “Every day you resemble your mother more, as she looked when I first knew her.” (45).
Nora has a vicarious dream for Sara: “she’ll be happy because she loves [Simon] dearly, a lot more than she admits. And it’ll give her a chance to rise in the world. We’ll see the day when she’ll live in a grand mansion, dressed in silks and satins, and riding in a carriage with coachman and footman.” (63). Another example of horses as a status symbol. And these lines sound similar to Sara in the first act, when she describes America as “a country where you can rise as high as you like,” wishing she was “a man with the chance [father] had” because “there wouldn’t be a dream I’d not make come true.” (27). In classic tragic fashion, we see how difficult it is to escape your fate (more so if you’re a woman) except O’Neill replaces the mystical element of fate with social mobility.
Simon’s mother, Deborah, enters. As Melody fits into his wartime uniform like Sara slipping on her dress for Simon, and as Sara tries to sound like a gentlewoman, i.e. “Yes, me and—my mother and I” (73), Deborah reflects on her family. Early in the play, Simon tells Sara that his mother “never goes out at all but stays home in their mansion, reading books, or in her garden” (31), and you can see her reading habit has the opposite effect on her than with characters like Don Quixote or Emma Bovary: she recognizes the fantasy and the allure but remains grounded in reality. She shows it when she lingers into a five-page monologue to Sara:
Deborah
This is the first time I have seen Simon since he left home to seek self-emancipation at the breast of Nature…I had thought his implacably honest discovery that the poetry he hoped the pure freedom of Nature would inspire him to write is, after all, but a crude imitation of Lord Byron’s would have more bitterly depressed his spirit.
She smiles.
But evidently he has found a new romantic dream by way of recompense. As I might have known he would. Simon is an inveterate dreamer—a weakness he inherited from me…Even my husband has a dream—a conservative, material dream, naturally. I have just been reminding Simon that his father is rigidly unforgiving when his dream is flouted, and very practical in his methods of defending it.
She smiles again.
My warning was the mechanical gesture of a mother’s duty, merely. I realized it would have no effect. He did not listen to what I said. For that matter, neither did I.
She laughs a little detached laugh, as if she were secretly amused. (81-2)
Sara doesn’t follow, and resents Deborah for it, thinking she’s “carrying airs.” Sara responds, “I don’t think Simon imitates Lord Byron. I hate Lord Byron’s poetry,” likely thinking of her father in front of the mirror. “And I know there’s a true poet in Simon.” Deborah is “vaguely surprised:”
Oh, in feeling, of course. It is natural you should admire that in him—now. But I warn you it is a quality difficult for a woman to keep on admiring in a Harford, judging from what I know of the family history…the Harfords never part with their dreams even when they deny them… (82-5)
Deborah is about to leave but adds:
It has been a most confusing morning for a tired, middle-aged matron…it will be a relief to return to my garden and books and meditations and listen indifferently again while the footsteps of life pass and recede along the street beyond the high wall…
She turns to the door.
Cato will be provoked at me for keeping him waiting. I’ve already caused his beloved horses to be half-devoured by flies. Cato is our black coachman. (86)
So Simon’s new dream is romance, manifest in Sara; Simon’s father’s dream, hinted here but unveiled in act four, is a high-bred wife for his son. His father is “practical” in defending his dreams—a foil to Melody. Deborah is self-aware and frank about dreams—a foil to Nora. The differences between the families are etched along class lines; Deborah has the option to remove herself to her garden and books when things get tough, the others don’t. Ending with Cato and his horses illustrates this divide. And later, when Con breaks the whip “over his black skull and knocked him to his knees” (156), we’re reminded of the year, 1828. Though as an American drama, the year matters much less than it might elsewhere.
Melody misses his chance to impress Deborah in his scarlet uniform, and he accidentally, symbolically, snaps the chair back that she sat in. Act three begins, and he is drinking with the regulars, who say “Ain’t he the lunatic, sittin’ like a play-actor in his red coat, lyin’ about his battles with the French!” (100). Melody repeats the verse from “Childe Harold” before looking at each man’s face around him and says, “What? You do not understand, my lads? Well, all the better for you. So may you go on fooling yourselves that I am fooled in you.” (101). Like Pirandello’s Henry IV, Melody is fully aware of his façade, and others, but he’d rather play the part than admit what he isn’t.
Like any prideful person cornered and vulnerable, Melody doubles down and lashes out after Sara’s “taunts.” He declines Simon’s offer for Sara’s hand in marriage because the “old established custom” (111) of financial arrangements requires the consent of his father first. But it’s obvious Simon’s father wouldn’t agree, and rather than admit it, Melody rationalizes he wouldn’t have said yes anyways, because he “hold[s] young Harford in too high esteem.” He continues, “I cannot stand by and let him commit himself irrevocably to what could only bring him disgust and bitterness, and ruin to all his dreams.” (113). Then he dares Sara into sleeping with Simon, so Simon would feel forced into marriage. Sara, along with the audience, knows he says this bitterly about Nora.
Few tragedies feel so blunt in the use of their storytelling tools, but the climax feels surprisingly natural. The lawyer Gadsby enters and Melody denies the person attending him is his daughter: “Do I look to you, sir, like a man who would permit his daughter to work as a waitress?” (118). Melody reverses course after Gadsby offers 3,000 dollars to end Sara’s relationship with Simon, and he runs Gadsby out of the bar. Suddenly, Melody has to defend his daughter’s honor, and he races to the Harford mansion. The family’s chance to rise above poverty is gone because of Melody’s pride; at the same time, if Melody didn’t have his illusions, Sara may not have inherited the loftiness that drew her to Simon. A catch-22. Of course, all this speculation is moot since Simon wanted to renounce money and live simply anyways.
Like any prideful person cornered and vulnerable, Sara takes matters into her own hands before her future slips through her fingers:
Sara
I won’t let him destroy my life with his madness, after all the plans I’ve made and the dreams I’ve dreamed. I’ll show him I can play at the game of gentleman’s honor too...I’m going upstairs to bed, Mother.
Nora
To bed, is it? You can think of sleepin’ when he’s—
Sara
I didn’t say sleep, but I can lie down and try to rest. (131)
The mark of a great tragedy is in the fall. What makes O’Neill’s plays so remarkable, what prompted the Nobel committee to highlight his “original concept of tragedy,” is that the tumble is almost intangible. Odysseus’ tragedy in The Odyssey is lost power and exile. Okonkwo’s tragedy in Things Fall Apart is also lost power and exile. Both stem from hubris, but they don’t have to—the tragedy of Hamlet is hesitation, and it results in the collapse of Denmark and the death of almost everyone. But when Melody returns from his fight with his uniform “filthy and torn and pulled awry,” looking through “lifeless” (152) eyes, never having challenged Harford because “The days of duels are long past and dead” (125), there isn’t much for an observer to point to that has changed. He’s still a barkeep, he’s still poor, his family is still in disarray. What Melody does lose is his illusions, or more accurately, his pride.
Does losing a vice constitute as tragic? Not normally. But O’Neill wrote a convincing tragedy nonetheless. While Melody fought, Sara slept with Simon and delivered a long speech on selfless love, sounding like Nora. Nora insulted Melody’s pride and instantly regretted it: “It would break his heart if he heard me! I’m the only one in the world he knows nivir sneers at his dreams!” (138). Melody returns and is unresponsive, then immediately grabs his dueling pistols and leaves. Sara goes through a mix of emotions: she’s proud when she thinks he’s going to kill Harford, then bitter at him for being in this situation in the first place. For a moment, she wishes he was dead. But a shot rings out, and she takes it back immediately, thinking he killed himself. Cregan fetches him from the shed. Melody killed the mare. He’s spiritually broken and speaks in brogue. He’s about to leave for the bar, but Sara stops him. “No! I won’t let you! It’s my pride, too!” (178). He hits her for “tryin’ to raise the dead” (179) and leaves to drink. The play ends with Sara sobbing:
Why should I cry, Mother? Why do I mourn for him?
Nora
You’re destroyed with tiredness, that’s all…
Trying to rouse her—in a teasing tone.
Shame on you to cry when you have love. What would the young lad think of you? (182)
The play ends on this wry note. We don’t know if Simon will marry Sara, and we’re also not sure if the pride she felt for his dreams remains intact. Regardless, their family is socially stagnant and their dreams are shattered. We also get the sense this isn’t an altogether unique night, apart from the mare dying: Con gets drunk with Cregan and the gang in the end, and the play begins with Cregan saying his head hurts from a hangover. It’s a never-ending cycle.
When A Touch of the Poet premiered at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1957, critic Henry Hewes had an interesting interpretation of the play, as reprinted in O’Neill and His Plays: “While the four-hour work…follows a conventional play form, its nature can only be described as a human comedy hovering dangerously near the fires of tragedy.” By reading the play, you get the opposite impression: a human tragedy hovering dangerously close to a comedy. Hewes continues:
Beyond a concern with social history O’Neill explores the relationship between pride and love; this is what moves contemporary audiences most…Nora tells Sara, “It’s little you know of love…” Sara argues, “I’ll love—but love when it’ll gain me freedom…” [and] Nora replies, “There’s no slavery in it when you love.” This simple wisdom is proved in the fourth act when, after making love to Simon, Sara discovers, “I knew nothing of love…” O’Neill finally celebrates the victory of love over false pride when, at the end of the play, Nora turns to Sara and says, “Shame on you to cry when you have love. What would the young man think of you?” (222)
When Hewes describes the actors and actresses, he commends Sif Ruud’s performance of Nora for her “uncomplicated overflow of indestructible love that immunizes her to our pity.” I wonder if the Stockholm performance depicted Deborah as mad since she serves as Nora’s counter. Of Eva Dahlbeck, playing Sara, her best scenes were “after she ha[d] given herself to love.” (223). What’s interesting to me is the way he quotes the last line of the play: there isn’t any of the “brogue” from the original writing. It gives stage Nora a more refined voice. Whether it was the director’s decision to change “lad” to “man,” or Hewes memory deceiving him, the implication is the same.
As audiences become more progressive, moments like Melody hitting Sara are more horrifying, and the emphasis on love, especially in the end, becomes hollower. That’s why I agreed with another critic’s response to O’Neill’s All God’s Chillun Got Wings, and then almost immediately disagreed with his follow-up 35 years later. In April 1926, T.S. Eliot wrote:
One is diffident of passing judgment upon a play which one has not seen upon the stage, but Mr. O’Neill’s plays…are so readable, and so impressive when read, that their publication in a book must be noticed. (168)
With the 1961 reprint of his review for the O’Neill and His Plays collection, Eliot asked the editors to include this side note:
I should like to make it clear to the present readers that at that time I had never seen any of Eugene O’Neill’s plays on the stage. Since then I have gained experience of the theatre myself and I realize that a play must be judged from seeing it on the stage as well as from reading the text. This is particularly true of Eugene O’Neill...I should like to say that I place his work very high indeed, and A Long Day’s Journey into Night seems to me one of the most moving plays I have ever seen. (168)
Critical reception can be a useful barometer of success if you ignore a few opening night reactions, such as Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. But sometimes productions are successful because they placate a certain atmosphere in the audience rather than challenge it. When I took a class in England studying Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona and (coincidentally) Henry IV Part Two, and then saw the weekend productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, we compared differences in the director’s interpretation of the text against our own. It was usually obvious—references to Twitter, flashy props. But sometimes the stage characters would say a line sexually that on the page had the potential for sincere pathos instead.
Ultimately, a stage production is nothing more than an interpretation, the same with a critic’s analysis. And every performance from every era has to appeal to the audience—even Shakespeare had his groundlings. But if the segue from page to stage determines the kind of art produced—if reading makes it a tragedy and acting makes it a comedy—is it worth staging?
I’m not sure. Attendance numbers are up for plays. It’s hard not to see the public hearsay of a “dying theatre” as a harbinger of what’s to come—maybe not of seats sold or classics performed, but original, high-quality art created. Today, most productions have gone the way of musicals, concerts, and acrobatics shows like Cirque du Soleil. These aren’t bad in their own right, but they will deprive other art of precious time slots on the stage. And as Mario Vargas Llosa argues in Notes on the Death of Culture, we are, now more than ever before, subject to a sensibility that holds salience hostage to spectacle.
The saving grace of the stage is that it is more effective in eliciting emotions than reading alone in the quiet of your home. That’s where I agree with Eliot and his opinion of A Long Day’s Journey into Night. At the same time, when it comes to certain work, I’m not sure that sullying the message is worth it. Or maybe Eliot is right in a fundamentally different way; the truth of a tragicomedy lies in its status as a red herring: the only way to appreciate one is to watch its message glide, barrel roll, and tail slide over someone else’s head.
March 26, 2014
Apparently this play was a part of a huge planned cycle of plays that O'Neill was working on. This one does work as a stand-alone play, but maybe not on the level of his best. What I did enjoy about this one is that the dialect change by the main character Con Melody from patrician English to Irish brogue works very well. In previous O'Neill plays I've read he has done terrible things with dialect.
In a twist for O'Neill, this play is set in a tavern. (Note. What I just did there was called "irony"). Melody used to be land-owning gentry in Ireland until he fought a duel in the King's army and also had an affair. The complete story must have been planned for another play(s) because we don't quite get the whole story for his downfall and his exile in America to a tavern on a road that has been bypassed (yes, there is a metaphor rootin' around in that there "bypass").
The plot is pretty straightforward: Daddy's girl meets Snob's son and feathers get ruffled on both sides - illuminating the false life of Melody and the false "honor" of the high and mighty.
In a twist for O'Neill, this play is set in a tavern. (Note. What I just did there was called "irony"). Melody used to be land-owning gentry in Ireland until he fought a duel in the King's army and also had an affair. The complete story must have been planned for another play(s) because we don't quite get the whole story for his downfall and his exile in America to a tavern on a road that has been bypassed (yes, there is a metaphor rootin' around in that there "bypass").
The plot is pretty straightforward: Daddy's girl meets Snob's son and feathers get ruffled on both sides - illuminating the false life of Melody and the false "honor" of the high and mighty.
February 6, 2017
I have the highest regard for O'Neill. He founded the small theater movement and was a dogged experimental playwright. I've read a lot of his plays, but not all. I often find him long winded and repetitive. This play I did not know. It is about a former Irishman who served gallantly in the British army until he was kicked out for dueling. He has come to America with wife and daughter and opened a now failing tavern. The tavern is failing because he drinks nightly, plays no part in the operation of the bar and lavishes his love and money on an expensive thoroughbred horse. He lives in a fantasy world where his shame is avenged and he is close to reviving his fortune and noble lineage.
Of course it all comes crashing down and in what perhaps is a psychological break he reverts to the humbler truth of his history. The play may be dated in its structure, but for O'Neill I thought it was concise and believable.
Of course it all comes crashing down and in what perhaps is a psychological break he reverts to the humbler truth of his history. The play may be dated in its structure, but for O'Neill I thought it was concise and believable.
August 4, 2020
It was kinda boring but also really interesting? The dad just straight up sucked. He was an ass and only got sort of better when he sort of broke apart inside. It is about an Irish family who moves to America in the 1820’s and it takes place over a day in 1828. It deals with an alcoholic father who is also abusive and his wife and daughter. His daughter is very defiant and cocky (somewhat for good reason.) It focuses a lot on class as well and being an immigrant and how they don’t speak in “brogue” (basically with a strong Irish accent or using slag) in order to be a “true American” it is sad to see them transition back and forth between that and the dad is so obsessed with it. Overall, I like character driven plots, but this just was a little too slow and felt mildly pointless. Still and interesting insight to some Irish-American immigrants at this time.
June 24, 2013
I enjoy Eugene O'Neill's plays and this one drew me with powerful themes of illusion vs reality, hope for a better future vs family dysfunction in the now. The disillusioned alcoholic father Con likes quoting Lord Byron poems while admiring himself in the mirror. Meanwhile his world crumbles. The theme reminds me of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Iceman Cometh.
August 3, 2007
GABRIEL BYRNE!
August 29, 2022
Of interest for personal reasons, this did not disappoint. A compelling story with deeply developed characters and a satisfying resonance with reality. Recommended for all readers and Irish immigrant descendants in particular. Blarney exemplified.
July 18, 2024
#2005-06: With O’Neill
This play, set in a melancholy tavern near Boston in 1828, has some bearing on the assimilation of European philosophies in the business-like democracy of America. The play’s actual leitmotif is the same as that of ‘The Iceman Cometh’. This plot too deals with the encounter between fulsome illusion and disgraceful reality in Cornelius — “Con” —— Melody, an Irish immigrant, who keeps his self-respect by only perpetuating his illusion and who is never certain where he belongs. All said, this is not a typical O’Neill tragedy. Why do I say so? Simply since it is confined to the annihilation of a braggart’s smugness!! This is a characteristically overwritten drama on a big scale. Interesting to note that this is the fifth play in the projected cycle of 11 plays that O’Neill was never able to give final form. The cycle was to record 175 years in the life of an American family — ‘A Tale of the Possessors Self-dispossessed’ being the overall theme.
This play, set in a melancholy tavern near Boston in 1828, has some bearing on the assimilation of European philosophies in the business-like democracy of America. The play’s actual leitmotif is the same as that of ‘The Iceman Cometh’. This plot too deals with the encounter between fulsome illusion and disgraceful reality in Cornelius — “Con” —— Melody, an Irish immigrant, who keeps his self-respect by only perpetuating his illusion and who is never certain where he belongs. All said, this is not a typical O’Neill tragedy. Why do I say so? Simply since it is confined to the annihilation of a braggart’s smugness!! This is a characteristically overwritten drama on a big scale. Interesting to note that this is the fifth play in the projected cycle of 11 plays that O’Neill was never able to give final form. The cycle was to record 175 years in the life of an American family — ‘A Tale of the Possessors Self-dispossessed’ being the overall theme.
May 4, 2012
Definitely enjoyed the play. It is easy to see the paralells that O'Neill created in his works as well as the common themes. This, much like long day's journey into night, dealt with financial issues and questions of stinginess, alcoholism, a dysfunctional families, and Irish-Americanism. Definitely lighter than 'A Long Day's Journey Into Night,' but I would venture if you enjoy other works of O'Neill's, this would be good as well.
December 6, 2019
This play goes on too long, and I'm ultimately not sure what the point is. Melody is a delusional idiot; Nora is just as stupid for letting him drag her down to near destitution. We lose all respect for Sara for forsaking her principled objection of her parents and using sex to get her man. I really don't understand what O'Neill was trying to say. And by the way, did police even exist back then?
February 12, 2020
Not my favorite O'Neill play. It is difficult to read at times because the "brogue" switches from English to old Irish usage. An interesting study in the death of pride. Mild recommendation. Kristi & Abby Tabby.
October 28, 2020
Saw virtual production by Irish Rep. A technical tour de force and powerful final act.
April 26, 2025
Summary: It is 1828 just outside of Boston. Cornelius Melody is an Irish tavern owner who has his wife, Nora, and daughter, Sara, to look after. Melody considers himself to be a gentleman and loves discussing his days in the army. Sara is tending to a young man named Simon whom she is in love with. Her father doesn't think it'll work out as he is a "Yankee". Sara is also afraid that Simon's mother will influence him not to marry her. Melody feels insulted by Simon's father (who does not appear in the play but is mentioned that he doesn't approve of this betrothal) and decides to go, along with some buddies of his, to duel him. They return from this venture and Melody is a changed man. He admits that he isn't really a gentleman and that he simply stole the army uniform. Sara is greatly upset by the change in her father but her mother tells her she shouldn't be sad since she's in love.
Review: I admit I don't think I did a very good job at summarizing first of all...um yeah this one didn't quite do it for me. I'm not sure why exactly but it was just a bit blah. I mean it was okay but I've read better plays.
Grade: C-
Review: I admit I don't think I did a very good job at summarizing first of all...um yeah this one didn't quite do it for me. I'm not sure why exactly but it was just a bit blah. I mean it was okay but I've read better plays.
Grade: C-
February 15, 2023
ليست من بين افضل اعمال يوجين أونيل - أحد أهم وافضل كتاب المسرح على مر العصور - ومع ذلك بها بعض الجوانب المميزة على مستوى الشخصيات والحوار ولكنها تفتقد لعنصرين طالما ميزا اعمال أونيل وهو المستوى الفكري لتناول الموضوع وتوظيف بعض عناصر المسرح التجريبي.
April 28, 2022
Yale University Press hardcover edition is bound in green linen and nicely set on quality paper.
August 2, 2023
الحوار في العمل جميل ولعل الكوميديا السوداء اضاف جمالا للعمل..
November 10, 2024
Wait, so there was no poet? Title mislead me.
January 27, 2025
Cornelius Melody, Kneipenwirt und Major a.D., träumt von den glorreichen alten Zeiten. Er will nicht erkennen, dass sie schon lange vorbei sind und dass ihm der Ruhm aus dem Krieg nichts bringt außer einem Tag, an dem er die Erinnerung daran feiern kann. Das Geld ist knapp denn Cornelius ist sein bester Kunde. Seine Frau arbeitet sich zu Tode, um die Familie über Wasser zu halten. Nur seine Tochter Sara könnte es einmal besser haben als die Eltern, denn sie ist dabei eine gute Partie zu machen.
Eugene O'Neill erzählt schnörkellos die Geschichte von Cornelius und seiner Familie. Er ist ein Säufer, der in der Erinnerung einer längst vergangenen Zeit lebt. Natürlich könnte er mit dem Trinken aufhören, wenn er nur wollte. Das redet er sich zumindest ein und seine Frau bestärkt ihn in dieser Illusion. Aber eigentlich wissen beide, dass er nie aufhören wird.
Sara schaut auf die Eltern herab. Auf den trinkenden Vater und die Mutter, sie sich für ihn abarbeitet wie eine Sklavin. Sie wird es anders machen, besser. Denn sie hat einen reichen Freund, der sie gegen den Widerstand seiner Familie heiraten wird.
Die Geschichte der Familie Melody scheint klar: der trinkende Vater, die devote Mutter und die Tochter, die sich einbildet dass sie etwas Besseres ist. Liebe scheint es in dieser Familie nicht zu geben, nur Verachtung. Dass das nicht so ist, erfährt der Leser nur wenn er auf die kleinen Zwischentöne achtet. Ein wunderbares Stück, bei dem man gut hinsehen sollte.
Eugene O'Neill erzählt schnörkellos die Geschichte von Cornelius und seiner Familie. Er ist ein Säufer, der in der Erinnerung einer längst vergangenen Zeit lebt. Natürlich könnte er mit dem Trinken aufhören, wenn er nur wollte. Das redet er sich zumindest ein und seine Frau bestärkt ihn in dieser Illusion. Aber eigentlich wissen beide, dass er nie aufhören wird.
Sara schaut auf die Eltern herab. Auf den trinkenden Vater und die Mutter, sie sich für ihn abarbeitet wie eine Sklavin. Sie wird es anders machen, besser. Denn sie hat einen reichen Freund, der sie gegen den Widerstand seiner Familie heiraten wird.
Die Geschichte der Familie Melody scheint klar: der trinkende Vater, die devote Mutter und die Tochter, die sich einbildet dass sie etwas Besseres ist. Liebe scheint es in dieser Familie nicht zu geben, nur Verachtung. Dass das nicht so ist, erfährt der Leser nur wenn er auf die kleinen Zwischentöne achtet. Ein wunderbares Stück, bei dem man gut hinsehen sollte.
April 8, 2024
A Touch of the Poet is great and has a genuinely exciting final act. I can’t remember the last time I was excited to know what happened next.
But More Stately Mansions Jesus Christ was a monster. For an unfinished draft, it was brilliant but was like 3 times longer than it should have been and my head was just reeling after the constant emotional contradictions and bitter, primal resentments between the the three main characters. This was Mecha-Strindberg. Recommended but feel free to jump out when you have had enough.
But More Stately Mansions Jesus Christ was a monster. For an unfinished draft, it was brilliant but was like 3 times longer than it should have been and my head was just reeling after the constant emotional contradictions and bitter, primal resentments between the the three main characters. This was Mecha-Strindberg. Recommended but feel free to jump out when you have had enough.
May 23, 2020
Fascinating to see O'Neill in all his glory. He puts a lot of his previous dramatic experiments to good use here. Unfortunately this book is the ultimate cliffhanger--it's the beginning of a cycle of plays, and O'Neill died before he could resolve the cycle.
May 27, 2016
It's a 400 page play, and if you add in Touch of the Poet, it's 550 pages. Long play. Great ending. But too long.
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