Quick bio: The Sad Life of Eugene O'Neill. (1888 - 1953) His father and mother, James and Mary, were Irish immigrants. Mary disliked Broadway, and James was a very famous Shakespearian actor, but sold out with a title role in Count of Monte Cristo which he played over 6000 times, thus losing versatility for money. For the first seven years of his life, Eugene was dragged along with his mother on James' tours, leading to Mary's loneliness. Eugene, his older brother Jamie, and his father were all alcoholics and depressed. Eugene was sent to a Catholic boarding school, where he buried himself in books, and growing rebelliousness was either thrown out or just left of Princeton University. It's obscure. The family spent summers in a house in Connecticut. He spent several years at sea and got tuberculosis. He went then to a sanatorium from 1912 to 1913. There, he devoted himself to writing plays, though he was late in achieving success. His mother, father and brother died within three years of each other. His brother drank himself to death at age 45. Eugene had occasional suicide attempts. After achieving fame, his life still remained troubled. He married three times, during which he had three children, Eugene Jr by his first marriage, and Shane and Oona by his second. He left his second wife and children for the actress Carlotta Monterey and stayed with her until he died. She became addicted to potassium Bromide which caused their marriage to be riddled with separations. Long Day's is dedicated to Carlotta. He disowned Oona when she was eighteen for marrying fifty-four year old Charlie Chaplin, and he never saw her again. He was very distant with his sons. Eugene Jr was an alcoholic and committed suicide in 1950. Shane was a heroin addict and committed suicide in 1977, but Eugene was already dead. He was ill all his life and for the last ten years, lost the ability to write (dictated) because of a severe tremor in his hand. Dictation proved a n impossible way for him to work though. He died at age 65 and Long Day's was published three years later. It was his second to last book.
Saddest story ever, huh. Well, it's a pretty simple story. There are issues, and every issue, you could pretty much just see what's going to happen. The worst possible thing: that's what happens. The problems get gradually worse and the causes for it getting worse are gradually revealed as well, but plot-wise, its pretty much speech-drama rather than action drama. I love it!!! ANd guess what. UNITIES!! This actually follows them. My god I love this play. Brain Snack: The three unities of theatre are that it takes place at one setting, it takes place in 24 hours, and it has a consistent plot (no subplot).The subplot is iffy, but there is generally one plot that the characters focus on. The CHARACTERS!! Great thing about this play is that except for the second girl Cathleen, there are only four characters and each are very deep, have their own issues and are amazingly written. You have to have a crazy good cast for this. So amazing. My favourites Edmund. Well, let's go.
Act 1: Living room of the Tyrone's summer home 8;30 am of a day in August, 1912. So the set is incredibly detailed. Everything is used too. Chekhov's gun!!
Living room with two parlours at back with double doorways.
Right parlour is front parlour, arranged neatly as though never used. Left parlour is dark and windowless, only used to connect to dining room.
Small bookcase between doors with books like Nietzche, Ibse, Marx, Engels, Shaw, Strindberg, Wilde, Kipling, Balzac, Zola, Stendhal, Swinburne
Large book case by left wall with three complete works of Shakespeare, Dumas, Hugo, history books
Shakespeare portrait hung above small bookcase
Round table with small lamp surrounded by three wicker chairs and one oak rocking chair.
Left wall: three windows looking at grounds in back. Wicker couch against wall.
Right wall rear has screen door to porch. Farther forward three windows looking at front lawn to harbour
Cool set, I think. Just wait. Mary and James enter, all happy. Mary (54) is very beautiful. Her hair is pure white and hew face does not have make-up but doesn't need it at all. She looks distinctly Irish. She has dark brows, straight nose, sensitive, full lips, high forehead and big brown eyes, and she has a nice figure but is a bit filled out. Her healthy body doesn't match her pale, thin face. She wears simple, but befitting clothing. Her hands look as though they were once very beautiful but are now warped by rheumatism. They are fidgety, and she always seems nervous. James Tyrone (65)looks ten years younger than his age and is very handsome. He has a fine profile. He is broad-shouldered and deep-chested. He looks more slender an tall than he is because he carries himself like a graceful actor, and though not on purpose, he instinctively has the touch of an actor in every movement. He wears casual shabby clothes, collarless shirt, ready-made suit, shineless shoes, handkerchief around his neck, ready to garden. He's very healthy. Never been really sick. Never nervous. Somehow peasant-ish. Grey, thinning hair.
They look very happy. Tyrone happily comments on her having gained weight and how beautiful she is, hugging her. She's happy with him, but worries that Edmund hadn't eaten much at breakfast, blaming it on his summer cold. When Tyrone worries of her worrying, she accuses him of watching her too closely, which he denies. Jamie and Edmund had stayed back and Tyrone suspects Jamie's getting Edmund to play a joint joke on him. The subject of MacGuire comes up, a guy, according to Mary, who sells Tyone bum property and Tyrone dumbly trusts. Mary says she didn't sleep well last night because of the foghorn and Tyrone's snoring. James says she has to take care of herself since she only just came back to the family. All this tiny stuff is important, trust me.
Jamie (33) and Edmund (23) enters. He resembles his father but is less handsome, though good-looking. He has early signs of dissipation. He's taller an more slender than Tyrone but looks stockier. He appears very cynical with a perpetual scorn. His nose is aquiline, unlike any less in the family, resembling Mephistopheles'. When he occasionally smiles, he regains his Irish charm. He is less shabby than Tyrone, with collar and tie.
Edmund is tallest and wiry. He takes after his mother, with her forehead, eyes, lips, and large, nervous long-fingered hands. He has her nervousness too. His face is brown from the sun. He has his father's nose. He looks clearly very ill, is too skinny, and his cheeks are sunken. Shirt, collar, tie, flannel trousers, brown trainers. They all flatter Mary and Edmund immediately appears as Mary's obvious favourite. Jamie quotes Othello in making fun of James' snoring, and James accuses him of gambling too much on horse races and says he should memorise more Shakespeare (a pet subject of theirs). Edmund and Mary quickly put out the fight. Edmund distracts everyone by telling what he and Jamie were talking of, which is that the tenant of James' farm got in a fight with his millionaire neighbour in an inn, (Mary scolds Edmund for drinking when the doctor said not to) concerning the tenant's pigs, a broken fence, and the millionaire's pool. The tenant wins the fight, being intimidating, and James laughs until he realises this may end up involving him in a law suit. Edmund says James likes that the tenant put a rich guy down but is scared of law suits. This goes with a characterising theme that starts up at this moment: that James is very stingy and cheap, afraid always of growing broke. So, sensitive, James gets angry at Edmund and for no apparent reason, turns on Jamie and calls him even worse and talentless. Edmund storms off exasperated, mentions that James is always going on about the same things, an also mentions forgetting his book upstairs (He's poetic and bookish.)
When Edmund leaves, Jamie mentions that he's really sick and James turns on him sharply. It's a taboo subject, Edmund's sickness. Jamie calls him the Kid. Mary freaks out and Tyrone says Doctor Hardy said it might be malarial fever that Edmund caught in the tropics, but it'll be fin. Mary won't believe it because Doctor Hardy's a cheap quack doctor sucking money from them. James and Jamie commence with flattery when Mary suddenly becomes self conscious about her hair, after mentioning medical dependency. Reassured, she goes to talk to the cook about the food for the day.
The second she leaves, the mood completely changes and James blows up at Jamie for mentioning the illness. Jamie says they should stop kidding her and that he thinks it's consumption (tuberculosis). He accuses James of using Hardy even though he's incompetent because Hardy is super cheap. The conversation run off as it seems it has a thousand times over. Jamie concedes in an unsatisfactory way saying James won't ever change or really listen and James accuses Jamie of not appreciating money, always wasting all his money on whores ans whisky until he's broke. he says Jamie has the talent and youth to be a great actor, but is wasting away. Jamie brings them back to Edmund and we find out that Hardy's calling around lunch to confirm whether Edmund has consumption. Edmund has no idea. James talks about how Edmund deliberately ruined his health with his mad lifestyle since he was thrown out of university. He says Jamie was a bad influence and left him to those things with his cynicism. Jamie accuses James of giving up on Edmund already and believing an Irish myth that consumption is always fatal. James defends Ireland and says for all the wildness, Edmund at least had he guts to go off on his own for what he wanted. They reveal that Edmund went off to see for a few years, living a wretchedly poor life in South America. James mentions Edmund's success in writing. Jamie jealously accuses Edmund of getting himself in his situation and quickly takes it back. James mentions Jamie's failure in writing, and Jamie angry, James switches to talking of Mary. Apparently Mary has been very well for two months and the house has been almost a home, like they'd never known it for so long. They're very worried of her since she seems to be slipping with the anxiety of Edmund's illness and the fact that her father died of consumption. Jamie seeming suspicious admits that at three o'clock he caught her moving to the spare room. He pretended to be asleep and she stopped by his and Edmund's rooms to check that they were asleep. The spare room was where she went when whatever's wrong with her was wrong. James yells at him for being suspicious and insists that it was to escape his snoring, but he seems worried too. Jamie says he was wrong and James mentions that it was during her long illness following Edmunds birth that whatever is wrong went first wrong. They insist on not saying what it is aloud. Jamie accuses James of blaming Edmund for her 'curse' because he was born, and James says no. Jamie blames the doctor that looked at her then, saying he was another cheap quack like Hardy.
Mary re-enters and they immediately cover everything and talk about cutting the hedges. James flatters her a little as she insults her own hands and they go out to cut the hedges. Before leaving, Jamie awkwardly tells Mary he's proud of her and that she should be careful. She's resentful and he's hurt and leaves with James. For a moment, Mary is alone, showing desperation and fidgeting with her hands, when Edmund enters. he avoided the fight. He has a book. She turns a motherly face to him. They both worry of each other. Mary insists that Edmund is exaggerating his illness and Edmund seems far more concerned with her than himself. Mary talks of how she's lonely, has no friends, and blames James for raising them in a way that neither Edmund nor Jamie have respectable friends or know nice girls. Edmund says James can't be changed. As Edmund keeps worrying Mary aggressively accuses Edmund of being suspicious and not trusting her. She wails about being trapped in the house alone. He reveals that he knew she went to the spare room, but filled with guilt, Edmund says he trusts her and apologises. She says that her promises must mean nothing o them by now, with all the ones she's broken, and he continues to deny mistrust. She's really abusing him by making him guilty, worried and frightened all at once, and he finally proposes that he go outside and fakes a laugh, as does Mary. He exits to the lawn, and Mary sit, relaxed and relieved. She suddenly jerks with sudden panic and then starts drumming her fingers on the arms of the chair
ACT 2 Scene 1: The same, around 12:45. The formerly clear day is getting hazy. Edmund is reading, but her looks more like he's waiting to hear something from upstairs and trying to concentrate on the book. Cathleen enters with Whisky and she guesses that he and Jamie will sneak drinks from James' whisky bottle. Edmund admits to it lightly bu gets clammy when she mentions that Mary wasn't taking a nap, like she told Edmund she would, but was lying in he spare room with eyes wide open, complaining of a headache. Edmund clearly is concerned but forcedly trusting her.
When she leaves, he immediately grabs a drink, but hearing Jamie entering, leaps back into he chair. Jamie knows what's up and they chuckle at their both being alcoholics. Jamie pours two drinks of water into the bottle and shakes it to hide what they stole. When Edmund says he's not hungry, Jamie worries that he shouldn't drink, but Edmund says he'll stop after Hardy gives him the bad news, which he believes will be malaria. Jamie, concerned, tells him to be prepared for anything and then they switch the subject and Edmund says Mary's upstairs. Jamie freaks out that he left her alone and Edmund defends her. Apparently Mary used to have most her meals alone upstairs when she was whatever she was. Jamie's angry and Edmund tells him about her accusations of suspicion. Jamie says he knows he' annoyingly cynical but he knew about the thing for ten years before James and he told Edmund so he knows better. They hear Mary coming down though, and Jamie admits that he was wrong.
Edmund has a coughing fit. She plays things normally, as does Edmund, but Jamie seems suspicious, and at the first occasion, she yells at him for sneering at his father and everything else. Edmund tries being peacekeeper. Mary then starts rambling about the past and how experiences change you, and how James always made her go second-rate, and how he is stingy. Edmund, uncomfortable goes off to call James and Jamie accuses her of slipping, telling her to look at her own vacant eyes. Edmund returns, and seeing what happened, yells at Jamie for accusing Mary. Mary is increasingly icy and singing, and Edmund insists more desperately that all is fine and accuses Jamie of being a cruel liar. Mary hears James coming and leaves to inform the cook, and Edmund sits looking sick an hopeless. He accuses Jamie of being a liar again but Jamie is convinced he is right. James enters and eyes the whisky and clearly knows what Jamie had done. Edmund proposes a drink and James hesitates, on account of Hardy's advice, but after little convincing, James agrees, and they all have a drink. James toasts to health and happiness and Edmund bitterly laughs.
Mary enters and rambles about how James refused to make a home for her, and James, realising she's slipped, transforms into an old, tired man. The brothers bitterly leave to the dining room and Mary, seeing James staring, fusses about her hair. James is angry and accuses her of slipping. Her denial finally breaks to a suggested admitting of guilt, and James breaks to feel sorry for her, bu then she goes quickly back to pretending as though she has no idea what he's talking about. They walk into the back parlour together, James hopeless.
ACT 2 Scene 2: The same, about a half hour later. They're returning from lunch and James and Mary's entrance is similar to their's in Act 1 but that it is now very cold and James refuses to touch her. Edmund and Jamie follow, Jamie with defensive cynicism and Edmund attempting the same but clearly heartsick and ill. Mary enter rambling with fumbling nervous hands, and she seems to be ignoring everything she says, like the others do. James, with a cigar, looks out the screen door, and Jamie, with a pipe, stare out the right window. Edmund sits facing away from Mary. Mary is complaining of the help, and how she can't wait for the summer to end and to be rid of them. Tyrone vaguely accuses her and she denies is and continues on about how her father's home was wonderful and how James stole her from it.
The phone rings and everyone tenses. James takes it, saying it must be McGuire, but clearly it's the doctor and James' reactions sound bad. James just say it's a confirmation for the appointment at four though. Mary complains that Hardy's a quack and hypothetically talks of a doctor that knows nothing and humiliates you as you plead for medicine that a quack just like him had given you initially, to hook you. It sounds very much like a memory and it seems pretty clear by now she has some kind of addiction. They stop her and she says she'll go upstairs to fix her hair, and then accuses James of suspicion. She leaves and Jamie says 'Another shot in the arm!' and Edmund yells at him.
Things get a bit philosophical. Edmund says Jamie is too dark and pessimistic. Jamie says he'd think Edmund would be too considering the darkness of the books he reads and the poems he write. We find that the Nietzche book is Edmund's and as for that, the entire back shelf. James says Catholicism is the way, at which Jamie and Edmund join sides against him, having a God-is-dead discussion because of he futility of James' prayers for her. James gives up hope and angry, Edmund announces he'll talk to her later and storms upstairs.
Jamie quickly turns to James and asks of the phone call. It's for sure consumption, and Jamie is heartbroken. He says Edmund'll have to go to a sanatorium and then warns James about being cheap about this too, think Edmund as good as dead and so to die in some state farm. James gets angry at the accusation but it blows over with Jamie's decision to go with Edmund to get the news. James is to meet Hardy before four. Jamie halts as he sees Mary coming. Her eyes are brighter and manner more distanced. She is increasingly receding. The fog is thickening.
Mary doesn't want to be alone, but their leaving her whilst they go to the hospital. She pretends that there's nothing wrong and James continues to condemn her. She is complaining of his alcoholism and he's giving his worn excuse. He never missed a performance. He suggests she takes a ride in the car whilst they're gone and gets then stuck on the subject of money and waste, as she never takes the car. She goes on the subject of loneliness and recalls her convent days, when she had youth and friends. James takes this as a sign of quick receding. James mentions a time she ran out of 'it' and half-crazy ran out and tried to throw herself off the dock. Then she remembers how she travelled all over with James on tours and how it tired her to e in the cheap hotels. She says that having Edmund was the last straw and the cheap hotel doctor James got for her knew nothing. Mary then gets to the subject of Eugene. She blames herself for Eugene's death because she left him with her mother when she joined James on tour. If she'd been with him, maybe Jamie wouldn't have infected him wit measles. She believes Jamie did it on purpose. Then she regrets having Edmund at all, since she must have learned from Eugene that he wasn't fit to be a mother.
Edmund enters and asks James for cab-fare and he begins to scold but stops and gives him ten pounds. Edmund is floored and happy until he suspects that Hardy old James Edmund will die. James is hurt by this and Edmund takes it back, and Mary accuses Edmund's depressing books for making him think of dying. She always calls him the baby of the house, faking for attention. Edmund tries to talk to her but she pretends not to understand and Edmund gives up. She says nobody believes her and when nobody does, the Virgin Mary will save her. She asks Edmund not to drink. She says she'll go to the drug store and Edmund is tortured. Jamie calls the heartbroken Edmund away and they all leave to go uptown, leaving Mary alone. She drums about with her hands and looks forsaken, saying she's lonely, and then insists that she's happy they're gone with a sort of alter-ego, and again says she's lonely. Every line tears you apart.
ACT 3: The same, around 6:30 that evening. he fog is now thick and the foghorns sounds regularly. The whisky is back from Act 2 scene 2 and Cathleen and Mary are talking. Cathleen has clearly been drinking and Mary is more distant and creepy. Mary hates the foghorn but likes the fog because it hides you from everybody and everybody from you. Stage directions say the present doesn't matter to her any more, and she acts all chatty and talks to Cathleen like they're best buds. Her hairs a bit messy.
Mary says the guys probably won't be home for dinner, staying at the bars away from her. She insults James as too simply to care of anything but poverty. She says she once wanted to be a nun back in the convent. She had Cahleen go to the drug store to get the 'medicine for her rheumatism' and Cathleen was embarrassed because the druggist treated her like a thief. Mary goes off about how she was a promising pianist and her generous father would have sent her to Europe to study if she hadn't married. She says her hands remind her of all she lost but the pain is far away now. Cathleen finally notices Mary is acting weird and Mary looks more and more like an innocent convent girl. She talks of meeting James. Her father took her to his play and he fascinated her and they were instantly in love. That was 36 years ago and Mary is proud that there'd never been a hint of disloyalty from him. Cathleen asks to leave and Mary seems to prefer being alone anyways. Mary orders dinner at the regular time but says she won't eat. Cathleen says it's the medicine, which Mary completely denies. It's been obvious for a while that Mary is a morphine addict.
Foghorns and bells sound but she doesn't notice. She suddenly looks ageing and tired. Mary calls herself a sentimental fool for cherishing her meeting with James since her truly happy days were in the convent before him. She tries to pray but thinks a 'dope fiend' (used often in the play) can't fool the Virgin and decides that she hasn't taken enough morphine.
James and Edmund enter and Mary offers whisky. Jamie stayed back to keep drinking, which Mary guesses and says he's jealous of Edmund and wants to drag him down to his failed level, as he was jealous of Eugene. She blames herself for Eugene dying. (He was two years old) James blames Jamie too. As Mary goes on talking of babies, and how Edund was always frightened as a baby, and James regrets coming home for which Edmund yells at him. Apparently Jamie was wonderful until he started drinking and blames James for using a spoonful of whisky as a remedy for everything when they were little. James is offended and Mary qualifies tat it's not his fault because he left school at 10 and his Irish peasant family were ignorant and believed Whisky was good medicine. James is about to explode but Edmund stays peacekeeping.
Mary realises how angry he is and brings up how they met and they have a loving moment when they say they'll love each other forever, but then she says she wouldn't have married him if she knew how much of an alcoholic he was, and that on their honeymoon and all through their marriage, she has had to wait up at home waiting for him to show up wasted. Edmund is angry at his father for this and seems to blame him for Mary turning to addiction. He asks her to forget but she can;t and moved onto the happier memory of their wedding when her father got her an expensive dress and how James would never spend enough money on her. She says here mom wanted her to be a nun and thought her father was spoiling her and so she won't be a good wife. She asks James if she has been a bad wife and he laughs it off but she's concerned so falls back to girliness and goes on about the dress. She wonders where she had put it.
James changes the subject to dinner and notices that the whisky is way watery and accuses Mary of drinking, and Edmund defends her immediately. She gets angry at accusations and semi-accuse Edmund for being born. We find out that James even refuses to turn light on because he's so cheap. James leaves to get a bottle of whisky for Edmund and him, and when he's gone, Mary explains a bit of his past. His father abandoned his mother and the six kids a year after moving to America to go back to Ireland because he thought he'd die soon and wanted to die in Ireland, which he did quickly. James thus was forced to work at a machine ship at age 10.
Edmund accuses her of not caring for him, having not asked of the hospital. Mary evades the topic and brings up when she tried to run off the dock, and that was when Jamie and James told Edmund about their the morphine. Edmund says he'll have to go to a sanatorium and Mary freaks. She says being away from her will kill him like it did Eugene and that Jamie is so jealous of Edmund for being her favourite that he's trying to tear them apart. Edmund mentions her father and Mary says consumption has nothing to do with anything, and then Edmund breaks and says it's tough having a dope fiend for a mother. He immediately takes it back. She talks of the foghorn and Edmund leaves out the screen door. Mary says she wishes she'll overdose so she'll die but be forgiven because it was accidental suicide.
James enters and Mary says Edmund probably left to go drink with Jamie. She says he has no appetite but it's the summer cold. James shakes his head and Mary breaks, saying Edmund will die and that he hates her and that she blames herself for having him and allowing him to suffer seeing her. He comforts her, but when Cathleen enters, immediately commands her to stop crying. Cathleen announces dinner drunk and says she was offered the whisky. She leaves and Mary says she won't eat and will just go upstairs and he accuses her. She says he's as bad as Jamie and Edmund and he goes broken into the dining room.
ACT 4: The same, around midnight. James looks broken, sitting playing solitaire in almost complete darkness. He has gone through 3/4 of the bottle and has an extra one. He's drunk but still not escaped. Edmund enters and turns on a lamp. James says to turn it off but he doesn't. Edmund is drunk too, but like his father, not much changed but that he's more aggressive. They argue of money. Edmund accuses James of only believing what he wants to. James eventually gets angry enough to threaten a beating unless Edmund turns off the light but he then remembers the illness and apologises. Edmund then regains his guilt complex (very active throughout) and he apologises for getting angry over nothing and is about to turn the light off when James says don't and turns all the light on in the chandelier. He doesn't care about reaching the 'poorhouse' any more, at which Edmund laughs.
James comments that Edmund understands the value of money, unlike his brother, and asks where he is. Edmund says he didn't go to meet him though. He went to walk on the beach. As Edmund split his money with Jamie earlier, James guesses that he's at the whorehouse. Edmund gets annoyed and James passes him the whisky. Edmund says he likes the fog and when James says he should have more sense then walk about alone, he says to hell with sense, everyone's crazy. Then he goes on a reciting spree. First is a bit of a poem by Ernest Dowson called They Are Not Long. I'll stick all the full poems below and mark in brackets the bits Edmund says. This one he says the whole thing. He essentially says that whatever happiness conjures up, it's but fleeting, and a dream, and he says in the fog, he felt that, with all the houses blinded away, he could disappear, and become but a ghost of a drowned man, trailing in the fog, the ghost of the sea, seeing everything not as it is, because what is real can turn you like Medusa, into stone. James calls him a morbid poet and pushes on Shakespeare. Edmund insists that all they can do is get drunk and forget, whilst James pushes resignation. Edmund recites, with bitter, ironical passion, the Symon's translation of Baudelaire's prose poem, Be always drunken, again in full. It says be drunk all the time, with wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish, and that's the best way to survive life, if you wish not to live a martyr of time. James says it's morbid, mentions Jamie, and Edmund recites Epilogue, Baudelaire, Symons, in full.This one's about how the people who are hunted by the vices of the city (Paris) secretly enjoy watching these vices, enjoying pleasures 'the vulgar heard (regular people) will never understand.' Edmund thinks Jamie thinks himself superior in his hunted state as one of unknown pleasures, but in the end understands that he is just a miserable loser. James says he should turn to the church. Edmund ignores and recites Cynara by Dowson, thinking Jamie will be reciting this to some whore. Only partly. It's about the I voice saying how though he sleeps with whores, he still is desolate and sick of his old passion for Cynara and in his desolation, has been faithful to Cynara, in his own fashion. But Edmund says Jamie has never had a Cynara, a true love or true anything. Edmund says it's all mad, and James agrees, saying, like Cathleen does earlier, to have faith is to have sanity, and Jamie has neither.
Edmund says Dowson died of booze and consumption, laughs, stops, looks frightened and then says he's going to change subjects. (this will happen a lot) James derails his literature, saying they're all whore-mongers and degenerates. Edmund says Shakespeare was a drunk, James excuses this and says Rossetti was a drug-addict. Oops, awkward, announcing change in subject. Edmund reminds James that he knows Shakespeare since he memorised Macbeth's part in a week once. They're interuppted by hearing Mary walking upstairs. They both are worried but drink and try to forget. JAmes talks of how Mary tries to revert to tthe past, as though her convent days were her only happy days. Talking of how her father wasn't as good as she makes out, he says booze and consumption killed him and Edmund says they can't avoid unpleasan topics. They play Casino (a card game) but neither of them really do. James goes on about how she never could've been a nun or pianist anyways. The think she's coming down and pretend to play cards but she goes back (I think a foghorn sounds here. It seems she likes the fog because it hides her, like the morphine hides her from the present issues [Edmund's TB] and she hates the horn because it calls her out of the fog, like her hands or her family calling her back to the present out of the past). The two are very relieved.
Edmund blames James for her addiction since she never would have known of it if it weren't for his hiring a quack doctor when she was sick. This by the way is the first time anyone actually outright says the word morphine. James is hurt and says he didn't know the doctor was bad. Edmund says this is a lie and says that even though, as James says, he asked for the best doctor to the hotel, he 'cried poorhouse' first to make it obvious that he wants a cheap one. Edmund insinuates that James did this again this afternoon, for his TB, but quickly focuses back on Mary. He blames James for not sending her to a cure earlier, and when he says he did later, Edmund says that it didn't matter because James never gave her anything to quit for. When describing the life on the road, Edmund hates James, and James gets very angry at him for repeating all of Mary's accusations that she only makes when she's high. And he was generous enough to let her have a nurse for the kids, at which point the subject turns to the Edmund-caused-it-all-by-ever-being-born thing, that James immediately takes back but Edmund immediately shows he's always believed and is sure Mary does too.
They move on, forgive each other, admit they like each other despite all their failings, and 'play' the game. Things explode again when James says Edmund'll get better and Edmund accuses James of thinking he'll die, and so not wanting to spend too much money on him. Thus Edmund is being sent to Hilltown sanatorium, a public one that's pretty useless. Jamie suspected that he'll cry poorhouse so he wormed the truth from Hardy. James accuses Jamie of infecting Edmund's mind. Edmund keeps going on how James has property worth a quarter million (HUGE back then) and even let McGuire sell him another stick of bum property after the hospital visit, which Jamie and Edmund found out at the bar. James lies feebly and then Edmund comes out with the big guns. He's not so much angry at the fact that he's obviously going to die in a state farm, but the fact that his father has no pride, because obviously hardy and the specialist and McGuire are going to talk, and the world will know he wished his son off on charity because he's that stingy. Breaking with rage, Edmund says he won't let James get away with it and kill him off, and he descends into a violent fit of coughing.
James is broken and admits to it all and says he's wrong. He says that he's addicted to buying property because it seems reliable as opposed to banks. He says that, though Edmund said he understood what James went through as a kid because of his time on his own at sea, he definitely didn't and it was all romantic adventure. Edmund brings up sarcastically when he tried to commit suicide, which James blames on drinking. Edmund says it was because he had been sober too long and started thinking.
James goes on about his childhood and how his father abandoned them and died (it seems by suicide, which Edmund confirms but James denies) and then how he worked with machines. The description is terribly sad and wins a lot of sympathy for James, especially when he describes his incredible mother and the day they had enough to eat when she was tipped for her work. Edmund agrees that she must have been wonderful.
James says Edmund can go wherever he wants - within reason (at which there's humour). Then James describes a nice place that's still inexpensive but quite nice, that they agree on, and then James confesses a story of his terrible stinginess that he'd never said before. It was how he was an amazing Shakespearian actor, on stage with Edwin Booth and all, but sold out for an easy role that lost him his versatility and talent for money. Edmund feels closer to him now, forgives him, and they turn off the extra lights with a laugh at crazy life. James wonders where his recording of Booth's compliments are and Edmund mentions the wedding dress, changes subjects, James brings up again, Edmund drinks to forget, and then, AWESOME SPEECH! He shares the highlight memories of his life, all to do with the sea, and how he feels, there, as though he is apart, forgotten of his own life, an all life, within something greater than God, and anything, because he becomes the sea and all of it, in peace. He says it is a mistake that he is a man, and not some fish or gull, and that because of it, he shall never want, never be wanted, never belong, and always be a little in love with death.
Now, James days this is all poetic but too morbid, and Edmund says it's the truth, sounding very much like O'Neill's own voice. The they hear Jamie stumbling in drunk and James is very annoyed, and walks out so as to not meet him, and of course, lose his temper. Jamie enters and calls it a morgue, recites Kipling and calls James Gaspard, a running joke of his. Brain snack: Gaspard is one of the main characters in the operette Les Cloches de Corneville. Gaspard in that is a miser that ruins everyone's life, but it all ends in a comedic, happy way. He has an adopted girl-servant and niece whom are both beautiful and mysterious, who he is trapping in the castle he lives in. He isn't the real owner so the castle bells don't ring and the place is haunted, but after finally the rightful owner returns, the two girls start slipping from him as people start investigating in his business. Turns out one of them is actually an important person, allowing her to marry the rich, rightful owner, who forgives Gaspard and releases his other girl. Connections to the play? I think so.
Jamie goes off about James' sending Edmund off to a cheap sanatorium, and drinks more, clearly trying to pass out and forget, but unable to get there. Edmund somewhat defends James, understanding him better after the story, but Jamie is cynical and saying he's still fooling Edmund and just sending him to another state farm. Changing the subbject, Edmund asks if he went to the whore house, which he did and he picked Fat Violet because she was about to get fired and he felt bad. He likes fat chicks but not that fat, so she thought it was for a joke he brought her upstairs, especially after Jamie started reciting poetry, and she cried and went off. Jamie told her he loved her because she was fat and stayed with her to prove it, and by the end, she said she'd fallen for him and kissed him and they cried together in the hall, for which the head hostess thought he'd gone mad. This, Edmund observes, is the secret pleasures the vulgar heard do not understand. Jamie throughout recites Wilde's The Harlot's House. They joke about and Jamie recites from Kipling's Sestina of the Tramp-Royal, saying he's a tramp on a weary road leading nowhere, as all suckers end up there.
He dozes off a bit and suddenly becomes very mean, saying there's absolutely no hope left, and recites from Mother O' Mine by Kipling sarcastically. He starts insulting mary and Edmund hits him in the face, which Jamie doesn't resent at all. Jamie reveals that he's very hurt because he had actually begun to believe Mary would be fine. The two months meant so much to him, and now all is lost, and he begins to sob and weep terribly, soberly. He says that he discovered it all when she was in the act, and he couldn't believe it. He switches to being brotherly and saying he made Edmund's success through his influence, at which they joke. Then after some extreme blaspheming, Jamie suddenly reveals that he's been dragging Edmund down on purpose because he is envious of the baby of the family. He wants him to be worse than him, and will continue to try, and will lie, so now he wants to warn Edmund from future bad influence. He even says he hates Edmund for being born and ruining everything. All throughout, Edmund is pitifully pleasing for him to stop. Jamie expains that there is a dead part of him and a minor living part, and the dead part wants Edmund to not heal. He even is happy that Mary's back ill. He says the dead part of him needs to avenge his death by taking revenge on the world, and is lonely as the only corpse in the house. He wants Edmund to think of him as dead and escape his wrath in the future. He mentions Reading Gaol by Wilde.
He passes out and James enters, reassuring Edmund that James has been a bad influence but likes to exaggerate the worst bits of himself. But Jamie wakes to his abuse and James and Jamie enter a fight, in which Jamie recites Rossetti's A Superscription. Jamie insults James' acting. Edmund forces peace at the cost of Mary coming down an Jamie goes to sleep. Edmund sits, described as hunted and nervous. Suddenly all bulbs of the chandelier are turned on by the hall switch and the opening of one of Chopin's simpler waltzes is heard played very badly. Then Mary enters dressed like a girl, in a sky-blue dressing gown slippers with pom-poms, hair in braids and eyes psychotically bright. She carries neglectfully her wedding dress. She acknowledges them like furniture only. Jamie announces her as Ophelia, and James and Edmund look to slap him, Edmund getting him first.
Mary comments on her own piano-playing and looks at her warped hands, wondering how they got that way. She thinks that she is her young self in the convent. James tries to talk to her but can't get through. She doesn't recognise him. Jamie recites Swinburne's A Leave-Taking, partly, of how Mary will not notice their terror anymore than anything else. She is gone. James sinks into his chair sober, and Jamie as well is sober after a plea. Edmund is a 'bewilderly hurt little boy' and impulsively grabs her arm and yells that he has TB, at which she seems to return, looking terrified, but yells No! grows very distant and ceases to recognise Edmund. She sits on the sofa, lost in the past, and James says this is the worst it's ever been.
All our sitting, and Mary to herself reveals how she announced that she would be a nun, but the Sisters told her to wait, and experience the world a little first to make sure. She looks confused and says that she prayed to the Virgin and was soothed by her, but then what happened? That was winter, and in spring, things changed. 'I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.' James stirs and the brothers are still, close curtain.
Read, folks. Read.
James: You made him old before his time, pumping him full of what you consider worldly wisdom, when he was too young to see that your mind was so poisoned by your own failure in life, you wanted to believe every man was a knave with his soul for sale, and every woman who wasn't a whore was a fool! (1)
Jamie: Another shot in the arm! (2,2)
Edmund: 'God is dead: of His pity for man hath God died. James: [ignores this.] If your mother had prayed too - She hasn't denied her faith, but she's forgotten it, until now there's no strength of the spirit left in her to fight against her curse. (2,2)
James: If you're that far gone in the past already, when it's only the beginning of the arternoon, what willl you be tonight? (2,2)
Mary: She sees no one in he world can believe in me even for a moment any more, then She will believe in me, and then it will be so easy. (2,2)
Mary: It hides you from the world and the world from you. (3)
Edmund: (They are not long) They are not long, the weeping and the laugher, Love and desire and hate: I think they have no portion in us after We pass the gate.
They are not long, the hays of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream Our path emerges for awhile, then closes Within a dream. (4)
Edmund: The for was where I waned to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of he other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbour, where he road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed a part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was a ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost....Don't look at me as if I'd gone nutty. I'm talking sense. Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it? It's the three Gorgons in one. You look in their faces and urn to stone. Or it's Pan. You see him and you die - that is, inside you - and have to go on living as a ghost. (4)
James: You have a poet in you but it's a damned morbid one! (4)
James: 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.' (4)
Edmund: We are such stuff as manure is made on, so let's drink up and forget it. (4)
James: All we can do is try to be resigned - again. (4)
Edmund: (Be always drunken)Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth to be drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.
And if sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room, you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped away from you, ask of the wind, or the wave, or the star, or the bird, or the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs, or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: 'It is the hour to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. (4)
Edmund: (Epilogue) WITH heart at rest I climbed the citadel's Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,
Where evil comes up softly like a flower, Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain, Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;
But, like an old sad faithful lecher, fain To drink delight of that enormous trull Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.
Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full, Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,
I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and Hunted have pleasures of their own to give, The vulgar herd can never understand. (4)
Edmund: (Cynara)Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae (Latin: I am not what I was under the rule of a good Cynara)
Last night, ah yesternight betwixt her lips and mine There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine, And I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in fashion.
[All night upon mine heart I felt her warm heart beat, Night-long within mine arms in love and sleep she lay; Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet; But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, When I awoke and found the dawn was gray: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.]
I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind, Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng, Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind, But I was desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, all the time, because the dance was long: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.
I cried for madder music and for stronger wine, But when he feast is finished and the lamps expire, Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine; And I am desolate and sick of an old passion, Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. (4)
James: There was no damned romance in our poverty. (4)
James: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings. (4)
Edmund: Yes, she moves above and beyond us, a ghost haunting the past, and here we sit pretending to forget, but straining our ears listening for the slightest sound, hearing the fog drip from the eaves like the uneven tick of a rundown, crazy clock - or like the dreary tears of a trollop spattering in a puddle of stale beer on a honky-tonk table top!....You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Bueonos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in he moonlight, towering high above me. I become drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself - actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of man, to Life itself! To God, if you want t o put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring form the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. The peace, the end of the quest, the last harbour, the joy of belonging to a fulfilment beyond man's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beautitude. Like the veil of the things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!...It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a seagull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death. (4)
Edmund: Well, it will be faithful realism, at leas. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people. (4)
Jamie: Had enough to sink a ship, but can't sink. (4)
Jamie: (The Harlot’s House) We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house.
Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss.
Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind.
We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind.
Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille,
Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill.
Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing.
Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing.
[Then, turning to my love, I said, 'The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.'
But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust.
Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz,] The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl.
And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.
Jamie: Speakin' in general I 'ave tried 'em all, The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.' Not so apt. Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Gets you nowhere fast. that's where I've got - nowhere. Where everyone lands in the end, even if most of the suckers won't admit it.
Jamie: (Sestina of Tramp-Royal) [Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all, The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.] Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done, An' go observin' matters till they die.
What do it matter where or 'ow we die, So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all -- The different ways that different things are done, An' men an' women lovin' in this world -- Takin' our chances as they come along, An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good?
In cash or credit -- no, it aren't no good; You 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die, Unless you lived your life but one day long, Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all, But drew your tucker some'ow from the world, An' never bothered what you might ha' done.
But, Gawd, what things are they I 'aven't done? I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good, In various situations round the world -- For 'im that doth not work must surely die; But that's no reason man should labour all 'Is life on one same shift; life's none so long.
Therefore, from job to job I've moved along. Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done, For something in my 'ead upset me all, Till I 'ad dropped whatever 'twas for good, An', out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die, An' met my mate -- the wind that tramps the world!
It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world, Which you can read and care for just so long, But presently you feel that you will die Unless you get the page you're readin' done, An' turn another -- likely not so good; But what you're after is to turn 'em all.
Gawd bless this world! Whatever she 'ath done -- Excep' when awful long -- I've found it good. So write, before I die, "'E liked it all!"
Jamie: (Mother o' Mine) [If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose love would follow me still,] Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
He begins to sob, and the horrible part of his weeping is that i appears sober, not the maudlin tears of drunkenness.
Jamie: I'll do my damnedest to make you fail. Can't help it. I hate myself. Got to take revenge. On everyone else. Especially you. Oscar Wilde's 'Reading Gaol' has the dope twisted. The man was dead and so he had to kill the thing he loved. That's what it ought to be. The dead part of me hopes you won't get well. Maybe he's even glad the game has got Mama again! He wants company, he doesn't want to be the only corpse around the house!
James: He love to exaggerate the worst of himself when he's drunk.
Jamie: (A Superscription) [Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;] Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between; Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell Is now a shaken shadow intolerable, Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen. Mark me, how still I am I But should there dart One moment through thy soul the soft surprise Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs, Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
Jamie: (A Leave-taking) [Let us go hence, my songs; she will not hear. Let us go hence together without fear; Keep silence now, for singing?time is over, And over all old things and all things dear. She loves not you nor me as we all love her. Yea, though we sang as angels in her ear, She would not hear.
Let us rise up and part; she will not know. Let us go seaward as the great winds go, Full of blown sand and foam; what help is here? There is no help, for all these things are so, And all the world is bitter as a tear. And how these things are, though ye strove to show, She would not know.]
Let us go home and hence; she will not weep. We gave love many dreams and days to keep, Flowers without scent, and fruits that would not grow, Saying, `If thou wilt, thrust in thy sickle and reap.' All is reaped now; no grass is left to mow; And we that sowed, though all we fell on sleep, She would not weep.
Let us go hence and rest; she will not love. She shall not hear us if we sing hereof, Nor see love's ways, how sore they are and steep. Come hence, let be, lie still; it is enough. Love is a barren sea, bitter and deep; And though she saw all heaven in flower above, She would not love.
Let us give up, go down; she will not care. Though all the stars made gold of all the air, And the sea moving saw before it move One moon?flower making all the foam?flowers fair; Though all those waves went over us, and drove Deep down the stifling lips and drowning hair, She would not care.
[Let us go hence, go hence; she will not see. Sing all once more together; surely she, She too, remembering days and words that were, Will turn a little toward us, sighing; but we, We are hence, we are gone, as though we had not been there. Nay, and though all men seeing had pity on me, She would not see. ]
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