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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. University Microfilms International A Bell & Howell Information C om pany 300 North Zeeb Road. Ann Arbor. Ml 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 Order Number 9307740 The performance of folly in plays by O’Neill, Williams, and S hepard Conklin, Robert Brian, Ph.D. The Ohio State University, 1992 UMI 300 N. ZeebRd. Ann Arbor, MI 48106 THE PERFORMANCE OF FOLLY IN PLAYS BY O’NEILL, WILLIAMS, AND SHEPARD DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Robert Conklin, B.A., M.A. The Ohio State University 1 9 9 2 Dissertation Committee Approved by Katherine Burkman Patrick Mullen Stratos Constantinidis A d v iser English Family and Friends ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Dr. Katherine Burkman for impetus, guidance, and scrutiny. Drs. Pat Mullen and Stratos Constantinidis have provided valuable insight and commentary. I have relied on conversations with several good friends and thank them for their patience and good humor. My parents and sisters have also been very supportive. VITA January 15, 1960 Born, Youngstown, Ohio 1 9 8 2 B.A., Ohio State University 1 9 8 3 -1 9 8 6 Teaching Associate, Ohio State University 1 9 8 6 M.A., Ohio State University 1 9 8 7 -1 9 9 1 Teaching Associate, Ohio State University 1991-present L ectu rer, Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English Other Fields: Drama, American Literature, Folklore TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii V ITA iv INTRODUCTION: THE FOLKLORIST, THE FOOL, AND THE PATHWAYS OF FOLLY 1 CHAPTER PAGE I. O’NEILL'S FOOLS AT THE CENTER 2 4 "Talkin' Big" in The Emperor Jones 3 0 Medieval Folly and American Humor in Marco Millions 4 7 "Bughouse Bull" in The Iceman Cometh 7 0 II. WILLIAMS'S FOOLS WHO COME IN FROM THE COLD 9 9 “Mother Wit” and the Tall Tale in A Streetcar Named Desire 107 Commedia Dell’arte and the Memorate in The Rose Tattoo 129 Camino Real as Nonsense Play 149 v Ill. SHEPARD’S FOOLS CONTRA FOOLS 1 7 2 Boaster Performance in The Tooth of Crime 178 Trickster Brothers in True West 192 Finale Fooling in Fool for Love 201 CONCLUSION 2 1 6 BIBLIOGRAPHY 23 3 vi INTRODUCTION THE FOLKLORIST, THE FOOL, AND THE PATHWAYS OF FOLLY The theaters of Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Sam Shepard denote three separate but interfusing stages of American drama; each playwright serves as a benchmark of the historical development of American theater, from realism through postmodernism. All three playwrights experimented with new techniques and forms, each seeking to make, as William Carlos Williams might say, the experience of theater new. Borrowing expressionistic techniques from European models, O'Neill sought to escape the melodramatic conventions of nineteenth-century American drama. Williams, as a successor to O'Neill, deepened the theater patron's experience through use of expressionistic devices and "plastic" elements of staging. Just as O'Neill and Williams were major voices of their respective time periods, Shepard's is an influential contemporary voice, sounding out possibilities in the postmodern theater. In several dramas by each playwright, the figure of the fool plays a central part. For example, Jones, of O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, contains vestiges of the minstrel fool in his characterization; Alvaro, of Williams's The Rose Tattoo, plays a significant role as 1 2 commedia dell1 arte clown; Martin, of Shepard's Fool for Love, is a simpleton, a country bumpkin, forming an easy target for the sophisticated wit of the play's trickster Eddie. The presence of the fool in modern tragicomedy is not unusual; comedy, as Olson points out, always requires the presence of a well- or ill-intentioned fool or wit (52). In the modern social world, "Folly has become a general, opaque, vague and free-floating phenomenon" (Zijderveld 156); likewise, one would expect a similar diffusion of folly in modern drama, with a proliferation of characters playing foolish parts, as is the case in The Iceman Cometh. The tragic character seems obsolete, requiring redefinitions from Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams,1 while the fool seems to rule the stage. Unlike the Renaissance or Restoration fool who played a significant, yet marginal, part, the fool in several American dramas tends to take center stage. By looking at three icons of the popular theater and of academic discussion, one may discover historical patterns of the way the fool is used in American drama. lln his foreword to The Rose Tattoo, a comedy, Williams discusses the contemporary requirments for tragedy. In tragedies of a former order, a timeless quality informs the events on stage. To hold the attention of a modern audience, a tragedy must include "the diminishing influence of life's destroyer, time" (x). Williams suggests that "a certain foolery, a certain distortion toward the grotesque" may "solve the problem" (x). Miller disinherits the Aristotelian notion that tragedy belongs to the highly placed or noble individual. As long as a character is "intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality," he may be said to be tragic, even if an "average man" (6-7). The fool spins a revolving door of truth and illusion, substituting an invented reality for one more empirically based, calling into question the foundations of our existence. One looks for a common denominator of traits: dual consciousness, a certain "self division" (Willeford 34, 42); the espousal of irrationality, of nonsense; existence along the sidelines of dramatic action (Welsford xii; Willeford 49); social marginality, the fool as "under-dog" (Welsford 319). The fool is comically abnormal, a scapegoat of our own sense of inferiority (Welsford 318) or an entertainer of absurd possibilities, using carnival unlicense or verbal indirection to challenge the status quo. At bottom, the fool lacks sense. As Red Skeleton says, "I've got the sixth sense, but I don't have the other five" (qtd. in Willeford 28). Although writers speak of the fool in a universal sense: the "Fool or Clown" as "Comic Man" (Welsford xii), "the Fool—capital F" (Berlin 7), several types of fool may be delineated. Several commentators distinguish between the natural and artificial fool (Welsford 59; Willeford 10; Sypher 232): the natural fool is physically deformed or mentally abnormal, cruelly retained by patrons as a source of amusement, as supernatural protection against the Evil Eye, as preventative medicine against the ill effects of hubris; the artificial fool, imitating the behavior of the natural fool, is a self-conscious jester, an entertainer, a licensed critic of courtly idiosyncrasies. The court fool finds his parallel on the Elizabethan stage in the Shakespearean wise fool, Touchstone or Lear's mascot, who disguises truth with nonsense and acts as "an ironical commentator on the other persons and the action of the play” 4 (Goldsmith 31). Finally, the mythical trickster is a type of fool, a figure whose pranks make fools out of others but may backfire and reveal the trickster's own absurdity. He encapsulates a trait of the fool as boundary breaker, his function "to render possible, within the fixed bounds of what is permitted, an experience of what is not permitted" (Kerenyi 185). Like the fool, he possesses a dual nature, "half animal, half divine" (Jung 195). In literature, the trickster manifests himself as "picaro, the vice, the mountebank, the rogue" (Lindberg 9). In American history, Abe Lincoln played the trickster by pretending to be a natural fool, a country bumpkin, conning political opponents into thinking he was simpler minded than he was in reality (Blair 126-33). The natural fool, the artificial jester, the wise fool, the trickster—these four varieties of fool also appear in American literature. One may find representatives of these types in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn alone: the Duke and King as artificial jesters who play-act the semi-obscene Royal Nonesuch, and the Duke and King as con-artists who abuse the public welfare of the Wilks daughters for private gain; Huck as a natural fool, a "numskull" (1178), who cannot make-believe, along with Tom Sawyer, that a Sunday School picnic is really a caravan of "A-rabs" (1179), and Huck as a wise fool, a mouthpiece for the ironical commentary of Mark Tw ain.

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