The Effect of Dramatic Concept in the Non-realistic Plays of Eugene O'Neill and Thornton Wilder by Stella Kent B.A. (Hons.) submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Fr\_4\1,c:L) UNIVERSITY OF TASMANIA HOBART November, 1981. cig 3 C-0"N'N4e-/.1.2-c't (1\CLArc,(..?1A-p,i, CONTENTS CHAPTER on Truth from Make-believe 1. CHAPTER TWO The Structure of the Plays 13. CHAPTER THREE Functions of the Characters 43. CHAPTER FOUR The Effects of What We Hear 73. CHAPTER FIVE The Effects of What We See 100. CHAPTER SIX What the Plays Achieved 129. This thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other higher degree or graduate diploma in azry university and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person, except when due reference is made in the text of the thesis. Stella Kent ABSTRACT Both Eugene O'Neill and Thornton Wilder reacted against the naturalism of turn-of-the-century drama, believing that non- realistic methods could be more effectively used to present the truth. Influenced by recent experiments in Europe, and deriving inspiration from Greek, Elizabethan and Oriental models, the playwrights searched for novel techniques to wake up the audience and shake it into awareness of man's universal and contemporary situation. This study of twenty-six plays considers the success of these devices. A discussion of the structure of the plays in Chapter Two explores O'Neill's use of compression, parallels, and repetit- ion to give the plays rhythm and force and his selection of episodes which give heightened significance to the action which is often played out against a large background. Similarly Wilder's concentration on symbolic moments, the deliberately jerky movement of many plays and the telescoping of time give his characters and action a cosmological and metaphysical framework. In Chapter Three a study is made of the effect of characters who are seen by the authors as only part of the whole play, and are often used to illustrate only one or two human traits. Representational and clich characters, personalities from history and myth, the personification of animals and places, and characters who address the audience strengthen Wilder's reminder to us that a play is a piece of fiction. O'Neill's development of the mask is traced with its various purposes of showing inner personality, conflict within the characters, lack of individuality, and for its sheer dramatic power. Chapters Four and Five analyse the dramatists! use of sound and visual effects. Although aware that great language was not possible in the early twentieth century, O'Neill relisheavily on rhythm, silence and pauses, the use of speech sounds, laughter, music and sound effects to give emotional impact to the action. The asides of Strange Interlude were a unique experiment which allowed layers of conflicting emotions to be shown.lalder's monologues and casual speech, lightened by humour and platitudes,make his philosophical concerns more palatable to the audience. Both authors were aware that stage- positioning, movement, sets, mime, dance, frozen posture, colour, lighting and costume could disencumber the dialogue, focus our attention and create atmosphere. The last Chapter attempts to assess what the playwrights achiev- ed with their experiments, both in terms of theirsuccess in performance and reading, and in terms of the influence exerted on a later generation of writers. American drama owes a sig- nificant debt to both authors for liberating it from a stale realistic tradition. CHAPTER 1 TRUTH FROM MAKE-BELIEVE Writing against the background of representational accuracy in theatre established by Ibsen, Shaw and other playwrights of the turn of the century, Eugene O'Neill and, to some extent, Thornton Wilder found a large audience of critics and theatre- goers who judged the success of their plays according to criteria established by more naturalistic performances. Although both dramatists argued that the precedents for unrealistic performance were numerous, referring to Greek, Elizabethan and Noh drama in their defence, it is hardly surprising that both playwrights also appeared quite content to follow more recent conventions such as O'Neill's continued use of what Georg Fuchs 1 describes as the "peep-show" illusory proscenium arch stage, leaving it for others later in the century to re-introduce the possibilities offered by thrust and circular stages. On the other hand reaction against more recent trends sometimes plunged the playwrights into troubled waters. O'Neill's defiant embrace of the mask technique in The Great God Brown for example, resulted in a confusing play. Nonetheless, O'Neill and Wilder's most valuable contribution to the drama was to question the recent concept that the function of plays was to present a world of "make-believe". On the contrary they saw that the very opposite, "a disengagement from belier2 to use Susanne Langer's term, a disengagement which liberated the audience from relating in a very practical way to the object, lay at the heart of aesthetic 4 experience. What Schiller called "Schein" 3 and Jung referred to as "semblance" may be as vivid as reality, and can in fact present the illusion of reality more effectively than an imitation of reality itself. As the painter Constable wrote: 1. Georg Fuchs, The Revolution in the Theatre: Conclusions Concerning the Munich Artists' Theatre, condensed and adapted by Constance Conner Kuhn, New York, 1959, p. 20. 2. Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form, New York, 1953, p. 49. 3. Ibid., p. 49. 4. Ibid., p. 48. 2. 1 "The art pleases by reminding, not by deceiving." Of all the arts, the representation which is theatre has particular problems in attempting to mimic the real world. Gordon Craig, whose ideas significantly influenced the young O'Neill, mocked the unnaturalness of witnessing contemporary performances, his complaints ranging from the experience of actually going to the theatre: "Is it not unnatural for us to wait till night to enjoy an art? Is it not unnatural to sit two and a half long hours on one seat - a 2 ticketed seat, a numbered seat, crushed in on all sides by strangers?" to objections about the performance itself: "The rouge is not dabbed on artificially as a frank artifice - it pretends to be natural nowadays. 3 How great a fault!" Similar dissatisfaction was common in the early twentieth century. AnseIm Feuerbach said: It hate the modern theatre because I have sharp eyes and cannot be 4 fooled by pasteboard and cosmetics. I despise the absurdity of its decor." Nor were these critics any happier with the use of real nature on stage, realising that this would paradoxically appear uninteresting and even untrue. Sarcey declared in 1916: "I hold that reality if presented on stage truthfully would appear false to the monster with the thousand heads which we call the public."5 "The perfection of naturalism by mechanical means has developed the peep show ad absurdum", wrote Georg Fuchs, adding an interesting prediction: 1. E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Representation, New York, 1960, p. 38. 2. Gordon E. Craig, The Theatre Advancing, New York, 1963, p. 42. 3. Ibid., p. 43. 4. Fuchs, p. 25. 5. Allardyce Nicoll, The Theory of Drama, London, 1937, p. 27. 3. "The conventional theatre itself has proved to us that we are encumbered with an apparatus that prohibits all healthy growth. This whole sham ,1 world of cardboard, twine, canvas, and gilt is ripe for destruction." These reactions to the staging of the time were in fact no different from Coleridge's realisation a century earlier: "The true stage-illusion in this and in all other things consists - not in the mind's judging it to be a forest, but in its remission of the judgement that it is not a forest ... For not only are we never absolutely deluded, or anything like it, but the attempt to cause the highest delusion possible to beings in their senses sitting in a theatre, is a gross fault, incident only to low minds, which, feeling that they cannot affect the heart or head 2 permanently, endeavour to call forth the momentary affections." Neither O'Neill nor Wilder was interested in deluding an audience; both wanted something more than momentary affections. As American writers, both had a barren national tradition on which to draw. Although popular with a largely undiscriminating audience, American theatre had sprung, as James Rosenberg puts it, "full-blown from the brow of British drama at a time when 3 the British drama was at its lowest ebb in history". Towards the end of the nineteenth century the stage was dominated by melodramas, many of them either imported or imitative of British models, in spite of some previous attempts by American authors to produce a more native drama based on folk heroes like Rip Van Winkle. Theatrical performance was distinguished by the use of the new box-set, spectacular stage effects (helped by the new possibilities of gas and later electrical stage lighting), and the emergence of the dominating actor or actor-director who became the idol of the day. O'Neill himself grew up with such a pot-boiler, his father James having already 1. Fuchs, p. 37. 2. Nicoll, p. 35. 3. James Rosenberg, "European Influences", Stratford Upon Avon Studies 10: American Theatre, London, 1967, p. 53. 4. performed the role of Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo five years before Eugene was born. Consciously the playwright rejected the romanticism of the play and all it stood for which Raleigh sums up as "melodrama, sentiment easy popularity, stage 1 tricks, cardboard characters [and] stale rhetoric" ; unconsciously, as many critics point out, O'Neill's own plays are full of such effects, combined with more searching themes perhaps, but certainly these devices are used for their dramatic impact.