петък, 14 февруари 2014 г.

EUGENE O’NEILL: GRAND MASTER OF MONOLOGUE IN AMERICAN DRAMA

EUGENE O’NEILL: GRAND MASTER OF MONOLOGUE IN AMERICAN DRAMA

Dr. Ksenia Kisselincheva

It is not an exaggeration that Eugene O’Neill is called “the grand master of American drama”. There is an auspicious detail in his biography. He was born in a hotel room on Broadway (where Times Square is now). The inscription on the memorial plate says: “Eugene O’Neill, 1888‑1953, America’s greatest playwright was born on this site…”.
I am going to speak more specifically of Eugene O’Neill’s contribution to monologue usage as well as about some parallels, showing the impact of Eugene O’Neill on successive generations of American and other English‑speaking playwrights.
Let me start with a general description of monologue as an expressive means in modern drama.
On the whole the role of monologue is overshadowed by the lively stage action and dialogue. It is not always thought of as indispensable for the dramatic mode. But, actually, monologue has its legitimate place and specific functions in the expressive arsenal of the theater. It is not accidental that the convention of monologue is present in the major stages from the evolution of the dramatic art. It has an especially respectful stature in ancient Greek, Renaissance, Restoration and Romantic theater.
The expansive experimentation with the expressive potential of the monologue mode in modern western drama is undoubtedly related to the inner psychological dimension of the conflict as a source of dramatic tension. There is hardly another means of expression which is better suited to give a more direct expression of the invisible inner drama as well as a more intimate penetration into it. The monologue is shedding bright light on the inner world of the dramatic characters. It follows in a retrospective or introspective point of view the modulations of the individual psycho-gram. The monologue gives the freedom to make a breakthrough in the socially ritualized framework of dialogue and action, giving an access to the innermost intimate layers in the soul of the character. They are deeply hidden and represent an universe of feelings, passions, thoughts, dreams and moods.
The monologue does not in the least infringe itself the perimeter of the dialogue. On the contrary, they only complement each other, stand in counterpoint to each other or merge one into another. The transitions might be marked down by a stage direction. The dialogic mode prevails whenever the dramatis personae aim at having an impact on one another. In contrast, the monologic mode takes the upper hand whenever the character appears to forget about other people’s presence and starts thinking aloud, or having a conversation with himself.
Alongside with the multi-dimensional self‑revelation of the characters, monologue performs other specific functions within the dramatic texture. It expands the scope of presentation in time and space. More specifically, it can render the imaginary journey of characters in the past and the future. It can also suggest indirectly of off‑the‑stage reality which has some relevance to the action. Another function the monologue can predict the future development of the action. Apart from this, the monologue often may give a compressed expression of the author’s message and attitude.
In the seemingly static plays of the modern theater which do not rely so much on the well-made plot, the monologic peaks shape up the highlights of the dramatic parabola. And last, but not least, the dimension of the monologue contributes significantly to creating a poetic atmosphere, making for the more convincing impact of the stylized dramatic reality. 
For the purpose of analysis of the drama a number of typological variants of monologue can be distinguished, depending on its content, like: monologue‑commentary, monologue‑confession, monologue-reckoning, monologue‑sermon, monologue‑climax, monologue‑message of the author. Such a typological division can only be provisional since in the vibrant dramatic texture these types of monologue never occur in pure form. They intercross and superimpose one upon another. But yet one of them might be assumed as defining shape of the monologue deviation from the flux of the dialogue.
I attempt at shedding light on the various types of monologue in contemporary American drama within a historical comparative perspective. The starting point of the study will be the late dramaturgy of Eugene O’Neill. Therein the prototypes of this ever productive trend in North American drama are contained. He manages to employ in full measure the expressive might of the monologue, creatively transforming and enriching what has been achieved before him by Ibsen, Strindberg and Checkov. In many aspects Eugene O’Neill turns into an inspiring model for the next generations of English speaking playwrights.
The slant towards using monologue prevails especially in his late plays, written on the eve and during World War 2. These monologues are, in one way or another, variations of the tragic and some time tragicomic discrepancy between reality and dream: a leitmotif running not only throughout Eugene O’Neill’s body of work. This eternally insolvable contradiction remains predominant throughout most of modern theater after Ibsen.
In “A Touch of a Poet” (1936) this discrepancy is projected in a number of soul self-revelations which take the shape of a confession or a reckoning. The ambivalent vision of the complex correlation between reality and illusions is emphasized in the ironic twists, paradoxes and grotesques. They are born out of the collision between the dialogic and monologue of the characters. The final monologue of the main hero Cornelius Melody marks the culmination point of his inner conflict. He makes a sincere and impartial reckoning of his life and comes to realize his delusive pretensions to return to real genuine love. Illusions are presented as destructive for the character’s personality and it is only through their painful realization, there is a chance for his rebirth and salvation. This treatment of the subject relates to a similar treatment in Ibsen’s “Doll’s House”.
Conversely, illusions are treated differently in “The Iceman Cometh” (1939). Therein they turn into the necessary protection of the characters against the insupportable reality. This is in tune with the treatment in Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck”. Both masters of modern drama are rather attracted by the manyfold embodiment of the human condition rather than by looking for one-sided solutions.
“Long Day’s Journey into Night” (1941) is considered a crowning achievement of O”Neill’s mastery. This static play could also be looked at as the author’s vision of the Eugene O’Neill’s own family fate. The monologues here are a journey from the present into the past, from the seeming to the essential, from illusions to crude reality. The mental conflict and its evolution find an exquisite expression in the sonata‑like transition of dialogue and monologue, presented at times in counterpoint contrast, at times - overlapping one into another. In Act Three, the main character Merry Tyrone (whose prototype is Eugene O’Neill’s mother) makes a confession prompting to her return to morphine addiction. This is a way to prepare the audience for the culmination point in Act Four, marked by the parallel confessional monologues of the four Tyrones.
The tragic suggestion of power of fate is further enhanced by other means of expression – audiovisual effects, symbolic configuration, pantomime and dialogue. The monologues turn from a confession into a reckoning of one’s life and reveal new aspects of the author’s point of view.
In “The Iceman Cometh” (1939) the expressive power of various versions of monologue is employed. The action is set in Harry Hope’s pub. He has sheltered a dozen of outsiders. They are eagerly expecting Hickman, a salesman, to celebrate once again Harry Hope’s birthday.  Hickman is known for his sense of humour and his addiction to booze. This time he comes sober and surprisingly he preaches the rejection of pipe dreams, which give meaning to the life of each and every one of the characters.
In a monologue-sermon in Act II, Hickman persuades them persistently that in order to find peace and happiness, they have to reject their illusions. The result of the “new religion” is that the characters are shocked and confused; they become aggressive to each other. The escalating underneath tension reaches its climax in the monologue self‑confession of Hickman in Act IV where Hickman admits to having killed his wife. Thus the monologue turns into a monologue-reckoning.
The fate of Parrit, another key character in the play, also follows the tragic pattern of crime and punishment. His final monologue-confession also turns into a painful reckoning - he has the guts to admit the treachery he has committed to his mother, dooming her to life imprisonment. He has the courage to take his own life ‑ he jumps off the fire escape - the retribution for his crime. This is an illustration of O’Neill’s tragic interpretation of the individual conflicts of the main characters - crime, pangs of conscience and retribution. The rest of the characters are too weak to face the horrible truth and they revert to their life sustaining pipe‑dreams.
This shocking outcome has been prepared by the implications of the dialogue, saturated with images of death. 
It was shown how tragic self-awareness inevitably leads to atonement. The monologues of Hickman and Parrit turn from a confession into a hard reckoning – they also signal the shocking denouement of their individual dramas.
“A Moon for the Misbegotten” (1943) is also connected to O’Neill’s family saga, which is rendered in a wider scope in “Long Day’s Journey into Night”. The main character is modeled after ONeill’s elder brother. One of the plot lines revolves around his unfulfilled love with the farmer’s daughter Josy. The inner conflict of both characters is projected in a counterpoint between the protective masks of their dialogue and the self-revelation of their monologues in Act IV. The melodramatic treatment is finely balanced by the tragicomic treatment - grotesque and farcical distortions alternate with ironic ambiguity.
If we turn to the impact of O’Neill on successive playwrights in American drama, there are striking parallels   between the late plays of O’Neill and some plays by Tennessee Williams.
The strong influence of O’Neill on the formation of Williams’ creative personality has been recurrently underlined by critics. Indeed among the playwrights of the postwar generation, T. Williams is closest in his disposition to the patriarch of native American theater. The line of continuity is quite perceptible, without verging on sheer imitation. There are many parallels to be traced between “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and “The Glass Menagerie” of Williams. Both plays are family dramas with a strong autobiographical touch where the past and the present oscillate between each other, embodying in a polyphonic manner the leitmotif of human hopes and failures. Also, the monologue plays a dominant part in both plays which is partially determined by the contemplative confessional vein of the content. Tom Wingfield, the main character in “The Glass Menagerie” is simultaneously a commentator and a participant in the action. In his address to the audience, he comments, analyses and shares his innermost thoughts. A whole range of expressive means is manifested in Tom’s monologue: the innermost core of his personality and his attitude to life is revealed; the narrow scope of the dramatic action is expanded; the future unraveling of the dramatic conflict is hinted at.
The most emotional confession belongs to Tom’s mother, Amanda Wingfield, in scene six, where she shares with her children her nostalgia for her lost youth, embodied in the   key image of the “daffodils”.  In the romantic idealization of the American South we can grasp Williams’s own nostalgia for the refined aristocratic culture of his native South, which is crumbling under the onslaught of the arrogant and upstart business of the North.
The end of the play is crowned by the monologue of Tom who expresses his revolt against the omniscient American dream, promoted like a social psychosis. It remains unattainable for millions of ordinary Americans like Tom, facing the menace of the Great depression and the encroaching world war.
The leitmotif of the tyrannical power of the past over the present from “Long Day’s …” is also elaborated in a number of plays by T. Williams. Another parallel between both authors concerns the main source of conflicting tensions. It stems from the clash between desires and fears, faith and betrayal, love of life and the urge to self‑destruction.
This perennial division and clash could be traced in the monologue in “Streetcar Named Desire” (1947). There is a certain ambiguity in the author’s attitude that impairs the tragic treatment. The retrospective effusions of Blanche Dubois echo the way the monologue is used  by O’Neill and Ibsen to give extra dimensions to the situation. The confession of Blanche before Mitch in scene nine marks the culmination of her inner conflict – the shocking revelations of her past inevitably lead to the catastrophic denouement. These revelations repel Mitch, her prospective husband,  and her last hope of some human happiness is crushed.
In “A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1955) the monologue intertwines with the dialogue and successively acquires either the form of a commentary, or a confession, or a sermon. The two main sources of the action are the characters of Maggie, Brick’s wife, and Big Daddy, Brick’s father. Maggie clashes with Kaspar and his wife Mae. They fight fiercely to get hold of the family property while Big Daddy is doomed to die of cancer. Throughout the play they have all been roasting on the fire of greed, hatred and alienation. The monologues are full of these destructive passions. This is another creative similarity between the attitude of both E. O’Neill and T. Williams. Maggie, the Cat, reminds of Abbie Cabot from “Desire Under the Elms” of O’Neill in her consistent calculating strategy. But Maggie is conceived predominantly in a melodramatic mold, she does not acquire the tragic stature of Abbie Cabot.
The delusions of life and of himself lead Willie Loman from “Death of a Salesman” (1949), a play by A. Miller, to a tragic fall from grace. He is reluctant to recognize and admit the false notions of himself and of his sons. This leads him to despair and to the fateful decision to commit suicide in order to give his sons a chance to profit from his life insurance and get a fresh start in business. Arthur Miller also employs expressionistic devices – he introduces in a imaginary way the ghost of Ben, Willie’s deceased brother. Ben’s sermons, tinged with a confessional tone, are actually addressed to Willie’s two sons. In his monologue, Ben stands for the value system of the conquerors of the Wild West.  But his words imply that the other side of individualism and self-reliance are ruthlessness and fraud. There is only a thin boundary between them which can be easily trespassed.  The strong inclination of A. Miller to use monologue and other expressionistic devices could be viewed in the context of his prominent creative reception to the expressionistic mode, found in the plays of the 20’s and 30’s of E. O’Neill and E. Rice.
The most unambiguous example of this trend in Miller’s artistic aspirations is to be found in “After the Fall” (1964). This is an autobiographical monodrama where the ongoing inner monologue is undercut by short dialogic scenes. The imaginary dialogue of the main character Quentin with the allegorical figure of the Listener is an example of using expressionistic devices to render Quentin’s inner drama.
The arena of conflicting clashes is once again the human soul. Its modulations vary from the analytical commentary through confessional insights to a long-suffering reckoning. The counterpoint juxtaposition of dialogue and monologue enhances the ambivalence and fluidity of the various points of view. The problems which flood Quentin’s “stream of consciousness” are more than a few and don’t have any easy solutions. They are projected not only by the textual layer of the play but also by other visual scenic devices – the symbolical setting, light effects, pantomime and stage configurations. After his painful meanderings Quentin comes to realize his personal and his “original sin” and he humbly hopes to achieve expiation through the cleansing elemental power of love.
The creative adoption of the artistic potential of monologue can be traced in other plays of the 60’s of the 20-th century, just to mention  “Two on the Swing” by William Gibson, “ The Typists” by Murray Shisgal and “The Influence of Gamma Rays on the Moon Marigolds” by Paul Zindell. In general, this trend asserts itself as artistically productive throughout the 60’s.
There is a certain crisis and decline in the theater on Broadway. The vibrant formative forces have already shifted to the off-Broadway theater. It is increasingly captivating a wider audience. The avantguarde‑theater is intensely experimental at the time of mass social movements like the Civil Rights movement. There is also an upsurge of underground culture like rock music and the hippies. In this context there arise and thrive the Living theater, the Open theater, the Café theater, happenings, regional theater and students’ theater. The new individual talents arise from this experimental spirit in the arts. For example, the Living Theater brings forth Edward Albee in whose distinctively individual style various elements  blend.
The failure of achieving meaningful communication among people accounts for the prevalence of the monologic mode over the dialogic one in “The Zoo Story“ (1959) of Albee which is his theatrical debut. This is a chamber drama for two actors. It is auspicious coincidence that its first US production took place in Provincetown Playhouse where O’Neill had his debut with “Bound East for Cardiff“ in 1916. This coincidence reminds of a number of profound parallels between “The Zoo Story“ of Albee and “Bound East for Cardiff“ of Eugene O’Neill. Both works are imaginative parables of alienation, inevitably leading to a spiritual impasse. Both main characters here Yank and Jerry perform a soul-searching hara-kiri in their desperate impulse to find their place in the chaos of being. In the context of the analogies, the contrasting differences stand out even better. First of all, the degree of alienation is different with Yank and Jerry. Yank from “East for Cardiff“ makes a death-bed confession before his mate, who responds with love and compassion. In contrast, Jerry from “The Zoo Story“ makes his confession before a stranger Peter in Central Park. This stranger does not want and is totally unable to understand him.  That is why the desired contact in Albee’s play is to be achieved only when Peter and Jerry correlate to each other as an assassin and his victim. Jerry’s monologic tirades imply his failed attempt at dialogue.
The monologic mode goes through a number of variations - from a retrospective introduction into Jerry’s life story it turns into a confession. This confession is finally transfigured into the parable of “the zoo story” where the author’s message is encapsulated. The climax of Jerry’s painful self-revelation is his failed attempt at befriending the neighbor’s dog. In the stage direction of the text, it is explicitly pointed out that the story is told with the presence of the audience in mind. E. Albee intends to get the audience emotionally involved and prepared for the unexpected bloody denouement.
The grotesque hyperbole of the ultimate degree of alienation definitely reminds to us of a similar drastic resolution of the situation in O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape” (1922). Yank, a ship’s stoker, who has lost his touch with others and the world at large, looks for a final refuge in the zoo. Having lost any hope of relating to the world, this Yank and Jerry from “The Zoo Story“ of Albee find the only escape in death. Yank dies in the mortal embrace of the gorilla in the zoo, while Jerry prods himself onto the knife, held in self-defense by Peter. In “The Zoo Story “ the dialogic exchange starts formally, then goes through the monologic failure in communication and ends in a menacing confrontation.
The motif of the crisis in human relations is at the center of Albee’s next play “Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf” (1961). As far as its structure is concerned, it follows the rhythm of a carnival ritual. The carefree gaiety of the games in Act One grows into a Walpurgis unbridledness in Act Two and ends in expiation and exorcism in Act Three. The psychological dramatic tension of this seemingly static play is charged by two sources - the understatement of the dialogic crossfire and the tidal wave of the monologic explosion.
The male characters, George and Nick are both lecturers in a small New England college. They impersonate two different intellectual and moral attitudes, which are put to the test in their confrontation. In his monologic sermon in Act II, George stigmatizes knowledge devoid of moral principles which intervenes into nature’s secrets in a purely rational manner. E. Albee’s own predilections can be glimpsed in this inspired lecture, the author is definitely siding with George, the old-fashioned moralizer.
Martha, his wife, has a retrospective speech which is immediately juxtaposed to George’s sermon. Her life story reveals her own philosophy – we can glimpse where her deep abhorrence for her husband stems from. This initial antagonism between them predetermines the rising conflict between them. They endorse contrasting attitudes to the American Dream. Martha has imbibed her attitude from her rich and successful father. The relations between husband and wife are built after Strindberg’s model – the battle between the two sexes is a ferocious battle for overpowering and submitting your partner, so love turns easily to hatred. The Walpurgis Night leads to a running high of passions, to provocations and deviations which sweep away any propriety in the dialogue. The parallel monologic projections of Nick and George rise to the stature of a poetic message, expressing Albee’s ironic  attitude to the pilgrims of the American dream. The painful shaking off of big and small illusions is the only chance for the characters to find a way back and to relate to each other in a meaningful way. This complex interpretation of Albee’s relates him to the tradition of O’Neill, Williams and Miller.
The monologic device takes a key place in Albee’s drama in the 60’s and 70’s of the 20th century which is strongly impacted by the European theater of the absurd (S. Beckett, H. Pinter). But E. Albee, similarly to O’Neill, does not adopt the posture of despair and helplessness before the absurdity of the human condition. They assert the possibility to confront reality and to resist it by making a choice of positive values, which can give meaning and dignity to individual life.
The shifts in the thematic and stylistic nature of the monologue in American theater from the last quarter of the 20th century reflect a certain trend of shoving off from the realistic and naturalistic tradition, associated with the work of O’Neill, Williams and Miller in the direction of the theater of the absurd – S. Beckett, H. Pinter, N. Simpson, E. Bond, etc. Also there is a definite trend to a more extensive involvement of elements from other genres ‑ musical, rock opera, pantomime as well as other arts like cinema, ballet, painting. This is another manifestation that theater, despite the invasion of cinema and the electronic media, has not exhausted the unique impact of its century-old magic.

Academic article in "Tradition and Innovation",  a book, published by Lambert Academic Publishing in September 2018   

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