Eugene O'Neill Life - World of Biography

THE INSPIRATION

Eugene had come in contact with the dramatist, Clayton Hamilton during that period. He encouraged O’Neill to write about the life he knew best – about the sea and sailors. Eugene started writing sea-plays. Thirst, Fog and Warnings are quite amateurish, but they do contain the power that marks O’Neill’s plays. There is marked improvement in the quality of work from the time of Bound East for Cardiff. Eugene O'Neill

AT HARVARD AND AFTERWARDS

It was Hamilton who persuaded the elder O’Neill to send his son to Harvard, to study under Professor George Pierce Baker at his 47 Workshop. James O’Neill also put up a thousand dollars for a collection of Eugene’s plays, published under the title Thirst. Besides Thirst, it contained The Web, Recklessness, Fog and Warnings.

Eugene left Harvard the following year and moved to Greenwich Village. He wrote several plays while in Harvard. Among them are The Second Engineer (or The Personal Equation), The Dear Doctor, The Sniper (The best play of this period), A Knock at the Door and Belshazzar. He continued writing for about seven hours daily. He saw his brother quite frequently during this period. James Jr, or Jamie as he was called, was a conformed alcoholic by now. Soon Eugene was to have his last but year-long relapse into the kind of life he had led before he entered the sanatorium. He stopped writing, and for the next 11 or 12 months his sole literary occupation was reciting Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven for the down-and-outers of the saloon he frequented.

BALANCING TWO WORLDS

Although O’Neill drank heavily when on a drinking spree, he always returned to writing whenever he recovered from its after-effects. He felt he ‘belonged’ to the world of saloons full of sea-fearing men and other derelicts. But when the time came for him to do something important and to take care of his health, he had the capacity to give up that world completely.

He soon expressed a desire to get out of the town, preferably live by the ocean and to start writing again. One of his saloon friends owned a shack at Truro, near Provincetown. Provincetown was a small fishing village at the tip of Cape Cod. His friend invited Eugene and soon he began writing. Marriage and its difficulties were still on his mind as reflected in Before Breakfast.

PROVINCETOWN PLAYERS

There was a group of artists and writers in Provincetown who were writing and staging plays, known as the Provincetown Players. His friend chanced to meet a couple of members of the group and they invited O’Neill to read his play. Eugene took Bound East for Cardiff. It was a great success with the group and it was the first Eugene O’Neill play to be produced. It was staged at the Wharf Theatre in Provincetown. The success of Bound East for Cardiff inspired Eugene to write. He wrote four more one-act plays – In the Zone, Ile, The Long Voyage Home and The Moon of the Caribbees. He also completed Before Breakfast, which the group wanted to produce in New York. After the staging of Before Breakfast, Fog and The Sniper were also produced. Eugene O’Neill had arrived on the theatrical scene.

By this time Provincetown was full of rumors of war. Eugene was arrested as a German spy by an over-enthusiastic town constable. Later on he was released. When war was declared against Germany, O’Neill enlisted for the Navy. But he was rejected. His father wanted him to join the Army but he was very much against it. After a very heavy bout of drinking he again returned to Provincetown from New London. As was the pattern, he again stopped drinking and became a workaholic. He was soon to meet a woman who was to become his second wife. Agnes Boulton Burton was a widow with a daughter. Their year of courtship was perhaps the happiest in Eugene’s life. The Cross is Made and The Dreamy Kid were written in this period. Eugene began working on Beyond the Horizon, which later won him his first Pulitzer Prize. Soon Eugene and Agnes went to live in West Point Pleasant near Barneqat Bay in New Jersey. It was the Boulton’s summerhouse. O’Neill spent his time between attending rehearsals of his play in New York and writing The Straw. Most of O’Neill’s plays reflected his state of mind, and so did The Straw. His marital happiness is brought out in this play. It is one of the few plays with a strain of hope. Life was good to O’Neill. Six of his one-act plays were brought out in a book form.

SUCCESS EVERYWHERE

By now, O’Neill’s literary fortunes were on the rise. John D Williams gave a contract for the production of Beyond the Horizon and an optio Eugene O'Neill n on all his future plays. Meanwhile O’Neill had already begun work on one of his great and enduring successes, Chris Christophersen (later renamed Anna Christie and finally made into a musical comedy New Girl in Town.)

In the winter of 1918, James O’Neill met with an accident. Although he was not hurt badly, the 73 year old ‘Count’ never recovered fully. Jamie and Eugene both rushed to New York and stayed there to be near their father. Soon after Agnes learned that she was pregnant. Knowing Eugene, she did not tell him the news immediately. She wanted him to finish his work. And when she did tell him – his first reaction was that the doctor had made a mistake and his second reaction was silence.

GIFT FROM FATHER

When Eugene and Agnes went to Provincetown for the summer, they got a surprise. The elder O’Neill had purchased Peaked Hill Cottage for his son. Eugene was delighted with his first home. Soon he and Agnes moved into Provincetown proper. This was a trying period as he had three plays under contract and none seemed to be going into production. On October 30, 1919. Agnes gave birth to Shane Rudraighe O’Neill. It is no wonder O’Neill worked on a play Gold during this period.

THE PULITZER PRIZE

When Beyond the Horizon was put into rehearsal, O’Neill went to New York. He saw a good deal of his parents and was beginning to come to terms with his father. The father’s pride for his son knew no bounds when Beyond the Horizon opened for matinee performance. Soon O’Neill received the news that he had won the Pulitzer Prize.

ILL-FATE

Although it was one of the happiest periods of Eugene’s life, he firmly believed that one always has to pay for success. He was not wrong. First his mother fell ill with the flu and Eugene caught it from her. Bed ridden and alone in New York, he worried about his wife and son. Just as mother and son were recovering, James suffered a stroke. Agnes too was finding it difficult to live alone in Provincetown and soon she fell ill and was bedridden. Eugene hurried to her side leaving final rehearsals of Chris. Chris Christopherson was a failure. Eugene’s sense of doom deepened, as Agnes remained bedridden. Meanwhile word came from New York that the doctors were considering surgery for his father, but later on it was ruled out as nothing good would come out of it. The Straw was to be staged, but it was to be tried out with a few matinees at Boston. There was a lot of unpleasantness between O’Neill and the producer for the production of the play and finally it was dropped.

Around this time James O’Neill took a turn for the worse. He recovered in a hospital and went to New London. He had hardly settled in New London when he had to be hospitalized again. Jamie and Eugene rushed to New London. Agnes also joined them. Soon James slipped into unconsciousness. It was a harrowing summer for the whole family, with both the brothers, Jamie and Eugene doing a great deal of drinking. James O’Neill died on August 10, 1920.