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    Bread And Butter: “Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”
    Bread And Butter: “Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”
    Bread And Butter: “Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”
    Ebook102 pages1 hour

    Bread And Butter: “Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”

    By Eugene O'Neill

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    Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York. Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons. He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure. However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest. His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter. Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status. His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays. Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism. In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStage Door
    Release dateJan 17, 2014
    ISBN9781783949496
    Bread And Butter: “Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.”
    Author

    Eugene O'Neill

    Eugene O’Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the US the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with international playwrights Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day’s Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list of the finest US plays in the twentieth century, alongside Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

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      Book preview

      Bread And Butter - Eugene O'Neill

      Bread And Butter by Eugene O’Neill

      Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in a hotel bedroom in what is now Times Square, New York.  Much of his childhood was spent in the comfort  of books at boarding schools whilst his actor father was on the road and his Mother contended with her own demons.  He spent only a year at University - Princeton - and various reasons have been given for his departure.

      However whatever his background and education denied or added to his development it is agreed amongst all that he was a playwright of the first rank and possibly America's greatest.  His introduction of realism into American drama was instrumental in its development and paved a path for many talents thereafter.  Of course his winning of both the Pulitzer Prize (4 times) and the Nobel Prize are indicative of his status.  His more famous and later works do side with the disillusionment and personal tragedy of those on the fringes of society but continue to build upon ideas and structures he incorporated in his early one act plays.

      Eugene O'Neill suffered from various health problems, mainly depression and alcoholism.  In the last decade he also faced a Parkinson's like tremor in his hands which made writing increasingly difficult. But out of such difficulties came plays of the calibre of  The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten.

      Eugene O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November 27, 1953, at the age of 65. As he was dying, he whispered his last words: I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room.

      Index Of Contents

      Characters

      Act I

      Act II

      Act II

      Act IV

      Eugene O’Neill – A Short Biography

      Eugene O’Neill – A Concise Bibliography

      CHARACTERS

      EDWARD BROWN, hardware merchant of Bridgetown, Conn.

      MRS. BROWN, his wife

      EDWARD, their son, a town alderman

      HARRY, their son

      JOHN, their son

      MARY, their daughter, a school-teacher

      BESSIE, their daughter, a stenographer

      RICHARD STEELE, dry goods merchant of Bridgetown

      MAUD, his daughter

      STEVE HARRINGTON, an art student

      BABE CARTER, an art student

      TED NELSON, a writer

      EUGENE GRAMMONT, Master of the Art School

      HELENE, a cloak and suit model

      ACT 1

      SCENE

      The sitting-room of Edward Brown's home in Bridgetown, Conn. To the left in the foreground a door leading into the dining room. Farther back a book-case and two windows looking out on the back yard. In the corner an expensive Victrola machine with cabinet for records. In the middle of the far side of the room is a huge old fashioned fire place with brass andirons. On either side of the fire place a window opening on the garden. In the right hand corner near the window a Morris chair. Farther forward a large doorway leading to the parlor with two sliding doors which are tightly drawn together, it being neither Sunday nor a holiday. Still farther in the foreground a smaller door opening on the hallway.

      Above the fire place a mantel on the center of which is a Mission clock with a bright brass pendulum. The remainder of the mantel is taken up by cigar boxes, a skull-and-cross-bones tobacco jar, a brass match safe, etc. A square table with four or five easy chairs grouped around it stands in the center of the large sober-colored rug which covers all but the edge of the hard-wood floor. On the table a stack of magazines and a newspaper, also an embroidered center-piece, the fringe of which can be seen peeking out from under the shining base of an electric reading lamp wired from the chandelier above. Two stiff looking chairs have been used to fill up floor spaces which must have seemed unduly bare to the mistress of the household. The walls are papered a dull blurred crimson. This monotony of color is at well-regulated intervals monotonously relieved by pretentiously stupid paintings of the Cattle-at-the-Stream, Sunrise-on-the-Lake variety. These daubs are imprisoned in ornate gilt frames.

      The room is sufficiently commonplace and ordinary to suit the most fastidious Philistine. Just at present it's ugliness is shamelessly revealed by the full downward glare of the reading lamp and the searching stare of all four bulbs on the chandelier.

      It is about eight o'clock on a hot evening in September of the present day. All the windows are open.

      Mr. and Mrs. Brown and their eldest son, Edward, are discovered seated by the table. Mrs. Brown is a small grey-haired, tired-looking woman about fifty years old, neatly dressed in black. Her expression is meek and when she speaks the tone of her voice apologizes for the unseemly indulgence.

      Brown himself is a tall, lean old man with a self-satisfied smile forever on his thin lips. He is smooth-shaven, a trifle bald, fifty-eight years old, and dressed as becomes a leading citizen.

      Edward is tall and stout, pudgy faced, dark-haired, small of eye, thick of lip and neck. He is dressed exactly as a small-town alderman should be dressed and is thirty years old.

      BROWN—(laying aside the newspaper he has been reading) I don't think much of that ad you've got in here, Ed.

      EDWARD—(solemnly deferential) What's the matter with it, Father? (with dignity) I wrote it myself.

      BROWN—(dryly) I know you did. I can see you sticking out all over it. It's too wordy and solemn—lifeless, in other words.

      EDWARD—My desire was to appeal to the better class of people in the town—the people whose patronage is really worth while and—

      BROWN—Stop right there. You're running a hardware store, not a cotillion. The people you've got to appeal to are the people who want something we've got and have the money to pay for it. No other distinction goes in our business.

      EDWARD—But I thought it would be an asset to get and hold the trade of the best people.

      BROWN—It isn't as much of an asset as getting and holding the trade of the working people. They pay cash. While the others—I'd never have to hire a collector if it wasn't for those same best people. Keep your social high-flying out of the store. It's no place for it. (with asperity) Remember I haven't retired yet and, although God knows I've earned it, I never will be able to if you mess things up this way. Please consult me after this before you appeal to the best people.

      EDWARD—(sullenly) I'll have the ad taken out tomorrow and you can write another yourself.

      BROWN—(more kindly) No, write it yourself. You know how to do it when you want to. (with a sly smile) Forget you're an alderman for a few minutes. Keep your speeches for the Board of Common Council. Remember your father was a working man and a farm hand, and all the education he's got beyond grammar school he picked up along the way. Write an ad which would appeal to him if he had five dollars and needed some kitchen utensils.

      EDWARD—(shocked—considering his father's acknowledgement of his humble origin a grave social error) You have risen beyond all such comparisons.

      BROWN—Don't be so sure of me. Well, don't forget about that ad. Anything else new?

      EDWARD—N—no; but there is another matter not directly connected with the store which I would like to talk over seriously with you.

      BROWN—Fire away. You've got the floor, Alderman.

      EDWARD—(ponderously) It's about John.

      BROWN—What's John done?

      EDWARD—Well, it's like this, Father. Harry and I, and I am sure the girls will agree with us, think it is rather hard John should so obviously be made the pet of the family. High school was good enough for any of us but you sent him through four years at Princeton. You have always told us you considered a college education more of a hindrance than a help to a man's success in life, and yet you allowed John to take up a classical course—a gentleman's course, as they call it, which will certainly be of little

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