University of Virginia Library

§ 4

In "Diff'rent" O'Neill has done both a greater and a lesser piece of work than in "Beyond the Horizon"—lesser in the extent of his canvas and in the restricted significance of his psychological problem; greater in its concentration, in its capitalization of inherent difficulties, in its disturbingly frank and realistic speech, and in the same keen and searching insight into human motives as applied to more elusive and unusual characters and situations.

It may seem contradictory to say

that a play loses in importance by its limited subject and gains by the playwright's skilful treatment of that subject, but the paradox is more apparent than actual. The greatest plays of all time have been written about the simple and primal problems of human life. But there is a fineness and precision of workmanship in miniature, as it were, which is not to be despised and which until now has been monopolized by European dramatists like Strindberg and Tchehoff and Wedekind. Such a detailed mastery of the nuances of life is probably the goal and the function of realism in the theater as well as in the other arts. Heretofore we have had no American playwright sufficiently sensitive to these back-waters of human experience or articulate enough in reporting his observations to bring to us an American counterpart of "The Father" or "The Sea-Gull" or "The Awakening of Spring." Among his varied talents, O'Neill has proved that he possesses this mastery of miniature, for "Diff'rent" is unquestionably the most expert, if not the most powerful and moving, example of realistic drama that we have produced in this country.

The very qualities which give "Diff'rent" its value make it almost impossible to convey any accurate idea of its substance or its peculiar merits. It is easy, of course, to point out the obstacle of the gap between the two acts, which ordinarily would break the tragedy into two separate plays; but it is not so easy to specify the shadings and contrasts of scene and language and character by which the author has made the interval serve the purposes of a deeper unity. These are the subtle privacies of the theater, as untranslatable in words as the modulations of the musician or the color harmonies of the painter. Such are the means, too, by which the inmost thoughts and feelings of these distraught figures are revealed with an intimacy that makes observation of them almost embarrassing.

Something of the same problem faced O'Neill in "The Straw," another realistic tragedy, with its setting in a sanatorium for consumptives. "The Straw" was written long before "Diff'rent," but though available in published form, it has reached the stage too recently to be considered here as acted and actable drama, the only way it is fair to judge works so manifestly intended for the actual stage as those of O'Neill. From a reading of the play, though, it seems to me that he was not yet so sure of his touch when he composed it. Like "Beyond the Horizon," it is far too long, and, unlike "Diff'rent," it seems to leave too little to the imagination, as even the realist must do if he is to make art out of photography. Still, the story of Eileen Carmody's unrequited love for her fellow-patient in the sanatorium, Stephen Murray, her wasting away and his realization, when it is too late to save her, that he, too, has come to love passionately, is a tale as deeply and pitifully moving as any O'Neill has yet devised. "Anna Christie" is still in guarded manuscript as this survey is made.