DRAMA for Students
National Advisory Board Jennifer Hood: Young Adult/Reference Librarian, Cumberland Public Library, Cumberland, Rhode Island. Certified teacher, Rhode Island. Member of the New England Library Association, Rhode Island Library Association, and the Rhode Island Educational Media Association. Christopher Maloney: Head Reference Librarian, Ocean City Free Public Library, Ocean City, New Jersey. Member of the American Library Association and the New Jersey Library Association. Board member of the South Jersey Library Cooperative. Kathleen Preston:Head of Reference, New City Library, New City, New York. Member of the American Library Association. Received B.A. and M.L.S. from University of Albany. Patricia Sarles: Library Media Specialist, Canarsie
High School, Brooklyn, New York. Expert Guide in Biography/Memoir for the website About.com (http://biography.about.com). Author of short stories and book reviews. Received B.A., M.A. (anthropology), and M.L.S. from Rutgers University. Heidi Stohs: Instructor in Language Arts, grades 10–12, Solomon High School, Solomon, Kansas. Received B.S. from Kansas State University; M.A. from Fort Hays State University. Barbara Wencl: Library Media Specialist, Como Park Senior High School, St. Paul, Minnesota. Teacher of secondary social studies and history, St. Paul, Minnesota. Received B.S. and M.Ed. from University of Minnesota; received media certification from University of Wisconsin. Educator and media specialist with over 30 years experience.
DRAMA for Students Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Dramas
Volume 17 David Galens, Project Editor Foreword by Carole L. Hamilton
Drama for Students, Volume 17
Project Editor David Galens
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Table of Contents GUEST FOREWORD
“The Study of Drama” Carole L. Hamilton . . . . . . . . . vii INTRODUCTION
. . . . . . . . . . ix
LITERARY CHRONOLOGY . . . . . . . xiii
. . . . . . . . xv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . . . . . . . xix
84, CHARING CROSS ROAD
Helene Hanff . . . . . . . . . . .
1
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI
John Webster . . . . . . . . . . . 20 ELECTRA
Hugo von Hofmannsthal . . . . . . . 44 GOLDEN BOY
Clifford Odets . . . . . . . . . . . 75 JOE TURNER’S COME AND GONE
August Wilson . . . . . . . . . .
100
MISS LULU BETT
Zona Gale
. . . . . . . . . . .
126
ORPHEUS DESCENDING
Tennessee Williams . . . . . . . .
160
OVERTONES
Alice Gerstenberg
. . . . . . . .
181
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THE PETRIFIED FOREST
Robert E. Sherwood
. . . . . . . . 192
THE SISTERS ROSENSWEIG
Wendy Wasserstein
. . . . . . . . 211
THE SUBJECT WAS ROSES
Frank D. Gilroy . . . . . . . . . . 231 SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO
Dore Schary . . . . . . . . . . . 251 THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE
William Saroyan . . . . . . . . . . 274 . . . . 301
GLOSSARY OF LITERARY TERMS
CUMULATIVE AUTHOR/TITLE INDEX . . 335 NATIONALITY/ETHNICITY INDEX
. . . 341
SUBJECT/THEME INDEX . . . . . . . 345
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The Study of Drama We study drama in order to learn what meaning others have made of life, to comprehend what it takes to produce a work of art, and to glean some understanding of ourselves. Drama produces in a separate, aesthetic world, a moment of being for the audience to experience, while maintaining the detachment of a reflective observer. Drama is a representational art, a visible and audible narrative presenting virtual, fictional characters within a virtual, fictional universe. Dramatic realizations may pretend to approximate reality or else stubbornly defy, distort, and deform reality into an artistic statement. From this separate universe that is obviously not “real life” we expect a valid reflection upon reality, yet drama never is mistaken for reality—the methods of theater are integral to its form and meaning. Theater is art, and art’s appeal lies in its ability both to approximate life and to depart from it. For in intruding its distorted version of life into our consciousness, art gives us a new perspective and appreciation of life and reality. Although all aesthetic experiences perform this service, theater does it most effectively by creating a separate, cohesive universe that freely acknowledges its status as an art form. And what is the purpose of the aesthetic universe of drama? The potential answers to such a question are nearly as many and varied as there are plays written, performed, and enjoyed. Dramatic texts can be problems posed, answers asserted, or
moments portrayed. Dramas (tragedies as well as comedies) may serve strictly “to ease the anguish of a torturing hour” (as stated in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream)—to divert and entertain–or aspire to move the viewer to action with social issues. Whether to entertain or to instruct, affirm or influence, pacify or shock, dramatic art wraps us in the spell of its imaginary world for the length of the work and then dispenses us back to the real world, entertained, purged, as Aristotle said, of pity and fear, and edified—or at least weary enough to sleep peacefully. It is commonly thought that theater, being an art of performance, must be experienced—seen—in order to be appreciated fully. However, to view a production of a dramatic text is to be limited to a single interpretation of that text—all other interpretations are for the moment closed off, inaccessible. In the process of producing a play, the director, stage designer, and performers interpret and transform the script into a work of art that always departs in some measure from the author’s original conception. Novelist and critic Umberto Eco, in his The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Indiana University Press, 1979), explained, “In short, we can say that every performance offers us a complete and satisfying version of the work, but at the same time makes it incomplete for us, because it cannot simultaneously give all the other artistic solutions which the work may admit.”
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Thus Laurence Olivier’s coldly formal and neurotic film presentation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet (in which he played the title character as well as directed) shows marked differences from subsequent adaptations. While Olivier’s Hamlet is clearly entangled in a Freudian relationship with his mother Gertrude, he would be incapable of shushing her with the impassioned kiss that Mel Gibson’s mercurial Hamlet (in director Franco Zeffirelli’s 1990 film) does. Although each of performances rings true to Shakespeare’s text, each is also a mutually exclusive work of art. Also important to consider are the time periods in which each of these films was produced: Olivier made his film in 1948, a time in which overt references to sexuality (especially incest) were frowned upon. Gibson and Zeffirelli made their film in a culture more relaxed and comfortable with these issues. Just as actors and directors can influence the presentation of drama, so too can the time period of the production affect what the audience will see. A play script is an open text from which an infinity of specific realizations may be derived. Dramatic scripts that are more open to interpretive creativity (such as those of Ntozake Shange and Tomson Highway) actually require the creative improvisation of the production troupe in order to complete the text. Even the most prescriptive scripts (those of Neil Simon, Lillian Hellman, and Robert Bolt, for example), can never fully control the actualization of live performance, and circumstantial events, including the attitude and receptivity of the audience, make every performance a unique event. Thus, while it is important to view a production of a dramatic piece, if one wants to understand a drama fully it is equally important to read the original dramatic text. The reader of a dramatic text or script is not limited by either the specific interpretation of a given production or by the unstoppable action of a moving spectacle. The reader of a dramatic text may
discover the nuances of the play’s language, structure, and events at their own pace. Yet studied alone, the author’s blueprint for artistic production does not tell the whole story of a play’s life and significance. One also needs to assess the play’s critical reviews to discover how it resonated to cultural themes at the time of its debut and how the shifting tides of cultural interest have revised its interpretation and impact on audiences. And to do this, one needs to know a little about the culture of the times which produced the play as well as the author who penned it. Drama for Students supplies this material in a useful compendium for the student of dramatic theater. Covering a range of dramatic works that span from 442 BC to the 1990s, this book focuses on significant theatrical works whose themes and form transcend the uncertainty of dramatic fads. These are plays that have proven to be both memorable and teachable. Drama for Students seeks to enhance appreciation of these dramatic texts by providing scholarly materials written with the secondary and college/university student in mind. It provides for each play a concise summary of the plot and characters as well as a detailed explanation of its themes. In addition, background material on the historical context of the play, its critical reception, and the author’s life help the student to understand the work’s position in the chronicle of dramatic history. For each play entry a new work of scholarly criticism is also included, as well as segments of other significant critical works for handy reference. A thorough bibliography provides a starting point for further research. This series offers comprehensive educational resources for students of drama. Drama for Students is a vital book for dramatic interpretation and a valuable addition to any reference library. Source: Eco, Umberto, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts, Indiana University Press, 1979.
Carole L. Hamilton Author and Instructor of English Cary Academy Cary, North Carolina
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Introduction Purpose of the Book The purpose of Drama for Students (DfS) is to provide readers with a guide to understanding, enjoying, and studying dramas by giving them easy access to information about the work. Part of Gale’s “For Students” literature line, DfS is specifically designed to meet the curricular needs of high school and undergraduate college students and their teachers, as well as the interests of general readers and researchers considering specific plays. While each volume contains entries on “classic” dramas frequently studied in classrooms, there are also entries containing hard-to-find information on contemporary plays, including works by multicultural, international, and women playwrights. The information covered in each entry includes an introduction to the play and the work’s author; a plot summary, to help readers unravel and understand the events in a drama; descriptions of important characters, including explanation of a given character’s role in the drama as well as discussion about that character’s relationship to other characters in the play; analysis of important themes in the drama; and an explanation of important literary techniques and movements as they are demonstrated in the play. In addition to this material, which helps the readers analyze the play itself, students are also provided with important information on the literary and historical background informing each work.
This includes a historical context essay, a box comparing the time or place the drama was written to modern Western culture, a critical essay, and excerpts from critical essays on the play. A unique feature of DfS is a specially commissioned critical essay on each drama, targeted toward the student reader. To further aid the student in studying and enjoying each play, information on media adaptations is provided (if available), as well as reading suggestions for works of fiction and nonfiction on similar themes and topics. Classroom aids include ideas for research papers and lists of critical sources that provide additional material on each drama.
Selection Criteria The titles for each volume of DfS were selected by surveying numerous sources on teaching literature and analyzing course curricula for various school districts. Some of the sources surveyed included: literature anthologies; Reading Lists for College-Bound Students: The Books Most Recommended by America’s Top Colleges; textbooks on teaching dramas; a College Board survey of plays commonly studied in high schools; a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) survey of plays commonly studied in high schools; St. James Press’s International Dictionary of Theatre; and Arthur Applebee’s 1993 study Literature in the Secondary School: Studies of Curriculum and Instruction in the United States.
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Input was also solicited from our advisory board, as well as from educators from various areas. From these discussions, it was determined that each volume should have a mix of “classic” dramas (those works commonly taught in literature classes) and contemporary dramas for which information is often hard to find. Because of the interest in expanding the canon of literature, an emphasis was also placed on including works by international, multicultural, and women playwrights. Our advisory board members—educational professionals— helped pare down the list for each volume. If a work was not selected for the present volume, it was often noted as a possibility for a future volume. As always, the editor welcomes suggestions for titles to be included in future volumes.
How Each Entry Is Organized Each entry, or chapter, in DfS focuses on one play. Each entry heading lists the full name of the play, the author’s name, and the date of the play’s publication. The following elements are contained in each entry: • Introduction: a brief overview of the drama which provides information about its first appearance, its literary standing, any controversies surrounding the work, and major conflicts or themes within the work. • Author Biography: this section includes basic facts about the author’s life, and focuses on events and times in the author’s life that inspired the drama in question. • Plot Summary: a description of the major events in the play. Subheads demarcate the play’s various acts or scenes. • Characters: an alphabetical listing of major characters in the play. Each character name is followed by a brief to an extensive description of the character’s role in the play, as well as discussion of the character’s actions, relationships, and possible motivation. Characters are listed alphabetically by last name. If a character is unnamed—for instance, the Stage Manager in Our Town—the character is listed as “The Stage Manager” and alphabetized as “Stage Manager.” If a character’s first name is the only one given, the name will appear alphabetically by the name. Variant names are also included for each character. Thus, the nickname “Babe” would head the listing for a character in Crimes of the Heart, but below that listing would
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be her less-mentioned married name “Rebecca Botrelle.” • Themes: a thorough overview of how the major topics, themes, and issues are addressed within the play. Each theme discussed appears in a separate subhead, and is easily accessed through the boldface entries in the Subject/Theme Index. • Style: this section addresses important style elements of the drama, such as setting, point of view, and narration; important literary devices used, such as imagery, foreshadowing, symbolism; and, if applicable, genres to which the work might have belonged, such as Gothicism or Romanticism. Literary terms are explained within the entry, but can also be found in the Glossary. • Historical Context: this section outlines the social, political, and cultural climate in which the author lived and the play was created. This section may include descriptions of related historical events, pertinent aspects of daily life in the culture, and the artistic and literary sensibilities of the time in which the work was written. If the play is a historical work, information regarding the time in which the play is set is also included. Each section is broken down with helpful subheads. • Critical Overview: this section provides background on the critical reputation of the play, including bannings or any other public controversies surrounding the work. For older plays, this section includes a history of how the drama was first received and how perceptions of it may have changed over the years; for more recent plays, direct quotes from early reviews may also be included. • Criticism: an essay commissioned by DfS which specifically deals with the play and is written specifically for the student audience, as well as excerpts from previously published criticism on the work (if available). • Sources: an alphabetical list of critical material used in compiling the entry, with full bibliographical information. • Further Reading: an alphabetical list of other critical sources which may prove useful for the student. It includes full bibliographical information and a brief annotation.
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In addition, each entry contains the following highlighted sections, set apart from the main text as sidebars: • Media Adaptations: if available, a list of important film and television adaptations of the play, including source information. The list may also include such variations on the work as audio recordings, musical adaptations, and other stage interpretations. • Topics for Further Study: a list of potential study questions or research topics dealing with the play. This section includes questions related to other disciplines the student may be studying, such as American history, world history, science, math, government, business, geography, economics, psychology, etc. • Compare and Contrast: an “at-a-glance” comparison of the cultural and historical differences between the author’s time and culture and late twentieth century or early twenty-first century Western culture. This box includes pertinent parallels between the major scientific, political, and cultural movements of the time or place the drama was written, the time or place the play was set (if a historical work), and modern Western culture. Works written after 1990 may not have this box. • What Do I Read Next?: a list of works that might complement the featured play or serve as a contrast to it. This includes works by the same author and others, works of fiction and nonfiction, and works from various genres, cultures, and eras.
Other Features DfS includes “The Study of Drama,” a foreword by Carole Hamilton, an educator and author who specializes in dramatic works. This essay examines the basis for drama in societies and what drives people to study such work. The essay also discusses how Drama for Students can help teachers show students how to enrich their own reading/ viewing experiences. A Cumulative Author/Title Index lists the authors and titles covered in each volume of the DfS series. A Cumulative Nationality/Ethnicity Index breaks down the authors and titles covered in each volume of the DfS series by nationality and ethnicity.
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A Subject/Theme Index, specific to each volume, provides easy reference for users who may be studying a particular subject or theme rather than a single work. Significant subjects from events to broad themes are included, and the entries pointing to the specific theme discussions in each entry are indicated in boldface. Each entry may include illustrations, including photo of the author, stills from stage productions, and stills from film adaptations, if available.
Citing Drama for Students When writing papers, students who quote directly from any volume of Drama for Students may use the following general forms. These examples are based on MLA style; teachers may request that students adhere to a different style, so the following examples may be adapted as needed. When citing text from DfS that is not attributed to a particular author (i.e., the Themes, Style, Historical Context sections, etc.), the following format should be used in the bibliography section: “Our Town.” Drama for Students. Eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 227–30.
When quoting the specially commissioned essay from DfS (usually the first piece under the “Criticism” subhead), the following format should be used: Fiero, John. Critical Essay on Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992. Drama for Students. Eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 1998. 247–49.
When quoting a journal or newspaper essay that is reprinted in a volume of DfS, the following form may be used: Rich, Frank. “Theatre: A Mamet Play, Glengarry Glen Ross.” New York Theatre Critics’ Review Vol. 45, No. 4 (March 5, 1984), 5–7; excerpted and reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 2, eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato (Detroit: Gale, 1998), pp. 51–53.
When quoting material reprinted from a book that appears in a volume of DfS, the following form may be used: Kerr, Walter. “The Miracle Worker,” in The Theatre in Spite of Itself. Simon & Schuster, 1963. 255–57; excerpted and reprinted in Drama for Students, Vol. 2, eds. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato (Detroit: Gale, 1998), pp. 123–24.
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We Welcome Your Suggestions The editor of Drama for Students welcomes your comments and ideas. Readers who wish to suggest dramas to appear in future volumes, or who have other suggestions, are cordially invited to contact the editor. You may contact the editor via Email at:
[email protected]. Or write to the editor at: Editor, Drama for Students The Gale Group 27500 Drake Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48331–3535
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Literary Chronology 1580: John Webster is born in London, England, probably in 1579 or 1580. Like most of the facts about Webster’s life, his birthdate is not recorded in any documents. 1623: John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is published. 1634: John Webster dies. Though no records of his death have been found, references to Webster in the work of other writers seem to indicate that he died no later than late 1634. 1874: Hugo von Hofmannsthal is born on February 1 in Vienna, Austria. 1874: Zona Gale is born on August 26 in Portage, Wisconsin, a small-town setting to which she frequently returns in her novels and plays. 1885: Alice Gerstenberg is born on August 2 in Chicago, Illinois. 1896: Robert Emmet Sherwood is born in New Rochelle, New York.
1908: William Saroyan (also known as Sirak Goryan) is born on August 31 in Fresno, California. 1911: Tennessee Williams (born Thomas Lanier Williams) is born on March 26 in Columbus, Mississippi. 1915: Alice Gerstenberg’s Overtones is first produced. 1916: Helene Hanff is born on April 15 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1920: Zona Gale’s Miss Lulu Bett is published. 1921: Zona Gale is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama for Miss Lulu Bett. 1925: Frank D. Gilroy is born on October 13 in the Bronx, New York. 1929: Hugo von Hofmannsthal dies from a heart attack on July 15 at his home in Rodaun, near Vienna, Austria. 1935: Robert E. Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest is first performed. 1937: Clifford Odets’s Golden Boy is published.
1903: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Electra is first performed.
1938: Zona Gale dies of pneumonia on December 27 in Chicago.
1905: Dore Schary is born on August 31 in Newark, New Jersey.
1939: William Saroyan’s The Time of Your Life is first produced.
1906: Clifford Odets is born on July 18 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1940: William Saroyan is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama for The Time of Your Life.
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1945: August Wilson (born Frederick August Kittel) is born on April 27 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1970: Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road is published.
1950: Wendy Wasserstein is born on October 8 in Brooklyn, New York.
1972: Alice Gerstenberg dies on July 28 in Chicago.
1955: Robert E. Sherwood dies from a heart attack in New York City. 1957: Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending is first produced. 1958: Dore Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello is first produced. 1963: Clifford Odets dies on August 14 in Los Angeles.
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1980: Dore Schary dies from cancer on July 7 in New York City. 1981: William Saroyan dies from cancer on May 18 in Fresno, California. He is cremated, with half his ashes interred in Fresno and the other half in Armenia. 1983: Tennessee Williams dies on February 24, when he chokes on a medicine bottle lid in a New York City hotel. 1986: August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone is first produced.
1964: Frank D. Gilroy’s The Subject Was Roses is first produced.
1993: Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig is published.
1965: Frank D. Gilroy is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama for The Subject Was Roses.
1997: Helene Hanff dies from pneumonia on April 9 in New York City.
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Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank the copyright holders of the excerpted criticism included in this volume and the permissions managers of many book and magazine publishing companies for assisting us in securing reproduction rights. We are also grateful to the staffs of the Detroit Public Library, the Library of Congress, the University of Detroit Mercy Library, Wayne State University Purdy/Kresge Library Complex, and the University of Michigan Libraries for making their resources available to us. Following is a list of the copyright holders who have granted us permission to reproduce material in this volume of Drama for Students (DfS). Every effort has been made to trace copyright, but if omissions have been made, please let us know. COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN DfS, VOLUME 17, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING PERIODICALS: CLA Journal, v. XL, June, 1997. Reproduced by permission.—Midwest Quarterly, v. XXVI, Winter, 1985. Reproduced by permission.—Modern Drama, v. 2, May, 1959; v. XIX, March, 1976; v. XXI, September, 1978; v. XXIX, March, 1986. Copyright © 1959, 1967, 1976, 1978, University of Toronto, Graduate Centre for Study of Drama. Reproduced by permission.—New York, v. 25, November 2, 1992. Reproduced by permission.— Newsweek, v. CXX, November 2, 1992. Reproduced by permission.—PMLA, v. 100, March, 1985.
Reproduced by permission.—Publishers Weekly, v. 228, August 2, 1985. Reproduced by permission. COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS IN DfS, VOLUME 17, WERE REPRODUCED FROM THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: Clurman, Harold. From an introduction to Six Plays of Clifford Odets. The Modern Library, 1939. Copyright, 1933, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1939, by Clifford Odets. © 1979 by Harold Clurman. From Waiting For Lefty and Other Plays by Clifford Odets. Reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.—Gassner, John. From Dramatic Soundings: Evaluations and Retractions Culled from 30 Years of Dramatic Criticism. Edited by Glenn Loney. Crown Publishers, Inc., 1968. © 1968 by Mollie Gassner. Reproduced by permission.—Groman, George. From “Clifford Odets and the Creative Imagination,” in Critical Essays on Clifford Odets. Edited by Gabriel Miller. G. K. Hall & Co., 1991. The Gale Group.—Krutch, Joseph Wood. From “Comedy,” in The American Drama since 1918. George Braziller, Inc., 1957. Copyright © 1939, 1957 by Joseph Wood Krutch. Reproduced by permission of George Braziller, Inc.—Morton, Richard. From “The Duchess of Malfi: Overview,” in Reference Guide to English Literature, Second Edition. Edited by D. L. Kirkpatrick. St. James Press, 1991. The Gale Group.—Schroeder, Patricia R. From “Realism and Feminism in the Progressive Era,” in The Feminist Possibilities of Dramatic
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Realism. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Reproduced by permission of Associated University Presses.—Simonson, Harold P. From Zona Gale. Twayne Publishers, 1962. Copyright © 1962 by Twayne Publishers, Inc. Reproduced by permission. PHOTOGRAPHS AND ILLUSTRATIONS APPEARING IN DfS, VOLUME 17, WERE RECEIVED FROM THE FOLLOWING SOURCES: Albertson, Jack, (left) playfully boxing with Martin Sheen in an army uniform in the 1968 movie version of the play “The Subject Was Roses,” written by Frank D. Gilroy, film directed by Ulu Grosbard, movie still. The Kobal Collection / MGM. Reproduced by permission.—Bellamy, Ralph, and Greer Garson in the movie “Sunrise at Campobello” which portrays the life of Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt, September 16, 1960, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Bellamy, Ralph, and Mary Fickett (unidentified young woman in center) as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1958 Broadway play “Sunrise at Campobello,” New York City, 1958, photograph. © Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Cater, John, as Krupp (smoking, feet up on chair) and Daniel Massey as Joe (wearing pinstriped vest and pants) in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1983 production of “The Time of Your Life,” written by William Saroyan, performed at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, 1983, photograph. Donald Cooper © Photostage. Reproduced by permission.—Cobb, Lee J., flanked by Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden in the 1939 movie “Golden Boy,” directed by Rouben Mamoulian, movie still. The Kobal Collection. Reproduced by permission.— Cover illustration of “The Playbill,” for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” showing African American man and child holding hands, written by August Wilson, directed by Lloyd Richards, performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, beginning March 27, 1988. PLAYBILL ® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated, N.Y.C. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Cover of Playbill for “The Sisters Rosensweig,” written by Wendy Wasserstein, directed by Daniel Sullivan, performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, May, 1993, photograph. PLAYBILL ® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated, N.Y.C. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.— Dailey, Irene, as the Mother and Martin Sheen as the Son in the play “The Subject Was Roses,” by Frank D. Gilroy, New York City, 1965, photograph. AP/ Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—
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Davis, Bette, and Leslie Howard in the movie “The Petrified Forest,” directed by Archie Mayo, 1936, movie still. The Kobal Collection / Warner Bros. Reproduced by permission.—de Baer, Jean, and Anne Bancroft (right) in the movie “Eighty-Four Charing Cross Road,” directed by David Jones, 1987, movie still The Kobal Collection / Columbia. Reproduced by permission.—Gale, Zona, photograph. © Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.—Gilroy, Frank, 1979, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Hanff, Helene, the author of “84 Charing Cross Road,” c. March 22, 1987, photograph. © Chris George/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, photograph.—Massey, Daniel, as Joe and Zoe Wanamaker as Kitty Duval, scene from a Royal Shakespeare Company production of “The Time of Your Life,” written by William Saroyan, directed by Howard Davies, photograph. © Donald Cooper/ Photostage. Reproduced by permission.—Mirren, Helen, as Duchess, with Bob Hoskins in a theatrical production of “Duchess of Malfi,” photograph. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Muethel, Lola, (left to right) as Lady Torrance, Hannes Riesenberger as Val, and Johanna Wichmann as Carol, in the German production of the play “Orpheus Descending,” written by Tennessee Williams, Frankfurt, Germany, January 30, 1958, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Odets, Clifford, photograph. AP/ Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.— Osborne, John, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Palmer, Felicity, (left) as Klytemnestra and Janet Hardy as Elektra, in the Welsh National Opera production of “Elektra” by Richard Strauss, September 19, 1992, photograph. Donald Cooper © Photostage. Reproduced by permission.—Redgrave, Vanessa, and Kevin Anderson embracing in the 1990 television movie version of Tennessee Williams’ play “Orpheus Descending,” directed by Peter Hall, movie still. The Kobal Collection / Turner Pictures / Nederlander Film / Heinila, Erik. Reproduced by permission.— Saroyan, William, photograph. © Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Scene from “Golden Boy,” by Clifford Odets, photograph. Theatre Collection, Museum of the City of New York. Reproduced by permission.—Scene from the 1953 production of Richard Strauss’ opera “Elektra” in Covent Garden, London, England, May 13, 1953, photograph. © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.—Schary, Dore, photograph. © Bettmann/Corbis. Reproduced by permission.— Sherwood, Robert E., (sitting backwards in chair,
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arms crossed), photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Title page / cast list in “Playbill,” for “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” written by August Wilson, directed by Lloyd Richards, performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, beginning March 27, 1988, photograph. PLAYBILL ® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated, N.Y.C. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Title page listing cast, etc., in Playbill for the play “The Sisters Rosensweig,” written by Wendy Wasserstein, directed by Daniel Sullivan, performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, May 1993, photograph. PLAYBILL ® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated, N.Y.C. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Title page of “The Playbill” for the play “The Petrified Forest,” written by Robert E. Sher-
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wood, starring Leslie Howard, performed at The Broadhurst Theatre, New York, beginning June 24, 1935, photograph. PLAYBILL ® is a registered trademark of Playbill Incorporated, N.Y.C. All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission.—Walter, Harriet, as the Duchess, flanked by two unidentified actors, in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of “The Duchess of Malfi,” 1989 or 1990, photograph. Donald Cooper © Photostage. Reproduced by permission.—Wasserstein, Wendy, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.—Williams, Tennessee, photograph. UPI/ Corbis-Bettmann. Reproduced by permission.— Wilson, August, Lloyd Richards, New York City, 1990, photograph. AP/Wide World Photos. Reproduced by permission.
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Contributors Bryan Aubrey: Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentiethcentury literature. Entries on Electra, Orpheus Descending, and The Subject Was Roses. Original essays on Electra, Orpheus Descending, and The Subject Was Roses. Cynthia Bily: Bily teaches writing and literature at Adrian College. Entry on The Duchess of Malfi. Original essay on The Duchess of Malfi. Allison Leigh DeFrees: DeFrees has a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia as well as a law degree from the University of Texas, and she is a published writer and an editor. Original essays on The Sisters Rosensweig, The Subject Was Roses, and Sunrise at Campobello. Beth Kattelman: Kattelman holds a Ph.D. in theatre from Ohio State University. Entry on Overtones. Original essay on Overtones. David Kelly: Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and literature at Oakton Community College. Entry on The Petrified Forest. Original essay on The Petrified Forest. Rena Korb: Korb has a master’s degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. Entry on Miss Lulu Bett. Original essay on Miss Lulu Bett.
Laura Kryhoski: Kryhoski is currently working as a freelance writer. She has taught English literature in addition to English as a second language overseas. Entries on 84, Charing Cross Road, The Sisters Rosensweig, and Sunrise at Campobello. Original essays on 84, Charing Cross Road, The Sisters Rosensweig, and Sunrise at Campobello. Kevin O’Sullivan: O’Sullivan writes for both film and stage. Original essay on Orpheus Descending. Doreen Piano: Piano is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Bowling Green State University. Original essay on 84, Charing Cross Road. Ryan D. Poquette: Poquette has a bachelor’s degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. Entries on Golden Boy and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Original essays on Golden Boy and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. Susan Sanderson: Sanderson holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing and is an independent writer. Entry on The Time of Your Life. Original essay on The Time of Your Life. Scott Trudell: Trudell is a freelance writer with a bachelor’s degree in English literature. Original essays on The Subject Was Roses and Sunrise at Campobello.
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84, Charing Cross Road 84, Charing Cross Road, published in 1970, is constructed from a collection of correspondence between the author and a London bookseller, Frank Doel. The relationship began as Hanff delved into the work of a professor at Cambridge University. Professor ‘‘Q,’’ as he is called, became the catalyst for Hanff’s letter writing. Her admiration for the professor fueled her pursuit of classic literature, resulting in the inquiries comprising this work. 84, Charing Cross Road spans a twenty-year period, incidentally chronicling events abroad, such as Winston Churchill’s 1951 election in London and the U.S. Democratic presidential nomination in 1960.
HELENE HANFF 1970
This story thematically touches on the ideas of lack and sufficiency, whether it be Helene’s bibliomania (obsession for books) or a black-market trade of eggs for a pair of pantyhose in London. It is a story of beginnings and endings as represented by each letter, from date to signature. The power of language figures prominently, presenting the challenge of inference in the white space of the text as Helene waits breathlessly for her next letter to arrive. Finally, it is a story of appearances for exactly the same reason: the only information the reader has is based on a series of letters, hardly the means by which one can accurately infer much about the characters. Despite what seem to be shortcomings, the appeal of this mysterious plot is what serves to entice and delight the reader’s imagination.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
PLOT SUMMARY
Helene Hanff was born April 15, 1916, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although she attended Temple University for one year, she did not pursue a degree. Critics attribute the bulk of her literary background to her penchant for books. In her work entitled Q’s Legacy, she speaks of the professor whose reading recommendations became the foundation for her literary education. A self-taught classicist, Hanff was a screenwriter and author. She was first employed as a manuscript reader for Paramount Pictures, and then accepted a position as a television scriptwriter for Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) and National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
Correspondence, October 5, 1949 to November 1, 1950
The author’s work is largely comprised of publications for children and young adults, constituting a collection of historical works for a young audience. However, she is perhaps most recognized for her work addressing adult audiences. 84, Charing Cross Road is her greatest achievement in this regard, in terms of the notoriety she received from it. Published in 1970, the success of the work made subsequent adaptations for film and stage possible. 84, Charing Cross Road chronicles twenty years of Hanff’s life as a writer through her correspondence with the employees at a London-based antiquarian bookstore, Marks & Co. Hanff’s experience as a playwright is attributable to professional activity with the Theater Guild. She is the author of thirty scripts for television’s Hallmark Hall of Fame and Matinee Theater, and contributed to eight United States Army training films. Other television work includes a writing stint with the program The Adventures of Ellery Queen. Her awards include a CBS grant-in-aid for work on historic scripts for television. She has also contributed to magazines such as Harper’s, The New Yorker, and Reader’s Digest. Other career highlights include her monthly ‘‘Women’s Hour’’ broadcasts over BBC radio, as recalled in Letter from New York, her 1992 book which contains excerpts from the program. Hanff’s contribution to the radio show characterizes her love for New York, as shared in upbeat anecdotes and other random observations of her community. After a long and fruitful career, Hanff died of pneumonia April 9, 1997, in New York City.
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Helene Hanff is responding to an advertisement for a bookseller specializing in out-of-print books. Knowing nothing of Marks & Co. in London, she encloses a list of ‘‘her most pressing problems’’: copies of secondhand books she cannot find, and a request that they must be clean copies costing no more than $5.00. The books arrive safely, and with the help of a neighbor in Helene’s New York apartment building, Helene is able to determine the cost in dollars per British pound. ‘‘Kindly inform the Church of England they have loused up the most beautiful prose ever written,’’ says Helene in a letter to Marks & Co. upon receipt of a Bible, complaining that the Church of England has tinkered with the Vulgate Latin. To justify her disappointment, she recites her own family tree, recalling a Catholic sister-in-law, Presbyterian cousins, and others in her family and their religious persuasions. She encloses four dollar bills, despite the bookseller’s request to be ‘‘safe,’’ in addition to her request for an additional item. In another instance, Helene communicates her great enthusiasm for a Roman battle she happens on in a book she received from the store. She shares her delight in secondhand books, for precisely the reason that they have a tendency to fall open to what for her are often beloved passages. Taking comfort in a friendly copy of one of Hazlitt’s books, she notes delightfully, ‘‘[Hazlitt’s book] opened to ‘I hate to read new books!’’’ In the same letter, Helene writes that she has learned in a communication from a Marks & Co. employee that the occupants of the shop have been rationed to small amounts of meat and eggs, as have Londoners in general, to help with the war effort. Out of pity, Helene decides to send the booksellers at Charing Cross a six-pound ham. Later Frank Doel responds to Helene’s kindness, expressing his gratitude and calling the food parcel something ‘‘we either never see or can only be had through the black market.’’ In March, Helene addresses Frank with complaints that he is slow to fill her book requests. She expresses her disappointment in not having received several books for Lent, as well as the fact that she is forced to scribble in the margins of books thereby risking her library card in the process.
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Exasperated, she adds, ‘‘I have made arrangements with the Easter bunny to bring you an Egg, he will get over there and find you have died of Inertia.’’ Cecily, another store employee, cannot help her curiosity, disclosing to Helene that she has been ‘‘dying to slip in a little note’’ with Helene’s bills from the bookseller. Although Frank is not stuffy, Cecily admits that he looks upon Helene as ‘‘his private correspondent.’’ She requests a snapshot of Helene and speculates as to her appearance. Cecily imagines her to be ‘‘young and very sophisticated,’’ while others err on the side of ‘‘studious-looking.’’ Helene’s description of herself is anything but flattering. She is admittedly ‘‘so unstudious,’’ having not attended college, and claims to favor a ‘‘Broadway panhandler’’ in appearance. Anticipating future travel, Helene asks Cecily to tell her about London. Sharing what she herself knows about London, she adds that a newspaperman confided in her that tourists go to London with preconceived notions. ‘‘I told him I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he said: ‘Then it’s there.’’’
Correspondence, February 2, 1951 to December 17, 1952 Helene is touched by the book of Elizabethan poems with pages edged in gold, sent from all at Marks & Co., in addition to letters sent from employees Megan Wells, Bill Humphries, and Frank Doel in a show of appreciation for her generosity. She downplays the food parcel she sent on Easter with ‘‘greetings from America—faithless friend that she is, pouring millions into rebuilding Japan and Germany while letting England starve’’ in the postwar 1950s. Another moment reveals an exasperated Helene who cannot believe her beloved bookseller would send her a book of excerpts from Pepys Diary rather than the entire work, telling Frank ‘‘I could just spit.’’ Frank responds apologetically, with much greater enthusiasm than he has demonstrated in the past. He assures Helene that there will be better times in the future for London, in anticipation of Winston Churchill’s re-election. ‘‘You dizzy me,’’ says Helene out of guilt for her sudden outburst over Pepys Diary. In a letter to Maxie, aka Maxine, Helene requests that her friend purchase four pairs of nylons for the girls working at the bookseller and also for Frank’s wife, after receiving a letter from Nora
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Helene Hanff
Doel. In her correspondence, Nora had shared the value of trading a tin of dried eggs for the stockings. Helene tells Maxie that, despite her desire to visit England and her beloved bookseller, she feels more comfortable writing ‘‘the most outrageous letters from a safe 3,000 miles away.’’ Helene also responds to Nora and Frank’s acquisition of their first car, an extremely difficult commodity to come by new or, in this case, used. She shares her hardships with Frank, those of purging overflowing bookshelves and the cost of having her teeth capped. In her last letter in 1952, she admits to the uneven exchange of holiday gifts. ‘‘You’ll eat yours up in a week. . . . I’ll have mine till the day I die.’’ Helene thrills in the idea that her scribblings in pale pencil will be discovered by ‘‘some book lover yet unborn.’’
Correspondence, May 3, 1953 to May 8, 1960 In 1953 Cecily tells Helene she should forget the care packages and save for a trip to London in 1955. In 1955, in a letter to Frank, Helene inquires whether Cecily is still in Iraq. ‘‘Do you mean to sit there and tell me you’ve been publishing these mammoth catalogues all these years and this is the first time you ever bothered to send me one?’’
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exclaims Helene in the same letter. She sends the letter along with a prayer request for the Brooklyn Dodgers to win the World Series. ‘‘Will you tell Megan Wells she is out of her cotton picking mind,’’ says Helene of a Marks & Co. employee’s choice to move to South Africa. Changes are also afoot for the writer, whose eviction notice from her New York brownstone has pushed her to acquire ‘‘a real apartment with real furniture’’ and ‘‘wall-to-wall carpeting,’’ although it means postponing her anticipated trip to London. ‘‘All this and the Dodgers disintegrating before my very eyes,’’ she says of the entire affair. Frank comforts Helene after hearing her television shows have moved to Hollywood. Five months later, Helene shares that she has won a $5,000 grant from CBS to write American history dramatizations. She kids with Frank, telling him that her first script will involve New York under seven years of British occupation, ‘‘and I marvel at how I rise above it to address you in friendly and forgiving fashion, your behavior over here from 1776 to 1783 was simply filthy.’’
Correspondence, ‘‘Sunday Night and a hell of a way to start 1960’’ to October 1969 Helene is struck enough by a giant Modern Library book given to her as a Christmas gift to devote a considerable amount of time corresponding with Frank about the work on New Year’s Day. She considers the pairing of the works of John Donne and William Blake into one volume an absurdity. In the end, says Helene, ‘‘I’m being driven clear up the wall, Frankie, you have got to help me.’’ With only a $1,500 book advance for the next six months, Helene must watch her finances. ‘‘So I can’t buy any books’’ she says, opting to visit the Society Library for a copy of Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon, only to find herself short on time to finish it. When she suggests Frank buy it to hold on reserve until a later date, Frank insists on sending six volumes to her without payment. ‘‘Your credit will always be good at Marks & Co.,’’ he tells Helene. ‘‘Enclosed-please-God-please-find a $10 bill,’’ says Helene to Frank, who cannot bear to have Memoirs without paying something toward it. In a brief story about a dinner meeting with her editor from Harper’s, Helene talks about her dramatization of Walter Savage Landor’s Aesop and Rhodope
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for Hallmark. Two hours before the program airs, she is dismayed to find a photo of a sculpture in the New York Times. The caption read ‘‘Rhodope, the most famous prostitute in Greece’’—a fact she never knew while writing the show for the family program. Her editor, reveals Helene, was impatient rather than sympathetic. ‘‘You see how it is, Frankie,’’ writes Helene, ‘‘you’re the only soul alive who understands me.’’ On January 8, 1969, Helene is informed of Frank’s death. He was unexpectedly rushed to the hospital for a ruptured appendix and died a week later. A letter from Nora followed some twenty-one days afterward. His wife pays him a glowing tribute, and admits her now growing awareness of his talents as letters and acknowledgements continue to reach her. The only other admission Nora makes is that she has always been envious of Helene’s writing ability and of Helene and Frank’s relationship. When Maxine says she is going to London and asks Helene if she would like to go, Helene shares that she almost wept when asked if she would consider going, provided she had the fare. She decides that maybe it is best she did not go after having dreamt about it for so many years. Speaking to the mysteries of the England of English literature, she says, ‘‘maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Looking around the rug one thing’s for sure: it’s here.’’ The work ends with the epilogue, a letter from one of Frank’s daughters giving Helene permission to publish her letters with Marks & Co. in book form.
CHARACTERS Frank Doel A consummate salesperson, Frank Doel is knowledgeable to a fault on the vast array of books available at Marks & Co. and elsewhere, demonstrating a keen awareness of possible works of interest to Helene and of their availability and care. Upon his death, his wife Nora speaks of many in the book trade who felt Frank was knowledgeable and ‘‘imparted his knowledge with kindness to all and sundry.’’ Mentioned in the beginning only as ‘‘FPD,’’ the efficient, polite reserve of Frank Doel softens over years of correspondence with Helene. In a later, decidedly more personal letter, Frank address-
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es the letter ‘‘Dear Helene,’’ pointing out in parentheses no less, that he does not care about the files anymore and goes on to share freely with Helene on a deeper level.’’ His importance in the novel in relation to Helene cannot be under-emphasized. Frank undisputedly shares Helene’s love of books and it is in this obvious reverence for the medium as well as his job as a bookseller that he quickly becomes Helene’s champion. Demonstrating patience, kindness and understanding only draws Helene out more and in this way she forms a dependence on Frank she may not so easily find in relations with others.
Nora Doel Loving, devoted, supportive wife and mother, Nora Doel corresponds with Helene in light of the kindness bestowed upon Nora’s husband Frank and those employed by Marks & Co. She is somewhat timid in her reserve, writing Helene only after having found the perfect excuse to do so: providing the name and address of a woman Helene wishes to contact. Nora also shares the difficulties both herself, and by extension, the members of Helene’s extended family at Marks & Co., are encountering in obtaining basic goods. When Nora expresses the value of a tin of eggs in procuring a pair of women’s hose, or the rare sight of meat at the London market, for example, Helene sees and responds to not only the needs of Nora for such items but to those of the bookstore. Decidedly less articulate than Frank or Helene, her curiosity about her husband’s female customer becomes obvious by the end of the story. She admits that she was very jealous of Helene ‘‘as Frank enjoyed [Helene’s] letters and they or some were so like his sense of humor.’’ Nora also acknowledges similar feelings regarding Helene’s writing ability. It is with equal candor that Nora shares the source of her insecurities with her husband’s correspondant. She describes her husband and herself as a pair of extreme opposites: ‘‘he so kind and gentle and me with my Irish background always fighting for my rights.’’ In this manner Nora functions in the play to round out Frank as a character on a more personal level. She shares intimate details about her husband, his family, and home life as well as his character quirks. Through Nora it is revealed that Frank is the father of three daughters, a ‘‘ready made’’ daughter from his first relationship and two from his union with Nora. She also provides snapshots of Frank to Helene, sharing her husband’s need to put a good foot forward with Helene as
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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • 84, Charing Cross Road was adapted as a fulllength film, directed by David Hugh Jones and starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, and Judi Dench for Columbia Tri-Star in 1987. It is available from Columbia Tri-Star on DVD and VHS.
expressed by his dissatisfaction for the photos. ‘‘Frank says none of them do him justice, he is much better looking,’’ says Nora of the pictures.
Cecily Farr The first Marks & Co. employee outside of Frank Doel to attempt to correspond with Helene, daring Cecily Farr does so without what she feels is the necessary permission, and in a much more intimate and personal way than Frank. Cecily’s letters reflect her young, vibrant enthusiasm; in anticipating Helene’s curiosity she mirrors her own. She shares with Helene intimate details of a personal life yet to be disclosed by Frank, preempting her description with ‘‘if you’re curious about Frank,’’ then providing information about his marital status and his looks. Of her own curiosity, Cecily admits, ‘‘I’ve been dying to slip in a little note and [Frank] might not think it quite proper of me.’’ A military wife, Cecily remains a correspondent of Helene’s until Cecily joins her husband on a military base in Iraq.
Helene Hanff Eccentric and reclusive Helene Hanff, known as h.h. by her closest friends, is a bibliomaniac (a person with a preoccupation for acquiring and owning books) and looks to Marks & Co. to satisfy her habit. Professor Quiller-Couch, or ‘‘Q,’’ is responsible for Helene’s obsession. When describing herself to Cecily, Helene remarks that she is ‘‘so unstudious she never went to college,’’ and claims she is ‘‘about as smart-looking as a Broadway panhandler.’’
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In expressing her desire for certain reading materials, she is often childish in her demands though she feigns humor or claims to press the bookseller in jest, despite the obvious effects such demands may have on Frank. ‘‘Poor Frank, I give him such a hard time, I’m always bawling him out for something,’’ says Helene. Claiming to be ‘‘only teasing,’’ she still knows Frank will take her seriously. She further shares, ‘‘I keep trying to puncture that proper British reserve, if he gets ulcers I did it.’’ Her concern is apparent by the nature of her comment, one she apparently wishes will reach the ears of Frank, the target of her sarcasm. Helene’s behavior towards Frank, as expressed in her communications, is not a function of her own self-absorption, but rather her obsessive need to surround herself with books. Books are a means of self-expression, and their appearance and contents also serve to soothe her. Because they are such an entrenched part of her life, the books seem to take on lives of their own, as personified in the text of her letters. When a book by M. De Tocqueville arrives, Helene refers to the author’s words and work in a letter to Frank, stating, ‘‘he sits around looking smug because everything he said is true,’’ as regards her feelings of politics in America. As demanding as Helene may be, she is also quite generous and kind, and receptive to the warmth of strangers as expressed in her correspondence to others involved directly with Marks & Co. She openly shares with Cecily her less-than-glamorous lifestyle in New York, devoid of the romantic notions Cecily offers. In another moment, a letter from Nora inspires a perceptive Helene to send several pairs of nylons not only to Frank’s wife, but to the other women at the shop, in response to the hardships rationing presents Nora and the others. In the same letter, the reader discovers via Nora’s letter that Helene has inquired after the address of a woman in an effort to express her thanks for a tablecloth. The author has her eccentricities, however, and they tend to come out particularly in her love of classic books. Helene fancies herself to be a Miniver Cheevy, a character in a poem who distrusts anything modern in favor of more chivalrous moments in history, when knights defended castles and princes married princesses. Her struggle with change comes out in some particularly telling moments, when she expresses angst over one work or another’s technical merits. She devotes an entire letter to Frank, for example, on the problem inherent in combining the
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works of John Donne and William Blake into one text, a discovery with nightmarish possibilities in her eyes. These and other impressions give the text its thematic underpinning.
Bill Humphries An associate at Marks & Co., Bill Humphries is mentioned throughout the text and actually corresponds with Helene from time to time in a show of appreciation for her generosity.
Maxine Maxine, or Maxie as she is addressed in letters to her friend, is Helene’s close friend and confidant. By the nature of their correspondence, it is assumed that the reader is able to get a clearer glimpse of Helene’s true nature. It is with Maxine that Helene shares her insecurities concerning a trip to London. It is also Maxine who becomes Helene’s eyes and ears on a trip to see the writer’s friends at Charing Cross road. The main function of the character is to illuminate a side of Helene not apparent in her communications with others, thus giving such communications the added dimension needed to put them into a richer context.
THEMES Language and Meaning The premise of the work is that through select letters the author is able to construct the story of the deep relationship forged between herself and the bookseller she has come to know on both a professional and personal level. Therefore, the idea of communication as a deep personal expression is a key factor in discovering the story behind the correspondence. There is a meaning behind the language that gives the story its emotive power. Nora, for example, admits she is a terrible writer, and by her admission has realized some meaning is lost in the text of her letters. In contrast, language and meaning forge the bond between Frank and Helene. It is the glue keeping their relationship together, so powerful that Helene is afraid to actually meet Frank and others in person for fear of losing the credibility and power she has forged in writing. By way of literary illusion as well as writing ability, Helene connects with Frank in a way others, like Nora, may not.
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • The advent of the computer age caused many to question the efficacy of books. Trace the advent of computers in America and their impact on popular opinion regarding the future of books. How does Helene Hanff’s correspondence reflect such trends?
• In one of Helene’s letters she includes an excerpt from Edward Arlington Robinson’s poem ‘‘Miniver Cheevy’’ to express her feelings about change. Read the entire poem in consideration of Helene’s views. Providing specific textual evidence for your assertions, make a case for Helene’s choice of poetry she employs to describe herself.
• In Nora Doel’s correspondence (and similar letters from other characters), she shares the impact of rationing on London in the 1950s, thankful for Helene’s care parcels. Research and write an essay about the economic climate of London in the 1950s as compared with that of the United States. Considering the quality of life in London during this time, how profound of an impact do you believe Helene’s gifts had on Nora and others associated with Marks & Co.?
• Although Helene does not visit London by the story’s end, she does eventually take a trip to Marks & Co. By creating a series of letters, writing them as if they were shared between Maxine (Helene’s friend in New York) and Helene, write a fictitious account of the trip. Keep in mind Helene’s obsession for the England of English literature. What sorts of places would she visit during her stay? With whom would Helene stay?
In a letter to Frank, Helene also demonstrates the significance words carry. In looking for an apartment she discovers what she considers to be distasteful violations of the English language. ‘‘Rents do not make sense,’’ she states, ‘‘and prices do not sit around being reasonable.’’ She concludes that she goes through life ‘‘watching the English language being raped before me face.’’ In this instance and others, she also uses a literary reference to Edward Arlington Robinson to express her feelings of dismay.
now off rations and even nylons are available in all the better shops,’’ it is safe to assume that London has made a transition for the better. Likewise when Frank reports to Helene he has lost touch with Cecily, the reader knows it marks the end of any subsequent communication between Cecily and Helene.
Beginning and Ending The work is based on a series of letters, and therefore, on beginnings and endings. The events of the story are recalled in relational time, either in response letters preceding letters, or as historical documents by date. The beginnings and endings are made implicit in specific life events or transitions, marked by career, personal relationship, environment, or history. For example, when Cecily instructs Helene to stop sending care packages because ‘‘everything is
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On a more tragic note, the death of Frank marks the end of many things for Helene—including a long friendship and her plans to visit England—and the beginning of others. Helene has managed to put together a book of correspondence for publication, and in so doing has sparked a relationship with one of Frank’s daughters.
Lack and Sufficiency Through communication of their needs and wants, the characters explore the idea of lack verses sufficiency. Often times the communication is subtle, a hint or request rather than a demand for something, or may simply be the author’s personal expression of a sense of deprivation. Such expressions set the tone for the work in terms of both
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history and characterization. As characters make their needs and wants known, the reader is able to make value judgments on the personalities represented in the work. When Helene does not get a response to her letter of inquiry, or does not receive a particular book she has requested, her responses are impetuous or fueled by sudden energy, action, or emotion, suggesting impulsiveness, impatience, or thoughtlessness of character. Telling Frank it will be a long, cold winter, she suddenly exclaims, ‘‘and I need reading matter, now don’t start sitting around, go find me some books.’’ Other expressions of lack and sufficiency serve as historical records of postwar London. After sending care parcels of meat and dried egg, for example, Helene is informed by Nora that a bit of dried egg is valuable in an exchange for pantyhose. In consequence, Helene responds to Nora’s need for female accessories by supplying not only Nora, but three other women in the shop, with nylon hose.
Appearances and Reality Letter writing is based somewhat on artifice; it is an expression of self on paper, a persona that leaves much white space to imagine the person behind the words, their appearance, their personality, and their life. The characters of the novel are able to summon imagination, to express themselves with reserve or candor, leaving very strong, lasting impressions of people they would fancy themselves to be in a personal encounter. Cecily first contacts Helene because her curiosity about the writer—how she looks and so forth— has peaked her interest to the degree that any consequence due to such contact is mitigated by a sheer need to satisfy her imagination. When Nora writes Helene, she encloses carefully selected photos of her husband, but is quick to point out Frank’s displeasure with the way he appears in them. In another instance, when Helene complains of neglect from Frank and others at the bookseller, she is often surprised with news of a death or illness, and dismisses her notions that the store was intentionally choosing to overlook her. Finally, it is Helene’s anticipated trip to London that figures prominently in the work. She shares in several instances that she prefers her writing persona, believing that what looks good on paper would not become reality in a personal encounter with her friends at the bookseller. Admitting the comfort she finds in her long distance relationship,
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she tells Maxine all may be compromised otherwise. For Helene, writing letters from 3,000 miles away is safe. Imagining a trip to the bookseller, she adds, ‘‘I’ll probably walk in there one day and walk right out again without telling them who I am.’’
STYLE Antihero The central character in the work, Helene, lacks traditional heroic qualities, particularly courage and personal fortitude. Although she provides the employees at Marks & Co. with some wonderful gifts, such presents do come with a bit of a price, particularly for Frank. When Helene is slow to receive a book, she often becomes demanding and temperamental with him. Although she admits to Cecily she is joking with Frank, she also owns up to the idea that he may take her seriously regardless of her intentions, and her joking becomes part of such demands by design. She also embraces her eccentricities, sharing she wears moth-eaten sweaters and wool slacks in reaction to her ill-heated ‘‘hovel’’ of an apartment. Most apparent, however, is her view of the world, which seems to be shaped in large part by the books in which she is interested. Helene favors classic works over contemporary ones, a tendency in sync with her view of the world. At one point, for example, she concurs with a poet in reaction to her editor, who becomes agitated with her interest in old English books. In response, she recites a passage from Edward Arlington Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy, identifying with another antihero who shuns modernity in favor of ‘‘the days of old.’’
Chronicle The text unfolds in a series of letters acting as a record of the events occurring in the lives of both Helene and those characters related to Marks & Co. The action unfolds chronologically by individually dated letter rather than by event. For example, when Helene complains of neglect to Frank, it is only in his response to her letter that she discovers Nora has been sick and in need of Frank’s attention. The letters also serve somewhat as a twenty-year historical chronicle, from 1949 to 1969. As a result, the reader becomes privy to such information as the impact of rations on postwar London, the re-elec-
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tion of Winston Churchill in 1951, the Brooklyn Dodger’s bid for the 1955 World Series, and the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign.
Motif The recurring motif (image or theme) that occurs throughout the text is Helene’s repeated request for used books. Although she forges deep bonds with those working at Marks & Co., Helene’s overriding desire is to find a particular published work; all of her correspondence, apart from some personal bits of information here and there, is related to this endeavor. This device is used to demonstrate the strong relationship Helene has formed with books, and by extension, the written word. Her need for books brings her closer to the employees of Marks & Co. Books also form the basis for both work and recreation for Helene. The book motif is also exemplified in the foundation of the story: a collection of letters Helene has been given permission to put in book form.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Churchill’s Conservative Government In 1951 Winston Churchill succeeded Clement Attlee as prime minister, signaling an end to the Labor government and a victory for the Conservatives. The new leader immediately asserted England’s need to economize on foreign spending, including restrictions on food and British tourism. In Hanff’s work, for example, the value of receiving a food parcel of meat from Helene was enormous, with the imposed meat ration set at less than twenty cents per person per week. At the same time, both the Labor government and the Conservative government pushed for increased arms spending in the billions, in reaction to both the Korean campaign and a perceived threat of communism. Two international disputes figured prominently in British politics. The first was with Iran, when the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was expelled from Iran in 1951, resulting in a blatant breach of contract. The company owned the largest oil refinery in the world on the Persian Gulf, with the British government holding a controlling interest. This conflict between nations explains character Cecily’s move to the Persian Gulf to be with her husband, a member of the military stationed there. Another conflict arose with Egypt over its attempts to force the country out of the Suez Canal zone and the
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Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. With forty-four percent ownership of the canal’s French operating company, the British refused to budge, believing the region would be of great strategic import in a conflict with the Soviets. Churchill had many political objectives in 1951, including the denationalization of the steel industry in response to an overwhelming public outcry. The government was also active in the affairs of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an anti-communist military alliance formed by eleven Western nations, including the United States.
Baseball in America When Helene asks Frank to root for the Brooklyn Dodgers, she is responding to a banner year for the team in 1955, when that October they earned baseball’s highest honor by winning the World Series, while also defeating their rivals, the New York Yankees. The Dodgers had previously won the National League pennant seven times without going on to win the Series; hence the Brooklyn adage, ‘‘wait till next year.’’ The 1955 Series went the full seven games before the Brooklyn victory became a reality. During 1955 major league baseball experienced an overall increase in attendance of 688,265 people. With respect to the American League, Milwaukee was the clear leader in attendance, attracting a crowd of 2,005,836 fans in 1955. American League highlights for 1955 included outstanding performances by Mickey Mantle, hitting thirtyseven homeruns for the year, and Al Kaline, the Detroit Tiger outfielder, who at twenty years of age become the youngest player ever to win a batting championship, with a .340 average that year.
The Democratic Comeback ‘‘I belong to a Democratic club,’’ says Helene, ‘‘[I] read a couple of newspaper stories about the presidential hopefuls—Stevenson, Humphrey, Kennedy, Stassen, Nixon.’’ In 1959 the Democrats came up with an elaborate plan to take control of the White House from the Republican Party. Four U.S. Senators were considered chief contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, including John F. Kennedy, Hubert H. Humphrey, Stuart Symington, and Lyndon B. Johnson. Adlai E. Stevenson was also favored but personally rejected the idea. Of all of the candidates, John F. Kennedy would realize the greatest success. He spoke of his Catholicism openly and felt the subject of religion in general a
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COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1950s: Winston Churchill’s Conservative Party is re-elected in the general election in England, signaling an end to the Labor government. Today: In power since 1997, the Labor government of Prime Minister Tony Blair is reelected in June 2001. • 1950s: Don Larsen of the New York Yankees pitches a no-hit, no-run game for the first time in World Series history, against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Today: In 2000 the New York Yankees and the New York Mets play each other in the first World Series between two New York teams since 1956. • 1950s: President Eisenhower suffers a heart attack in September 1955, opening up the possibility for Democrats to recapture the presidency. Today: Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore loses the 2000 presidential election to George
target for political debate. He also won the support of many with his views on labor-reform legislation. Both factors were cited as contributing to his successful victory against Eisenhower in 1960.
The Feminine Mystique Women of the early 1960s were experiencing burgeoning intellectual liberation on college campuses across America, and from this time of great expansion in the feminist movement came the work of freelance magazine journalist Betty Friedan. Her work was born out of her research of former Smith College classmates, to whom Friedan sent questionnaires to follow-up on their post-college lives. What she discovered was that these middle- and uppermiddle-class women were overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the role for which society had typecast them, that of wife and mother. Friedan called these women victims of the ‘‘feminine mystique,’’ or the belief that for a woman to step outside of the role of
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W. Bush in one of the most closely contested elections in the history of the United States. • 1950s: The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) is the first company authorized by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to transmit color television programming. Today: Television consumers are no longer limited to the traditional major network offerings (NBC, CBS, and ABC). People can choose from direct TV, digital cable, and other options providing access to hundreds of channels. • 1950s: The Library Services Act extends public library services to several million residents, with forty-eight states awarded services, including librarians and bookmobiles, in new areas. Today: With the advent of electronic books and hand-held computers capable of downloading and storing printed materials, the future of printed books is debated.
wife and mother was unnatural, if not dangerous. The book opened up a realm of possibilities for women, who up until this point had been afraid to voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo. The popularity of the book was only part of Friedan’s contribution to the feminist movement. In 1966 the author founded the National Organization for Women (NOW).
CRITICAL OVERVIEW 84, Charing Cross Road is the best-known of Hanff’s four titles published specifically for an adult audience. The work exemplifies an economic and literate prose style, Hanff’s hallmarks that have been traditionally celebrated by critics. Many critics, however, find the appeal of Hanff’s memoir to be a function of its Victorian charm. For example, Tho-
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mas Lask, in a New York Times review, praised the work for its nineteenth-century response to the encroachments of a twentieth-century computerized society. Lask adds that the book is ‘‘an emollient for the spirit and the sheath for the exposed nerve.’’ Other critics cite Hanff’s keen sense of wit as a contributing factor to the success of the text; a quality recognized consistently by critics with respect to her other works. 84, Charing Cross Road gained critical acclaim and was subsequently adapted for film, television, and the stage. Stanley Kauffman’s review in the New Republic did not give these adaptations high marks, however. Calling Hanff’s work ‘‘a hopeless candidate for the screen,’’ Kauffman believes it to be ‘‘almost equally hopeless for the stage,’’ although already dramatized by James Roose-Evans. The problems Kaufmann cites with the work relate to the medium in which they are presented: a series of letters. Kaufmann’s concern is that much has to be inferred from the white space of this collection of correspondence in order to create a more cohesive work, thus the work runs the risk of creative compromise in adaptations.
CRITICISM Laura Kryhoski Kryhoski is currently working as a freelance writer. She has taught English literature in addition to English as a second language overseas. In this essay, Kryhoski considers some of the ambiguities inherent in a literary work constructed solely from Hanff’s personal correspondence. Critics have commented on the elusiveness of the text of 84, Charing Cross Road in its translation onto screen or stage. What makes the work particularly beguiling for the reader (and for the screenwriter or playwright) is the ambiguous characterization of Helene and others, as well as of the specific events of the text, as influenced by its presentation as a bundle of letters. The choppiness of the correspondence leaves more open to interpretation than would the structure of a more traditional novel. Considering the inconsistencies in Helene’s character, as well as the overall structure of the work, it is easy to see the story’s power to stir the reader’s imagination. Subsequently, there is a danger inherent in accepting any one interpretation of the work, or in
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assuming that it is conclusively a true representation of the author’s life. The characterization of Helene is ambiguous at best. At the outset of the novel, her correspondence is polite enough, witty enough, and acceptable enough to be considered well within the norm of letterwriting etiquette. As time goes on, however, Helene’s demeanor changes, giving the impression that one is seeing a side of the writer that is more intimate and therefore more accurate than that which has been previously observed. In the first few months of correspondence with Frank, Helene is congenial in her request to Frank to translate his prices for her on specific items in an effort to pay him properly. Conscious of the slight burden she puts on Frank, Helene explains, ‘‘I don’t add too well in plain American, I haven’t a prayer of ever mastering bilingual arithmetic.’’ She also closes the letter rather wittily, writing of Frank’s last letter (in which he addressed her as ‘‘Dear Madam’’): ‘‘I hope that ‘madam’ doesn’t mean over there what it does over here.’’ In just a month’s time, however, Helene’s tone has completely changed, although Frank Doel’s has not. Responding to his professional reserve, Helene fires at him of her latest purchase, exclaiming, ‘‘What kind of a black protestant Bible is this?’’ She insults the Church of England, claiming that they have ‘‘loused up the most beautiful prose ever written.’’ Simply stating ‘‘the hell with it,’’ Helene finally concedes to the idea of using her Latin teacher’s Vulgate until Frank can find her a suitable copy. The writer comes off as a loose canon in her rather dramatic reaction to the receipt of an unwanted book. This response is particularly surprising because of the seeming liberties Helene takes with the bookseller in a relatively short time, such that her relationship with Marks & Co. might be jeopardized. From previous letters, the frazzled response of the writer is based solely on what seems to be an absurd dependence on books rather than on any prior experience with Frank. She has no reason to believe her request will go unheard, that the bookseller will be less than sympathetic to her plight, or that Frank will not satisfactorily address the problem. The reader’s assumptions of Helene based on this response could indeed be shortsighted. The tenor of further responses seem to be fairly consistent with the outburst in which Helene engages early in the story, a knife-edged sort of moodiness indica-
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Jean de Baer and Anne Bancroft in the 1987 film adaptation of 84 Charing Cross Road, directed by David Jones
tive of someone prone to temperamental flares. However, her correspondence with other members of Marks & Co. bear witness to a different image of Helene, that of the witty prankster. She does not react to Cecily’s intrusion into her personal life in the same manner she does with Frank’s seemingly harmless mistakes, but is instead chummy in her conversations with the inquisitive Marks & Co. employee. Helene willingly offers details about her life, such as her unflattering appearance, her occupation, and her living space. She is particularly pointed in sharing her feelings for Frank. Relating to Cecily the heap of abuse directed at him, Helene tells her that she purposely gives Frank a difficult time of it. ‘‘I’m always bawling him out for something,’’ Helene says, ‘‘I’m only teasing, but I know he’ll take me seriously. I keep trying to puncture that proper British reserve, if he gets ulcers I did it. In this light, Helene knowingly tells Cecily of her pranks with Frank with the intention of reaching him. Cecily cannot help but be in the thick of things, and Helene is banking on this fact. She realizes that Frank may eventually be put off by her impetuousness or impulsive outbursts expressed in her letters. But at some point one wonders as to the sincerity of the admission. Based on subsequent responses, it is
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as if Helene is seeking permission to continue behaving in what she knows to be an unacceptable fashion, without regard for Frank. Although this may seem a bit thin-skinned a view—and although Frank seems to take subsequent outbursts in the true spirit one is to assume, at least according to Helene, that they are given—there is still an edge to her correspondence that creates an interesting picture of the author. She continually makes childish demands of Frank, of his time, and duly responds to disappointment with a flare for the dramatic. But what seems to be behind such behavior is her obsession with the written word, particularly fitting for a writer whose profession puts a great value on wordsmiths. For instance, Helene devotes an entire letter to Frank on the merits of her latest acquisition, a ‘‘Giant Modern Library book.’’ Her discourse on the subject continues for a page or two, at one point pleading with Frank for help, concluding with her retirement to bed, where she will ‘‘have hideous nightmares involving huge monsters in academic robes carrying long bloody butcher knives labeled Excerpt, Selection, Passage and Abridged.’’ What seems to be painfully clear is that the narrator is perhaps unreliable in her perceptions. Wit seems to walk a fine line with the author’s
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • The Library of Helene Hanff, by Helene Hanff and edited by Stephen Pastore, was published in 1998. The work is a warm and personal biography of the author, further illuminating her correspondence with the bookseller at Charing Cross. It provides the reader with valuable insight into Hanff’s collection of books, and by extension, her life. • Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Company, by Lynn Tillman, was published in 1999. An account of what has been called one of the most interesting bookstores in New York City, the work covers not only the opening and closing of the shop, but the life of the young woman who founded and ran it. In addition to a forward by Woody Allen, the book
bibliomania, or obsessive book-collecting habits. Her concerns for the future can be taken as a humorous affront or the product of deeper insecurities. But all are hard to infer with any certainty, even by the text’s conclusion. Correspondence with Maxine reveals yet another dimension to the communication between Frank, his coworkers at Marks & Co., and Helene. Helene candidly admits to Maxine her fear of meeting her friends at Charing Cross Road based on the persona she has put forward in her letters. Stating that she may not ‘‘have the nerve,’’ Helene shares that she writes considerably more outrageous letters than she would if it were not for the safety of a 3,000 mile expanse between New York and London. ‘‘I’ll probably walk in there one day and walk right out again without telling them who I am,’’ claims Helene. This is where Helene makes an impact on her audience at Marks & Co., and by extension, her world. She admittedly hides behind the elusiveness of letter writing to avoid intimate contact with those at the bookseller, making empty promises that she will indeed visit London. Yet the reader is privy
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also includes shared recollections of Books & Co. by authors and other New York notables. • Bookends: Two Women, One Enduring Friendship, by Madeline B. Stern and Leona G. Rostenberg, was published in 2001. The memoirs of two rare-book dealers and lifelong friends, the work chronicles the lives of two single Jewish-American women, and their struggles and successes against the backdrop of the twentieth century. • Bridget Jones’s Diary, by Helen Fielding, was published in 1999. This novel is a warm, humorous look into the private life of a thirty-something publishing professional, as related in a series of diary entries. Bridget Jones is on a quest to quit smoking, lose weight, and find her own sense of inner peace.
early on to information that she will not make the trip. Who is to say the reliability of the text, by extension, is not consistent with Helene’s own behavior and characterization of herself and the events around her? To say, then, that the author truly opens her life up to interpretation is subjective at best. The omission of various letters is intimated in the sparseness of the collection during specific time periods, and by the choppy progression of letters, noted in the intentional omission of responses logically linking one to the next. In this regard the work becomes truly one of fiction, based mainly on inferences of the reader as to particular details of the text. Relying on these letters, then, the reader finds him- or herself on a slippery slope, blindly relying on the discourse of an unreliable narrator. Structurally the work also lends itself to various interpretations. Letters are rather temporary documents, momentary recollections suspended in time that may or may not truly reflect the writer behind them. A skilled writer may actually make their presence felt within the context of the correspondence. There is inherent danger, however, in
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Source: Laura Kryhoski, Critical Essay on 84, Charing Cross Road, in Drama for Students, The Gale Group, 2003.
FROM PREVIOUS LETTERS, THE FRAZZLED RESPONSE OF THE WRITER IS BASED SOLELY ON WHAT SEEMS TO BE AN ABSURD DEPENDENCE ON BOOKS RATHER
Doreen Piano Piano is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Bowling Green State University. In the following essay, Piano explores a writer’s emotional and intellectual attachment to books as represented by her correspondence to a bookseller at an antiquarian bookshop in London.
THAN ON ANY PRIOR EXPERIENCE WITH FRANK.’’
guessing the nature of a person or a particular event or events based solely on such correspondence. Nora aptly demonstrates this to Helene, admitting she does not put the most impressive foot forward in her correspondence due to rather poor writing ability. Personality, then, is lost in the translation, as is additional information about the lives of the characters occurring in the white space of the work. The white space referred to in literature is that open or blank expanse created by gaps in time and plot unaccounted for by the text, literally the blank page. It is in this space that one must infer or make connections in the text as to the motivations of specific characters, or the impact of particular events on the story. The packaging by the author of a bundle of letters leaves quite a bit to the reader in terms of interpretation. Considering the task, it is understandable that critics the likes of Stanley Kauffman have pondered the logistics of the text only to conclude that the work does not lend itself to adaptation for stage or screen. It is a work based purely on perceptions rather being driven by plot. To try to translate any one reader’s experience with the text into another form, then, to universalize the experience for the reader, is perhaps doing both Hanff and the fans of 84, Charing Cross Road a great disservice. The power of the work lies within the imagination of the reader who happens on it at a particular moment. This idea seems to gel quite well with Helene Hanff’s own feelings on London travel. She shares aptly, ‘‘I remember years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for.’’ Of the existence of the England of English literature, the author concludes, ‘‘Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Looking around the rug one thing’s for sure: it’s here.’’
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Published in 1970, 84, Charing Cross Road by writer Helene Hanff is an unusual memoir that reveals the author’s love not only of books but also her passion for letter writing and, on a deeper note, human communication. The story centers around a series of letters written by Helene Hanff, a New York writer, to the bookseller Frank Doel, who works at the antiquarian bookstore Marks & Co., located for many years at 84, Charing Cross Road in central London. Beginning in 1949, the letters cover twenty years of correspondence, ending in 1969 with the death of Frank Doel, who has over the years provided Helene with an extraordinary number of used books ranging from the Socratic dialogues to nineteenth-century classics like Pride and Prejudice. Yet more than simply a business exchange or monetary transaction, the correspondence between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel shows how cultural difference and geographic distance cannot inhibit friendships from developing, particularly when both correspondents share a love of books. In addition, their trans-Atlantic friendship can be seen as a continuance of the congenial relations forged during World War II between the United States and Great Britain. 84, Charing Cross Road is made up of a series of letters in chronological order that convey a deepening intimacy and affection between the two main correspondents, Helene Hanff and Frank Doel. What is most striking while reading the letters is how very different these two people are. Right at the onset of their correspondence, the reader gets an immediate sense of two very different personalities emerging. On the one hand, Helene is direct, personal, and expressive. Her humor surfaces in the second letter where she writes as an afterward, ‘‘I hope ‘madam’ doesn’t mean over there what it does here,’’ referring to Frank’s form of address despite Helene signing her name ‘‘Helene Hanff (Miss).’’ Although very little detail is given in terms of physical description, class background, or education, the reader is able to envision Helene as a typical New Yorker. She is quick to speak (or write) her mind about the
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books she is receiving, whether it is praising the beauty and condition of the books or castigating their contents. For example, in the letter dated November 18, 1949, she begins her letter with a question in capital letters, ‘‘WHAT KIND OF A BLACK PROTESTANT BIBLE IS THIS?,’’ thus revealing her dismay at receiving a bible that does not meet her expectations. Whereas Helene’s letters are often emotive, her outrage usually conveyed through the use of capital letters, Frank’s letters are formal and direct, practically to the point of being anonymous and impersonal. This anonymity is seen in the way he signs his letters using his initials, FPD. From the tone of his letters, he is acting as one who conducts business should act, which is polite but distant. One can imagine Frank being quite alarmed at receiving some of Helene’s letters, yet his responses hardly ever reveal that she has said something that may offend. He is the quintessential British gentleman, or at least he seems to be. Although Helene Hanff and Frank Doel could not be more dissimilar, Helene’s warm abrasive wit and generosity eventually breaks down the cool exterior that Doel exudes at the beginning of their correspondence. Her references to dental work, her badgering comments to Frank for not doing his job, and her joy at receiving books she loves all contribute to establishing a more intimate relationship not only with Frank but also with many of the staffers at the bookstore. Even more so, Helene’s generosity in sending care packages reveals a sensitivity to the conditions of post-WWII England. Because a good portion of the letters are written when England’s population was on government food rations and where basic goods like eggs were a luxury, affordable only to the most economically well-off, Helene’s care packages make her a hit among the staff and Frank Doel’s family. In fact, after she sends the staff a ham for Christmas in 1949, Frank begins to sign his name Frank Doel instead of FPD. Other staff members also then begin to write her letters. Her correspondence eventually extends to Frank’s wife and later, when they are grown, to his children. In these letters, Helene is able to get a more in-depth portrait of Frank as well as the England that he represents to her. In return for the gifts of hosiery and foodstuffs, Helene receives a number of beautiful antiquarian books and a handmade Irish linen tablecloth made by a neighbor of Frank’s. In addition, Helene is offered free room and board whenever she decides to visit England by both the Doel family and others at Marks & Co. This cultural exchange reveals on a
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WHEREAS HELENE’S LETTERS ARE OFTEN EMOTIVE, HER OUTRAGE USUALLY CONVEYED THROUGH THE USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS, FRANK’S LETTERS ARE FORMAL AND DIRECT, PRACTICALLY TO THE POINT OF BEING ANONYMOUS AND IMPERSONAL.’’
more personal scale the ties that have developed between Great Britain and the United States and contributes in a small way to the rebuilding of England’s infrastructure, many of its cities having been destroyed by German bombing campaigns. As Helene herself notes in a letter to the whole staff, ‘‘I send you greetings from America—faithless friend that she is, pouring millions into rebuilding Japan and Germany while letting England starve.’’ Thus, these gifts are an extension of her personal investment in English culture, especially its literature. Even more than being war allies, it is Helene’s love of books and passion for Western literature that fuels her passion for maintaining relations with people she has not met. The correspondence, while divulging personal information, especially in Helene’s letters, is primarily focused on keeping Helene well-stocked in many of the canonical works of literature and more obscure items such as musical scores. Her references to reading and receiving books from Marks & Co. take up a good portion of the contents of her letters. In her brash demands for books to be hunted down is a zest for reading great literature. In fact, her drive to acquire quality books is a way for her to develop a repartee with Frank. A letter, dated February 9, 1952, is a particularly noteworthy example of not only her desire to read the literary classics especially when they are bound in beautifully made books, but also her reliance on Frank to find what she is searching for. Addressed to ‘‘SLOTH,’’ the letter reveals Helene’s despair of not having anything substantive to read. ‘‘I could ROT over here before you’d send me anything to read. i oughtta run straight down to brentano’s which i would if anything i wanted was in print.’’ She ends the letter, ‘‘MISS Hanff to you. (I’m
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Helene only to my FRIENDS),’’ acknowledging not only Frank’s inability to fill her book requests but also his unceasing formality, even after three years of correspondence and the many care packages she has sent. Moreover, by reading books by England’s finest writers and being in touch with the staff at Marks & Co., Helene begins to envision an England that most likely exists only in her imagination. Despite her many letters that claim she will be in England soon, Helene never ends up going. On the surface, it seems like a monetary problem. As a struggling writer, Helene’s income is unpredictable, and what she does earn seems to go to her dentist. Later, after she begins making more money, she moves into a bigger and better flat. Yet, as the years go by, there seems to be something else more at stake in her not going. By the end of the correspondence, it is evident that Helene will never go. Physically being there is impertinent as for the past twenty years Helene has been imagining England through the books she has. As she says in her last letter dated April 11, 1969, years ago a guy I knew told me that people going to England find exactly what they go looking for. I said I’d go looking for the England of English literature, and he nodded and said, ‘It’s there.’ Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. Looking around the rug one thing’s for sure: it’s here.
For Helen, 84, Charing Cross Road is part of a world that she prefers to keep isolated from the material world of actual people and places. Instead, the bookshop and its occupants is contained within the books she buys as well as a product of her imagination. In the end, 84, Charing Cross Road is an homage to a place never visited and people never seen, only imagined. In her letters, Helene’s passion for reading spills over to her passion for all things British that results in making deep connections to a number of people from Frank Doel to his fellow workers and family. It is not surprising that Frank’s wife, Nora, writes Helene about her husband passing away since they have exchanged letters as well as gifts over the years. Nora even admits that she has been jealous of Helene because ‘‘Frank so enjoyed your letters and they or some were so like his sense of humour.’’ Thus, she makes clear that two people who appear to be so different on the surface are actually quite similar. Although Helene will probably never make it to England, she realizes that she
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does not need to go to wonder at its marvels. Rather, the marvels are imbedded in both her memory and the books she has received over the years. Source: Doreen Piano, Critical Essay on 84, Charing Cross Road, in Drama for Students, The Gale Group, 2003.
Sybil Steinberg In the following interview, Steinberg discusses with Hanff her method of self-education and the impact of writing in her life. The frustrated actress in Helene Hanff, well documented in her autobiographical chronicles: 84, Charing Cross Road, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, Underfoot in Show Business, and in her latest work, Q’s Legacy, out this month from Little, Brown (Fiction Forecasts, June 14), gives a bravura performance to raise the curtain on our interview. A pixie with moxie, Hanff takes center-stage in her one-room Manhattan apartment to deliver a mock excoriation of PW and her interviewer in particular. ‘‘I am infuriated that Publishers Weekly is interviewing me,’’ she begins, and goes on to explain that she had no sooner finished writing an article, fashioned especially for PW, about ‘‘how one gets to be a walking ad’’ for one’s publishers, when we called to request this interview, thus precluding the purchase of her opus. It is, she says, her tart tongue in cheek, just one more example of how an author’s precarious financial state is undermined by even the hands that should feed it. The zam-bang opening and antic humor are characteristic of Hanff, who in her latest book again relates the adventures that transformed her life. ‘‘At an age when most executives are considering early retirement, I was a failed playwright, a television writer who was unwilling to follow the industry to Hollywood, a writer of children’s books no one was publishing any more,’’ she says. Within the next decade, the play adapted from her most popular book was a hit in London and went on to be featured in repertory theaters all over the world, a plaque carrying her name is prominently displayed at the site of the bookstore she made famous in London’s Charing Cross Road, she is the recipient of adulatory fan mail, and she has finally achieved an income above the poverty level. In Q’s Legacy, Hanff pays tribute to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, the Cambridge scholar whose books she used to educate herself when she could not afford to go to college during the Depression. Inspired by ‘‘Q,’’ who ‘‘brought English literature into my
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life,’’ Hanff embarked on a writing career that, to hear her tell it, has had more downs than ups. As she reveals in Q’s Legacy with insouciant candor, for every successful book she has written, several others have ended up in the incinerator. ‘‘I have not only started bad books, I have finished them!’’ she announces with gusto. ‘‘André Deutsch [Hanff’s London publisher] once said, ‘If you wrote the phone book, we’d have to publish it because you have such a big following in London.’ I then wrote three phone books, and he wouldn’t publish any of them because he had the sense to know they were bad books. I didn’t know, or I never would have finished them.’’ Hanff ruefully describes some of the books she has thrown away. One was a guidebook resulting from a one-week, government tourist office-sponsored tour of Israel in which she and six other travel writers were ‘‘imprisoned in a bus for six days, twoand-one-half of them spent in Tel Aviv. We never got out of the bus except in a group with our tour guide, whom we nicknamed Brunhilde. Now you know that you’re never going to get a book out of six days on a bus.’’ Next was a book on dogs, a subject she was told could not miss. ‘‘I happen to be goofy about dogs. So I strung together 150 doggy anecdotes. It was dreadful.’’ ‘‘The third we do not discuss,’’ she announces in a lugubrious voice, and discusses it anyway. ‘‘I wrote it for the first time in 1963 at my editor Gene [Genevieve] Young’s suggestion. It was terrible, and we dropped it down the incinerator. I wrote it for the second time in 1968. Ditto. I wrote it for the third time in 1975. Ditto. Ask me what I’m going to spend ’85 and ’86 doing! I think I’ve finally found the right approach. Of course, it may go down the incinerator like its three predecessors. But I’m hopeful.’’ The books that have made it to publication and earned Hanff a legion of devoted readers all relate the story of her life. She has learned, she says, that she can only write about things that have happened to her. ‘‘You’d be amazed how many ways you can tell the same autobiography. I’ve never written anything else, though I never told the whole story in any of them. But each time Gene Young read the first draft of my books, she called and said, ‘You’ve left yourself out of it.’ It took me just ages to get up the nerve to start with me. So this time, when I first
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THE BOOKS THAT HAVE MADE IT TO PUBLICATION AND EARNED HANFF A LEGION OF DEVOTED READERS ALL RELATE THE STORY OF HER LIFE.’’
had the horrible suspicion I was about to fall down the same rat hole again, I tacked up a sign over my typewriter: ‘You’ve left yourself out of it!’ In Q’s Legacy, line one, page one begins with me. Because I finally realized that unless it was a story about my life—in which scads of other people are involved, of course—it would be a bust again.’’ While Hanff may put herself into her books, her self-deprecatory comments about her appearance should not be taken seriously. At various points in Q’s Legacy she calls herself ‘‘plain and mousy,’’ ‘‘small, round-shouldered,’’ ‘‘nearsighted, awkward and clumsy,’’ ‘‘easy and assured on paper, but awkward and stiff in person.’’ In reality, she is a gamine with a monk’s haircut and a friendly, energetic, offhand manner. Shoeless, her trim figure clad in corduroy slacks and a cotton blouse with turned-up sleeves, she could be a peppy teenager. She chops out her conversation in a flagrant Philadelphia accent animated by colloquialisms and delivered in what she calls her ‘‘gin baritone,’’ but which is most probably attributable to the cigarettes she smokes. Her mocking self-put-downs tend to endear Hanff to her readers, many of whom feel that they know her and behave in a proprietary fashion. In Q’s Legacy, Hanff acknowledges that she is a ‘‘cult author’’ and describes the numerous favors that fans ask of her, from autographing books and mailing them out as gifts, to phoning her in the middle of the night to chat. She answers every fan letter she receives. ‘‘I’m a very chummy type,’’ she declares. ‘‘I have never written ‘Thank you so much for your letter,’ because that would take longer than just writing off the top of my head. But when I’m writing 50 thank-you notes, each of the 50 recipients is getting just one and they think I’m their best friend. I, of course, forget what I’ve said almost immediately.’’
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Sometimes the ramifications of a long-forgotten letter get Hanff in temporary difficulties. Replying to a fan who wrote that he had been tempted to purloin the Marks & Co. sign that once hung outside the bookstore at 84, Charing Cross Road, she scribbled, ‘‘Why didn’t you?’’ and thought no more of the incident. When the fan called some months later and announced triumphantly that he had acquired the sign for her, she was at first nonplussed and then delighted; the handsome silver-and-black nameplate now hangs on the wall in the alcove where shelves hold the treasured volumes she bought from Marks & Co. and the dog-eared texts by Q, the nucleus of her collection and the inspiration for her later purchases. According to Hanff, every week brings phone calls from people who have just discovered her books, have seen or are acting in the play adapted from 84, Charing Cross Road. ‘‘People phone and they apologize for disturbing me. I say, ‘Listen, honey, if I didn’t want to talk to you, my number wouldn’t be listed.’ Then they get loose. Or they begin, ‘Miss Hanff, you don’t know me.’ They’re stiff. So I jump in. I say, ‘Oh you obviously read books; so I know you.’’’ Many callers express appreciation of Hanff’s guidebook to New York, titled The Apple of My Eye. They would be surprised to know that the book marked a low point in the author’s life. According to Hanff, Doubleday commissioned the guide for $7500, a sum so low that her agent Flora Roberts even contributed her fee, adding another $750 to Hanff’s meager earnings. Living on the half of the fee advanced to her during the six months it took to research the book, Hanff says she was ‘‘flat broke the whole time. A friend and I took 13 day trips touring New York. We did it on the cheap. I could only buy us one decent lunch; the rest of the time we ate in cafeterias. We had ferry fares, museum charges, car fares. But when I turned in an itemized expense account for $138, Doubleday wouldn’t pay it! They said it would have to come out of my advance.’’ This is one of the incidents that have caused Hanff to take a dim view of the author’s lot. Another was the fate of her book Underfoot in Show Business, which ‘‘crept out during the New York newspaper strike in 1962 and promptly died.’’ When Little, Brown reissued the book in 1980, Gene Young sent letters to newspapers and booksellers explaining that it had not been reviewed the first
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time around and asking them to treat it as a new book. ‘‘So what happened? Every reviewer said, ‘This is an old book,’ and didn’t review it. Every bookseller said, ‘This is an old book,’ and stuck it up in the balcony.’’ Despite her bad luck in this case, Hanff knows herself incomparably fortunate in her relationship with Young, whom she followed from Harper & Row to Lippincott to Little, Brown. ‘‘I hope she stays at Little, Brown,’’ she says somewhat wistfully. ‘‘They do the most beautiful job. Their editors care. Their copy editor is wonderful. And their printers are meticulous.’’ Hanff ‘‘thanks God’’ for Young, who is supportive, but not falsely encouraging. ‘‘You send your book to Gene, and she calls you the next day and says, ‘I read it, I don’t like it.’ You know where you are instantly. No kid gloves. No smooth, ad agency-ese. None of that. But when she does like it, you know it immediately. I depend on that.’’ Hanff also thanks the deity for James RooseEvans, who adapted 84, Charing Cross Road for the stage. She confesses herself ‘‘speechless’’ at the royalties she receives, as she was when she discovered herself the toast of London at the play’s premiere. Equally astonishing to her is that Samuel French purchased the play and made it available to theatre groups around the world, most of whom seem to have contacted her one way or another. She was taken aback however, by a letter from a young Scottish actress who said she had been quite relieved to learn that Hanff was still alive. Her royalty payments still make Hanff feel somewhat guilty, since she regards these profits as money she did not actually earn. Having fended off the wolf at the door so frequently, she is almost fanatic about managing her finances on the pay-asyou-go plan. ‘‘The one drawback about being a writer is that you never know in any month where the rent is coming from six months from then,’’ she says earnestly. ‘‘That’s why I never buy anything on time.’’ Only the experience of being stranded in the Minneapolis airport sans money or her ticket, which mysteriously disappeared, she says, between the airport door and the check-in counter, convinced her to apply for a credit card, which then lay dormant for a long time before she could convince herself it was not wicked to use it. She is equally compulsive in her attitude toward her readers, who, she is determined, must get
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their money’s worth from her books. ‘‘I worry a helluva lot more about my readers than I do about reviewers,’’ she says. ‘‘I have nightmares that they’ll run out and get the new book and be disappointed. I’d die rather than let them down.’’
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It is an old-fashioned attitude, but then Hanff is somewhat of an anachronism in the contemporary world. Having taken Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch as her personal mentor, and having been introduced in his books to Izaak Walton, Shakespeare and Milton, she is high on the merits of a literary education, particularly as preparation for a writing career. ‘‘Of course you must choose your models sensibly,’’ she says. ‘‘I love John Henry Newman to death, but he doesn’t write American English. Fortunately I had Q’s lectures, which kept me from going off the deep end.’’
Frankel, Haskel, Review of 84, Charing Cross Road, in Saturday Review, November 7, 1970, p. 38.
Asked whether her method of self-education would seem feasible to young people these days, she answers, ‘‘I think the people who still want to are the people who have to. There are still kids growing up in slums, with a terrible need to write, who, knowing that college is beyond them, will go to libraries and read anything they can get their hands on. They will be just as dependent on libraries as I was. The ethnics may have changed—these kids are not lower middle class, they are underclass—but the need for knowledge still exists and especially the need for immersion in good writing.’’ Hanff cites James Baldwin, a writer she very much admires, as a master of English prose learned primarily from the Bible. As for herself, she would do it all over again, Hanff says. ‘‘I don’t think I had a choice. I wouldn’t have half-starved if I could have helped it. But if writing is the only thing you want to do, and the only thing you know how to do, you do it.’’ Sometimes her reliance on her own life experiences for material gives her anxious moments, she confesses. ‘‘One thing about the books I write, ideas for them are not going to fly in the window,’’ she observes. ‘‘The thing I must do is dig back into my own past, and at my age, I have to go back plenty. I may not have had a busy life, but it’s been long, that’s a blessing.’’ Momentarily serious, Hanff then responds in characteristic fashion to our expression of relief that she still has material to draw on. ‘‘Relieves you, honey,’’ she cackles, ‘‘it gives me a nervous tic!’’ Source: Sybil Steinberg, ‘‘PW Interviews: Helene Hanff,’’ in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 228, No. 5, August 2, 1985, pp. 70–71.
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Axelrod, Alan, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Twentieth Century History, Alpha Books, 1999, pp. 255–365.
Kauffman, Stanley, Review of 84, Charing Cross Road, in New Republic, February 23, 1987, p. 24. Lask, Thomas, Review of 84, Charing Cross Road, in New York Times, September 11, 1970.
FURTHER READING Basbanes, Nicholas A., A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, Henry Holt & Company, 1995. Bibliomania, or the passion to collect books, is celebrated in this historical account of book collecting which begins 2,200 years ago in Alexandria. The work also includes more contemporary stories of book junkies, some driven to criminal acts to sustain their habit. ———, Patience and Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture, HarperCollins, 2001. Basbanes focuses on the book culture, talking with obsessed readers about their enduring passion for books. The work is a profile of librarians, writers, readers, booksellers, and the like, all dedicated book enthusiasts. Hanff, Helene, Q’s Legacy, Penguin, 1986. This work offers insight into the creation of 84, Charing Cross Road. In it, Hanff recalls her discovery of a volume of lectures by a Cambridge don. Under ‘‘Q’s’’ guidance (a recommended list of reading), Hanff begins to order books from Marks & Co., the small bookseller at Charing Cross Road, by letter— correspondence that ultimately forms the basis for 84, Charing Cross Road. Jenkins, Roy, Churchill: A Biography, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001. Jenkins relays the story of Winston Churchill, one of the greatest figures in English politics, while providing a great historical account of British politics. The author of the work is a former Labor member of the House of Commons.
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The Duchess of Malfi JOHN WEBSTER 1623
John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi was written in 1613 or 1614, and had at least two successful productions in London before it was published in 1623 under the title The Tragedy of the Duchesse of Malfy. Generally considered to be Webster’s masterpiece, it tells the story of a young widow who marries against the wishes of her powerful brothers, setting off a storm of revenge. The startling violence, the unbelievable plot twists, the mysterious motives of the brothers, and the calm strength of the Duchess have made The Duchess of Malfi a subject for fierce debate for hundreds of years. Critics and reviewers have loved or hated the play, with equal fervor. The Duchess’s story is based on actual events that took place in Italy in the early sixteenth century. Webster freely borrowed elements of his story from several sources, including William Painter’s popular collection of stories, The Palace of Pleasure (1566–1567), and Sir Philip Sidney’s romance Arcadia (1590), and also borrowed dramatic elements from the Revenge Tragedy tradition, but he adapted the source materials to suit his own themes and dramatic purpose. The Duchess of Malfi is widely available in high school and college anthologies. It is also available separately as a Dover Thrift edition and collected in The Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays (1998), part of the Oxford World Classics series.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY John Webster was born in London, England, probably in 1579 or 1580. Like most of the facts about Webster’s life, his birthdate is not recorded in any documents that survive to this day; scholars estimate his birthdate by extrapolating from existing records of his parents’ marriage in 1577. It is known that his father was also named John and that the father earned a good living as a coachmaker, but the name and background of Webster’s mother is not known. It is likely that Webster attended the prestigious Merchant Taylors’ School, an institution established for children of members of the Company of Merchant Taylors. There, he would have received a solid basic education, which included exposure to literature in Latin and English, and he would have participated in musical and dramatic performances. Although the play itself has been lost, there is evidence that Webster was part of a group that was paid in 1602 for writing Caesar’s Fall. This play, written on commission, is the earliest known work to which Webster contributed. Webster would continue to collaborate with other playwrights, including Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, and Michael Drayton, for much of his career. Most of these plays were written for performance by particular theatrical companies. They were intended to be popular successes, not texts for study, and the successful playwright was able to produce histories, comedies, tragedies—whatever the market demanded. In or near 1605, Webster married a woman named Sara Peniall. Their first son, also named John, was baptized in 1606, and several other children followed. Webster was apparently able to support his family through his writing. Webster’s two most important plays were both written by him alone: The White Devil (1612) and The Duchess of Malfi (published 1623, but written in 1613 or 1614). Both draw heavily on the Italian tradition of sensation and tragedy, which was popular at the time. Webster also wrote prose ‘‘character’’ sketches, a ceremonial pageant, and various odes and verses, none of which is as important today as his plays. Over his career, Webster wrote approximately ten plays in collaboration and at least four individually. During his lifetime, he was wellknown as a playwright and as a visible member of London’s upper middle class. Webster’s last known play, Appius and Virginia, was produced in London in 1634. Though no
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records of his death have been found, references to Webster in the work of other writers seem to indicate that he died no later than late 1634.
PLOT SUMMARY Act 1 The Duchess of Malfi is divided into five acts, each comprising several scenes. In the three scenes of act 1, the major characters and conflicts are introduced. The setting is the Italian city of Amalfi in the sixteenth century, in the audience chamber or ‘‘presence’’ of the widowed Duchess. Antonio, the Duchess’s steward, talks with his friend Delio as they observe the others who pass through the chamber. The first to enter are the Cardinal and Bosola. Although Bosola has recently been released after serving seven years for a murder he committed at the behest of the Cardinal, the Cardinal is cold to him and will not acknowledge his debt. Ferdinand, the Duke of Calabria, enters with his entourage. Ferdinand learns that Antonio has proven himself the best at a knightly competition, and he congratulates Antonio for his prowess and for his eloquent speech. When the Cardinal reenters with the Duchess, Antonio gives Delio his impression of the three siblings: the Cardinal is jealous and vengeful, Ferdinand is ‘‘perverse and turbulent,’’ and the Duchess is sweet and noble. Ferdinand asks the Duchess to accept Bosola as a servant, and she agrees; in fact, the brothers have hired Bosola to spy on the Duchess. The two brothers warn the Duchess not to remarry, and she promises that she will not. However, as soon as they leave her chamber, she summons Antonio and the two perform a private marriage ceremony, with the Duchess’s trusted servant Cariola as witness.
Act 2 The second act, which has five scenes, begins several months later, as the Duchess is about to give birth to a child. Her marriage to Antonio is still secret, and she has concealed her pregnancy by wearing loose clothing. Bosola, however, suspects that she is pregnant and tries to trap her by giving her a present of apricots. When she devours them hungrily and then vomits, he has confirmation of the
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pregnancy but does not reveal what he knows. The incident sends the Duchess into labor, and she is rushed to her chamber.
with expected fury. The Cardinal decides to contact the authorities at Ancona and have the Duchess and her family banished.
To avoid suspicion that the Duchess is giving birth, a ruse is invented: it is announced that jewels have been stolen, and everyone must stay in his or her room while a search is conducted. The Duchess delivers a healthy son, and when Cariola tells Antonio the good news, he prepares a set of calculations based on astrology to determine the baby’s future. Meanwhile, Bosola sneaks out to the courtyard beneath the Duchess’s window and hears her crying out. Antonio finds him there, and they argue about Bosola having left his room. As he leaves Bosola, Antonio accidentally drops the paper on which he has written his astrological notes, and Bosola retrieves it, discovering that a baby has been born to the Duchess—a baby who will have a short life. Bosola knows that Antonio is in on the secret but does not consider that a man of Antonio’s social class could be the father.
At the Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto, the Duchess and Antonio review their situation. Bosola brings a letter from Ferdinand calling for Antonio’s death, and Antonio and the Duchess say goodbye again. They know that this will be their final parting. Antonio takes their oldest son and flees to Milan. The Duchess is arrested by Bosola, in disguise, and taken by guards to her palace.
In Rome, the Cardinal meets in his chamber with Julia, his mistress. Delio arrives and propositions Julia, but she refuses him. In another part of the Cardinal’s palace, Ferdinand has received a letter from Bosola, telling him of the baby’s birth. The Cardinal and Ferdinand discuss their sister’s betrayal, and Ferdinand’s rage takes him to the brink of insanity.
Act 3 Several years pass before the five scenes in act 3 take place. The Duchess has given birth to two more children, but her marriage is still a secret, and Bosola still has not discovered the identity of the father. Ferdinand, finally stirred to action, arrives at the Duchess’s palace to confront her. To play an affectionate joke on her, Antonio and Cariola step out of the room while the Duchess is talking to herself in the mirror, and Ferdinand comes into the room at the same moment. He accuses her of shaming the family with her promiscuity, and although she tells him that she is married, he vows never to look at her again. Afraid of Ferdinand’s anger, the Duchess sends Antonio to safety by pretending that he has stolen money and been banished. Tenderly, the couple say goodbye to each other, planning to reunite in Ancona. In her grief, the Duchess confides in Bosola, telling him everything. Bosola plots to entrap the Duchess and Antonio. He speeds to Rome to tell what he knows and find his reward, and the brothers respond
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Act 4 Act 4, with its two scenes set in the Duchess’s chambers, moves quickly. Trying to drive her to despair so that she will be damned as well as killed, Ferdinand arranges for a series of horrors. He visits the Duchess in a darkened room (because he has vowed never to see her again) and places in her hand a dead man’s hand that she will assume to be Antonio’s. He shows her wax figures that look like the bodies of Antonio and the three children. He arranges for eight madmen to scream outside her window. Through it all, the Duchess maintains her quiet nobility, saying ‘‘I am Duchess of Malfi still,’’ and Bosola begins to feel a grudging respect for her. Finally, Bosola brings two executioners to the Duchess’s chamber, and they strangle her. She faces her death with dignity. Cariola is also strangled, though she resists her death with all her energy. Off stage, the two younger children are strangled. When Ferdinand sees his dead sister, he has a dramatic change of heart, and rather than rewarding Bosola, he blames him for the murders.
Act 5 The action of the five scenes of act 5 is also rapid. Four days after the events in act 4, the Cardinal has had all of Antonio’s property seized. Antonio decides to visit the Cardinal and attempt a reconciliation. Ferdinand’s madness has increased, and he has been seen digging up bodies in the cemetery and carrying a man’s leg over his shoulder. Bosola arrives in Milan, and he and the Cardinal try to determine what the other knows. The Cardinal pretends that he does not know the Duchess is dead, so that he will not seem to have been involved in the murder, but Bosola persuades Julia to find out the truth. The Cardinal confesses to Julia that he has had his sister killed, but then he immediately kills Julia with a poisoned book.
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Outside the Cardinal’s home, Antonio and Delio speak with a ghostly echo that comes from the Duchess’s grave. Bosola vows to protect Antonio from harm, but he accidentally kills Antonio with his sword, mistaking him for the Cardinal, who has promised to kill Bosola. In the final scene, an anguished Bosola kills the Cardinal’s servant and stabs the Cardinal. Ferdinand rushes in and stabs Bosola and the Cardinal. Bosola stabs Ferdinand. As they all lie dead, Delio enters with Antonio’s son and calls for a unified effort to support the young man as the new Duke.
CHARACTERS Antonio Bologna Antonio is the steward, or the manager, of the Duchess of Malfi’s palace. He is good with a horse and a lance, and he is widely known to be honest— so honest that the Cardinal rejects a suggestion that Antonio be hired to spy on the Duchess. He is also a good judge of character, delivering to his friend, Delio, insightful descriptions of the others as they appear. He is in awe of the Duchess, because of her beauty and her disposition, and humbly accepts her proposal of marriage without regard for the wealth he will obtain by marrying her. In fact, he agrees to keep the marriage secret, and so he gains no power or prestige from it. After he is married, Antonio is less sharply drawn, but the glimpses given of him do not fulfill the promise of act 1. He loses the paper on which he has calculated the baby’s future. He follows the Duchess’s plans for avoiding capture, making no suggestions himself. Finally, he is killed as he walks to the Cardinal’s door to ask for a reconciliation. Still, he is a good man, and the Duchess clearly loves and trusts him until the end.
Daniel de Bosola Bosola is the Duchess’s Provisor of Horse. As the play opens, he has just been released from imprisonment because of ‘‘a notorious murder’’ the Cardinal hired him to commit. Now, he is employed by Ferdinand, who arranges his position with the Duchess so he can spy on her and prevent her from marrying. In many ways, Bosola is the most complex character in the play, and the only one whose thinking and personality change from beginning to
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MEDIA ADAPTATIONS • The Duchess of Malfi was produced for television in 1972 by the BBC. The 123-minute VHS cassette, featuring performances by Eileen Atkins, Michael Bryant, and Gary Bond, is distributed by Time-Life Video. • The BBC produced an audio recording of the play in 1980, starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scolfield. This production runs on three audiocassettes, and is distributed by Audio-Forum. • An older audio version originally issued on record albums, but since 1972 distributed on three audiocassettes, is also available from Caedmon. It features Barbara Jefford as the Duchess, and includes a booklet with biographical information and essays on the play. • In 1962, Caedmon issued a recording of excerpts from the play read by the British poet Dylan Thomas, well known for his wonderful speaking voice. The recording is available from Caedmon on one audiocassette.
end. Antonio predicts this change at the beginning, when he comments that Bosola is ‘‘very valiant,’’ but worries that his melancholy will ‘‘poison all his goodness.’’ In fact, Bosola is capable of great evil. He spies on the Duchess (though he is unable in three years to discover that Antonio is the Duchess’s husband), supervises her murder and the murder of her children and of Cariola, accidentally kills Antonio, and deliberately kills the Cardinal, Ferdinand, and a servant. As he observes the nobility of the Duchess and Antonio in facing death and also sees that committing heinous acts for the Cardinal and Ferdinand does not win him gratitude or financial reward, he begins to question his belief that it is better ‘‘To appear a true servant, than an honest man.’’ But, when the ‘‘stars’’ drive Bosola to kill Antonio, whom he has resolved to protect, he concludes that all human endeavor and human goodness are meaningless.
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The Cardinal The Cardinal is the brother of the Duchess and Ferdinand, as cold and calculating as Ferdinand is excitable. He is a high-ranking official in the Roman Catholic Church, but he does not live the life of a Christian saint: he has a mistress; he hires spies and murderers; and, he does not seem to have any religious duties or religious thought. As Antonio explains to Delio, ‘‘where he is jealous of any man, he lays worse plots for them than ever was imposed on Hercules, for he strews in his way flatterers, panders, intelligencers, atheists, and a thousand such political monsters.’’ The Cardinal is the quiet force behind the plotting against the Duchess. It is his idea to hire Bosola to spy on her, but even Bosola does not know of the Cardinal’s involvement. When Bosola has killed the Duchess, the Cardinal pretends to have no knowledge of the crime. He shares Ferdinand’s desire that the Duchess not marry, and Ferdinand’s anger when she bears a child, but he ‘‘can be angry / Without this rupture’’ of ‘‘intemperate noise.’’ He demonstrates no love or loyalty, treating with startling coldness Bosola, who killed and was punished in his employment, and Julia, who is his mistress, and the Duchess and Ferdinand, who are his siblings. His motives for tormenting his sister are not clear. He does not want her money or her love, and he is incapable of feeling humiliation or shame. He does not care for his reputation or legacy; his final words are ‘‘now, I pray, let me / Be laid by, and never thought of.’’
Cariola Cariola is the trustworthy servant of the Duchess, privy to all of the Duchess’s secrets. Cariola witnesses the marriage between the Duchess and Antonio, helps deliver the Duchess’s children, and is with the Duchess when the Duchess dies. In her own death, she is not as noble as the Duchess, but kicks and screams and tries to escape. Throughout the play, she is more cautious than the Duchess, thinking that marrying Antonio is ‘‘madness,’’ and fearing that the trick of a false pilgrimage will prove unlucky.
Delio Delio is a courtier and a friend of Antonio. His main role in the story is to provide a sounding board for Antonio. Delio’s curiosity about the court gives Antonio the opportunity to speak aloud about the characters of the Duchess, her brothers, and Bosola
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in the way an omniscient narrator might in a novel. Delio is also the friend in whom Antonio confides the secrets of his marriage and the births of his children; like Cariola, Delio guards the secrets carefully. Delio has no direct connection with any of the siblings, and he does not directly participate in their plots and deaths. He is the faithful friend, always standing by to help Antonio when he is needed. In a scene in act 2, Delio comes to Rome and makes advances to Julia, who rebuffs him. Their interaction affects nothing else in the play, and the two never meet again. Delio speaks the last words in the play, when he enters ‘‘too late’’ with Antonio’s oldest son after his parents have been killed. He urges the survivors to help the young man gain his inheritance and proclaims, ‘‘Integrity of life is fame’s best friend, / Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.’’
The Duchess of Malfi The Duchess of Malfi is the sister of the Cardinal and the twin sister of Ferdinand. She is never referred to by name throughout the play, but only by the labels that describe her roles as sister, duchess, and wife. As the play opens, she is a widow, but still in the bloom of youth. (According to Webster’s source materials, the real duchess was a girl of twelve years old when she was married to a much older man; she became a widow when she was twenty.) Although her brothers forbid her to marry again, and she promises to obey them, she longs for a husband. Secretly, she asks her steward Antonio to marry her, and they perform a private marriage ceremony. Afraid of her brothers’ anger, the Duchess manages to keep her marriage a secret for years, even through the birth of three children. When the brothers do learn of the children, she flees with Antonio but is captured and murdered. Early in the play, Antonio describes her as a woman whose speech is ‘‘full of rapture,’’ who has a ‘‘sweet countenance,’’ who lives a life of ‘‘noble virtue.’’ Although her sweet nobility casts no spell over her brothers, her every word and action support Antonio’s judgment of her, and her subjects love and respect her. She is clever, able to match her brothers’ wit in her exchanges with them, and able to quickly craft intricate plots for escape. She is affectionate with her husband, children, and servant, showing a tenderness that is far beyond the capabilities of the Cardinal and Ferdinand. And she
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is dignified in the face of her brothers’ torments, stating even at the worst of it, ‘‘I am Duchess of Malfi still.’’ Some critics have commented that the Duchess deserves death because of her rashness in marrying beneath her station, but most reject that notion, agreeing that there is nothing in the play to indicate that Webster found fault with the marriage of Antonio and the Duchess. What happens to her is not her fault, but the result of living in a ‘‘gloomy world.’’
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Julia Julia is the wife of an old nobleman and is the Cardinal’s mistress. While she is staying with the Cardinal, she is propositioned by Delio, whom she refuses; she also tries to seduce Bosola. Ironically, the Cardinal kills her by tricking her into kissing a poisoned book, while she is swearing to keep his secret.
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Ferdinand Ferdinand, the Duke of Calbria, is the twin brother of the Duchess, younger than her by a few minutes. He is as emotional as his brother the Cardinal is icy, and his response to the idea of his sister marrying is beyond all bounds. Ferdinand’s motivation has always been a central question for critics of this play, and many critics have seen incestuous feelings in his rage. Whatever the cause, when he learns that his sister has given birth to a child, he declares her a whore and ‘‘a sister damn’d,’’ creates a mental picture of her ‘‘in the shameful act of sin,’’ and imagines burning her and her lover in a coal pit with no vent, so that ‘‘their curs’d smoke might not ascend to heaven,’’ or boiling her child into a soup and serving it to the father. As with other characters, Antonio’s early description of Ferdinand proves insightful. Antonio tells Delio that Ferdinand has ‘‘a most perverse, and turbulent nature.’’ Even the Cardinal wonders whether Ferdinand is ‘‘stark mad,’’ and after brooding over his sister’s betrayal for a time, Ferdinand does approach insanity. After he has had the Duchess killed and sees her lying dead, he regrets that he ordered Bosola, ‘‘when I was distracted of my wits, / Go kill my dearest friend,’’ but there has been no hint previously that he and the Duchess shared any closeness. The realization of what he has done pushes Ferdinand over the edge into insanity, perhaps even to the point of imagining that he is a werewolf. He is found in the graveyard digging up dead bodies and is seen ‘‘with the leg of a man / Upon his shoulder; and he howl’d fearfull, / Said he was a wolf.’’ Ferdinand is not seen again until the last scene, when he charges in on the Cardinal and Bosola, and stabs them both. Bosola stabs him in return, and just before Ferdinand dies, he ‘‘seems to come to himself,’’ saying, ‘‘Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, / Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.’’
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Fate and Belief Considering that one of the main characters of The Duchess of Malfi is a Cardinal, one of the highest-ranking officials in the Roman Catholic Church, there is a surprising lack of reference to God in the play. The characters do not turn to God for help in trouble, and they do not seek forgiveness when they come to believe they have acted wrongly. The only certainty in life is death, and there is no promise here of an afterlife. The world of The Duchess of Malfi is controlled not by God, but by fate. Ferdinand is the character most conscious of his religion, but his Christianity is not a religion of love but one of vengeance, not of forgiveness but of damnation. In act 2, in his anger at learning of the Duchess’s child, Ferdinand’s first instinct is to call her ‘‘a sister damn’d.’’ Naming wild punishments he would like to administer to her, he declares that he would like to have the Duchess and the unknown father of the child ‘‘burnt in a coal-pit’’ with no vents, so that ‘‘their curs’d smoke might not ascend to heaven.’’ In act 4, he brings a series of horrors to the Duchess to drive her to despair, so that she will renounce God and be sent to hell when he has her murdered. Ferdinand is so clearly insane, that his understanding of religion must be seen as a product of rage, not of religious teaching. Other characters turn elsewhere for their understanding of the world. Antonio learns by astrological calculation that his first child will have a ‘‘short life’’ and a ‘‘violent death.’’ The Cardinal, whose lavish lifestyle and mistress would seem to distance him from the teachings of his church, does not suggest that the Duchess pray for guidance if she finds herself tempted to remarry, but advises that ‘‘your own discretion / Must now be your director.’’ Cariola warns the Duchess not to use a false religious pilgrimage to fool her brothers, but the Duchess rejects the warning, calling Cariola ‘‘a supersti-
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Research another influential Renaissance text, Machiavelli’s The Prince (1517), which describes the qualities of the ideal ruler. To what extent is the Cardinal an embodiment of these qualities? What are the strengths and weaknesses of such a ruler? • Some critics have said that in creating the Duchess of Malfi, Webster was praising Queen Elizabeth I, who had died in 1603, ten years before the play was written. In what ways were Elizabeth I and King James I different? Why might Webster have preferred a ruler like Elizabeth I? • London’s Globe Theatre, one of the theaters where The Duchess of Malfi was performed, has been reconstructed with historical accuracy. Research the ways in which the type of theater, and the conventions about casting a play, would have made a performance of the play seen in
tious fool.’’ Although she faces her death on her knees to more easily pass through heaven’s gates, there is no real sense of faith in her last speeches. Of all the characters, it is Bosola who most changes during the play, and whose psychology is revealed the most clearly. As he watches the conduct of the three siblings, he comes to a new understanding of the differences between a good servant and a good man, and he grows in respect for the honesty of Antonio and the dignity of the Duchess. If anyone were going to turn to God in the end, it would be Bosola, but he does not. Instead, when he realizes that he has accidentally killed Antonio, he utters the line that expresses the world view for the entire play: ‘‘We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and banded / Which way please them.’’
Appearances and Reality Repeated throughout The Duchess of Malfi is the idea that people cannot be trusted, that things are not as they appear. People, both the essentially good
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London in 1613 different from performances staged in important theaters today. • Compare the Duchess’s situation at the beginning of the play with the social conventions observed by British nobility today. How free, for example, are members of the Royal Family to marry whomever they wish, regardless of class distinctions or other considerations? How much pressure might one’s family exert over one’s choice of a spouse? • The Duchess of Malfi is set in sixteenth century Italy, but written for a seventeenth century English audience. Given the broadest outline of the Duchess’s story, what adaptations would a playwright have to make to set the story in twentyfirst-century United States? How might American cultural values change the outcome of the story?
people and the villains, disguise their bodies and their motives. In act 1, several instances of pretending and concealing occur to set the tone for the rest of the play: the Cardinal pretends to have no interest in Bosola; Bosola is hired to spy on the Duchess, pretending only to tend her horses; the Duchess pretends to have no interest in marriage; Cariola hides behind the arras without Antonio’s knowledge and promises the Duchess that she will ‘‘conceal this secret from the world / As warily as those that trade in poison / Keep poison from their children.’’ Antonio, who is known for his honesty, agrees to keep the marriage a secret. The Duchess complains that women of wealth and stature cannot be honest about their feelings, but are ‘‘forc’d to express our violent passions / In riddles, and in dreams, and leave the path / Of simple virtue, which was never made / To seem the thing it is not.’’ Further incidents of deception and disguise occur throughout the play. The Duchess and Antonio invent stories to conceal the birth of their first child and their plans to escape to Ancona. Ferdinand
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brings the Duchess a dead man’s hand that he knows she will take for Antonio’s and shows her wax figures that look like her husband and children. Bosola visits the imprisoned Duchess in disguise, appearing as an old man and a bellman. Even Bosola’s one kindness to the Duchess is a deception, as he tells the dying Duchess that her husband is alive and reconciled with her brothers. The Cardinal kills Julia (with whom he has been having an affair without her husband’s knowledge) by giving her a poison disguised as a holy book, not knowing that Julia has deceived him by hiding Bosola behind the door. The Cardinal, Bosola, and Ferdinand die without anyone coming to save them, because the Cardinal has lied to keep the servants from entering his chambers. Although none of these deceptions brings about its desired end, the characters turn again and again to secrecy and disguise to solve their problems, as though they know no other way to move in the world. It is not an optimistic picture, as Bosola realizes just before he dies: ‘‘O, this gloomy world! / In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, / Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!’’ If the world is steered not by God but by uncaring stars, and if men and women cannot trust their own perceptions to steer through it, it is a gloomy world, indeed.
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The nine Senecan tragedies have several features in common: a five-act structure; a theme of revenge; long-suffering nobles; trustworthy female companions; ghosts; gruesome violence inspired by lust, incest, and vengeance; the death of children; and a chorus that comments on the action and describes the violent acts, which happen offstage. During the Elizabethan period, playwrights began to present the violence on stage in response to demands from audiences, who were accustomed to public executions and other forms of public violence. To Seneca’s ingredients, they added a hero who is called upon but unwilling to seek revenge, actual or feigned insanity, and an emphasis on schemes and secrets. Clearly, many of these elements are present in The Duchess of Malfi, but it varies from the conventions in important ways. The revenge tragedy has a hero whose honor has been wronged (often it is a son avenging his father); in this play, the brothers seek revenge on the Duchess, who has done them no harm. The Duchess is surely the hero of the play named for her, and yet she does not seek or win vengeance for the harm done to her. The fact that she is killed in act 4 (and does not die in the act of winning revenge) deflects attention away from her as the center of the action and moves the play out of the category of revenge tragedy. The motive for the actions of the two brothers is unclear, but revenge— whatever they may think themselves—is not at the heart of it.
Blank Verse Revenge Tragedy Between 1542 and 1642 in England, many dramatists looked back to early Latin writers for their models. In particular, one group of English Renaissance plays, later called Revenge Tragedies, was based on the tragedies written by the Roman philosopher and playwright Seneca, who lived from 4 B.C. to A.D. 65. Seneca’s tragedies employed a set of conventional characters and plot devices that these Renaissance writers found appealing, and at the end of the sixteenth century, English plays imitating Seneca began to appear. William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote two plays, Titus Andronicus (c. 1590) and Hamlet (c. 1601) that are generally considered to be revenge tragedies. Although The Duchess of Malfi is often labeled a revenge tragedy, it is more accurate to say that it was strongly influenced by the movement, but that Webster uses revenge tragedy conventions to create a different kind of play.
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Many of the lines spoken by the characters in The Duchess of Malfi are written in a poetic form called blank verse. Blank verse is the name given to unrhymed lines of ten syllables each, accented on the even-numbered syllables, though lines need not be in perfectly regular iambic pentameter (the name given to lines constructed in this way) for the poetry to be labeled blank verse. For example, Ferdinand at one point wishes he were a wild storm ‘‘That I might toss her palace ‘bout her ears, / Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads.’’ Each of these lines has exactly ten syllables, and the underlying pulse or stress felt as one reads the lines naturally gives a slight accent on the second, fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth syllables of each line. If every line were so regular, however, the speeches would develop a singsong rhythm that would be unnatural and distracting, so the poet’s task is to write lines that are near enough to the regular pattern but with enough variety that different characters speak dif-
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ferently, and different tones can be heard. In fact, very few lines in The Duchess of Malfi are regular ten-syllable lines; most have more or fewer syllables or stresses in different places, as in the line ‘‘We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and banded.’’ Not all of the lines in The Duchess of Malfi are written in verse. Antonio speaks in prose with Bosola and with Ferdinand before Antonio marries the Duchess, and the eight madmen speak in prose. The Duchess and Bosola speak in prose while he is disguised as the tomb-maker, but they shift to verse when he declares his intention to kill her. The blank verse is thought to convey solemnity and nobility, and all of the important speeches by important people are in blank verse. (An interesting use of this idea is Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I, in which Prince Hal speaks in prose when he is with his friends in the tavern and speaks in blank verse when he is with the King or on the battlefield.) Using blank verse for tragedy was a convention for Elizabethan dramatists. The first English tragedy, Gorboduc (1561), was also the first English drama written in blank verse, in a deliberate attempt to echo in English the regular rhythms of Senecan tragedy, written in Latin. Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare brought the form to its greatest heights with their writing some thirty or forty years later. A generation after these two, Webster and his contemporaries were still writing tragedies in blank verse, though never as well. Webster frequently ends a scene with two rhyming lines, called a couplet. The rhyme catches the audience’s ear, making the last lines of a scene slightly more noticeable and giving a finished quality, rather like a period at the end of a sentence. Within fifty years after the publication of The Duchess of Malfi, most English poetic drama was written entirely in couplets.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT The Renaissance The term ‘‘Renaissance’’ means ‘‘rebirth,’’ and the period known as the Renaissance was a time of new beginnings in Europe, an emergence from the Middle Ages. The Renaissance brought with it new ways of thinking about science, religion, philosophy, and art. During the earlier medieval period, Europeans had come to think of themselves as
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insignificant creatures subject to and inferior to divine beings. When some Italian scholars began to read ancient Latin and Greek texts that had been ignored for centuries, they began to look for ways to combine contemporary Christian thought with the classical belief in human capabilities. This belief in what is now called Renaissance humanism drove a new passion for celebrating human endeavor and potential. The ideal ‘‘Renaissance man’’ would be talented in science, mathematics, poetry, art, and athletics. As an intellectual movement, the Renaissance touched every aspect of life. Science and exploration proliferated. Political theorists attempted to apply the best features of classical thought, and religious reformers asserted the rights of the common person to have direct access to Biblical texts. There was a new passion for reading classical literature in the original Greek and Latin and for incorporating classical mythology into literature and art. New forms emerged, based on classical forms, as the revenge tragedy grew out of the study of Senecan tragedy. Literature, including drama, moved beyond its role as an outgrowth of the church and turned to stories that celebrated or decried human capabilities. Of course, there was no particular day on which the Middle Ages ended and the Renaissance began. The transformation happened over many years and did not affect every country at the same time. Generally, the Renaissance is said to have begun in Italy during the fourteenth century and to have reached England about a century later. The height of the English Renaissance was during the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth. Webster’s career comes at the end of this period, and The Duchess of Malfi shows many traces of its creation during this period. The Duchess’s insistence that she be allowed to make individual choices, the secular tone of the play, the five-act structure and blank verse, the allusions to classical mythology, and the Cardinal’s many references to new technology and science all point to the play as coming from the Renaissance. One aspect of Renaissance literature that may strike readers in the twenty-first century as peculiar is the notion of imitation. Greek and Roman students frequently copied from models to create their own compositions, and the Renaissance writers adopted this technique. The basic story of the Duchess of Malfi, for example, is a true story that occurred in Italy around 1510. The story was adapted
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COMPARE & CONTRAST • Early Seventeenth Century: King James I is ruler of England and Scotland. He has come to the throne through inheritance and divine right and is the sole ruler of the country. Today: Queen Elizabeth II is Queen of England. She inherited the throne from her father, but her duties are primarily ceremonial. The country is ruled by a Parliamentary government. • Early Seventeenth Century: The mental illness called melancholia is thought to be caused by an excess of black bile in the body. Some people deliberately take on the characteristics of melancholia, because it is thought to be a disease that affects great minds. Bosola may be one of these. Today: Depression is a widespread disorder, thought to be caused by a chemical imbalance. In technologically advanced countries, antidepressant medications are widely used. • Early Seventeenth Century: Most noble women
in Italian in a sixteenth-century novella, and in English in William Painter’s collection of stories, The Palace of Pleasure and Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Webster used incidents from all of these sources—sometimes using lines and phrases word for word—in creating his own play. He also kept a journal throughout his career, jotting down scraps of poetry and quotations he found interesting. He drew freely from this journal in writing his plays, inserting lines where they fit pleasingly. This was not considered plagiarism but a sensible way to draw on the learning of those who had come before.
Jacobean Age The period within the Renaissance when England was ruled by King James I is known as the Jacobean period, from the Latin form of the name James. James I ruled from the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 until his own death in 1625, and although he was not a beloved king, the years of his reign saw a
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do not marry for love. Like the Duchess, they may be joined in arranged marriages with older men while they are very young. Even if widowed, they are not free to remarry or to make choices about their property without male guidance. Today: While social pressures may prevent members of the upper classes from marrying those of the lower classes, there are no legal divisions between the classes. English women may marry whomever they wish and control their own property. • Early Seventeenth Century: All that is required for a marriage to be legally binding in England is that a man and woman declare themselves to be husband and wife. Witnesses and written documents are not required. Today: Marriages must be performed by an official certified by the state to do so.
great period of English drama. William Shakespeare, for example, began his career before James came to the throne, but his greatest and most mature work was produced during the Jacobean age. Webster also produced his best work during these years, as did many other important dramatists. James’s rule was guided by the strength of his religious convictions. He was a member of the Church of England, and it was under his direction that the King James Bible was produced. James also believed devoutly in the divine right of kings, or the idea that kings and queens are accountable only to God, and that the system of inheriting the monarchy was created by God. Because the Church of England was the official religion of the monarch and of the country, religion and politics were intertwined in a way that is not the same in England today. The divine right of kings gave James power, while the Roman Catholic idea of a pope chosen by God opposed that power. To protect his stature, James
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dealt severely with those who believed differently, including Puritans (who eventually began to leave England for the New World), Catholics (who are portrayed with irreverence in Webster’s character of the Cardinal), and Jews (who are treated with casual disrespect in The Duchess of Malfi and other popular works of literature from the period).
CRITICAL OVERVIEW The Duchess of Malfi is considered one of Webster’s two greatest works and one of the canonical works of Jacobean drama. It is also roundly criticized as being weak, confusing, and illogical. In his thorough overview of more than three centuries of criticism, John Webster and His Critics 1617–1964, Don D. Moore writes that there may be no one other than Webster ‘‘whose plays have received a more varied reception and whose critics have been so divided among themselves on whether the writer was due praise or excoriation.’’ In Webster’s own time, The Duchess of Malfi sold enough tickets to be profitable, and the publication of the play in 1623 was accompanied by verses from other playwrights who seem to have found the play worthy of praise. From the second half of the seventeenth century through the eighteenth, the play was seldom performed and there was no extended criticism of it. Criticism of the nineteenth century tended more toward appreciation than study, and Webster was alternately praised for his overall effect or reviled for specific flaws in logic or ideology. Much of this criticism was based on performances, rather than on scrutiny of the text. Academic criticism, beginning in the late nineteenth century, focused at first on uncovering the sources for Webster’s understanding of the Duchess’s story. In the twentieth century, dozens of critics have written about the play. William Archer, writing a 1920 article for Nineteenth Century, is typical of those who have found the play lacking. Inspired to examine the play closely after seeing a production, Archer found it ‘‘three hours of coarse and sanguinary melodrama’’ and pronounced it ‘‘fundamentally bad.’’ With unblinking honesty, Archer points out several bits of inconsistency and illogic in the play, including the son of the Duchess and her first husband, who is mentioned only once in the play and then forgotten. Inga-Stina Ekeblad, on the other hand, explains in an article in Review of English Studies that Webster, ‘‘though he often leaves us in
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confusion,’’ does achieve in this play a fusion of convention and realism, ‘‘creating something structurally new and vital.’’ Psychological questions about the play have been raised by several critics. What is Ferdinand’s motive for tormenting his sister? Sheryl Craig believes that the answer lies in the fact that the Duchess and Ferdinand are twins. She explains in an article in Publications of the Missouri Philological Association that for Renaissance audiences, the siblings would have resembled biblical twins, whose ‘‘conflicts with each other are symbolic of their conflicts with God; one twin is the chosen one, God’s elect, and the other twin is the outsider.’’ Much more common is the opinion expressed by James Calderwood in Essays in Criticism, that within Ferdinand’s actions are ‘‘unmistakable suggestions of incestuous jealousy.’’ Calderwood finds that when Ferdinand becomes aware of his own sinful desires, he becomes a ‘‘physician-priest-executioner who seeks the purgation of his own tainted blood in the purging of hers.’’ Another central question that has engaged critics grows out of that fact that the title character dies in act 4. Is the Duchess really the main character of the play and, if so, what is the play about? Charles Hallett and Elaine Hallett, in The Revenger’s Madness: A Study of Revenge Tragedy Motifs, write that the play is a drama of initiation, much like Hamlet, and that the Duchess is at the heart of it: ‘‘The test she must pass is whether she will remain the woman she was, once she sees what the world is.’’ Kimberly Turner examines the play as a critique of the female ruler within the context of Renaissance patriarchy in an article in the Ben Jonson Journal, and finds that Webster creates a new kind of female hero who ‘‘participates actively in her own life.’’
CRITICISM Cynthia Bily Bily teaches writing and literature at Adrian College. In this essay, Bily examines Webster’s manipulation of the five-act structure in his play. When John Webster sat down to write The Duchess of Malfi, he had several goals in mind. He was a professional playwright, trying to earn a living and support a large family by writing plays that people would pay to see. To achieve that goal, he needed a
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Harriet Walter, as the Duchess in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Duchess of Malfi
fascinating story with enough intrigue and violence to appeal to his audience. He wanted, as all artists do, to earn a reputation for quality. Although he was writing plays to be performed on the London stage during his lifetime (he never could have dreamed that five hundred years later scholars would be studying the texts of his plays in libraries and classrooms—without even seeing them performed), he shared the awareness of his age that art is a continuum, that the literature of one period influences, and is influenced by, the literature of other times. As a serious writer, he followed literary convention, finding the idea for his story from early sixteenth-century Italy via a late sixteenth-century English collection of stories, and finding the structure for his play in first century Rome. Although the idea of ‘‘imitation,’’ or borrowing ideas and even phrases from earlier models, might strike the modern reader as hack work, simple cobbling together of other people’s ideas, the task Webster faced was quite difficult. He had before him two or three versions of the story of one Giovanna, who in 1490 at the age of twelve married a man who would later become Duke of Amalfi and leave her a widow at twenty. At least one of these retellings was in English prose; one may have been in
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Italian. To create the play as he envisioned it, Webster had to follow the general arc of the true story, which some of his audience would have read in William Painter’s collection The Palace of Pleasure, turn narrative into drama, create dialogue and render it in blank verse, and shape the whole thing into the five-act structure that he had inherited from the Roman philosopher Seneca. Webster saw The Duchess of Malfi as a tragedy, and in Renaissance England, a tragedy called for Seneca’s five acts. The idea of following a pattern in creating art may be counterintuitive, but it is actually quite common. Anyone who has been to a lot of movies knows about the plot that runs ‘‘boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.’’ Even audiences who could not articulate the pattern are subconsciously aware of it—they know what to expect, and part of the pleasure in watching the film is in seeing the old story unfold in a new way. Many romance novels are written with strict formulas that dictate how many chapters the book will run, which chapter will include the heroine’s first meeting with her dream man, and so on. Epics from the Iliad and the Odyssey to The Call of the Wild and Star Wars follow the same arc. We like pattern, we expect it, and we rely on it to help us make sense of complexity.
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • The White Devil, published in 1612, is Webster’s other well-known play. Like The Duchess of Malfi, it is based on a true story of Italian nobles. Using elements of the revenge tragedy, it depicts diabolical brothers punishing and avenging their sisters.
play, more closely resembles The Duchess of Malfi in its horrific violence. Seldom performed, it has a cycle of vengeance that includes murder, rape, the cutting off of a character’s tongue and hands, and the baking of murdered children into a pie that is served to their mother.
• William Shakespeare’s great tragedy Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (c. 1601) is arguably his most famous play. Although it ends, like The Duchess of Malfi, with dead bodies strewn across the stage, its focus is on the philosophical and psychological development of the title character.
• A good introduction to the period in which The Duchess of Malfi is set is J. H. Plumb’s The Italian Renaissance, published in a revised edition in 2001. The first half of the book is an historical overview of the economic and social conditions that led to the Renaissance; the second half includes brief biographies of important figures by different scholars.
• Titus Andronicus (c. 1590), another Shakespeare
The idea that a drama might be divided into five parts actually came from Aristotle, a Greek philosopher in the third century B.C.. Four hundred years later, the Roman playwright Seneca refined Aristotle’s ideas and wrote nine tragedies in five acts, each act having a particular function in the drama. Elizabethan playwrights knew Seneca’s plays and used them as a model for their own work, and Webster is among those whose own tragedies follow Seneca’s pattern of Exposition, Complication, Climax, Resolution, and Catastrophe. Or do they? In Seneca’s plan, the first act presents the Exposition, or the background information an audience needs to understand the play. This act will introduce the characters, establish the setting, and hint at the conflicts to come. This is clearly what happens in act 1 of The Duchess of Malfi. We meet Antonio, Delio, Bosola, the Cardinal, Ferdinand, and the Duchess. Because a drama typically does not have a narrator who steps in to interpret characters for the audience, Webster creates reasons for the characters to talk about each other. Delio asks Antonio ‘‘to make me the partaker of the natures / Of some of your great courtiers,’’ and Antonio obliges by standing off to the side and commenting on the personalities of Bosola and the three siblings.
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Likewise, the Cardinal and Ferdinand talk about Antonio, so it is established early on that Antonio’s ‘‘nature is too honest.’’ Lines such as ‘‘I knew this fellow seven years in the galleys / For a notorious murder’’ and ‘‘Here comes the great Calabrian duke’’ serve the purpose of conveying information to help the audience make sense of what will come. Setting is established beginning in the first line, when Delio says, ‘‘You are welcome to your country, dear Antonio—/ You have been long in France.’’ Throughout the act, there are references to Naples, Milan, the sea coast, and other locations in Italy. The central conflict is set in motion when the Cardinal and Ferdinand order the Duchess to remain unmarried, and she defies them by marrying Antonio. When the first act ends, the audience has gotten everything expected from the Exposition. Act 2, according to Seneca, should present the Complication, sometimes called the Rising Action. In this section, the forces that will be opposed gather together and intersect—that is, they become complicated. In the second act of The Duchess of Malfi the Duchess gives birth to the first child of her marriage to Antonio, Bosola’s suspicions are raised and then confirmed, Bosola shares the knowledge of the birth with Ferdinand and the Cardinal, and
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Ferdinand begins his descent into madness. With the Duchess and Antonio on one side, and Bosola, the Cardinal and Ferdinand gathered on the other, the action pauses, as on the night before a great battle. In fact, the action pauses for several years, while the Duchess gives birth to two more children and Bosola tries to determine who their father is. Seneca placed the Climax, the turning point and the moment of the highest emotional response, in act 3. In The Duchess of Malfi, act 3 presents the sweetly touching scene with Antonio and the Duchess in the bed chamber, immediately followed by Ferdinand’s sudden appearance. Coming at the center of the play, the scene between the Duchess and Antonio is the last moment of happiness they will share; from this point on, there is a steady progression of sorrow and torment until both are dead. The rapid juxtaposition of the Duchess’s happiness with her husband and conflict with her brother takes the audience on a rapidly shifting roller coaster of emotion, rather like the ‘‘whirlwind’’ that takes Ferdinand away. This is followed by a tender parting as Antonio flees, the Duchess’s innocent sharing of her secret with Bosola, another tearful parting, and the Duchess’s arrest. Act 4 presents the Resolution of the conflict, sometimes called the Falling Action. As the hero ascended in stature through act 2, the hero descends through act 4. Act 5 is the Catastrophe, or the conclusion. Typically, the hero of a tragedy dies in act 5, often accompanied by more deaths. Here The Duchess of Malfi seems to break from the five-act structure of Seneca. The Duchess does not decline in any significant way through act 4. In the face of unspeakable torment, she remains dignified and noble, ‘‘the Duchess of Malfi still.’’ She does not die bravely, a result of her tragic flaw, in act 5, because she has already died in act 4. (In addition, it would seem to be a perversion of the notion of tragic flaw to find one in the Duchess, whose only error seems to have been in marrying for love.) What might this mean? How can the hero die in act 4? If she does, what is act 5 for? What if the play is not really about the Duchess after all? Some critics have identified Bosola as the only character in The Duchess of Malfi who undergoes any psychological growth or change. Could he be the real hero of the play? What would the five-act structure look like if one foregrounded Bosola instead of the Duchess? Act 1 presents the Exposition. The audience is introduced to the characters and setting, but they pay perhaps more attention to Bosola’s situation.
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SHE DOES NOT DIE BRAVELY, A RESULT OF HER TRAGIC FLAW, IN ACT 5, BECAUSE SHE HAS ALREADY DIED IN ACT 4. . . . WHAT MIGHT THIS MEAN? HOW CAN THE HERO DIE IN ACT 4? IF SHE DOES, WHAT IS ACT 5 FOR?’’
He has just returned from seven years in prison for a murder he committed for the Cardinal. The Cardinal shows Bosola no gratitude but secretly arranges for him to be hired by Ferdinand to spy on the Duchess. Act 1 ends with Bosola in position, poised for action. Act 2 is the Complication, or the Rising Action. After at least nine months of fruitless spying, Bosola suspects and confirms a pregnancy through a combination of his own wiles (the apricot trick) and good fortune (Antonio’s dropping the paper). Bosola’s star is certainly rising. His letter to Ferdinand shows that he has done his job well, and Bosola might well expect a reward for his success. However, the letter to Ferdinand ironically ‘‘hath put him out of his wits,’’ driving Ferdinand’s attention far away from his faithful servant. In act 3, the audience finds a turning point and a strong emotional response. Bosola begins to turn away from Ferdinand and finds himself speaking admiringly of Antonio. When the Duchess sends Antonio away for supposedly stealing from her, Bosola scolds her for not seeing Antonio’s true value: ‘‘Both his virtue and form deserv’d a far better fortune.’’ Learning that the Duchess and Antonio are married, he wonders ‘‘can this ambitious age / Have so much goodness in’t?’’ It is his highest moment. One admires the eloquence with which he celebrates virtue, but his path from this point is a steady descent. The next time the audience sees him, he is himself again, arresting the Duchess and speaking ill of Antonio’s humble birth. Act 4 finds Bosola in Resolution or Falling Action. Trying to drive the Duchess to despair, he turns to despair himself and cannot even face her without a disguise. He continues to do Ferdinand’s bidding, bringing the madmen and supervising the
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murders of the Duchess, the children, and Cariola, but his heart is not in it. At the end of the act, he realizes that Ferdinand has no intention of paying him for his evil work. He has chosen poorly, misread the world, lived a life in which he ‘‘rather sought / To appear a true servant, than an honest man.’’ Now, he sees the flaw (the tragic flaw) in his thinking, and says ‘‘I am angry with myself, now that I wake.’’ In act 5, the spiraling descent continues, until Bosola has killed Antonio, a servant, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand, and until he dies himself. Of all the characters, he is the only one whose thinking has changed in fundamental ways through the play, the only one who has changed his situation through his own actions, the only one who has learned. He is the one who obtains revenge in the end, just before dying: ‘‘Revenge, for the Duchess of Malfi, murdered,’’ for Antonio, for Julia, ‘‘and lastly, for myself, / That was an actor in the main of all.’’ Bosola is a good candidate for hero of The Duchess of Malfi.
At every turn in this dark action, the characters identify their fears, their rage, or their despair in language startling in its specific physical immediacy and its general moral pessimism: ‘‘We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and banded/ Which way please them.’’ The events and the language—equally painful—mark Webster’s characteristic awareness of human impotence before evil and malignant fate.
Source: Cynthia Bily, Critical Essay on The Duchess of Malfi, in Drama for Students, The Gale Group, 2003.
Some theatrical problems have been noted. The crucial moment of the Duchess’s banishment is relegated to part of a dumb show. Act V, subsequent to the Duchess’s death, may seem anti-climactic: a hectic series of accidents and random killings.
Richard Morton In the following essay, Morton examines how the language in The Duchess of Malfi contributes to the play’s emotional intensity and dramatic power. The Duchess of Malfi’s emotional power and theatrical potency, first defined by Charles Lamb and A.C. Swinburne, derives from its persuasive dramatic realism and its tirelessly intelligent and complex poetry. The plot follows an account in William Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1567) based on true events in early 16th-century Italy. Two powerful brothers, Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, and the Cardinal, are determined that their widowed sister, the Duchess, shall not remarry. They set Bosola, a malcontent courtier, to spy on her. She secretly marries her steward, Antonio Bologna, and bears him several children. Bosola betrays her and, on instructions, imprisons her, torments her with false news of Antonio’s death and with a grisly display of mad folk, and finally has her killed, together with two of her children and her maid Cariola. Ferdinand, repentant after the fact, runs mad. In a grim final sequence of confusion and revenge, Ferdinand, the Cardinal, Bosola, and Antonio die, and it is left to the Duchess’s young son to restore an orderly society.
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Critics have observed many ambiguities and inconsistencies. There is no convincing reason for the brothers’ prohibition of the Duchess’s remarriage, nor do they justify her murder as an appropriate consequence of her actions. That a marriage and the birth of three children should remain secret is highly unlikely. A child of the Duchess’s first marriage is mentioned, then ignored. An elaborately presented horoscope does not come true. Antonio and the Duchess flee in different directions for no clear reason.
But such inconsistencies may be validated; Webster’s realism depends on his recognition that his characters’ intense emotions create around them, as if by passionate magnetism, a field of irrational behaviour and fatal consequence. Ferdinand’s sexually explicit ravings against his sister—‘‘Are you stark mad?’’ asks the Cardinal—his extravagant grief and his collapse into lycanthropia cannot be rationally explained, but Webster’s language gives his actions a potent, frightening plausibility. The malcontent Bosola is ambiguous; a reputedly skilled intelligencer who cannot solve the simple mystery of the Duchess’s marriage and who finally stabs Antonio by mistake, he is consciencestricken and ashamed, even while he undertakes the brutal murders. Yet his ceaseless and insightful selfanalysis is convincing and even extenuating. The events of Act V may be seen not as anticlimactic, but as the unavoidable results of Machiavellian policies which, after the Duchess’s murder, must be played out in a sequence of lesser acts— ignoble, grotesque, but still inevitable. Webster finds an apt symbol of inflexible fate when an ‘‘ECHO from the Duchess’ grave’’ prompts Antonio and his friend Delio by ironic repetition.
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Webster is dramatising an historical event which English audiences would believe only possible in the intolerant and disorderly society of 16th-century Italy, with its dissolute churchmen, corrupt courtiers, and crazed nobility. The opening contrasts the court of Italy with that of France, where the ‘‘judicious king’’ has sought to ‘‘reduce both state and people/To a fix’d order.’’ Two pilgrims, the only outsiders in the play, express their opinions with equally judicious balance:
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AT EVERY TURN IN THIS DARK ACTION, THE CHARACTERS IDENTIFY THEIR FEARS, THEIR RAGE, OR THEIR DESPAIR IN LANGUAGE STARTLING IN ITS SPECIFIC PHYSICAL IMMEDIACY AND ITS
Here’s a strange turn of state! Who would have thought So great a lady would have match’d herself Unto so mean a person? yet the cardinal Bears himself much too cruel.
Their comments remind the audience that a world does exist outside the malevolent environment of the action. The obvious lapse of time in the Duchess’s marriage between the scenes similarly draws attention to a period of presumed tranquillity and domestic love. The moment at which chaos and horror descend on the Duchess and Antonio is precisely marked. Antonio and Cariola tiptoe from the Duchess’s bedroom, leaving her alone. As she continues talking, Ferdinand enters solus, showing her a poinard when, thinking Antonio is silent behind her, she queries, ‘‘Have you lost your tongue?’’ The Duchess’s instant recognition that the inevitable discovery has come to pass is brilliantly expressed: Tis welcome: For know, whether I am doom’d to live or die. I can do both like a prince.
GENERAL MORAL PESSIMISM. . . .’’
‘‘Love mix’t with fear is sweetest.’’ She can organise Antonio’s escape with good sense and dispatch, but is trapped by her thoughtless and misplaced trust in Bosola. She meets her torments and death with grandeur—‘‘I am Duchess of Malfi still.’’ Some critics have suggested that these inconsistencies are flaws in characterisation. By turns deceitful and impassioned, playful and fearful, practical and naive, haughty and petulant, her character may indeed not be consistent, but her frailties and strengths are recognisably human responses to the terrible world into which she is thrust. Source: Richard Morton, ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi: Overview,’’ in Reference Guide to English Literature, 2d ed., Vol. 3, edited by D. L. Kirkpatrick, St. James Press, 1991, pp. 1557–58.
These contrasts between an attainable harmony in a time or a place outside the confines of the tragic setting and the necessary chaos within that setting, are mirrored by the contrasts in the Duchess’s character. She begins the play by assuring her brothers that she will never remarry, but without a pause in the action proceeds to the dangerous wooing of Antonio: ‘‘If all my royal kindred/Lay in my way unto this marriage,/I’d make them my low footsteps.’’ Recognising her ‘‘dangerous venture,’’ she undertakes, ‘‘through frights, and threat’nings,’’ the commitment which Cariola sees as a ‘‘fearful madness.’’ Though full of ‘‘noble virtue’’ and a model of sweet and pious behaviour, her ‘‘tetchiness and most vulturous eating of the apricocks’’ when pregnant are hardly evidences of nobility. After the birth of three children, she still lies to Ferdinand: ‘‘when I choose/A husband, I will marry for your honour.’’ Moments later, in conversation with Antonio and Cariola, she is ‘‘merry,’’ holding that
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FURTHER READING Bloom, Harold, ed., Elizabethan Dramatists, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea House, 1986. This collection of critical essays includes two essays about The Duchess of Malfi as well as essays about Webster’s most important contemporaries. In ‘‘Tragical Satire in The Duchess of Malfi,’’ Alvin B. Kernan describes Bosola as the ideal, and one of the last, of the Elizabethan satirists. G. Wilson Knight contributes an essay called simply ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ which examines image clusters in the play. Boklund, Gunnar, ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi’’: Sources, Themes, Characters, Harvard University Press, 1962. Boklund traces Webster’s sources for the story of the Duchess, pointing out the places where Webster deviates from these sources to make the story his own. The characterization of Antonio as humble but honest, for example, is Webster’s invention.
SOURCES Archer, William, ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ edited by Norman Rabkin, Prentice-Hall, 1968, p. 14, originally published in Nineteenth Century, Vol. 87, 1920, pp. 126–32. Calderwood, James L., ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi: Styles of Ceremony,’’ in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ edited by Norman Rabkin, Prentice-Hall, 1968, pp. 79, 82, originally published in Essays in Criticism, Vol. 12, 1962, pp. 133–47. Craig, Sheryl, ‘‘‘She and I were twins’: Double Identity in The Duchess of Malfi,’’ in Publications of the Missouri Philological Association, Vol. 19, 1994, p. 21. Ekeblad, Inga-Stina, ‘‘The ‘Impure Art’ of John Webster,’’ in Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ edited by Norman Rabkin, Prentice-Hall, 1968, p. 50, originally published in Review of English Studies, Vol. 9, 1958, pp. 253–67. Hallett, Charles A., and Elaine S. Hallett, The Revenger’s Madness: A Study of Revenge Tragedy Motifs, University of Nebraska Press, 1980, p. 286. Moore, Don D., John Webster and His Critics 1617–1964, Louisiana State University Press, 1966, p. ix. Turner, Kimberly A., ‘‘The Complexity of Webster’s Duchess,’’ in the Ben Jonson Journal, Vol. 7, 2000, p. 400.
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Knight, G. Wilson, ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ in Elizabethan Dramatists, edited by Harold Bloom, Modern Critical Views series, Chelsea House, 1986, pp. 85–107. Knight offers a close reading of the clusters of images and symbols in the play and argues that the coherence of the play is not to be found in the logical structure of the plot but in the non-rational resonance of the imagery. Rabkin, Norman, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations of ‘‘The Duchess of Malfi,’’ Prentice-Hall, 1968. This collection touches on the major critical questions about the play in ten critical essays, or ‘‘Interpretations,’’ and fourteen brief excerpts, or ‘‘View Points,’’ by scholars including T. S. Eliot and Northrup Frye. Thomson, Leslie, ‘‘Fortune and Virtue in The Duchess of Malfi,’’ in Comparative Drama, Vol. 33, No. 4, 1999–2000, pp. 474–94. Thomson compares the play with medieval and Renaissance iconography illustrating the relationships between fortune, love, and death. She shows how the relationships between the Duchess (fortune) and Antonio (love) are derived from earlier morality plays and emblem books. Winston, Mathew, ‘‘Gendered Nostalgia in The Duchess of Malfi,’’ in The Renaissance Papers, 1998, pp. 103–13. Winston sees in the play the longing of Webster and his contemporaries for Queen Elizabeth I, who had been dead for a decade when The Duchess of Malfi was first performed. The Duchess’s death in act 4 is part of Webster’s overall plan, which is to show in act 5 how the world decays when she is gone.
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Electra HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL 1903
Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s play Electra, which was first performed in Germany in 1903 (German title, Elektra) and published in English translation in 1908, is available in the volume, Hugo von Hofmannsthal: Three Plays, translated by Alfred Schwartz (Wayne State University Press, 1966). This volume is currently out of print. Electra is a free adaptation of the play of the same name by the ancient Greek dramatist, Sophocles. The story focuses on the consequences of the murder of Agamemnon. Agamemnon was the king of Mycenae who was killed by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus upon his return from the Trojan War. The play takes place ten years after the slaying. Agamemnon’s daughter Electra still mourns her beloved father’s death and obsessively anticipates the moment when she will avenge him by killing her mother. The revenge comes when Electra’s brother Orestes returns from exile and kills both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Electra is a study in mental disturbance and obsession. It uses the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, which had been published only a few years before von Hofmannsthal wrote the play. Electra also employs powerful, lurid imagery that gives vivid insight into the disturbed minds of Electra and Clytemnestra, and it moves singlemindedly to its violent conclusion. Although rarely performed today, the play has become famous be-
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cause von Hofmannsthal adapted it as the libretto for German composer Richard Strauss’s thrilling opera, Elektra (1909).
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Dramatist, poet, novelist, and essayist, Hugo von Hofmannsthal was born on February 1, 1874, in Vienna, Austria. He was the only son of Hugo August (a bank director) and Anna Maria von Hofmannsthal. Von Hofmannsthal attended the Wiener Akademisches Gymnasium, where he wrote his first poetry, drama, and essays. He was considered a precocious talent. After graduating in 1892, he entered law school at the University of Vienna, but dropped out in 1894 to join the military. Returning to the same school a year later, he studied for four years, receiving a Ph.D. in Romance philology in 1899. By that time, he had already established himself as a writer, much admired by prominent men of letters in Austria and Germany. He helped to form the Jung Wien (Young Vienna), a group of writers who rejected naturalism in literature and adopted the principles of the French Symbolist tradition. Von Hofmannsthal’s work is often divided into three periods. The earliest phase lasted from about 1890 to the turn of the century. It consisted mainly of poetry and lyric drama, including such works as Der Tod des Tizian (1901; trans. The Death of Titian, 1914), and Der Thor und der Tod (1900; trans. Death and the Fool, 1913). The second period, from about 1900 to the beginning of World War I, was a transitional one. Von Hofmannsthal placed less emphasis on the precept of ‘‘art for art’s sake’’ that had characterized his earlier works and developed a deeper regard for human issues and concerns. It was during this period that he wrote Elektra (1904; trans. Electra, 1908), a free adaptation of the play by Sophocles. Shortly after this, von Hofmannsthal’s twenty-three year working relationship with German composer Richard Strauss began. With von Hofmannsthal as his librettist, Strauss composed six operas: Elektra (1909), Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Ariadne auf Naxos (1912), Die Frau ohne Schatten (1919), Die agyptische Helena (1928), and Arabella (1933). To this period of von Hofmannsthal’s work also belongs his play Jedermann (1911; trans. Everyman, 1917). From 1914 to 1917, von Hofmannsthal served in the military, as a translator and courier.
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Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Von Hofmannsthal’s final creative period produced several comedies and the morality plays written for the Salzburg Festival, which he helped to found. The most notable works from this period are the comedy Der Schwierige (1921; trans. The Difficult Man, 1963), and the two versions of Der Turm (first version 1925; second version, 1927, both of which premiered in 1928; trans. The Tower, 1963). Hofmannsthal married Gertrud Schlesinger in 1901. They had three children, Christiane, Raimund, and Franz. On July 15, 1929, Hofmannsthal died of a heart attack at his home in Rodaun, near Vienna, Austria.
PLOT SUMMARY Electra begins in the inner courtyard of Clytemnestra’s palace. A group of women servants, with their matron overseers, are gathered around a well. As the servants draw water, they discuss what has become of Electra, and one says that it is the time of day when she howls loudly for her dead father. Electra appears. As all the servants turn to look at her, she goes back into hiding, holding one arm in front of her face. The servants discuss how Electra
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has been abusive towards them and one servant describes how she answered Electra back with insults of her own. It also transpires from the servants’ talk that Electra is ill-treated in the house. She is beaten and made to eat with the dogs. No one in the house can endure the terrible look on her face. But the fifth servant, a young girl, speaks up in support of Electra as a royal princess. As the servants and matrons go inside, Electra reappears. She is still grieving for her father, Agamemnon. She describes how Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus killed him while he was in the bath. Crying out that she wants to see him, she appeals to him not to leave her alone. She tells him that his day of vengeance will come. His murderers and all their servants, even their horses and dogs, will be slaughtered. When this is done, she, Orestes, and Chrysothemis will dance around their father’s grave. Chrysothemis enters. She tells Electra that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus are planning to throw her, Electra, into a dark dungeon. Electra responds by telling her sister not to listen in on Clytemnestra’s conversations. She should just sit and wait for judgment to come upon the murderers. Chrysothemis responds that she is frightened and cannot sit still. She wants to get out of the house, live a normal life and bear children. She says that no one profits from their continuing anguish and Orestes will not return. She just wants to forget the past and feels that she could do so if only she could escape from the palace. But Electra says she cannot forget and is scornful of her sister’s words. Chrysothemis bursts into tears. Then she tells Electra that she should hide because Clytemnestra is coming and she has been complaining of bad dreams. Electra boasts that it is she who has sent the nightmare, which is of her mother’s own death at the hands of Orestes. Chrysothemis rushes out and Clytemnestra enters. She is pale and trembles with anger, and her clothing is covered with jewels and charms. Electra gives her mother the impression that she is in a pleasant mood, so Clytemnestra says she wishes to speak to her. Electra reproaches her angrily and says it grieves her to see Aegisthus wearing the robes of her dead father. Clytemnestra retorts that she will not listen, but then she seems to have a change of heart and tells her confidante and trainbearer to leave. Clytemnestra then asks her daughter if she knows how she could be relieved of her bad dreams— by performance of a ritual sacrifice, for example.
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Clytemnestra declares that she is rotting inside. Her torment is so great that she no longer knows who she is. Electra gives broad hints about who the victim of the sacrifice should be, but Clytemnestra does not understand what she is saying. She insists on knowing the name of the victim and the rite she would need to perform. Electra gives only cryptic answers and keeps bringing the subject back to Agamemnon’s murder. Eventually, Clytemnestra tells her to be silent about it. When Electra mentions Orestes, her brother who was sent away, Clytemnestra trembles. Electra believes her mother is afraid because she knows that Orestes is alive and will return to carry out vengeance. Clytemnestra continues to insist that Electra tell her the name of the victim and the rites that are to be performed. She threatens to imprison Electra in chains and starve her if she refuses. Electra responds with more wild and fiery words about the coming vengeance. She describes her mother’s terror as the avenger is about to strike. At this point, when Clytemnestra is full of fear, her confidante enters and whispers something in her ear. Clytemnestra’s expression changes from fear to evil triumph, and as she runs back into the house, the reason for her sudden joy becomes clear. Chrysothemis enters, crying out that Orestes is dead. Electra refuses to believe the news. Chrysothemis wants to question the messengers to find out the details of Orestes’ death, but Electra simply insists that now, she and her sister must carry out the vengeance and do so that very night. Chrysothemis does not understand at first, and then is speechless when Electra explains what her plans are. Chrysothemis protests that Electra is mad, but Electra grabs her and tells her she must help in the killing because she is physically strong. Horrified, Chrysothemis just wants to get away from the house. But, Electra, assuming that her sister will do what she is told, says that from now on she will be her devoted servant, even slave. She insists that Chrysothemis must do the deed and that there is no way out for her. Then, she will be free and able to marry and bear the children that she desires. Chrysothemis frees herself from Electra’s grasp and runs off, saying that she cannot do the killing. Electra resolves to do it herself, alone. Orestes enters, but neither he nor Electra recognize each other. Orestes questions her about who she is and says he has come to convey to the mistress of the house the details of Orestes’s death, which he witnessed. Electra tells him to get out of her sight and she falls once more to expressing the misery of
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her life. Then after Orestes again asks who she is, Electra speaks her name. At first, Orestes does not believe it is her because she looks so different from the gracious sister he remembers. Orestes then declares that Orestes is still alive, and Electra demands to know where he is. She assumes he must be in danger. When a servant rushes in and kneels before Orestes and kisses his feet, Electra finally realizes who the visitor is. Orestes says that he has come to avenge their father’s death; the gods have imposed the deed on him and he has no choice. He will do it quickly. Orestes’ tutor enters and after a moment of confusion, Electra recognizes him. She says that now she can believe that Orestes really has returned. Orestes and the tutor go inside where they know Clytemnestra is. Electra remains alone in suspense. A piercing cry comes from Clytemnestra and is quickly followed by a second cry. The servants realize that something is going on although they do not know what. Aegisthus arrives and Electra bows down before him. He says he wants to see the messengers who brought news of Orestes’s death. Electra assures him that Orestes is indeed dead. As they move to the house, she dances around him. Aegisthus enters the house and shortly afterwards begins to shout for help, saying that he is being murdered. Pandemonium breaks out. Chrysothemis reports that all the members of the household who hated Aegisthus are kissing Orestes’s feet. She says that fights broke out between those who loathed their master and those who supported him. Many dead bodies are lying in the courtyards. Electra is overwhelmed and at first cannot rise to her feet. Then she manages to rise and dances a wild dance. After ordering everyone else to dance too, she falls insensible to the floor and lies there rigid. Chrysothemis pounds on the door of the house calling for Orestes.
CHARACTERS Aegisthus Aegisthus is the lover of Clytemnestra, and together they killed Clytemnestra’s husband, Agamemnon. Aegisthus is presented as a weak man and a bully. One of the servants says that he beats Electra. Electra refers to him as a woman, and speaks sarcastically of ‘‘that brave murderer.’’
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Aegisthus appears only near the end of the play and is murdered by Orestes as soon as he goes into the house.
Chrysothemis Chrysothemis is Electra’s younger sister. She is a gentler spirit than Electra and unlike her sister, she is not obsessed by the murder of her father. She is, however, deeply disturbed by her current situation. Frightened and confused by day and night, she cannot remain still and runs from room to room. She feels as if she is lost to herself and blames Electra for the fact that they are both confined to the palace. If Electra were not so unmanageable, Chrysothemis says, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus would let them out of what she calls their prison. She longs to escape so that she can lead a normal life. Her great desire is to marry and bear children, but she is conscious that she is no longer young and life is slipping by. She is frightened when Electra discloses her scheme of vengeance and refuses to take part in it, even though Electra, who has the more dominating personality, tries to force her into compliance.
Clytemnestra Clytemnestra is the mother of Electra, Chrysothemis, and Orestes. With her lover, Aegisthus, she murdered her husband Agamemnon after he returned from the Trojan War. Clytemnestra, who is pale and wears a scarlet robe, is tormented by guilt, even though she cannot remember anything about the murder of her husband. The incident was so traumatic that she has repressed all memory of it. Now, her relationship with Aegisthus appears to have turned sour and she feels she is sinking into chaos, enduring a kind of living death. At night, before she goes to sleep, a dreadful feeling creeps over her. She does not know what it is, ‘‘and yet / it is so terrible that my soul / wishes it were hanged and every limb of mine longs for death.’’ Then when she sleeps, she has terrible nightmares, and she wonders why the gods are inflicting such torments upon her. During the day, she can hardly keep her eyes open, sometimes she feels giddy and she leans on her confidante for support. Her attendants give her contradictory diagnoses about what ails her. Some believe she has a diseased liver; others say that demons are sucking her blood. Clytemnestra is determined to put an end to her nightmares, and adorns herself with jewels and
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charms to ward off the evil influences. She also believes that if she performs the correct ritual sacrifice, the gods will release her from her pain. All in all, Clytemnestra is a fearsome figure, and her servants, as well as Chrysothemis, are afraid of her. She ill-treats Electra, subjecting her to whippings and humiliations. But Electra seems to be the only one who is not intimidated by her.
The Confidante Clytemnestra’s attendant, the confidante, dresses in dark violet and carries an ivory staff adorned with jewels. Clytemnestra supports herself on the confidante’s arm and takes advice from her constantly. When Electra appears to be speaking reasonably to Clytemnestra, her confidante warns her that Electra does not mean what she says. But this time, Clytemnestra rejects the confidante’s words.
The Cook The cook makes only one brief appearance. He talks with the young manservant and also warns Electra and Chrysothemis that Orestes is dead and they must be careful or they will be next.
Electra Electra is the daughter of Clytemnestra, the sister of Chrysothemis and Orestes. She is completely obsessed with avenging the death of her father, Agamemnon. Every day at sunset, she mourns him. The memory of the murder and her desire for revenge obliterates everything else in her mind and heart. Electra used to be beautiful, quiet and gracious, but the torments of grief, her lust for vengeance, and the ill-treatment she has suffered has affected her appearance. Her eyes look frightful because of her lack of sleep and her stare is ferocious. She is dressed in rags with bare arms and legs. Because of Clytemnestra’s enmity, Electra has been fed with scraps, whipped, and threatened with imprisonment and chains. But none of this deflects her from her purpose, and she longs for the time when she can kill her mother and Aegisthus. She then plans to perform a victory dance around her father’s grave. After she hears the false report of Orestes’ death, Electra tries to persuade her sister Chrysothemis to assist in the murder, but Chrysothemis refuses. Ironically, at the climax of the play, it is not Electra but Orestes who does the killing. Electra seems to be full of words but incapable of deeds. Her mental torment has resulted in a
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serious warping of her personality, in which passion and hysteria convince her that the fulfillment of her entire being rests solely on the performance of one bloody act of vengeance.
Matron The matron supervises the servants as they draw water from the well. She is as hostile to Electra as well as most of the servants and reminds them that Electra spat at them and said their children were cursed simply because they had been born in the same house where the murder took place.
Orestes Orestes is the son of Clytemnestra and the brother of Electra and Chrysothemis. After the murder of Agamemnon, when he was still a boy, he was sent away from the palace. Clytemnestra believes that he is feeble-witted and will not return, although she trembles when his name is mentioned. Electra believes that Clytemnestra paid in gold to have Orestes murdered, but she does not believe he is dead, even when his death is reported by the messengers. When Orestes does return to the palace with his tutor, he does not disclose his identity. He meets Electra, but he has been gone so long the two do not recognize each other. Orestes pretends that he is visiting to confirm the death of Orestes, but when he is recognized by a servant, the truth comes out. After this, Orestes does not hesitate to carry out the vengeance that he believes is his duty, killing Clytemnestra and then Aegisthus.
The Trainbearer Clytemnestra’s trainbearer is a yellow figure with black hair. She resembles an Egyptian woman and also is like an upright snake. She speaks only briefly but hisses when she does.
Tutor Orestes’ tutor, a vigorous old man with flashing eyes, accompanies Orestes when he returns to the royal palace. When Electra recognizes him, she realizes that the man with him must indeed be Orestes. It is the tutor who tells Orestes that Aegisthus is not at home and it is time to strike Clytemnestra.
Women Servants The women servants appear at the beginning of the play, when they draw water from a well. They all describe how unpleasant Electra has become. But
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one very young servant defends Electra, and says that the others are not worthy of breathing the same air as the princess.
A Young Servant A young manservant rides out to inform Aegisthus that Orestes is dead, and also to escort him home. He is coarse and impatient and insults the other servants.
dragging of animals, a muted scolding, a quickly stifled scream, the whistling sound of a whip, a recovering and staggering onward.
Who then could argue with the idea that Clytemnestra’s autocratic and cruel reign is an open, festering sore (to use an image that fits the mood of the play) and that justice demands its removal?
Obsession and Fulfillment of the Self
THEMES Justice and Vengeance The play embodies the idea of retributive justice, of blood for blood. An act of wrongdoing can be put right only by a similar act carried out against the original perpetrator. The sole focus of the play is therefore on vengeance and nothing distracts from this theme: the killing of Agamemnon has created a wound that will not heal; it has perverted the natural order of things, which must be put right. Although the situation would appear to be complicated by the fact that one of the intended victims is the mother of the avengers, this in fact, makes little difference, other than to ratchet up the intensity of the drama. The question of whether the killing is morally justifiable is not debated; it is presented through the character of Electra as self-evidently the case. In this, von Hofmannsthal simplified his source, for in Sophocles’ play Electra, Clytemnestra explains why she killed her husband, citing Agamemnon’s sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia. She claims to have justice on her side. Von Hofmannsthal, however, gives Clytemnestra no such moments to offer her case. She is presented as a mentally ill woman who cannot even remember the murder she committed. Furthermore, in von Hofmannsthal’s version, the audience is encouraged to automatically take Electra’s side by showing much more directly than Sophocles the kind of evil that flourishes in the royal palace. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, having attained power by an act of brutality, maintain it in similar fashion. The servant girl who expresses support of Electra is hauled off and whipped offstage, and Clytemnestra’s entrance is accompanied by a chilling stage direction that leaves no doubt about the prevalence in the house of cruelty and perversity: A hurried procession passes the glaringly lit up windows clanking and shuffling by: it is a tugging and
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In Sophocles’ Electra, Electra is a hard and embittered figure, but she presents her case rationally. Von Hofmannsthal’s Electra is a woman obsessed by one thing and one thing only which she expresses in the most lurid terms imaginable. She can think of nothing other than her father’s death (which took place ten years previously) and she eagerly anticipates the moment when she will wreak vengeance on her mother. There is simply no space in Electra’s mind for anything other than this. Her very first speech, for example, is a fifty-seven line monologue addressed directly to her father as Electra looks down at the ground. Electra’s tragedy is that, unlike her sister Chrysothemis, she is unable to forget. She is doomed to remember. And in that act of remembrance, everything else that she once was is obliterated. As she says to Orestes, ‘‘Look, I am / nothing at all. All that I was I have / had to surrender.’’ She lives, she says, but at the same time she does not live. She no longer has a self. Her life has in a sense become an impersonal one in that it has been subordinated to keeping the account of what has been done and what remains to be done in the future. However, the loss of her personal life is, paradoxically, the fulfillment of her being (at least in her own eyes). Her purpose has become larger than herself: she must carry out the will of the gods, obey the law of guilt and retribution and that alone justifies her existence. When it is done, she has no reason to go on living, no reason to speak another word. She must simply be silent and dance.
STYLE Imagery There are a few recurring images or motifs in the play that vividly bring out its themes. The first set of images relates to animals. The images convey the idea that in the world of the play, human life has
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TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY • Read Sophocles’ Electra and describe some of the similarities and differences between that play and von Hofmannsthal’s version. How do the two dramatists differ in their portrayals of Electra and Clytemnestra?
of retributive justice, in which members of the victim’s family are permitted to execute the murderer. Is it fair to call this a ‘‘primitive’’ approach to crime and punishment and to regard our own system as superior?
• In your experience, what is the best way to deal with bad memories from the past? Write a paragraph or two about a situation that has troubled you deeply and how you have come to terms with it.
• In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus encounters Agamemnon in the underworld and Agamemnon tells his story. Read this account, which can be found about two-thirds through Book 11, and then imagine that you are also able to journey into Hades, where you encounter not Agamemnon but Clytemnestra. What might Clytemnestra say to explain her actions and also what happened to her in the end?
• What is meant by the modern idea of the rule of law? How does that concept differ from the concept of retributive justice, as shown in Electra? A few societies today still adhere to versions
lost its dignity and has descended to an inferior level of creation. The light of reason and of love has been snuffed out. The animal imagery appears throughout the play. On Electra’s first appearance, before she even speaks, the stage direction states that she ‘‘bounds back like an animal into its hiding place.’’ Other actions of Electra suggest that of an animal. A servant reports that she once broke into howls and threw herself into a corner. Late in the play, she digs in the ground ‘‘like an animal’’ to find the axe with which to kill Clytemnestra. The servants compare her to a wild cat; her fingers are likened to claws. Clytemnestra speaks of her, using the impersonal pronoun, in serpent imagery: ‘‘How it rears up with swelling neck / and darts its tongue at me!’’ Electra uses similar imagery herself. She refers to the servants as ‘‘flies,’’ and Clytemnestra’s attendants as ‘‘reptiles.’’ (The stage directions state that the trainbearer resembles an ‘‘upright snake.’’) She says that she is feeding a vulture in her body and she also compares herself to a dog snapping at the heels of its prey. The same imagery is applied to other characters. Clytemnestra speaks of Chrysothemis as
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running away ‘‘like a frightened dog’’; Chrysothemis howls ‘‘loudly like a wounded animal’’; and Clytemnestra imagines Orestes sprawling in the yard with the dogs, unable to ‘‘tell man and beast apart.’’ There is one brief moment when the dramatist uses the same imagery to completely different effect, as when Orestes recalls his sister before the murder blighted their lives: ‘‘animals steal timidly around her dwelling / and nestle against her robe when she goes by.’’ This gentle, almost pastoral image suggests the former natural order of things, before murder disrupted it. But now humans have become like animals. Another recurring batch of images centers around blood. This imagery reinforces the main theme of vengeance, since that can only be accomplished through the shedding of blood. Electra’s first speech, for example, is saturated with this kind of imagery. She addresses her dead father and envisions the moment when revenge has been accomplished by her and her two siblings: we three, when all this is done and purple tents have been raised by the haze of the blood which the sun sucks upward to itself, then
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we, your blood, will dance around your grave.
The word blood in this passage has two meanings: the blood that is shed by Clytemnestra and the ties of kinship the three avengers have with their murdered father. Blood and animal imagery combine in Electra’s words of scorn to the servants. The matron reports that Electra said nothing is as accursed ‘‘as children which, like animals, slithering about / in blood on the stairs, we have conceived and born / here in this house.’’ There are also recurring references to the eyes— the organ that can behold such terrible deeds as a wife’s murder of her husband, and that can communicate to another what lies in the depth of the soul. Linked to this are the many references to looking or gazing. This suggests the meeting of one pair of eyes with another, which for the principle characters may be almost impossible to endure. No one, not even Clytemnestra or Aegisthus, can endure the intense gaze of Electra, for example, and Orestes cannot bear to look into his mother’s eyes before he kills her.
Staging and Lighting The staging and lighting work to reinforce the themes of the play. According to von Hofmannsthal, the set should convey a sense of claustrophobia, narrowness, and enclosure, giving the feeling that there is no escape. In addition to the royal palace and the lowly buildings that house the servants, there is to the right an enormous fig tree. Its appearance may well be grotesque with gnarled, intertwined branches all twisted up and distorted. This well suggests the idea of a family bound together by blood but twisted into unnatural shapes and relationships. The fig tree also helps to create an atmosphere of gloom and foreboding. The stage direction when Electra is about to give her first speech reveals the symbolic importance of this element of the staging: ‘‘She is alone with the patches of red light which fall like bloodstains from the branches of the fig tree.’’ This shows that the drama begins in the early evening, as the sun sets. In the lighting effects, light and dark alternate. When Clytemnestra enters, she is accompanied by glaring light from torches, but her confrontation with Electra takes place only by a faint light coming from the house, which from time to time falls on the
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two women. It is in a shadowy, dark world that they converse. Light returns when the false news is brought of Orestes’s death. The stage directions read: ‘‘the courtyard becomes bright with lights and a red-yellow glare floods the walls.’’ This conveys at once Clytemnestra’s moment of apparent triumph and the sinister nature of it. Then, it is dark again until the arrival of Orestes, who enters from the courtyard door, ‘‘his figure set off in black against the last gleam of light.’’ In other words, Orestes is a ray of light from the outside world that has managed to penetrate the palace and can therefore resolve the situation. At the end of the play, the stage is lit up with torches—a thousand of them, according to Chrysothemis—to show that the dark evil has been exorcised.
Theatrical Conventions The play observes the three unities of time, place, and action. This was a concept of dramatic structure that derived in part from Aristotle and was completed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The unities require that the actions represented by the play take place over a period of not more than one day, at a single location, with all the action focusing on a single plot. There are no subplots, comic characters or other diversions. The play also observes the convention of Greek drama that violent acts are reported rather than being shown directly on stage. For this reason, the killing of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus is not shown directly.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT Turn of the Century Vienna In the 1890s, the dominant mood in von Hofmannsthal’s hometown of Vienna, the capital of the great Habsburg Empire, was that of uncertainty. It was clear to many that the Habsburg monarchy, and the social, cultural and political order that it represented, was entering a crisis period and that its future could not be assured. The liberalism that had prevailed in the politics of the Habsburg Empire from the 1860s was virtually over by 1900. In its place arose reactionary and anti-Semitic forces—a development that worried von Hofmannsthal.
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COMPARE & CONTRAST • 1900s: In Vienna, Arnold Schoenberg develops a new approach to composing classical music. He turns away from traditional harmony and melody and develops music that no longer functions in an identifiable key. It becomes known as atonal music. The nature of his work, being revolutionary, is often misunderstood by the public. Today: Schoenberg’s music, along with that of his pupils Alban Berg and Anton von Webern, has long had a place in the contemporary classical repertoire. Atonal works are no longer as shocking to audiences as they were in Schoenberg’s early days. The ‘‘twelve tone’’ method that he invented continues to influence contemporary composers. • 1900s: Sigmund Freud publishes his seminal work, The Interpretation of Dreams, in which he applies the method of psychoanalysis to dreams. It becomes one of the most influential books of the century. Freud’s central ideas are that dreams express the disguised wishes of the subconscious. It is in this book that he first names and describes the Oedipus complex (the son’s desire to kill the father and marry the mother). Today: Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams is still valued as a pioneering work that opened up
But, far from depressing the city’s literary and artistic culture, the coming political disintegration seemed, on the contrary, to encourage it. The period from 1890 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914 produced an unprecedented flowering of Vienna’s artistic and intellectual life. There was a spirit of innovation and experiment in the air, of new ways of thinking and creating. This new spirit bore fruit in the music of Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg; the poetry and drama of von Hofmannsthal and Rainer Maria Rilke (whom von Hofmannsthal met in 1899); the cultural criticism of Karl Kraus; the art of Gustav Klimt and the Secession movement; the
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an entire new field of study. Freud’s thought has been modified and expanded by his followers and interpreters. However, he also has his critics. Many are skeptical that Freud did, in fact, explain the functioning of the unconscious. The argument is that he went too far in his generalizations, based on a small sample of patients and focused too much on repressed sexual desires as an explanation of the contents of the unconscious. • 1900s: The Vienna Circle begins discussions in 1907. This is a group made up of sociologists, mathematicians, physicists, and philosophers. Their work proves central to the development of a philosophical approach known as logical positivism, which rejects traditional philosophy and metaphysics. Logical positivism is concerned with the analysis of scientific knowledge, according to the ‘‘verification principle.’’ This principle states that a non-analytic sentence must be empirically testable if it is to possess any meaning. Today: Contemporary philosophy owes much to logical positivism, as can be seen in the attention given to the analysis of scientific thought. In the United States, much of this influence is due to the fact that many logical positivists emigrated from Europe to America during the middle of the twentieth century.
Vienna Circle of the logical positivist philosophers, including Ludwig Wittgenstein; and the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, whose famous work, The Interpretation of Dreams, was published in 1900. (Von Hofmannsthal owned a copy of Freud’s book.) This golden age of Viennese culture came to an abrupt end when war enveloped Europe. In the aftermath of World War I, the map of Europe was redrawn. The Habsburg Empire and the social order that it represented no longer existed. What was left was the small country of Austria. Von Hofmannsthal,
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who during the war had served in the Habsburg war ministry in Vienna, found himself having to adapt to a different world. He was deeply disappointed by the collapse of the old order.
Art for Art’s Sake The Aesthetic Movement of the late nineteenth century, centered in France but had an influence throughout Europe, adopted the slogan, ‘‘art for art’s sake.’’ The idea was that the only purpose of art was to embody beauty and perfection, which was its own justification. Art needed to have no utilitarian or social value. It was enough that it existed. Many poets of the aesthetic movement, which included the young von Hofmannsthal in the 1890s, felt that their purpose in life was to pursue beauty in a life devoted to art.
that Iphigenia had vanished, a story that she refused to believe. The incident aroused her undying hatred of Agamemnon. When Agamemnon was fighting at Troy, Thyestes’ son Aegisthus seduced Clytemnestra. In addition to her distress over Iphigenia, Clytemnestra may have heard reports that Agamemnon was bringing home the Trojan princess Cassandra as a concubine. When Agamemnon returned from Troy, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus killed him, as well as the two sons that Cassandra had born him. Clytemnestra also killed Cassandra. Orestes would also have been killed had not Electra or some other member of the house managed to send him away to the court of Strophius, king of Phocis.
The Aesthetic Movement also led to a movement known as the Decadence or the fin de siècle (end of the century). Decadent writers lauded art over nature, and explored in their works deviant or bizarre subject matter. They were opposed to accepted social standards in morality and sexual behavior. A typical work of the Decadence was Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1893), which is notable for its sexual perversity and lurid, violent climax. Von Hofmannsthal’s Elektra has some decadent elements in common with Wilde’s play.
After Orestes attained manhood, Apollo told him at Delphi that it was his duty to kill both Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. With his friend Pylades, Orestes returned to his former home, made himself known to his sister Electra, and carried out his act of revenge. The Furies (spirits who punished those guilty of crimes against their own family) pursued Orestes and drove him mad. Orestes wandered to Delphi to consult Apollo, who had ordered him to commit the murders, and Apollo sent him to Athens, where he was tried and acquitted by a jury.
The House of Atreus in Greek Mythology
Orestes and Electra are principal characters in The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, two plays by the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus. They are also the subjects of Sophocles’s Electra and Euripides’s Electra and Orestes.
Agamemnon was a king of Mycenae. He was a son of Atreus, who had a long-running quarrel with Thyestes. Agamemnon killed a son of Thyestes who was married to Clytemnestra. He also killed their baby and took Clytemnestra as his wife. Clytemnestra bore Agamemnon four children: Iphigenia, Electra, Chrysothemis, and Orestes. When Clytemnestra’s sister, Helen, was abducted by the Trojan prince, Paris, Agamemnon raised a Greek force to win her back. But he angered the goddess Artemis, who used her power over the weather to prevent the departure of the Greek fleet. The only way Artemis could be appeased was through the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s eldest daughter, Iphigenia. Telling Clytemnestra that Iphigenia was to be married to Achilles, Agamemnon arranged for the girl to be sent to Aulis to be sacrificed. At the last moment, Artemis placed a stag on the altar instead of Iphigenia and took Iphigenia with her to be her priestess. Clytemnestra was told
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CRITICAL OVERVIEW The initial production of Electra, which premiered on October 30, 1903, in Berlin, was von Hofmannsthal’s first major theatrical success. Within four days, three editions of the book were sold out, and twenty-two German theaters expressed an interest in producing the play. Critics were divided, however. Von Hofmannsthal wrote in a letter to his brother-in-law that some were enthusiastic, others hostile. Those who passed negative judgments thought that the play did not measure up to the dignified calm that they believed was part of the ancient Greek spirit. They argued
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are killed in which Electra sings that she is the fire of life. Von Hofmannsthal is today recognized as one of the finest librettists in operatic history. The play, however, still continues to occupy the attention of scholars, whose arguments tend to reflect the same critical debate that was sparked by the play’s first production. In 1938, E. M. Butler wrote that the Freudian elements seriously damaged the play, which she referred to as ‘‘turgid spiritual melodrama’’ (quoted in Michael Hamburger’s introduction to von Hofmannsthal’s Selected Plays and Libretti). But other modern critics have found the Freudian elements in the play, such as Electra’s fixation on her father and the idea of repressed memory as applied to Clytemnestra, to be fruitful ground for examination. Critics have also contrasted von Hofmannsthal’s play with the play by Sophocles on which it is loosely based.
A scene from Richard Strauss’s 1953 opera production, Elektra
CRITICISM Bryan Aubrey
that the modernization of Sophocles’ play to incorporate psychological theories had made Electra into a savage character. In addition, Electra’s relationship with her sister was condemned because of its erotic, lesbian overtones. Other critics thought that the modernization was legitimate, given the popularity and importance of Freud’s psychological theories. These critics tended to focus on the concept of ‘‘hysteria,’’ as defined by Freud, and as seen in the characters Electra and Clytemnestra. For some years, Electra continued to be regularly performed by many theater companies. It was even performed in Japanese. Today, however, performances of the play are rare events. It is now known chiefly as the libretto of Richard Strauss’s opera, Elektra (1909), which is part of the standard operatic repertoire. Strauss had seen the original production of the play in Berlin and asked von Hofmannsthal to create a libretto from it that he could set to music. Von Hofmannsthal made some changes to the original play to fit the demands of the operatic form. He reduced the length of the monologues and expanded the scene between Electra and Orestes. He also gave Electra an ecstatic duet with Chrysothemis, after Clytemnestra and Aegisthus
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Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth-century literature. In this essay, Aubrey discusses the psychological elements of the play with emphasis on Freudian psychoanalysis. ‘‘My main incentive is not to let bygone ages be wholly dead, and to make people feel that what is remote and alien is closely related to themselves.’’ So wrote von Hofmannsthal (quoted in Robert Mark’s article in Opera News) of his adaptations of Greek tragedies. He certainly set himself quite a task. Appreciating such a grim, bleak, violent play as Electra requires a leap of imagination into a world very different from our own. Perhaps a comparison with a more familiar revenge tragedy, Hamlet, might be helpful. There are many similarities between the two plays. Like Electra, Hamlet has had a dearly loved father murdered and must, by the code of his society, avenge his death. Like Electra, Hamlet must kill a relative (although Hamlet must kill his uncle, not his mother, to do so). Hamlet’s mind, like Electra’s, is placed under enormous strain by the Herculean task imposed upon him. And like Electra, Hamlet develops a revulsion against all sexuality because his mother is having sexual relations with a criminal usurper.
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WHAT DO I READ NEXT? • Von Hofmannsthal’s The Cavalier of the Rose (1912) is the English translation of his libretto for Strauss’s famous comic opera, Der Rosenkavalier. Unlike many opera librettos, it is also excellent literature in its own right and can be read and enjoyed quite independently of Strauss’s music. • Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), a trilogy of plays made up of Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted, is loosely based on Aeschylus’ trilogy, the Oresteia. It is set at the end of the American Civil War and uses Freudian psychology to explain the motivations of the characters. Lavinia Mannon is the Electra character who, along with her brother, must avenge the death of their father, who was murdered by their mother.
The ancient Greek tragedians who dramatized the Agamemnon-Orestes-Electra myth were deeply concerned with the question of justice. The final play of Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy entirely concerns Orestes’s guilt or innocence. After being pursued by the Furies, Orestes is finally acquitted by the goddess Athena, and the long cycle of violence is brought to an end. Sophocles also, in his play Electra, appears to have believed that the killing of Clytemnestra and her lover was justified, a view also emphatically presented by Homer in the Odyssey. Von Hofmannsthal does not have the same interest as Aeschylus in examining the issue of justice from all sides. He does not seem to bring the justice of Electra’s vengeance into question, although it could be argued that the abrupt ending of the play is suggestive, as Chrysothemis bangs on the door calling for Orestes but receives no reply. Perhaps already the Furies are pursuing him. Von Hofmannsthal’s approach to the myth is a different one entirely. As befits a man writing in Vienna at the time that Freud was delving into the uncharted waters of the subconscious, von
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• Euripides’ play, Iphigenia in Aulis (available in Euripides IV: Four Tragedies, 1968), takes as its subject the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the event that aroused Clytemnestra’s undying hatred for her husband Agamemnon. • The Poet and the Countess: Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Correspondence with Countess Ottonie Degenfeld, edited by Marie-Therese Miller-Degenfeld (2000) contains the correspondence between von Hofmannsthal and his close friend, Ottonie Degenfeld. The letters span a period of twenty years (1909–1929) and give a fine picture of von Hofmannsthal’s emotional life as well as insight into the kind of lives people led during that period. It is also clear that von Hofmannsthal was very much in love with his correspondent.
Hofmannsthal is concerned more with psychology than ethics or morality. It is as if he takes the smooth textures of the ancient dramas and asks himself, what is really going on in the subconscious depths of these characters’ minds? What has been the psychological effect on them of the killing of Agamemnon? That the effect has been traumatic and devastating on at least three of the main characters— Clytemnestra, Electra and Chrysothemis—is obvious. The one moment in which the terrible destructive act—the killing of Agamemnon—took place has in effect frozen time for Clytemnestra and Electra. They cannot get beyond that moment and its consequences. Their lives are like dammed up rivers where the pressure continues to build but there is no way of releasing it. They are locked in a deadly struggle that is destroying them both. Interestingly, the few positive, life-affirming images in the play are of flowing water. These are supplied by Chrysothemis, who has reacted to the tragedy that has enveloped her family quite differently than Electra. That is not to say that she is not
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ELECTRA BADGERS HER MOTHER AGAIN AND AGAIN ABOUT THE ORIGINAL DEED, TRYING LIKE A PSYCHOANALYST TO GET THE BURIED MEMORY TO COME TO LIGHT.’’
deeply distressed. She is. She tells Electra that she is terrified; she runs from room to room as if a voice were calling her; she cannot find relief even in tears. But unlike Electra, she is not fixated on the past. She wants to be part of the world of becoming, the natural cycle of growth and change. She wants to fulfill her role as a woman and give birth to a child. She wants life to flow freely again, out of the deathgrip that holds her mother and sister immobile in a nightmare past that consumes their present and offers them no future. Chrysothemis uses the image of cleansing water to express her desire to be free of the past: ‘‘I will wash my body / in every water; I will plunge deep down / into every water; I will wash each part of me.’’ Disturbed, frightened and desperate she may be, but Chrysothemis represents the hope that whatever the past, life will flow once more and new births will ease the memory of old deaths. Electra herself, in her second long dialogue with her sister, recognizes that Chrysothemis is the one who still has energetic life flowing through her. She contrasts Chrysothemis’ youthfulness and physical strength, which ‘‘flows like cool / pent-up water from the rock’’ (the water image again) with her own wasted body, her ‘‘wretched withered arms.’’ Chrysothemis, of course, is unwilling to go along with what her sister wants her to do. She blames Electra for their joint imprisonment, and simply wants Electra to change her attitude. But that is like asking her to alter the laws of her being, to be a different person entirely. It is not going to happen. And Chrysothemis’ willingness to ‘‘move on with her life’’ (as the modern phrase has it), although attractive on the surface, is in fact not really a solution to the problem. It leaves the impasse between Clytemnestra and Electra in place.
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How does von Hofmannsthal tackle this thorny situation? How can that moment of ‘‘frozen time’’ that holds Clytemnestra and Electra in its grip be melted? As Lorna Martens has pointed out in her article, ‘‘The Theme of the Repressed Memory in Hofmannsthal’s Elektra,’’ he turned for inspiration to Freud. In particular, he read Freud’s Studies in Hysteria (1895) and The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Freud’s theory was that traumatic events are repressed by the conscious mind. The memories do not disappear but become lodged in the unconscious mind, from where they create neurotic symptoms in the personality. It is clear that Clytemnestra is suffering from repressed memory because she cannot recall the moment of the murder. This is how she describes that moment to Electra: There he stood of whom you always talk, there he stood and here stood I and Aegisthus, and from eye to eye our glances met: so it had not happened yet! and then your father’s dying look altered so slowly and horribly, but still fastened to mine—and then it had happened: there is no space in between! Now it was before, and then it was past—in between I did nothing.
As Martens points out, it is Electra who represents the memory of the act of murder that Clytemnestra is repressing. Since the memory of this awful act is now stuck in Clytemnestra’s unconscious mind, it is having an insidious, poisonous effect on her whole being. She knows that something is wrong. ‘‘I rot inside,’’ says Clytemnestra, and this accounts for the symptoms of hysteria which she exhibits. These symptoms include hallucinations— Clytemnestra has hallucinations of Electra as a snake—nightmares, and the loss of the ability to use language at vital moments. In Clytemnestra’s long speech to Electra when they are alone together, for example, Clytemnestra complains that she can find no words to answer Aegisthus when he mocks her. She reaches for the words, but they are not there. Also, according to Martens, Clytemnestra’s entry, in which she supports herself on a stick and can hardly keep her eyes open, suggests a condition of ‘‘hysterical paralysis.’’ Taken as a whole, Clytemnestra’s symptoms of hysteria, which also include confusion and dizziness, make her resemble one of Freud’s most famous patients, a woman named Anna O.
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Martens notes that Electra also has symptoms of hysteria, and also resembles Anna O. This can be seen especially in her excessive attachment to a dead, beloved father, her preoccupation with reliving the past, and the fact that both the fictional character and real-life psychiatric patient experience symptoms of the disorder daily at sunset (this is the time each day when Electra mourns her father and relives the murder). It is a sign of how von Hofmannsthal’s symbolic meanings overlap that Electra, herself resembling a hysteric, also resembles the psychoanalyst. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the analyst keeps probing and investigating the psyche of the patient until the memory of the original trauma is uncovered. This, in theory anyway, frees the patient from the trauma’s grip. This is why Clytemnestra senses that Electra, who keeps tormenting her, also has the ability to cure her. And Electra badgers her mother again and again about the original deed, trying like a psychoanalyst to get the buried memory to come to light. This is also symbolized both verbally and visually by Electra’s feverish digging for the axe that killed Agamemnon. Interestingly, Freud sometimes used the analogy of an archeological dig to convey the work of the psychoanalyst, who has to dig through all the layers of the mind to discover the basic structures that have made it what it is. Such is the basic Freudian approach to the play, and there is no doubt that it digs deeply into von Hofmannsthal’s intended meanings. Whether, either in the early 1900s or now, a hundred years later, it fulfills von Hofmannsthal’s goal of making ‘‘people feel that what is remote and alien is closely related to themselves’’ is another matter. Perhaps the answer, in spite of the extreme nature of the subject matter, is yes. Methods of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy have proliferated since Freud’s day, but many of them still work on the same premise. The theory is that if some traumatic event or process that has been pushed back into the unconscious mind is brought to conscious awareness, it will automatically lose its power to produce neurosis in the personality. That which is known, and can be contemplated in the light of day, is less powerful than that which lurks undetected and unknown. The trauma can be anything from, say, sexual abuse as a child to something perhaps less serious, such as how the family dynamic—the relationship between the parents and their relationship with the children—operated to create the problem that is being addressed by the therapist.
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This kind of intervention by a psychiatrist or psychotherapist might be thought of as the ‘‘Electra solution’’ to psychic disturbance, if Electra is viewed in her role as the preserver of memory. It is the solution she tries to force on Clytemnestra: face the monster and he will lose his fangs. An alternative, less attractive, attitude to inner turmoil might be Electra in her role as hysteric, endlessly and morbidly dwelling on the traumatic events of the past. A third possibility might be thought of as the ‘‘Chrysothemis solution’’: get immersed in life and make the best of things, perhaps with the attitude that ‘‘it all happened a long time ago.’’ A fourth possibility of course is Orestes’ solution. He wastes little time on words and simply takes action to get the job done. These four different approaches might be thought of as confront, brood, forget, act. Of such stuff is the drama of life made. Source: Bryan Aubrey, Critical Essay on Electra, in Drama for Students, The Gale Group, 2003.
Martin Mueller In the following essay excerpt, Mueller explores the influence of both Greek and contemporary drama on Hofmannsthal’s Electra. Electra was Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s first major success on the public stage. The play was first performed at Max Reinhardt’s Little Theatre in Berlin on October 30, 1903. On November 10, Hofmannsthal wrote to his brother-in-law that it had had a great success with three editions out of print, twenty-two adoptions by public stages, and a noisy reception from the press, partly enthusiastic, partly hostile. Electra kept its place in the repertoire. Some years later, Hofmannsthal authorized a Japanese club to perform it in Japanese and casually referred to performances of his play on ‘‘hundreds of stages.’’ Today, Electra survives chiefly in a cut and slightly altered form as the libretto of Strauss’s opera. Electra was not Hofmannsthal’s first or only stab at Greek tragedy. A decade earlier, the nineteen-year-old student had tried his hand at Euripides’ Alcestis. A little more than a translation and a little less than a new version, this play presents a very lyrical and decorous Euripides, with the buffoonery of Heracles toned down, and some poetic fin-de-siècle additions about the deep relationships of life and death. Electra marked the beginning of several years’ preoccupation with Greek myths. It was followed by Oedipus and the Sphinx and a translation of Oedipus Rex, which Hofmannsthal at one time considered parts of a trilogy to be rounded
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BUT THE EIGHTEEN-YEAROLD ADMITTED IN A CHARMING LETTER TO MARIE HERZFELD . . .‘MY EDUCATION IS RATHER DILETTANTISH AND UNEVEN.’ TEN YEARS LATER, THIS STATEMENT WAS PROBABLY EVEN MORE ACCURATE, AT LEAST AS REGARDS HOFMANNSTHAL’S CLASSICAL LEARNING. AND HIS RELIANCE ON STANDARD TRANSLATIONS IS EVIDENT IN HIS PLAYS.’’
off by a one-act play on the old Oedipus. There are quite systematic sketches for a drama on Pentheus, as well as less elaborate sketches for plays on Leda and the Swan, Jupiter and Semele, and King Kandaules. Hofmannsthal returned to Greek mythology again in two of his opera libretti: Ariadne auf Naxos and Die ägyptische Helena. One should not, however, overestimate the rigor or coherence of Hofmannsthal’s interest in Greek tragedy and mythology. He learned Greek at the Gymnasium and was by all accounts a phenomenally gifted and precocious student. References to volumes of Pindar, Herodotus, and Sophocles in his correspondence show that he continued to read Greek literature in the original after leaving school. But he was not a Greek scholar like Milton or Racine. He was familiar with some of the fashionable scholarship and criticism of his day, notably Nietzsche, Erwin Rohde’s Psyche, and Bachofen’s work on matriarchy, and he associated this reading with the newfangled work of Freud and Breuer on repression, hysteria, and the unconscious. But the eighteen-year-old admitted in a charming letter to Marie Herzfeld: ‘‘meine Bildung ist ein bißchen dilettantenhaft unauseglichen’’ [my education is rather dilettantish and uneven]. Ten years later, this statement was probably even more accurate, at least as regards Hofmannsthal’s classical learning. And his reliance on standard translations is evident in his plays.
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While Hofmannsthal was pursuing things Greek, he was also dabbling in several other traditions. Wolfgang Nehring has recently shown that in the early years of the twentieth century, Hofmannsthal tried to find his way as a dramatist by imitating whatever struck his fancy. Them were the Greek subjects, but there were also Robert Browning’s The Ring and the Book, Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserv’d, the medieval Everyman, and Calderón’s Life Is a Dream. And Oedipus and the Sphinx, far from being an unmediated return to ancient myth, was inspired by a play on the same topic by Joséphin Peladan, a contemporary French writer. The provenance of models suggests an eclectic and indeed haphazard procedure. On the other hand, all of Hofmannsthal’s plays from that period are dominated by an obsessive concern with the question of identity and its relationship to sexuality and action. In a letter to Hermann Bahr, he describes his current work on Calderón’s Life Is a Dream in a phrase that characterizes his entire work during that time: he is concerned ‘‘in die tiefsten Tiefen des zweifelhaften Höhlenkönigreiches ‘Ich’ hinabzusteigen und dort das Nicht-mehr-ich oder die Welt zu finden’’ [to descend into the lowest depths of the dubious cave kingdom ‘I’ and to find there the no-longer-I or the world]. The combination of narrow thematic range with a very eclectic choice of models raises some doubts about the usefulness of exploring the relationship of text and subtext in Hofmannsthal’s case. But a close examination reveals that Hofmannsthal was a very good reader and that he chose his models with a keen eye for resemblances between their thematic range and his interests. The title page of Hofmannsthal’s Electra identifies the play as: ‘‘Tragódie in einem Aufzug frei nach Sophokles.’’ In a letter to Rudolf Alexander Schröder, Hofmannsthal called it ‘‘eine freie, sehr freie Bearbeitung der ‘Elektra’ des Sophokles’’ [a free, very free adaptation of Sophocles’ ‘Electra’]. The play, however, is more accurately seen as a version of three very different plays. Its immediate theatre history relates it closely to Oscar Wilde’s Salome. At the thematic level, the play is a polemical attack on Goethe’s Iphigenie. The relationship with Sophocles exist superficially at the level of action; the thematic relationship is mediated through both Salome and Iphigenie. Electra was especially written for Gertrud Eysoldt, who had starred in over 200 performances of Oscar Wilde’s Salome in the same theatre and,
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according to the contemporary critic Paul Goldmann, ‘‘specialized in perverted women.’’ Hofmannsthal had seen Eysoldt in Gorky’s Lower Depths, and it was at her urging and Max Reinhardt’s that he sat down to carry out plans for the Electra drama that had been on his mind for some time. The plan to write an Electra play dates to 1901: . . . My point of departure was the character of Electra, as I well remember. I read the Sophoclean play in the garden and in the forest, in the fall of 1901. The line from ‘‘Iphigenia’’ came to mind where it says: ‘‘Electra with her fiery tongue,’’ and as I walked I fantasized about the figure of Electra, not without some pleasure in the contrast to the ‘‘devilishly humane’’ atmosphere of Iphigenia. The similarity and contrast with Hamlet also went through my mind.
In a diary entry of 17 July 1904, Hofmannsthal gave a very similar account: . . . The first idea came in early September 1901. I was reading ‘‘Richard III’’ and Sophocles’ ‘‘Electra’’ in order to learn some things for ‘‘Pompilia.’’ Immediately the figure of Electra was transformed. The ending was also there at once: that she cannot go on living, that, once the blow has fallen, her life and entrails must rush from her, just as life and entrails together with the fertilizing sting rush from the drone once it has impregnated the queen. The resemblance and contrast to Hamlet were striking. As for style, I thought of doing something opposite from ‘‘Iphigenia,’’ something that would not fit the description: ‘‘this hellenizing product appeared to me on rereading devilishly humane.’’
This statement clearly understates the similarities and the influence of Wilde’s play. Hofmannsthal wrote his play for the Little Theatre in full knowledge that Electra would be played by Gertrud Eysoldt, who was famous for her Salome, and he saw Eysoldt in Gorky’s Lower Depths while working on his play. The German theatrical history of Salome stands squarely behind Hofmannsthal’s play. Wilde’s play changes the biblical narrative in important ways. First, Salome is motivated by her own passion for John and acts out of the love/hatred of a rejected woman. Second, Salome is killed at the end. Finally, Wilde elaborates the biblical motif of Salome’s dance and gives it an explicitly bloody setting: HEROD Ah, thou art to dance with naked feet! ‘Tis well! ‘Tis well! Thy little feet will be like white doves. They will be like little white flowers that dance upon the trees . . . No, no, she is going to dance on blood! There is blood spilt on the ground. She must not dance on blood. It were an evil omen. HERODIAS What is it to thee if she dance on blood? Thou hast waded deep enough in it. . . HEROD What is it to me? Ah! look at the moon! she has become red. She has become red as blood. Ah! the prophet prophesied truly. He prophesied that the moon would become as blood. Did he not prophesy it? All of ye heard him prophesying it. And now the
