"The Right Kind of Pity": Notes on O'Neill's Revisions for The Iceman Cometh

Abstract

Eugene O’Neill was not only a prolific author, but also a tireless editor of his own works. His typical method of composition was to begin with notes and a scenario, sometimes accompanied by set drawings; then to draft a handwritten pencil manuscript, which would be revised; then to have a first typescript prepared from the revised manuscript. O’Neill scrutinized these first typescripts with a cold eye, adding, revising, and deleting, sometimes to an astonishing degree. Key phrases appear at this stage in his composition process, inserted by carets or in the margins, and long stretches of dialogue are crossed out (but still legible). Ruthless cuts are routine, and not many pages escape unaltered. Next, O’Neill would prepare a second typescript based on the one that had been heavily edited. There might also be subsequent typescripts, but O’Neill’s revisions become progressively minor in these iterations. O’Neill’s manuscript and typescript materials (most of which are housed in the Beinecke Library at Yale University) have been available to scholars since the 1980s and have inspired a number of useful studies. In 1981, Virginia Floyd published Eugene O’Neill at Work: Newly Released Ideas for Plays, which examined O’Neill’s composition process from his first plays to his last, by analyzing his notebooks, work diaries, and scenarios (though not the manuscripts and typescripts). In 1985, Judith Barlow produced an exemplary study of O’Neill’s composition of his final masterpieces. In Final Acts: The Creation of Three Late O’Neill Plays, Barlow traced the evolution of The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten from their beginnings through their final states, with close attention to the manuscripts and typescripts. In 1992, using primary sources, Martha Bower reconstructed O’Neill’s intentions for his unfinished “Cycle Plays” in Eugene O’Neill’s Unfinished Threnody and Process of Invention in Four Cycle Plays. Collectively, these studies have enriched our understanding of the most important phase of O’Neill’s career. The dramatist’s early plays now await similar scrutiny, and one hopes that such work will be forthcoming.