The Long Voyage Home and Other Plays

By Eugene O'Neill

Book Overview

4 of great American playwright's finest short plays: Bound East for Cardiff, In The Zone, The Long Voyage Home and The Moon of the Caribbees. Playwright Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) spent his early... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486287556
• ISBN13: 9780486287553
• Release Date: April 2016
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 4.8" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

The precocious mastery of O'Neill's Glencairn cycle

The four plays in this paperback were originally included in Eugene O'Neill's "The Moon of the Caribbees and Six Other Plays" (1919). This Dover edition omits "Ile," "The Rope," and "Where the Cross Is Made," and includes only the four one-act dramas set on the "tramp" steamer Glencairn. All four plays were performed in New York City between 1916 and 1918, and together they first brought O'Neill to critical attention. Although they do not share a storyline, one could easily imagine them staged together as interrelated sketches. Set in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War I (with "In the Zone" taking place at the onset of hostilities), all four plays share common themes and characters. The only tragedy of the bunch is "Bound East for Cardiff," in which the crew of the Glencairn offer aid and encouragement to a wounded sailor who lies suffering from a horrible fall. We meet Driscoll (who is one of two characters in all four plays) as he tends to his dying friend. While occasionally filled with tension, the remaining three plays show the far lighter side of life at sea. "In the Zone" depicts the crew's frayed nerves while their boat traverses an enemy sea filled with submarines. Smitty hides a mysterious black box and raises the suspicions of his jumpy crewmates--to unintentionally comic (although simultaneously melancholy) effect. In "The Long Voyage Home," four of the crew enjoy a shore leave in a dingy London bar, and Olson falls victim to a gang of local sharks. "The Moon of the Caribbees" sees Smitty, Driscoll, and company anchored off port in the tropics, where, defying the captain's orders, they sneak several native women (and quite of lot of rum) onto the ship. These short, effective plays all display O'Neill's nascent mastery at depicting both sailors' vernacular and their camaraderie (and rivalry). The lack of intensity famous in O'Neill's later works is due more to the brevity of the one-act form rather than to his apprenticeship as a playwright, and one could argue that the Glencairn cycle comprise O'Neill's first major works.