Evening star., 1934-02-04

perfectlOn, ana Win Eugene
O'Neiil writing this impressive modern morality
play it is almost possible to believe that the
reaction against twentieth century materialism
and cynicism is under way, bringing a revived
recognition of spiritual values. The penetrating
psychological study in Days Without End is
in the O'Neill tradition; the religious motive is
q new element. The pattern followed is that
OF the old English morality plays, in which, with
many variations, the plot is always the same
the struggle between the forces OF good and
evil God and the Devil, for the soul of man
In the old morality plays. beginning as early as
the fifteenth century miracle and mystery
plays came earlier), Man appears under diff
ferent names, Mankynde, Manhode, 1nfans.
Frcwyll: the forces of good appear as Mercy,
Consequence, Pyte; the forces of evil as Mysche1,
Mundus FOlye, HyckeScorner and many others.
Eugene ONeill personifies in John Lovings
dual nature the faith and love of an idealist
and the unbeef and Scorn of the complete
cynic. John" is the idealst Loving" is the
cynic In the end John becomes, after ter
rife struggle, a unified personality, the man
life has intended him to be at the beginning
the true John Loving-as in the old moratles
Mans soul is snatched from the Devil in the
last scene The priest, Father Baird Johns
uncle represents the power OF good without
whose aid John would have been lost
Eugene O'Neill is too much of reallst to
allow any play of his to become mere allegory.
John is throughout a real tortured human
being striving through the writing of a novel
to unburden his mind of the conflicts caused
by his early loss of religious belief after the
deaths of his much loved parents. With the
loss of belief has come profound diStrust OF
all emotion. especially Of love, that Whcn he
has loved and married Elsa, the part of him
represented by Loving" has rebeed against
the compulsion of his love, has almost hated
Elsa. When the play opens he has put much of
this struggle into novel, ostensby the story
of another man, and has reached the SoTdld
episode in his life which has been his effort to
escape from the tyranny Of love. Father Baird,
drawn from his home in the West by a mystical
vision of the crucified Lord with "sternness in
His eyes" an accusation of neglect of the
nephew not for years. comes into johns
life at this point and quietly, perseveringly,
fights during the following days of crisis to save
him from his worse self
The play is rich in dramatic values Every
scene is tense. Johns opening argument with
Loving about the ending he shall give to his
novel, which will be the solution of his own
life the visit of the rather tawdry. suffering
Lucy Hillman to Elsa, with her Condolences,
which in the evening of the same day. throw
such binding light on the plot of Johns novel
as he eXpOundS it to Elsa and Father Baird,
Elsa's mad flight into the rainy night and its
consequences: the significance Of Johns despair,
Father Bard's intuitive knowledge, Dr.. Still
Wills SuSpIClOIlS. dIu EiSd III Iti
sick room are all on ONeills highest level.
The final scene, before the Cross in the old gray
stone church, is a powerful and affecting
climax Whatever the success OF Days With
out End with the dramatic critics and the
theatergoing public, whatever the quality Of
the acting in its production, literature it is
possibly O'Neill's finest work
MODERN TRAGEDY. BY Phyllis Bentley.
New York: The Macmillan Co.
A GAIN the scene chosen by Phyllis Bentley
is the West Riding of Yorkshire, this time
the towns of Ashworth and Hudley, not far
from Leeds a center of the textile industry 1t
is in general the same setting as that of her
novel "Inheritance," the saga of the Oldroyd
family and the Yorkshire textile trade from
1912 to the 1905, by this reviewer considered
the outstanding novel of 1882 "A Modern
Tragedy is a smaller scale. 1t is a story
of the present only of the depression in the
textile industry when mill owners are worrying
their ledgers arranging overdrafts at the
bank and anxiously wondering whether they
will BE- able to keep solvent until business i'm
proves: when the older workers are dropped
from the mills and many of the younger ones
have bcen cut Of work for ccVeral years A in
Miss Bentleys earlier novel. the gloom of the
factory district setting is relieved by descrip-
tive passages Of beauty-the Ire Valley at night
along which Leonard Tasker rushes in his big
car over the river, up the somber hill past the
two stone cottages under the bluff the home
of Walter Haigh Clough End. purchased at his
marriage with the thick gray walls in their
mantle OF ivy, the pointed gables the arched
porchway and mulloned windows the BEAUTIFUL
unimpeded view of non-industral West Riding
bills
Phyllis Bentley has said of herself: 1T is
characterization which interests me most in a
novel and character which interests me most
in life ESDecldlV / am interested in the dill
ference between any person in youth ard the
later life: the Life nanldS