Strange Interlude/Act 1

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Contents

Strange Interlude (1928)
by Eugene O'Neill

Act One

Act Two

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4423742Strange Interlude — Act One1928Eugene O'Neill

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FIRST PART

ACT ONE

STRANGE INTERLUDE

ACT ONE

Scene: The library of Professor Leeds’ home in a small university town in New England. This room is at the front part of his house with windows opening on the strip of lawn between the house and the quiet residential street. It is a small room with a low ceiling. The furniture has been selected with a love for old New England pieces. The walls are lined almost to the ceiling with glassed-in bookshelves. These are packed with books, principally editions, many of them old and rare, of the ancient classics in the original Greek and Latin, of the later classics in French and German and Italian, of all the English authors who wrote while s was still like an f and a few since then, the most modern probably being Thackeray. The atmosphere of the room is that of a cosy, cultured retreat, sedulously built as a sanctuary where, secure with the culture of the past at his back, a fugitive from reality can view the present safely from a distance, as a superior with condescending disdain, pity, and even amusement.

There is a fair-sized table, a heavy armchair, a rocker, and an old bench made comfortable with cushions. The table, with the Professor’s armchair at its left, is arranged toward the left of the room, the rocker is at center, the bench at right.

There is one entrance, a door in the right wall, rear.

It is late afternoon of a day in August. Sunshine, cooled and dimmed in the shade of trees, fills the room with a soothing light.

The sound of a Maid’s Voice—a middle-aged woman—explaining familiarly but respectfully from the right, and Marsden enters. He is a tall thin man of thirty-five, meticulously well-dressed in tweeds of distinctly English tailoring, his appearance that of an Anglicized New England gentleman. His face is too long for its width, his nose is high and narrow, his forehead broad, his mild blue eyes those of a dreamy self-analyst, his thin lips ironical and a bit sad. There is an indefinable feminine quality about him, but it is nothing apparent in either appearance or act. His manner is cool and poised. He speaks with a careful ease as one who listens to his own conversation. He has long fragile hands, and the stoop to his shoulders of a man weak muscularly, who has never liked athletics and has always been regarded as of delicate constitution. The main point about his personality is a quiet charm, a quality of appealing, inquisitive friendliness, always willing to listen, eager to sympathize, to like and to be liked.

Marsden

[Standing just inside the door, his tall, stooped figure leaning back against the books—nodding back at the maid and smiling kindly]

I’ll wait in here, Mary.

[His eyes follow her for a second, then return to gaze around the room slowly with an appreciative relish for the familiar significance of the books. He smiles affectionately and his amused voice recites the words with a rhetorical resonance]

Sanctum Sanctorum!

[His voice takes on a monotonous musing quality, his eyes stare idly at his drifting thoughts]

How perfectly the Professor’s unique haven! . . .

[He smiles]

Primly classical . . . when New Englander meets Greek! . . .

[Looking at the books now]

He hasn't added one book in years . . . how old was I when I first came here? . . . six . . . with my father . . . father . . . how dim his face has grown! . . . he wanted to speak to me just before he died . . . the hospital . . . smell of iodoform in the cool halls . . . hot summer . . . I bent down . . . his voice had withdrawn so far away . . . I couldn't understand him . . . what son can ever understand? . . . always too near, too soon, too distant or too late! . . .

[His face has become sad with a memory of the bewildered suffering of the adolescent boy he had been at the time of his father’s death. Then he shakes his head, flinging off his thoughts, and makes himself walk about the room]

What memories on such a smiling afternoon! . . . this pleasant old town after three months . . . I won’t go to Europe again . . . couldn’t write a line there . . . how answer the fierce question of all those dead and maimed? . . . too big a job for me! . . .

[He sighs—then self-mockingly]

Strange Interlude/Act 1

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