In order to make his plot convincing to himself and his audience he had to set the scene a generation back from the present in a small town untouched by the fierce struggle of modern industrialism. This gives the whole play a genuine realistic touch. There is a gentle reminiscent quality about Ah, Wilderness! that is very charming. Here is revealed an aspect of American life that at present seems almost as dead as the Middle Ages. It is the atmosphere of The Rubaiyat, of Swinburne, of college days when college life was not too serious a business. Arthur Miller, the young man from Yale, has no doubts about his purpose in life. He knows that a Yale man is sure of his place in the sun. Fraternities, games, little affairs with women, from which he learns about life, are his most genuine interests. Not a single spark from the coming struggle for power ever illuminates the complacent depths of his mind.

He is the son of a well-to-do middle-class family in the great.days of peace and prosperity that preceded the world economic and spiritual collapse. Ah, Wilderness! is a true historical comedy, It is a fleeting glimpse into the days that are gone forever. In that lies its very great charm to the men and women who have reached forty. The college student of today does not recognize Arthur, for today the army of the unemployed marches so near the campus that even a student at Yale must know that fraternities and football are relatively unimportant. But in its setting Ah, Wilderness! is perfect.

Arthur's brother, Richard, is far more seriousminded. He is the typical O'Neill character in one respect. He is described as possessing "extreme sensitiveness . . . a restless, apprehensive, defiant, shy, dreamy, self-conscious intelligence." In a different environment these are the qualities in the O'Neill hero that make for tragedy, but in the small-town scene of this play they lead to an amusing, gentle, romantic rebellion which is finally resolved in moonlight and romance.

And so it is with all the characters. They are wellmeaning men and women whose problems are for the moment a trifle disturbing. The passion which flamed in the culture of the nineties puzzles the older generation and is not very well understood by the youngsters, but as a means to an end it serves as excellent dramatic material. Grown-up people can live again for a moment in the days when they also quoted The Rubaiyat and Swinburne, dreamed in the moonlight, made brave promises, and occasionally, at rare intervals, saw the darker side of life in a small hotel at a backroom bar "dimly lighted by two fly-specked globes in a fly-specked gilt chandelier suspended from the middle of the ceiling."

No character in the play quite discovers what it's all about, nor does he quite solve all the problems that he sensed as needing resolution. Nat Miller doesn't quite succeed in telling his son just what every young man should know. His wife doesn't make her point on her objections to the "revolutionary" books that Richard reads, Sid Davis and Lily Miller get no nearer to the conclusion of their long-endured romance; Mr. McComber is forced to recede from his stern position towards his daughter; while Richard and Muriel solve their problem in a manner that does not promise complete harmony for the future. But it does not matter, for there are no great problems in this play to be solved. There are tense moments, but they are too amusing to be taken seriously. It is good comedy from start to finish.

Ah, Wilderness! stands as a strange interlude in the midst of a world of tragedy. It indicates O'Neill's versatility, but it does not add greatly to his interpretation of the modern world which is the theme of this book. The imagined world of Ah, Wilderness! is not without its value as a contrast to the reality of the present. It tends to emphasize the darkness of today by revealing what was thought to be the light of yesterday. To the student of O'Neill the grim shadows of the past play over the easily solved complex of this romantic world of comedy. The future for Arthur and Richard will be fraught with difficulties that neither moonlight nor romance explain away. From the reading of Swinburne and The Rubaiyat Richard will move to Hardy, Dreiser, Thomas Mann, Faulkner, and O'Neill; from the peace of a small Connecticut town in 1906 he will move to the world conflict of 1914; from the economic security of pre-war days to the collapse following the war; from the philosophical idealism of his youth to the realistic materialism of maturity. When that day comes he may have moments of real delight in an occasional glance at his past romances, but he may also realize that as a preparation for what is to come, they give little on which to build for the future struggle.

3

To O'Neill who loves life for its potentiality as well as for its sequence of experiences, tragedy and not comedy has been the best medium for his art. In tragedy he can vent his bitterness against the self-imposed cruelty of man, and at the same time he can vision the good life as a force battling against the evil. Mourning Becomes Electra is a good case in point. There is in it an element of the comic which reduces man to the ludicrous. But that is mere by-play. It is the Mannon family with its traditional beliefs, beliefs based on the puritanical heritage of American culture, that drive the family to disaster. It is this force in American life that has inspired the art of O'Neill in this play, and it is his love for a nobler and a freer life that formed his tragic theme. Even for the Mannons life was rich in potential beauty—even happiness—but the roads that led to the good life were barred to them by the white walls of the "Meeting House," the symbol of a ghostly past that survives in a culture that has changed all of its outward manifestation while it still mumbles the ritual of the ancient law. General Mannon saw it all on the night when he returned from the four years of civil war. As he sat on the steps of his house in the soft, sensuous atmosphere of night, he told of his desire for a new life, freed from the tortures of false beliefs and Puritan culture. But it was too late, as it must always be too late until society is aroused to a faith in life itself, to a life that does not measure its value in terms of death.

Since to love life means to accept it as essentially tragic is O'Neill's philosophy as an artist, his use of comedy has usually been a means to the development of tragedy. He knows life too well to believe that it does not have its comedy, but since he is concerned with the whole and not the insignificant part, comedy must be subservient to the master spirit, the guiding force, and that is tragedy. Thus he has used comedy to express the irony and tragedy of life. It does not provide a relief from the tragic intensity of a scene: it merely heightens the effect. O'Neill does not fall victim to the academic theory of "tragic relief." He knows that the best use of comedy in tragedy does not contradict the chief theme. The Emperor Jones begins almost as a comedy, but before many lines are spoken the ominous spirit of tragedy creeps into the atmosphere. By quick and subtle transitions the comic gives place to the tragic, and the ludicrous antics of the selfmade emperor become the very substance of his tragic defeat. As he sinks deeper and deeper into the terrors of his past, as he becomes more and more the victim of his own past and the ancient racial pattern asserts itself, that which was comic becomes tragic, laughter changes to sympathy and terror. This use of comedy in this particular play is typical of O'Neill, and harmonizes with his whole conception of the purpose of his art.

In Desire Under the Elms, Gold and All God's Chillun Got Wings the same use of comedy is apparent. There are moments in all of these plays that, could they be divorced from the whole and comprehended apart from the spirit of the play, might be called comic. But in their place and properly grasped, they are an integral part of the tragic mood. Like the mad scenes from King Lear they are too serious to be amusing. Nothing could be more ridiculously funny than Lear's antics in the mad scenes, were it not that they are so heartrending, so profoundly and painfully sad. O'Neill has succeeded in making the ridiculous behavior of his characters almost lead his audience to laughter, and then he turns this impulse to laugh into sympathy and understanding which make laughter impossible and heighten the tragic note.