Ghosts within ghosts: The Shakespeare within Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House plays

In several of the Tao House plays — those written between 1936 and 1943 at Eugene O’Neill’s remote Danville, California, estate, including The Iceman Cometh (1940), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1941), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943) — American playwright Eugene O’Neill alludes to Shakespeare, both directly and indirectly, with a sudden frequency and urgency. Each of these plays excruciatingly exorcises a personal demon, and, as O’Neill turns toward his past, he also turns towards a refracted image of William Shakespeare.

In this dissertation, I argue that the Shakespeare within Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House plays is among the most important and least understood elements of Eugene O’Neill’s playwriting. More than an esoteric, literary feature of the plays, O’Neill’s use of Shakespeare is crucial to understanding, interpreting, and playing these foundational American works. O’Neill did more than embed a glimpse of Shakespeare within the Tao House plays — in them, he creates his own personal and partial Shakespeare. Expressed through the distinctly theatrical time signature or rotating repertory, the Tao House Shakespeare is among the most fascinating, complex, and moving achievements in twentieth century American drama.