Touch of the Poet V463

The setting of the play is 1828, Melody's tavern, not far from Boston. The Yankee gentry won't let the tavern owner, Cornelius Melody of Galway, come near them, a cousin of Con, Mickey Maloy relates. Con mistreats his wife, Nora. Sara is Con's daughter. Sara contends her father prefers his mare to his family. There are money woes. Nora has pride in her love for her husband. Sara is interested in Simon Harford, a rich man's son who attended Harvard, now living the life of a tinker, a tramp. Sara claims that Simon is a born dreamer. Nora says that Simon has the touch of a poet in him. Simon is timid. He hasn't told Sara yet he is in love with her. At Talavera the Duke of Wellington commended Con's bravery. Con fancies himself a Byronic hero. Factually speaking, he is the owner of a tavern and he drinks too much. Mrs. Henry Harford, Deborah, arrives while Con is preening before the mirror. Simon's mother received an unsigned letter telling her about Simon and Sara. Simon's grandfather had been an idealist. Deborah sees that Sara is strong, ambitious, and determined. Deborah warns Sara that Harfords never part with their dreams. Sara is put into a state of hysterical laughter because her father, Con, has the presumption to speak with Simon about the terms of a marriage. Gadsby, an attorney representing Henry Harford, arrives. He tells Con that Harford opposes the marriage of Simon and Sara. Henry Harford offers a monetary settlement for nonmarriage. Seeking an interview with Henry Harford, Con is beaten by the Harford servants. In a state of lunacy he kills his mare. In the end Sara comes to see that her mother is strange and powerful and that she should follow the example of her mother. This is a beautiful play. Reading it offers some consolation for not seeing it produced.

A Touch of the Poet is the only completed work in what Eugene O'Neill hoped to make into a nine-play cycle entitled "A Tale of Possessors, Self-dispossessed." Set in 1828 near Boston, it centers around Con Melody, an Irish immigrant who takes pride in having served with distinction under Wellington in the war against Napoleon and who fancies himself as a distinguished gentleman despite all evidence to the contrary. He is married to Nora, who he in some ways detests due to her peasant birth (Melody was born into a wealthy family, though it acquired that wealth rather unethically), and his grown daughter Sara is in love with Simon Harford, the son of a legitimately wealthy Yankee. Despite being severely in debt, Con insists on maintaining airs of gentlemanliness--he keeps a horse solely for the purpose of showing off, and, on the day the play is set, he throws a lavish party in celebration of the anniversary of his moment of military glory--often at the expense of Nora and Sara. Despite Con's airs, Harford's snobbish father sees him for what he is and objects to Sara and Simon's impending marriage (an objection Simon would readily defy). This insult deeply offends Con, who storms off to Harford's house intending to challenge him to a duel instead of staying out of Sara and Simon's way as a caring father would. All three of the main characters (Con, Nora, and Sara) are quite memorable--Con for his bizarre delusions of grandeur, his insistence of living in his romaticized glorious past, and his alternation of cruelty and contrition toward his family (to say nothing of what happens to him at the end of the play, which I won't reveal); Nora for her moving proud love for Con despite his reprehensible treatment of her; and Sara for her impressive stands against her father and her devotion to Simon. There were times, though, when the characters demonstrated such extreme behavior that I had a hard time suspending my disbelief, which is the only reason I'm not giving the play five stars. Con is very often contrite for his behavior toward his family, which appears to have been going on for decades, yet in all that time it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that maybe he ought to modify or at least try to suppress his hostility to Nora and Sara. Sara, meanwhile, issues all sorts of condemnations of how Con treats Nora, all of which he deserves, but one would think that after a certain amount of time she would realize that she's wasting her breath. However, even if their actions are a bit unbelievable at times, all three characters are developed quite movingly. While all of the play was quite gripping, the last half of the final act was for me at least as cathartic as anything else in the dozen or so O'Neill plays I've read. A Touch of the Poet, having been written around the same time as The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, tends to be overshadowed by those works, but it r