Welded

By Eugene O'Neill

This is a three-act play that revolves around a playwright, Michael Cape, and his wife Eleanor. Eleonore's acting career is built on the plays Michael wrote for her. Michael has a romantic notion of what the perfect marriage ought to be like, and he has little tolerance for any instance in which his marriage falls short of this ideal love. Eleonore, understandably, finds it difficult to live up to such unrealistic expectations of blissful devotion. This creates tension in their relationship. Will they reconcile their differences?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Nov 9, 2021
• ISBN: 4066338093363

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O’Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the US the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with international playwrights Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day’s Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list of the finest US plays in the twentieth century, alongside Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

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Eugene O'Neill

Welded

Published by Good Press, 2022

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EAN 4066338093363

Table of Contents

ACT ONE

ACT TWO

SCENE ONE

SCENE TWO

ACT THREE

ACT ONE

Table of Contents

SCENE--Studio apartment. In the rear, a balcony with a stairway at center leading down to the studio floor.

The room is in darkness. Then a circle of light reveals Eleanor lying back on a chaise longue. She is a woman of thirty. Her figure is tall. Her face, with its high, prominent cheek-bones, lacks harmony. It is dominated by passionate, blue-gray eyes, restrained by a high forehead from which the mass of her dark brown hair is combed straight back. The first impression of her whole personality is one of charm, partly innate, partly imposed by years of self-discipline.

She picks up a letter from the table, which she opens and reads, an expression of delight and love coming over her face. She kisses the letter impulsively--then gives a gay laugh at herself. She lets the letter fall on her lap and stares straight before her, lost in a sentimental reverie.

A door underneath the balcony is noiselessly opened and Michael comes in. (A circle of light appears with him, follows him into the room. These two circles of light, like auras of egoism, emphasize and intensify Eleanor and Michael throughout the play. There is no other lighting. The two other people and the rooms are distinguishable only by the light of Eleanor and Michael.)

Michael is thirty-five, tall and dark. His unusual face is a harrowed battlefield of super-sensitiveness, the features at war with one another--the forehead of a thinker, the eyes of a dreamer, the nose and mouth of a sensualist. One feels a powerful imagination tinged with somber sadness--a driving force which can be sympathetic and cruel at the same time. There is something tortured about him--a passionate tension, a self-protecting, arrogant defiance of life and his own weakness, a deep need for love as a faith in which to relax.

He has a suitcase, hat, and overcoat which he sets inside on the floor, glancing toward Eleanor, trying not to make the slightest noise. But she suddenly becomes aware of some presence in the room and turns boldly to face it. She gives an exclamation of delighted astonishment when she sees Michael and jumps up to meet him as he strides toward her.

ELEANOR--Michael!

CAPE--(with a boyish grin) You've spoiled it, Nelly; I wanted a kiss to announce me. (They are in each other's arms. He kisses her tenderly.)

ELEANOR--(joyously) This is a surprise!

CAPE--(straining her in his arms and kissing her passionately) Own little wife!

ELEANOR--Dearest! (They look into each other's eyes for a long moment.)

CAPE--(tenderly) Happy?

ELEANOR--Yes, yes! Why do you always ask? You know. (suddenly pushing him at arms' length--with a happy laugh) It's positively immoral for an old married couple to act this way. (She leads him by the hand to the chaise longue.) And you must explain. You wrote not to expect you till the end of the week. (She sits down.) Get a cushion. Sit down here. (He puts a cushion on the floor beside the chaise longue and sits down.) Tell me all about it.

CAPE--(notices the letter lying on the floor) Were you reading my letter? (She nods. He gives a happy grin.) Do you mean to say you still read them over--after five years of me?

ELEANOR--(with a tender smile) Oh--sometimes.

CAPE--Sweetheart! (smiling) What were you dreaming about when I intruded?

ELEANOR--Never mind. You're enough of an egotist already. (her hand caressing his face and hair) I've been feeling so lonely--and it's only been a few weeks, hasn't it? (She laughs.) How was everything in the country? (suddenly kissing him) Oh, I'm so happy you're back. (with mock severity) But ought I?