O'Neill's Marco Millions: A Road to Xanadu

O'NEILL'S MARCO MILLIONS: A ROAD TO XANADU The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modem stage, Not, at any rate, an attic grace.... Ezra Pound, Mauberley, 1920 IT IS A COMMONPLACE OF O'Neill criticism that the areas of action within his plays are neatly coincident with his own moral universethat as an obsessed dramatist, his entire canon is a search for meanings in a world he finds sterile and corrupt. Certainly the complexity of O'Neill's obsessions and their relationship to his well~known psychological difficulties are the sources of his unique virtues and defects as an artist; the author's psychological state is the catalyst bringing together artistry and idea, linking each play to his own core c;:oncern. His conclusions are thus often far less interesting than the various means he uses to analyze his material. Marco Millions, first conceived in 1921 and completed in 1927, was written during the most productive years of O'Neill's life and provides a central focus for a study of the man and his artistry. What becomes important, then, in an examination of Marco Millions, knowing that O'Neill was attempting to dramatize once more a longexplored idea, is an examination of the initial steps involved in the creation of the play. Such an inquiry demonstrates not only how the play evolves from O'Neill's compelling criticism of American values, but also reveals the steps in the creative process which give power and shape to his dramatic work. Available for such a study are O'Neill's direct source for the play and his working notes, written during 1922 and the winter of 1923 as he prepared to write Marco Millions.1 While in prison at Genoa (1298-99) following his years in the Orient, Marco Polo dictated his travels to a fellow prisoner, Rusticiano , the Pisan writer, and it is this account to which O·Neill turned for infonnation regarding the Polos' journeys before he drafted Marco Millions. O'Neill's notes indicate that he was familiar with the most celebrated edition of the travels, T he Boo~ of Ser Marco Polo, edited by Sir Henry Yule and first published in 1871. This two-volume edition 1 O'Neill's "Preliminary Material" for Marco Millions is available on m-icro. film (27 frames) in the Yale Collection of O'Neilliana and is labeled "O'Neill Film No.3." 377 378 MODERN DRAMA February reappeared in revised form in 1875 and a third edition, still in two volumes, appeared in 1903 and was reprinted in 1921, the same year O'Neill conceived the idea for Marco Millions.2 The play and O'Neill's working notes give certain evidence that the playwright worked directly from Yule's third edition. O'Neill's preliminary notes for the play can be divided into two unequal sections.S The larger part consists entirely of notes dealing with major characters, notes drawn from Yule's lengthy Introduction to Marco Polo's own Prologue and Four Books of his travels, rather than from a close reading of the travels themselves. O'Neill includes an outline of Marco's known career, a proposed cast of characters, the major dates of the Polo family'S travels between 1254 and 1299, and observations on the characters of Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. There are individual pages of notes on Rusticiano; outlines of Chinese history, particularly of the genealogy of Chinghiz, the Great Khan, including Kublai, his grandson; lists of Marco's missions, data on specific voyages, and information on his return to Venice.. The second portion of notes, these derived largely from· Marco Polo's actual narrative in the four books of the travels, consists of background data on the geographical and economic aspects of the Orient; there are sections on Persia, Mongolia, India, and China, the principal countries which appear in the play, as well as data on the specific cities within these countries: Georgiana, Tariz, Bagdad, Hormuz, and so on. This section concludes with brief sketches of several scenes and occasional lines of poetry later to be included in the play. We can best analyze O'Neill...