Missing Lines In Long Day's Journey Into Night

Missing Lines In Long Day's Journey Into Night MICHAEL HINDEN At the end of the second act of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Edmund Tyrone quarrels with his mother about Dr. Hardy, their family physician, then goes off without saying goodbye. But that is not the ending of the scene as O'Neill wrote it. Since 1956, Yale University Press has been reprinting O'Neill's masterpiece minus several important lines. LOllg Day's Journey Into Night is longer (slightly) than the published text. The text is based on a second typescript of the play produced in the early 1940S by Carlotta Monterey O'Neill, the playwright's wife. Mrs. O'Neill first typed a copy of her husband's pencil manuscript, which itself contained revisions. O'Neill then edited this draft, making extensive cuts. It was from this heavily edited first typescript that the second typescript was prepared. I Only a few minor changes appear on the second typescript, ana these are corrections of obvious spelling or typographical errors. All significant revisions were completed on the first typescript, which O'Neill considered his final draft. Later, several professional copies of the second typescript were produced, and one of these, showing no additional revisions by the playwright, eventually went to the printer after O'Neill's death. Because the play was published posthumously, the author never saw the galleys. Although O'Neill presumably read the second typescript, which became the source of the printed text, his proofreading was lax. He failed to notice several "clean" omissions, lines definitely not marked for deletion in the first typescript but which Mrs. O'Neill accidentally dropped during her retyping. One of these was caught by Judith Barlow in her 1985 study of O'Neill's composition process, Filial Acts: The Creation of Three Late O'Neill Plays.' Barlow noticed that Edmund does bid his mother goodbye at the end of the second act; the line had been overlooked by Carlotta. I have discovered three additional missing lines that suffered the same mishap. Two of these significantly change the context oftheir scenes. The first 178 MICHAEL HINDEN is another lost line by Edmund that occurs on the same page as his missing goodbye. It is interesting that this line escaped Barlow's attention, too, but it is easy to understand the oversight. Looking for lost words in a manuscript resembles comet-hunting. The comet-watcher must know a patch of sky by heart, down to the smallest points of light, in order to pick up something new that isn't mapped on the charts. So it is when one compares a manuscript with a text. The difference is that the astronomer scanning the skies expects to find a discrepancy, while in the case of a well known published work, the scholar is taken by surprise. What are the chances of finding two comets on the same evening in the same patch of sky? In Long Day's Joumey Into Night, the patch of sky in question is located at the end of the second act (Text, II, 2 , pp. 94- 95). The day is wearing on. The men are getting ready to leave for town, Tyrone for his club, Edmund and Jamie to visit Dr. Hardy, where bad news is expected regarding Edmund's "summer cold." Mary warns Edmund to avoid letting Jamie take him drinking. Doesn't he know what Dr. Hardy has said concerning alcohol? Edmund replies bitterly: "I thought he was an old idiot." In the text, Mary rebukes Edmund (so it seems) for his remark about Hardy. "Pitifully" she calls out Edmund's name. But the printed text makes little sense. Throughout the play Mary expresses contempt for Hardy and is quick to agree with anyone who has a bad word to say about doctors; it was Mary herself who called Hardy an old idiot a few minutes earlier. Her reaction seems out of character. However, Mary's rebuke makes perfect sense in response to the missing line that Edmund hurls at her in the first typescript: "Anyway, by tonight what will you care?" The lost line significantly changes the emotional tenor of the...