The Great God Pan/Brown: Shared Origins and Theme of A Victorian Horror Classic and Eugene O’Neill’s Masked Play

Examining the origins of the phrase “the Great God Pan,” and similarities between Eugene O’Neill’s play The Great God Brown (1925) and Arthur Machen’s Victorian horror novel The Great God Pan (1894), reveals that these works share more than similar titles. Correspondences in tone, theme, and other details suggest that Machen’s novel might have influenced O’Neill, opening new possibilities for interpreting the ideas and stylistic affinities of O’Neill’s elusive play. The possibility of connection is strengthened by the authors’ overlapping social spheres during the 1920s, with Carl Van Vechten as the linking figure. As such, a groundbreaking Victorian horror story, which O’Neill might have heard as a boy, could have helped shape O’Neill’s sort of modernism.