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Reviewed by:
  • O'Neill's Shakespeare by Normand Berlin
  • Catherine Loomis (bio)
NORMAND BERLIN O'NEILL'S SHAKESPEARE Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1993 268 pp. isbn 978-0472104697

Derided by Harold Bloom and Stephen Greenblatt as carrion-eaters picking their way through the elephants' graveyard, scholars with an interest in Shakespeare's use of sources must begin their work by explaining why it matters that one author reads, quotes, alters, steals, or transforms the work of another. Bloom and Greenblatt may be satisfied that the significant sources were gathered in Geoffrey Bullough's eight-volume Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (1957–75), but scholars have developed a more generous sense of which early modern texts are worth attending to, and searchable databases have made it easier to find evidence that Shakespeare was an indiscriminate reader and an accomplished thief. Comparing source texts to the plays, particularly in the company of students, uncovers examples of metamorphoses that Ovid would envy, and can also help solve textual cruces, establish historical context, encourage more nuanced readings, and provide handy essay topics. Additionally, the study of Shakespeare's use of his sources can model ways to study the use later authors make of Shakespeare.

Normand Berlin (1931–2015) attempts to provide such a model in his 1993 analysis O'Neill's Shakespeare. Cramming a chronological survey of O'Neill's dramatic canon into categories used to classify Shakespeare's plays, Berlin argues that, consciously or not, O'Neill was as heavily influenced by Shakespeare as he was by the classical sources he more willingly acknowledged. In prose that seems to have begun life as classroom lectures (complete with frequent attempts at witty asides), Berlin uses O'Neill's biography, summaries of his plots, excerpts from his letters and notebooks, details of productions of his plays, a very basic reading of Freud, and snippets of mid-twentieth-century scholarship to argue that not only did O'Neill make use of Shakespearean themes and, occasionally, lines, but also that the playwrights have "an organic relationship" (254). Shakespeare is "an important [End Page 233] part of O'Neill's inner biography in addition to being a literary or bookish influence," and he "helps O'Neill write a breakthrough tragedy [Long Day's Journey Into Night] that allows us to feel the subjective impulse more strongly than ever before in O'Neill's career" (73–74). While this first book-length study of O'Neill's use of Shakespeare was a noble undertaking in the critical context of the early 1990s, Berlin's analysis—vague, simplistic, and deeply dependent on plot summary—fails to support his argument.

Although he does acknowledge the great differences between the playwrights (11–13), Berlin attempts to shove the round peg of O'Neill's varied oeuvre into the square holes conventionally used to organize an edition of the complete works of Shakespeare: chapters are called "Comedy," "History," "Tragedy," and "Tragicomedy." Because O'Neill's early experimental works defy categorization, these are discussed in chapters called "The Sea," "Black and White," and "The Family." Each chapter features detailed summaries of O'Neill's plays and lists parallel plot elements, characters, and themes in Shakespeare's plays. Both playwrights, for example, use soliloquies (89). Both write about families (25). Both "seem to thrive on ambiguities" (76). Shakespeare possesses an "amazing grasp of psychology" (87), and some of his plays "contain real historic figures treated imaginatively" (139). O'Neill "offers few memorable lines or phrases" in his plays (168) and is subjected to a great deal of "autobiographical pressure" (153). Unfortunately, these are not isolated examples of the level of interpretation Berlin offers. Throughout the text, facts about O'Neill's life are yoked to speculation about Shakespeare's. This practice leads to some startling conclusions: despite an admitted absence of biographical evidence, Berlin is "forced to believe [Shakespeare's tragedies] reflect Shakespeare's personal life" (166). He is also forced to believe Shakespeare had a "deep need to be reconciled with his father" (110) and an incestuous desire for Mary Arden (180), perhaps explaining the assertion that Shakespeare qualifies as a member of the Tyrone family (195).

Berlin's opening...

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