Mourning Becomes Electra

Mourning Becomes Electra
A Trilogy
by
Eugene O'Neill
eBooks@Adelaide
2010

First published in 1931.

This web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide .

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Last updated Sun Aug 29 12:06:46 2010.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

General Scene of the Trilogy

Homecoming

 

  1. ACT ONE
  2. ACT TWO
  3. ACT THREE
  4. ACT FOUR

The Hunted

 

  1. ACT ONE
  2. ACT TWO
  3. ACT THREE
  4. ACT FOUR
  5. ACT FIVE

The Haunted

 

  1. ACT ONE
  2. ACT TWO
  3. ACT THREE
  4. ACT FOUR

GENERAL SCENE OF THE TRILOGY

The action of the trilogy, with the exception of an act of the second play, takes place in or immediately outside the Mannon residence, on the outskirts of one of the smaller New-England seaport towns.

A special curtain shows the house as seen from the street. From this, in each play, one comes to the exterior of the house in the opening act and enters it in the following act.

This curtain reveals the extensive grounds — about thirty acres — which surround the house, a heavily wooded ridge in the background, orchards at the right and in the immediate rear, a large flower garden and a greenhouse to the left.

In the foreground, along the street, is a line of locust and elm trees. The property is enclosed by a white picket fence and a tall hedge. A driveway curves up to the house from two entrances with white gates. Between the house and the street is a lawn. By the right corner of the house is a grove of pine trees. Farther forward, along the driveway, maples and locusts. By the left corner of the house is a big clump of lilacs and syringas.

The house is placed back on a slight rise of ground about three hundred feet from the street. It is a large building of the Greek temple type that was the vogue in the first half of the nineteenth century. A white wooden portico with six tall columns contrasts with the wall of the house proper which is of gray cut stone. There are five windows on the upper floor and four on the ground floor, with the main entrance in the middle, a doorway with squared transom and sidelights flanked by intermediate columns. The window shutters are painted a dark green. Before the doorway a flight of four steps leads from the ground to the portico.

The three plays take place in either spring or summer of the years 1865-1866.

Homecoming

A Play in Four Acts

Part One of the Trilogy

Mourning Becomes Electra

CHARACTERS

Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon
Christine, his wife
Lavinia, their daughter
Captain Adam Brant, of the clipper “Flying Trades”
Captain Peter Niles, U.S. Artillery
Hazel Niles, his sister
Seth Beckwith
Amos Ames
Louisa, his wife
Minnie, her cousin

SCENES

ACT ONE: Exterior of the Mannon house in New England — April, 1865.
ACT TWO: Ezra Mannon’s study in the house — no time has elapsed.
ACT THREE: The same as Act One — exterior of the house — a night a week later.
ACT FOUR: A bedroom in the house — later the same night.

ACT ONE

Scene — Exterior of the Mannon house on a late afternoon in April, 1865. At front is the driveway which leads up to the house from the two entrances on the street. Behind the driveway the white Grecian temple portico with its six tall columns extends across the stage. A big pine tree is on the lawn at the edge of the drive before the right corner of the house. Its trunk is a black column in striking contrast to the white columns of the portico. By the edge of the drive, left front, is a thick clump of lilacs and syringas. A bench is placed on the lawn at front of this shrubbery which partly screens anyone sitting on it from the front of the house.

It is shortly before sunset and the soft light of the declining sun shines directly on the front of the house, shimmering in a luminous mist on the white portico and the gray stone wall behind, intensifying the whiteness of the columns, the somber grayness of the wall, the green of the open shutters, the green of the lawn and shrubbery, the black and green of the pine tree. The white columns cast black bars of shadow on the gray wall behind them. The windows of the lower floor reflect the sun’s rays in a resentful glare. The temple portico is like an incongruous white mask fixed on the house to hide its somber gray ugliness.

In the distance, from the town, a band is heard playing “John Brown’s Body”. Borne on the light puffs of wind this music is at times quite loud, then sinks into faintness as the wind dies.

From the left rear, a man’s voice is heard singing the chanty “Shenandoah”— a song that more than any other holds in it the brooding rhythm of the sea. The voice grows quickly nearer. It is thin and aged, the wraith of what must once have been a good baritone.

“Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you
A-way, my rolling river
Oh, Shenandoah, I can’t get near you
Way-ay, I’m bound away
Across the wide Missouri.”

The singer, Seth Beckwith, finishes the last line as he enters from around the corner of the house.