Long Day's Journey into Night (Yale Nota Bene) Read Free Page A

forgotten by any of us.
    HAROLD BLOOM

Publisher’s Note, 1989
     
    Since its first publication in February 1956, Long Day’s Journey into Night has gone through numerous reprintings. With this printing, the sixty-first, we have taken the opportunity to correct several errors recently reported by scholars who have made careful examinations of final typescripts of the play. It has been discovered that Carlotta O’Neill, retyping from a previous version heavily edited by O’Neill, accidentally dropped lines in several places.
    We wish to take note first of a correction that was silently made in the fifth printing after Donald Gallup called our attention to missing lines on page 170. The dialogue and stage directions restored were those beginning with “Kid" in line 22 and ending with “old" in line 24.
    For the corrections made in this printing, we thank the following: Michael Hinden (for pointing out missing lines on pages 97, 106, and 167 and errors on page 158), Judith E. Barlow (for missing lines on page 97), and Stephen Black (for an error on page 111). On page 97 a sentence ("Anyway, by tonight, what will you care?") has been added to Edmund’s dialogue at lines 18-19. On page 97 lines 29-33 are printed for the first time. On page 106 a sentence ("It’s a special kind of medicine.") has been restored at line 1. The errors corrected on pages 111 and 158 were minor, although puzzling, misprints (e.g., “fron" for “front," “sibject" for “subject"). On page 167 a sentence ("No one hopes more than I do you’ll knock ‘em all dead.") has been restored in line 20.

For Carlotta, on our 12th Wedding Anniversary
    Dearest: I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood. A sadly inappropriate gift, it would seem, for a day celebrating happiness. But you will understand. I mean it as a tribute to your love and tenderness which gave me the faith in love that enabled me to face my dead at last and write this play—write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.
    These twelve years, Beloved One, have been a Journey into Light — into love. You know my gratitude. And my love!
    Gene
    Tao House
    July 22,1941.

Characters
    JAMES TYRONE
    MARY CAVAN TYRONE , his wife
    JAMES TYRONE, JR., their elder son
    EDMUND TYRONE, their younger son
    CATHLEEN, second girl

Act One
     
    SCENE
    Living room of James Tyrone’s summer home on a morning in August, 1912.
    At rear are two double doorways with portieres. The one at right leads into a front parlor with the formally arranged, set appearance of a room rarely occupied. The other opens on a dark, windowless back parlor, never used except as a passage from living room to dining room. Against the wall between the doorways is a small bookcase, with a picture of Shakespeare above it, containing novels by Balzac, Zoh, Stendhal, philosophical and sociological works by Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Engels, Kropotkin, Max Stirner, plays by Ibsen, Shaw, Strindberg, poetry by Swinburne, Rossetti, Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Kipling, etc.
    In the right wall, rear, is a screen door leading out on the porch which extends halfway around the house. Farther forward, a series of three windows looks over the front lawn to the harbor and the avenue that runs along the water front. A small wicker table and an ordinary oak desk are against the wall, flanking the windows.
    In the left wall, a similar series of windows looks out on the grounds in back of the house. Beneath them is a wicker couch with cushions, its head toward rear. Farther back is a large, glassed-in bookcase with sets of Dumas, Victor Hugo, Charles Lever, three sets of Shakespeare, The World’s Best Literature in fifty large volumes, Hume’s History of England, Thiers’ History of the Consulate and Empire, Smollett’s History of England, Gibbon’s Roman Empire and miscellaneous volumes of old plays, poetry, and several histories of Ireland. The astonishing