Desire Under Elms
DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS A Play in Three Parts by Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) Revised Second Edition, as published by Boni & Liveright, 1925 Characters EPHRAIM CABOT SIMEON PETER--_his sons_ EBEN ABBIE PUTNAM Young Girl, Two Farmers, The Fiddler, A Sheriff, and other folk from the neighboring farms The action of the entire play takes place in, and immediately outside of, the Cabot farmhouse in New England, in the year 1850. The south end of the house faces front to a stone wall with a wooden gate at center opening on a country road. The house is in good condition but in need of paint. Its walls are a sickly grayish, the green of the shutters faded. Two enormous elms are on each side of the house. They bend their trailing branches down over the roof. They appear to protect and at the same time subdue. There is a sinister maternity in their aspect, a crushing, jealous absorption. They have developed from their intimate contact with the life of man in the house an appalling humaneness. They brood oppressively over the house. They are like exhausted women resting their sagging breasts and hands and hair on its roof, and when it rains their tears trickle down monotonously and rot on the shingles. There is a path running from the gate around the right corner of the house to the front door. A narrow porch is on this side. The end wall facing us has two windows in its upper story, two larger ones on the floor below. The two upper are those of the father's bedroom and that of the brothers. On the left, ground floor, is the kitchen--on the right, the parlor, the shades of which are always drawn down. Contents PART I PART II PART III {text:bookmark-start} Desire Under the Elms {text:bookmark-end} PART I SCENE ONE Exterior of the Farmhouse. It is sunset of a day at the beginning of summer in the year 1850. There is no wind and everything is still. The sky above the roof is suffused with deep colors, the green of the elms glows, but the house is in shadow,...
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