Beyond the Horizon

Beyond the Horizon (1920), a tragedy by Eugene O'Neill. [Morosco Theatre, 111 perf.; Pulitzer Prize.] Robert Mayo ( Richard Bennett) has grown up on his family's New England farm dreaming of mysterious, faraway places, unlike his brother, the natural‐born farmer Andrew ( Edward Arnold). Both Robert and Andrew are in love with Ruth Atkins ( Helen MacKellar), and on the day before Robert is to sail away on his Uncle Dick's ship and fulfill his dreams, Ruth persuades him to marry her so Andrew sails in his stead. Three years later, Robert has made a mess of both the farm and his marriage. His only passion is his sickly young daughter Mary ( Elfin Finn). His wife and his mother ( Mary Jeffery) belittle him and hold Andrew up to him as an example. When Andrew returns, it is clear his experiences have made him hard and unloving. He cruelly tells Ruth, who realizes too late that she really loved him, he had forgotten about her long ago. He goes back to sea, and another five years pass. Mary dies, Ruth grows apathetic, and, with Robert dying of consumption, the farm is in ruins. Andrew returns and Robert asks him to move his bed so that “I can watch the rim of the hills and dream of what is waiting beyond.” He urges Andrew to marry Ruth after he dies and save the farm, but Andrew berates Ruth for her behavior and demands that Ruth tell Robert she truly loves him. Ruth at first refuses; but when she finally agrees, it is too late and Robert is dead. “God damn you!” Andrew yells at her. “You never told him!” No major producer wanted to mount the play, but John D. Williams, pressed by Bennett, finally agreed to give it at a special matinee. The response was so overwhelming that more matinees were offered, and on March 9 the play began a regular run at the Little Theatre. “By that time,” Burns Mantle wrote shortly afterwards, “there were many who were willing to accept this first long play from Eugene O'Neill's pen as representing the closest approach any native author has yet made to the great American play.” For many, this stark, unyielding work marks the beginnings of modern American drama. However, one modern critic, Howard Taubman, has noted, “In the light of today's uncompromising freshness of language and unsparing probing of character, it is tame. . . . What impressed people eager for a new voice to lead the American theatre out of its wilderness of mediocrity now strikes us as essentially sentimental . . . a reversion to romanticism.” Others would reply that O'Neill's very romanticism coupled with his bleak outlook was a major source of his strength.