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Great Divide, The
Great Divide, The (1906), a play by William Vaughn Moody. [Princess Theatre, 238 perf.] Although of old New England stock, Ruth Jordan ( Margaret Anglin) has come to Arizona to get away from the stifling, effete East and to help her brother's Western venture. She rejects a proposal of marriage from a New England doctor who seems too bloodless to her. Left alone in the Jordan cabin, she finds herself confronting three rough‐hewn men, who would apparently attack her. She pleads to the most decent looking, Stephen Ghent ( Miller), to help her. He buys off the others but then demands that Ruth come and live with him as his wife. She does and, although Ghent proves both an honorable man and a successful entrepreneur, drawing strength and goodness from his wife, Ruth cannot bring herself to love him. She remains haunted by her puritanical upbringing, yet she returns to New England, only to have Ghent follow her. There he reveals he has helped save her brother's enterprise. At first Ruth remains reluctant to return, but at last she sees she must. She tells Ghent that she lived “the only way I knew—the only way my fathers knew—by wretchedness, by self‐torture, by trying blindly to pierce your careless heart with pain.” Now she begs him to teach her how to live. Basing his play on an actual incident that did not end happily, Moody was inspired to develop the story as a classic battle between the tight puritanical mind and the free spirit of the West. The play was first performed at Anglin's urgings in Chicago as The Sabine Woman, then slightly rewritten for the Henry Miller production in New York. Walter Prichard Eaton noted shortly after its premiere, “No other American play has ever gone so deep, has ever seized hold of so powerful an idea; and no other American play has ever wrought an idea into a dramatic story with such dignity and grace of language, such poetry of image and emotion.”
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Cite this article
Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Great Divide, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Great Divide, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GreatDivideThe.html Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak. "Great Divide, The." The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 2004. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O149-GreatDivideThe.html |
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Great Divide, The
Great Divide, The, play by William Vaughn Moody.
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Cite this article
James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Great Divide, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. 31 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>. James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Great Divide, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Encyclopedia.com. (May 31, 2012). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-GreatDivideThe.html James D. Hart and and Phillip W. Leininger. "Great Divide, The." The Oxford Companion to American Literature. 1995. Retrieved May 31, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O123-GreatDivideThe.html |
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