4                                  Andrew B. Myers

formances. It had, written in, something like a happy ending on
stage, but an unhappy one was forced on it in its literary life off¬
stage. A "flop," Days remains one of O'Neill's journeys into the
night of neglect. This fact, clear enough from today's vantage
point, strongly suggests the tightness of much of the onslaught
made by the New York drama critics when the play was first re¬
viewed. Their attacks were characterized by O'Neill, ruefully
and briskly, in words borrowed for my title, as "Hysteria Night
in the Sophomore Dormitory," these taken from his letter of Feb¬
ruary 28, 1934, to Bennett Cerf, his new publisher. This intimate
epistle is part of the O'Neill material in the extensive Random
House files now in Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

I use the word "ends" above in several senses. It refers not only
to O'Neill's purpose(s) in writing both the play and especially its
conclusion as he did, but also to the widespread adverse reaction
to the whole as well as to that last part, with the end result of
the play's continuing life in limbo. There is no danger of a re¬
vival! O'Neill himself, in his final title, Days Without End (and
a troublesome name that was in the making), struck an ambiguous
note. His chosen words suggested both things eternal, in a positive
way echoing language familiar to the playwright, even as a lapsed
Catholic, from the liturgy. They also had a temporal meaning,
suggesting in a negative way an endless search or suffering.

The O'Neill of the early 1930s was a commanding figure in our
world of letters—and a controversial one. Ever since his "S. S.
Glencairn" one-acters in World War I years, and after, he had
driven himself hard as a writer, coming up almost annually with
another play, and often as not one challenging in theme or tech¬
nique, for example The Emperor Jones (1920) and The Hairy
Ape (1921). His stubborn efforts over the twenties had met with
both victory and defeat, but on balance he had proven himself by
the time of the Crash the greatest creative force in American
drama. Especially was he disposed—compelled is more appropri¬
ate—to write in a tragic vein, this in turn a reflection of his own