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The
Personal Equation
1915
O'Neill wrote The Personal
Equation while studying playwrighting with George Pierce Baker in
the so-called "47 Work-shop" at Harvard University. His musical
requirements were routine and minimal. In act 3, scene 1, a stoker,
Hogan, sings fragments of two chanties and an Irish revolutionary song:
"Whisky Johnny," "Beer, Beer, Glorious Beer," and "We Are the Boys of
Wexford." The chanties were to reappear in O'Neill's next play set in a
stokehole, The Hairy Ape.
At the play's end, Whitely, the
fervent anarchist, turns super-patriot as World War I begins. A marching
tune is heard in the distance, to which Whitely responds by humming the
tune and beating time with his foot, evidence that he has deserted his
radical cause. Any British march tune of the period will serve. |
