HUGHIE BY EUGENE O’NEILL
Resources For Further Reading And Discussion

PRINT

For a biography of O’Neill:
Gelb, Arthur and Barbara. O’Neill: Life with Monte Cristo. New York, NYL Applause
Books, 2000.

To read letters written by O’Neill to family, friends, and lovers:
Breyer, Jackson R., ed. Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1988.

If you are interested in other O’Neill plays:
O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey into Night. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1989.
O’Neill, Eugene. The Iceman Cometh. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
O’Neill, Eugene. Strange Interlude. Kessinger Pub. Co, 2004.

To read about previous stagings of O’Neill’s plays by Jose Quintero (who directed some notable American premieres of O’Neill’s work):
McDonough, Edwin J. Quintero Directs O’Neill. Pennington, NJ: a capella books, 1991.

For the history of New York in the 20th century:
Margolies, Edward. New York and the Literary Imagination: The City in the Twentieth Century. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, c2008.

For books on slang of the 1920’s, try:
Farmer, J.S. and W.E .Henky, eds. Slang and its Analogues. Millwood, NY: Kraus
Reprint Co., 1974. Volumes 1-7.
Green, Jonathan. The Cassell Dictionary of Slang. London, England: Cassell Wellington
House, 1998.
Mathews, Mitford M., ed. Dictionary of Americanisms. Chicago, Illinois: University of
Chicago Press, 1951. Volumes 1-2.

For information on gambler Arnold Rothstein (also available on Google Books):
Pietrusza, David and Peter C. Whybrow, M.D., contributor. Rothstein: The Life, Times, and Murder of the Criminal Genius who Fixed the 1919 World Series. Carol & Graf Publishers, 2003.

WEBSITES

The Beinecke Library at Yale houses the O’Neill archives

For more about Eugene O’Neill:

AN ELECTRONIC O’NEILL ARCHIVE: Site includes biographical information, forums, production archives, criticism, and a library of plays.

1920s Fashion

Slang of the 1920s

History of Gambling in the United States

The History of Gambling in New York

On Arnold Rothstein, gambler and criminal

Information on the Monte Cristo Cottage, O’Neill’s home in New London

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

Both Erie Smith and Charles Hughes live in worlds constructed by their imaginations. Discuss the concept of fictionalizing one’s life. How are we liberated by our own perceptions? How do they limit us?

O’Neill’s opening stage directions describe a hotel that “had given up all pretense of respectability,” a clerk who “had even forgotten how it feels to be bored,” and a tenant who is a “type of small fry gambler and horse player, living hand to mouth on the fringe of the rackets.” In what ways does creating a dismal setting at the beginning of the play enrich its ending? Have you experienced moments of enlightenment in the midst of decay, as Smith and Hughes do?

Compare how Erie Smith and Charles Hughes interact with one another with how they perceive one another privately. How do you reconcile the gaps between action and thought in your daily life?

What does O’Neill reveal about Erie Smith and Charles Hughes by creating the unseen character of Hughie? In what ways is Hughie real in the play? In what ways is he symbolic? How do we use other people in our lives to justify our routines and beliefs?

O’Neill wrote Hughie “more to be read than staged.” How do you think the experience of reading this play, with its detailed world of stage directions, differs from seeing it?