“Old before your time!”: performing age in E. O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet
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| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | The play A Touch of the Poet (1939) by Eugene O’Neill is as much a drama of a conflict between immigrant and American identities, as it is an inter-generational clash, which parallels the characters’ process of naturalization. While Cornelius Melody, the family’s patriarch, revisits his youthful days during his daydreaming, his wife Nora lives in the present filled with existential worries, illness (rheumatism), and felt need to protect her constantly quarreling husband and daughter, Sara, from one another and the outside world. These “years of overwork and worry” take a toll on Nora’s health and beauty, making “her look much older.” On the other hand, Cornelius returns to his youthful days filled with strength and stature when he puts on his army uniform, miraculously reanimating his otherwise lost luster, only to become his age when he is defeated in his pride, (literally) beaten and politically accepting his Irish identity at the end of the play. In my presentation, I will first explain the dynamics between the parallelism between generations, their ageing, and the mechanism of Irish immigration into the US in the 1820s, focusing on Cornelius and Sara. Then, my presentation will focus on Nora. It will discuss the concept of premature ageing in A Touch of the Poet within the context of O’Neill’s other ageing female characters, mainly Mary Tyrone and others; at the end, it will show various performances of the play and their representations of Nora’s age through a discussion of casting, costuming, and – if possible – acting. |
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