Devising the “Writer’s Soul”In Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.
The poet, described in ideal
perfection, brings the whole soul of man intoactivity, with the subordination
of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and
dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of
unity that blends and fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical
power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name of imagination.—Samuel Taylor Coleridge[i]
A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature.—Henry David Thoreau[ii]
In every culture of every age, the ability to tell stories, to teach, to delight, to create poetry, to give nature voice through language, functions as an essential feature of human existence.[iii] Views concerning the creation of texts and the role of the storyteller as creator vary in different ages and cultures. Roland Barthes contends that the “author” is essentially a modern phenomenon. Previously, a comparable figure was extolled not as a creator but as “mediator, shaman or relater whose ‘performance’ may be admired—the mastery of the narrative code—may possibly by admired but never his ‘genius.’”[iv] Indeed, the image of the author as a genius, as a gifted individual with the rare ability to create meaning, survives today primarily as a holdover from the Romantic Movement.[v] This lasting portrait still influences contemporary perceptions. For the person with the capability to create meaning must therefore know the meaning; and the person who knows the meaning, perhaps the only person who knows the meaning, achieves a form of omniscience. In this view, the author holds god-like properties.
Early his career, famed literary biographer Leon Edel envisioned the figure of the author and the role of the literary biographer in idealized terms. He states that literary biography provides for a read “every secret of a writer’s soul, every quality of a writer’s mind.”[vi] The use of the phrase “writer’s soul” hints at a decidedly Romantic method of biographical construction, a reflection on the inherent greatness of teh subject and the sanctity of the creative process.[vii] In the following investigation, I explore the “writer’s soul” idealism guiding Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s literary drama,[viii] The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (TNT).[ix] My examination divides into three sections. Seciton one contains an overview of the unique production history of TNT. Section two consists of identification and discussion of what Karen Mitchell refers to as “intrinsic” intertextuality.[x] In section three, I examine the “extrinsic” intertextual implications[xi] realized when Lawrence and Lee’s biographical portrait of Thoreau was performed in the context of the 1970s.[xii] Through this analysis of an important literary drama, I reveal the ways in which Lawrence and Lee transform a nineteenth-century author into anti-Vietnam sage, savior and activist. This study also highlights TNT’s place among a dying breed of literary dramas that glorify and canonize the figure of the author as a laudable and sanctified individual.
TNT Production History
The unique history of TNT begins with an organization known as the American Playwrights Theatre (APT). IN 1962, at the annual conference of the American Educational Theatre Association, a panel addressed the question as to why college and university theatre seasons across the country produced such a high number of warmed-over, three-to five-year-old Broadway scripts. An especially disturbing feature of this observation grew from the widely held belief by those in attendance that these scripts were often of low quality.[xiii] Recognizing this dilemma prompted a determination that universities, ideally bastions of progress and new ideas, should serve as navigators, not passengers, in the course of the American stage. The following year, the APT was formed dedicated to the belief that “new plays of ideas of superior caliber to those recently produced on Broadway can be written and produced in the American theatre” (Guernsey 39).
The founders of the APT were a
distinguished mixture of academics and commercial artists. In 1964, when the organization became
incorporated, J. Osborn Fuller, Dean of Ohio State’s
Understandably, the involvement of
Lawrence and Lee in tehAPT lent the organization considerable creative
clout. At that time, their resume
included Inherit the Wind (1955), Auntie Mame (1965), and seven other
Broadway productions. However, the
inaugural production of TNT in April
and 1970 distinguished the duo as the most successful and significant
dramatists in the fifteen-year history of the APT. In the subsequent year and a half after the
pilot production at
The enormous popularity of TNT is especially remarkable because the drama was deliberately never performed on or off Broadway. In an anthology of Lawrence and Lee’s plays, Alan Woods contends that the playwrights’ decision not to make their play available to Broadway audiences vindicated the mission of APT by forcefully demonstrating that a living theatre could be born and continue to flourish outside of Manhattan.[xvii] However, Woods also suggests a downside connected with the lack of professional exposure: “That TNT still has not attracted much scholarly attention must be seen as an ironic comment on the scholarly community’s lack of awareness of changes in theatrical production patterns during the past two decades, as well as on scholars ignoring evidence beneath their very noses” (Woods 452). Subject of a very little critical investigation, TNT achieved its enormous popularity at the same institutions that currently ignore its significance with their silence.
Intrinsic Intertextuality Through Lifted Texts
In his essay “Civil Disobedience,”
Thoreau recalls that immediately after being released from jail he “joined the
Huckleberry part.”[xix] Likewise, Fink cites a reference to this
eccentric ritual appearing in
I remember how glad I was when I
was kept form school half a day to pick huckleberries on a neighboring hill all
by myself to make a pudding for the family dinner. Ah, they got nothing but pudding, but I got
the invaluable experience besides! A
half a day of liberty like that was like a promise of life eternal. I was emancipation in
A similar passage appears in TNT when Henry is tutoring Edward Emerson:
Huckleberry—hunting my boy!...Now,
when I was your age—if I was ever your age—my mother used to bake Huckleberry
pudding. Best in
Although
the above passages clearly are not identical, their similarities nearly succeed
in making the latter narrative an example of a lifted text. Both narratives mention a “half a day” set
aside for picking huckleberries; they both argue that the means of the
occupation (huckleberry gathering) far surpass the ends (“pudding”); and they
both express a sense of the personal joy connected with spending solitary time
in nature. Predictably, the difference existing between the two passages are
attributable to the manner in which the narrative is recontextualized. In the TNT
version, Thoreau directs his statement to his young student. Gone, then, are the more mature phrases, such
as “A half a day of wild adventure under the
Another example of a lifted text in
TNT, also identified by Fink, remains
even closer to the syntax of Thoreau’s source text.
I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name—if ten honest men only,--ay, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefore, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. (qtd. in Fink 16)
Likewise, a similar speech exists in TNT. After being approached
by the
“I’ll tell you this. If one thousand…If one hundred…If ten men…ten honest men, only…if one honest man in this state of Massachusetts had the conviction and the courage to withdraw from this unholy partnership and let himself be locked up in the country jail, it’d be the start of more true freedom than we’ve seen since a few farmers had the guts to block the British by the bridge up the road. (TNT 66; qtd. in Fink16)”
This passionate expression of “civil disobedience” eventually leads to Henry’s incarceration.
As is quickly evident, the
similarities existing between these two passages, not only in meaning but also
in vocabulary and syntax , make the TNT
version an example of a lifted text. For
the most part,
Intrinsic Intertextuality Through Allusion
Although both are forms of intertextuality, the study of “allusion” in literary drama offers a set of challenges different from the study of “lifted texts.” Rather than drawing from specific passages, allusions generally connote wider associations, such as a n entire book or a set of ideas (Mitchell 48). Fore example, on several occasions in RNR, characters discuss issues of solitude, natural studies, transcendentalism, passive resistance, etc. Although most of these moments do not correlate directly with specific passages in Thoreau’s writing, they clearly refer and defer to his overall body of work. Admittedly, the limitations of performance condense many allusions to the point of superficiality. Allusion therefore helps to express Barthes’ definition of biographemes. They “reduce [themselves] to a few details, a few preferences, a few inflections” (9). Since biographemes in the form of allusions do not always refer to a specific passage within a specific text their sources can remain blurred and difficult to pinpoint.
Even so, allusions to certain
highly resonate texts dominate the intertextual fabric of TNT. Predictably, three of
the most prominent of these source texts include Walden, the essay “Civil Disobedience,” and excerpts from Thoreau’s
journals. It is no coincidence that
copious notes from all three of these texts appear in
Undeniably, ideas and locations expressed in Thoreau’s most iconic text, Walden, leave behind a definite signature in the performance of TNT. For example, Thoreau’s Walden amplifies any reference within the drama to something as seemingly innocent as a “pond.” In the opening moments of the drama, John Thoreau’s description of his brother as “Wild”…”Known to haunt the woods and ponds” (TNT 7) refers to more than eccentric behavior. John’s reference only foreshadows a conversation near the end of act one precipitated by Waldo’s attempts to pay Henry for his work as a maintenance man and as a teacher:
WALDO: You must have weekly wages…
HENRY: But must it be money? Could it be—(He breaks off. HENRY pauses. WALDO and LYDIAN stare at him strangely, as he stares way off, toward Walden, far in the back of the auditorium and beyond) How far does it extend , your back meadow?
WALDO: To the woods
HENRY: Including the woods?
WALDO: A section of it. To the shore of the pond. (The idea is accelerating inside his head.)
HENRY Perhaps, some day, if my work has been useful to you, and if we remain friends, I may ask you fro a bit of your woods (Quickly) A small square, no bigger than this room. Not as a gift, I don’t’ want to own it! Simply an understanding between friends—who know that the land really belongs to the woodchucks, anyhow! (TNT 53)
The deliberate and, one may argue, contrived manner in which Henry “stares way off, toward Walden” force fully signals the significance of this allusion within the drama.
In its final manifestation, the
signature of Walden plays a key role
the dramatic action of TNT. Late in the drama, Henry reaches the
agonizing decision to give-up his life on
The number of allusions to Walden found on TNT pales in comparison to the near saturation of material drawn from Thoreau’s famous essay “Civil Disobedience.” A case could be made that the very idea for the drama is itself an allusion to the famous essay. One specific example centers on the guilt of Thoreau’s unfortunate cellmate. Although he does not mention him by name in “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau speculates as to the probable reasons for his cellmate’s captivity: “As near as I could discover, he ha dprobably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and ha dsmoked his pipe there” (“Civil Disobedience” 24). In TNT, “Bailey” grudgingly tells Henry, “All I did was snuck in to get some sleep and I guess the sparks from my pipe fell in the hay” (TNT 12).
Other connections between “Civil Disobedience” and TNT exist. For example, although the individual texts disagree as to whether Thoreau was picking up or dropping off his shoes, they both indicate that the writer’s arrest occurred while he was on his way to the cobbler (“Civil Disobedience” 26; TNT61).
In “Civil Disobedience,” he decries the practice of paying local taxes to support a town priest (22). Likewise, on numerous occasions, Thoreau takes aim at paying Federal taxes to fund an unjust war. These two convictions come together in TNT to form Henry’s line: Í wouldn’t pay the tithe to the church, so I signed off from the church! Well, I’m ready right now to sign off from the government” (65).
But perhaps the most memorable allusion to “Civil Disobedience” found in TNT comes when the lights go out. In his famous essays, Thoreau describes the sensation of lying in the darkened cell after his cellmate had drifted to sleep:
It was like traveling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village….It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine Stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village inn—a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly free inside of it. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about. (“Civil Disobedience” 25)
Similarly, a definite allusion to Thoreau’s’ nighttime
epiphany occurs in TNT. The allusion begins with the audio cue of a
clock striking eleven. According to the
stage directions, the sound “dilates,
louder and louder, pulsing with standing waves” (TNT 42). Visibly affected,
Henry addresses the darkness: “Thank you
The similarities existing between these two passages, both in terms of context and content, theaten to overshadow what are some fairly significant differences. Among the similarities are the fact that both narratives come as a result of the solitude of the jail cell, that the ringing of a church bell inspires both epiphanies, and, to different degrees, that both narratives describe a sense of personal freedom achieved through a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings. In reducing the length of the passage to just a few lines, however, Lawrence and Lee alter the source considerably. The passage shifts from a reflective, highly descriptive acknowledgement of a transcendent experience, to an exuberant and passionate expression of intellectual superiority. In short, Lawrence and Lee’s allusion to the passage from Thoreau’s essay further contributes to their overtly favorable characterization of Thoreau. He comes across as a superior individual with a singular capacity to achieve happiness, self-awareness and personal fulfillment.
Throughout TNT, allusions to Thoreau’s work also appear in the form of visual and auditory symbols. For the most part, these indicators are not blatant; they remain suggestive devices that only plant subtle clues as to the nature of Thoreau’s personality and contribute to the almost filmic, memory-play quality of the overall drama. For example, a major thematic element of Walden is reduced to his plea, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”[xxii] Recognizing the potential usefulness of this quotation, Lawrence and Lee include it in their early notes for TNT.[xxiii] The quotation also literally appears as a line in the drama (TNT 91). Indeed, Thoreau’s impulse to simplify carries into performance by providing the visual core of TNT’s production design. Never is this strategy more apparent than the playwrights’ notes accompanying the script changes for the 1970 UCLE production:
For your production style, use Thoreau’s own words: Simplify, simplify, simplify! The more you can omit physically and leave to the audience’s imagination, the more your production will project Thoreau’s own sense of economy and uncluttered order. There should be no scenes as such—they should overlap, happen simultaneously: they are not merely inside the cell, but inside this man’s head—and his soul. Time is awash. Free your stage for history’s free-est human being.[xxiv]
As this statement indicates, Lawrence and Lee believe that the mise-en-scene of their production holds the potential to enhance the biographical essence of their protagonist. In short, they express a production goal in which staging decisions enable an audience to experience Thoreau’s doctrine of simplification through exposure to visual metaphor.
Significantly, the impulse to
simplify influences more than movement and staging choices of Lawrence and
Lee’s drama; it controls other elements of design as well. Perhaps the most obvious an immediate example
is Thoreau himself. In their stage
directions,
On a scribbled floor plan
accompanying a 1969 draft of TNT,
Predictably, lighting design
represents yet another tool used to further emphasize Thoreau’s relationship
with nature. Before collaborating with
Lee,
Leafy projections of trees in spring, summer and autumn, the bare branches of the limbs hung with the snow in winter. Dawns, sunsets, starry nights alive with milky-way made close by the forest’s darkness—all will be suggested subtly by lighting. These are the moods of a man’s mind, the free-est mind ever.[xxviii]
As was his practice, Lee edited
Finally, costume, scene, and lighting are not the only intertextual design elements with the potential to create character and enhance theatrical presentation. The closing moments of TNT provide a powerful example of how a sound may serve as an audio biographeme. Arguably, no quotation from Thoreau’s writing is more identifiable than his famous defense of non-conformity: “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, whoever measured or far away.” Ironically, Lawrence and Lee’s use of this statement, generally interpreted as a “live and let live” anthem, underscores Thoreau’s decision to leave Walden in order to more aggressively pursue social change. As he exits his prison cell, the final stage directions describe his reaction:
In the doorway, HENRY stops,
looks up sharply. From a distance, he
hears an eccentric, non-military drummer.
He moves into
Significantly, this is the first and only direct reference to “a different drummer” in the entire text. Clearly, Lawrence and Lee recognize the importance of the allusion and deliberately make it the final experience of the production. Transformed into a sound cue of a sporadic drum beat, Thoreau’s quotation supplies the denouement of the drama; in doing so, it provides a clear example of intertextuality’s ability to shape and influence literary drama.
As should be increasingly clear, visual and auditory allusions fulfill many important functions in a performance of TNT. Seamlessly integrated into the performance event, these allusions reinforce widely held biographical views of Thoreau. Staging, costume, scenic, and lighting choices only strengthen the writer’s overall status as a seeker of simplicity, a naturalist, and a nonconformist with a social conscience. Any incongruities and inconsistencies lurking behind these portrayals go unexplored and untouched. The writer emerges as the embodiment of his texts, a figure of esteem and bardolarty.
Intrinsic
Intertextuality Through Found Discourse
Entries from Thoreau’s private
journals represent the third dominant source text leading to the creation of TNT.
Texts such as journal entries fall into the category of what Mitchell
refers to as “found discourse.” Similar
to lifted texts but unlike allusion, found discourse consists of quotations
taken from documents surrounding an author’s life. Found discourse differs from lifted texts in
that the source of the intertext usually is not a document originally intended
for publication of public consumption (Mitchell 50). The publication of edited volumes of
Thoreau’s journals in the late nineteenth century drastically hastened the
growth of the writer’s reputation as the “Poet-Naturalist.”[xxx] No surprise should be taken, then, that
Of all of Thoreau’s journal entries
that influence TNT, none does so more
prominently than an entry dated 1 October 1851.
The following quotation comes from
Just put a fugitive slave, who has
taken the name of Henry Williams, into the cars for
Occasionally, Thoreau volunteered
his home as a station along the Undergroudn Railroad.[xxxi] Likewise, anti-slavery sentiments permeate
much of his writing and are referred to on a number of occasions in TNT.
By far the most direct allusion appears in a scene involving the same
“Williams” mentioned in Thoreau’s journal entry. Set near Thoreau’s cabin on
Within the context of the overall
drama, the “Henry Williams” scene serves several theatrical function. The pivotal scene depicting the fracture
between Henry and Waldo immediately follows Henry’s scene with Williams. Ii fact, it is the news that Williams has
been recaptured by a “
Regrettably, however, Thoreau’s glorification comes at the expense of Williams’ characterization. Similar to the character of Thoreau’s cellmate, Bailey, Williams’ depiction makes him a poor makes him a poor candidate to carry on a conversation with the great Thoreau; he becomes instead a foil for the writer’s racial and social wisdom. Unlike Bailey, however, William’s deficiencies in intellect carry with them a racially motivated stigma. Rather than functioning in the scene as “intelligent” and “well-behaved,” as he is described in Thoreau’s journal entry (even this obviously sympathetic description is slightly troubling by contemporary standards), Williams comes across as the stereotype of the run-away slave: silly, malleable, unintelligent and comically skittish. The manner in which Lawrence and Lee depicts Williams’ desire to take Thoreau’s first name is as contradictory as it is misguided. Henry spends much of the scene affirming the benefits of self-expression and nonconformity. After hearing this, Williams inexplicably asks the writer if he can take “Henry” as a first name. Only more absurd is the fact that Henry agrees, but tells him that “David” might be a better choice because he doesn’t use it much (TNT 90).
Extrinsic Intertextuality: Thoreau in the Context of the 1970’s
In his
review of the 1970
A description of the tumultuous
social context in which the majority of performances of TNT occurred serves as the first step towards understanding the
remarkable appeal of the drama. It is no
coincidence that the height of TNT’s
popularity corresponded with the
Indeed, many scenes, lines, and
images from TNT take on added force
when viewed through the social context of 1970s college life. The most obvious association likely to provoke
audience response are the inevitable comparisons between the Vietname War and
Thoreau’s efforts to discredit his government’s involvement in the
Mexican-American War. In a conversation
with bailey occurring early in Act One, Henry compares the qualities of a bird
with the bureaucracy of federal government:
“A loon doesn’t wage war, his government is perfect, being nonexistent”
(12). Later, in a conversation with his
jailer, Henry expresses similar views referring to the Mexican American
War: “What the government of this
country is doing turns my stomach! And
if I keep my mouth shut, I’m a criminal.
To my Conscience. To my God. To Society” (67). The anti-war theme continues later in the
drama during the pivotal scene between Henry and Emerson. Desperate to inspire his mentor to action,
Henry pleads, “Can you lift your right hand to your mouth while your left
hand—which is also you—your government—is killing men in Mexico?” (94).
As is quickly evident from these examples, a 1970’s student audience
could easily perceive parallels between TNT
and the
But never are parallels between the
Mexican-American and Vietnam Wars more directly apparent than in TNT’s climatic dream sequence. In this bizarre scene, described in the stage
directions in the unmistakable vernacular of the 1960’s and 1970’s drug culture
as “a bad trip” (101), Henry confronts many horrifying images of war. Significant figures from his past play the
roles of soldiers on their way to battle.
Refusing to go, Henry endures a barrage of insults from his drafted
Deafening artillery fire peaks in volume. There are great flashes of light, the arcing of mortar shells, the staccato splattering of bullets. The Federal troops form into a ragged line of attacking infantrymen. They point their muskets front and move slowly forward, advancing on the audience as if they were the enemy. (104)
With no
attempts at subtlety, Lawrence and Lee design Henry’s hallucination to play on
a number of images from student life during the
Aside from references to the Vietnam War, other extratextual allusions to social action in the form of student protests abound in TNT. One of the most persistent of these allusions deals with the ways the drama questions, discredits, and eventually discounts all symbols of authority. Examples include the many caustic references to government; the open disrespect for organized systems of religion, education, and justice; and the gradual devaluation of the status of Emerson. The harsh portrayal of these institutions and Thoreau’s gradual separation from them contribute to a depiction of the writer as the physical embodiment of a popular 1960s counter-cultural anthem: “question authority.”
Similar to the allusions to
I wish more time to collect my thoughts. So I am going to appoint a committee to appoint a committee to appoint a committee. (Cheers.) Get to the bottom of this, so the top will know what to do! (102).
The symbolism of this exchange is as blatant as it is biting. Within the context of TNT, Emerson and Ball represent the two most identifiable symbols of authority and the establishment. By the end of the drama, neither of them is portrayed in an even remotely positive light. Their theatrical metamorphosis into highly powerful political and a military figures systematically decries far reaching symbols of authority. Furthermore, Emerson’s depiction as an incoherent pawn of the military meshes nicely with 1960s and 1970s views of American presidents as poorly equipped to function effectively and objectively as commanders-in-chief.
Finally,
The many allusions in TNT to the Vietnam War,
anti-establishmentism, and racial injustice are by no means coincidental or
accidental phenomenon. In a transcript
of a 1968 meeting between Lawrence and Lee and the board of the APT,
The whole country is unjustly over-run and conquered by a foreign army and subject to military law, and in that case, I think it’s not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.[xxxiv]
In itself, this quotation seems consistent with Thoreau’s
other statements against the Mexican-American War expressed in numerous
intertexts in TNT. However,
Indeed, throughout the development
of TNT, Lawrence and Lee emphasized
the contemporary relevancy of their concept in the drama. In the very first sentence of the preface to
the Hill and Wang publication, the playwrights openly state, “The man
imprisoned in our play belongs more to the 1970s than to the age in which he
lived” (vii). Likewise, the program
notes to the 1970 production at
Time is awash in the jail cell. We are not trapped in happenings past, but are concerned about THE NOW THOREAU—the explosive spirit who addressed himself to the perils of our time with more power and clarity than most angry young men writing about it now. (viii)
By
admitting the fact that they are “not trapped in happenings past,” Lawrence and
Lee indicate that their interpretation of Thoreau, or, as they put it, “THE NOW
THOREAU,” may be more influenced by
the events of 1960s and 1970s than by social context of the middle 1800s. Ultimately, the clearest indication of the
playwrights’ desires to heighten and redirect Thoreau’s political agenda may be
found in minutes of an APT board meeting.
In an attempt to express the urgency of their project,
Conclusions: Seamless Intertexts and the Author as Sage, Savior, and Activist
As this study of TNT indicates, Lawrence and Lee’s use of intrinsic intertextuality to create a biographical depiction of Thoreau corresponds with Edel’s idyllic “writer’s soul” objective for literary biography. Lawrence and Lee’s “NOW THOREAU” exists as a blameless idealist and a tireless social avenger. Rarely does the essayist/poet/naturalist’s mouth fail to spring forth the perfect phrase, the right idea, or the appropriate indictment. Cursed with being the only person with the foresight and courage to change the wrong-headed and destructive policies of his community and government, Henry resolves to struggle against the system. Granting his listeners wisdom, fighting for those too weak or ignorant to fight for themselves, and sacrificing his lifestyle for an ideal, Thoreau becomes the theatrical embodiment of the talented, enlightened, selfless author: a visage of Romantic expectation.
The selection and method of placement of intertextuality play a key role in the theatrical creation of Thoreau as Romantic hero. Nearly every instance of intertextuality in TNT—whether lifted, allusion, or found—conforms to what Mitchell refers to as a “seamless” method of placement. Seamless intertexts, according to Mitchell, furnish a playwright with the ability to conceal and expunge otherwise glaring incongruities in the triangular relationship between text, intertext, and author (47). This is to say that, although minor and expected alterations do occur between text and intertext in TNT, the intertexts themselves always affirm and never negate or question the integrity of their source text. Likewise, the integrity of Thoreau’s carefully crafted literary persona never comes into question in Lawrence and Lee’s drama. Even the extrinsic metaphorical parallels between Thoreau’s writings and the cultural climate of the 1970s accentuate and elevate the positive expectations of Edel’s “writer’s soul.” By choosing only the most upbeat and flattering of intertexts, Lawrence and Lee leave no room in their idealized portrait for the often stodgy, disillusioned, and cynical figure also apparent in much of Thoreau’s writing. With no apologies, their “NOW THOREAU” exists as a purification of what we might guess to be the “THEN THOREAU.”
In terms of issues of characterization and theatrical effectiveness, TNT’s highly Romantic depiction of the author poses some problems to the skeptical sensibilities of a contemporary audience. While today’s theatre-goers may still delight I Thoreau’s noble attempts to change the system, they never really get an opportunity to see him change. Always witty, intelligent and indomitable, Henry displays no chinks in his armor. He is almost completely immutable. Despite his charisma and intelligence, Lawrence and Lee’s Thoreau border the terrain of the stock figure, the stereotype of the one-dimensional character. To use an analogy from popular culture, the Thoreau in TNT suffers from the same disadvantage as Superman. With all his powers, intelligence, and goodness, Superman makes a predictable protagonist. Lawrence and Lee might have been well served to follow the lead of the creators of the man of steel and inject a little Kryptonite into their drama.
Still, part of me is saddened by
the fact that the Romantic image of Thoreau as expressed in TNT now seems contrived and in need of
revision. The enormous and unprecedented
popular appeal of the drama during the 1970s clearly indicates that the
original audience did not view Thoreau’s moral perfection as a problem. The relative obscurity of the play in 1980s
and 1990s points to a hardening of the arteries of our collective idealism. Whether this disillusion comes as a result of
a failed social revolution or as a component of the diminished reverence given
to authors in society is unclear. What
is clear, however, is that
1 Coleridge, Samul Taylor. Biographia Literaria. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Fifth Edition. Ed. M.H. Abrams (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 1600.
2 Thoreau, Henry David. The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals. Ed. Odell Shepard (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), 84.
[iii] Lord, Albert Bates. The Singer of Tales(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), viii.
[iv] Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142.
[v] Watson, George. "Are Poems Historical Acts?" Contexts of Criticism . Ed. Donald Keesey (Mountain View CA: Mayfield, 1994), 30.
[vi]
[vii] Approximately twenty years later, in
his essay "The Figure Under the Carpet," Edel tellingly modifies his
Romantic terminology of the "writer's soul" to something more
reflective of modern and postmodern distrust of the author's significance. In this later texts, he states that the
primary tast of the literary biographer is to identify the "mask" of
the biographical subject. "In doing
this," he writes, "we have won half the battle. The other half is his real battle, the most
difficult part of his task—his search for what I call the figure under the
carpet, the evidence in the reverse of the tapestry, the life-myth of a given
mask."
[viii] I use
the term “literary drama” to designate a collection of briographical
performance texts in which actual authors serve as primary characters. To date, I’ve located over eighty such
dramas. Recent examples include John
Hare’s The Judas Kiss and the Oscar
winnign film, Shakespeare in Love. For a detailed definition and discussion of
Literary Drama, see Hubbard, Rober. “The
Author on the Boards: Intertextuality,
Biography, and Literary Biographical Drama.”
Dissertation.
[ix]
Lawrence and Lee commonly abbreviate the titles of their plays for reference
purposes. For example, their
correspondences contain references to ITW
(Inherit the Wind), GAH (The
Gang’s All Here), TIM (The Incomparable Max), etc. In one letter, Lee comments, “Imagine our
delight the fisr time we referred to The
Night Thoreau Spent in Jail as TNT! It was accidental, so help me—but we think it
fits the play: explosive!” (qtd. In Gerrard, Gene. “New Play Has World
Premiere.” The
[x] Mitchell, Karen. “Seamless Intertexts: Extrinsic and Intrinsic Intertextuality and Emily Mann’s Execution of Justice.” Text and Performance Quarterly 13 (1993): 44-60. “Intrinsic” intertextuality, according to Mitchell, describes intertextual material transcribed directly from its source text into the performance text. Mitchell provides four categories of intrinsic intertextuality: lifted texts, allusion, found discourse, and cultural discourse (48). The first three are especially useful for the needs of this study and warrant a brief explanation at this time. “Lifted texts” are those intertexts that “exist verbatim elsewhere and are incorporated into the new work” (48). The ost common example of lifted texts within literary drama are excerpts of poetry or prose taken from an author’s work. Mitchell describes the intertextual properties of “allusion” as “the tacit references of one text oto another in which the referene signals the text’s previous context” (48). In these moments of intertextuality, the primary text is present, but only as a referent. As a biographical tool, the effects of allusoin may very greatly. Allusoin may serve as something as innocent as a look into the futre. For example in TNT, the title character repeatedly refers to the theories associated in his writing, even though the theatrical persona has not yet written much of the source material to which he is “alluding.” Finally, intertexts in the form of “found discourse” compose a powerufl tool in the creation o fbiogrpahy in LBD. Examples include recorded interviews, speeches, trial transcripts, private letters, and other documentation. Mitchell describes this form of intertextuality as “extremely covert” because it is virtually impossible for audience members to “distinguish ‘found discourse’ from ‘fictionalized discourse’ without the help of extratextual sources” (50).
[xi] “Extrinsic” intertextuality derives from the reader-centered theories of John Fiske, Robert Scholes, and Roland Barthes and is used to predit and explain the personal reactions a reader carries for a text (Mitchell 46). This is to say that extrinsic intertextuality only exists in the response of the audience; it appears nowhere on the printed page or in the visual language of performance. As an example of this condition, Mitchell refers to audience/text dynamics occurring when a film set in the 1960s, such as Oliver Stone’s JFK, is performed in the context of the 1990s.
[xii] All three sections of this investigation are aided greatly by time spent in the Lawrence and Lee Collection held exclusively within the Jerome and Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Research Institute at The Ohio State University. A gift from Lawrence and Lee to their alma mater, this collection contains 672 plays (man signed and inscribed), 221 other books, 691 playbills, 7 original manuscripts, 145 photographs, 324 journal and magazine articles, 2 video tapes, one cassette tape, several transcipts of interviews, personal letters, clippings, etc.
[xiii]
[xiv] Fink, Lawrence E. “From Thought to Theatre: Creation, Development, and Production of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail by Jerome Lawrene and Robert E Lee.” master’s thesis. Allen Woods, Advisor. 3-4.
[xv]
Berkowirtz, Gerald. New Broadways:
Theatre across
[xvi] O’Reily, William. “The Office of Advanced Drama Research Closes.” TCG Newsletter (Octover 1977): 1.
[xvii] Woods, Alan., ed. The Selected Plays of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1995), 452.
[xviii] The information used form Fink’s study draws from a variety of news releases and memos located in the American Playwrights Collection housed at The Ohio State University. Fink deserves credit for indexing this information into a usable format, thus saving an immense amout of time tracking down individual sources. Although indebted to it, my study builds and goews beyond Fink’s investigation. Whereas Fink’s work is primarily descriptive of the source texts comprising TNT, my analysis draws conclusions as to how the placement of these texts influences the overall theatricality of the play and hleps to fashion a Romantically inspired biographical person.
[xix] Thoreau, Henry David. “Civil Disobedience.” Henr David Thoreau: Selected Writings. Ed. Lawrence Leary (Arlingotn Heights, Illioniose: AGHM Publishing Corporation, 1958), 26.
[xx] Fink identifies a number of quotations taken from Thoreau’s writing that appear in TNT. BY his own admission, his access to Lawrence and Lee’s preliminary notes for the play made Fink’s location of lifted texts considerably easier. Aside form famous quotations such as “a different drummer” and “Simplify, simplify, simplify,” the detetion of lifted texts oin TNT would otherwise come down to scanning large numbers of pages in hopes of identifying syntactical similarities with passages from the drama. But by recording their source material in their notebook, Lawrence and Lee greatly reduced the difficulties of locating seamessly placed lifted texts.
[xxi] The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail (New York: Hill and Want, 1970), 78. also qtd. In Fink 14.
[xxii] Thoreau, Henry David. Walden (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Double Day, 1973), 80.
[xxiii]
Lawrence, Jerome and Rober E. Lee.
“Thoreau Plums.” Lawrence and Lee Collection 17:11.
n.p.: The
[xxiv]
Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee.
“Preliminary Directing Notes.” Lawrence and Lee Collection 16:11.
n.p.: The
[xxv] Lawrence, Jerome. “Notes on Thoreau’s Journals.” Lawrence and Lee Collections 15:4. n.p.: The Ohio State University, n.d. n. pag.
[xxvi] Since
this early draft was written almost excluseively by
[xxvii]
Lawrence, Jerome. “
[xxviii]
Lawrence, Jerome. “A Different Drummer”
(typed manuscript). Lawrence and Lee Collection 16:1
n.p.: The
[xxix]
Lennebach, Jonathan. “Projector Notes.” Lawrence and Lee Collection 16:17.
n.p.: The
[xxx] Shepard, Odell. Introduction. The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927), v.
[xxxi] Whicher, George F. Walden Revisited: A Centennial Tribute to Henry David Thoreau (New York: Packard and Company, 1945), 91.
[xxxii] Note
that the words “
[xxxiii] Barnes, Clive. “Lawrence and Lee Cull Action from a Night.” New York Times 2 Nov. 1970, natl. ed: 66.
[xxxiv]
Lawrence, Jerome and Robert E. Lee. “Meeting with APT Board.” Lawrence
and Lee Collection 16:1. n.p.: The
[xxxv] Lawrence,
Jerome and Robert E. Lee. “Goodman
Program Notes.” Lawrence and Lee Collection 17:2. n.p.: The
Taken from:
Hubbard, Robert.
“Devising the “Writer’s Soul” in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee’s the
Night Thoreau Spent in Jail.” The