THEATER CHRONICLE
105
major to posture inside of. But like so many home-preseIVed museum–
pieces, the major is of doubtful authenticity. He is not an aristocrat but
the son of a new-rich peasant; his army career was genuine, like the
bit of anguished truth in George, but, by the time the play opens, Con
Melody is nothing but a seamy drunkard living off the sweaty labor of
others, whom he despises for their smell. The major's excuse is that,
again like George, he has a finer consciousness-a touch of the poet.
Moreover, the protective museum-atmosphere that surrounds him is a
prison, allowing him no freedom to be what he actually is; it is his
wife and daughter who press him to go upstairs and put on his uniform.
The major and George are half-unwilling actors performing at the re–
quest of the pit. Their lies and semi-truths are bolstered by other lies–
the shock-absorbent cushions of the unlettered. "It was the liquor talk–
ing," says Nora, explaining Con away, even though everyone else in
his establishment knows that Con means what he says but did not mean
to say it ... exactly.
The notion of a gentleman, above all of a poet-gentleman, cuts two
ways.
If
it implies ready, soothing forgiveness on the part of the lower
orders, it also implies that there are certain things a gentleman cannot
do and be forgiven-at any rate by himself. Education and sensitivity are
supposed, by those who have them, to constitute some sort of guarantee
or safeguard; that, in fact, they do not is the terrible and banal dis–
covery of the non-hero. He cannot, as they say, live with himself after–
wards. The shock of hearing himself transgress the limits of what he
feels to be civilized conduct is almost too much for Ivanov: he can–
not
be
the person he thought he was. This is what happens to Green
Eyes, 22 years old, handsome, and analphabetic, when the lurid crime
he commits fastens itself on him like another, strange identity with which
he must become reconciled before he can become a god, one of "les
grands, les durs." But for the educated semi-gentleman, no other iden–
tity, including that of a god, is socially possible. "Live with himself
socially"
is what is meant. Neither Ivanov nor George Dillon nor Con
Melody can tolerate his own shameless company.
What recourse is left to them? Ivanov, who is about to be married
to a young girl, shoots himself instead. The title of the Osborne play,
Epitaph for George Dillon,
suggests that Mr. Osborne has finally got
rid of Dillon, a bad lot. In the last act of the O'Neill play, a shot is
heard, and the audience, together with Con's wife and daughter, as–
sumes that he has killed himself. No such luck for him; he has only
shot his beautiful mare, the sign of his lying pretensions, and comes into
the tavern announcing in a thick peasant brogue that the major is
