Personal Nomenclature In The Plays Of O'Neill

Abstract

When a dramatist baptizes his fictitious creatures, he is not in the situation of a parent christening his own children. For the dramatist usually baptizes, not children, but grown-ups, who have developed a number of characteristic traits. Hence he can do for them what he cannot do for his own offspring: give them fitting names. Since all names have a meaning (although in some cases it is obscure or unknown even to the scholars in the field) it would seem natural if any dramatist, indeed any writer, made naming a distinctive element of characterization along with occupation, costume, gestures, etc. It is objected that the average theater-goer or reader of plays knows the meaning of but a few names, and that this inventiveness on the part of the author is consequently wasted on his public. The obvious answer to this is that some dramatists at least—and O'Neill is one of them—do not let their way of writing be influenced by the average theatre-goer.