The Iceman Cometh Eugene O'Neill Author
- nouveau livreISBN: 2940013772854
Harry Hope's is a Raines-Law hotel of the period, a cheap ginmillof the five-cent whiskey, last-resort variety situated on thedowntown West Side of New York. The building, owned by Hope,… Plus…
Harry Hope's is a Raines-Law hotel of the period, a cheap ginmillof the five-cent whiskey, last-resort variety situated on thedowntown West Side of New York. The building, owned by Hope, is anarrow five-story structure of the tenement type, the second floora flat occupied by the proprietor. The renting of rooms on theupper floors, under the Raines-Law loopholes, makes theestablishment legally a hotel and gives it the privilege of servingliquor in the back room of the bar after closing hours and onSundays, provided a meal is served with the booze, thus making aback room legally a hotel restaurant. This food provision wasgenerally circumvented by putting a property sandwich in the middleof each table, an old desiccated ruin of dust-laden bread andmummified ham or cheese which only the drunkest yokel from thesticks ever regarded as anything but a noisome table decoration.But at Harry Hope's, Hope being a former minor Tammanyite and stillpossessing friends, this food technicality is ignored asirrelevant, except during the fleeting alarms of reform agitation.Even Hope's back room is not a separate room, but simply the rearof the barroom divided from the bar by drawing a dirty blackcurtain across the room.The Iceman ComethACT ONESCENE--The back room and a section of the bar of Harry Hope'ssaloon on an early morning in summer, 1912. The right wall of theback room is a dirty black curtain which separates it from the bar.At rear, this curtain is drawn back from the wall so the bartendercan get in and out. The back room is crammed with round tables andchairs placed so close together that it is a difficult squeeze topass between them. In the middle of the rear wall is a dooropening on a hallway. In the left corner, built out into the room,is the toilet with a sign This is it on the door. Against themiddle of the left wall is a nickel-in-the-slot phonograph. Twowindows, so glazed with grime one cannot see through them, are inthe left wall, looking out on a backyard. The walls and ceilingonce were white, but it was a long time ago, and they are now sosplotched, peeled, stained and dusty that their color can best bedescribed as dirty. The floor, with iron spittoons placed here andthere, is covered with sawdust. Lighting comes from single wallbrackets, two at left and two at rear.There are three rows of tables, from front to back. Three are inthe front line. The one at left-front has four chairs; the one atcenter-front, four; the one at right-front, five. At rear of, andhalf between, front tables one and two is a table of the second rowwith five chairs. A table, similarly placed at rear of fronttables two and three, also has five chairs. The third row oftables, four chairs to one and six to the other, is against therear wall on either side of the door.At right of this dividing curtain is a section of the barroom, withthe end of the bar seen at rear, a door to the hall at left of it.At front is a table with four chairs. Light comes from the streetwindows off right, the gray subdued light of early morning in anarrow street. In the back room, Larry Slade and Hugo Kalmar areat the table at left-front, Hugo in a chair facing right, Larry atrear of table facing front, with an empty chair between them. Afourth chair is at right of table, facing left. Hugo is a smallman in his late fifties. He has a head much too big for his body,a high forehead, crinkly long black hair streaked with gray, asquare face with a pug nose, a walrus mustache, black eyes whichpeer nearsightedly from behind thick-lensed spectacles, tiny handsand feet. He is dressed in threadbare black clothes and his whiteshirt is frayed at collar and cuffs, but everything about him isfastidiously clean. Even his flowing Windsor tie is neatly tied.There is a foreign atmosphere about him, the stamp of an alienradical, a strong resemblance to the type Anarchist as portrayed,bomb in hand, in newspaper cartoons. He is asleep now, bentforward in his chair, his arms folded on the table, his headresting sideways on his arms. Digital Content>E-books>Theatre & Drama>Drama>Plays, WDS Publishing Digital >16<
