The Emperor Jones
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- This article is about the play. For the independent record label, see Emperor Jones.
The Emperor Jones is a play by Eugene O'Neill which tells the tale of Brutus Jones, an African American man who kills a man, goes to prison, escapes to a Caribbean island, and sets himself up as emperor. The play recounts his story in flashbacks as Brutus makes his way through the forest in an attempt to escape his former subjects who have rebelled against him.
The play displays an uneasy mix of expressionism and realism, which is to be found in several other O'Neill plays, including The Hairy Ape. It was O'Neill's first play to receive great critical acclaim and box office success, and the one which launched his career.
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[edit] Structure and Characters
The play is divided into eight scenes. Scenes 2 through 7 are from the point of view of Jones, and no other character speaks. The first and last scenes feature a character named Smithers, a white trader who appears to be part of illegal activities. In the first scene, Smithers is told about the rebellion by an old woman, and then has a lengthy conversation with Jones. In the last scene, Smithers converses with Lem, the leader of the rebellion. Smithers has mixed feelings about Jones, though he generally has more respect for Jones than for the rebels. During this scene, Jones is killed by a silver bullet, which was the only way that the rebels believed Jones could be killed, and the way in which Jones planned to kill himself if he was captured.
[edit] Influences
[edit] Carl Jung's Psychological Theories
C. G. Jung's concept of the collective unconscious appears to have influenced O'Neill.
[edit] Henri Christophe
The life of Henri Christophe might have provided a basis for some of the events in the play.
[edit] Ibsen
It seems that the play is also influenced by Ibsen's Peer Gynt.
[edit] Kipling
Some of the plot bears a very strong resemblance to Rudyard Kipling's story The Man Who Would Be King, in which Daniel Dravot also sets himself up as a ruler and convinces his subjects that only a silver bullet can kill him.
[edit] Productions
[edit] The 1920 Production
Charles Sidney Gilpin was the first actor to play the role of Brutus Jones on stage on November 1, 1920 at The Playwright's Theatre in New York. O'Neill said later on that he was the only actor who had played an O'Neill character to O'Neill's full satisfaction, though they also had some conflict over Gilpin’s tendency to change a few words in his part. This production proved to be very successful and it launched O'Neill's reputation. The little Provincetown theater proved unable to cope with the demand, and the play was transferred to another theater. It ran for 204 performances and was hugely popular.
[edit] The 1924 Revival
Due to disagreements with O'Neill, another actor was chosen for the the main role in the London production and then in the 1924 revival, singer-actor Paul Robeson. Robeson received excellent reviews in the role, and, after appearing in the 1928 London production of the musical Show Boat (in which he played the role of the stevedore Joe and sang Ol' Man River), he went on to worldwide fame as one of the great black artists of the twentieth century. Gilpin has been forgotten by modern audiences, but the fame of Robeson has only increased with the years.
[edit] Other revivals
The play lost popularity later on, mainly due to the fact that audiences in the 50s and 60s considered it to be racist. It still had a few occasional productions. Ossie Davis starred in a television adaptation in 1955.
[edit] Spin-offs
[edit] The 1933 Film
Paul Robeson was also later chosen to star in the 1933 film version, which also featured Dudley Digges, Frank H. Wilson, and Fredi Washington, and was adapted for film by DuBose Heyward and directed by Dudley Murphy. The film, titled simply Emperor Jones, is based rather loosely on the play, adds an entire backstory before O'Neill's actual play begins, and includes several new characters that do not appear in it (such as Jones' wife, and a friendly priest who advises him to give up his evil ways). Some people consider the movie to be just a vehicle for showing off Robeson's musical talent (he sings twice in the film). However, the film does contain his greatest dramatic performance on film, considered by many to be worthy of an Oscar nomination that it did not receive. The highlight is a twenty-five minute spoken monologue taken directly from O'Neill's play, in which Brutus Jones (Robeson), hunted by natives in revolt, flees through the jungle and slowly disintegrates psychologically, becoming a shrieking hysteric who runs right into the path of his pursuers. In 1999 the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. The film is in the public domain now, and can be found on a couple of websites.
[edit] The 1933 Opera
Louis Gruenberg wrote an opera based on the play, which was performed in 1933 with Lawrence Tibbett in the title role. Tibbett was white, and performed the role in blackface.
Paul Robeson's film Song of Freedom contains a scene from the opera version, with Robeson singing the role. This has sometimes resulted in confusion; it is sometimes mistakenly thought that the 1933 film version of O'Neill's play is really a film of the opera.
[edit] External links
- David Goldenberg A founding member of the Vitaphone Project, a group of collectors devoted to saving early movie sound tracks, Mr. Goldenberg made a significant contribution to film preservation when he provided the Library of Congress with the only complete sound-track discs for the classic 1933 film The Emperor Jones.
- E-text of The Emperor Jones
- The 1933 film on IMDB
- Discussion of Emperor Jones from Travus Bogard's book Contours in Time, on eoneill.
