O’Neill’s education took place in several different boarding schools while he was on the road with his father, and later the future playwright flunked out of Princeton. As a result, the boy renounced his mother’s Catholic faith. In 1902, when he was fourteen, O’Neill learned of his mother’s addiction when she ran out of morphine and tried to drown herself. O’Neill lived his early life on the road his family accompanied James on acting tours. As a result, critics widely proclaimed the waste of James’s talent. O’Neill’s father, James, was a famous actor and was so obsessed with his poor background that he only acted in plays that were surefire financial successes, such as The Count of Monte Cristo. O’Neill’s mother, Mary, became addicted to morphine as a result of pain suffered during Eugene’s birth. AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYĮugene O’Neill was born on October 16, 1888, in New York City, into a dysfunctional family. The play has been widely anthologized and is available in Four Plays by Eugene O’Neill, published by Signet Classic in 1998.
Although O’Neill’s later autobiographical tragedies, namely The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night, have surpassed Beyond the Horizon in many critics’ eyes, most still acknowledge the earlier play as the first success in O’Neill’s career and one that had a strong influence on his early development as a playwright.
While some critics have interpreted the play’s tragic ending to mean that one should follow his or her own dreams, others have seen a darker message: it does not matter what choice one makes because even dreams that come true are not fulfilling. Robert stays on the farm, and Andrew goes to sea. Because they love the same woman, both brothers choose to go against their natures. His brother, Andrew, is a born farmer who wants nothing more than to work on his family’s farm. Robert, a poetic but sickly dreamer, wants to go to sea to strengthen his health and see the world. Taking this idea as a starting point, O’Neill crafted a tale of missed opportunities and failed dreams, involving two brothers. During one of these sea trips, he met a Norwegian sailor who criticized his choice of going to sea as opposed to staying on his family’s farm. The play drew heavily on O’Neill’s own experiences, including his tuberculosis and his sea voyages. Critics and audiences responded favorably to O’Neill’s dark, tragic vision, which contrasted sharply with the unrealistic, melodramatic plays of the day. Beyond the Horizon was O’Neill’s first successful full-length play, and it signaled a change in American drama. Eugene O’Neill’s seminal, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Beyond the Horizon, was written in 1918 but not produced or published until 1920, when it made its debut in New York.
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