Enoch Arden
Enoch Arden is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, first published in 1864, and based on a story by Thomas Woolner. The eponymous hero is a fisherman turned merchant sailor who leaves his wife and three children to go to sea with his old captain, who is offering him work. When he fell victim to an accident Arden lost his job and was struggling to provide for his family, so he takes up the offer of work to support them. This reflects the hero's masculine view of personal toil and hardship which he must endure to support his family and to better serve them as a husband and father. During his voyage, however, he is shipwrecked and remains lost and missing for ten years. When he finally returns from the sea he discovers that his wife, who believed him dead, is married happily, with a child, to another man, his childhood friend Philip (Annie, his wife, has known both men since her childhood and there is a distinct rivalry). Enoch's life remains unfulfilled, with one of his children now dead, and his wife and remaining children now being cared for by his onetime rival. The story has a tragic ending as Arden dies of a broken heart without ever revealing his true identity to his wife and children.
The story has been interpreted in many ways and in various media including numerous films which base their plots either outright or subliminally on the tale. In 1897 Richard Strauss composed music to accompany the poem for the actor Ernst von Possart and it has been performed many times since, most recently in 2007 with Patrick Stewart as narrator and Emanuel Ax at the piano.
Luise performed the piece on a tour of the US for the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.), as part of their Fall Festival Guest Series, in 1981 and 1982, after a brief run in London [verification needed]*. This marked her first theatrical appearance in over 30 years, with venues including the Loeb Drama Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, UCLA's Schoenberg Hall, Los Angeles, CA and the Library of Congress, Washington DC. Luise also performed the piece as a benefit evening at the Lucille Lortel Theater, New York on 26th April 1982. This performance was a benefit for the White Barn Theater in Westport, Connecticut. The performances were billed as An Evening with Luise Rainer and met with a mixed reception. In his article Armageddon in Boston, A.R.T. founder Robert Brustein writes briefly of one particularly personal critical response by Kevin Kelly of the Boston Globe that was swiftly excised from Luise's hand before she had the chance to read it.
* Various sources say that, prior to her appearance at the Loeb Drama Center the piece had been performed in London, however, I have been unable to substantiate this. If you have more information regarding Luise's performances of Enoch Arden, please contact me by email.
[picture: illustration for Tennyson's Enoch Arden (1866) by Arthur Hughes. Scanned image by George P. Landow, courtesy of The Victorian Web] |
Enoch Arden