1. Alfred, William, Hogan's Goat (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966)Google Scholar. Subsequent references are given in the text. See Guernsey, Otis L. Jr., Best Plays of 1965–1966 (New York: Dodd, Mead), 1966Google Scholar; Gassner, John and Barnes, Clive, eds., Best American Plays, 6th ser. – 1963–1967 (New York: Crown, 1971)Google Scholar; Clurman, Harold, Famous American Plays of the 1960s (New York: Dell, 1972)Google Scholar; and Griffith, Francis and Mersand, Joseph, eds., Eight Ethnic American Plays (New York: Scribner's, 1974)Google Scholar. The stage history is summarized in Guernsey, in Salem, James M., ed., A Guide to Critical Reviews. Part I: American Drama, 1909–1982, 3rd ed. (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow, 1984), p. 17Google Scholar, and in such standard reference works as World Authors, Contemporary Dramatists, and Contemporary Authors. Several members of the cast went on to prominence. In addition to Waite (Stanton), Dunaway (Kate), and Hughes (Father Coyne), Tom Ahearne (Quinn) won considerable acclaim for his performance. Other featured roles were taken by Cliff Gorman (Petey), Roland Wood (Black Jack), Michaele Myers (Bessie), Grania O'Malley (Maria), John Dorman (Father Maloney), Conrad Bain (Palsy), Luke Wymbs (Bill), Agnes Young (Ann), Tresa Hughes (Josie), and Tom Crane (Boylan). The television production was October 11, 1971. A musical version of Hogan's Goat, entitled Cry for Us All, written by Alfred with Albert Marre, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Alfred and Phyllis Robinson, ran briefly in New York at the Broadhurst Theatre during April, 1971.

2. Szillassy, Zoltan, American Theater of the 1960s (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), p. 4.Google Scholar

3. “The Prof Moonlights a Hit,” Life 60 (04 22, 1966): 89–90.Google Scholar

4. The title is also a sly allusion to the goat who appears in the comic strip “Hogan's Alley,” a reference to the once-popular song “Old Hogan's Goat,” a nod in the direction of Frank Dumont's burlesque drama The Yellow Kid Who Lives In Hogan's Alley: A Burlesque (New York: De Witt, 1897)Google Scholar, and a suggestion of the old blues “Hogan's Alley.” The comic strip “Hogan's Alley” was a significant prize in the 1890s battle between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, with both the New York Journal and the New York World competing for the talents of cartoonist R. F. Outcault and his central character, “The Yellow Kid”; William Randolph Hearst, Jr., contends that the term “yellow journalism” arose from this tussle (see Hearst, William Randolph Jr., with Casserly, Jack, The Hearsts: Father and Son [Niwot, Colo.: Roberts Rinehart, 1991], p. 41Google Scholar). For a splendid example of the artwork in “Hogan's Alley” (featuring the goat at the top of a stepladder), see Blackbeard, Bill and Williams, Martin, eds., The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977), p. 21Google Scholar. For a recording of “Old Hogan's Goat,” consult / Know an Old Lady, Michael Lobel and Susanne Weyn, Bantam Sing-a-Story series, Parachute Press 45057, 1987. For a 19th-century version of “Hogan's Alley,” consult Dodge, David H., Hogan's Alley Waltzes (New York: Hawley, Haviland, ca. 1896)Google Scholar. For contemporary recordings of “Hogan's Alley,” consult Odetta and the Blues, Odetta, Fantasy Original Blues Classics series, 1962; reissued 1991, OBCCD-509–2; Riverside RLP-9417; and Cecil Gant, Cecil Gant, Krazy Kat Records KKCD03,1989.

5. Most of the standard biographical reference works contain an entry on Alfred. The dates and titles given there are rounded out with details in two New Yorker articles, “One Saturday in Brooklyn” (12 19, 1965), pp. 42–46Google Scholar, and “W. A.” (01 25, 1982), pp. 26–29Google Scholar; Flaherty, Daniel L., “Hogan's Goat,” America 114 (03 19, 1966): 378–81Google Scholar; Sellers, Rose Z., “Conversation with William Alfred,” Brooklyn College Alumni Bulletin 22 (Winter 1965–1966): 10–11Google Scholar (supplemented by the transcript of the interview on which the article is based: see Alfred Sub-Group III, ser. 10.A, Brooklyn College Library); Miller, Henry S. Jr., “I Wouldn't Write Plays if I Didn't Think People Could Change,” Harvard Magazine (11–12 1979): 51–56Google Scholar; and in Alfred's autobiographical essay, “Ourselves Alone: Irish Exiles in Brooklyn,” Atlantic 22 (03 1971): 53–58.Google Scholar

6. This construction, of course, puts Alfred and William Lynch (see below) at odds with much contemporary cultural theory. Jean-François Lyotard and many others have declared that modernism delegitimated the ancient master narratives of Western civilization – such as goal and quest narratives – whether in literature, history, religion, or philosophy, and that the postmodern condition, unable to bring back what was lost, can only present the sense of loss itself (see Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984], pp. 78–81Google Scholar). A similar condition took place in art, where modernism's great enemies were “the academy and kitsch” (see Holloway, Memory, “Blu-Tack and Temples: Artistic Practice in the Eighties, a Postmodernist View,” in Miller, Andrew, Thomson, Philip, and Worth, Chris, eds., Postmodern Conditions [New York: St. Martin's, 1990], p. 189Google Scholar). Alfred and Lynch oddly proceeded in the 1960s as if the great master narratives were still legitimate enough to work on the stage, and Alfred – as is discussed below in remarks on his use of melodrama – tried studiously to keep company with both of the enemies of modernist art, using the stately blank verse of the academy and the much-scorned kitsch of 19thcentury melodrama. In this regard, Hogan's Goat marks an interesting counterpart to Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, produced contemporaneously with Alfred's work and recently identified as having given birth to postmodernism (see Roberts, David, “Marat/Sade, or the Birth of Postmodernism from the Spirit of the Avant-Garde,”Google Scholar in Miller, et al. , Postmodern Conditions, pp. 39–59Google Scholar). In an interview, Alfred commented on his position vis-à-vis Marat/Sade: “In my own opinion, one of the reasons that our avant-garde plays work as intellectual exercises – and very brilliantly as intellectual exercises – but have no effect upon an audience is that the people in the audience cannot be an accomplice to the action on stage. How can you, for example, be an accomplice to Marat/DeSade [sic]? Unless you are really pretty kinky, you don't share Marat's feelings or anybody's feelings on the stage. I do think that the way to bring the theatre back – part of the theatre, anyway, since I don't mean we shouldn't have plays like Marat/DeSade, which is a brilliant play – but the way to bring the theatre back to the whole people is to let the audience become involved again with the action on stage” (Flaherty, , “Hogan's Goat,” p. 380).Google Scholar

7. Alfred, William, Agamemnon, (New York: Knopf, 1954Google Scholar); trans., Beowulf, in Medieval Epics (New York: Modern Library, 1963)Google Scholar; and coeditor, Complete Prose Works of John Milton, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), vol. 1.Google Scholar

8. Flaherty, , “Hogan's Goat,” p. 378.Google Scholar

9. Lynch, William F., S.J., Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of the Literary Imagination (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960)Google Scholar; and his Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970)Google Scholar. Subsequent references to Christ and Apollo are given in the text.

10. The drafts and proofs of Hogan's Goat in the Brooklyn College Library clearly show Alfred's particular attention to stage directions for the final scene. He revised the script carefully with an emphasis on controlling any extraneous movement on the stage at these moments and emphasizing not only speech but gesture.

11. Lynch, , Christ and Apollo, p. 67.Google Scholar

12. Flaherty, , “Hogan's Goat,” p. 379.Google Scholar

13. “One Saturday in Brooklyn,” p. 45.Google Scholar

14. Flaherty, , “Hogan's Goat,” p. 380.Google Scholar

15. Flaherty, , “Hogan's Goat,” pp. 379–80.Google Scholar

16. Alfred, , “Ourselves Alone,” p. 55.Google Scholar

17. Alfred, , “Ourselves Alone,” p. 55.Google Scholar

18. Harris, William H. and Levy, Judith S., eds., The New Columbia Encyclopedia (New York and London, 1975), p. 1743.Google Scholar

19. Heilman, Robert B., The Iceman, the Arsonist, and the Troubled Agent: Tragedy and Melodrama on the Modern Stage (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Smith, James I., Melodrama (London: Methuen, 1963).Google Scholar

20. Smith, , Melodrama, p. 7.Google Scholar

21. Smith, , Melodrama, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

22. Hogan's Goat was heavily reviewed. For lists of the reviews, see Salem, , Guide to Critical Reviews, p. 17Google Scholar; and Eddleman, Floyd Eugene, American Drama Criticism: Interpretations, 1890–1977, 2nd ed. (Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String, 1979)Google Scholar, plus supplements. Reviewers and critics generally praised the play, with any sniping directed at the melodrama, particularly the device of the concealed marriage certificate in the tin box. (As James Smith observes [Melodrama, p. 7Google Scholar], melodrama “is probably the dirtiest word a drama critic dare print.”) Of all the critics, Gerald Weales, both in his Reporter review and later in his book The Jumping-Off Place, was the most severe. For Weales, Alfred is a latter-day Arthur Wing Pinero and Hogan's Goat is “smothered by the melodrama” (see “Off-Broadway Trio,” The Reporter 34 [02 24, 1966]: 47–48Google Scholar; and The Jumping-Off Place: American Drama in the 1960's [New York: Macmillan, 1969], pp. 182–83Google Scholar). Wilfrid Sheed, reviewing the play both for Life and for Commonweal, says that the “creaky” melodrama irritated him but that the play finally won him over (“Agamemnon Moves to Brooklyn,” Life 60 [02 4, 1966]: 17Google Scholar; and “The Past as Past,” Commonweal [01 14, 1966]: 441.Google Scholar

With the rise of structuralism and poststructuralism, melodrama has enjoyed a critical rediscovery – indeed, a spirited defense – since the work of Heilman and Smith in the 1960s and 1970s. See, for example, Gerould, Daniel, ed., Melodrama (New York: New York Literary Forum, 1980)Google Scholar, and the collection of essays entitled Melodrama in James Redmond, ed., Themes in Drama 14 (1992)Google Scholar, particularly Winkler, Elizabeth Hale, “Modern Melodrama: the Living Heritage in the Theatre of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy”Google Scholar (pp. 255–67); Sharp, William, “Structure of Melodrama”Google Scholar (pp. 269–80); and Hauptman, Ira, “Defending Melodrama” (pp. 281–89)Google Scholar.

Gramsci's model of hegemony, upon which so much contemporary cultural critique depends, is of course highly melodramatic when considered in dramatic terms: a privileged, powerful, devious ruling class foists its hegemony as an elaborate swindle upon the earnest but dimwitted oppressed unil the plucky intellectual arrives to expose the swindle, foil the villainous rulers, and empower the hitherto powerless.

23. Kerr, Walter, Thirty Plays Hath November: Pain and Pleasure in the Contemporary Theater (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), pp. 106–07.Google Scholar

24. Kerr, , Thirty Plays Hath November, pp. 107–8.Google Scholar

25. Donoghue, Denis, The Third Voice: Modern British and American Verse Drama (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 244–45.Google Scholar

26. Kerr, , Thirty Plays Hath November, p. 107.Google Scholar

27. Syrett, Harold Coffin, The City of Brooklyn, 1865–1898: A Political History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 72.Google Scholar

28. Clurman, Harold, “Hogan's Goat,” The Nation (11 29, 1965): 498.Google Scholar

29. Syrett, , City of Brooklyn, p. 162.Google Scholar

30. Syrett, , City of Brooklyn, p. 163.Google Scholar

31. New York Tribune, 10 15, 1886Google Scholar; quoted in Syrett, , City of Brooklyn, p. 177.Google Scholar

32. Bryce, James Viscount, The American Commonwealth, 3 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1888), Vol. 2, 281Google Scholar. Subsequent references to Bryce are given in the text.

33. Flaherty, , “Hogan's Goat,” p. 378.Google Scholar

34. The Ga-Ga condescension dies hard. When Harold Clurman introduces Hogan's Goat for the Famous Plays of the 1960s series, his guiding premise is the same as Bryce's: “Alfred's Brooklyn is very much a corrupt frontier town. It is rank with its politicians, lackeys, intrigues, whores, drinking, its still superstitious ties with its old religion, habits, and hearth.” To an advanced, progressive sensibility, Irish behavior is easy to explain: they are a corrupt, primitive, rank, unwashed, and superstitious lot and their religion, habits, and hearth follow suit. But, Clurman allows, “there is a neighborhood charm in all this: warmth and gaiety in the midst of poverty, graft, internecine rivalry. The atmosphere is rife with a mixture of rage and sentimentality: booze, dirt, song, and gestures of patriotic and sacramental devotion. … Many cities all over America at the time, and perhaps in our time too, were very much like that” (pp. 17–18). Palsy Murphy and Ned Quinn could probably tell him why.

35. Breslin, Jimmy, “Grammar and Religion,” in Occhiogrosso, Peter, ed., Once a Catholic: Prominent Catholics and Ex-Catholics Reveal the Influence of the Church on Their Lives and Work (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), pp. 173–81.Google Scholar

36. O'Brien, Thomas J, An Advanced Catechism of Catholic Faith and Practice Based Upon The Third Plenary Council Catechism [the Baltimore Catechism] for Use in the Higher Grades of Catholic Schools (Chicago: John B. Oink, 1901) p. 120.Google Scholar

37. I Cor. 11.28.

38. The first task of the revolutionary,” writes Michel Foucault, is learning “how to shake off the Oedipal yoke and the effects of power, in order to initiate a radical politics of desire freed from all beliefs. Such a politics dissolves the mystifications of power through the kindling, on all levels, of anti-oedipal forces … that escape coding, scramble the codes, and flee in all directions: orphans (no daddy – mommy – me), atheists (no beliefs) and nomads (no habits, no territories)” (“Introduction” to Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Hurley, Robert, Seem, Mark, and Lane, Helen R. [New York: Viking, 1977], pp. xv–xxivGoogle Scholar). In Foucault's formulation, the revolutionary figure fits Smith's definition of a melodramatic hero, the undivided protagonist defining himself as antagonist, opposing “external pressures: an evil man, a social group, a hostile ideology, a natural force, an accident or chance, an obdurate fate or a malign deity.” Matt Stanton believes that by the strength of his will he can become such a character. With the death of his wife-mother, Agnes Hogan, and anticipating the deposition of his father figure, Ned Quinn, he defines himself as orphan-atheist-nomad revolutionary in the making, a man soon free to “flee in all directions” in a “politics of desire freed from all beliefs.” But Alfred's ironic melodrama will not allow him the complete fantasy; nor will his culture. The individual will is insufficient to shake off the Oedipal yoke so easily, and, as Bryce recognized, the codes at work in Hogan's Goat are too pervasive and intricate for one man's will to scramble them. Kathleen, precisely because the triad of orphan-atheist-nomad comprises the worst of worlds for her, resists Matt's plans. If any character truly fulfills Foucault's formula, it is Agnes Hogan, who demystified power, understood all the codes, and achieved her state of desire freed from beliefs, habits, and territories. But she is dead.