“Have I ever mentioned Ned Sheldon? … Edward Sheldon, the playwright? Can’t write plays anymore…. Can’t move an inch; but do you know what he does? He rules the American theatre. All the great and famous people come to him for advice. And live by his advice. He’s like some fabulous wise man on a mountaintop, an oracle.
Thornton Wilder paid me the compliment of presenting me to that oracle. I don’t think there was ever a prouder day in my life. He phones me now after anything halfway decent I get to do on the radio and, of course, I bring him all my plans and problems in the theatre…
… Mr. Sheldon says yes — I’m on to a great project. But like every great project, he says, there’s something wrong with it, and somebody will have to pay.”
— ORSON, a character in Orson Welles’s unproduced screenplay The Cradle Will Rock
By KATHLEEN SPALTRO
Born in Chicago on 4 February 1886 to families that had grown wealthy through real estate and railroad transactions, Edward Brewster Sheldon defied patriarchal pressure to enter business and instead made his name, and his success, as a playwright. Dead in New York City on 1 April 1946 in his penthouse on the fourteenth floor of 35 East 84th Street, Ned Sheldon was by then immobilized and blinded, reputedly by severe arthritis that had confined him to his bed. Forgotten now as a contributor to American literature, Sheldon nevertheless, in defiance of his physical challenges, wrote dramas that presaged the birth of a great American theatre, encouraged the artistry of John Barrymore, counseled or inspired Thornton Wilder and Eugene O’Neill, and invited numerous other writers as well as actors to visit his bedside for encouragement and solace. “We called him the Pope of the theater,” recalled Lillian Gish, “You’d go to have dinner with him at 7 and you’d swear you’d go home by midnight, but you never would—he was so entertaining. Anyone who had a problem that had to do with the theater went to him for help.”
Thus, Sheldon contributed to the American stage both directly, by creating his own plays, and indirectly, by befriending other playwrights and actors, supporting them emotionally, and advising about their projects and careers. Numerous friends testified about his impact on them. Asserting that “there has never been a more beloved man in the theater than Sheldon,” Lionel Barrymore remembered that “he was one of the most wonderful— and I use the word ‘wonderful’ knowing what it means— persons I ever knew, one of the most extraordinary. He was utterly unselfish.” Wilder dedicated his novel The Ides of March “to Edward Sheldon who though immobile and blind for over twenty years was the dispenser of wisdom, courage, and gaiety to a large number of people.” Introduced by John Gielgud, Alec Guinness described Sheldon as laughing a lot, “with a deep throaty chuckle,” and as being “one of the bravest men I have ever met.” Guinness stressed that “He never complained or showed any sign of bitterness, or even disappointment, but retained a vigorous interest in everyone he knew or had heard of.” Wilder introduced the young Orson Welles, then making his name in theatre and radio, to Sheldon. Years later, Welles asserted that “he more or less ran the New York theatre for thirty years. None of us did anything without talking to him. He called me after every broadcast and told me what he liked and what he didn’t like…. everybody went to him. He was a sort of an Oracle.” Not long before Sheldon’s death, a newspaperman called him “one of the most remarkable men in New York”: “Of all men, you would think him doomed to loneliness. Yet he is the hardest man in New York to see. His engagement book is filled for weeks ahead.”
Successful Young Playwright
In 1907, Sheldon graduated from Harvard magna cum laude after taking George Pierce Baker’s very influential playwrighting course, The Technique of Drama, turned in 1912 into the famous Workshop 47. Sheldon earned a master’s degree as well from Harvard in 1908, the year of the production of Salvation Nell. The New York Evening Sun exclaimed, “To say that Salvation Nell’ created a sensation is putting the situation mildly. Playgoers may take our word for it, that … they will witness a production which is not alone extraordinary but unique….It was, in a word, a very remarkable production of a very unusual play.”Much later Michiko Kakutani asserted, “Sheldon’s craftsmanship raised the melodrama of the day to a new level, and in doing so provided later generations of playwrights with intimations of the theatre’s possibilities.”
Sheldon continued in the vein of Salvation Nell by creating other innovative plays that depicted social issues. E.K.W. Drury, compiler of Some of the Best Dramas, gloomily summarized in 1917, “There was no American drama before 1890, and there has been very little since then,” but he included Sheldon among the dramatists listed as honorable exceptions. By 1913, Sheldon had veered into a different direction and scored his greatest theatrical success with Romance.
Reencountering John Barrymore (a veteran of Sheldon’s The Princess Zim-Zim) in Venice in 1914, Sheldon encouraged Barrymore to seek dramatic roles, as in John Galsworthy’s Justice and John Raphael’s Peter Ibbetson (codirected by Ethel Barrymore and Sheldon). For the 1919 production of The Jest with the Barrymore brothers, he rewrote an Italian original, and adapted Richard III for John Barrymore’s 1920 appearance as the Wicked Uncle, the “bottl’d spider.” John Barrymore recalled in his memoir: “The first thought of my playing Richard III came about in an odd way. I was at the Bronx Zoo one day with Ned Sheldon looking at a red tarantula which had a gray bald spot on its back. This had been caused by trying to get out of its cage. It was peculiarly sinister and evil looking; the personification of a crawling power. I said to Sheldon: ‘It looks just like Richard III.’ ‘Why don’t you play it?’ was his only comment.” Lionel Barrymore fully credited Sheldon’s perception of his brother’s potential: “Ned saw, and was the first to see, the depths and possibilities of Jack Barrymore as an interpretative dramatic actor. You must understand the real intelligence of that perception because, aside from the irresponsibilities that marked all his appearances, his drinking, and his other eccentricities, Jack did not then have a full-rounded voice and his diction was slovenly. Ned Sheldon saw through to something, the real something, whatever that something is when we consider genius, and he set about to develop it in Jack.”
The Pope of the Theatre
In 1915, Sheldon began to experience symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis in his knees. By 1925, he was completely bedridden; by 1928, completely rigid in the supine position; by 1931, completely blinded. Meanwhile, in 1922, he moved into his penthouse at 35 East 84th Street, and, after the 1930 production of his last play, Dishonored Lady, began consulting about others’ plays. As Elliot Sirkin explained, “only Sheldon’s speech and hearing remained, and every joint below his head was rigid. His biographer’s descriptions of the penthouse bedroom where he lay, motionless but not mute, suggest an atmosphere of vault-like luxury. The crypt’s tenant, however, refused to be buried alive. Suicide was an option he refused, solitude was abhorrent to him. Instead, Sheldon’s collaborations now became advisory, and at his own insistence, kept secret. His perceptive criticism helped Thornton Wilder to mold Our Town and Robert Sherwood to complete Abe Lincoln in Illinois. A lesser protégé wrote Dark Victory….Sheldon also coached actors. Helen Hayes, Raymond Massey, and Katharine Cornell all sought his guidance.”
Linda J. Sandahl emphasized the devotion of the theatrical community to him: “since he could no longer see plays, go to first nights, and direct shows and performances, through the following years, week after week and day after day, the New York theater world went to him. For the rest of his life, the top stars, directors, and theater folk made time in their crowded, reputedly self-absorbed lives to visit Sheldon regularly; not a day went by without a Barrymore, a Cornell, a Hayes, a producer like Tyrone Guthrie, or a writer like Alexander Woollcott or Thornton Wilder spending time with him. (This included, by the way, a very young Orson Welles.) From his darkened bedroom, without being able to move or see, he was still able to collaborate on plays and even continue as an acting coach. The world that he loved so much loved him back.”
His great successor in the modern American theatre, Eugene O’Neill, expressed gratitude in a 1926 letter: “Your continuous generous appreciation of my work during the past years has meant a great lot to me, has been one of the very few things that have gratified me and satisfied me deep down inside. I say this—and I want you to know I say it!—with the deepest sincerity. Your Salvation Nell, … was what first opened my eyes to the existence of a real theatre as opposed to the unreal—and to me then, hateful—theatre of my father, in whose atmosphere I had been brought up. So, you see, I owed you this additional debt of long standing.”
Kathleen Spaltro is the author of “The Great Lie: The Creation of Mary Astor.” She has written biographical articles about such notables as Orson Welles, Preston Sturges, and Frank Capra, as well as more than 40 biographical profiles in “Royals of England: A Guide for Readers, Travelers, and Genealogists.”
© Copyright (2021), Kathleen Spaltro. All Rights Reserved.
This article first appeared in Illinois Heritage, published by the Illinois State Historical Society.
Ned Sheldon: Mystery of Self-Mastery
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
― John Milton, Paradise Lost
Clearly, Ned Sheldon possessed remarkable courage and fortitude. Instead of withdrawing from the world, he asked the world to visit. “Sheldon, physically chained to his bed, actually lived his life in the outside world…. No one thought of him as a sick man. As one friend of his said, ‘Sick? He gives strength to everybody who walks in that room’.” Those who could not visit received letters, phone calls, telegrams: “his telegrams—messages of friendship, cheer, or merely a thought to be shared—became famous.” More even than his contributions to the birth of the modern American theatre, his example in the wake of adversity was an unexpected gift. How did he manage to surmount devastating illness, reject despair, and create a worthwhile life?
A few anguished moments are recorded; we would find nothing surprising about them. Much more remarkable is Sheldon’s sustained ability to re-imagine his life. Naturally, being wealthy helped, but how many wealthy people could have embarked on his voyage of self-conquest?
Although many have praised Sheldon’s mastery of his situation, no one has explained it. Without assuming that Sheldon overtly followed the teachings of the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus, I would like to point out how well his behavior aligned with Epictetus’s precepts.
Control
Epictetus emphasizes self-control, self-mastery, duty because other people and external circumstances are simply not within our power to control. We can control only our own thoughts, values, decisions, and actions. This insight creates great responsibility but also grants great power. It shifts focus from our futile struggle to control others and to control our external environment to our possibly successful exercise of power over ourselves. Our seizing power over ourselves takes away others’ power over us and diminishes the power of circumstances to distress us. “Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions. Vigilantly practice indifference to external conditions. Your happiness can only be found within.”
The emphasis on controlling our inner world makes us responsible for our own well-being and happiness. It also refashions our approach to problems in our external world by transforming these situations into challenges to develop greater self-mastery. It takes away power from other people and from external circumstances and returns power to us. With that return of power to, and over, our inner selves comes greater freedom.
Opportunity
Stoicism shifts our locus of control to our inner world. Epictetus teaches us to see our difficulties as opportunities to develop greater self-mastery and resourcefulness. “Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.”
In a way, Epictetus steers us right into the storms of our lives, instead of away from them. He advocates grasping the nettles of life, thinking about the inevitability of loss and death, and appreciating what we have instead of wishing to have something—anything—else. “… you move forward by using the creative possibilities of this moment, your current situation. You begin to fully inhabit this moment, instead of seeking escape or wishing that what is going on were otherwise.”
One of these nettles is our inability to control the outcome of our efforts. Despite determined efforts, we can certainly fail to reach an objective. Epictetus notes that the results of our strivings oftentimes depend on factors beyond our control and that we should focus on doing our best but not on the results of doing our best. “When you… devote yourself instead to your rightful duties, you can relax. When you know you’ve done the best you can under the circumstances, you can have a light heart….In good fortune or adversity, it is the good will with which you perform deeds that matters—not the outcome. So take your attention off of what you think other people think and off of the results of your actions.”
Another nettle is feeling frustrated by other people. Epictetus explains that we create our own sense of frustration but we could choose not to feel frustrated. “When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it; you can either accept it or resent it. What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”
Power
Only we can choose our thoughts, values, decisions, and actions. Only we can frame a problem as an opportunity to improve ourselves. Only we can face the inevitabilities of our own lives with equanimity. Only we can avoid feelings of failure by doing our best and then letting go. Only we can take back the power to upset us that we have unwisely ceded to other people and to events and circumstances.
Seemingly a philosophy of self-constraint, Epictetus’s Stoicism is exactly that, but it is also a philosophy of self-emancipation. “By accepting life’s limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free.”
Freedom
The ancients voiced a maxim that “Freedom is the knowledge of necessity.” Useless resistance to the inevitabilities of life—loss, age, death—entraps us rather than frees us. Clearly understanding and accepting these inevitabilities ironically liberates us from them. We can choose to not live in dread; instead, we can lose our fear.
Stoicism and Sheldon
Ned Sheldon’s bodily rigidity and blindness severely limited—indeed, ended—his ability to leave his penthouse and engage in society. Instead, he sought happiness by creating situations in which he attracted visitors and constantly interacted with other artists. Instead of escaping into addiction or despair, he “fully inhabited the moment”; he accepted, rather than resented, his fate. “I feel that aversions, being negative, are unimportant,” he wrote for his Harvard class’s 30th anniversary report, putting into practice Epictetus’s teaching that self-mastery disciplines our aversions as well as our desires: “If you try to avoid inevitabilities such as sickness, death, or misfortune, over which you have no real control, you will make yourself and others around you suffer.” By choosing to control himself, to rework rather than hate his life, Ned Sheldon created an opportunity in which he exerted great power over self and won freedom from his fate. In so doing, he provided a powerful example, not merely of suffering and endurance, but of courage and fortitude. His obituary in The New York Times lauded his life as “the triumph of the spirit over the most crushing burdens that our uncertain life can inflict.”
Sources
“A Boat Against the Current: This Day in Theater History (George Pierce Baker, Teacher of US Drama Giants, Dies).” boatagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2015/01/this-day-in-theater-history-george.html
“American Dramas Weak.” Champaign Daily News, 7 March 1917, 3.
Barnes, Eric. The Man Who Lived Twice. New York: Scribner, 1956.
Barrymore, John. Confessions of an Actor. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926.
Barrymore, Lionel. We Barrymores. New York: Appleton Century Crofts, 1951.
Clark, Barrett H. “Edward Sheldon.” Intimate Portraits. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1951.
“Edward Sheldon.” Obituary, The New York Times, 3 April 1946, 24.
Epictetus. The Art of Living (Trans., Sharon Lebell). New York: Harper Collins, 1994.
Guinness, Alec. Blessings in Disguise. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.
Hamil, Dorothy Black. “Edward Sheldon: A Man Who Lived Through His Friends.” In Philip Henry Lotz (Ed.), Unused Alibis (pp. 115-120). Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970 reprint of 1951 publication by Association Press.
Hamilton, Clayton. Seen on the Stage. New York: Henry Holt, 1920.
Harvard Class of 1908: Fortieth Anniversary Report (pp. 359-361). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Printing Office, June 1948.
Kakutani, Michiko, “A Drama Recalls a Playwright: Recalling Edward Sheldon.” New York Times, 8 November 1981, D1.
Krebs, Albin, and Robert McG. Thomas, Jr. “A Night of Memories for Miss Hayes.” New York Times, 9 November 1981, B13.
McGilligan, Patrick. Young Orson. New York: HarperCollins, 2015.
O’Brien, Howard Vincent. “City of Contradictions.” Decatur Herald, 25 June 1945, 4.
Rosen, Sheldon. Ned and Jack. Toronto: Playwrights Canada, 1979.
Ruff, Loren K. Edward Sheldon. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.
“Salvation Nell Reviewed.” 18 December 1908. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1908/12/18/salvation-nell-reviewed-psince-its-first/
Sandahl, Linda J. “Garbo’s Artistry on Display in an Old-Fashioned Romance.” https://backstoryclassic.com/2017/02/garbos-artistry-on-display-in-an-old-fashioned-romance/
Sirkin, Elliott. “Edward Sheldon.” https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2001/03/edward-sheldon.html
Spaltro, Kathleen. “Searching for Serenity.” Blogpost, 11 February 2017. https://uncravenmaven.blogspot.com/2017/02/thank-you-epictetus.html
Tarbox, Todd. Orson Welles and Roger Hill: A Friendship in Three Acts. Albany, GA: BearManor Media, 2013.
Tinee, Mae. “A Talk with Edward Sheldon.” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 21 June 1914, E5.
Welles, Orson. The Cradle Will Rock: An Original Screenplay (pp. 54 and 55). Santa Barbara, CA: Santa Teresa Press, 1994.
Wilder, Thorton. The Ides of March. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2020.
______________
Post your comments on the Wellesnet Message Board.