The Second Man by S. N. Behrman

First published: 1927

First produced: 1927, at the Guild Theatre, New York City

Type of plot: Comedy of manners

Time of work: The 1920’s

Locale: New York City

Principal Characters:

• Mrs. Kendall Frayne, a wealthy widow, thirty-five years old
• Clark Storey, a thirty-year-old dilettante writer
• Austin Lowe, a rich young chemist
• Monica Grey, a poor and beautiful young woman

The Play

The Second Man opens on the comfortably furnished living room of a suite in a studio apartment building; the baby grand piano, the profusion of books, and the general atmosphere suggest the occupant’s interest in the arts. When the curtain rises, Mrs. Kendall Frayne is nervously consulting her watch. She has been trying to reach Clark Storey by telephone, with no success. When it does ring, the caller leaves a message that clearly annoys her. As she turns to leave, Storey enters, late as usual, having been detained by a fellow writer at lunch. Kendall tells him about the message and displays some jealousy because the caller was Monica Grey. Monica is, Kendall believes, in love with Storey although she is engaged to millionaire Austin Lowe, an outstanding scientist. Monica’s mother wants her to marry Austin because she is poor. Storey denies any interest in Monica, pointing out that he himself is quite fond of money, of which he has very little, and would never dream of becoming involved with anyone who had none. He invites Kendall to have dinner with him later in his flat, and before she leaves to dress she writes him a check for five hundred dollars. It is clear that the two are lovers and that she has been supporting him while he tries to pursue his literary career. He has already published some short stories, but by his own admission his talent is small.

Austin arrives, disturbed because he is in love with Monica and he is afraid that she loves someone else. Storey promises to persuade her to marry Austin, who thanks Storey for his help and leaves. When Monica enters, Storey announces that he is dining with Kendall and abandons Monica to Austin, who has just returned. As the act ends, Monica and Austin try to make small talk over the meal Storey has ordered.

In the first scene of act 2 a few hours have passed; it is apparent that the dinner has not been a success. Austin mentions that Storey has sold some of his writing to a magazine (this is Storey’s explanation of Kendall’s check, which he had left carelessly on the table), but when Monica sees the signature, she crushes the check in disgust. Austin, alarmed, smooths it out and only then discovers who the real donor is. He does not disapprove, because he is convinced that Kendall and Storey will eventually marry. When Storey returns, Monica decides that she will win him for herself, aware that he is more fascinated by her than by Kendall, despite the other woman’s wealth. She leaves with Austin but comes back alone to persuade Storey of her love. When he hurries her out, her scarf remains behind.

Two hours later, in the second scene, Kendall is again in Storey’s flat, waiting for him to dress so that they can go to some late-night spot with Monica and Austin. The latter, catching sight of the scarf, remembers that Monica had been wearing it when they left together a few hours before; he can only conclude that she returned secretly because Storey is the man she really loves. Storey, now in evening dress like the others, joins them in a drink. More depressed than ever, unaccustomed to alcohol, Austin accuses Monica of having visited Storey on the sly. She admits it and, having had too much to drink herself, shocks everyone by announcing that Storey is the father of her unborn child. Austin is devastated, as is Kendall, who shows her contempt for the way Storey has accepted money from her while making love to Monica. When Storey and Monica are alone, she acknowledges her lie; indeed, they have never been lovers. However, her determination to ensnare Storey even if it means destroying her reputation so impresses him that he yields to her wish for marriage—somewhat bitterly, because he sees no happiness in their future without money.

The last act takes place the following afternoon, when Storey, huddled in a chair and trying to write, finally gives up in disgust. Austin breaks into the room, waving a gun. He has walked the streets all night and has now decided to take revenge on Storey for getting Monica pregnant. Storey’s insistence that Monica was lying only enrages Austin more; in a highly comic scene, he fires the gun—and misses. Then he faints, from shock, sleeplessness, and hunger. Storey tucks him into his bed and comes back to find Kendall, who has returned to say good-bye. She is sailing for Europe and will never see him again. He tries to clear his name, but she is too disillusioned to listen. Even after Monica admits the truth, Kendall remains unconvinced: It is not the sort of tale a “nice girl” would invent.

After Kendall leaves, Monica informs Storey that she now understands that she never loved him, only her image of him. When she hears that Austin tried to kill Storey for her sake, she realizes that Austin is the right man for her. She begs his forgiveness and says that she will marry him gladly, for she now appreciates the difference between fleeting attraction and enduring devotion. Left alone, the irrepressible Storey telephones Kendall to stop her before she sails. His announcement of the forthcoming marriage between Monica and Austin convinces Kendall of his innocence. As he plans to join her for a trip abroad (and their eventual marriage), the curtain falls.

Dramatic Devices

The Second Man introduces its audience to a group of sophisticated people and scrutinizes their manners and their way of life. All four have a considerable amount of time on their hands—even Austin, whose scientific discoveries do not require him to spend too many hours in the laboratory. On two occasions Storey is seen trying to write, but he expends so little effort on the process that the result cannot be taken very seriously. Although Monica has no money, she always wears elegant clothes, proving that despite her “poverty” she has little in common with those genuinely in want. An actor who once appeared in a Behrman play commented, “Even the bums are fairly affluent.”

Music has an important function in the play. At one point, when Kendall has begun to feel that she is losing Storey to the younger woman, she plays excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier (1911), Richard Strauss’s poignant opera about a mature woman who must surrender her lover to a more youthful rival. Storey plays jazz to illustrate the liveliness of his feeling for Monica, and Austin suggests taking Monica to the opera to hear Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung (1874)—his idea of fun.

Kendall’s check is used not only to goad Monica into telling her lie but also to show how cavalier Storey is about money and how ashamed he is subconsciously of his weakness of character. However, when Monica reproaches him for “dawdling away your life on a sofa when you might be standing straight on your own feet,” he is angered enough to envision them in five years, “you looking blowsy—with little wrinkles under your eyes—and I in cheap shirts and cracked shoes—brooding in a room over the corpse of my genius.”

The abandoned scarf alerts Austin to Monica’s obsession with Storey and precipitates the major confrontation with the gun. The telephone is used most skillfully to inform the audience that Storey has finally won Kendall back, but the one-sided conversation, with only Storey visible onstage, keeps the love scene cool and detached, suggesting what their marriage will be like.

Critical Context

The Second Man, S. N. Behrman’s first solo play (he had written plays before with collaborators), contains elements that recur repeatedly in his work. Almost all of his comedies deal with the upper classes; all of them, despite the glitter and glamour of their settings, have serious comments to make about the privileged few; and all of them are concerned with conflicts in love. Serena Blandish: Or, The Difficulty of Getting Married (pr. 1929, pb. 1934), based on a short story by Enid Bagnold, emphasizes the struggles of a girl with no money contrasted with others who are more fortunately endowed. Meteor (pr. 1929) provided a study of a ruthless financier who, although he wins over his competitors, loses his wife because he has sacrificed her happiness to his money-making passion. Biography (pr. 1932, pb. 1934) is a return to the more lighthearted mood of The Second Man in depicting a successful painter whose easygoing philosophy alienates her lover, a young radical who disapproves of her uninhibited way of life. Rain from Heaven (pr., pb. 1934) studies the conflict between a wealthy, sensitive young woman and the man she admires but cannot follow because he has a vision of a better world for which he is willing to sacrifice his life, while she is content to “muddle through.” End of Summer (pr., pb. 1936), by his own account Behrman’s favorite play, is a social comedy which remains one of his best because of the brilliant dialogue and the impressive characterization.

The world outside was beginning to encroach on the world Behrman had created, and so in No Time for Comedy (pr., pb. 1939) he studied the dilemma that he himself was facing. In this play, his hero is a writer of light comedies married to a devoted actor who has helped to make his work a success. Now that World War II is about to erupt, the hero asks himself how he can go on composing polite trivialities. He becomes attracted to a young woman who encourages him to write serious pieces, but tragedy is not his métier. In the end he returns to his wife and his former style, realizing that one writes not as one wishes but only as one can.

His later plays were less successful, because he was no longer in tune with his audience; the world had changed too much. He turned to adaptations; among the best was his version of Amphitryon 38 (pr. 1937, pb. 1938), based on a Jean Giraudoux play depicting an amusing triangle composed of Jupiter, a Greek general, and the woman they both loved. Jacobowsky and the Colonel (pr., pb. 1944), a collaboration with Franz Werfel, concerns a Jewish refugee and an anti-Semitic Polish colonel, both fleeing from Adolf Hitler’s horrors. Jane (pr., pb. 1952) is based on a story by Somerset Maugham about a woman who becomes the darling of society simply because she tells the truth.

In The Cold Wind and the Warm (pr. 1958, pb. 1959), Behrman turned to his own work and dramatized a book he had written about his family, The Worcester Account (1954). In Lord Pengo (pr. 1962, pb. 1963) he dramatized a series of articles he had published in The New Yorker based on the life of the famous art merchant Joseph Duveen. In the course of his forty-year writing career, he collaborated on such film classics as Queen Christina (1933), which starred Greta Garbo, and Quo Vadis (1951). As he grew older, he turned more and more to stories and biographies, producing the year before his death a memoir, People in a Diary (1972).

Behrman’s gifts as a playwright attracted the talents of some of the theater’s most illustrious performers: Ina Claire, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Laurence Olivier, Katharine Cornell, Rex Harrison, and Charles Boyer. His career was at its height in the 1920’s and the 1930’s, before the Great Depression and World War II transformed the shape and the content of drama forever. His characters are cosseted and protected by social and economic advantages. They are invariably amusing, on the whole well intentioned, and intelligent enough to be aware of the world outside and its perplexities. However, they have no wish to engage in the struggle for moral values, too passive and civilized perhaps to take up the cudgels for an ideal. They seem almost to understand that they are bound to be swept away in the coming storm. As a result, there is something melancholy about even the lightest of Behrman comedies; their characters seem to be dancing on the edge of an abyss. As a mirror of their age, however, they have earned a place, however small, in American theatrical history.

Sources for Further Study

Behrman, S. N. “At 75, S. N. Behrman Speaking as a Survivor, Not a Contemporary, Talks of Many Things.” New York Times Magazine, June 2, 1968, 28-29.

Behrman, S. N. People in a Diary: A Memoir. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.

Gross, Robert. S. N. Behrman: A Research and Production Sourcebook. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Krutch, Joseph Wood. The American Drama Since 1918: An Informal History. 1939. Rev. ed. New York: G. Braziller, 1967.

Lewis, Allan. American Plays and Playwrights of the Contemporary Theater. New York: Crown, 1965.

Reed, Kenneth T. S. N. Behrman. Boston: Twayne, 1975.