The Elephant Man by Bernard Pomerance

First published: 1979

First produced: 1977, at the Hampstead Theatre, London

Type of plot: History; biographical

Time of work: 1884-1890

Locale: London, with one scene in Belgium

Principal Characters:

• Frederick Treves, a surgeon and teacher
• Carr Gomm, an administrator at the London Hospital
• John Merrick, the Elephant Man
• Ross, the manager of the Elephant Man
• Nurse Sandwich, Merrick’s caretaker at the hospital
• Bishop Walsham How, a religious leader
• Mrs. Kendal, an actress

The Play

The Elephant Man depicts the difficult life of Joseph “John” Carey Merrick, a real person who lived from 1862 to 1890. Because of his extreme bodily and facial deformities, he was nicknamed the Elephant Man. Until rescued by the physician Frederick Treves and given a home at the London Hospital in Whitechapel, Merrick earned his living as a freak attraction in a traveling sideshow. The play’s twenty-one scenes depict selected episodes from the last six years of Merrick’s life and emphasize Merrick’s strength of spirit and the hypocrisy of Victorian English society.

The action begins not with Merrick, but with Treves, who considers himself a man blessed with a career, a home, a family, and financial success. The audience can contrast Treves’s life with that of Merrick, who is shown trapped at the opposite end of the social scale: Merrick’s tumor-ridden face, contorted body, and distorted speech doom him to a life of abuse and ridicule.

Merrick’s manager, Ross, who claims to have taken Merrick from the workhouse where he was abandoned at the age of three, robs and beats Merrick and confines him like an animal in darkness. He advertises Merrick to paying customers as a creature whose “physical agony is exceeded only by his mental anguish.” Merrick is no less an object of morbid fascination at a medical meeting, where Treves exhibits him while lecturing on Merrick’s multiple handicaps.

Ross abandons Merrick, complaining of too little profit from his display. Treves, performing what Bishop Walsham How calls his “Christian duty,” persuades the London Hospital’s director, Carr Gomm, to give Merrick permanent sanctuary. Charitable contributions from newspaper readers will pay for Merrick’s lodging, but living arrangements prove difficult. Although Nurse Sandwich has cared for lepers in the Far East, she is so repulsed by Merrick’s countenance that she bolts from his room.

In his new life, Merrick is as much on display as in his old life. The royalty and aristocrats who visit him in the London Hospital offer pleasantries and gifts that inflate their own egos as much as they do that of Merrick. Merrick, ever the innocent, receives their attentions with pleasure and views their noblesse oblige as helping him attain the normality and acceptance he craves. Ross returns, demanding repossession of Merrick because high society has suddenly embraced Merrick, and his moneymaking potential has been enhanced. Merrick rejects his proposals.

Unique among the play’s characters is the actress, Mrs. Kendal. She alone responds to Merrick as an equal, and in recognizing and appreciating the repressed sexual side of his nature, she undresses for him in scene 14. “It is the most beautiful sight I have seen,” says Merrick, but Treves bans Mrs. Kendal from the hospital and chastises Merrick for unacceptable behavior.

Merrick spends his days reading works by William Shakespeare, conversing with his visitors, and building an intricate model of St. Phillip’s Church. Although Merrick’s quality of life improves, Treves’s quality of life deteriorates, and he finds himself trapped in a crisis of conscience. While teaching Merrick that “the rules” make people happy, Merrick observes that Treves cannot distinguish “between the assertion of authority and the charitable act of giving.” Treves is troubled by the pressure for conformity he sees in himself and his society: “I conclude that we have polished him [Merrick] like a mirror, and shout hallelujah when he reflects us to the inch.”

Despite his social gains, Merrick’s physical limitations continue to plague him. His head is so enlarged and deformed that he must sleep with it on his knees. His health is, in fact, worsening, and Treves predicts Merrick’s heart will not long sustain him.

In scene 20, Merrick dies while attempting to sleep in a normal reclining position, the weight of his enormous head crushing his windpipe. The play ends with Gomm composing a “report to investors,” an obituary for the Times aimed at reconciling the charitable accounts that provided Merrick’s support. “He was highly intelligent,” Treves says. “He had an acute sensibility . . . and a romantic imagination.” However, Treves withdraws his assessment in dismay. “Never mind. I am really not certain of any of it.”

Dramatic Devices

The Elephant Man is a play with little plot. The story is revealed through snapshots in time. The episodes are brief, stylized, and sometimes complemented by theatrical devices, such as three women “Pinheads.” Ostensibly an act from Merrick’s freak show, the Pinheads act as the chorus in a Greek tragedy. They comment on the characters and action and perform as agents of fate in shifting Merrick from his upright posture into the recumbent sleep position that kills him.

In most performances, the settings are impressionist, achieved with a minimum of backdrops and props: Pomerance mandates little in the way of stage setting. For example, Ross’s sideshow in scene 2 requires nothing more to set the stage than a storefront poster heralding the Elephant Man attraction.

The lead role of Merrick is demanding. While Pomerance advises that no actor should attempt to simulate Merrick’s near-unintelligible speech, the role requires sustaining a contorted body posture and skewed facial alignment for the entire performance. The actor must skillfully meld Merrick’s outer ugliness and his inner beauty.

Critical Context

Of the four plays that have been written about Joseph Merrick, only Pomerance’s has received notable attention from drama historians. Like most of Pomerance’s other works, The Elephant Man uses historical fact to probe the darkest of human experiences and to uncover the failings of society and its members. His sharply drawn characters and precise staging strip away the social norms that veil the greed, unfettered ambition, and hypocrisy that lie within all humans.

While capturing the ugliness of humanity’s basest motives and actions, Pomerance simultaneously offers hope for redemption. His best characters, like Treves in The Elephant Man, fight the battle of good and evil with others and, more important, within themselves. They seldom win, but they offer hope that the triumph of truth is possible, if rarely or imperfectly achieved. The distinction between wrong and right is blurred in real life, but Pomerance brings it into focus, forcing his audiences to probe their most carefully concealed sins.

The Elephant Man is the best-known, most honored, and most often performed of Pomerance’s plays. The New York Drama Critics Circle voted it the best play of the 1978-1979 season. That same year, The Elephant Man received Tony Awards for best play, best actress, and best director. Pomerance’s other notable works include the play Superhighway (pb. 2001), which delves into the grief of a cancer victim’s surviving relatives, and Quantrill in Lawrence (pr. 1980, pb. 1981), a Civil War story of corrupt leadership and social disruption. The themes of despair and hopelessness arise again in his prose poem We Need to Dream All This Again: An Account of Crazy Horse, Custer, and the Battle for the Black Hills (1987).

Sources for Further Study

Guernsey, Otis L., Jr. The Burns Mantle Theatre Yearbook: The Best Plays of 1978-1979. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1979.

Howell, Michael, and Peter Ford. The True History of “The Elephant Man.” 3d ed. London: Allison and Busby, 2001.

Montagu, Ashley. “The Elephant Man”: A Study in Human Dignity. Lafayette, La.: Acadian House, 1995.

Treves, Frederick. “The Elephant Man” and Other Reminiscences. London: Cassell, 1923.