The verse narrative Cawdor, set on the ruthless California coast which
Jeffers knew so well, tells a simple tale: an aging widower, Cawdor,
unwilling to relinquish his youth, knowingly marries a young girl who
does not love him. She falls in love with his son, Hood, and the
narrative unfolds in tragedy of immense proportions.
Medea is a verse adaptation of Euripides' drama and was created
especially for the actress Judith Anderson. Their combined genius made
the play one of the outstanding successes of the 1940s. In Medea,
Jeffers relentlessly drove toward what Ralph Waldo Emerson had called
the proper tragic element--terror.