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