The Shavian Playground by Margery M. Morgan (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 401 of the book); but why were 50,000 words allotted to Germany-AustriaSwitzerland and only 35,000 to France? Did someone forget about France's transplanted Belgians, Algerians, Rumanians, Spaniards, Irishmen, Russians, and - recalling Aime Cesaire - Martiniquians? Also, why were Italy and Spain each forced to crowd into a mere 6,000 words, especially when Poland alone squandered 16,000? The question of how much to include of what is even more involved than this. A good encyclopedia of contemporary drama would naturally accommodate certain major dramatists and theoreticians whose writing careers ended before the dividing line of 1945. Thus room was made for Stanislaw Witkiewicz (died 1939) and Antonin Artaud (committed to an asylum in 1937) because of their immense influence in the sixties, and for Eugene O'Neill because the late, great O'Neill of 1939-1942 did not hit the public eye (or Albee's) until after the war. An adequately informed editor would have noted that some of these chronological borderline cases had been worked in by the experts, and would have spotted the absence of others. Two serious omissions are Michel de Ghelderode, a parallel to Witkacy, and Ugo Betti, whose finest plays -like O'Neill's - were unknown before 1945. A genuinely progressive editor might in fact have solicited articles on some figures entirely outside the confines of drama. Visualize the enlightenment possible from a drama-focused discussion of the musical theorist·composer John Cage, whom Michael Kirby (in The Art of Time) calls the "backbone" and the "touchstone" of the new theatre. But that type of editor is rarely efficient enough at the grim grubwork of his trade. The editorial staff behind the Handbook, besides organizing the project and nursing it toward its largely commendable final state, also handled the grubwork well. I detected only two misalphabetizations (Brazil and Fialka) and eighteen typos, none very obtrusive. (The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama contains several blunders of a more disconcerting nature.) But even in this respect Myron Matlaw comes out best: I noticed fewer errors in his much larger volume. And he included bibliographical notes - good ones. And illustrations. And an index - in fact, two. What he didn't include, along with everyone else, was a guide to pronunciation of names. Thus Edward All-bee will remain AI-bee and Ko-pit Kop-it. And Brendan Behan anything one likes. CHARLESA.CARPENTER State University of New York at Binghamton THE SHAVIAN PLAYGROUND, by Margery M. Morgan. London: Methuen & Co., 1973. xiv & 366 pp. £5. The virtue of this book is that the writer is determined to consider Shaw as a literary artist, rather than as a philosopher and social reformer; its vices stem from a determination to appear scholarly in a fashionable way. It is refreshing to read Shaw criticism which returns again and again to the unique quality of the plays as the productions of a man of towering literary and dramatic 402 BOOK REVIEWS genius. It is especially heartening to find serious and appreciative discussion of the plays that follow Sain t Joan; these have too often been dismissed as dotages by critics who cannot conceive that good work might come from an old man. Miss Morgan has a strong and independent critical judgement, and when she trusts it her book is first-rate. It is when she decorates it with the tinsel of Beginner's Hermeneutics that she writes below her best. As an example of the quality of her personal judgement I cite her good discussion of what makes Candida a Pre-Raphaelite play. But she diminishes the value of this honest and perceptive criticism when she writes that by putting the first scene of Pygmalion in the portico of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, Shaw intended "a visual statement of the interrelatedness of these souls, implying such an ideal of society as Peter Keegan had expressed, a country where the State is the Church and the Church the people ... in which all life is human and humanity divine." We are sorry when she spoils her comment on Getting Married by lugging in fancy notions about androgynes and hermaphrodites, because the Bishop wears an apron and his secretary...