Helen in Egypt and Other Plays by John Heath-Stubbs (review)

1959 BOo.K REVIEWS 65 dialect! Even to drama, and perhaps especially to drama, we may apply Mallanne's dictum, "A poem is made, not of ideas, but words." Whatever Miss Falk may reveal about language or dramatic irony, however, is secondary to her business-like concern with the action and reaction of character in the play. She is not an aficionado, nor is she "trying to like O'Neill." Her search is for "order and coherence" in O'Neill's characters on the basis of what is consciously Jungian and an unconscious anticipation of Homey and Fromn. Her conclusion is that O'Neill's vision was to a degree affirmative, and certainly existential: "The tragic tension between opposite masks does result in a kind of creativity and action, to be sure, but it is not directed toward the objective world which demands such action. It is directed within and against the self. In this sense the tension is not really a supporting framework, a psychological and normal order within which one can move and produce. It is a trap where one is doomed to lifelong participation in a conflict between values and self-conceptions." If, then, Miss Falk occasionally finds herself in the limbo of aT-personality, it is only natural, because that is the home of these O'Neill people. RICHARD B. VOWLES HELEN IN EGYPT AlvD OTHER PLAYS, by John Heath-Stubbs, London, Oxford Press, 1958, 127 pp. Price $3.00. John Heath-Stubbs' is the most recent contribution to the type of religious verse play made popular by John Masefield and later strengthened by T. S. Eliot, Charles Williams, Christopher Fry, and Dorothy Sayers. Two of the three plays in his Helen in Egypt and other Plays are written for a church audience. Like their medieval counterparts, they make contemporary biblical incidents. The Talking Ass and The Harrowing of Hell, as well as Helen, are demonstrations of his belief that traditional values can be maintained only at the price of continued change flexibility. Mr. Heath-Stubbs, in his "Preface," makes large claims for the literary ancestry of The Talking Ass. From the Elizabethans comes the underlying symbolic-structure and from W. B. Yeats and Berthold Brecht is derived a non-naturalistic approach. It is from Aristophanes, however, that he absorbs his fundamental inspiration for the creation of "a lyrical, canonical, liturgical farce, a topical joke with a pantomime donkey." It might be recalled that the craftsman at York and Chester accomplished the same end in a less self-conscioUS manner. One must not forget Mr. Heath-Stubbs' admonition that traditional values are maintained at the price of change. The old order of the mysteries are not for us. Our society seeks an intelligent, not an emotional, religion. The Twentieth-century Angel of the Lord's benediction upon the spectators of The Talking Ass is no simple "peace be with you," but Learn then, in humbleness and charity, And not in prophesying nor in tongues, Salvation lies, not yet in formulas Of words, of metaphysics, or of physics; So may the sweet Spirit prove your true Comforter, To Whom now, with the Father and the Son, Be glory everlasting, Amen. Balaam, the Prophet, has learned that although he is tangled in an ambiguous net of words and is the plaything of powers he does not understand, he has been allowed a brief vision of the future King of Kings, Redeemer, Saviour. The offers of riches and powers from King Balak if he curses the Israelites may appeal to 66 MODERN DRAMA May Balaam's wife, but he casts off the power of his evil Djinn and allies Wmself with the future. Even the forsaken ass is comforted: God will not despise you; When late in time He comes, He will be content To share a stable-stall with the ox and you; And He shall ride you to Jerusalem Upon His day of palm-boughs and hosannas. The Harrowing of Hell is more rigid, more static, and rightly so. The author's aim is to give a liturgical shape to the playlet that it may properly substitute for a sermon on Easter Even. The introduction of well...