The Poet's Three Comforters: J. B. and the Critics

THE POET'S THREE COl\1FORTERS: J B. AND THE CRITICS AT THE END OF A RATHER MYOPIC REVIEW of Archibald MacLeish's J. B., the New Yorker's Kenneth Tynan commentsl on the theological implications of the play by quoting Doctor Johnson's famous remark to Boswell: "Sir, there is no trusting to that crazy piety." Since Mr. Tynan is so appreciative of the good Doctor's aphoristic talents, he should be familiar with Johnson's remarks in his discussion of Degradation of Genius. When the Doctor comments that "Such degradation of the dignity of genius, such abuse of superlative abilities, cannot.be contemplated but with grief and indignation. . . ." he might well be aiming his remarks back from the grave at Mr. Tynan's review of J. B. Extreme as it is, Mr. Tynan's final judgment is of the same kind as· that reached by two other knowledgeable but more moderate critics who write about J. B. The fact that Robert Brustein of Harper's2 and Henry Hewes of Saturday ReviewS are in basic agreement with Tynan is important. Here we begin to see a clearly defined set of attitudes toward the philosophic play, and these attitudes are significant because they are common to critics who write in magazines which are sophisticated, widely read, and influential. Were we to examine the nature of this most recent writing on J. B., we could probably come to some interest~ ing conclusions about the present state of the art of the intuitive theater critic, about the place of the poetic-philosophic play on the Broadway stage, and about the audience-critic relationship, if there is one. In an article entitled "About a Trespass on a Monument" Mr. MacLeish has this to say about his choice of the Book of Job as a dramatic framework for his play: When you are dealing with questions that are too large for you, which nevertheless, will not leave you alone, you are obliged to house them somewhere, and an old wall helps. Which is why so many modem plays have proved, on critical examination, to be reconstructions of the myths of Greece. That appeal to precedent, however, is of little use to me, for my J. B. is not a reconstruction of the kind presently familiar in which discovery of the model is part of the adventure. My play is put in motion by two broken-down actors who believe themselves that the play is the Book of Job, and that one of them is acting God and the other, Satan. When J.B. 1. ''Portrait of the Artist as a Young Camera," The New Y01'/cer, Dec. 20, 1958, p. 72. 2. ''The Theatre of Middle Seriousness.l".Harper's, March, 1959, pp. 60-63. 3. "A Minority Report of J. B.," Saw""", Review, Jan. 3, 1959, pp. 22-23. 224 1959 J. B. AND THE Cmncs 225 and his family appear, however, it is not out of the Bible that they have come . . . I badly needed an ancient structure on which to build the contemporary play that has haunted me for five years past, and the structure of the poem of Job is the only one I know of which our modem history will fit.4 Now our latter-day critics also5 feel "that the play is the Book of Job." Kenneth Tynan in The New Yorker sees I. B. as "the Book of Job retold." Robert Brustein of Harper's envisions I. B. as "another adaptation " which is commercially attractive because it is of that class of play which "can trade on the popularity and reputation of works that have already established themselves and, by leaving the more difficult stuff behind, thus appear respectable, popular, and painless all at the same time." Henry Hewes writes that "I. B. adds little to what has been said more beautifully in the Bible . .." and approaches the playas a "parallel to lob." Whether or not the critics have the understanding of source-play relationship which is so necessary to perceptive judgment might be questioned. Mr. MacLeish comments that poetry gives us what humanity most desperately needs ... the re-creation, in terms of human comprehension, of the...