Play Within a Play: The Dramatist's Conception of His Art: Shakespeare to Anouilh by Robert J. Nelson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS PLAY WITHIN A PLAY: THE DRAMATIST'S CONCEPTION OF HIS ART: SHAKESPEARE TO ANOUILH, by Robert J. Nelson, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1958, 182 pp. Price $4.00. This book is derived from a doctoral dissertation offered at Columbia University in 19.55, and it evidently carries Dr. Nelson's theme into areas somewhat more recondite than a dissertation committee usually sanctions. The dissertation was a survey of the play within a play in French drama. The present work is a series of critical essays on a number of playwrights of major importance-Shakespeare, Rotrou, Corneille, Moliere, Marivaux, Scribe, Dumas, Schnitzler, Pirandello, Sartre and AnouiIh: it may be said to cover the ground. In a work of this sort, the germinal idea can hardly be more than vestigial. Nevertheless it is upon a series of plays in which other plays are performed that the author strings his commentary. The reality of a play is derivative; drama is a reflection of the outerworld, not the outerworld itself. In a play within a play, one goes a step further into the looking-glass. In this special situation we, as audience, are invited to witness the life of another audience which is in turn witnessing a play which we also see. The result is a play of mirrors, so to speak, image within image, the studied contemplation of which is calculated to make even strong men dizzy. As this situation brings out in bold relief the writer in his professional capacity and the audience in its special character, a peculiarly intimate relationship is set up in which tlle writer may be expected to confide something of his professional secret. For this reason, no doubt, it has occurred to a number of scholars in the last decades to study the play within a playas a special dramatic phenomenon. To Dr. Nelson also it has appeared that through a study of this sort one might arrive somehow at a closer understanding of the writer's idea of his art. The device of writing a play in the course of which some other play is acted has long been a staple of the drama, and even of musical comedy. In most cases, the purpose is immediately obvious. Nobody, I believe, would read epistemological implications of any depth into Kiss Me, Kate or even Redhead. But playwrights have used this 'technique for a variety of purposes, some more abstruse than others. In Hamlet the inner play is used as a trap; in L'lmpromptu de Versailles it is part of a polemic; in Chekhov's Seagull, part of the character study; and in Pirandello's plays-a whole series of them, of which the masterpiece is doubtless Henry IV-for the familiar demonstration of the unreality of reality. There is obviously good reason for studying such plays carefully, and it is undeniably an interesting exercise to consider the varied uses to which the inner play devices can be put. Dr. Nelson decides that Shakespeare uses it as a mirror, Rotrou as a miracle, Comeille as a piece of magic, Marivaux as a game, Scribe for confessional purposes, and so on. Onc might quarrel perhaps with the choice of these terms, but this is no great matter; the use of these terms can be sufficiently substantiated from the plays Dr. Nelson has chosen to discuss. The intellectual leap, however, by which he concludes that from the purpose which these inner plays serve in the particular plays under consideration we can deduce the playwright's idea of theater in general is less easy to take. Shakespeare has Hamlet use The Murder of Gonzago as a trap. The Murder of Gonzago, it must be admitted, is no great shakes as a play, and it is not al425 426 MODERN DRAMA February together clear that it serves its purpose properly as a trap either. We can hardly conclude from these data that for Shakespeare the art of the theater is to perfect the better mousetrap. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare uses Pyramus and Thisbe, at least in part, to ridicule amateur actors. Can we conclude from this that for Shakespeare the function of comedy in the...