The Off-Broadway Theatre ed. by Richard Cordell and Lowell Matson (review)

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 professional theatre is to promote business by holding up the mirror to the amateur stage? I suppose the major difficulty with Dr. Nelson's study is in the spectacular mental gymnastics by which in each case he characterizes a dramatist generally by means of his practice in a particular play. I am not sure that Dr. Nelson really means to go so far. Indeed, his device of studying the play within a play is no more than an excuse for stringing together a series of loose essays on important playwrights, and it would perhaps have been better had he abandoned his dissertation topic entirely and written these essays without benefit of mousetraps and miracles. There is no special order perceptible in these divagations. Stepping off in each case from a play-within-a-play situation, Dr. Nelson mounts his theme and rides off in all directions. It is not a particularly stimulating performance, nor is it particularly amusing; but topographically, it is impressive. Literary studies-like literature itself-fall into two general classes: the intelligible and the unintelligible. Each has its special charm and its special audience. There is a kind of scholarship-sometimes very learned-the object of which appears to be to wrap the subject in a cocoon of language from which ultimately, it is hoped, truth will emerge as a beautiful butterfly. I must confess that, although most of the material with which he deals is familiar to me, I have been unable to follow Dr. Nelson very far in the weaving of his word-web, nor has his theme progressed , to my mind, beyond the pupal stage. Nevertheless I might venture to express the hope that with time and temperature the miracle of metamorphosis will take place here ultimately, as it has elsewhere in less promising circumstrnces. MAURICE VALENCY THE OFF-BROADWAY THEATRE, edited by Richard Cordell and Lowell Matson , New York, Random House, 1959, 481 pp. Price $5.00. This anthology of seven plays is handsomely printed and a pleasure to hold in the hand; but its claim is misleadingly ambitious. The editors argue, in the course of an introduction that attempts to relate off-Broadway plays of the 1950's to earlier off-Broadway movements such as the Provincetown Playhouse and the Neighborhood Playhouse, that the pattern contributes to the contemporary scene in three ways: by a revival of classics, by a discovery of new or recent native and foreign plays never produced in New York or in the United States, and by a rediscovery of worthy plays. The truth is that off-Broadway is notorious for its lack of historical continuity. Groups issue manifestoes, flourish briefly, and disappear ; they might never have existed less than two days after their final curtain descended. This reviewer agrees with Cordell and Matson that the definition of off-Broadway propagated by the editors of Theatre Arts ("everything not gloriously commercial, including colleges and universities in the Midwest, church groups in the Virgin Islands or Alaska, little theatres in Dallas or Saginaw") is muddy, and of no help to students of modem drama. But off-Broadway, for all its vigor and variety, is less than it should be; it is surprisingly unwilling to experiment; it is neither attracting nor developing serious young playwrights; it is not refining a repertory tradition (despite individual efforts); and it succumbs,. with dismaying ease, to all the vices of Broadway productions, including higher prices. It may well be that the conditions of playgoing in New York have become such that no 1960 BOOK REvIEWS 427 solution is possible; but the salvation of the American theater, despite the earnest, intelligent best wishes of the editors of tllis anthology, will not come from an offBroadway direction. Off-Broadway, in short, is interesting rather than influential...