The Complete Plays of W. D. Howells ed. by Walter J. Meserve (review)

1962 BOOK REVIEWS 439 Anouilh and Giraudoux as "characters in search of themselves." (As stated, this theme is implied in all tragic drama.) To analyze the Pirandellism lurking beneath the surface of Giraudoux's plays, Dr. Bishop first admits that "the possibility of conscious adaptation of the Italian's theories is somewhat problematical," but then claims, "What matters more is that in Giraudoux's theater can be found reflections of the ideas which Pirandello had sown in the French theater in the 1920's and 1930·s." One of these ideas, "people's need for illusions," is rephrased in Giraudoux 's Intermezzo, by his characterization of Isabelle. But who would believe that the Frenchman needed Pirandello's example to depict the magic charm of illusion or imaginative transmutation, the very core of Giraudoux's stories, the majority written before Pirandello became known in France? In La FoUe de Chaillot, the President refers to his feelings about his diverse occupations as "lifeless masks," a concept suggesting Pirandello's notion of "the personality as mask." While it is not inconceivable that Giraudoux was here reflecting a Pirandellian theme, it seems more reasonable and more honest to admit that this idea, too, long antedated Pirandello and indeed belonged to every outstanding tragic writer from Sophocles through Cervantes, Shakespeare, Moliere, and Musset. In Dr. Bishop's bibliography (unjustifiably termed "comprehensive" on the volume 's flyjacket), important post-1956 studies of Pirandello's impact in France are unmentioned. Serious gaps result. Renee Lelievre's excellent, scholarly work, Le Thedtre dramatique Italien en France, 1855-1940 (Paris: A. Colin, 1959) far surpasses this study in scrupulousness of fact and in critical penetration. Dr. Bishop should have consulted and given credit to J. Chaix-Ruy's brilliant little book, Luigi PirandeUo (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1957), undoubtedly the most profound view in French of Pirandello's drama. The significant Pirandello by Luigi Ferranti (Florence: Parenti, 1958) deserves notice, as do the more specialized studies published in 1958-1959 by Robert J. Nelson (Play within a Play) and Marc Beigbeder (Le Thedtre en France depuis la Liberation). Pirandello and the French Theater, apart from these weaknesses, contains valuable enlightenment. Dr. Bishop's appreciations of Pirandello's artistic impetus for French playwrights of secondary stature (particularly Sarment, Achard, Savoir, Salacrou, Neveux, and Renoir) are cogently drawn. In general, these findings are better balanced and more persuasive than the overstated claims concerning discoveries of Pirandellian echoes in leading dramatists such as Giraudoux, Sartre, Camus, and Anouilh. Dr. Bishop's style is clear and unencumbered; but it is rarely subtle enough to provide real elucidation of Pirandellian complexities. Theater specialists and historians seeking a lucid account of the pathways by which Pirandello's necromancy filtered through the French drama in the 1922-1955 era will do better to consult Lelievre's and Chaix-Ruy's books, cited previously. Dr. Bishop's study, with its rapid Simplifications, may appeal to the general reading public of theater enthusiasts , but it is marked by too many dubious assertions and outright mistakes to stand as a model of critical insight or as accurate theatrical history. KENNETH S. WHITE University of Michigan THE COMPLETE PLAYS OF W. D. HOWELLS, edited with an introduction by Walter J. Meserve, New York University Press, New York, 1960. xxxiii + 649 pp. Price $15.00. In recent years we have come to put a fairer valuation on the literary achievement of William Dean Howells. Probably the most influential man of letters in 440 MODERN DRAMA February America at the tum of the century, Howells after his death in 1920 was virtually dismissed by the bold new critics of the post-war years as a hopelessly oldfashioned writer, guilty, with others of his generation, of a sterile gentility. His reputation began to recover during the years of the Depression, when his liberal economic views and his passion for social justice were recalled. It has recovered further in the last twenty years, thanks to the persistent and intelligent efforts of a group of Howells scholars, Professor Walter Meserve among them, to provide the materials-bibliography, biography, texts, criticism-that would give us a full and clear view of the man and his work. The...