James Joyce's Exiles and the Tradition of the Edwardian Problem-Play

James Joyce's Exiles and the Tradition of the Edwardian Problem-Play ELLIOTT M. SIMON I. JAMES JOYCE'S CRITICAL INTEREST in the theatre of Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, John Synge, George Moore, Edward Martyn, and other Edwardian problem-playwrights predates his major works of fiction. 1 The unconventional problem-play, especially the symbolic drama of Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken, appealed to Joyce as the most innovative artistic form in which an aspiring artist could capture his vision of that elusive truth of the human condition. In his early definition of drama, he makes the distinction between literary fiction which is dependent on the conventional and circumstantial aspects of daily life, and the problem-play which presents *e underlying laws of life "in all their nakedness and divine severity": By drama I understand the interplay ofpassions to portray truth; drama is strife, evolution, movement in whatever way unfolded; it exists, before it takes form, independently; it is conditioned but not controlled by its scene ... if a play or a work of music or a picture presents the everlasting hopes, desires and hates of us, or deals with a symbolic presentment ofour widely related natures, albeit a phase of that nature, then it is drama.2 Joyce's interest in the symbolic and intellectual problem-play was sustained throughout his life, and yet ironically his singular attempt to enter the dramatic arts in the form of his problem-play, Exiles, has been considered simply an aesthetic hiatus between Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses. Written in 1914, it appeared at a time when Joyce's art was 21 22 ELLIOTf M. SIMON evolving from the lyrical and personal experience of The Portrait towards the dramatic and impersonal experience of Ulysses. Richard Rowen, the artist-in-exile, and his conception of intellectual freedom are extensions of Stephen Dedalus's emancipation from family and church. Rowen's amoral relationship with Bertha and Robert Hand is developed into the symbiotic relationship among Leopold Bloom, Molly and H,ugh Boylan. Robert Hand, a composite of Heron, Lynch and Cranly, is developed into Hugh Boylan and Buck Mulligan. Bertha, a composite of Mrs. Dedalus and Emma Cleary, is developed into Molly Bloom. But by forcing the play into the Joyce canon as an unsuccessful theatrical experiment and an inferior articulation of the ideas and characters represented in his novels, critics have neglected to consider the play in terms of its rightful place within the tradition of the Edwardian problem-play, a tradition which Joyce admired and which can be used to explain its difficult dramatic experience when produced in the theatre. Until recently, Joyce's play has suffered in its production history from critics who have not evaluated it in terms of the problem-play tradition . Ezra Pound, after reading the script, argued that Exiles was a "dangerous play" unfit for the stage because its intellectual crises were too complicated and emotionally controversial for its contemporary audience.3 When first performed in Munich on August 7, 1919, the production was considered a fiasco. The reviewer for the Miinchen-Augsbenger Abenzeitung argued that the play's dialectic subtleties and original psychological observations should not, or rather could not, be performed for the general public.4 When W.G. Fay produced the drama in 1926 at the Regents Theatre, it played for only two nights,and although the first two acts were applauded, the ambiguous ending puzzled and offended the audience.5 It was not until Harold Pinter revived Exiles at the Mermaid Theatre in 1970 and with the Royal Shakespearean Company at the Aldwych Theatre in 1972 that the play achieved a measure ofsuccess both on and offthe stage. The fact that in the play Richard Rowen advocates that Bertha commit adultery with Robert Hand in order to create a mystical union of free individuals was considered by Joyce's contemporaries a great assault upon the moral sensibilities of an audience. Breaking the moral obligations of m~rriage in order to establish a symbolic spiritual liberation, however, is a common theme in the Edwardian problem-play and can be found in Henry Arthur Jones's The Case of Rebellious SuSan, Arthur Wing Pinero's...