The Clown in Modern Anglo-Irish Drama by Elizabeth Hale Winkler (review)

106 Book Reviews the two actors, A and S, ambulate around a special stage area which consists offour large one·meter cubes. Designed in the style ofPiet Mondrian and Paul Klee, each of the cubes has a trapdoor on lOp. and from within the actors can move from one cube to the other without being seen by the audience. The games they play - which constitute the play are choreographed, and at the end, the actors disappear into the cubes. Circularity, which emphasizes the mythlike quality of this drama as well as of others. The Lay ofBarrabas and The Grand Ceremonial, is used with power by Arrabal. Reminiscent of the gargoyles of Notre Dame, Arrabal's emanations stem, as do the depictions of Bosch and Goya, from the deepest levels of his unconscious. It is from this sphere that his hauntingly beautiful and terrifying creations emerge, that the defonned creatures of his fantasy reveal their soundings and their pounding hearts. His plays are a commentary on his own individual pain; they are also an artistic appraisal of our time, our values and culture. When viewing the mysteries Arrabal has chosen to reveal replete with types capable of killing at random as was done during the Spanish Civil War, with those who thought up the gas chambers and tortures during the Second World War, with the excrescences who pollute the contemporary world - one should give pause to think ofthe reasons for the proliferation and burgeoning ofsuch creatures today while the pure it! heart have vanished from view. BETTINA L. KNAPP, HUNTER COLLEGE AND THE GRADUATE CENTER OF CUNY ELIZABETH HALE WINKLER. The Clown in Modern Anglo-Irish Drama. FrankfurtlM.: Peter Lang; Bern: Herbert Lang 1977- Pp. 297. Winkler's extremely well-researched book first surveys the literature about clowns, comes up with a definition of clown, and then considers whether major Anglo-Irish playwrights from Boucicault to Beckett have clowns in their plays. Her study has been exhaustive, but she has not managed to put her own stamp on the material, to develop a persuasive argument about the clown. The book proceeds very mechanically and there are no surprises. One wishes that Winkler had emphasized what she regarded to be original ideas on the subject. The book looks like an unrevised thesis. Published in typescript , it lacks an index (a pity, since Winkler has packed so much into the book, and one wishes one could hunt through such items as "knockabout," "dialect," "lout," etc.). The author leans heavily for methodology on Maurice Disher, Clowns and Pantomimes (1925), and William Willeford, The Fool and His Sceptre: A Study in Clowns andJesters andTheir Audience (1969). and does not go significantly beyond these books. While the copyright and the ISBN number would suggest that Winkler's effort is a book, she obviously regards it as a thesis, because she has recently published an essay, "The Clown in O'Casey's Drama," Irish University Review, 10 (Spring 1980), 77-90, which incorporates verbatim and revised sections from the "book." The essay is much more focused and persuasive than the book. One hopes for something more than straight history when Winkler titles her first chapter "Archetypes and Functions of the Clown," but one is disappointed. Under "Archetypal Elements of Clowning," she includes falls, blows. surprises, knavery, mimicry. and stupidity (all of these distinguished by Disher in his book). She should Book Reviews 107 have used a tenn like "characteristics" rather than "archetypes," since the latter lenn nonnally promises some kind of psychological analysis. About half of Winkler's first chapter is devoted to two types of clowns, the butt (the unconscious clown) and the knave (the conscious clown). Butts are distinguished into lout, naive simpleton, braggart , pedant. and old clown. Knaves are parasites, intriguers, shrews, tramps. "The clown ". exploits all kinds of social failings for the purpose of comedy... {;] he works with low comic techniques , exploits physical, bodily (sic) actions, primitive or primary jokes, and makes use of extraordinary or grotesque exaggeration in his art." She distinguishes "fools" from "clowns" and does not treat those wise, witty characters in herstudy. Winkler's application of her "system" to Anglo-Irish drama excludes plays by Yeats, George Fitzmaurice, and...