The Alienated Hero in Modern French Drama by Robert Emmet Jones (review)

1964 BOOK REVIEWS 469 are worth re-exposing. After declaring that Browning is "essentially undramatic" in contrast -to Shakespeare, Shaw continues: Now, there is a difference between the faculty of the dramatic poet and that of the epic or descriptive poet, and ·they are often strangely divided . The epic poet has a theory of the motives and feelings of his characters , and he describes his theory. The dramatic poet, whether he has a theory or not, instinctively puts the character before you acting and speaking as it would do in actual life. The merely epic and descriptive poet cannot do this. Milton had not the dramatic faculty very strongly; Shakespeare had. In music Beethoven was destitute of it; Mozart possessed it in the highest degree. If you compare Browning and Shakespeare, you will find the difference coming out strongly. (Browning Society Papers, V [1884], 1U-) The portion of a letter to V. Tchertkoff printed in Tolstoy on Shakespeare (New York, 1906, pp. 166-169) would also have heightened the staying power of Wilson's edition somewhat. Again, Henderson omits the more illuminating half, part of whim follows: There is at present in the press a new preface to an old novel of mine called "The Irrational Knot." In that preface I define the first order in Literature as consisting of those works in whim the author, instead of accepting the current morality and religion ready-made without any question as to their validity, writes from an original moral standpoint of his own, thereby making his book an original contribution to morals, religion, and sociology, as well as to belles lettres. I place Shakespeare with Dickens, Scott, Dumas pere, etc., in the second order, because, tho they are enormously entertaining, their morality is ready-made; and I point out that the one play, "Hamlet," in whim Shakespeare made an attempt to give as a hero one who was dissatisfied with the ready-made morality, is the one which has given the highest impression of his genius, altho Hamlet's revolt is unskilfully and inconclusively suggested and not worked out with any philosophic competence. The relevant passage from the preface to Toke Irrational Knot is reproduced by Wilson (pp. 229-230), but the above statement clarifies Shaw's point considerably and could well stand beside it. Reprinted here, the letter offers a clear foreshadowing of precisely the kind of criticism whim the reader will find in Shaw on Shakespeare. It is not literary criticism; but it is distinctly and irresistibly Shavian criticism-and that should suffice. CHARLES A. CARPENTER, JR. ,Cornell University THE ALIENATED HERO IN MODERN FRENCH DRAMA, by Robert Emmet Jones, University of Georgia Press, Athens, Ga., 1962, 137 pp. Price $2.75. In his introduction, Mr. Jones states that his purpose is "to demonstrate . • • that in an effort to portray some sort of tragic figure the modern dramatist has created a race of unadmirable exiles who seem devoid of true significance because they are seldom of our world." The reader who thought that the protagonists of contemporary Frenm plays, whether he considered them great creations or mere puppets, heroes or victims, etc., did clearly have the virtue of at least belonging to our world, will be startled by the author's statement. The same reader, who ~ay well agree with the word "exile," will be dismayed to see it qualified by the adjective "unadmirable," for he may suspect that it portends criticism not so much from a literary or dramatic point of view, but rather from a somewhat 470 MODERN DRAMA February pompously moral one. As he ventures further into this volume, the reader will have cause to be startled and dismayed repeatedly by Mr. Jones' method and by his ideas. In a sense, the author's main argument is that no tragedy exists in the French theater today. He views tragedy largely in classic Greek terms and envisages only two genres: the tragic and the comic. The word "drama" of the book's title is used, I think, deprecatingly to denote the would-be tragedies of modern dramatists . "Tragedy • • . cannot be written about misfits. Misfits are the subject of comedy, and yet our comic authors avoid writing about...