The Profane Book of Irish Comedy by David Krause (review)

Book Reviews 397 Or is it not rather a confusion among dramatic, poetic, epic, moral aspirations? An opposition between "ideal" and "reality," left undefined, masks divergences, possibly incompatibilities, between types of values. In quite a few passages, Mclntyre offers some well-formulated insights. But they remain disconnected, sometimes at variance. McIntyre's critical distance is insufficient. Anouilh is taken as a guide and partner, not enough as an opponent. In particular, McIntyre does not construct an autonomous tenninoJogical (conceptual) framework. Anouilh is echoed rather than questioned. ROBERT CHAMPIGNY . INDlANA UNIVERSITY DAVID KRAUSE. The Profane Book a/Irish Comedy, Ithaca, N. y, and London: Cornell University Press 1982. Pp. 326. $19.95. Initially, when I read David Krause's first book, Sean O'Casey; The Mati And His Work, published in 1960, I was quite convinced that Krause did not know enough of the background from 1913 to 1923 to understand how wrong O'Casey sometimes was. Some of Krause's comments about this period of time in Irish history were incorrect. Although he had much to say about O'Casey's feelings of compassion for the slum women suffering in 1916 (The Plough and the Stars), as well as about the war of independence and civil war (Juno and the Paycock), he did not seem to know or realize that many of O'Casey's working-class "hutties" made up the crack fighting units of the Dublin brigade. These men fought, were tortured and died in those streets so well known to Johnny Casey. They fought and died for an ideal as finnly believed in as any credo O'Casey ever espoused. That the ideal was not fully achieved was no blame to the fighters - what ideal ever is achieved? In the twenty-two years since the publication of his first book, Krause has, quite obviously, done a lot of reading, and many of the historical inaccuracies and misinterpretations which marred his first book have been eliminated. His most recent book, The Profane Book of Irish Comedy. is a thought-provoldng, often stimulating. work that is filled with amusing anecdotes and clever critical analogies. However. the book is still not a total success. Why? When writing about comedy one needs a sense of humor, and this is something that Krause lacks. Perhaps it is his attempt to impose a theme on his book - to show the way that several playwrights are linked emotionally and thematically to early Celtic literature - that forces him to take everything a bit too seriously. Also, when Krause is discussing individual playwrights, such as Synge and O'Casey. he is much more readable than when he is making often pretentious and farfetched references to Levi-Strauss. In fact, Krause has many interesting points to make when he is discussing even minor playwrights like the kindly Belfastman George Shiels. It is commendable that someone has attempted to resurrect the work of playwrights like Shiels, Paul Vincent Carroll and Lennox Robinson. Irish theatre comprises more than just the plays of Yeats, Synge, O'Casey and Beckett, and it is appropriate that scholars, like Krause, begin to extend their discussion of the theatre in Ireland to include the work ofthese several, so-called "minor," dramatists. It was often such lesser Irish playwrights who helped to establish a dramatic tradition in Ireland. RICHARD BURNHAM, DOMINICAN COLLEGE ...