The Infernal Machine and Other Plays by Jean Cocteau (review)

340 MODERN DRAMA December (p. 208)-a trip which no other biographer seems to have discovered. She knows nothing about any of Shaw's love affairs before Mrs. Jenny Patterson (which she spells Paterson),but she cannily surmises that he probably "had put the matter to the test and been rejected" because of his poverty and his unprepossessing appearance as a young man. (p. 135) But she says some penetrating things about Shaw's estimate of Stella Campbell and Stella's of him. (p. 164) In the process of unearthing such errors as the foregoing, however, one comes to realize that there are some virtues in Miss Williamson's book after all. These are chiefly on the side of her discussions of Shaw's plays and other works, though she is equipped to deal more originally with some of the other works than with the plays, which she often presents largely through the contributions their actors have made in their interpretations. Not having bothered to read what Shaw himself said were his intentions in Candida or what recent academic critics have brought out about it, her analysis of this play falls into the old-fashioned sentimental and romantic school, but her discussion of The Doctor's Dilemma is much more intelligent. Though her criticisms of most of the plays are uneven and often incomplete, and her presentation of most of the later plays is extremely sketchy, she generally has some astute and well-phrased remark which illuminates a character or situation. One of the greatest assets of her book is her contagious enthusiasm for her subject-a kind of appreciation of G.B.S. which will strike some of our younger dramatic critics as quite deplorable. It is in the fIeld of her specialty, music, and particularly the opera, and even more particularly Wagner, that Miss Williamson's book is at its best. Taking Shaw as a perspicacious pioneer missionary here, she-as might be expected from a journalistic critic-almost invariably loves to speculate on what he would probably have said about the musical leaders and experimenters of today. She even goes so far as to push her partisanship for the modern operas of Carl Orff on the analogy of Shaw's successful campaign for the acceptance of Wagner in England. (pp. 59-60) She accepts Shaw's interpretation of the political allegory of The Ring in his Perfect Wagnerite~ while knowing that she is almost alone in doing so. (p. 62) And almost the only highly original literary thought in her book is her suggestion that H. G. Wells got his ideas for the underground civilizations in The Time Machine and The First Men in the Moon~ as well as his "Tarnhelm" in The Invisible Man~ from Shaw's description of the society of the Nibelungs in The Perfect Wagnerite. (pp. 39-40) All of Miss Williamson's readers, however (and especially those in England), should be grateful for her plea for the early realization of "Shaw's vision of a true national Theatre" in England which would permit a full participation and alternation of all the great actors and actresses in the country. (pp. 79-80) In this respect at least she is fully aware of the existence and needs of the United States because, recognizing the limitations and inadequacies of the new repertory companies at Lincoln Center and Minneapolis, she makes the same plea that this country, too, listen to the eloquent representations of Bernard Shaw in this vital cultural matter of a true National Theater. ARTHUR H. NETHERCOT University of Montana THE INFERNAL MACHINE AND OTHER PLAYS, by Jean Cocteau, New Directions , Norfolk, Conn., 1963, 409 pp. Price $6.50. This volume contains translations, by various hands, of three full-length dramas 1965 BOOK REVIEWS 341 (The Infernal Machine, The Knights of the Round Table, Bacchus); two shortey plays (Orpheus, The EifJel Tower Wedding Party); and e. e. cummings' rendition of the speaker's text for Stravinsky's neoclassical opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex. We shall not question the representativeness of the collection-some readers, obviously, would have preferred Les parents terribles or L'Aigle a deux tetes-but content ourselves with scrutinizing the value of...