English Theatre in Transition: 1889-1914 by James Woodfield (review)

428 Book Reviews many other thirigs - is quite beyond the apparent ken of Hamm and Clov. just as the dialogue of The Tooth afCrime is beyond the ken ofHoss and Crow. For someone who understands that fact , it should come as no surprise that, after the submission to pop surfaces in The Tooth a/Crime, Shepard can give us in Foolfor Love amost penetrating and problematic handling of what Kennedy would call the "duologue of recognition" in terms that are both interpersonal and intrapersonal. Shepard's revision of the Sophoclean fascination with the incesHabu is based quite firmly on the recognition that the partners in dialogue are not finally distinct and separate beings. Each day. as Bruce Tauh-Bynum has said, "we an play an intimate cosmic game with each other where you pretend not to be me and I accept your countetfeit signature." Anyone who takes that statement as a serious hypothesis will find in the theatre implications quite beyond those that Kennedy has in mind when he speaks of"dialogue as a search for significance and as a flexible state of being-with-others through speech." We are with others more intimately, and more problematically, than Kennedy's model of separate and solid selves can acr.nunt for. Indeed, I would hazard the guess that the open secret of theatre is its focusing of not just an interpersonal but·a transpersonal knowledge. From this vantage-point the history of Western drama, and certainly the intricate labyrinth of its recent permutations, will appear quite different from anything that either Peter Szondi or Andrew Kennedy have suggested. But Strindberg, Pirandello, and Brecht - we may suspect - would from their different intellectual corners smile in assent. THOMAS R. WHITAKER, YALE UNIVERSITY JAMES WOODAELD. English Theatre in Transition: 1889- 1914. London: Croom Helm 1984. Pp. 213. £15·95· Thjs is not a book one can tell by its cover - or indeed its title page. Both announce the work as English Theatre in Transition: 1881- 1914. while halftitle and author's preface insist upon 1889 as terminus a quo. (Readers who flip to the copyright page will fmd the British Library cataloguing the volume as English Theatre in Transition 1886- 1914!) Aside from its bizarre prelims, Professor Woodfield's study holds few surprises. The problem, in part. is one ofaudience. In presenting his account of the London stage in the birth throes of modem drama the author elects to write "not for the specialist, but for the student or general reader." The decision commits him to yet another rehearsal of how bourgeois spectators fled the theatre of the mid-Victorians only to be wooed back by the union of drama and literature at the century's close. Along the way we hear of the rise of ensemble pJaying, the box set, and subscription society, with the corresponding decline of the actor manager and provincial stock company. It is, in broad outline, a familiar tale that a general reader will find laid out for him elsewhere. Here the cargo is more than 174 pages of text can carry, a dilemma compounded by Woodfield's penchant for telling each part of the story from its very inception. A chapter concerned with the search for a National Theatre begins with Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee of 1769, while a review of Book Reviews 429 fin de siecie censorship dips all the way back to the reign ofHenry VIII. At the same time the hypothetical non·speciaHst for whom all this is intended proves to be a curious creature. On page twenty we find him possessing an intimate knowledge of Hauptmann's Weavers - enough, at any rate, to specula!e upon how an Edwardian audience might have received "the destruction of the mill-owner's house." Two chapters later he is expected to catch the significance of Archer's "NO PHILANDERERS NEED APPLY" postscript with nary a mention of Shaw's play. The more's the pity. because the volume contains much that is useful. Woodfield's sections on the Independent Theatre. Stage Society, and Royal Court bring together an impressive amount of information, enabling us to trace the fortunes of these enterprises from season to season. Generous citations...