New Tragedy and Comedy in France, 1945-70 by Peter Norrish (review)

Book Reviews PETER NORRISH. New Tragedy and Comedy in France. 1945-70. London: The Macmillan Press LId. 1988. pp. 156. $82.50 Peter Norrish's book, New Tragedy and Comedy in France, 1945-70, deals with the reshaping of these two genres in serious French drama in the quarter-century following World War II. He has taken that period in order to discuss the philosophical theater of Sartre and Camus as well as the "new" theater of Ionesca. Beckett, and others. Norrish stops at 1970. however, since he feels that it is too early to assess the impact of the most recent theater. In addition, he suggests that the French stage since 1970 differs considerably from the earlier part of the century (it includes. for example, further developments in politically oriented theater, experiments in collective creation, and Le Grand Magic Circus). In one form or another, all of French theater during the twentieth century has dealt with the human condition, Norrish maintains, and, "already in the first half of this century, the fundamentals of living and dying were being thoroughly explored again, with an intensity ofconcern reminiscent ofeighteenth-centuryphilosophesor nineteenthcentury poets with a zeal for reform, but with the difference that the debate was now regarded as a matter of greater and ever increasing urgency" (p. J). Essentially, up until the mid 1950s, serious drama could be characterized as "Theater of Ideas... The writer briefly explores early attempts at this type of theater, noting the religious plays of Paul Claudel and Fran~ois Mauriac; the work of Jean Anouilh, Jean Cocteau and Jean Giraudoux, who borrowed from Greek drama, using myth in their reconsideration of the issues involving the human condition; and some of the philosophical plays of Jean-Paul Sarue and Albert Camus. In his examination of Sartre and Camus, he observes that both writers found it difficult to tum complex philosophical ideas into exciting drama, as can be seen in Sartre's "declamatory" Les MOllches and Camus' "monotonously insinuative " Le Malentendu. Both Camus and Sartre define tragedy as the moment when the affinnation of values and rights is placed in a situation of conflict. The two dramatists maintain that the solutions to this situation come about by means of a pragmatic approach to metaphysical, political and social realities. Norrish sees Henri de Montherlant as a different example of the Theater of Ideas, representing a psychological strand. MontherlanCs drama, he finds, is an attempt to vie with the seventeenth-century tragedians. Comeille and Racine, in the exploration of the human heart. Montherlant, however, does this less effectively since the tragic effects of his characters come mainly from the negative aspects of their personalities. The "new tragedy" of Samuel Beckett and the "new comedy" of Eugene Ionesco represent a major change in the genres. Beckett's theater, wit~ its seriocomic elements, does indeed fulfill many of the traditional requirements of tragedy, but it adds additional dimensions "by placing the accent on suffering without heroism in the conventional sense, and by making the source of that suffering not the terrible workings of the gods but the pain of living, part of which consists of not being able to understand the 'mess' in which it has to be endured" (p. 73). Just as Beckett's tragic theater contains elements of comedy, Ionesco's comedy is related to the tragedy of mankind. Norrish analyzes Book Reviews 585 plays like Les Chaises and Le Roi se meurl in which a comic overlay is placed upon essentia1ly tragic material. While this may have also occurred in Moliere's works, Norrish feels that Ionesco has shifted the "focus from the absurdity of human behavior to the absurdity of the human situation" (p. 89). The period from 1945 to J970 was a particularly rich and diverse moment in French tragedy and comedy and Norrish's study of these two genres and the changes experienced during this time touches upon all ofthe major dramatists of the period (discussions of Adamov, Arrabal, and Genet are included as well). He has also furnished solid analyses of many of the important plays. Yet. if anything, there is probably an attempt to provide too much information and too many analyses. Since the...