Masks of Love and Death: Yeats as Dramatist by John Rees Moore (review)

1972 BOOK REVIEWS 211 at least of his manuscripts, especially the slt.etches for A Drama Play, that sublime drama the discussion of which forms the climax of Lamm's book. EVERT SPRINCHORN Vassar College MASKS OF LOVE AND DEATH: YEATS AS DRAMATIST, by John Rees Moore. Ithaca and London: Cornell Univ. Press, 1971. xiv+361 pp. In recent years there have appeared numerous articles and an increasing number of books dealing with Yeats's work as a dramatist. There are at least two bibliographies devoted entirely to items commenting on the plays alone. The scholarly and invaluable Allt and Alspach variorum edition of the plays has been available since 1966. Since Ure's shrewd and helpful critical survey, Yeats the Playwright (1963), there has been a number of books investigating specialized questions such as the revisions of the plays (Bushrui and Bradford) or their relationship to the mysterious system of Yeats's thought (Vendler)-and writers on the meaning of the plays are usually indebted in one way or another to Wilson's two books. While Clark's book limited itself to close study of a group of plays from the heart of the dramatic cannon, Nathan discussed the tragic experience in the plays, relating them to the literary background of their age. Mr. Moore's Masks of Love and Death provides another timely general survey, departing from Ure's grouping by theme and motif to adopt a treatment which first offers a concise and very useful general discussion of Yeatsian drama followed by a chronological discussion of the plays from The Countess Cathleen onwards . His first two chapter's give a precise and striking summary of Yeatsian dramatic theory and contain one of the best short descriptions of the Yeats play that I have yet seen. He indicates the moral dimension of Yeats's concern"... for the right relationship between character and action," the aestheticism of his sure sense of decorum, the philosophic quality gained from seeing ". • • individual attitudes and behaviour ••. as manifestations of cosmic forces," the famous lyrical and magical, incantatory aspects of the plays. He finds Yeats's work truly dramatic in its "... unfolding of an action in which the clash of human passions leads to a sudden transformation of the immediate situation." The lyric and the dramatic are united in those culminating emblematic tableaux which might be considered theatrical counterparts of Joyce's epiphanies. The mask as theory of personality, as either one of a pair of opposing beings, or as symbolic stage property is seen as "motive of the action, the form created by the action, and the final meaning of the action." The viability of these generalizations is demonstrated later in the book by some of the analyses of individual plays. The chapter on Cuchulain and the Yeatsian hero is an excellent and at times witty summary of mythological background and Yeatsian theory and practice, while the interpretation of The Player Queen is a very thorough piece of literary criticism. The book contains many good insights, and refreshingly assumes that Yeats's plays are dramatic, yet the criticism is mainly literary rather than dramatic: the plays were designed for performance, and should be criticized as such. Moreover , there could have been reference to prompt copies, and the farcical Yeats! Moore collaboration was discussed without mention of the one significant point for a full understanding of the making of Yeats's dramatic language-the Bible purged of archaism. Nor did the discussion of Deirdre satisfactorily tackle the problem of the musician's knife (see Birgit Bramsbiick in Studia Neophilologica, Vol. XLI, No.2, .1969), and one wishes there had been a bibliography. I m,~st also correct 212 MODERN DRAMA September Mr. Moore on another point; Hiro Ishibashi is not a man, but a most charming lady and scholar. ANDREW PARKIN University of British Columbia CLIFFORD ODETS: PLA.YWRIGHT, by Gerald Weales. New York: Pegasus (Bobbs-Merrill Co.), 1971. 205 pp. $6.95. Reading this interesting new study of Odets, one is frequently intrigued by the fresh insights of Weales-the-critic into the structure and possible interpretations of the Odets Canon_ So much so, that there is a temptation to suspect that inside...