Many Loves and other Play, the Collected Plays by William Carlos Williams (review)

1963 BOOK REVIEWS 97 MANY LOVES AND OTHER PLAY, THE COLLECTED PLAYS, by William Carlos Williams, ed. John C. Thirlwall, Norfolk, Conn., New Directions, 1961. 427 pp. Price $6.50. "But one must be at the advancing edge of the art: that's the American tra· dition," wrote William Carlos Williams in a letter nearly thirty years ago; and in these five pieces which have been recently issued as his "Collected Plays" he constantly manifests the experimental dmpulse espoused in his dictum on American art. Like Whitman he looks beyond the present to the future develop· ment of the art form with which he is concerned; and he too might have written, as did Whitman in "Poets to Come," that his plays are, above all. "indicative words for the future." Each of the five plays has its own distinctive mode of experimentation. the most notable perhaps being the libretto for an American opera on George Wash· ington, for which Theodore Harris has written the music. Convinced that grand opera "must look to America for its rekindling," Dr. Williams has acutely reo flected on the character of Washington and on the form of an opera that could properly reveal the "flaming" essence of the man beneath the somewhat stolid image in which history and tradition have cast him. With a fresh insight into the inherent depth and dedication of the first President and with a feeling that be was the originator of "the thing we [Americans] still labor to perfect," the librettist has devised a unique kind of impressionistic opera in which time and place sequences are secondary and in which the music rather than the text lib· erates for the audience the real character of Washington from the mere events which, as Dr. Williams has said, have imprisoned him. In the stage directions for the various scenes-e.g., with Arnold, with his wife, or at Valley Forge-the, librettist has added detailed directions on the lighting to give appropriate im· pressions of Washington's "feeling spirit," and he has suggested occasions in the production when the orchestra should even drown out what Washington is saying. Perhaps Dr. Williams' demands in this opera are too heavy, for thus far it has not been produced. Quite different in mode of experimentation are the three prose playlets which constitute his "Trial Horse No. I," as he has subtitled Many Loves. The unity of these playlets lies in their counterpoint:. they illustrate varying textures of love-adolescent, deviant, familial-and thus illuminate one another by contrast. In addition, however, cutting through the substance of the prose playlets and frequently interrupting the main action with poetic dialogue, a counterplay involving the entrepreneur, the playwright, and the leading lady allows further comment not only on abnormal and possessive love but also on the future of American drama. Hubert, the playwright, must in many ways reflect Dr. Williams' own aspirations and beliefs when he dec1are~ that his "purpose is/ to write for the stage such verse as never/ has been written heretofore"-a verse which is not Shakespeare "diluted down. A new con·jception more suited to ourselves." (pp. 14.15) Over the commercial objections of his "backer," Hubert insists that verse is the proper medium for the drama of the future, because only it can project "what I am saying beyond the words" (p. 32); only through poetry can the audience be lifted "to a world it never knew .•• beyond the/ dirty boards into the empyrean." (p. 33) But whatever his hopeful vision of a poetic drama may indicate for the future, Dr. Williams has done much to give body and reality to Many LUlJes through the acuteness of his ear for the tone and pace and diction of the colloquial idiom, whether it be that of farmer, mill worker, or suburban housewife. In Many Loves one feels something of the authentic simplicity with 98 MODERN DRAMA May overtones of complexity that the poet-playwright Hubert discusses and that are to be found in Dr. Williams' short stories. This sensitive projection of American idiom has given the playlets the flavor of life and, no doubt, is in large measure respousible for the year's run...