Humanities: Drama

.414 LE'ITERS IN CANADA: 1965 survival!" When one has sorted this out it becomes clear that the association of images is unhappy for Grimm, not for Marivaux, but surely there would be a clearer and less cryptic way of stating this. These are minor flaws in a major work on a major author by a major Canadian critic. Serious consideration should be given to the possibility of a French edition of this book. (WILLIAM S. RoGERs) Mr. Lamb's six lectures_ on tragedy, offered originally on the University of the Air, provide a concise, gracefully written and generally admirable survey of a large and disputed topic. No single definition of tragedy covers everything from The Booh o-f Job to Waiting for Godot unless it is so sweeping as to be of small value in particular cases; Mr. Lamb has not attempted anything of the kind, but has discussed how men have attempted serious dramatic treatment of serious themes over a term of 2,500 years. Mr. Lamb's Tragedy (Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, pp. x, 69, paper $1.25) gives us a springboard to the others in this group, for he frequently stresses the need for experience ·in the theatre as a corrective and an extension of what is comprehensible through the study of drama texts. But there . are realms in English .theatre where.even good texts are not easily come by; Mr: Faile in his Three Restoration Comedies (Toronto and London: Macmillan, pp. viii, 342, $1.50) has edited the three comedies with good, spare notes for students, and an Introduction which should clarify their ideas about Comedy, and·direct them to further fruitful investigation. Mr. Booth's Eighteenth Century Tragedy (Oxford, pp. xiv, 394, $2.75) offers five eighteenth-century tragedies-of which three are not otherwise readily available-and an appropriate introductory essay. Lillo's London Merchant ~nd Moore's The Gamester represent the bourgeois tragedy to which Mt. Lamb gives little attention, but which has had some 'worthy children; Johnson's marmorealIrene contrasts with Home's dramatifally valid Douglas; Colman's The Iron Chest is that mingling of tragedy and comedy, somewhat arbitrarily fitted with a happy ending, that led straight to melodi:arha. These are indeed useful compilations in an area where texts are too few. Melodrama is despised by those who are convinced. that drama is the younger sister·of literature. But'it dominated the theatre from 1800 to_1880, and satisfied some millions-of playgoers, not all of whom we dare dismiss as tasteless, naive, or foolish. It unquestionably pleased the HUMANITIES 415 illiterate, who responded whole-heartedly to My Poll and My Partner Joe and Lost in London, but the audience for The Corsican Brothers and The Lady of Lyons was by no means illiterate. The crude morality of Ten Nights in a Bar Room was not the morality of Camille. A melodrama like The Bells, the text of which is negligible, provided a great actor with the scaffold on which he hung a personal creation of extraordinary psychological power-an evocation of remorse far more powerful than Coleridge achieved in his drama, Remorse. And the plays of Shakespeare during this period were offered in terms that stressed their melodramatic elements, greatly to the satisfaction of the ablest critics of the day. There is more in melodrama than a solely literary approach can reveal. Mr. Michael Booth has chosen melodrama as his special province, and in the two books under review, Hiss the Villain: Six English. and American Melodramas (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode [Toronto: Ryerson ], 1964, pp. 390, $6.50) and English Melodrama (Smithers & Bonelli, pp. 223, $7.50), he offers six texts that are not otherwise available to the general reader, and a study of melodrama as a form, to which he has appended much the best consideration of melodramatic acting that I have seen. He has chosen his examples from the mid-range of the genre; he gives us neither the abject Maria Martens and Sweeney Todds of the booth theatres and fit-ups, nor does he attempt to win our assent with anything so meritorious as Richelieu, The Love Chase, or Ingomar. His collection called Hiss the Villain is...