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1958 BOOK REvIEWS 139 from receiving wide popular acceptance in this country. In fact, he is much more popular in Europe. especially in Germany, where his expressionistic techniques are admired. 4. Perhaps the most stimulating essay in this special number of ttudes Anglaises is J. J. Mayoux's "Le Theatre de Samuel Beckett," a fine illustration of Gallic lucidity and balance. Dealing with a playwright whose work invites extravagant allegorical interpretation and strains the ingenuity of the critic to isolate and explain his complex symbols, lilt ~-fayoux cahnly sticks to the text of Beckett's plays, which he discusses with remarkable understanding and clarity. Some of M. Mayoux's observations are so modest and so quietly stated that it is easy to overlook their acuity. For example. in discussing Pozzo. the "demi-master" in Waiting f OT Godot, M. Mayoux asks the rhetorical question, "Who is Pozzo?" His answer: "He is the ODe who comes when we are waiting for Codot." Never insisting upon a narrow interpretation, M. Mayoux has written an eminently sane and sensitive treatment of the themes, structure. and poetry of Samuel Beckett's plays. EDWAlID B . GROFF THE DRAMATIC EXPERIENCE, by Judah Biennan, James Hart, and Stanley Johnson, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1958, 549 pp. This is an excellent drama text and might well be the answer to the dilemma of many a professor who, after taking the roll, finds one-fourth of his class possessing some knowledge of the professional theatre and the rest familiar only with the high school production of Charlie's Aunt. The Dramatic Experience solves this prob. lem, for it is sufficiently complex to challenge the mature student yet Dot too technical to discourage the neophytes. . Section One, "On Reading Drama/' is"a cogently written, highly compact essay alerting the reader to the problems he faces in reading a play and establishing the DOrolS by which he may best satisfy his own intellectual growth through drama. Section Two. "The Major Elements of Drama/' analyzes by essay and play.. example dramas featuring either action, or theme, or character. The Desperate Hours, a melodrama by John Hayes, was selected to represent the play of action, Everyman, the play to represent theme, and Abe Lincoln in Illinois by Robert Sherwood, the play of character. Of particular interest in this section is Hayes' own essay describing some of the problems he faced in writing this play from his own "best selling" novel of the same name. Section Three, "The Elements in Balance," presents Ibsen's The Wild Duck as an example of a play tll.at employs action, theme, and character and blends them into an organic whole. within which each is of approxi.mately equal importance. The second half of The Dramatic Experience centers around the major modes of drama with particular emphasis placed upon comedy and tragcdy. Section Four offers a study of the various approaches to comedy with Saroyao's The Time of Your Life, Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespearc's T welfth Night as plays exemplifying the comic vision. The final section entitled "Tragedy" is perhaps tlle most stimulating. Revealing the various complications surrounding the tragic vision are such dramas as 501,ho. d es' Oedipus Rex. Shakespeare's Othello. Lorca's Blood 'Vedding, and MHler's Death 0/ a Salesman. Accompanying all of these plays are provocative comments. One may question occasionally why a particular play was selected when several others come to mind that might serve as well or better. This is a minor point, however, and while one may question, he certainly never objects. The Simplest and most direct manner I know of to give my personal appraisal 140 MODER" DRAMA September of The Dramatic Experience is to say that I like the teAt so well I plan to use it in my own drama course. Wn.LIAM M. BURKE PASSAGES FROM FINNEGANS WAKE, A Free Adaptation for the Theater, by Mary ~:laIU1ing. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1957, 73 pp. Price $3.25. Any attempt to adapt Finnegans 'Wake presents staggering problems of cutting, of scenic arrangement, progression and depiction, of thematic emphasis, of the identification of character and speech, and, finally, of...

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