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JAMES BRIDIE AND THE PRODIGAL SON STORY IN HIS LAST PLAY, The Baikie Charivari, Jame$ Bridie's theme is man's temptation 'to be less than himself, to act inhumanly rather than superhumanly.l In The Black Eye, an early play (1935), Bridie's development of the major theme of his plays-man's capacity for superhuman achievement-is straightforward rather than oblique. In The Baikie Charivari he uses the biblical story of Pontius Pilate; in The Black Eye he works with the prodigal son story. He says of The Black Eye: "George" ... was all the younger sons and Idle Jacks out of Grimm, and his story was their story. . . . Its moral is that of The Prodigal Son and of the Labourers in the Vineyard and of half the fairy tales in the world. It is that we are not justified by a catalogued series of sensible, social acts but by something very much more extraordinary.2 In one sense he is stating not only the moral of The Black Eye but that of The Baikie Charivari and of all his major plays: A Bridie hero is not justified by a catalogued series of sensible, social acts (Sir James MacArthur Pounce-Pellott's wholesale slaughter of his enemies is not a sensible, social act); still the fatted calf is killed in compassion and love for him, the son who has wasted his substance with riotous living, and his father proclaims, "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." In this sense the moral implicit in the major plays is that of the story of the prodigal son. For, superhuman achievement, whether it is Pounce-Pellott's slaughter in The Baikie Charivari or George Windlestraw's £8250 haul on a horse race in The Black Eye (or, for another example, Tobias' marriage to an exotic foreign princess in Tobias and the Angel), is by definition logically impossible; it represents a reversal of the laws of probability, an irrational or undeserved triumph, like the triumph of the prodigal son. In The Black Eye the prodigal son morality operates explicitly. 1 See "Bridie's Last Play," Modern Drama, V (February, 1963), 4°0.414. 2 "The Anatomy of Failure," Moral Plays (London, 1936), p. viii, and "Author's Note," p. v (immediately preceding The Black Eye). The plays in this volume are paged separately. All quotations from the play in my text are taken from this edition. 35 36 MODERN DRAMA May George Windlestraw, the younger son, is, apparently, a disappointment to his father because he has failed the chartered accountant examinations four times and has not settled into his niche in the, business world as his older brother Johnnie has. When Angus Windlestraw is struck by a post-office van and consequently hospitalized, George, who is on the verge of bolting because johnnie's girlfriend has fallen in love with him, is forced to help his brother at the factory. He discovers there gross negligence, quarrels with Johnnie over this and over the girl, and finally does walk out on the family, with the vague hope of earning a fortune to save the business. The next day, in a Glasgow rooming house, he meets an ex-convict, Mr. Samuels, who persuades him to gamble for his fortune. George immediately wins £8250 and returns to save his father from bankruptcy . (At his entrance his mother says, "Oh, here's the the Prodigal Son at last.") The girl, Elspeth, annoyed with the entire family for its failure to help her straighten out George, throws over both brothers, denouncing the Windlestraws as "a pack of damned savages." The prodigal son has returned; he who was lost is found. His triumph has been achieved in spite of himself and, moreover, at the expense of the elder son, whose sensible, social acts appear to count for nothing. George has triumphed in spite of himself, for certainly he has resisted superhuman achievement. Cautiously and reasonably he tries to look the other way when Mr. Samuels tempts him to the irrational acts (gambling and betting) that will assure his triumph at home. Ironically, although he professes to believe in a universe...

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