Millay's Aria Da Capo: Form and Meaning

MILLAY'S ARIA DA CAPO: FORM AND MEANING SO STRONG "was the appeal of the commedia dell'arte that it has, in various guises, survived into the present."! One modern play of this type is Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria da Capo (popular with drama students despite its requirements of skillful directing, acting, and creative setting), which portrays one aspect of the human plight as an image become flesh on the stage, and which is at the same time broadly comic and deeply tragic. Millay did not choose to write theater-poetry based on folk myth or ritual, as so many playwrights did in the twenties; neither did she write a thesis play on social reform; nor did she write an intellectual farce, in which the point is in the game of ideas. What she did write had a dash of the first, a pinch of the second, a generous sprinkling of the third, with the commedia dell'arte form as one of the main ingredients. The more objective, the more representational a work of art, a piece of dramatic writing, the more clearly we can judge it against its model: truth of characterization, authenticity of language, veri· similitude of situation-all of these help the critic to judge a realistic play. In Aria da Capo we are deprived of all these criteria of judgment except in relation to its commedia dell'arte form. So here the artistry of form, of structural balance, of shaping of internal conflicts is the basis of evaluation. The psychological truth of the play is an equally important touchstone, but it is through the balance, the formal pattern of its structure, that we can best approach an assessment of its psychological truth. For, if the author has reproduced her vision as an organic growth rather than mechanical construction, it will also be perceived as a satisfying, because genuinely balanced, pattern of form. How Millay uses the elements of commedia dell'arte to unify form and meaning in Aria da Capo is the subject of this essay. As every playwright knows, method depends on medium. At the beginning of the usual play, the dramatis personae are unknown to the audience: the playwright must reveal their identities and circumstances . In commedia dell'arte~ however, the very costumes of the actors immediately identify them: their basic natures are predetermined . The playwright need provide only the few touches ! Martin Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, 1961), p. 235. 165 166 MODERN DRAMA September necessary to adjust the characters to the requirements of the plot. This economy gave Millay the freedom to use all the dialogue for plot development-highly desirable in a one-act play! Hence in Aria da Capo all action contributes to the depiction and resolution of the conflict, resulting in a play of unusual vitality. This play deals with one of the "universals," man's relation to his fellow men and to the world. The meaning of the play is simple enough. In the cliche-ridden world of our empty, everyday lives, we are in danger of losing the capacity for the basic human awareness of the mystery of the universe, the transitoriness of our feelings, the constant presence of death. If this capacity atrophies, our lives become empty, mechanical; we lose one of the basic attributes of the dignity of man which has aptly been called "the tragic sense of life."2 This play inspires the search for genuine, authentic feeling and emotion, the striving to come to grips with reality despite all the cottonwool optimisms and euphemisms of our busy, purposeless lives. The playwright undertook to communicate what is most difficult to communicate -the callousness and heartlessness of human beings who have lost the basic sense of profound anguish at the thought of death and evanescence. .Pierrot and Columbine are the prototypes of all men and women cut off from the joy and sorrow of their fellowmen and from inquiry into the metaphysical sense of life. In commedia dell'arte and farcical aria da capo this servant and serving maid are bold externalizations of inner reality, visualizations of the underlying emptiness of life lived only to satisfy one's aesthetic (painting and...