The Drama of Comedy: Victim and Victor by Nelvin Vos (review)

1967 BOOK REVIEWS 471 certain plays over others (which may have a more profound message) in order to stretch his point, or for under-playing Anouilh's ethical point of view, but all in all he has done a great service to Anouilh and to the theater in general in showing the originality of his theatrics. RAYMOND FEDERMAN State University of New York at Buffalo THE DRAMA OF COMEDY: VICTIM AND VICTOR, by Nelvin Vos, John Knox Press, Richmond, Va., 1966, 125 pp. Price $1.95. Dr. Vos begins his work with the assumption that "the essence of dramatic comedy is, first of all, neither social nor philosophical, nor even narrowly literary, but religious." He goes on to approach the analysis of comedy through the defining of action rather than of tone, and detects three basic dramatic structures. First, in a study of Thornton Wilder's works (including the novels), he sees the emphasis on "the initial confidence and the happy ending" which characterizes the comic victor. He also comments on Wilder's sentimentality, his simplificacation of reality, and his failure to reveal how his characters achieved their optimism. The second study is of Eugene Ionesco, whose plays illustrate "the elements of aberration, the grotesque, and the fateful accidents of falling" of the comic victim. In lonesco, Dr. Vos sees a failing in that the playwright does not show why the characters deserve "to suffer and to be sacrificed." The third study, of Christopher Fry, presents the dramatic structure of the victim-victor in which the "process of emergence from the ordeal is stressed." These three studies, covering much beyond what I have indicated, make up the bulk of the book, and in each of them Dr. Vos illustrates his ability to get beneath the surface of things in his analysis of an individual play while also showing the thematic relationships to the playwright's other works. I found the use of quotations from the critical writings of the playwrights themselves a valuable asset. In the "Epilogue" to his work. Dr. Vos compares his three basic comic patterns to the three sections of Dante's Divine Comedy: Satan in the Inferno is the comic· victim; in the Purgatory is seen exemplified the victim-victor (illustrated pre· viously by Fry); and the Paradise is equated with Wilder's world of unexplained love. This analogy is not altogether satisfactory since the figure of Dante, and not the other characters (Satan, Beatrice) as implied by Vos, is certainly the protagonist of the Comedy. The further analogy of Dante's Comedy and the dra· matic structure of the comic victim-victor to Christ's death and resurrection also presents certain problems, particularly the question of whether such action as the passion and crucifixion, even if suffered willingly through love for man, can be defined as comic just because it has an ultimately happy ending, i.e., the resurrection. What is involved, of course, is the difficulty of defining the nature of comedy itself-a difficulty Dr. Vos attempts to deal with in the "Prologue" to his work. There he differentiates the comic protagonist from the tragic by the former's acceptance of his "finitude," his patience with "the fundamental limita· tions of his creaturehood," and his ability to survive and escape death. One questions the sufficiency of this description. Is it really adequate to cover such proto· types as Falstaff and Quixote, who, although they have limitations, do not endure them patiently, and suffer not only defeat but death? A later statement that "In tragedy, the heroes live and die only for themselves; in comedy [they] live for one another, and, if they die, it is in sacrificial love for another" does not, I think, help to clarify the matter. 472 MODERN DRAMA February The problem that Dr. Vos attempts to solve is a major one, however, and in .his hands it receives a thought-provoking treatment, even though it does not altogether convince. And his Christian-oriented studies of Wilder, Ionesco, and Fry are of considerable interest. JOHN CEROVSKI North Central College ACTING IS BELIEVING: A BASIC METHOD, 2nd Ed., Charles McGaw, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 219 pp. Price $4.95. In...