The Art and Mind of Shaw: Essays in Criticism by A.M. Gibbs (review)

506 Book Reviews plays and the relations among them are very helpful. Thomas gives us not merely the received critical opinions, but his own, often remarkable, insights into plays he has meditated upon, taught, and directed for many years, He even gives us close readings of Ibsen's wel1-wrought prose and dramatic poetry (verbal and visual) inspired by precise knowledge of and sensitivity to the Norwegian texts. This he does best in the sixth chapter, which deals with the values revealed in various "classic" Ibsen productions from William Bloch's Enemy ofthe People to Peter Stein's Marxist Peer Gynt and Peter Hall's expressionist Johti Gabriel Borkman. Thomas sees "moments of intense emotion where the actors are expected to act out rather than state the essential meaning ofa given scene" (p. 153), thus revealing "the poem hidden in the poem" (p. 156). Some of Thomas's readings can be challenged. The painful confrontation between Mrs. Alving and Manders in Act 2 of Ghosts contains something other than "his feeble attempt at self~justification." It is his own tragic attempt to cope with his love for Helene Alving, a love which, in his mind, is not lawful. Incidentally, Manders calls Mrs. Alving by her Christian name "Helene" not once only. as Thomas maintains (p. 152), but twice here and once before in the equally painful confrontation at the end of Act I. The final chapter deals succinctly with Ibsen's influence on the modern theatre from Shaw to Pinter and Bond. and concludes with a briefexamination of the main currents of Ibsen criticism: biographical, philosophical, psychological, "new," structuralist, Marxist, polemical. But, again, the last word should be Thomas's own. The task of audiences and critics is to note and respond to the shifting patterns in each work and to appreciate the significance ofone pattemjuxtaposed with another - a word undercut by a glance, a purely visual response by one character to a move or statement of another, a loving phrase delivered in the context of emotional pressure, a claim of the ideal tainted by environmental conditioning, an unthinking surface response contrasted with a response rich in subtextua1 insight. This is the stuff and substance of Ibsen's theatre poetry. The book, brief as it is, both consolidates and orders Ibsen criticism and carries it a step forward. For this we can only be grateful to David Thomas, qui bene docet. CHARLES LELAND, 51. MICHAEL'S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO A.M. GIBBS. The Art and Mind ofShaw: Essays in Criticism. New York: St. Martin's Press 1983. Pp. ix, 224. $22.50. Because I could discover neither an organizing principle nor a consistent application of one methodology or a system in The Art and Mind ofShaw, I infer that the subtitle suggests its purpose: discrete essays about plays that interest the author. "This study," says A.M. Gibbs, "presents an exploration of Shaw's dramatic art, which takes into account his masterly use of all the various 'languages' of the theatre in Book Reviews 507 the creation of meaning. Eighteen of the plays are studied in depth" (p. vii). What are these languages that create dramatic meaning? What are the eighteen plays? What detennines Gibbs's selection of them from Shaw's fifty~odd pieces? The author does not say. By the time one completes the book, one learns the answer only to the second question, and Gibbs appears to consider four and a half pages (Caesar and Cleopatra), four (The Apple Cart). and even three (On the Rocks. Geneva) to qualify as "depth." On p. 38, he cites some works he will discuss, such as the important Mal! and Superman, Major Barbara, and Heartbreak House. The next sentence mentions "less ambitious" plays "which by themselves would have secured for Shaw a very substantial reputation," including The Docto,'s Dilemma, Misalliance, Fanny's First Play, and Androcles and the Lion. With no explanation, he treats none of them. Ditto, Back to Methuselah - a surprising exclusion from a book that purports to deal with Shaw's mind. Neither does Gibbs analyze SaintJoan, which he considers "marred by the obtrusive factitiousness of the language which Shaw created for the central character...