American Dramatists 1918-1945 by Bernard F. Dukore (review)

Book Reviews I have many quibbles. Characters often oscillate between classifications, and discussion can become confusing. Professional Foul, a play with five categories of "clockwork," is discussed only in the introduction. I wanted to read an entire chapter on Professional Foul, especially after encountering: "In fact the arguments of Pavel Hollar, which Anderson repeats in his improvised and curtailed address to the Colloquium Philosophicum near the end of the play, arc not really 'clockwork' at all but ' mystery' masquerading as 'clockwork. ' " I have onc other quibble which in theory is related to my quibble about Corballis's thesis. His definition of the play-within-the-play is extremely loose and includes almost every scene which contains a strong sbift. For example, the Colloquium Phi/osophicum in Professional Foul and the dream sequences in Night and Day are labeled plays-within-plays. These are not such devices, because no one in tbe scenes knowingly acts out a scene from a play other tban tbe original play. Those Stoppard plays which include plays-within-the-play are Ros. & Gui/., The Real Inspector Hound, Dogg's "Hamlet," Cahoot's "Macbeth" and The Real Thing. Travesties is a spccial case, since The Importance oj Being Earnest serves as a source play rather than a play-within-aplay . It seems as though the line should be drawn on this issue somewhere, so that we can all speak the same language. But I grant that often it is difficult to draw lines when discussing Stoppard's work. Corballis's approach is both oblique and invaluable. His book brings together a great deal from others who have conunented on Stoppard, and Corball is takes as his focus an original look at the works. The bibliograpby contains a listing of the more important items now avaiJable. Why, I wonder, is there no index. and why are page numbers not given for quotations? I wish to update some of Corballis's statements. statements which are two years old because of the inordinate amount of time required for a book to go from manuscript to publication. Corballis mentions that no satisfactory bibliography on Stoppard exists. This is no longer the case with the publication of David Bratt's excellent annotated bibliography Tom Stoppard (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982). A series of plays and other minor works that Corballis lists as unavailable are now accessible in The Dog It Was That Died and Other Plays (London: Faber and Faber, 1983). There are too many interesting ideas in this book for it to be dismissed. Corballis welcomes a mental response and even disagreement from his readers. Those with an interest in Stoppard must add this book (0 the list for required reading. JOH N HARTY , UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BERNARD F. DUKORE. American Dramatists t918- 1945. London: Macmillan J984. Pp. 191, illustrated. £13·00; £4.95 (PB). Professor Dukore's latest book, American Dramatists 1918- 1945, is a must for anyone interested in theatre in general and in American theatre in particular. Concise, cogent, Book Reviews 147 provocative, and extremely entertaining, it offers not only a history of the theatre of the period, but also evaluations and discussions of the works and productions of outstanding playwrights during the interwar years: Rice, Cummings, Kaufman and Hart, Anderson, Odets, Wilder, Hellman, and Saroyan. American drama began with O'Neill, Dukare suggests, more specifically with Beyond the Horizon (1920), which set the stage for sophisticated. professional and innovative works. It also put an end to "the piffle and twaddle" of worthless and sentimental trivia so popular at the time. New York was the theatrical center. Just as Paris could boast of its Theatre Libre, Berlin of its Freie BOhne, London of its Independent Theatre, Moscow of its Art Theatre, so New York had its Washington Square Players, whom Lee Simonson reorganized in 1918 as the Theatre Guild. Its fIrst production: Rice's The Adding Machine. Although The Adding Machine shocked audiences at the lime because of its "gratuitously vulgar" scenes, its open approach to sex, this story deaing with Mr. Zero, a white-collar worker enslaved by his monotonous job and a virago wife, is "the flrst American play," writes Dukore, "to dramatise human beings nonentitised by...