The Language of Silence: On the Unspoken and Unspeakable in Modern Drama by Leslie Kane (review)

Book Reviews 127 unpublished plays. This is a book.- and a series - that every student of American - and modem - drama will want to own. JUNE SCHLUETER, LAFAYETTE COLLEGE LESLIE KANE: The Language a/Silence: On the Unspoken and Unspeakable in Modern Drama. Rutherford, N.J .: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1984. Pp. 195· $27.50. In her "Introduction" to The Language ofSilence, Leslie Kane offers a valid premise: the theatre ofMaeteriinck. Chekov, Bernard, Beckett, Pinter, and Albee is distinct from the Western dramatic traditions that precede it because of its "repression of explicit expression and continuous, conceptual dialogue and the elevated status it gives silence" (p. 14). She also contends that this approach to the use of language on stage reflects the contemporary world's uncertainty that developed after World War I and was intensified by discoveries in the fields of psychology and science. In order to illustrate her thesis, Kane examines a "representative" work by each of these playwrights (in roughly chronological order). Her comparative exegeses are intended to demonstrate the nature of the silences that she discovers in L'Intruse, The Three Sisters, Martine, En auendant GodOl, No Man's Land, and The Zoo Story, and toexplain the plays' thematic content. Unfortunately, the result is disappointingly limited and at the same time repetitive. The volume seems to be a series of articles strung together with poor transitions. Ultimately the study fails because it does not break any new ground and even ignores some important criticism that could have confmned some of the author's main points. Structurally'- the book is divided into two basic sections that deal with pre and post·World War II approaches to language in drama. There is an introduction and four chapters in the first section. The chapters are titled "Speech and Silence," "Maeterlinck ," "Chekov," and "Bernard," There is then a two-page·long Interlude, "Altered Perspective: World War" - Culmination of the Crisis of Language," followed by the second section which is composed of the three chapters "Beckett," "Pinter," and "Albee." A conclusion, a bibliography ("Works Consulted"), and an index complete the book. Stylistically, The "Introduction" reads as though it was taken from a dissertation, as does "Speech and Silence." Both chapters are filled with brief allusions to the works of Mallarme, Joseph Wood Krutch, Ortega y Gasset, George Steiner, Suzanne Langer, Ludwig Wirtgenstein, and others, but these constant references, presumably meant to confirm her reading of the plays, merely substitute for her own interpretation of the primary material, and Kane never actually develops an argument that brings all of these elements together convincingly. She claims that her intention is to show how modern drama's "retreat from the word" (p. 13) is a refusal to speak about "man's relationship to himself, his work, and his God" (p. (6), but her examples demonstrate rather that the speaking goes on, it is just couched in unconventional terms. Aside from Kane's annoying habit of leaving all of her French quotations in French 128 Book Reviews (she does provide English translations for the Russian quotes), the main problem is that she never satisfactorily defines her teoos, an omission that affects virtually the entire volume. She mentions silence as represented by "ellipses, pauses, and wordless responses" (p. IS) , though she never differentiates between these signifiers. When there is a "long pause" followed by a "silence," for instance, what is the difference between the two in tenns of stage directions (timing) and relationship to the drama's meaning? Other critics have conunented on such matters, but Kane neither does so nor recognizes that others have. In addition, she indicates that she uses the concept ofsilence to include the absence of "various fonns of connotative, indirect expression," but this definition encompasses so much that itis not v~ry helpful. "Speech and Silence" does contain some briefcomments summarizing movements in modem drama and Kane's subject authors' contributions; these summaries are useful in helping the reader focus on the critic's general theme. The chapters on the individual playwrights are disappointing. So many opportunities to discuss language and silence are missed that, although what is contail,led in the book does involve some legitimate insights, the bulk of the material...