Man in His Theatre by Samuel Selden (review)

62 MODERN DRAMA May taste in the theatre, as in any of the arts, must be earned through effort. As the Preface states, «Appreciation in itseH cannot be taught. That is a by-product growing out of lmowledge and understanding. It comes to the individual only after he has applied. first consciously and later unconsciously. all that he can learn about form and technique, accepted principles and practice." In other words. it all takes a bit of doing. . NATALIE CALDERWOOD MAN IN HIS THEATRE, by Samuel Selden, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1957, 113 pp. Price $3.00. To Professor Selden, man in his theatre is essentially biological man set in an environment to which he must adjust But man has powers and is a force in a life where his innate drives create the Ritual and Myth which are the substance of theatre. In his introduction Professor Selden states that his aim is to help stirnu· late a Dew awareness of dramatic forces. Although his ideas are not new-it is a book of "re-exploration," he writes-his ability to re-evaluate old ideas and to place man in his theatre in a reasonable relationship with both scientific and aesthetic views makes his essay a valuable contribution to works on the nature of drama. The development of this long essay is clear and logical in the terms which Professor Selden accepts. He begins with Oxytricba, a one-celled organism whose capacities are slight but whose desires, though on a low level, suggest the three great fundamental drives of man: to exercise his powers, to preserve them, and to extend them. Exercise and preservation of his powers is not enough: man must plan, dream, progress. To completely fuHill himself, he must grow. But there is always a rising as well as a falling in life forces, and man from his earliest times has considered his welfare in terms of the cycle of days as well as the cycle of seasons. In fact. the days and the seasons became a part of his festive and religious experience. Consequently, he expressed his feelings in certain Rituals which gave birth to Myths, and from these two factors-Ritual and Myth-came the drama. The moving seasons represented the central theme of drama! summer was light, warmth, growth, good; winter was dark, coldness, decay, evil. Love was associ. ated with gro~ and the battIe of the seasons became eternal as man fouod something worthy of his emotions and struggled toward that quality of summer which he desired. Here was the drama of life, aod the theatre of man was of necessity closely related to the seasons. Blended with this concept of the seasons as a part of ancient Ritual represent· ing cyclic death and rebirth in nature is the Myth of eventual triumph. Even in tragedy one must face light as well as darkness-there must be rebirth through the return of a h~. Professor Selden shows this to be true in the ceremonies of ancient Greece and presents the idea in drama as a progression from King to Scapegoat to King's Son. "'The best of drama," he writes, «that which has been most hardy through the centuries, is the kind which fulfills the age-old pattern of the warring seasons, expressed through the figures of a dying and a re~arising .King." This principle, like the struggle between the forces of Summer and Winter, is part of the contribution of Ritual to the growth of drama. A third factor of Ritual is a sense of change, the seeking of something better. In Professor Selden's thesis this becomes a somewhat confusing suggestion that the change can be an Aristotelian reversal of fortune or an element of shock which involves the living or the dying but can be turned to good or evil according to the ability of the priacipals to make a "good adjustment." Myth. on the other hand, grows out of Ritual but lends intensity and power to both protago"!"t and antagonist. 'The Myth hero 1958 llOOK REvmws 63 may be discontented or a dreamer but he is an active rebel. striving "to belong." "Art," states Professor...