T. S. Eliot's Dramatic Theory and Practice by Carol H. Smith (review)

1964 BOOK REVIEWS 235 Moreover, as a leader in the revival of genuine theater among religious groups, Mr. Ehrensperger is in a position to inform his readers of the work being accomplished by Mr. E. Martin Browne in England and by such groups in this country as Union Theological Seminary, the author's own Boston University School of Theology, and colleges and universities like Scarritt, Hamline and Baylor. Religious drama, if it has any real history in this country, is concerned not so much with playwrights as with active religious theaters. A more complete treatment of the development of religious drama in our contemporary theater demands more space than is allotted it in an appendix. The central problem of the book, however, is not with details of a chapter here or there, but rather with the subtle and precarious relationship that exists between religion and drama. The author shows that he is aware of the tension by the meaningful subtitle of his book: Religious Drama: Ends and Means. In a religious context, that is, in a context of organized religion, there will always remain the tension between the use of drama as a means to a religious end and the development of drama as an end in itself. It is obvious that the author has a deep understanding and genuine regard for drama for its own sake. This he has tried to communicate to his readers among ministers and Christian worshippers of all denominations. He has rightly surmised that much of the problem with past attempts of religion to use drama is that they neglected to make proper use of the means and counted too heavily upon a religious motive to carry the production through. There is another proposition that is implicit in Mr. Ehrensperger's treatment of the problem: religious education has frequently neglected to develop a proper respect for the arts and has, as a consequence, failed to teach people to integrate them into their religious lives. Much can and is being done to relieve the situation by a better education in the arts by divinity schools and among church groups. Still one has the suspicion that the tension cannot, and perhaps should not, be entirely eradicated, but must remain in some degree as a healthy reminder that drama has an end in itself (albeit a proximate one) that may serve in the work of religion but one that cannot be violated or ignored without disastrous results to both religion and drama. In his book Mr. Ehrensperger has the courage to propose the problem to those who can best effect a change in the Christian's attitude toward drama. The book does not solve all of the problems but it makes a necessary beginning to the solution . EMILE G. McANANY, S.J. St. Mary's College T. S. ELIOT'S DRAMATIC THEORY AND PRACTICE from Sweeney Agonistes to The Elder Statesman, by Carol H. Smith, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1963, ix, 251 pp. Price $5.50. Mrs. Smith's title is somewhat misleading. Her book is focussed not upon dramaturgy as such but upon Eliot's search for an ordering principle, his discovery of it in the mythic-cum-ritualistic pattern of death and rebirth which Cornford postulated as the basis of ancient Greek drama, and his assimilation of this pattern to Christianity and the idiom and theatrical modes of the twentieth century. Insofar as Mrs. Smith sharpens this focus to an analysis of the way Eliot gradually integrates "the dramatic surface with the spiritual depths of meaning" (p. 185) ~o as to lead the audience almost imperceptibly to an awareness of how ordinary life is informed by spiritual reality, she fulfills the promise of the title. But her method-play-by-play commentary-betrays her into discussion which is not 236 MODERN DRAMA September strictly relevant to her thesis, and indeed there are fairly long stretches in the book which yield little that is new to anyone familiar with earlier studies of the plays, although she often sums up the implications of those studies with luminous grace. , The most original section of the book is the chapter on Sweeney Agonistes, in which Mrs. Smith ,demonstrates...