Theatre and Drama in the Making ed. by John Gassner and Ralph G. Allen (review)

1965 BOOK REvmws 235 THEATRE AND DRAMA IN THE MAKING, edited by John Gassner and Ralph G. Allen, Houghton Mifilin Company, 1964, xvi+l071 pp. Price $8.50. There are a number of excellent specialized anthologies of source materials on theatre and drama, specifically on stage and production, acting, directing, playwriting , and criticism and theory, or limited to a period or area. The editors of Theatre and Drama in the Making, John Gassner and Ralph G. Allen, have provided a collection unique, so far as I am aware, in scope of selections. Their coverage is all aspects of theater and drama in Europe and America from the Greek to the present, and they have combined selections from scholarly research and dramatic criticism with primary source materials. The diversity actually represents a principle of unity, that of theater itself: of theatrical presentation as a composite art, of theater and drama as properly inseparable, and of theater as inescapably involved with social and intellectual background. Without exceeding the bounds of material directly of the theater a good deal of social hackground is revealed through inclusion of the audience as an integral part of theater, represented by such various means as Dekker's The Gull's Hornbook, a primary document, the sellolarly research of Alfred Harbage's Shakespeare's Audience , and examples of reflection of an audience in the reviewer-critic, as in William Winter's attack on Ghosts. In the introductions to the divisions and selections the editors include pertinent comment on relations between social and intellectual background and the content of plays, theories of drama, and even the technical developments of staging. With due respect to the service that has been performed in modem criticism of focusing attention on a work of literary art in its intrinsic ellaracter, a tendency to aridity has become recognizable, and it is a pleasure to receive the enrichment of humanistic 'breadth of treatment. The selections are arranged in seven sections by chronological and EuropeanAmerican division. Sub-divisions are not mechanically rigid in organization. Most of the sections include the sub-divisions "Stage Production," "Theory and Criticism," and "Playwrights and Their Sources," but the topical groupings vary according to what is significant for each section. The chronological scope and sequence, with the introductory and linking comments and narrative, not only give perspective period to period, but an over-all perspective on our immediately contemporary theater and drama. The scope of the volume is suell that it is necessarily, and intended to be, introductory, a sampling from the total resources of documentation on theater and drama. It is a liberal sampling, however, one hundred and thirty selections, and a stimulus and guide to further resources. The editors have made full use of the preceding specialized collections, to which they point the reader. They also have made many items available otherwise hard to come by, from early source documents, from later but out-of-print books, and from periodical publication, in some instances, of obscure publications. A number of items were translated into English especially for this volume. From the Preface, "this single hardcover volume represents the complete text of two paperbacks" in Houghton Mifflin's series Literature in the Making, "augmented by two appendixes containing essays of particular interest to the specialist." The book usefully and admirably contributes to the function stated by the editors, "to provide the student with an introduction to the methods and materials of research in theatre history and dramatic criticism." (It would have been additionally helpful to the student if information had been consistently provided on the availability of the full text from which a selection is made, for some of the scarce items, a library locus.) The book is rewarding read- 236 MODERN DRAMA September ing for anyone who cares about theater and drama, in renewed pleasure with old favorites and the stimulus of items first come upon. The hardcover single volume is welcome for a book to be read and reread, in as well as through, and kept at hand for reference. KENNETH ROWE University of Michigan PANTOMIME: THE SILENT THEATER, by Douglas and Kari Hunt, Atheneum, New York, 1964, 115 pp. Price $3.50. The main value of this...