Modern British Dramatists ed. by John Russell Brown (review)

1969 BOOK REVIEWS 101 of the major playwrights that one cannot help wishing that she had conceived of her book differently. Dr. Knowles has organized her study in twelve chapters, most of which purportedly deal with dramatic themes, styles, or attitudes. There does not seem to be any logical basis for the sequence of chapters, nor, for that matter, for the sequence of playwrights discussed within a particular chapter. Thus, in Chapter VI, under the heading, "Studio Theatre: The New Romantics," we have an account of the plays of Jean Sarment and Jean Anouilh, while in Chapter VIII ("Studio Theatre: The Literary Play"), the author begins with Jean Giraudoux and moves on to other figures including Andre Gide and Paul Claude!. More may be lost than gained by considering Giraudoux after Anouilh, and one wonders what Gide is doing in the book at all, while Montherlant, Ghelderode, and Sartre are omitted, apparently on chronological grounds. The fundamental distinction governing the organization of the study is between "Studio Theatre" and "Boulevard Theatre," a distinction which might loosely correspond to art theater versus commercial theater. The author admits that this opposition is no longer operative in the French theatrical scene of the present day, and one may wonder how valid it was during the period at hand. The volume ends with a chapter entitled "Towards a People's Theatre," which Dr. Knowles seems to embrace as the ideal theater of tomorrow. The general categories of organization are loose and imprecise, but they enable the author to describe in impressive detail the stage history of the period. In retrospect, the long parade of fourth and fifth rate playwrights and plays offers a melancholy prospect, and one wonders if the nineteen twenties and thirties in France were as exciting and as fruitful for the theater as Dr. Knowles contends they were in her preface. Alongside the Occupation theater and even the theater after World War Two, the drama of the interwar period seems far less significant. Yet, the work of the major playwrights will surely continue to attract readers and playgoers. Dr. Knowles is at her very best in combining summary and interpretation in her discussion of Claudel, and the section dealing with the plays of Giraudoux is almost as acute and incisive. One cannot help wishing that these sections, and those on the few other major playwrights of the period, had been expanded, at the expense of the encyclopedic account of theatrical activity. The many footnotes almost always refer to details of production, although occasional and intelligent use is made of comments by the writers on their own works. There are virtually no direct references to secondary studies of individual playwrights or of the modern French drama at large, and there is no bibliography. All the same, the reader seeking to be informed about theatrical activity in France between 1918 and 1939 will find Dr. Knowles' book a useful guide. HASKELL M. BLOCK Brooklyn College of the City University of New York MODERN BRITISH DRAMATISTS, edited by John Russell Brown, TwentiethCentury Views, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1968. $4.95. John Russell Brown, who introduces this book, has collected a dozen essays, chiefly from Encore, The Critical Quarterly and The Tulane Drama Review, on the British theatre of the decade since Look Back in Anger (1956). John Whiting, whose best plays, Saint's Day and Marching Song, reached the stage in 102 MODERN DRAMA May the early fifties, is considered very briefly, but for the most part only four writers are discussed: Osborne, Pinter, Arden and Wesker. A book of this kind can be useful in three ways. First, it may help us to see the plays more clearly by suggesting what (if anything) some of them have in common ; second, it may offer provisional judgements; third, it may set the writers in the context of modern drama. A word about each of these possibilities. (1) .Have the best plays of the decade anything in common? Only their rejection of the theatre of middle-class manners (Coward, Rattigan). Tom Milne notes the concern with violence that runs through Saint's Day, The Birthday Party and Serjeant Musgrave's Dance; Martin Esslin relates...