Serjeant Musgrave's Problem

SERJEANT MUSGRAVE'S PROBLEM Whether they see it as a source of strengthl or of weakness,2 there is one thing on which critics, reviewers, and columnists are agreed: John Arden writes plays on explosive issues and does not take sides or provide answers-or at least not openly. Implicit in many versions of this dictum, moreover, is the idea that a refusal to spell out a· moral position in this way is a radical departure in the drama.s It is because audiences were unused to an impartial presentation of material that Arden's plays, and particularly Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, were greeted at first with hostility and bewilderment. In fact, of course, there is nothing new in the idea of preserving some degree of neutrality towards one's characters or in failing to provide the pat answer at the end of the play. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance is clearly in the tradition of the Victorian and Edwardian problem play and in its more subtle forms this type of play frequently aspires to a reticence of this kind. Thus Shaw describes the more advanced form of the play of ideas as follows: the drama arises through a conflict of unsettled ideals rather than through vulgar attachments, rapacities, generosities, resentments, ambitions, misunderstandings, oddities and so forth as to which no moral question is raised. The conflict is not between clear right and wrong: the villain is as conscientious as the hero, if not more so: in fact, the question which makes the play interesting (when it is interesting) is which is the villain and which the hero.4 It seems to me that the confusion occasioned by Serjeant Musgrave's Dance is not due to its use of this by now fairly conventional formula, and it is certainly not due to any advance in sophistication on it. In many respects Serjeant Musgrave's Dance is quite unsubtle in the ways it relates narrative, character, and moral significance. Rather than refinements on the older form it is weaknesses in the handling of it that have led to the confusion. The main feature of the problem play is that the conflict at the heart of the action is a particular example of some general social issue, with different characters embodying different attitudes to that 1 For example, Tom Milne, "Touch of the Poet: A Study of John Arden's Plays," New Left Review No.7 Oan.- Feb. 1961), 21. 2 For example, George E. Wellwarth, The Theatre of Protest and Paradox (New York, 1964), p. 270. 3 C. Marowitz, New American Drama (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 15, is one example of this. 4 George Bernard Shaw, Major Critical Essays (London, 1932), p. 139. 54 1970 SERJEANT MUSGRAVE'S PROBLEM 55 issue. In the more direct examples of the genre, such as Robertson's Caste or Pinero's The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, a display of the clash of attitudes is worked into the exposition to pinpoint the theme. The progress of the particular story is, in effect, a demonstration lesson , with reminders of the general significance along the line and with the outcome of the particular case held to have general applicability . It either provides an answer to the problem or, in the case of the unresolved play, seeks to define it. Once again the more forthright play tends to spell out this general relevance by concluding with characters actually discussing the significance of what has happened. Caste again provides an example, as, for that matter does Shaw's discussion of Ibsen's Doll's House.5 The opening scenes of Serjeant Musgrave's Dance are largely given up to the creation of atmosphere, and it is not until Act I, Scene iii, the graveyard scene, that any thematic preoccupation begins to emerge. But though this emergence is delayed, it is managed in the most formal of problem-play styles, as a discussion revealing different points of view on an important issue. Musgrave compels his three followers to state why they are supporting him and this in effect constitutes the setting out of three distinct attitudes to what most critics regard as the central issue of the play-the problem of what is...