Masks of Childhood: The Easter Egg, Three Desks, the Killdeer by James Reaney, and: Hunting Stuart & Other Plays by Robertson Davies, and: The Hanged Man by Robert Gurik, and: The White Geese by Marcel Dubé, and: Leaving Home by David French (review)

Book Reviews • MASKS OF CHILDHOOD: THE EASTER EGG, THREE DESKS, THE KILLDEER, by James Reaney. New Drama 2. 292 pp. HUNTING STUART & OTHER PLAYS, by Robertson Davies. New Drama 3.274 pp. THE HANGED MAN, by Robert Gurik, translated by Philip London and Laurence Berard. New Drama 4. 98 pp. THE WHITE GEESE, by Marcel Dube, translated by Jean Remple. New Drama 5. 106 pp. LEAVING HOME. by David French. New Drama 7. 105 pp. Toronto: new press, 1972. $6.50 and $2.50. General editor: R. B. Parker. The Canadian universities with which I am acquainted seldom if ever include Canadian drama in their generic or national literature courses. The universities in the United States with which I am acquainted don't know that there is any. And the artistic directors of local theaters in Canada have long claimed to be seeking Canadian plays suitable for production but have only recently begun to find them. Toronto's new press states in each volume of its New Drama series that its aim is to brighten this rather gloomy picture: This series aims to encourage the performance of more Canadian plays and to promote the teaching of Canadian drama in high schools, colleges, and universities. It will include anthology volumes grouping together three or four Canadian plays which have a common interest, and also single play volumes of contemporary plays and Quebec plays in translation. Each volume will contain a critical introduction or afterword, with biographical and bibliographical notes to encourage further research. \ 235 236 BOOK REVIEWS New Press has taken a middle-sized step towards the achievement of its stated aim. Inevitably, the quality of the plays in the series varies somewhat, but most are good and the choice of playwrights is good - a mixture of relative newcomers and established dramatists of recognized importance. Robertson Davies, who comes under the second category though he is perhaps now best known as a novelist, writes with a humor that is sometimes merely impish and often much more; his characters travel to the edge of the abyss of self-knowledge, look down, and triumphantly maintain their balance, yet Davies never goes beyond what his actor's instinct tells him will work on a stage. The Davies volume is the only one of the group listed here that is lacking in critical and biographical apparatus (except for a short paragraph by Davies himself for each play and an unannotated list of his other works); the material supplied in the other volumes is brief but valuable, guiding the student or actor to begin his work on the plays but leaving much to be done by the teacher or director. R. B. Parker's afterword in the volume of James Reaney's plays is especially helpful as an introduction to the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of these verse dramas or dramatic poems, with their heavy reliance on a characteristic body of imagery. I find David French's Leaving Home the least interesting of this group. The title tells it all, though the play is to some extent saved from banality by the nature of the generation gap involved and the local Newfoundland color. French Canadian drama has been very scarce indeed outside of Montreal and Quebec, so it is a particular pleasure to find it represented in the New Drama series. Both Gurik's The Hanged Man and Dube's The White Geese are strongly rooted in the society, the problems, the character of French Canada, and yet, as good drama should, they grow beyond the local limitations to universal significance as each dramatist develops his shattering psychological insights. The very fact that new press is publishing plays, as well as choosing good ones for the most part, is cause for rejoicing. Canadian plays in print exist in the depths of library stacks where specialists and bibliographers may find them, but teachers need quantities of readily available copies to be able to present the subject adequately. There are doubtless many reasons for the infrequent appearance of Canadian plays in university courses, but the problem of texts is clearly one of them. Furthermore, many plays have never appeared in print at all. Some small presses, such as Talonbooks...