Money & Politics in Ibsen, Shaw, and Brecht by Bernard F. Dukore (review)

Book Reviews 1956. In the early seventies, Brecht's widow, Helene Weigel, told me, "Bentley is an explicit enemy of ours" - the statement is quoted in Bentley's book. The fact that Bentley and Brecht knew one another and worked together in one way or another for some fifteen years is important to a full understanding of the personal discussion of The Brecht Commentaries. but the fact of the Bentley/Brecht friendship should not blind us to the wealth of commentary on Brecht's work. The commentary is central and it is very good indeed. Precisely because Bentley has enjoyed a wide circle of intenectual friends, precisely because he has been equally at home in all periods of drama history and criticism, he is a brilliant commentator on what Brecht did and did not achieve. Refusing to be browbeaten by Brecht and Berlau, Bentley was able to maintain a loving but critical perspective on Brecht's work. When he disagreed with Brecht, he said so - and he often said so - in letters to Brecht and in published commentaries on the work. " Because he cared very much for Brecht's work, he would not allow himself to be uncritical of Brecht. On one occasion, in fact, because Bentley did not allow himself to be swept away by Brecht's hyperbole ("I am the Einstein ofthe new play form") . he forced Brecht to clarify his ideas. In 1946 Bentley wrote to Brecht: "You have a conception of art which few understand. I think I am probably not one of the few. You will have to explain yourself. The explanation you gave in 'Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties' was not enough." This is very blunt criticism from a friend, but Brecht recognized its truth and went to work to remedy the lack of clarity which Bentley had identified. The result was the "Short Organum," in my judgment the most useful, clearest, best-reasoned, nonpolemical, and best-sustained piece of drama theory which Brecht ever wrote. Bentley not only had enough courage to tell Brecht directly that Brecht had not been sufficiently clear, but also had enough courage and critical acumen to tell readers where tJ find the great strengths and weaknesses in Brecht's work. Here it all is between the covers ofone book. I know of no volume that provides. line for line, a greater wealth of insight into the personality and the work of the greatest dramatist and drama theorist that this turbulent century has produced. JOHN FUEGI. UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BERNARD F. DUKORE" Money & Politics in Ibsen, Slww, and Brecht. Columbia, Missouri and London: University of Missouri Press 1980. pp. xxii, 172, $[5.95. In the final chapter in Money & Politics in Ibsen, Shaw, andBrecht, in which Bernard F. Dukore tells us once again what he has told us in greater detail in the first 160 pages of this brief book, he says, "]n capitalist societies - which are the societies about which Ibsen, Shaw and Brecht write - money underlies virtually all human activities." In that sentence can be found both the rationale for and the pitfalls facing Dukore' s study. The statement is both true and bromidic. The task that Dukore has set himself is a difficult one - to illustrate how that truth is reflected in the plays of his three dramatists without allowing the obviousness of his subject to engulf his presentation. Too often, unhappily, the obvious wins out. Dukore borrows Shaw's use of "Apostolic Succession" for the title of his introduction, but whereas Shaw's was a line reaching back to the Greeks, Dukore is Book Reviews 579 interested in just a fragment of that line in which the three playwrights he has chosen - "each in his own way a radical, left-wing writer who challenges established societal values" - are joined not by artistic afflatus but by social impulse. Ibsen is the odd man out in the group, since both Shaw. the Fabian Socialist, and Brecht, the Marxist, are adherents of particular political -theories. "Ibsen's radicalism was individualistic - at times, to the point ofanarchy," Dukore says, making a place for Ibsen as a revolutionist of "the human spirit." Although Dukore indicates that Shaw fed on Ibsen...