"Ibsen the Romantic" : Analogues of Paradise in the Later Plays by Errol Durbach (review)

Book Reviews interprets Williams's use of imagery, particularly the "sister figure," as a kind of expositional "short-hand." Part Four, "Dramaturgy," offers tentative conclusions about the achievement of this early work. Frank Durham describesMenagerie as a poem written in the language of the modem stage. Roger B. Stein concludes that Williams's success in this work is derived from his ability to achieve a "delicate balance" between the play's poetic form and its social, psychological, and religious contents. The section concludes with Paul T. Nolan's comparison of Menagerie and Arthur Miller's After the Fall as examples of a new dramatic genre - the memory play. The collection of essays assembled by Parker is particularly valuable at this time. It not only offers a highly useful review of criticalinterpretations of The Glass Menagerie, but also provides an opportunity to reexamine Williams's career and to reassess his contribution to the idea of dramatic form, as well as to the literature of the modem theatre. The editor takes this reassessment to be a necessary function, commenting in the concluding lines of his excellent introductory essay that, "Despite the goodwork already done, scholarship on Williams is still only just beginning." An important line of such scholarly and critical inquiry involves the influence of Williams's brief career as a film writer on both his idea of a plastic form and the nature of the "scenic language" required to bring that form to life in contemporary theatre. One conclusion to be drawn from the materials assembled in this important collection of essays is that The Glass Menagerie may come to assume a more significant role in the history of the playwright's career than it has been generally assigned. It may come to be seen as the best measure of the playwright's original contribution to the American drama and, indeed, to the modem theatre. Works which followed it were to excel in specific aspects of form: A Streetcar Named Desire in characterization, Cat on a Hot TinRoof in the structure of action, and Camino Real in the exposition of themes. The Glass Menagerie- on the surface a more naive work than any of these later plays -retains in performance a clarity of vision, an integrity of purpose, an emotional impact, and a sense of beauty which are the basis of both its continuing popularity with audiences in World theatre, and the claims of many performing artists that it is the work most representative of Tennessee Williams's unique contribution to modern drama. ESTHER M. JACKSON, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ERROL DURBACH. "Ibsen the Romantic": Analogues of Paradise in the Later Plays. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press 1982. Pp. vii, 213. $Ig. Errol Durbach's study exercises once more the epithet "romantic" as an approximate term for some of the major themes articulated in Ibsen's later, more realistic plays. The quotation marks in the title suggest, as he admits, "an idea for investigation rather than a position confidently asserted" (p. I), but an idea at least as old as BernardLuther ("Natur und Romantik bei Ibsen," lbsens Beruf [I gi o]) and Fredrik Paasche ("Ibsen og nationalromantiken," Samtiden [I gog]), certainly older than E.M. Forster, whose I928 Book Reviews 279 essay "Ibsen the Romantic" is Durbach's starting point. Durbach, it seems to me, recognizes quite correctly Ibsen's "counter-Romantic," "anti-Romantic," or "Negative Romantic" attitude as a dramatic "bourgeoisie grasping at romantic possibility and, in the very attempt to make it viable, devastating and destroying life itself" (p. 4). Simply stated, Ibsen's protagonists in the later plays share a nostalgic yearning for a paradise lost. But finding a reality with no such ideal affinities, they are compelled to turn either inward to unhealthy, self-immortalizing fictions or outward to idealized cultural societies which ultimately disintegrate into the "anti-Paradise, the Kindermord, [or) the perversion of love" (p. 31). Together, these last three dianoia define Ibsen's cynicism for a romantic temperament; separated, the major chapters of Durbach's discussion. Durbach's primary focus in this book is Ibsen's relationship to "the larger context of English and European Romanticism" (p. 31), but he ignores local influences...