Edward Gordon Craig and ‘The Pretenders’: A Production Revisited by Frederick J. Marker, Lise-Lone Marker (review)

HUMANITIES 433 Jamesian spectator is viewed as a 'sensibility so finely charged that all involvement turns finally inward'; the difficulty of understanding and sympathizing with Jamesian renunciations is partly attributable to the absence of public sanctions within the works themselves. Commenton the specific novels is mainstream but frequently illuminating . Berland shows George Eliot's influence on Roderick Hudson to be greater than usually supposed; Isabel Archer's final rejection of Caspar Goodwood and return to her marriage to be a function of her high ideal of civilization; the gradual decline manifested in the three novels between The Portrait and James's dramatic period to be related toJames's unwitting divorce of culture and art from the wider context of life. Berland classifies The Golden Bowl and The Ivory Tower as failures because in themJames tries again to reconcile the acquisitive genius with the life of culture as he had done years before in The American, and The Ambassadors as a success because it is built on the dichotomy between the two. The analysis of Strether - James's 'Whole Man' - is carried out according to the perspectives developed throughout the book and consequently validates the claim that the novel is James's 'persuasive tribute' to the ideal of civilization. Clarity in planning and execution, the ability to sum up discussion with witty concentration - these also help make Culture and Conduct in the Novels of Henry James a welcome addition to Jamesian criticism. (J. PETER DYSON) Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker. Edward Gordon Craig and 'The Pretenders': A Production Revisited American Society for Theatre Research, special issue Southern Illinois University Press. xiv, 134, illus. $19-95 One of the paradoxes of the long and eventful career of Edward Gordon Craig is that so few of his theatrical deSigns were actually realized on stage. The evidence regarding the handful of productions in which he was personally involved has until recently been vague and contradictory, so that the popular view advanced by such antagonists as Lee Simonsonthat he was an egotistical and impractical dilettante - has tended to persist. However, with the pioneering work of Laurence Senelick on the Craig-Stanislavsky Hamlet, and now with this splendidly documented study of the 1926 Copenhagen Pretenders, the strengths and limitations of Craig's potential as an 'Artist of the Theatre' are becoming clearer. Frederick J. Marker and Lise-Lone Marker draw not only on such previously available sources as Ulla Poulsen Skou's Genier er som tordenvejr (1973) and Craig's own rather unreliable account in A Production (1930) but also on his exchange of letters with the actor-director Emile 434 LETTERS IN CANADA 1981 Poulsenand a large collection of promptbooks and other documents in the collection of the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen. Even more valuable is their use of the Craig papers in the Bibliotheque nationale, which often serve to clarify- but occasionally to deepen - uncertainties about the extent and nature of Craig's contribution to this ambitious theatrical venture. As a result of the Markers' research Craig remains enigmatic and contradictory , but the contradictions are perceived in much sharper focus. Like the Moscow Hamlet, the Copenhagen Pretenders afforded Craig a rare opportunity to apply his ideas to a text that had become, albeit over a much shorter span of time, the victim of theatrical traditions. From its first staging, by Ibsen himself in 1864, designers and directors had approached this enormous poetic drama from a more or less realistic pOint of view, relying on historical research as the basis for extravagantly painted settings intended to evoke a convincing impression of medieval Norway. Paradoxically, Emile Poulsen, who invited Craig to assist with this new production, seems to have conceived of the playinsimilar terms. Precisely how Craig's very different ideas about theatre were to fit into such an approach is a mystery that not even the Markers have been able to elucidate. Misunderstanding was deepened by ambiguity about the extent of Craig's proposed involvement. Originally invited to 'draw the decorations and sets,' Craig was later assumed to be preparing ideas for only one or two scenes, which were somehow to be incorporated in the overall realistic conception of the Royal Theatre's resident...