Neo-Classical Dramatic Criticism: 1560–1770 by Thora Burnley Jones and Bernard de Bear Nicol (review)

Reviews 77 from the publication history of the plays, to their influence on American writers, and the spread of Shakespearean production throughout the country) . Ultimately, it is important to recognize that Shattuck has conceived his book as a series of "essays" rather than as a "history." Thus, we should not expect completeness but insight, vividness, and excellence of descriptive detail. And, though Shattuck admits that despite his work a complete history of Shakespearean production in America remains to be written, his study is certainly an excellent beginnin g toward that end and one apt long to remain an important contribution to the field. OSCAR G. BROCKETI Indiana University-Bloomington Thora Burnley Jones and Bernard de Bear Nicol. Neo-Classical Dra­ matic Criticism: 1560-1770. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Pp. vi + 1 88. $13.95. Despite its grim title, Neo-Classical Dramatic Criticism: 1560-1770 will certainly interest readers of Comparative Drama. The authors wish to describe a theory of drama which persisted, in essence, from Horace until Artaud. Jones and Nicol feel that students of the theater too frequently regard the neo-classical theorists as a group of dusty, sapless academics who have nothing to tell us in the twentieth century. On the contrary, the authors argue, these Renaissance and Enlightenment critics address at least five crucial issues : ( 1 ) the relationship between the fictional truth of the theater and the reality of the world outside it; (2) the relationship between drama and the social realities of its time; (3) the social function of drama; (4) the proper subject-matter of drama; and (5) the conventions · which writers, actors and audiences agree to accept. Certainly these are not remote issues, but are questions which Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett and especially Artaud have had to ask in our own time. In their conclusion, the authors state: "The certainties of the seventeenth century are gone forever. And yet one wonders whether the neo-classical critics in their combined wisdom did not ask most of the fundamental questions about the nature of drama, while we are still groping for the answers" (p. 1 8 1 ) . The major strength of Neo-Classical Dramatic Criticism is that it allows students of European drama to confront, within 1 8 1 pages, the most important English, French ' and Italian theorists of a 200-year period. Shakespeareans are undoubtedly vague about the critical con­ tributions of Diderot or Mercier (chapter six) ; and specialists in Moliere or Dryden may be similarly unenlightened about the specific insights of Scaliger and Castelvetro (chapter two ) . Almost anyone can bear reminding of Sidney's Defense of Poesie or Corneille's defense of his own art. One is also reminded (or, more likely, told for the first time) that it is Castelvetro, and not Aristotle or Horace, who first formulated 78 Comparative Drama the doctrine of the "unities." The authors also reject some cliches when they observe that not all neo-classical critics accepted the notion of these unities and that not all neo-classical critics thought that poetry should instruct! And in the category of "nothing new under the sun," one learns that in 1757 Diderot wrote his own Six Characters in Search of an Author; or rather, he crafted an extended dialogue between him­ self and a character from his play, The Natural Son, who argues that Diderot should picture the events as the characters actually experienced them (p. 148 ) . Jones and Nicol demonstrate that their critics are not merely bookish theorists, but have an active sense of the pragmatic questions which all theater persons must face. Moreover, the authors allow their critics to speak Clearly and directly in theif own words. Jones and Nicol not only select interesting passages, but they also provide their own lively trans­ lations from the original texts. The authors put us in touch with the probing intelligence of the critics themselves, and force us to rethink the many cloudy and second-hand opinions we may have about neoclassical dramatic theory.·. There are some serious weaknesses in the book. For example, one confronts the following sentence early in the work: "Scaliger is here breaking away from Aristotle and adopting the Horatian-Ciceronian­ Medieval view of poetry as...