The Designs of Carolean Comedy by Eric Rothstein, Frances M. Kavenik (review)

198 Comparative Drama guilt that threatens to engulf him, is everyman; as the banished prince, he is Adam seeking readmittance to the garden." But none of O'Neill's characters gains readmittance to the garden until Josie opens the gate for !im Tyrone in A Moon for the Misbegotten. A true Irish matriarch, Josie IS the magna mater. According to Porter, her intervention is efficacious in part because she represents the playwright's return to his own cultural and communal roots. Within this framework, Porter offers a shrewd insightful reading of O'Neill's last play. ' The intermediary chapters, though, are less satisfying. Porter's dilemma is that she views each of the earlier plays as a static attempt to abolish time; each inevitably dramatizes the same failure of the quest. In practi~e the thesis becomes repetitious and l,eads to several questionable readings. In order to support her contention that there is no real forward motion in The Iceman Cometh, Porter claims that Hickey denies the insights that he has acquired during his confession and ends by retreating to the comfortable delusion of insanity. However, Hickey's actions at the end of the play suggest that his last,. enlightened gift to the boozers at Harry Hope's is to restore their communal peace of mind despite his own knowledge of the truth. Similarly, Porter argues that the ritual confessions in Long Day's Journey into Night fail to be redemptive because the Tyrones ultimately do not regard what they have done as requiring absolution and because Edmund, who is cast in the role of priest-confessor, "is not a full-fledged member of this community." Yet Jamie, for one, does beg absolution of his brother, and it strains credulity to claim that Edmund is somehow less than a full-fledged member of the family. Might it not be more fruitful in this case to consider the play as awhoJe as ritual with the playwright himself (as opposed to a particular character) cast in the role of priest-confessor? ~everthel~ss, i?ere is ~uch that is rewarding in this provocative study of time and ntnalm O'Neill's late plays, Porter's hypothetical reconstruction of the unfinished Calms of Capricorn is of particular interest, as is her discussion of More Stately Mansions. Critics may disagree with the author on specific points, but anyone interested in the playwright's career will appreciate this thematic overview of O'Neill's intertwined autobiographical and historical cycles. MICHAEL HINDEN University of Wisconsin-Madison Eric Rothstein and Frances M. Kavenik. The Designs of Carolean Comedy. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988. pp. viii + 296. $29;95. The Designs of Carolean Comedy is a book for specialists: it assumes detailed, ready 'knowledge of a number of comedies staged in London between 1660 and 1685, while it provides little background information about plots and ouly a trifle more about characters. It pays special attention to the Davenant-Dryden Tempest and Dryden's Secret Love, Marriage A-la-Mode, and Spanish Fryar; but other plays receive similar detailed analyses. The book concludes with useful appendices on the I \ I I I ! Reviews 199 comic repertory, a ten-page bibliography, and an index. Although Rothstein 's name appears first on the title page, the vitae at the end of the book report that this volume "grew out of work for [Kavenik's] dissertation " at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Rothstein is Edgar W. Lacy Professor. The italicized word in the title puns on a principal theme of the book, for the authors discuss not only the patterns ("designs") of Carolean comedy, but also its strategies in appealing to various interests of the audience (it has "designs" on them: the word audience is always used in the plural to emphasize their variety of interests and points of view). The authors challenge the assumption that these plays "cohere in the (re)presentation of belief or attitude" (p. 1); instead, theyemphasize that the comedies gratify wishes rather than convey truths: Our hypothesis is as follows. Carolean Comedy primarily entertains not through wit, farce, or bawdry for their own sake but by allowing the audience to entertain (in...