French Tragedy: The Power of Enactment by Albert Cook (review)

Reviews 293 with O’Neill’s life. They add little to our sense of the artistic achieve­ ment and final vision of this playwright. I have already alluded to the very helpful connecting essays written by Travis Bogard. Few scholars know more about O’Neill’s art and life. Also helpful are the notes prepared by the editor Jackson R. Bryer, with the assistance of Ruth M. Alvarez. A multitude of proper names, mostly of people associated with the theatre of the 1920’s and 30’s, are identified clearly and succinctly. The editing of these letters has been much needed. It has been patiently and competently attended to. MICHAEL MANHEIM The University of Toledo Albert Cook. French Tragedy: The Power of Enactment. Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press, 1981. Pp. xiv + 124. $14.95. Albert Cook is well known to scholars of theater through his various books on Greek and European drama, and it is not surprising that he should want to examine Seventeenth-Century French Tragedy. The title of this slim volume, however, misleads the reader. Professor Cook’s study is limited to a few plays by Racine and Corneille. In fact, more than three fourths of the book are devoted to Racine with about twenty pages allo­ cated to Corneille. It becomes evident, therefore, that the author has no intention of examining either author or French tragedy in extenso. There are detailed studies of Athalie and Britannicus and more general consid­ erations of the rest of the Racinian canon. Corneille is reduced to a far more cursory treatment: only Le Cid, Horace, Cinna and Polyeucte merit more than a few paragraphs. One wonders, therefore, what reader Pro­ fessor Cook seeks to reach as neither scholars of Racine and Corneille nor of stage practice will find much that is new either in critical metho­ dology or in his glosses. Professor Cook’s discussion of these two authors centers on their exemplary value: “Corneille and Racine, in their different ways, saw the possibility of singlemindedness. Uniformity of style, relative bareness of metaphor, an intensively interactive small cast of characters, and single, extreme action, were made to converge for plays of extreme and exem­ plary force” (p. xi). “Their success makes them, then, a kind of clear paradigm, or extreme model, for the presentation in drama of a human essence, reductive, simple, and intense” (p. xiii). The first part of the book, consisting of five chapters, is devoted to Racine and, more specifically, to a detailed study of Britannicus (Ch. 1) and Athalie (Ch. 2). The other three chapters are more general and touch briefly on several other plays, notably, Bérénice, Andromaque, Phèdre and Mithridate. The analysis of Britannicus focuses on displacement and condensation. Displacement occurs by excluding “the Christian world which permeates not only the allegiances but also the sensibilities of the ‘inner’ audience for whom Racine is writing. Classical Rome allows the Christian writer to rebuild his Christian gestures from scratch, or to contemplate sacred impulses by setting them on the tabula rasa of an ideal secular world; . . .” (p. 3). Professor Cook rightly insists on both 294 Comparative Drama the analogies and the differences that exist between the pagan Roman setting of the plays and the Christian world of Louis XIV society. The displacement allows the audience to reflect on its own world and ideals and “a sense of ultimate rightness is worked through the feelings of the spectators, who are brought up not to the hidden God, but rather to a resolution that ultimately identifies the common impulse in any human expression: to emphasize not the difference of what has been displaced, but the analogy, as between secular Rome and Christian France” (p. 6). Condensation occurs as a result of displacement by reducing the three spheres of government, love, and religion to two with government and love at center stage. This level of condensation is further emphasized by Racine’s use of couplets and their progression in the play. Professor Cook’s perceptive analysis of Racine’s verse practice, extensively examined in numerous books and articles, merits further study. His emphasis on the couplet as a unit joined to other units is both subtle and persuasive...