Jean Anouilh by Lewis W. Falb (review)

Reviews 183 of drawings and etchings of scenes and portraits of individual clowns suggests that these artists had a veritable “field day.” Most modem books on the Commedia reproduce these drawings lavishly, and The World Of Harlequin is no exception. Some of these are published for the first time among the 130 illustrations. The most widely known and loved Com­ media drawings are those of Jacques Callot in his series Balli Di Sfessania. Nicoll has used only a very few of these, explaining that they seem to be “far from accurate” or, if accurate, seem to show costumes localized to their source in the Neapolitan troupes. Yet he does concede that “for a suggestion of atmosphere and gesture, nothing can equal them!” (Exclamation point mine). The few Callot engravings that do appear are used to illustrate the song and dance that were an essential part of the Commedia. Many people will view this downgrading of Callot with sorrow and misgivings and grave reluctance; and Nicoll himself seems to sigh deeply even as he delivers this bombshell. The World of Harlequin is a very solid addition to the growing lore surrounding the Commedia Dell Arte. The extreme value here lies in the detailed research into primary sources. The scope of this research extends to collections and libraries throughout Europe and America. The documentation is exhaustive. One is tempted to add exhausting, save for the fact that the text is written with grace and lucidity which makes the multiplicity of facts it contains continuously interesting and always illuminating. The reissue of this book in its paperback format now puts it well within the reach of all. It should become a valued part of everyone’s personal theatre library. HENRY B. WILLIAMS Dartmouth College Lewis W. Falb. Jean Anouilh. World Dramatists Series, ed. Lina Mainiero. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1977. Pp. 169. $9.50. Falb’s modest bio-bibliographical essay is typical of this introductory series: concise, clear, and unpretentious. It will be very useful for acting students who often need an accurate glossed plot summary. Falb pre­ sents Anouilh’s theater as one where we are forced to admire the character who says “No!” to the compromises needed either for ordinary existence or positions of leadership. He shows, by implication, that admiring against our better judgment is made easier by Anouilh’s stage artifice. What we watch is not real life either by mirror or metaphor: it’s the stage. For Anouilh, Jacques in As You Like It has the aphorism backwards; it’s not “All the world’s a stage,” but “The stage’s all the world.” Plays about plays (like poems about poems and novels about novels) can in the long run be somewhat tiresome, especially, perhaps, to Amer­ ican audiences which have given Anouilh’s plays a mixed reception. 184 Comparative Drama With the significant exceptions of Antigone, a perennial campus favorite, or The Lark which Lillian Heilman adapted for stunning success with Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer, American audiences—or their spokesman critics, at any rate—find that stage-as-world, actor-as-man, playwright-as-God tend to trivialize life and, certainly, make the transfer more difficult to the spectator’s own experience. But there is a more disturbing reason for Anouilh sounding curiously super annuated to American readers today. We have always known in world literature that it is hard for literary prestige to survive loss of political power, but it is perhaps only recently that some of us Franco­ philes have realized that even to us French literature no longer dictates literary fashions. French literature still matters, but as literary history. When Beckett, an Irishman residing in France, received the Nobel Prize in 1969 for his French-English corpus, that may have been the closing date for the French as arbitres littéraires. If this is the case, Anouilh’s reputation is bound to go into eclipse and relegate his considerable body of impressive theater to drama anthologies. MARILYN GADDIS ROSE State University of New York, Binghamton ...