The Ways of the World: Comedy and Society by Robert Bechtold Heilman (review)

REVIEWS Robert Bechtold Heilman. The Ways of the World: Comedy and Society. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1978. Pp. xii + 294. $17.50. Since his textbook (with Cleanth Brooks) entitled Understanding Drama (1948), Professor Heilman has devoted his chief scholarship to the broad subject of that title, first by his careful studies of King Lear (This Great Stage, 1948) and Othello (Magic in the Web, 1956), and then, quite logically, by his studies of dramatic genres, tragedy and melo­ drama (Tragedy and Melodrama, 1968, and The Iceman, the Arsonist, and the Troubled Agent, 1973). Now comes the nature of comedy, the most difficult of genres. His studies are rightly more upon modes than upon strict definitions, more upon spirit than upon limitations. Thus tragedy derives from a struggle within the mind of man, melodrama from one between the man of uncompromising conviction and the social order, now comedy from man’s dealings with society but not with un­ compromising convictions, defiance or heroics, rather with finding ac­ commodation with society or accepting the ways of the world. The author does not restrict himself to a discussion of such plays as are called comedies, nor yet to the drama alone: novels may also reveal the comic spirit. But because “the essence of comedy is the relation with others,” he enters into the ways of comedy by moving, not through art alone, but through human experience itself, out of which art is shaped. Nor throughout does he forget this raw material. So he examines some ten or a dozen ways philosophers and critics have defined or explained the nature of the comic. He divides their theories into three types (the “corrective” or satirical, the “liberative,” and the theory that comedy is rooted in the disharmonies and incon­ gruities of human existence), none of which he finds adequate—though all are helpful in his treatment of a “more comprehensive view of the comic realm.” This larger view sees the world as it is, though it may not approve it. Though Congreve, Wilde, Shaw, and Fry may scoff at its foibles, they never evade, deny, or reject the world and its waywardness, human society and its incongruous and ambiguous practices; instead they are more often amused by them. Though they may hope the world will be improved, they would agree with Carlyle’s profane approval of Margaret Fuller’s decision to “accept the world.” For the protagonist of comedy it is wiser to tolerate a foolish world—even treat it with indulgence and affection—than to be destroyed by it. And for the writer this is a vast and infinitely varied world, comprising the doings of family, politics, 258 Reviews 259 economics, bureaucracy, high society, and people of highest urban so­ phistication. It is a world of “fundamental disparateness.” With tragedy and melodrama it may “coinhabit” the same state or family and even combine one mode with the other. Yet combined, he thinks, the modes are always separable. Out of a divided mind or psychomachia the tragic person may confront the social order; out of no such division does the person of comedy act, but from wholeness of spirit and a unity of mind at peace with itself. The turmoil within Macbeth’s soul brings turmoil to Scotland; no such turmoil disturbs the mind of Prince Hal. The author next distinguishes how such acceptance becomes the special property of comedy. The plays examined range from those of outright rejection of the world to those of uncritical acceptance— “black comedy.” In both extremes protagonists may see the world as it is, but that of tragedy recognizes the flaw that drives 'him beyond the moral order, whereas that of comedy wills not to reach beyond it. The melo­ dramatic, recognizing no flaw within, shares with him of tragedy the will to reverse the way things go. Freed of hybris, the comic spirit ac­ commodates himself to things as they are. Melodrama brings triumph or defeat; comedy brings compromise. A brief survey of a career or two and an analysis of several plays reveal further distinctions between the two. They turn upon contrasts that show, for example, that satire will not fit into Heilman’s...