The Esthetic of Jean Cocteau by Lydia Crowson (review)

374 Comparative Drama faced, his chin down like that of a boxer waiting to ward the punch. He was balanced and held by Hamlet’s rigid, eager face, with nose jutting, on the other side of the stage. For the dumb-show the Players wore staring white and oddly sinister masks. The play itself was spotlit by a torch held by a Player. . . . The sense of mystery and of a horror about to be suddenly unleashed was very strong, and Hamlet’s perhaps too blatant provocations at least increased the pressure of the screw. At the moment when it became intolerable Claudius and Hamlet both started from their seats and met in the central ‘spot,’ to glare at each other, nose to nose, over the body of ‘Gonzago’ before Claudius made his distracted exit down the central aisle.” This could hardly be better; David is a master at capturing the form and pressure of theatrical action. And his descrip­ tions are complemented by a finely selected series of photographs. Unfortunately, David is often inaccurate with scholarly details. Writ­ ing about the Seleucus episode in Antony and Cleopatra, he says: “Plu­ tarch, it is true, is quite clear about the plot with Seleucus, but I believe that Shakespeare meant to keep us guessing until almost the very end.” In fact, Plutarch says nothing about a plot, nor does Shakespeare. This error was explained and corrected by Brents Stirling in 1964. David has obviously not reread Plutarch, and he has not consulted the modern scholars—whom he often decries. In describing Barton’s production of Richard II, David believes there should be only one assistant gardener in the garden scene. The words of the chief gardener (III.iv.29, 33) make it clear that there are at least two assistants. Discussing the Henry IV plays, David asserts that the “only possible defence of the unity of the two parts comes from a Japanese scholar, Keiji Aoki.” This puzzling statement seems to deny, or ignore, a wealth of penetrating Western scholarship and commentary on the subject. G. K. Hunter—to cite only one example—pointed out some years ago that the two parts are parallel in structure and thus are very like other Elizabethan two-part plays. However, this book is best read for its brilliant, moderate, and intel­ ligent description of five years’ of Shakespeare production in England. I enjoyed reading it very much. W. L. GODSHALK University of Cincinnati Lydia Crowson. The Esthetic of Jean Cocteau. The University Press of New England, 1978. Pp. 200. $10.00. More than fifteen years have passed since the death of Jean Cocteau. Since then various studies of different kinds, both in French and English, have been published about this writer. Probably the best of the lot is Francis Steegmuller’s excellent, elegant, and judicious critical biography, Cocteau, a book which is a model of its kind. An experienced and most professional writer, Steegmuller is an exemplary belletrist who combines thorough scholarship and a pleasing style with a thoughtful and dis­ tanced consideration of his subject. Steegmuller’s study is an object Reviews 375 lesson in what literary scholarship should be, but rarely is. One returns to Steegmuller’s book, as one turned earlier to those of Neal Oxenhandler on the plays and Wallace Fowlie on the poetry of Cocteau, to learn a great deal about this often perplexing writer. Of course, it is a simple matter to place Cocteau. His milieu is familiar, perhaps too familiar; his contemporaries among the glories of modern art. Indeed, amidst the great fondateurs of the twentieth century, he moved, it seems, with ease and familiarity, a seemingly major figure to the manner born. A precocious teenage poet, a fin-de-siècle angry young man, he plunged into the competitive world of tout Paris with a strong sense of himself sometimes overwhelming and often exasperating to those around him. Performance, whether onstage or off, was all, the winsomely snobbish turns of a dandy anxious and determined to make his mark. He did not merely astonish, as his friend Diaghilev suggested; he shocked, eager to justify those adjectives which soon clung to his name: mercurial, enigmatic, provocative, and quixotic...