Playwriting by Bernard Grebanier (review)

1963 BOOK REVIEWS 87 so commendably attempted. Here is the continuing challenge to admirers of Tennessee Williams, if rhis obviously twisted talent is ·to survive as something more than a Shakespeare who never got beyond Titus. Andronicus. WISNER. PAYNE KINNE Tufts University PLAYWRITING, by Bernard Grebanier, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1961, 38Q pp. Price $4·50' This book is recommended. It is a book on .form. a study of form; the author holds the theory .that form is creative of ideas. It is a thorough, different, stimulating analysis of structure or the science of playwriting. Although numerous books have appeared on the subject, this one is not a rehash of previous ones and it is not hackneyed; subjects which have been discussed before are here presented with freshness and from new viewpoints. The discussion of characterization includes several new slants; the chapter on dialogue is succinct, clear, comprehensive; the section on pl'Oportioning the play is revealing; interesting sidelights are discovered, such as an analysis of Shakespeare as a clever mechanic of dramatic writing. When the reader has finished the book, he has learned many things, and he feels pretty smart because he knows them. The author states, "I have never been able to recommend to my students a text book." This reviewer is not sure his book can be recommended as a text; it is doubtful whether the beginner can learn to write plays from reading it; but he can study it with profit for its wealth of information and its stimulation; after reading it he should want to try his hand at playwriting. If the book possesses an outstanding fault, it is padding. Twelve plays are selected for analysis. Lengthy. quotations (on the same point) are taken from each play. Surely so much repetition is not necessary. The author devotes three full pages to comment on a certain line in Behrman's Rain From Heaven. The point could have been made more briefly. The 380 pages of the text could have been condensed to advantage. The author sometimes uses space to reduce to smooth formula that which is obvious; and occasionally he is dogmatic and very sure of himself. We would retain our pleasant feeling for him if he were more modest. The present reviewer does not wish, howeve!', to drive a reader from the book. It is readable, informative, challenging-whether or not the reader agrees with the author concerning his theories on the proposition and the climax. As one who has read text after text and has endeavored to teach playwriting for many years, I was never bored, I never skipped (except in some of the quotations) but read with a sustained interest and a respect for the intelligence of the author. ALLEN CRAFTON University of Kansas EIGHT DRAMAS OF CALDERON, FREELY TRANSLATED, tr. Edward Fitzgerald . Garden City, Doubleday &: Co., 1961, 440 pp. $1-45. CALDERON 4 PLAYS, New York. Hill and Wang, 1961, 319 pp. $1.95. Edward Fitzgerald wrote his own review of his Calderonian translations in the preface to his original edition. (Should it not be 1853, rather than 1865, as is cited in this volume?) He agrees that a closer following of the original might, in a number of instances, have been better, but believes that Spanish passion sounds bombastic to English ears. Besides, Calderon's "concession to private haste or 88 MODERN DRAMA May public taste" does not always represent his better self. In the six plays of his first volume. Fitzgerald's choice was not the best work of Spain's final G.olden Age dramatist, etcept for the "homely Mayor 0IZalamea." Later. however. he did translate for private circulation the two works by Calderon which he esteemed greatest: The Mighty Magician and La vida es sueflo, which he entitl~ Such StuD as Dreams Are Made Of. This is not the first time Calderon has appeared in English garb. During his lifetime. his Mejor esta que estaba was acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Shelley put parr of The Mighty Magician into English, and that inspired Irishnian,Denis Florence MacCarthy. published his version of Calderon the same year as Fitzgerald . First play in the present collection is Painter of...