Aspects of Modern Drama ed. by M. W. Steinberg (review)

1961 BOOK REvIEws 405 Sur la question capitale de son apport a I'art de la mise en scene M. Frank n'a pas, et on peut Ie regretter, redige d'etude systematique. S'abritant derriere les documents, les citations brillamment commentees, il a pre£ere multiplier les illustrations, dont certaines remarquables. II essaie de reconstituer son travail de creation, montre Pitoeff dessinant ses decors, faisant jouer les materiaux les plus simples, inventant pour chaque piece Ie "detail genial" qui en 6claire Ie sens: ainsi Ie medaillon OU s'inscrit "La Dame aux Camelias; ainsi l'ascenseur d'ou montaient , "livides SOlls la lumiere verte, jaillis du mystere meme de la creation," les "Six Personnages En Quete d'Auteur." II insiste sur sa recherche du symbole, son souci de I'unite: tous les arts, toutes les composantes du spectacle, musique a motifs, eclairages savants, diction incantatoire, jeu interiorise des acteurs, devaient se fondre et creer une "atmosphere." Dans cette "croisade pour une purete dramatique totale," Pitoeff en France n'etait pas seul, et si M. Frank Ie rapproche de ses compagnons du Cartel dans la croyance qu'il avait en la toute-puissance creatrice du metteur en scene transfigurant les oeuvres dramatiques sans consideration prealable de leurs auteurs, il borne la ses comparaisons. Par contre, liaison fort interessante est faite avec certains animateurs comme Jean Vilar qui s'emploient actuellement a constituer ce theatre populaire que Pitoeff, resolument modeme, appelait deja de tous ses voeux. JACQUELINE BASTU~ ASPECTS OF MODERN DRAMA, edited by M. W. Steinberg, Holt-Dryden, New York, 1960. 633 pp. Price $3.00. Anthologies of drama, especially modem drama, are a hard problem. Novels are plentiful, each one separate, most of them paperbound and inexpensive. Forty or fifty short stories can be put into one reasonable volume and provide enough variety to satisfy most tastes. But plays--even Gassner's impressive, newly revised volume which ranges authoritatively from Ibsen to Ionesco in 1275 double column pages most likely does not contain all the plays which anyone instructor will consider the sine qua non in his course, not to speak of the general public. As a result we have few middle-sized, inexpensive, well-printed anthologies, and the trepidation of publishers and editors at venturing out into the wide open spaces of modem drama can be understood. Professor M. W. Steinberg has ventured, and on the whole very successfully. The choice of modem plays is so idiosyncratic a matter that a reviewer can easily lose himself in comments on works included and left out. It is more useful therefore to consider two points: the criteria of selection, and the ways in which the plays combine and contrast with each other. Mr. Steinberg confines himself to English and American plays and divides his dozen about evenly between them. He has ordered them alphabetically and thereby avoids national labels and chronology, both fairly meaningless in a contemporary setting. Shaw and O'Neill are there, and Miller and Williams, but also some surprises: Galsworthy and Maxwell Anderson, and a one-act play by Yeats. Three one-acts are included which seems like a very good idea; besides Yeats' The Dreaming of the Bones and the obligatory Riders to the Sea we have Man of Destiny. In general one is qnite safe in saying that all plays are intrinsically justified for their inclusion, though a few of them should be seen in comparison or contrast to each other to make that justification clear. In fact, the main strength of the volume lies in the combination of the plays. Comedies, for example, range easily from the most marmered 406 MODERN DRAMA February (yes, Earnest is present) to The Playboy of the Western World and The Time of Your Life. Two plays experiment with masks: Yeats', and The Great God Brown--and even a third can be said to do so, Man of Destiny. The well-made play (Strife) can be contrasted in manner or structure to The Time of Your Life, or in means to the poetic drama of Yeats or Anderson's chronicle of Elizabeth the Queen. And as two authors, Shaw and Synge, are each represented by a one-act and...