Classics for Contemporaries: Old Dramas for New Theaters (review)

1970 BOOK REVIEWS 109 and the author's stylistic narcissism, it opens our eyes to certain links and subterranean connections which we may have suspected without ever bringing them to light-such as those (perhaps unwittingly) implied by the description of what Jean Wiener found when he visited his friend in 1930: He was met first by a sweet odor unmistakably that of opium. At Cocteau's side stood Maurice Sache, rotund as ever, wearing a pearl gray suit and a white carnation in his lapel. Cocteau himself was scarcely recognizable. Deathly pale and enveloped in a black dressing gown, his features pinched and his hair teased into a frizzy crest, he bore a striking resemblance to some old, formerly elegant lady, an impression reinforced by the ribbon he was wearing round his neck. It was as if Cocteau had translated from Rue d'Anjou not only his room, but his mother as well. (287) The Cocteau whom Wiener surprises in this negligee comes perilously close to resembling the bisexual hero of Djuna Barnes' Surrealistic novel, Nightwood, a Tiresias-like Irishman named Matthew O'Connor. ULRICH WEISSTEIN Indiana University CLASSICS FOR CONTEMPORARIES: OLD DRAMAS FOR NEW THEATERS, edited with Introductions by Ruby Cohn, George Armstrong, and Arlin Hiken. Random House: New York, 1968. 401 pp. $4.75. The editors of Classics jor Contemporaries have prepared five plays for college and university production-Euripides' The Trojan Women, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, Moliere's That Scoundrel Scapin, Sheridan's The Critic, and Buechner 's Woyzeck. Contributing to the introduction to each play are the Scholar, the Director, and the Designer. The Scholar describes the plays under such headings as Background, Composition and Provenance, Sources, Genre, Theme, Plot, Characters , Language, and Rhythm. The Director, under Contemporaneity of a Classic. Selected Stage Interpretations, Preparation of the Text, Use of Stage Space, and Staging Problems. The Designer, under Theater Structure; Scenery, Costumes, Lighting, and Properties; and Contemporary Production Possibilities. In general, the editors are helpful without becoming inflexible or dogmatic. As the title and the sub-title of the book suggest, the editors do seek, in Lovejoy's phrase, to reinterpret the classics in the light of living thought. For example, they suggest that both The Trojan Women and Troilus and Cressida can be presented as plays which speak to the central issues of our time, since the first deals with invasion and the second with the degeneration of culture which accompanies war. Like Shaw, the editors believe we should name the villain. Just as Euripides and Shakespeare named the villain in their own day. Shakespeare knew that his audiences assumed that it had descended directly from the Trojans and that it was proud of living in "New Troy." It would not have been content with a presentation of Vice, Virtue , and Art. If there are some, and there are some indeed, who believe that art should not be sullied with propaganda, the editors can reply that the greatest art, such as the Odyssey and the Sistine Chapel ceiling, have their centers in propaganda . Classics jor Contemporaries attempts also to introduce into the theater a little learning, however dangerous some may suspect such practicing to be. Unlike most other theaters, the American theater has always been without a learned tradition . True, we have seen a good deal of symbolism lately, but symbolism is a poor substitute for learning however intriguing it may seem to the matinee girls who 110 MODERN DRAMA May write papers on the subject for their dubs. It is refreshing, then, to see the Scholar, the Director, and the Designer working together in Classics for Contemporaries. One hopes that the book makes an impression on college and university theaters. For if learning can only be established there, the infection may spread to the commercial stage, and some of us may yet linger long enough to exclaim as did the elderly lady who had just seen Oh, Calcutta! "I never thought I would live to see anything like this, but I have." MIGUO RIENZI University of Kansas ...