Could You Die in a Theatre?

214 ROBERTSON DAVIES Could You Die in a Theatre? ROBERTSON DAVIES Jonas Barish. The Anti-Theatrical Prejudice Berkeley: University of California Press 1981. 499. $24.50 In undertaking to chronicle and discuss the range ofanti-theatricalprejudice since first there was a theatre to provoke such feeling Jonas Barish has shouldered a burden that might have broken many a good man, he has performed it not only with scholarly fullness but with a concision and wit that make delightful reading. It is in this vein that one wishes all academic studies of the theatre to be written. The theatre, which seeks to raise our spirits and charm our ears, ought to be discussed in terms congruous with its own lively spirit; alas, too often we are belaboured by writers who seek to make the theatre academic rather than to bring the theatre into academe. Not Barish, one feels that he loves the playhouse and the player-folk, and although he is judicious in defending them against theirenemies, there is never any doubt about where his sympathies lie. One is tempted to say, a model book - if that had not such dreadful overtones. What sort of people are they who do not like the theatre? Of course there are plenty of people who are indifferent to it, but do not wish to abolish it, this book gives us the history and opinions of those who would abolish if they could. They belong to the variety of mankind sometimes called Patrists - authoritarians, people suspicious of man when he is not under close guard, retrogressive and severe in politics, repressive towards women, worshippers direct or by implication of the Father-God, and of course suspicious of the arts and all those things, some of them undoubtedly reprehensible, which the arts bring in their train. The Patrists cannot be dismissed simply as killjoys. Tertullian, despite his furious rebukes to the ungodly, was a man of mighty spirit and a formidable advocate; it must be remembered that in his day the theatre had sunk to a level of bestial exhibition which makes our present triflings with 'simulated sex' look like the play of children behind a barn. Plato and Augustine, who argued against the theatre, could, under other circumstances, have been ornaments of dramatic literature, for they understood dramatic effect and the power of dialogue as few have done. Among the churchmen who condemned the stage there were many who also had grave doubts about sacramentalism and the pomp of church ceremonial. If a man questions the mimetic element in the liturgyl he cannot be a friend ofrough farce and streetshows. Anti-theatrical prejudice was notan aspect of stupidity, it was part of the philosophy of men who deeply mistrusted imaginative experience ofany kindl and they numbered among their forces minds as fine-honed as that of La Rochefoucauld, a subtle anti-theatric who shoots his arrows both in the Maxims and his R€flexions diverses; what may appear on the stage as great examplesl says he - Diogenes, Ocerol AntonYI and Cato to name a few - have produced an infinite number of bad copiesl for it is the externals of UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 52, NUMBER 2, WINTER 198:21) 0042-o247I8Y02QO-0214-021j7$oo.ooIo