Chekhov and O'Neill: The Uses of the Short Story in Chekhov's and O'Neill's Plays by Peter Egri

Abstract

300Comparative Drama as well. For example, he is a sexist. Herington writes of the Oresteia that "at stake ... is nothing less than the relationship between male and female throughout the universe" (p. 135). Abstraction to such a degree may obscure the immediate sexual politics. What looks like a cosmic compromise turns out to involve the social subordination of the female to the male. Herington is a great scholar of Aeschylus, and anything he writes on the subject is interesting. This book is very readable, and will, I think, hold the attention of undergraduates. My qualm is with the plan of the series, which aspires to convey timeless values in the form of a companion to Greek literature. The result is the savvy preachiness of the professor huddled earnestly with the freshmen. As the editor acknowledges , it is an old-fashioned project. DAVID KONSTAN Wesleyan University Peter Egri. Chekhov and O'Neill: The Uses of the Short Story in Chekhov 's and O'Neill's Plays. Budapest: Akademiai Kiado, 1986. Pp. 183. (Distributed in the USA and Canada by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N. J.). $18.00. Peter Egri finds the essential form of the novella or short story "organically integrated into the dramatic pattern" (p. 13) in the plays of both Anton Chekhov and Eugene O'Neill. In the plays of others, he says, dramatic form actually replaces that of the short story. This integration in Chekhov's and O'Neill's plays, argues Egri, takes a variety of shapes: from (1) the use of a short-story-like "turning" or "culminating" point in the plays of both dramatists, to (2) what Egri calls a "cascade connection" of "narrative-dramatic units" (a sort of add-on principle), to (3) a structure which makes use of "a short-story-like climax" in the plays "involving a sudden change in the direction of the action," to (4) a "mosaic design" in the plays which creates varying patterns of multiple short-story-like actions within individual episodes. The mosaic design is particularly important for Egri in that it figures prominently in Chekhov's and O'Neill's last plays. Egri's chapters follow die above four stages of comparison, exploring selected Chekhov stories first in each chapter, then both Chekhov and O'Neill plays. In his "turning point" chapter, for example, he deals with Chekhov's story "A Defenceless Creature" and playlet "The Anniversary," then O'Neill's early play Warnings and late play Hughie. In the "cascade connection" chapter, he looks at Chekhov's story "The Duel" and early plays Platonov and Ivanov, followed by O'Neill's early Servitude and late A Moon for the Misbegotten. In the "climax" chapter, he considers several Chekhov stories along with The Sea Gull and Uncle Vanya, followed by O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra and A Touch of the Poet. In the "mosaic design" chapter, he looks at other Chekhov stories along with Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, followed by O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. And growing out of his "mosaic design" discussion, he concludes with an extended chapter on O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Reviews301 Egri's four categories raise questions which can only be touched on here. He is guilty of forcing some of the plays to fit his patterns; and while his "mosaic design" certainly fits The Iceman Cometh, the debt of that design exclusively to the short story seems questionable. More important, perhaps, is that the "short-story-like" units which Egri finds uniquely integrated into the structure of Chekhov's and O'Neill's plays are by no means unique to these two dramatists. Most plays of the Elizabethan period contain multiple plots quite as short-story-like as those Egri deals with, some of which are treated as separate units and some of which are integrated into what might aptly be labeled a mosaic design. Similarly, a play like Ibsen's A Doll House also contains examples of both loosely and tightly integrated "narrative-dramatic units" and "narrative-dramatic" climaxes. Egri is nevertheless quite astute in identifying what links these two playwrights, especially when he becomes less concerned with the form of...