The Laws of History and the Laws of Drama: Barrie Stavis'The Raw Edge of Victory

Abstract

When I first read Barrie Stavis' The Raw Edge of Victory (1976) I was struck by the thought: What an unusual play for an American to write! For it deals with the political history of the United States. American plays usually do not do that. They have a more limited vision, dealing with personal relationships in romantic melodramas that at best shed some light on the immediate surroundings of the protagonists. Daniel Larner has contrasted this norm with the power of what he calls Stavis' heroic realism.' Reading this powerful drama today, in the midst of exciting changes in my own country that have led to the abolition of the German Democratic Republic and, I hope, to some changes in the unified entity within which that country is incorporated, an intensified sense of historical mutability discloses how profound and how topical is Stavis' dramatic treatment of historical events. A dominant contemporary challenge lies in the necessity and the chance to transform the two superpower blocks of NATO and Warsaw Pact from a military instrument of the past cold war into political units of security and global peace. Stavis sees the struggle about the superiority of the civil over the military as pivotal for the life of a nation; today his view seems to have gained a new dimension and an unprecedented actuality. Change, indeed, is the mark of history and, accordingly, of Barrie Stavis' concept of historical drama. About his first four plays Lamp at Midnight (about Galileo Galilei), The Man Who Never Died (about Joe Hill), Harpers Ferry (about John Brown) and Coat of Many Colors (about Joseph in Egypt), he said: