The Theatre in Search of a Fix by Robert W. Corrigan

Abstract

266 Comparative Drama periences a traumatic, if dramatically unconvincing, change of heart and renounces his former life with appropriate moral commentary. In A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (Lady Elizabeth's, ca. 1613) Middleton projects a similar situation. Sir Walter Whorehound, who by long ar­ rangement has enjoyed Alwit's wife while Alwit has enjoyed financial independence, undergoes a moral conversion in the final act which leads him publicly to denounce both the Alwits and himself. Again, Leggatt's concern is the manner in which Middleton accommodates the moral tirade to the comic stage world: "The play's vision includes Sir Walter's moral revulsion; but [in the total lack of concern among the other char­ acters] it also includes a sardonic recognition that no amount of preach­ ing can change a world as corrupt as this one" (p. 143 ) . These examples should be sufficient to suggest the general useful­ ness of such a study. In an age of prolific composition for the stage, Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is predominantly comedy, however much subsequent critical attention to the tragedies may have distorted that fact And, especially outside the corpus of romantic comedy, much remains to be done in effectively analyzing the diversity of subject matter which contributed to this popularity. One may justifiably feel on occasion that Leggatt's study reads more like an annotated version of Harbage's and Schoenbaum's Annals than a discursive essay, more like description than extended analysis. One may also insist that his occa­ sional distinguishing of tone and theme between the public and the private stage obliges him to a more extensive consideration of the inffu­ ences of the audience upon citizen comedies. One must also admit, how­ ever, in the final analysis that Leggatt has written a needed book both because it provides an analytic frame for a large and important body of Elizabethan-Jacobean comedies and also because it offers insightful com­ mentary on at least a reasonable proportion of them. LARRY S. CHAMPION North Carolina State University Robert W. Corrigan. The Theatre in Search of a Fix. New York : Dela­ corte Press, 1973. Pp. 368. $3.25. Professor Corrigan's volume is a collection of essays culled for the most part from the many and varied anthologies he has issued during the last fifteen years. In addition, he has resuscitated several of his other pieces from various other journals for use in this current offering. That he intends this assemblage to be something more than an omnium gatherum, or blatant exhumation, is clear from a heady preface of quasi­ spiritual autobiography which tells us that he has "rewritten or revised most of them [the material here under review] to achieve a continuity of idea or theme." Precisely what this Herculean effort has yielded in the way of fresh insights or comforting reassertions of old truths is not Reviews 267 quite clear, as one moves through the book's twenty old and six new sections. Chapter eight, for example, first saw life as the introduction to The Modern Theatre (New Y ork, 1964). Now pruned of several paragraphs and with de Tocqueville's Christian name correctly given this time round in the opening sentence, it reappears not significantly reworked, or, more importantly, rethought. In addition, one of the above noted excisions has gratuitously made its way to another essay in the present publication (cf. p. xvii of the former with p. 205 of the latter) . And to pursue these niggling textual matters further, one should note that the first sentence of the second paragraph of the ubiquitous chapter eight is the same sentence, word-for-word, as the first sentence of the last paragraph on p. SO. Does this mean ideational aridity, affluence, or stylistic lapse? Indeed, those bemused or wary of such ardent utilitarian­ ism might also examine (for another interesting, not to say curious, example) Professor Corrigan's traversal of the Chekov canon (Chapter 1 1), a treatment here reproduced intact from his Six Plays of Chekov (New York, 1962) around and about which the unacknowledged shade of Professor Francis Fergusson hovers with disconcerting persistence. Incidentally, another important Chekovian matter warrants mention at this point. Professor Corrigan uniquely subtitled the...