Three Hundred Years of American Drama and Theatre: From Ye Bear and Ye Cubb to Hair by Garff B. Wilson (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 203 THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF AMERICAN DRAMA AND THEATRE: FROM YEBEARAND YECUBB TO HAIR, by GarffB. Wilson. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973. viii & 536 pp. $11.95. Few tasks are more necessary, and more difficult to do well, than writing about the arts for a popular audience. The historian who addresses a wide readership of non-professionals must synthesize the controversies and minutiae of scholarly investigation into a coherent account accessible to anyone with sufficient curiosity to open his book. Yet he must do so without falsifying or distorting the knowledge - including the products of his own research - on whose authoritativeness his popularization depends. In the case of the American theatre and drama, attempts at synthesis have become familiar, but historians have focused, understandably , on either the literature produced by American dramatists or the conditions and activities associated with its stage performance. Garff Wilson has now sought to integrate the two emphases within one comprehensive, fivehundred -page volume chronicling "the development of dramatic art in America from 1665 to 1972," as the dust jacket explains. Perhaps it is vain to think the job can be done at all. At any rate, what Wilson has done is to juxtapose a series of well-planned chapters on dramatic history with concurrent accounts of the development of theatres and theatrical art, including acting, with some attention to scenic design and more to the allied arts of cinema and television. The result is a sometimes lively narrative, but not the synthetic combination to which the author aspires in his Preface. Nor is there consistent and extensive evidence of the fresh research, the rethinking of critical concepts, or the establishment of a conceptually sound, comprehensive point of view that the task would seem to require. These shortcomings are perhaps most clear with respect to Wilson's admittedly authoritative accounts of acting and in his treatment of melodrama. He knows American acting well, having demonstrated that knowledge in his 1966 history of the subject. But, in numerous instances where this reviewer compared passages, the pages on acting in the present work are a virtual cutting and pasting of his earlier discussions and so, although condensed, are far from being "greatly ... revised," as the Preface maintains in acknowledging the author's debt to his previous work. Clearly, no substantial attempt has been made to integrate the history of acting with other aspects of the larger subject. A similar deficiency emerges in the critical viewpoint Wilson brings to melodrama. Despite recent revaluations of the genre, including the social historian David Grimsted's explanation ofthe widespread needs and assumptions that gave melodrama its historical validity - an explanation Wilson quotes and endorses - his own view remains essentially that it was a "blight that perverted American dramaturgy" (p. 104). In fact he seems to think of melodrama less as a genre than as a collection of "devices" naively or mendaciously employed by otherwise promising playwrights. The insufficiency of this view be,')mes even more evident when the author takes up the rise of "realism" (a term that remains inadequately defined). The following passage explains the appearance of a new realistic drama in the late nineteenth century: The world had changed and the need for a literature relevant to the times was urgent. 204 BOOK REVIEWS Everywhere men were becoming aware of the deeply disturbing problems created by the industrial revolution, the urbanization of the population, and the impact of science, especially the conflict between science and religion. The conventions and attitudes of romantic literature were criticized for being outmoded and artificial. A desire for relevance and truth developed. Instead of exotic settings, there was a demand for the settings of everyday life. Instead of battles for political liberty, there was demand for social and economic freedom. Instead of princes, noblemen, and Byronic heroes, there was demand for characters who represented the average man. Instead of the romantic problems of love and honor, there was demand for a discussion of the disturbing economic, social, and personal problems of the day. Instead of the language of poetry or elaborate rhetoric, there was demand for the diction and rhythms of ordinary speech. A radically altered concept of the mission and method...