R E V I E W S Anthony B. Dawson, Indirections: Shakespeare and the Art of Illusion (To ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978). xv, 194. $15.00 Those of us who were surprised by sin in the sixties or influenced by anxiety in the seventies will not be shocked or outraged by Professor Dawson’s book on Shakespeare. In fact, the contemporary reader is likely to feel nothing more vigorous than discomfort and, at times, mild irritation while encounter ing Indirections: Shakespeare and the Art of Illusion. Not that the author is alone to blame for this state of affairs. Far from it. But today’s reader has endured a recent and astonishing rise in his pain threshhold. He routinely submits to rhetorical acts of seduction, betrayal, and assault, especially when these are perpetrated by the admittedly great writers and sanctified by the apparently great critics. Readers accustomed to such violence are a jaded lot indeed. They are bound to be disappointed when, in the greatest playwright of them all, they are invited to confront such timid experiences as deception, manipulation, and clarification. I begin with these shrewish remarks because, by aligning himself however tentatively with the “reader response” school of criticism, Professor Dawson is inviting them. In an introductory statement he declares that, for Shake speare, “the audience’s awareness of the complex fictiveness of their experi ence is fundamental.” I find this assertion both misleading and evasive. It might mean that the spectators at a performance of, say, Henry V are asked to give their assent when Shakespeare creates a clearly imaginary world. But this meaning, though it seems to have satisfied Shakespeare (“Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts,” the Prologue says), would be far too sim ple for Dawson. “Fictiveness,” I suspect, is never simple. Perhaps the state ment in question means that, from time to time, Shakespeare draws attention to the very techniques by which the dramatic artifice is created and per formed. If this is its meaning, then the statement is evasive: deliberately so, no doubt, in order to allay the suspicion that Dawson is travelling the road mapped out by Anne Barton in Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play (1962). E n g l is h St u d ie s in C a n a d a , vii, 3, F all 1981 Perhaps the statement means, finally, that the spectators must always be conscious of the skill which the playwright exercises in deceiving them. This emphasis, I believe, is misleading. It presupposes an audience composed principally of recent Ph.D. graduates from American universities and, what is even more surprising, the playwright’s willingness to cater to the critical whims of this distinguished crew. If Dawson is right, then attending a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is rather like watching a magician who can’t resist telling you how he gets the rabbit out of the hat. It may not be any fun, but you learn a lot. The play “calls attention to its own artificiality,” “insists on its own silli ness,” but still “forces us to take it seriously.” This play, with its inserted performance by the rude mechanicals, should allow Dawson the best oppor tunity to vindicate his approach. In the last act, Bottom and his companions are acting out the “tedious brief scene” of Pyramus and Thisby for the assem bled courtiers. Shakespeare shows how his imaginary audience responds to the clumsy artifice of the play within the play : h i p p o l y t a This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard. t h e s e u s The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them. h i p p o l y t a It must be your imagination then, and not theirs. t h e s e u s If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men. Here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion. Dawson’s commentary on this passage saves the appearances of his argument but sacrifices the substance of the scene. He...
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Dec 2, 2020
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