PARTISAN REVIEW
of the '30s were also sustained by a passing mood of idealism, just as in
Wilson's time the public was ready to seek some alternative to market
values, and the center of power passed from New York back to Wash–
ington. But the idealism of the New Deal was mildly revolutionary; it
expressed the hopes and energies of less privileged elements in the
population; it is typified not by a fine-drawn Presbyterian face trying
to invade the world of action, but by a slangy committee chairman in
shirt-sleeves, with a volume of Freud and a sheaf of statistics on slum
clearance on his desk. That is recent history, and we all remember how
this wave of ambitious hope passed also, as Hitler rose in Germany,
Stalin's regime revealed itself more clearly, and World War II ap–
proached faster and faster. And as the mood of idealism was replaced
by one of cynicism, the
raison d'ctre
and the public sanction of the
socially conscious theaters leaked away. Clurman has a moving account
of how this sinister process felt to the members of the Group Theater
in his fine history of that theater,
The Feruent Years.
The moral I wish to draw from this bit of history is this: neither
of our off-Broadway, or anti-market theater movements succeeded in
expressing really fundamental problems or values of our culture. Both
were sustained by passing moods, comparatively superficial and mo–
mentary public sanctions, which they themselves hardly understood
until too late.
And that brings me back once more to the university and to the
question I raised earlier: What might the university do for the theater?
Briefly, I think the university might become the patron of the theater.
I have already paid my respects to the market as the place of the theater
in our society. As an alternative we have tried, in the little-theater days,
more or less hit or miss private support; but that was neither strong
enough nor self-conscious enough to succeed for long. In the '30s the
theater was sustained by the government and by a political movement
which accomplished much, but is already behind us. The government
does not inspire much confidence as the theater's protector-as I feel
strongly when Congressmen J avits proposes a plan for federal support
of the theater. Among the institutions in this country with enough
stability and public recognition to sustain the theater, what is left if we
rule out the market and government? Only education, I think. We are
bound to have education in some form; the educational establishment
in this country is enormous, varied, and (in spite of the weak position
of the teaching profession) rich and powerful.
But I do not think of the university as merely providing the theater
with a physical plant and some financial support. I think of it as pro-
