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PARTISAN REVIEW
"Yet I'll not shed her blood ..."
which directly relates him to the act before him. However, all references
to the verse plays of the Elizabethans-and of Shakespeare in particular
-when applied to the problem of the modern verse play, are very mis–
leading. Poetical expression, I take it, was more spontaneous under the
Elizabeth of those days, than of ours.
It
was, if you like, pre-reflective;
nowadays, it is post-reflective. The last person you would expect to
express himself-nowadays, that is-with poetic eloquence, would be a
simple person involved in a serious action. The person most likely to
express himself in life with poetic eloquence would be someone who had
given thought to the problems of poetry. Nowadays, it takes
time
to
write a poem, a lot of time to write a
modern
poem, and what we want
on the stage, is the direct, immediate expression of feeling. You know
something? I mean I want to tell you something you may not know:
I would be interested in reading a verse play that was written over–
night, as it is claimed that some of Lope de Vega's plays were. But I
think the thing is impossible. I am sure the play I just read by Djuna
Barnes must have taken years to compose. One result is that the char–
acters scarcely talk to each other. Each one is intent on subtilizing and
distilling his own thought and feeling into a verse expression adequate
to the author's norms of rhetoric, and these are not at all dramatic
norms. The result: there is no dialogue in any proper sense of the term,
in this play, and the words spoken by anyone character have scarcely
any effect on the others. It is as if the real action lay in the production
of words, poetic words, and as if each character was too exhausted by
this effort to listen to what the others have to say.
SOUTH: Your judgment of Djuna Barnes's
The Antiphon
may be
correct, but I think the play I have to review, MacLeish's
J.
B.,
is worse,
though in exactly the opposite way. Take the title, for instance.
J.
B.
is, of course, short for Job. Now Job is short, and wonderfully so, as
short as a cry, or a lifetime. Why abbreviate the name that sums up
all abridgements and abbreviations? To bring Job up to date. But why
bring Job up to date when there is nothing antiquated about him?
Just as the name, which is so wonderful, is diminished poetically by
the initials
J.
B., even so the story is banalized by being consciously
placed in a modern setting. What makes MacLeish's play so objection–
able is the author's effort to make it a real theatrical work with gags,
punch lines, fast dialogue. We get all the dramaturgical tricks that
are required by Broadway audiences; -but every once in a while, the
author sneaks in here and there a great line from the old book. Now
I am not against Mr. MacLeish's trying to write a verse play, since
