HIGHBROWS AND THEATER
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with what is lacking or wrong for the sake of what
is
special and
splendid-the problem (to use larger names than any in the theater
at the moment) with Macaulay or Tchaikowsky or Swinburne.
But-and perhaps it is only here that highbrows today are really
vulnerable-the theater, as either a significant part of our culture
or a rewarding source of enjoyment, is not just the Tennessee Wil–
liamses or William Inges.
If
names like these represent the current
theater where it has thematic or sociological relevance, they equally
represent it where it comes closest to being like fiction, to resembling
"literature." And where our current theater seems intellectually most
relevant is not where it may be artistically most rewarding. Where it
comes closest to fiction, on fiction's terms, is where it may lag most
noticeably behind it. We should not forget that the novel partly came
into being from the inability of the stage to cope with what was
particularly inward in thought and feeling, or to handle compactly
what was extensive in space and time; that, with good reason, again,
Aristotle made plot the essential factor in drama, where increasingly
the nature of man and society has held first place in fiction. My
own feeling is that there would be higher rewards in the theater, and
greater hopes for it, if it became less "intellectual," less topical, less
barnacled with problems than it is at present; if, in terms of interest
and impact, it moved farther away from fiction and closer to poetry,
if it sought to be expressive rather than illustrative. Certainly the
two most satisfying "theater" occasions, for me, in New York last
season were
The Seven Deadly Sins,
performed with
all
the accoutre–
ments of ballet at the City Center, and the medieval
Play of Daniel,
performed with all the atmosphere of religion in a church.
Highbrows tend, too, and for fairly similar reasons, to disregard
the theater on its comic side. Here they bring to the theater an atti–
tude they seem to manifest generally: they often seem to me to care
less about how funny, so to speak, a writer may be than about what
he
is
laughing at; they make, too, what seems to me the capital blun–
der of regarding satire as .a greater form than comedy; of not realiz–
ing that, as opposed to satire's need to take sides and seem superior,
comedy is above the battle,
is
relentlessly, even menacingly, disinter–
ested-as likely to show up the right side as the wrong, to catch out
the hero as the villain. Comedy no more exempts Mr. Bennet than
Mr. Collins, Falstaff than Shallow, Uncle Vanya than the Professor.
