538
HAROLD CLURMAN
words, when the question of color as such as reduced to absurd–
ity.
This paradox-eschewing all sociological rationalization of
an immediately practical nature-not only gives a clue to the
special literary nature of Abel's play-but also to some of its
general import. Abel is not only saying in effect "I don't care
if my sister does marry a negro," but "I want to be as free to
dislike the black as much as I do the white!" and in proclaiming
this, he throws off the incubus of any paltry "liberalism."
Just as this attitude will strike many of us as monstrous
extravagance or as sheer frivolity, so the play itself, with its constant
twists and spurts of sharp action and peculiar motivation hardly
complies with any ordinarily recognizable pattern of drama. For
Prince possesses aspects both of Moliere's
Misanthrope
and of a
Gidean or Sartrian "existential" character given to gratuitous acts
which exemplify attitudes outside the range of normal debate.
Yet the play pretends at all times to stay within the realm
of the naturalistic. Thus a confusion is created in the mind of
the simple American spectator who judges everything by the con–
vention of stage realism-unless he is specifically cautioned that
what he is seeing is a "dream," a "fantasy," vaudeville or some
form of theater that isn't obliged to be "true to life."
The Pretender
is an intellectual comedy on a subject about
which it is usually considered bad taste to joke. What is worse
from the standpoint of the casual theatergoer, one is not always
sure how seriously Abel means us to take his joke. Is the play a
parable? Does Abel intend his weird fable to be regarded as a
sober statement? Does he really propose to remain detached from
concrete social considerations, to revel in the position of the
anarchist-bohemian-poet? How far is
The Preten,der
a pretense?
The consternation which must accompany such queries makes
the play fascinating and refreshing to me. Its construction is
muddled only if we are foolish enough to take the play literally
-though there is a very bad moment at the end of the first
scene of the third act when Abel turns inappropriately "psycho–
logical" and has Prince treat his wife like a whore because she
has wantonly toyed with his sensibilities and behaved like one.
The play is brightly written in polished prose somewhat more
