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REUBEN A. BROWER
spearean conventions and patterns (there are still others I have not
mentioned). There is also a new emphasis on the cycle of rebirth, and
especially on "the return from the sea," the dark area of chaos and
unreason. Such, in a crude reduction, is the structure of Shakespearean
comedy.
The outline is hardly adequate to Frye's presentation, either in its
strength or weakness. The strength, it seems to me, lies in the negative
and cautionary rather than in the more positive phases. The two earlier
chapters, with their warnings against the danger of forgetting the formal,
conventional character of all comedy are highly recommended to readers
and critics. Frye rightly insists that we must not overlook the conven–
tional character of the comedies of Shakespeare in particular, that we
need to "keep the genre in mind as an essential part of the critical
context," that we should not try to find moral allegories, but
be
content
with the "concrete" stuff of each play. He protests against those who
would assign particular beliefs to Shakespeare, and he shrewdly points
out that the beliefs we infer are often determined by dramatic structure.
But in asserting that "Shakespeare had no values, no principles of any–
thing except dramatic structure," he is in danger of throwing out the
baby with the bath. There is a possibility, as we shall see, that the theory
may leave no place for significance of any sort: the structure is the
structure is the structure. Even in these earlier chapters difficulties
begin to appear that are traceable to the initial dichotomy and the
temptation it invites to further oversimplifications.
Having divided critics into two camps, Frye makes a correspond–
ing division between writers of comedy, setting Shakespeare in opposi–
tion to Jonson, Shaw and other writers who offer direct criticisms of
manners and morals. While insisting on the stylized character of Shake–
spearean comedy, Frye disregards the stylization of Jonsonian comedy,
and while noting the operatic features of plays like
Twelfth Night
and
The Tempest,
he seems unaware of the operatic mode of
Man and
Superman, Misalliance
and
Heartbreak House,
to name only the more
obvious examples. It might be argued that Shaw is more consistently
operatic in his technique than Shakespeare, and it is worth recalling what
Shaw himself said, that in time his plays would live not by the ideas
they presented, but by their form. On Frye's own principles, it is no
easier
to
determine
from the plays
what Shaw believed than it is to
determine what Shakespeare believed from his plays.
In
his commendable advice that we should attend to the form
first (it is odd to think that D.
H.
Lawrence would agree with
him),
Frye pushes his argument so far that he underlines the potential limita-
