220
PARTISAN REVIEW
form or only a compositional form for what is called "tragicomedy"?
Tragedy results from seeing an action from the viewpoint of perfec–
tion , comedy from the viewpoint of common sense . Can these view–
points be easily substituted one for the other, and in a unified work?
But something very different follows from seeing an action from the
one viewpoint than seeing that same action from the other. The fact
is that the Greeks and the dramatists of the French classical theater
were , I think, quite right in separating tragedy from comedy.
If
the
values of the comic and the tragic can be brought together in a uni–
fied work - and it is my claim that they can - it is certainly not by
making a mix of the two, for we can see in Chekhov's plays that
when mixed they destroy each other. Yet the comic and the tragic
may appear harmoniously in a single work if, conforming to the
metatheatrical canon, it is a play within a play.
In
this case, one of
the plays can have a form stipulating tragedy , the other a form
stipulating comedy, so that once again there will be a separation,
though in a single work, of the comic and the tragic .
But there is no
form, no nonconventional, architectonic form for tragicomedy.
There is just
one other possibility, realized most perfectly by Pirandello, of bring–
ing the tragic and the comic together under one architectonic: this
can be achieved when the effects of comedy and tragedy are
both
subordinated to the theatrical, and this becomes possible in a
play
about theater,
as in
Tonight We Improvise ,
by no means Pirandello's
masterpiece, but yet a work in which the comic and the tragic are
brought together under a single architectonic form .
In
Tonight We Improvise,
the play of that title is in the process of
being rehearsed, and one character in it, the actor, Penny-Whistle,
is on stage. He is doing a death scene , but then , too , he is actually
dying. To be sure, there is much more of the sophistry offeeling in
his playacting than of the true feeling of a man facing death, but this
sophistry of feeling takes on the accents of truth because we know the
actor is really dying. We also know that he wants to be affecting and
are touched by the fact that a man who is dying can have such
thoughts . On the stage with Penny-Whistle is Dr. Hinkfuss, the
stage manager, also a customer, and a Chanteuse. Here is just a frag–
ment of this wonderful scene, too long to quote in full:
PENNY-WHISTLE: I am saying that I have not been able to
die, Mr. Manager; I have not been able to pull it off; and I
can't help laughing when I see all these people have it over
me , and me not able to die . The maid ...
(He Looles
