Titus Maccius Plautus: The Pot of Gold and Other Plays

Contains: Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), Menaechmi (The Brothers Menaechmus), Captivi (The Prisoners), Miles gloriosus (The Swaggering Soldier), and Pseudolus
Edition: Penguin, 1965
Translated: E.F. Watling, 1965

What makes a "perfect comedy"? The German critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing described one of the plays in this volume, Captivi (The Prisoners) as such, but it is unlikely to be an answer that would occur to many people asked this question today. Even if the field is restricted to stage comedies on the grounds that Lessing lived before the invention of moving pictures (ruling out such contenders as Some Like it Hot and Fawlty Towers), there are many plays which are funnier. Among my favourites, I might suggest Aristophanes' Frogs , Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Orton's Loot, Frayn's Noises Off. My father would have suggested farces by Feydeau or Labiche, I'm sure.

To Lessing, of course, the word "comedy" didn't just mean an amusing drama; it was a more technical term, describing a play with particular components and attributes. But even so, Captivi is an odd choice, as Watling points out in his introduction: for example, the real world geography of the Greek setting makes it virtually impossible for the action of the play to take place in one day, a requirement applied to drama by critics of the time, based on Aristotle's ideas in the Poetics. So why choose this one? Again, Watling makes a sensible suggestion, that the real issue is that the play does not have aspects which Lessing apparently viewed as distasteful in ancient literature (and particularly in the texts which could be used to teach in schools). In particular, there's no sexual content to the play, which is very unusual in ancient comedy, the surviving examples of which usually at least include bawdy jokes. Until fairly recently, there were still versions of Aristophanes which translated passages which were particularly rude into Latin, rather than into English which could be read by the uneducated, considered to have minds corruptible by such things. Instead, Captivi is about the ties between father and son (together with the mistaken identities which occur in almost every plot used by Plautus).

And Captivi is not even the best known of the five plays in the volume. Two of the others served as the inspiration for extremely famous later comedies. Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors is based on Menaechmi but takes the plot a step further by adding a second pair of twin brothers, increasing the potential for comic confusion at the risk of making belief in the actions on stage harder. Shakespeare may well be the greatest dramatist who ever lived, but this is an early play, and not one of his best; it has the air of an exercise rather than a drama involving characters based on human beings. On the other hand, Aulularia, the title play in this collection, inspired L'Avare by Molière, one of the greatest works by a great writer in his prime. Like Shakespeare, Molière added more to the plot, which to me suggests something of why Plautus is not as well known today as he used to be. My understanding is that these plays were produced as diversions during festivals - effectively another sideshow - so were not as long and or complex as Greek plays (which were the main attractions of the festivals they appeared were written for) or later plays which were the centrepiece of an evening's entertainment. The plays are short, one theme (almost one joke) affairs, without the subplots and subtlety we have come to expect from a full length three act drama in today's theatre. Perhaps it would be better to compare Plautus' output with one act comedies, like Shaffer's Black Comedy, but they are more like individual episodes from The Simpsons than anything produced for the stage now. Indeed, there are several parallels with the way that the animated sitcom works: plots as variations on standard themes; exaggerated everyman character; improbable events; and a happy ending.

Captivi is also not the funniest or cleverest play in this collection. The final pair here, Miles gloriosus and Pseudolus, are the best Plautus plays I have read. In both, the characters rise at least a little above the stereotypes, the jokes remain funny, and a little bit more length allows some extra complexity. These two are probably the place to start, if Shakespeare and Molière give you and interest in theirt sources of inspiration. (Not the ultimate source, because Plautus took most of his ideas from Greek originals, now mostly lost, but the closest you can get.)

The introduction to this collection states that these translations were made for use on the stage. Now, Penguin Classics translations of drama don't usually have that as their main aim; they are aimed at tthe reader, not the performer and tend to concentrate on being an accurate (if not word for word) translation of the best available edition of the original text. The Penguin Ibsen translations are obviously like this, if compared with the work of Michael Meyer or my father (among others). So, is this collection of Plautus plays an exception, or was Watling mistaken? There are certainly livelier translations of Plautus, while these are in turn livelier than some of the Penguin Classics drama that was published around the same time. I'm not so sure they would work so well on the stage; perhaps they would be good as a dramatised excerpt to liven up an academic seminar, but that isn't quite the same thing. But then I've never found Plautus as enjoyable as the more complex comedies listed at the start of this review, in any translation. There are problems with details. Some of the jokes could be better translated; there must be a better pun to describe cooks who are scoundrels than "rapscullions", for example. I'd give thee plays 6/10, and the translations, also now rather dated, 5/10.

Henrik Ibsen: An Enemy of the People (1882)

Translation: Eleanor Max-Aveling
Edition: Heinemann, 1907
Review number: 1203

In most of his plays, Ibsen's major concern seems to be the depiction of hypocrisy. It is possible to expand this obvious idea into something which is an important part of even more of his works - he was interested in the relationship between the public and private aspects of people's personalities. Thus in Peer Gynt, the central character is unable to repress his inner childlikeness and rebels against developing an outer shell of an acceptable adult; Hedda Gabler, in the play bearing her name, is similarly unwilling to accept the changes society requires of her as a newly married woman; and in Brand an iron hard Puritan begins with his inner and outer selves in harmony but has his certainty chipped away by the events that unfold in the play. In An Enemy of the People, however, the central character is one whose inner and outer selves are the same and remain so throughout, while the hypocrites around him seek to make him compromise and then, when he refuses, try to destroy him and his reputation.

Dr Stockmann lives in a provincial Norwegian town (they continued to provide the setting for many of Ibsen's plays even after he moved to Italy), and was one of the main instigators of a plan to build a therapeutic baths, turning the town into a (hopefully soon to be fashionable) spa. The baths have recently been completed, but Stockmann has learnt that cost-cutting in the building has meant that the water supply is contaminated. For the long term good of the town, he wants to see the baths closed down and the water supply improved before a patient becomes seriously ill, causing a scandal. However, the leading men of the town refuse to listen, thinking only of the short term financial damage this would cause. (They are not so much to blame for this as a modern audience might think, as the idea of disease carrying bacteria invisible to the naked eye was far less well established in 1882, and was probably something of a novelty to a provincial capitalist.)

Of all the characters in Ibsen's plays, Stockmann is the one most frequently cited as a self-portrait. There are certainly many aspects of the character which match up with Ibsen's perception of himself. An example is the best known line from the play ("The minority is always right"), in which Stockmann declares that he will always be in the minority not to say that he is contrary in nature but that he is the kind of progressive who is always ahead of the majority, so that he will have moved on by the time they have caught up with his views. In fact, Ibsen apparently deliberately made the character of this man who was to put forward his own ideas as unlike himself as possible to increase the impact of what he says; he is, for example, exuberant where Ibsen himself was rather melancholic.

The play itself was wrtten in part as a response to the criticism heaped upon Ghosts, his previous drama, which had provoked a scandal that created the dramatist's international reputation. In An Enemy of the People, Ibsen turns what he considered the rotten centre of bouregois Norway into the metaphor or symbol or the corruption polluting the baths which are heralded as the heart of the town's future. Much of the central act, a town meeting addressed by Stockmann, was inspired by a particular remark made by fellow dramatist Bjornsen in a criticism of Ghosts, that the "majority always has right on its side".

This particular translation is one of the series made under the auspices of Ibsen fanatic William Archer, who oversaw the first English publications of many if not all of Ibsen's plays. (Indeed, several of the original Norwegian language versions were first published by Archer, so that Ibsen could take advantage of the British participation in international copyright treaties that Norway was not yet party to.) Many of these translations now appear stilted and wordy, but this one is still remarkably easy to read. I'm not sure it would work so well on the stage, since readability and performability are two quite different things.

Samuel Beckett: Collected Shorter Plays (1984)

Edition: Faber & Faber, 1984
Review number: 1075

Contents: All That Fall (1957),
Krapp's Last Tape (1958),
Act Without Words I and II (1959),
Embers (1959),
Words and Music (1962),
Cascando (1963),
Play (1963),
The Old Tune (adaptation of La Minivelle, by Robert Pinget) (1963),
Come and Go (1966),
Eh Joe (1967),
Breath (1970),
Not I (1973),
Footfalls (1976),
Ghost Trio (1976),
Rough For Radio I and II (1976),
Rough For Theatre I and II (1976),
That Time (1976),
...but the clouds... (1977),
Ohio Impromptu (1982),
A Piece of Monologue (1982),
Rockaby (1982),
Catastrophe (1984),
Nacht und Träume (1984),
Quad (1984),
What Where (1984)

Beckett has a reputation as one of the most difficult twentieth century writers, many finding even his most accessible and most famous play, Waiting for Godot, impenetrable. As a follower of Joyce, there is certainly something in this, as is perhaps particularly apparent in the thirty or so short dramtic pieces collected here, which actually make up the bulk of his output.

They stretch the meaning of the word "play" somewhat; originally written for radio, film and TV as well as the stage, they include mimed pieces and pieces without action as well as ones where what is spoken is not in itself important in a traditional way. Some are extremely short (Breath, for example, lasting only seconds), while the longest is about an hour (radio play All That Fall).

What they share, in spite of the diversity of form, are the themes which are common to all Beckett's writing. These are also all present in Waiting for Godot, which can really be seen as the essential Beckett play. These themes are meaninglessness, decrepitude and ageing, guilt, lack of identity, and death. In some plays, this forbidding list is leavened by a Joycean fascination with language. (In fact, the precision of Beckett's use of words - and his prescription of performance practice - are among the most interesting aspects of his work, given his obsession with non-meaning. He clearly found it necessary to specify things exactly in order to get what he wanted.) One cannot help admiring Beckett's cleverness, and many of the pieces come to life in performance, but they could never be described as cheerful.

Francis Beaumont & John Fletcher: The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607)

Edition: Robert Holden, 1926 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1056

To a modern reader or theatre audience member, The Knight of the Burning Pestle irresistibly suggests another seventeenth century story, the far better known Don Quixote. When it was reprinted and revived in 1633, it was given a preface refuting the idea that it was derivative, by pointing out that its original performance occurred before the first appearance of Cervantes' novel in England. (This denial is a measure of just how popular Don Quixote was already by the 1630s.)

The structure of The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a double play within the play. A group of players is about to perform The London Merchant, a romantic comedy satirising that class, when two members of the audience object. A grocer and his wife are not used to play-going, but they fear that their trade isn't going to be taken seriously; and they insist that the grocer's apprentice, Ralph, be permitted to take a part which shows grocers in a better light. This is done, Ralph taking the part of a modern knight errant, an apprentice fired by tales of chivalry to take up a device appropriate to his origins, a shield showing a burning pestle (as in pestle and mortar). His adventures, and the constant interference of his not too bright master and mistress, play havoc with the drama that is meant to be on stage.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle is very funny, and ends up (of course) satirising the aspirations of the merchant class a great deal more strongly than would have been the case with The London Merchant alone. That's probably the reason that it failed when first produced, before an audience a little too similar to that which it parodies, but success on revival (and its bizarre title) has left it one of the best known Jacobean comedies.

Luigi Pirandello: Right You Are! (If You Think So) (1918)

Translation: Frederick May, 1962
Edition: Penguin, 1969
Review number: 1044

This particular play takes a different view of Pirandello's general theme of play-acting from most of them. Instead of being about the actors themselves, it is about a group of people trying to work out what the truth is about others. Someone new has recently moved into town, and has established his mother in law in a flat away from the family home, something regarded as faintly scandalous - what could possibly be the reason for excluding her from the household? Town busybodies set out to find out the truth, only to discover that the mother in law tells one story, while her son in law tells another incompatible with it; and because of a natural disaster in their native city, it is impossible to find out which is true.

Pirandello manages to make us feel curiousity about the issue, while at the same time making us feel ashamed to be as insensitively inquisitive as the characters on stage. The play is funny even on the page, and would be hilarious on stage. Right You Are! (If You Think So) may not be his most profound drama, but is certainly entertaining.

Luigi Pirandello: The Rules of the Game (1919)

Translation: Robert Rietty, 1959
Edition: Penguin, 1969
Review number: 1043


The Rules of the Game revolves around three characters: Silia, her lover Guido, and her seemingly complaisant husband Leone. The arrival of a group of drunk young men at Silia's flat when she is entertaining Guido and the insults they offer her thinking she is a prostitue provide the catalyst for the play when Leone (who was not there at the time) insists on playing the role of the outraged husband and challenging the leader of the young men to a duel.

The Rules of the Game comes before Pirandello's big success with Six Characters in Search of an Author and isn't as focused on the philosophical question of part playing as some of his later plays. It has some of the elements of farce, and should be extremely funny on stage, and it is thus successful on its own terms.

Luigi Pirandello: Henry IV (1922)

Translation: Frederick May, 1962
Edition: Penguin, 1969
Review number: 1042

Six Characters in Search of an Author, Pirandello's breakthrough play, remains his best known, despite efforts (such as in the introduction to this collection) to declare Henry IV his masterpiece. It certainly encapsulates his interest as a dramatist (basically, in the different ways in which a part can be played) very cleverly, as well as being an effective drama in its own right.

In the first scene we see the first take on the idea of playing a part. Here, four men arrive, one of them new; they are to play the part of attendants to Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Unfortunately, the new one has assumed that the ruler is Henry IV of France, and so has read up and assumed the part of a French lord five centuries later. The four of them turn out to be attendants not, as initially seems, in a play about the Emperor, but to a rich Count who lapsed into madness following an injury received during a pageant in which he was playing Henry IV. That is another form of play-acting, and his delusion is a sort of unconscious playing of a part. (And the most famous scene from Henry's life involved him playing out a remorse and humility he most certainly didn't feel when he was forced to beg the Pope's forgiveness and was kept waiting barefoot in the snow at Canossa for days.) Of course, there is also the irony always part of Pirandello's work that all these characters are parts played by actors.

Even by itself, Henry IV is a pretty comprehensive review of the different ways in which people can play a part, and this is presumably the reason why people want it to be considered Pirandello's masterpiece rather than the more limited Six Characters. But the other play continues to be better known, partly because it has such an intriguing title, partly because the history behind Henry IV is to many people obscure, and partly because to an English language audience there is an obvious possibility of confusion with the Shakespeare plays of the same name.

Jean Anouilh: Antigone (1942)

Translation: Lewis Golantiere, 1951 (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Methuen, 1957
Review number: 1036

Anouilh has taken over the plot of the play directly from Sophocles, while changing the characterisation of Antigone and her uncle Creon to make a point very clear (though presumably not to the German authorities) when originally produced in occupied Paris. His play is not about Antigone's choice but about the futility of resistance and the moral bankruptcy of both resistance and collaboration (the Germans being symbolised by Creon).

The story is basically that Creon has taken over as ruler of Thebes after the self-mutilation and exile of Oedipus; the former king's children grow up under his protection. The two sons, Polynices and Eteocles, eventually kill each other when the former leads a rebellious attack on the city. Creon therefore orders a hero's funeral for Eteocles, but Polynices is left in the open to rot, the death penalty being prescribed for anyone who tries to carry out the burial rites for him. Of his sisters, Ismene is unhappy but not willing to do anything, but Antigone is caught trying to bury the body. Creon tries to spare her, asking her to collaborate with him in covering up her crime, but she refuses and eventually her execution is ordered.

Where Anouilh principally differs from Sophocles is in the motivation of the characters. Antigone begins to defend her actions by claiming that piety is her motivation, but this is quickly demolished - she is known to find religious observance ridiculous, so how can her claim be anything but hypocrisy? Creon claims, in his turn, that he wants the best for Thebes, but he view the best as the preservation of the staus quo, especially when he can claim that he is driven by necessity to such acts as the desecration of Polynices' corpse.

There is an air of unreality about this play, partly because it has been modernised (so that Polynices was a wild young man who liked fast cars, for example), but mainly because Anouilh has changed the function of the chorus. In a Greek play, they tend to expand on the action, reacting in a way that helps explain what is going on or bring out the point the playwright wants to make. Here, Anouilh uses a single man, who is much more separated from the action, acting as a narrator, and constantly pointing out the artificial nature of the theatrical drama. The effect is alienating, and the intention is clearly to make the audience think about the message of the play rather than the events in the drama itself, to distance themselves from their immediate emotional reaction.

In many ways, the meaning of Antigone is bound up with the circumstances for which it was written, more so than is the case for most drama. (Indeed, this is so clearly the case that it must have been quite daring to put on, critical as it is of both occupiers and resistance.) It still has something to say, though, and that is basically that there is something banal about our motives even for important actions; not a cheerful message, but one to provoke some self-examination.

Jean Anouilh: Becket (1961)

Translation: Lucienne Hill, 1961 (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Eyre Methuen, 1963
Review number: 1029

The relationship between Henry II and Backet is a fascinating one, particularly with the way that it changed once Becket was ordained and became Archbishop of Canterbury. Though more accessible, Anouilh's version of the story is probably less well known in English than Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. It consists of a series of scenes from the lives of the two men, which are bookended by Henry, naked before the cathedral altar performing penance for Becket's death.

Anouilh isn't particularly interested in historical accuracy, and there are a number of errors, such as Henry referring to his father as a king. More seriously, since it plays an important part in the play, is making Becket's background Saxon rather than Norman. (One of the themes which interests Anouilh is the relationship between conquerors and conquered.)

Henry is presented more sympathetically than Becket, who is made clever but cold, obsessed with the idea of honour (not his own, but first the King's and then God's, and meaning not something chivalric but the preservation and extension of their rights). Henry, on the other hand, is passionate and entranced by the man who has shown him that there is more to life than the interests of his bestial barons: food and drink, fighting and sex. The combination of their characters - which does bear some relation to the medieval sources even if these were unlikely to think in such terms - was inevitably to prove explosive once Becket transferred his loyalty to the church.

This change of heart, the big mystery about Becket's life story, is still really left unexplained by Anouilh, though he clearly connects it to the oaths sworn on ordination. It is Henry who is the memorable and convincing character of the two even if Becket is the nominal centre of the play.

Jean Anouilh: Colombe (1951)

Translation: Dennis Cannan, 1951
Edition: Methuen, 1959 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1004

Like Ardèle, which accompanies it in this Methuen volume, Columbe is about the right to freedom of expression. The young woman in the title role seems content to be the wife of aspiring and penniless musician Jean, until his call-up papers arrive. Then they are forced to ask his estranged mother, a famous actress, for help, which she gives them by providing Colombe with a part in the production in which she is starring.

This act, and the absence of her husband, brings Colombe into contact with a completely different world, full of men paying her compliments, full of expensive gifts and, above all, full of fun. Is this more important than dutiful devotion to her husband, his art, and their baby (which she seems quite grateful to be able to afford to pass on to a childminder)? Her new life also includes Jean's half-brother Paul, who is the opposite of Jean and to whom she is strongly attracted.

Colombe is remarkable for the way in which the character of the mother is drawn so quickly and skilfully, even though like the others (in what is after all quite a short play) she contains liberal amounts of stereotype. It is not among Anouilh's more profound plays, but is no doubt extremely effective on stage.

Jean Anouilh: Ardèle (1948)

Translation: Lucienne Hill, 1950 (original title Ardèle ou la Marguerite)
Edition: Methuen, 1959 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 1002

Ardèle is a tragic idea written in the form of a slightly absurdist French bedroom farce. Its central character is never seen or heard on the stage, which is another unusual feature. It is set in a château where a family conference has been called to discuss what can be done about Ardèle, the old maid of the family. A hunchback from her youth, she scandalises her relations when she and the new tutor, also a hunchback, fall in love.

This is an entirely hypocritical reaction, as every other family member is openly having an affair. (The exception is the General's wife, who never emerges from her room and whose periodic calling for her husband is dismissed as insanity.) Knowing that her future is under discussion, Ardèle has locked herself in her room and refuses to come out, despite the arguments made through the keyhole of her door.

The meaning with the play is connected to the right to have personal freedom, to love and be ones true self. Ardèle shocks the other characters not because of the social distance between her and the tutor, but because they have never considered her a fit person to love or be loved. Ardèle's passion is clearly far more deeply felt than the bedroom-shuffling antics of the rest of the family, and even evoked only through the words of the others she comes across the better deserving of the freedom to love.

Eugène Ionesco: The Lesson (1954)

Translation: Donald Watson, 1958
Edition: Penguin, 1962
Review number: 960

This is the only Ionesco play I have seen, and it is very funny on the stage. It describes a visit by a pupil to the house of someone who can only be described as a mad professor, who teaches her bizarre mathematics and ludicrous linguistics before attacking her with a knife.

The mathematical jokes are similar to those involving the Logician in Rhinoceros, and The Lesson reads like a preparatory excercise for the later play, a less surreal version of that play's lighter moments.

The Lesson is lighter than the other plays in this collection, and so unlike them it doesn't particularly seem to need to be supplied with a meaning.

Eugène Ionesco: The Chairs (1954)

Translation: Donald Watson, 1958
Edition: Penguin, 1962
Review number: 959

Two old people prepare an auditorium for a lecture. They welcome large numbers of invisible guests, holding conversations with several of them including the Emperor. Then, when the lecturer arrives, he turns out to be deaf and dumb, unable to communicate except by sign language and gibberish written on a blackboard.

The conversations between the old man and woman and their imaginary guests are reminiscent of Beckett. It has the world weariness, even if the wordplay is missing. It is not particularly funny on the page, unlike Rhinoceros and The Lesson, but could come alive on the stage.

As with Ionesco's other plays, the question is whether it is meaningful or not, and, if it is, what that meaning is. There are several possibilities for the play's theme, if it has one, and the key element is what Ionesco wants to convey with the invisible characters. They are not likely to be imaginary, only present of the minds of the two old people, because the lecturer appears and the fantasy would have to be consistently shared by both of them. The implication is that any meaning the play has is to do with the audience's perception of these people, or possibly about their nature as characters in the play.

Eugène Ionesco: Rhinoceros (1959)

Translation: Derek Prowse, 1960
Edition: Penguin, 1962
Review number: 956

Ionesco's most famous play may have a surreal idea at its centre (that people are turning into rhinoceroses), but he uses this to say something about human nature while at the same time creating a drama which is by turns funny, surprising, and fascinating.

In the first act, the main characters, Berenger and his friend Jean, are terrorised by the first rhinoceroses, running around the streets of the town causing lots of damage. It is only in the next scene, set in Berenger's office, that we discover that people are turning into the animals, as one of his colleagues destroys the building's staircase. Then everyone around Berenger starts to change - Jean, his colleagues and eventually the girl from his office that he had a crush on at a point when they believe they are the only remaining human beings. Finally, Berenger, alone, wonders why he can't change, begins to feel that his lack of a horn on his forehead makes him ugly, but ends with defiance against the idea of changing.

Though the play is designed to make the audience think it has an ideological point, like one of Sartre's existentialist plays, for example, it doesn't really, in my opinion. The rhinoceroses can be interpreted, say, as people who have accepted a new totalitarian regime, but this identification can only be made vaguely, and it seems to be more that Ionesco is writing an absurdist version of this kind of drama, so that the animals do not need to have a meaning.

Henrik Ibsen: Hedda Gabler (1890)

Translation: Una Ellis-Fermor, 1950
Edition: Penguin, 1961
Review number: 847

The character of Hedda is in some ways an inversion of that of Nora in The Dollshouse. Nora starts out as the quiet, dutiful wife, and is eventually driven to rebellion by the bourgeois conventionality of her husband. Hedda was a society success who married a wrong choice after the death of her father, and who is very quickly crushed by his dullness.

Hedda and her new husband, Jörgen Terman, begin the play by returning to Norway from their honeymoon. (The fact that Hedda is generally known by her maiden name is significant of her attitude to her marriage.) It is almost immediately clear from her interaction with Tesman's maiden aunts (who brought him up) that there is a wide social divide between them, and her conversation with the urbane Judge Brack reveals that there is a similar gap in terms of their interests. Brack's aim is to pressurise Hedda into accepting him as her lover, something that she is unwilling to do because she doesn't want anyone to have power over her.

This is really the character background; the plot itself is about the attempts of a former suitor of Hedda's, Ejlert Lövborg, to put his life back together after succumbing to alcoholism. While the Termans were away on their honeymoon, he has produced a book (on the history of culture), which has taken the town by storm. His rehabilitation was the result of the inspiration given him by Thea Elvsted, who was at school with Hedda but who doesn't remember her as a friend. Hedda manipulates Lövborg into returning to his self-destructive hedonism, and by taunting him about a lack of courage when he thought about killing himself when earlier rejected by Hedda, eventually drives him to suicide; at the same time, she destroys the manuscript of his new book, which should prove even more original. This is all because of jealousy over the fact that he has found true love with Thea, a girl she has always despised.

There was always an important place for the individual in Ibsen's work (think of both Brand and Peer Gynt among his early plays, both about how an individual expresses himself). The social plays such as The Dollshouse are often about the relationship between an individual and society as a whole, and particularly about the difference between private and public morality. By the time he wrote Hedda Gabler, Ibsen's focus has moved back to his earlier theme of the expression of individuality; the difference between Hedda and Peer is that Peer Gynt is trying to work out who he is while Hedda knows her identity but is increasingly unable to express it except destructively. She is so much the centre of the play that there is far less symbolic context than usual in Ibsen's work; the main symbols have to do with posterity and children (Lövborg's new manuscript is called his child; Tesman's aunts are tremendously excited by the idea that Hedda might be pregnant). Thus the portrayal of Hedda is of vital importance to the production of the play, and it is a pity that the one performance I have seen (Fiona Shaw in the mid-nineties) was rather marred by turning it into melodrama.

Henrik Ibsen: The Pillars of the Community (1877)

Translation: Una Ellis-Fermor, 1950 (Buy from Amazon)
Edition: Penguin, 1964
Review number: 844

Also known in English as The Pillars of Society, this play is really the start of the series of plays with social messages which so scandalised nineteenth century Europe. It is a vicious attack on the complacent hypocrisy of Norwegian small town society, especially on the "it couldn't happen here" attitude taken towards the scandals of the wider world.

Karsten Bernick runs a shipping firm in a coastal town, an important business as the railway doesn't yet pass through it. His wealth and eminence is based on a lie; by pretending that his family's rumoured hidden wealth (in fact non-existent) had been stolen by his brother in law Johan T&oumlaut;nnesen, who emigrated to the US, he was able to persuade creditors that he was suffering only a temporary loss and compound with them until his business became more healthy. No one, not even his wife, knows the truth, but now T&oumlaut;nnesen is returning to Norway. At the same time, two other scandals seem to be about to break; the railway is coming, and Bernick has bought the land along its route cheaply, standing to make a huge profit; and he has accepted work at his shipyard that cannot possibly be done in the time allowed, which means that shoddy repairs are likely to lead to loss of life.

It is not just Bernick who is a hypocrite; all of this around him who might be considered pillars of the community, are really as bad. The only honest adult among the characters native to the town is Bernick's foreman Aune, and he is forced by the threat of dismissal to make the poor quality ship repairs against his better judgment.

One of Ibsen's themes is the passing of corruption from father to son, and it can be seen in a mild form in this play in Olaf, Bernick's son, who is keen to travel, to take part in the modern world, and at one point is thought to have stowed away on the dangerous ship.

The main purpose of the play is the attack on the complacent superiority of the relatively unsophisticated Norwegian bourgeois, and it succeeds admirably, paving the way for the greater plays to come.

Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1592)

Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1997
Review number: 841

Given how many devices are new in The Spanish Tragedy, it is absolutely astounding how well it works. Written in the early 1590s, possibly not by Kyd, it was the innovative precursor of techniques used by Marlowe, Shakespeare (Hamlet might be based on another, lost, play by Kyd), and the Jacobean revenge tragedies.

The plot of The Spanish Tragedy is a complicated revenge story, which is set up by the characters of Revenge personified and the recently killed Don Andrea, watching from Hell the events which follow Andrea's death. They have little bits of dialogue between the acts, like a chorus; Andrea is keen for his death to be avenged, and continually accuses Revenge of falling down on his job. (There is good reason for the accusation - Revenge actually falls asleep during the third act.)

The Spanish Tragedy was one of the first plays in English to follow the ideas of Seneca, though it did not do so completely slavishly (its four rather than five acts are quite unusual, and it doesn't have the action off stage). It includes a favourite device of the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, the play within the play (in addition to the Christopher Sly-like scenes for Revenge and Don Andrea). It also has the distinction of innovating iambic pentameter blank verse, which makes the play easier to read than some of its contemporaries and seems more familiar to us than alternatives through Shakespeare's use of it.

It is clear that The Spanish Tragedy is technically innovative and accomplished, but it is more than that. Even across the gulf of over four centuries it manages to be engrossing and exciting, putting it in a class with the best drama of its time.

Anton Chekhov: The Seagull (1896)

Translation: Stephen Mulrine, 1997
Edition: Nick Hern Books, 1997
Review number: 826

It may seem strange today, but the initial response to The Seagull was so negative that it made Chekhov resolve to retire from drama. (It was the way that Stanislavsky and the Moscow Arts Theatre took up the play a few years later that persuaded him to change his mind.) The reasons for the failure lay in the expectations of the audience and actors rather than in the play itself; the audience wanted star vehicles, and The Seagull isn't one; the star billed did not appear, annoying her vociferous fans.

The plot is all about unrequited love; just about all the characters love someone who doesn't care for them. The only equal relationship is the affair between successful author Trigorin and actress Arkadina, which is not exactly one with much love in it. The central characters in the play are Arkadina's son, Kostya, who is an aspiring author, and local girl Nina, whom he loves but who prefers Trigorin because he might be able to arrange for her to get a part in a play in Moscow. The play contains a lot of discussion of drama, and includes excerpts from the play Kostya has written for Nina, in which she takes the part of the World Spirit. It is an experimental, Symbolist play; Kostya wants to move drama on, but his work is fairly typical of second rate avant garde literature.

As the title indicates, there is an important (and far more subtle) symbol in Chekhov's play, as well; the seagull accidentally shot by Kostya. The only other important literary seabird prior to this that I can think of is the albatross killed by the ancient mariner in Coleridge's poem, and this too brings bad luck. Even ignoring traditional ideas (I have no idea what significance a seagull might have in Russian folklore), it is easy to see that such a bird symbolises freedom and is connected to the power of the sea, and the dead bird represents the end of Kostya's hope that Nina might love him, among other things, and the recall of the motif in the final act brings on Kostya's famous suicide.

The plot of The Seagull is more melodramatic than those of Chekhov's last three plays, but marks an important step in terms of naturalism by comparison with what was going on around him. It is easy to see why, with its combination of this realism with the central symbol, this play is compared to Ibsen (with perhaps The Master Builder being particularly similar), though I don't think that Chekhov particularly liked being classified with the Norwegian author.

Charles Maude & Saki: The Watched Pot

Edition: Penguin, 1982
Review number: 818

In this "complete works" of Saki, there are three items listed as plays. Two of them are really only sketches, about five pages each, which would fit into the collections of short stories quite well. (There are a couple of short stories which are actually in play format already.) The Watched Pot is different, a collaboration of considerable length with Charles Maude.

In the play, the largely offstage character Hortensia Bavvel wields an absolute tyrrany not just over her household but over everyone with whom she comes into contact, trying to mould a resentful and ungrateful world to be the way she thinks it ought to be. When her son marries, however, her power will come to an end, and because of the damage she is unwittingly doing to the prospects of the Party at the next election, many people have turned into matchmakers. Trevor shows no preference for any of the young women to whom he is introduced, and exen exhibits a tendency to fall asleep whenever left alone with one.

According to the introductory note, Maude said that the basic dialogue was his responsibility, while Monro provided the wit; Maude's major problem was to keep the witty remarks sparse enough that they didn't swamp the whole story. The Watched Pot is very funny, and contains some memorable examples of Saki's humour; Maude's input ensures that it is not as stilted and undramatic as the short plays by Saki alone.

James Joyce: The Exiles (1918)

Edition: Granada, 1977
Review number: 816

Of all Joyce's mature writing, his only play is probably the least well known. It is also one of his least successful pieces, never having had much success on the stage. Displaying an unusual lack of confidence, it shows its influences strongly.

The Exiles manages to simultaneously be dull enough to seem longer than it is and unsatisfying enough to seem shorter. This is because Joyce gives all the real character to the part of Richard; neither he nor any of the others are interested in understanding anyone except himself. But even with Richard we do not come to understand the motivation behind his encouragement of his wife's potential infidelity, the principal dramatic content of the play; hints are made that it springs from some kind of misogynistic impulse, but that is not really a proper explanation (where did the impulse come from?).

The main model for the style of the play is Ibsen, as refracted through George Bernard Shaw's commentary and William Archer's translations. The introduction in this edition cites An Enemy of the People as a particular model, but I found it quite hard to see parallels between the two plays - especially as politics is extremely important in one and hardly mentioned in the other. The main aspects of the play which are copied from Ibsen are the ways in which characters interact (those these are less successful dramatically) and frankness about controversial issues in home life.

Joyce's preoccupation with the relationship of the Irish to Ireland is muted here, but is the reason for the title; the background event of the play is the Rowan family's return to Ireland from life abroad. Perhaps a drama more reflecting his other concerns as a writer would have drawn out more of his genius; as it is, The Exiles is probably his most disappointing work.