CDR 1992 0001
CDR 1992 0001
(review)
June Schlueter
Comparative Drama, Volume 26, Number 3, Fall 1992, pp. 284-286 (Review)
Access provided at 9 Jan 2020 02:06 GMT from Queen Mary University of London (+1 other institution account)
284Comparative Drama
least some specific recognition: John Henry Raleigh's learned "Strindberg
and O'Neill as Historical Dramatists," a substantial contribution to the
study of the historiographical tendencies of these two dramatists, and
Jean Chothia's ingenious reading of verbal and scenic images in The
Hairy Ape. Raleigh's comparison constitutes the most substantial, sus-
tained argument in the book and should prove of real interest to all
students of historical drama.
The volume's few weaknesses mirror those of New Essays on Ameri-
can Drama, although they are somewhat less conspicuous: namely, a
number of not so "new" ideas and methodologies, and some truly
egregious copy-editing. Both problems really damage the quality of New
Essays, and I shall take up the former, more important defect momen-
tarily. I hate to complain about sloppy proofreading—who hasn't been
guilty at one time or another of such lapses?—but in several cases the
unreasonably large number of spelling and punctuation errors becomes
distracting. In Johan Thielemans' "From LeRoi Jones to Baraka and
Back," an able and interesting essay in several respects, Ron Karenga's
name is spelled three different ways; another essay comparing stage and
film versions of Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is authored
by either C. Bordewijk or J. M. Bordewijk-Knotter, depending upon
where you happen to look in the volume. You get the idea: someone at
Rodopi (or is it Roddoppi? Rodapi? Does it really matter anymore if
words are spelled correctly?) needs to attend to the important details of
proofreading or define more rigorously that horrible phrase and process
which have insinuated themselves into academic publishing: "camera
ready."
My suggestion that there is little "new" in this volume is, of course,
not totally fair or accurate. As I noted above, Henry Schvey provides
strong insights into Miller's later plays The Archbishop's Ceiling (1977)
and The American Clock (1980) and makes a convincing case that
The Price (1968) reaches the aesthetic "level of his earlier works"
(p. 96). Sy M. Kahn is persuasive in arguing that "to come to terms"
with Williams' Out Cry (the 1973 version) is "to confront the very heart
of Williams' work as a whole" (p. 41), and Liliane Kerjan provides a
useful, much-needed exposition of Albee's most recent work. New Essays
on American Drama, therefore, possesses a number of attractions, its
most appealing being its strategy of foregrounding the lesser-known, less
often discussed plays of the "big four" American dramatists. In this
regard, there is something of value "new" about the collection—and
about the later selections in Eugene O'Neill and the Emergence of Ameri-
can Drama.
STEPHEN WATT
Indiana University