BOOKS OF THE DAY

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Shakespearian Comedy (Bonamy Dobree) Burma Trials (Francis Gower) .. 318 319 The Chamberlain Tradition (E. L. Woodward) .. 319 Escape from Australia (Christopher Hobhouse) 32o Hungary and her Successors (Igor Vinogradoff) . . 322 Madame Curie (Dr. F. Sherwood Taylor) . . 322 Philosophy and the Physicists (A. J. Ayer) . 324 Talks with a Tory (Dingle Foot, M.P.) .. 326

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The CO-013 (Derek Kahn)

The Labour Spy Racket (D. W. Brogan) .. • • 326 328 The Herne's Egg (L. A. G, Strong) ..

330 A Royal Raconteur 330

Popular Art Books (Anthony Blunt)

330 Short Stories (E. B. C. Jones)

332 Fiction (Kate O'Brien) ..

334 Current Literature ..

335

SHAKESPEARE AND THE COMIC IDEA

By BONAMY DOBREE 'Ha is a bold man who will today publish a book as a straightforward study of one aspect of Shakespeare's art without garnishing his ideas with ink-horn terms of psycho- analysis, or plunging into a life veiled in darkness to interpret plays suffused with light, or inquiring curiously into the significance of imagery. But Professor Charlton has accom-

plished this act of courage. There is no mention throughout his book of Dr. Caroline Spurgeon or of Professor Wilson Knight, no hint even that he recognises the existence of Mr. Middleton Murry. Thus in discussing Troilus and Cressida he ignores the fact that the play contains an inordinate number of food and cooking images (which, if they prove anything, prove that when Shakespeare wrote the " unpleasant " plays he was suffering from dyspepsia): and when he wishes to say that when writing The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare's dramatic imagination obscured the intention of his patriotic prejudice, he does not say that the id invaded the realms of the super-ego. All of which is very refreshing. It shows that a clear eye and a scholarly training can still produce an illuminating book.

To present a series of lectures, for such this volume is, on Shakespeare's comedy, involves having a theory.of comedy ; and Mr. Charlton holds that its business is to lead us to live life more happily, with our feet on the ground. " It has no direct cognisance of thoughts which wander through eternity. It is exclusively concerned with the problems of mortality . . . What time of day is it, lad ? ' That is the immediate concern of comedy," and its chief joke is " the incongruity between what a thing really is, and what it is taken to be." So Mr. Charlton takes us through the canon, showing us Shakespeare struggling to attain this end within the climate of Elizabethan emotions. What he has to say is of very great interest indeed, more, it is true, for what he says incidentally than because we can accept all his conclusions ; but that is the way with Shakespeare books.

The main objection will be a doubt as to chronology. Is Mr. Charlton justified in placing Two Gentlemen before the Comedy of Errors and The Shrew ? One hopes so, because it fits in beautifully. Shakespeare, the contention runs, after enjoying the private lark of Love's Labour's Lost, naturally fat into romance, " naturally " because the time demanded it, and he, being of his time, desired it ; but he found that it simply would not do. The play, indeed, is in some ways so absurd as to encourage even conservatives to " disintegration." But that is, as Mr. Charlton points out in a chapter where his expert knowledge of Italian criticism has stood him in good stead, just the sort of revenge romance will take if you try to use it for comic purposes. So Shakespeare, seeing' his mistake, tried what the classical formula would do, spiced with just a touch of romance. But this again would not work, for reasons Mr. Charlton gives us in a brilliant chapter which solidly convinces us that the bases of Roman society, and thus of Latin comedy, were so different from those of the post- romance, post-Renaissance world, that they would not fit in. Yet, but this Mr. Charlton does not say, for the lite " romances " do not come within his purview, Shakespeare found use for at least one common Latin comedy convention in Pericles.

The next step was the Dream, in which the problem of uniting earthiness with romance was partly solved ; earthiness

Shakespearian Comedy. By H. B. Charlton. (Methuen. los. 61)

and beef and beer there must be in comedy, and the Elizabethan demanded romance in a play. Petruchio, indeed, solved the problem of living, _but " achieves only a false victory. He triumphs because he denies love." Theseus, however, acknow- ledges it as *a fever that has to be lived through ; and it is not the skilful interweaving of three planes of existence which makes the Dream a whole, but the unity of the comic idea, as expressed in the famous speech about the lunatic, the lover, and the poet. Yet that was only a partial solution, which The Merchant did little to help, for the Shylock presentation is dual (Mr. Charlton somewhat cavalierly disposes of Portia and Belmont). But Falstaff was indeed a triumph, yet a brittle triumph ; the solution could not last because Falstaff conquers life only: by ignoring everything which does not pertain to the belly. That is true, but then Falstaff dOes present one aspect of the eternal comic. idea, as Mr. John Palmer has so engagingly pointed out, namely the undying joke of man's being the spirit of an angel imprisoned in the body of a beast. The fact is, of course, that there is no more an all-embracing idea of comedy than there is one containing idea of tragedy.

Clearly Shakespeare had to pass on, and Mr. Charlton makes him pass on to " the dark comedies." This is difficult to accept. It is all very well to say that you cannot be sure when Shakespeare first worked at any play, so you can shift them back to where you will ; for if you start that, then you will have to put As You Like It to within a year or two of Marlowe's death, which would not suit Mr. Charlton at all. The more convincing view is that Shakespeare, having achieved finality on a certain level in Twelfth Night, sought for symbols to express a deeper apprehension of life, and was not at first successful ; whence the problem comedies which inadequately expressed an attitude which could only be manifested by tragic symbols. But no matter. Mr. Charlton is entrancingly fresh on the dark comedies, and disposes, finally one hopes, of the " cyniCal," or moral measles theory, which. the Victorians had to construct to explain plays which struck at all their tenderest assuthptions, but which a post-War world can greet as revealing truth redeemed by charity. This chapter is the most important, original, and convincing part of the book.

For it must be admitted that the conclusion, that Much Ado, Twelfth Night, and finally As You Like It are Shakespeare's final solution, reached after the &tilt comedies, is not argued with so sure a touch as the earlier portions of the theme. No doubt the heroines of these plays are perfect_in their way, and show wisdom in the art of living ; but surely the problem they had to solve with the aid of the comic spirit was not so harsh as that presented in the dark comedies, among .which Mr. Charlton places All's Well last. He is lured to this conclusion, one feels, because, consciously or not, he shares Meredith's view that women rather than men are the better vessels of the comic spirit. There is much indeed to be said for Rosalind, Beatrice, Viola and Helena, but is it quite enough ? They triumph if you like, but it is on a more superficial level than that shown us in Measure for Measure, a less philosophical level than that in which Troilus floundered. But one's dis- sensions from Mr. Charlton only prove the value and interest of his work, here. " gloz'd but superficially," work caiefully thought out over eight years, and presented in a manner which is stimulating to both thought and sensibility, and which is never for a moment dull or pedantic. It is a valuable contribution not only to Shakespeare studies, but also to a

clearer conception of the idea of comedy: • . _