Modern Drama

1964 BOOK REVIEWS 361 Plays in The Observer (20 January 1957) and once more forces one to recognise the limitations of Mr. Taylor's inward.looking, play-by-play treatment. It is impossible to read this review and not to notice that Osborne is touching on general issues which concern him, Williams, and his contemporaries; adequate criticism of Osborne as a dramatist must take account of these issues and consider their importance in his plays. In the review, Osborne remarks that Williams's significance for the British dramatist is that his plays "are a kick in the face of the common belief among playgoers in this country that suffering is some form of inferiority." The relevance to Osborne's own plays is obvious. He goes on to comment that Williams's plays "are about failure. That is what makes human beings interesting." It is not a novel idea-Graham Greene voiced it in almost exactly the same terms many years earlier-but it is clearly pertinent for a study of Osborne's drama as well as compelling the critic to take note of the social and political situation out of which Osborne writes. And, finally, the review contains the statement: "[Williams's] plays are about-sex. Sex and failure. The moral failure of Protestant Capitalism has produced the biggest sexual nut-house since the Middle Ages." Again the general question here cannot be sidestepped and in particular terms the remark has a challenging relevance for Look Back in Anger: Alison and Helena are treated by Jimmy Porter as if they are Baby Dolls who have to be defiled and diminished in stature. This, it is true, is only one of Osborne's public statements but in itself it provides a vantage point from which his vision and achievement can be assessed on general, particular, and comparative grounds. These few extracts from it emphasise the limitations of a dramatic criticism that never moves out beyond the plays themselves and the individual playwright. To go tilirough Mr. Taylor's book in similar detail would only serve to reinforce the conclusions already suggested. For insights into the scope of contemporary British drama and for the flavour of individual plays or of the total production by the several dramatists, his work is valuable. For this reason it should find a place in every library of drama. But to look in his book for breadth of vision in terms of the interplay between art and SOciety, for an adequate appraisal of serious critical assessments of modern drama, or for a rigorous attempt to evaluate the permanent contribution made by living writers to dramatic literatureto look for such things is to be disappointed. JAMES T. BOULTON University of Nottingham THE ANGRY THEATRE: NEW BRITISH DRAMA, by John Russell Taylor, Hill and Wang, New York, 1962, 286 pp., illustrated. Price $5.00. The title fairly indicates the thesis: the production of Look Back in Anger in 1956 is seen as the explosion that triggered a revolution in the British theatre, and Mr. Taylor applies a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument while admitting at the same time that "there has never been any 'School of Osborne,' and Anger in his special sense has on the whole been conspicuous by its absence." This tendency to launch a kite and then snipe at it until we are not sure whether theobject is celebration or target practice makes the book a somewhat difficult introduction for the reader who is not already familiar with the plays discussed. He can see that there was a revolution, he is not sure whether it was a renaissance, but then Mr. Taylor himself seems undecided. This is almost inevitable, of course, in writing about contemporary literature while it is still being made. 362 MODERN DRAMA December Mr. Taylor is the enthusiast who realises that enthusiasm must be tempered if the result is to be worthwhile, but he is inclined to temper it with prejudice rather than with clearly perceptible critical standards. Thus he criticises Arnold Wesker because, among other things, the language of Roots does not "bear more than a very superficial resemblance to the language really spoken by Norfolk natives." Yet when he discusses...