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AUTHOR Nardin, James T. TITLE Modern Criticism and the Closet Drama Approach. INSTITUTION National Council of Teachers of English, Champaign, Ill. PUP DATE May 65 NOTE 7p.; Paper read at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention, Cleveland, Ohio, November, 1964 JOURNAL CIT College English; v26 n8 p591-597 May 1965

7DRS PRICE EDRS Price MF-50.25 HC-$0.45 DESCRIPTORS Acting, *College Students, Creative Dramatics, Creative Reading, Directed Reading Activity, Discussion Groups, *Drama, Dramatics, *Educational Objectives, *English Instruction, Group Reading, Imagination, *Literary Analysis, Literary Criticism, Literary Genres, Literature Appreciation, Reading Development, Teaching Methods, Teaching Techniques, Theoretical Criticism

ABSTRACT Modern drama criticism is rebuked for taking the "closet drama approach" which reduces the theater to yet another type of philosophical and content-oriented literary genre. Group participation and discussion are suggested as means by which the student is encouraged to stage an imaginary performance leading to intelligibility and appreciation of the theatrical nature of drama. Special problems encountered by students in reading the drama are examined. (RL) fromCollege English, May,1965

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Modern Criticism and theCloset Drama Approach

JAMEST. NARDIN

IN THE YEARS that I've been teachingas retreatment ofearlier material. When drama, the commonest and most disheart-I was an undergraduate, I had a course ening comment I've met with regularityin Shakespeare, and because I took Greek is "I can't read a play." This comes fromand Latin, I also read some classical dra- my students; it comesfrom my friends;ma. But Greek drama was anexercise in it comes from my colleagues on occasion.translation; it was not the study of a And a good bit of the reason for thisplay. The Shakespeare professor lectured failure can be attributed to the kind ofon sources and indicated inthe early criticism we have been faced with in theplays the characters to be developed dramaa criticism which in a sense apolo-more fully later and thenreminded us in gizes for and tries to explain away thethe later plays that we had seen earlier drama, or at least to treat it as if it wereViolas, Launcelots, and Iagos. So he something else more respectable. devoted five lectures to Two Gentlemen of Verona and a total of three to Hamlet, This is not strange. Drama has beenLear, Macbeth, Othello, and Antony and suspect in the classroom for a long time, largely, I fear, because it is popular. We Cleopatra. who teach tend to mistrust literature Then along came Brooks and Warren people like. Indeed, I doubt that dramawith their new approach to teaching po- would ever have made it into the class-etry and fiction, and this newapproach room and the learned journa!s if it hadwas extended to the drama.More plays not been for Shakespeare. His poeticwere introduced intothe classroom, and genius was so great that he could not bethat was all to the good. Also, the time ignored, and after all, the main body ofin class was devoted largely to the text tihis work was in dramatic form. So theof the play instead of merely to Holins- play had to be reckoned with. hed or Plutarch and theadaptation But it could be explained away asShakespeare made of these sources. something elseas a philosophical discus- But the orientation of that approach to 14.sion, as imaginative poetry, as imagery,the drama text was still fundamentally the approach to the poem, an approach Modern drama is the special field of Mr.to a piece of literature designed tobe Nardin, professor of English at Louisiana Stateread by one person alone, to be analyzed University. This paper was read at the NCTE Convention session on Teaching Drama, inclosely in terms of imagery and philo- November, 1964. sophical content. It simply ignores the

J1 ..earuage 592 COLLEGE ENGLISH elements that make a play distinctive. It there, but he often talks as if this were turns all plays into closet drama. And to trueas if, because he wrote for the make Hamlet or Hedda Gabler or Oedi- theater, Shakespeare were restricted by .-apacities of the ordinary theater-goer pus Rex closet drama is disastrous both (as conjectured by a twentieth-century critically and pedagogically. scholar)....2 After all, most of us did not get in- terested in closet drama to begin with, These two passages seem to me to lay if, indeed, we ever got interested in it.bare the heart of the problem of trying We saw plays; we acted in them. Onlyto make use of modern criticism in teach- after considerable experience with whating drama. Though both imply that dra- plays looked like and sounded like werematic necessity and dramatic elements are we able to read them and approximate ainvolved, the idea of concentrating on theatrical experience in our imaginations.what comes over in a theater before one But most modern criticism would leadexplores any additionalpossibilityis us away from the theatrical phase ofpassed over by calling the "first-night" the drama and take it directly into theapproach a fallacy and referring to those of us who like to begin there as "victims" closet for careful scrutiny. of it. The emphasis on "reading" a play In This Great Stage (1947), his bookas it appears in these passages suggests on King Lear, Robert B. Heilman (and itthat a reading and a viewing are the same is his text Understanding Drama whichthing. They are not. has been perhaps as influential as any Let me turn back briefly to these pas- single work on the direction recentsages and to what seems to be fundamen- teaching of the drama has taken) indi-tally wrong in their approach. The ref- cates this prejudice against the theatrical: erence to the play as a philosophical es- But it seems safer to assume, as a work-say seems to me like the statement of ing hypothesis, that, when there is re-teachersand I have heard manywho peated speculation upon nature, the playstart to deal with a short story by saying is to that extent an essay upon nature"Now the story is not important." They an essay necessarily broken up into partscut off what gets the reader interested in which are apportioned according to, and finding out what more may be offered. probably modified by, dramatic neces-If the author chooses to write a story, he sity does so because he thinks he can embody A decade later, in Magic in the Web, hehis idea more forcefully in story form or

is more strongly opposed to any but thebecause he thinks stories make more t closet study of the drama as poem: money than philosophical essays. In either The printed play is somewhat like theevent, itis important and a necessary symphonic score which the music critic,starting point. imagining the performance, may study Similarly, if we tell the student that rigorously to see how it is "composed."Oedipus and Lear are interesting because All this is hardly a new and bright idea,they both deal with a similar theme of but it seems necessary to say it to counterparadoxical blindness and sight and that an argument that keeps popping upthethe play as play is not important, we are Fallacy of the First Night or the Fallacydenying the very elements which make of the Single Reading. The victim of this fallacy can hardly believe that what thethem distinctive and exciting worksthat auditor would not get from the perform-they are plays which embody ideas in a ance, or the reader from such a readingform designed to reach an audience in as he would accord to a relativelya theater and move that audience, that straight-forward work of prose, is notmuch of what moves us depends on what s This Great Stage, p. 11. s Magic in the Web (1956), p. 13. ti MODERN CRITICISM AND THE CLOSET DRAMA APPROACH 593 we see and hear, and that the failure toprevious close study of the text are of consider these theatrical elements is tono great significance to the student learn- make these plays simply one more pair ofing to overcome his inability to "read long poems for private reading in thea play." closet. Professor Heilman's other statement So let us turn to what the student which I have quoted about the play'sfinds his greatest problems in reading a being a symphonic score for study andplay. The novel is designed to be read; analysis one finds echoed in many ofthe poem is designed to be read. Both the most recent texts of the drama. Butcan be taken in in solitude. The play the statement appears again to me tois designed to be seen and heard by a go at the play from the wrong end. Letgroup of people assembled in a the- me repeat his phrase again"the printedater (or more recently before a TV set). play is somewhat like a symphonic scoreWhen the student picks up a play with which the music critic, imagining thespeeches and character names and little performance, may study rigorously toelse, he finds himself far more on his own see how itis 'composed.' " True, butthat he is in the novel, where the author there is admittedly no purpose to anal-is in general more explicit in telling him ysis of a symphonic score if the readerwhat he is seeing and what he is hearing does not imagine the performance. Andthan the playwright is. The student who the principal difficulty in imagining such"can't read a play" often tells us he a performance, most of us would readily"can't keep the characters straight." If admit, is "hearing" it. To do so from theyou can put him in the theater and ex- printed score requires a great deal ofpose him to the same text, he has no such experience with performed music. Andtrouble, for he has different persons and only after acquaintance with performeddifferent voices to help him keep them music is one likely to be interested instraight. finding out how the effects were created. I begin, therefore, to recreate a play We who teach drama are, I hope, cap-for him in the classroom by trying to able of "reading the score" of a play be-supply the auditory help he needs. With cause we know a great deal about per-Hedda Gabler, for example, I assign (be- formed drama. But our interest in detailsfore I have asked the students to read the of a "dramatic score" is an interest inplay) different parts to students in vari- seeing how the effects conveyed to usous parts of the room. Some read badly; from the stage were achievedtextually,others well. Admiticedly, rehearsal would visually, audibly. Since we can recon-make this go better. But I want the stu- struct a performance mentally, we aredents to see how as they start to read for ready for that kind of examination. But ifthemselves they are going to have to we wish our students to be able to readimagine a play. The results are often as- drama as a distinctive literary genre, wetonishing as they hear voices coming had better begin, not by examining thefrom different parts of the room. The details, but by helping them try to con-students then report that it is easier to struct a performance of the play in theirfollow, that the play "makes sense." minds. So in examining details for our- selves, we need to keep in mind that, Also, since Hedda Gabler depends a interesting though they may be in them-great deal more on the conversation than selves when we examine the text of theon the visible action, this play serves me play, the details that we can findbutvery well. I have the students read the that virtually no one in the audienceopening six or seven pages of the play would detect in a performance withoutand then stop them and begin discussion II;

594 COLLEGE ENGLISH of what they have gathered from thatto get them to supply as they read, some- much of the play. thing of what they would see in a theater. This fall when I tried it with a class,Readers are notoriously fond of skipping IP one person remarked thatitseemed descriptivepassages; when descriptive strange that as late as Hedda came in atpassages appear as stage directions, they night she still unpacked; but only oneare almost invariably ignored by even had noticed that detail. Several of themthe most determined of us. But we cannot were aware that Berta seemed uneasyignore what we would see if we were about her new job in this newly estab-looking at a stage, not if we are really lished household. All of them were awaregoing to read a play. that Hedda was a woman about whom To start with, I point out that a stage they felt some misgivings; all of them felt description is intended for the director, thatthehoneymoon(and George)not the spectator, that the details of the sounded stuffy and dull; everyone had re-scene described in a modern play will be corded that Miss Tesman's hat was ofrecorded by the spectator only after he some significance. has observed the total effect. Hence, if What this seems to me to illustratethe play says "a drawing room at the pres- among other thingsis that inevitably inent day," that is the general impression a play, the attention span of the memberswe get at once. And this initial impres- of the audience varies and that the drama-sion indicates something of what to ex- tist therefore emphasizes by the textpect from the play. The students them- things which he considers important forselves are astonished to realize how con- future development. Since the actors andditioned they are by such a set to ex- the director will determine the speedpect something other than tragedy, for with which lines go by the audience, theexample. dramatist cannot risk having the audi- To be more specific, I like trying on ence get lost by missing a single men-them the description of the set for You tion of any one important detail. If heCan't Take It With You. Here Kaufman c. is not merely to repeat each line threeand Hart have done much to indicate the times, he must find various kinds ofamused shock we get initially and the details which will add up to the impres-added hilarity we feel at seeing first the sion he wishes his audience to have. Sincecluttered living room of the Sycamore the audience cannot ask to have a linefamily, and then in rapid succession the repeated, either repetition or theatricallydetailspainting easel, typewriter, print- staged emphasis are his only devices foring press, fishtank full of snakes, etc. I making sure that an audience stays withask them to try to visualize the scene him. The obscure and the esoteric arefor themselves and see the absurdity of all right for the closet, but are not the-the collection of incongruous things in atrical, as many a dramatist has learnedthat living room. If I ask them what from to his pain. So should the teacher. such a scene they expect the play to be Having launched a class on Heddalike, they find they know almost at once. Gabler in this fashion, I ask the studentsThis is another step toward getting the to read it through at a fairly rapid (andstudent to read a play and stage his own reasonably attentive) pace, trying to keepimaginary performance, a most useful straight what the play would at leaststep if he is not to mistake a play for a sound like. And with repeated exercisescloset drama. of this kind, I come to the point where I Then I begin on the problem of com- find the students can at least read a playbining the visual and the audible. I some- and keep the characters straight. times try staging (half in actuality, half Next I start on the problem of tryingin their imaginations) a scene; one from MODERN CRITICISM AND THE CLOSET DRAMA APPROACH 595 Henry IV, Part I is a good one herethethat a good bit of modern criticism intro- scene in which Falstaff discovers the trick duces, but still such discussion needs to that has been worked on him by Poinsbe checked by a reference to whatcan and Hal in the highway robbery. I askbe done from the stage. We may look them just what they would have Falstaffat a line such as Ophelia's "I do not know, do as stage action during the speechesmy lord, what I should think." The line of the other people. They need to seemay be simple; I think it is. But reading that Falstaff even while listening mustit differently may change Ophelia from give some suggestion of his gradual real-an innocent and dull woman to a know- ization that he is caught and tricked anding minx. I have let people try reading must by facial expression and glance indi-it in various ways and then have point- cate to an audience that he is on the vergeed out to them that they must take of working a way out if theyare to seea stand on what the line is to meanin why the scene is uproariously funny onconjunction with the rest of Ophelia's the stage and to believe in Falstaff's in-characterizationand then read the line genuity in the face of seeming disaster. that way, that both extremes of this Of course, the ham in a good many ofrange of characterization cannot be si- us makes it difficult for us to stand bymultaneously represented. So also with while some of our inept students reada textual quibbles like "solid" or "sullied" line badly or suggest nothing by way offlesh. Scholars may argue as long as they illuminating action to accompany dia-like over which word to use, but when logue. And I see no reason whywethe actor speaks the line, he will have should not occasionally step in to offerto make up his mind, one way or the suggestions on the reading ofa line andother, unless he is going to mumble like to point out what may happen if onethe Method Actors. On the other hand, shifts a meaning by reading. But since itHamlet's "Ay, madam, itis common" is more important that we develop thecan easily be read so that we hear in ham in our students, we should do whatthe theater more than one meaning to the we can to foster this instinct in them.word common. The final test is whether And they have it. it can reasonably be played so thata To develop the ham in them, severalspectator not versed thoroughly in the times I have tried the line from Henrytext in advance could detect the multi- IV, Part 1, where Falstaff and Hal playplicity of meaning that the closet-bound the roles of the King and HalFal-scholar has conjured up. staff's line "I would your Grace would But the test of such readings is not take me with you. Whommeans yourlimited to single lines in isolation. Exam- Grace?" If the students have been givenination of the subtle meanings ofa text a chance at offering suggestions aboutought well to be done with the constant action and reading, they vie with questions "What happens to this meaning ii one an- other in trying to read this line andtoin the theater?" "Could we make most suggest the action that may accompanyof the audience register it?" "How would it. it be done?" After a good many attempts atexer- Let me illustrate with a line that had cises such as this, I find that when thebeen lost on me until I saw the play students come to class after readingaperformed. In Volpone, in thescene play on their own, they have begun towhere the will is read by the greedy stage mental productions, and sometimescharacters who have hoped to be Vol- they do not agree about theway thingspone's heirsVoltore, Corvino, and Lady are done. At this point, we are ready forPolitick-Would-Be,allread thewill. e the kind of textual quarrels and quibblesMosca sits making quiet inventory of the I 596 COLLEGEENGLISH estate. Itis easy to picture the basicWhen Shy lock's wordsare hurled back scene, with Volpone peering out fromat him in the trial in The Merchant of hiding watching with satisfaction the Venice, we can hardly forget them since frustration of these characters. The ab-they are recent and have received much [ surdity of the frenzy of the disappointedemphasis. When in Mary, Mary,one of heirs as contrasted with the excessivethe characters remarks that dried apricots calm of Mosca is hilarious to watch. Buthave always made him think ofears, the the great moment is easy topass over forlaughter is so hearty that when the hero- the reader who does not picture theac-ine later lifts the lid on the dish of dried tion. Corbaccio late in thescene saysapricots and look; surprised at what is in "Mosca the heir?" after itis clear toit, we are prepared for her replyto the everyone else and has been for a longquestion as to what she thought they time that he is the heir. Buton thewere. We know the word will be ears, stage, this business makes the laugh onand it is. his line the greatest of the show. lie is The devices by which words, phrases, old, nearly blind and deaf. All throughconcepts in a play are fixed in the minds the wild screaming of the others, he la-of audiences are numerous, but they de- boriously reads the will, arriving onlypend on the theatrical. Details needto later at the realization that he has beenhave appeared recently enough for the bilked. The fun the audience gets fromspectator to recall them or to have been the absurd lateness of his discovery isemphasized as Miss Tesman's hat is in something only visualization and hearingHedda Gabler or the incendiary proba- the scene can supply. Perhapsmost read-bilities are in Ghosts. Mere repetition in ers never reach this skill, but at least onethe text is not dramatically significant, director I know of did, and it should beunless there is some reasonableway of our aim as teachers to get our studentsplaying the dramaso that audiences re- to go as far as they can toward seeingcord that repetition and unless there is and hearing a stage playas they read.some reason for that repetition to figure Even if they fall far short of the ideal,importantly in the overall reaction to, w they will be able to reada play betterand judgment of the play. Otherwise, it than they do now. our pet theories may make the part One other error into which moderngreater than the wholebad dramaturgy criticism readily falls could be averted ifas well as bad mathematics. the critics kept in mind the possibilities By the theatrical approachthecon- of performance ond worked toward hav-stant reminder of the relationship be- ing students constantly envision thattween the text and reasonable imagined performance while readinga play. Theperformancewe may lead our students tendency to pursue an imageor a phraseto see that finally the test of readinga that recurs is common. Such pursuitmayline or working out a bit ofstage busi- illuminate the psyche of the author, butness has to be connected with what we little about the play. The fact thata have decided the character isas a person character mentions a word in Act II willand what the play argues about human not make us remember that fact if hebeings and their relationships. We need mentions it again in Act IVor V unlessto emphasize the fact that only through something on the stage makesus recallthis combination of printedtext, actions, the earlier instanceor get it fixed firmlyand vocal inflectioncan the student legit- in our munories in the beginning. Whenimately arrive at something of themean- Falstaff makes his speech about honor,weing of the play inso far asitis a do not hear the word honor again with-philosophical essay in the guise ofa play. out overtones of his initial attack on it.And by helping the student reada play

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1i MODERN CRITICISM AND THE CLOSET DRAMA APPROACH 597 in this theatrical fashion, we may get himsaid, "I think Elizabeth Taylor would be at least to discover why the author wroteideal for Gertrude. Then I could see how a play and not an essayto be entertain-Hamlet got so disturbed at her behavior. ing. After all, entertainment is what tookIf I were her son, I would be too." From us to the drama in the first place. the back of the room someone said, At this point, if we wishand if we"In that case, I'd be Oedipus." The plays have time and energy enough leftwemay have been out of focus after such may be ready to begin the kind of "scoreremarks, but at least they were not dead study" the new critics recommend to seeissues on a page. how the drama was "composed." But that I realize that much of what I have said is only for those of us who want to di-must stand on my own assertion. I have rect performanceson stage or in theno text to support my contention, only classand not for most of the dramamy experience of trying to get students readers we are trying totrain, thoseto see something of what makes drama whom we would have see that drama canexciting literature to me. I know it takes be entertaining and can afford interestingtime to do this, and I know many of you reading and present an interesting idea. worry that this time might be better I still, however, have one more devicespent getting at philosophical profundity. at the end of the consideration of a play.I know that energy spent this wav won't It may sound stupid, but it helps remindcreate articles on the Aristotelianism of the students finally of the theatrical na-Blanche Dubois or increase the bibliog- ture of a play. I find it a useful deviceraphy that we need for promotion. But for making them sum up in their ownI also suspect that there is enough ham minds ;List what the essentials of a char-in most of you that you have secretly acter are. I ask them to cast the play (andand surreptitiously done these things and sometimes to miscast it as grossly as pos-better, perhaps, and that in so far as you sible) using only well-known actors forhave gotten the drama out of the crit- the roles. They can't do it without decid-ical closet, you are closer to having a ing just what the characters are as peoplegroup of students who can read drama. and appraising in some degree the abilityIf all we are doing in teaching is re- of actors as they have known them. (In-flected in the preponderance of articles cidentally, it serves to keep you abreastand books we see about drama, then any of the theater as well, for acto.,.:lave a day now we ought to have an anthology way of fading from popularity, and ifappear consisting of Seneca's Thyestes, you are to control this part of the dis-Samson Agonistes, The Cenci, Paracelsus, cussion you had better know somethingSwinburne's plays on Mary Queen of about who is acting what at the presentScots, and The Cocktail Partycloset moment.) But, flippant as it sounds, I felt drama all. And that day I'll be ready to I had in some measure succeeded in mak-turn L. 7 uniform, go to the showers, ing a play a live theatrical event for aand joinY_. .,' students saving, "I can't class recently, when one of the studentsread a play."

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