TOM STOPPARD AS a PLAYWRIGHT with Special Reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
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Session :2019-2020 Strictly for Internal Circulation Only Lecture Notes : 01 M.A. ENGLISH SEMESTER II PAPER-V: ENGLISH SOCIETY, LITERATURE AND THOUGHT (20th CENTURY) UNIT-IV DRAMA Dr. Meenakshi Pawha Associate Professor Department of English and Modern European Languages University of Lucknow TOM STOPPARD AS A PLAYWRIGHT With special reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Introduction Theatre is a living art and consequently it continually responds to the world around it. As that world changes so does theatre. Furthermore theatre is a product of human imagination; it remains as unpredictable as the minds of those who create it. In fact, “this constant interaction between human imagination and a changing cultural environment is suggestive of the ecological balance between living organisms and their biological environment.” (Hansen 6). Just as living organisms must adapt or die out, so must the art of theatre adapt. Any art lives in a balanced relationship with the society which supports it. This is especially true of theatre, an art which only happens when relatively large numbers of people are assembled at the same space at the same time. For ten years and more after the Second World War, the British theatre lived quietly with little argument; its scattered forces were reassembled and work was put on hand to restore the production lines that had been in action before hostilities began. “ Some few oddities were accommodated like a revival of verse drama (Brown 1) - but that innovation did not challenge old theatrical forms or literary felicities- and translations or adaptations of plays by Federico Garcia Lorca, Jean Giradoux and Jean Anouilh. Reports from abroad that praised the “epic” theatre of Bertolt Brecht, the “holy” theatre of Antonin Artaud, or the “absurd” theatre of Eugene Ionesco did not dent the self absorption of those who were busy restaging Shakespeare, Anton Chekov, Henrik Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, and the Restoration comedy. The picture of the British variety of the ‘affluent society’ in the 50s and the 60s was convincing enough to the natives of the British Isles as well as to any foreign visitor. The problem of unemployment was pushed to the background, people were better fed and better clothed; they were more cars on the roads and more television sets in British homes. But affluence had its areas of darkness. The nation spent millions of pounds on mass consumption of gadgets, and entertainments, but it could not afford to build a single new hospital or prison, during 1950s-60, and affluence moreover, brought in disquieting social problems. One of the fruits of the welfare state was deep rise in crime, particularly among teenagers. Criminologists indicated possible links between a fast changing society of this kind and the alarming increase in juvenile offenders, illegitimacy, prostitution and drug-taking. Traditional values were being discarded by the youth and an uneasy quest for new values strained the post-war community structure. A fairly sizeable section of population felt either completely left out or partially crippled by insurmountable difficulties. It was the image of a nation with a high proportion young people, struggling to adjust itself to an expending economy and an outdated socio-moral convention. Even those who enjoyed the material prosperity like Arthur Seaton in Ann Sillitoe’s Saturday and Sunday Morning, could not feel a sense of communal belongingness, and were aware of the loneliness in the society. This paradoxical situation, affluence enjoyed by a section of the community, and a large section left uncared for was bound to have its impact on drama. The welfare state raised high hopes but most of its promises remained unfulfilled. This dissatisfaction over the gap between the expected and the existing provided the initial inspiration of what is known as the ‘New Drama’. A child of the post-war conditions, it aspired to visualise, at least at the first stage, the new society’s tensions and paradoxes, its myths and frustrations. The theatre more than any other form of art, perhaps is a place not only for social comment which there is plenty in the new drama, but of social contemplation too. Theatre is the place wherein we not only discover the language of social protest, we also learnt to contemplate the grandeur of human activities and the futility of human efforts; the facts of the period find their way into plays and its dreams and illusions radiate from them. Changes in the economic structure of the society, introduction of new modes and styles in the industrial and habits of a country are followed by a sort of reshuffling in the behaviour pattern of groups, realignments of sections of interest and appearance of new forces. New ideas gain currency, areas of human relationship are reviewed and social priorities readjusted. In this process of overall change, post-war British theatre has undergone a veritable cultural revolution-although it is impossible to demonstrate to what extent the different areas of social and individual behaviour have been controlled and moulded by the rapid economic changes-and the British theatre has been representing with astonishing vitality the dominant moods and the changing cultural images. While a section of the contemporary theatre- John Osborne, Ann Jellicoe, Arnold Wesker for instance, assiduously strives to present problems, and perplexities of an emerging society, its spiritual apprehensions and yearnings are more prominently treasured by playwrights like Pinter and Arden. Bold and passionate plays were being written in English at this time, but the authors were all Americans- Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. These works were staged in London and they were received like rare trophies from another world or all like survivals from another world or like survival from an earlier turmoil that had been represented already in the pre-war plays of Sean O’Casey and John Millington Synge. As the new European dramatists went largely and unperformed and unconsidered, so no one seems to have thought of imitating these trans- Atlantic authors, still less of founding a new kind of British drama. At its best “the rehabilitated theatre was intriguing, temperamental and less frequently, thoughtful.”(2) but by common consent, all its business was carried on without noise or passion, as if a prolonged convalescence had to take its agreeable course in order to ensure full recovery from the shock and rigours of war. Seldom were present-day issues posed on the stage, and few science could be seen in the theatre in the far-reaching and totally unprecedented changes that were taking place in thought, feeling, and society throughout the world. Theatre practice in the years following World War II was extremely diversified. It borrowed, combined, and modified elements from various modern movements, adapted staging devices from many earlier periods and explored new techniques both in writing and staging. Until the 1950s realism continued to be the most common theatrical style, although by late 1940s it had been modified considerably. Various modern movements had by that time conditioned audiences to accept simplification, suggestion, and distortion as basic techniques in art. In the theatre the result was great emphasis on theatricality, less dependence on illusionism, and more willingness to recognise that art is different from reality. State settings, for example, came to rely on suggestion instead of detailed representation of period and place. Although locales were still indicated pictorially, many details were eliminated. Similarly play structure became freer and less dependent on the techniques of the “well -made” play than it had been in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There also was a trend towards a large number of scenes and away from the division of acts, and experimentation with dramatic techniques became common. These modifications came about in part because of changes in man himself and his world. In the late nineteenth century, discoveries of science were hailed and liberated the people from irrational explanations of social phenomena. But such advanced control of atomic energy (with all its potentialities for benefit and misuse) reemphasise the need for moral and spiritual values capable of guiding such power. With the realisation that science cannot provide moral answers came a lessening of faith in the scientific method as the only source of truth. Furthermore, psychology has shown increasingly that many of man's most powerful motivations are subconscious and cannot be deduced from purely external signs. Reality, then was no longer thought to be so simple as in the late nineteenth century, and the means for representing it in the theatre consequently became more flexible. As realism gradually absorbed irrational elements from other movements, it also borrowed dramatic and theatrical techniques from them.Thus post-war realism represented in part a fusion of elements made familiar and acceptable by earlier approaches. Though competition from other media aroused anxiety in the post- war era, most producers merely continued pre-work practises without any extreme break with the past. Thus, for a time, modified realism remained the major mode. But during 1950s the absurdists posed a serious challenge, both to established theatrical practises and to earlier views of man. Absurdism is a term coined by Martin Esslin around 1960, to describe the preceding decade. It was never a conscious movement like many of those that had preceded it. Those writers considered it to be its prime exponents- Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet-did share convictions however, that permit grouping them into a common school. The basic conception of the human condition can be briefly summarised: Absurdism is a logical extension of the nineteenth-century scientific outlook.( Brockett 339). The naturalists argued that the only truths are those that can be apprehended through the five senses and verified by the scientific method.