Postscript

Abstract

During the course of this book, in an attempt to demonstrate the modernity of these seven seminal plays, reference has sometimes been made to twentieth-century concepts of absurdity. Aberrations of such ideas are found, as André Gide tells us, within the writings of all ‘great specialists of the human heart’.¹ The difference however between the renaissance authors and the modern dramatists of absurdity is one of faith. Not faith particularly in a divine Godhead, although their sense of morality is dominated by the Christian tradition, but in the order of time. In anthropological terms the absurdity of man’s actions at periods of feast and festivity has been shown by E.R. Leach to have a linear pattern.² Man requires staging posts in time whereby he throws off respectability, his order, and embraces chaos so as to understand the nature of everyday life. At such feasts he wears funny hats, costumes, false noses and indulges in an experience of fantastic absurdity before reestablishing the normality of his existence. In many of Shakespeare’s plays as C.L. Barber has demonstrated,³ such a pattern of absurdity forms the kernel of the drama. From the sentence of Egeon to death and the account of his history we witness a farcical reversal of norms where man’s existence itself is brought into question. Sanity becomes madness, madness sanity as the Antipholuses and Dromios strive to find a touchstone of proof, a solution to madness. In the reversed world of festivity enjoyment can be found and sorrow experienced. Such moments in time, therefore, do not necessarily have to be festive in a comic sense. They exist too in tragedy and tragicomedy. Isabella deluded by the role-play of the Duke wails the loss of her brother whilst Angelo triumphs in the sensual mechanism of his power. These worlds acted out in a brief period of time have the validity of real life but the play always brings the errors or falsehoods to an end, Egeon is recognis discovered, Volpone sentenced, Vindice, De Flores, Giovanni exposed and Faustus taken down to hell. The moment of recognition that brings the play to a close implies faith in the midst of doubt, order in the midst of chaos. The dramatists may wish the audience to see through the protagonists respective fates a criticism of the society to which they belonged and they may question the rational fabric of existence itself, but they do not dismiss its foundations as inescapably futile. It is here that the resemblances between absurd drama and the renaissance fade. The notable absentee from many modern plays is the recognition scene. For Sartre, Ionesco, Genet and Beckett there is no moment of discovery signalling the end of a festival pattern and the consequent return to normality since there is nothing to be discovered. Thus Ionesco in The Bald Prima Donna ridicules the concept of anagnorisis as an absurd mechanical device indicative of man’s inability to find order out of chaos, rather than as an agent to regain sanity. Mr and Mrs Martin in this play prove themselves to be man and wife through a satirical episode of discovery: