CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH THEATRE

Abstract

In the whole history of English drama, there has never been an age so closely allied to the Elizabethan plays as the contemporary theatre. A number of ways may lead us to prove it, but I will choose only one way out of them ; I will look into the view of human condition revealed in the works of contemporary playwrights, and try to find out some elements in common with Elizabethans'. Among many promising dramatists of today, I am going to pick out three : John Osborne, the first runner of so-called 'New Drama' ; John Arden, the representative of the Brechtian school ; Harold Pinter, the champion of the Theatre of the Absurd. When Osborne's Look Back in Anger was first performed, K. Tynan observed of its hero : "Jimmy Porter is the completest young pup in our literature since Hamlet, Prince of Denmark". It seems to me of much importance that Hamlet was named in order to make Jimmy's position clear. The most fascinating enigma with Hamlet is the surprisingly conspicuous lack of connection between Hamlet the thinker and Hamlet the doer. And the most interesting problem with Jimmy is the divergence between his outward heroic gestures and shouts of anger and his inward neurotic consciousness of disgusting self. The same thing can be said with Martin in Luther and Bill in Inadmissible Evidence. Osborne's intention must be in presenting human beings as they are, not always consistent with their real selves, but always sincere in their meditation and action, like Hamlet the typical Elizabethan. Arden's attitude towards human condition is most distinctly shown in its objectivity. For example, Live Like Pigs apparently aims at making an attack on the Welfare State, but the Sawneys, the attackers, are not freed from the dramatist's critical eye, either. Serjeant Musgrave's Dance deals with pacifism, it is true, but its pacifism is too rigorously, almost too grotesquely expressed at its crisis to gain the complete sympathy of audience. And how to solve the questions he offers is left entirely in audience's hands. Such an objective eye bears a striking resemblance to, say, Jonson's. Pinter's case is more subtle and complicated. In him, there is a coherent symbol, 'the room'. In The Room, The Dumb Waiter, The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, 'the room' is the protagonist. Every character in 'the room' is Everyman, and consequently 'the room' becomes the world, the stage the macrocosm. Each character also stands for some consciousness within the human mind, and consequently 'the room' comes to be transformed into human mind itself, the stage into microcosm. And in this macro-microcosm, human drama can be at once tragedy and comedy. This is the world of Pinter, directly connected with that of the Elizabethans.