Table Of ContentSIX CONTEMPORARY DRAMATISTS
Also by Duncan WII
WORDSWORTH'S READING, 1770-1799
WORDSWORTH'S READING, 1800-1815
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
A Selection of his Finest Poems
(co-editor with Stephen Gill)
ROMANTICISM: An Anthology (editor)
ROMANTICISM: A Critical Reader (editor)
Six Contelllporary
Dram.atists
Bennett, Potter, Gray, Brenton,
Hare, Ayckbourn
Duncan Wu
Reader in the Department of English Literature
University of Glasgow
palgrave
macmillan
© Duncan Wu 1995, 1996
The right of Duncan Wu to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London WIP 9HE.
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil
claims for damages.
Published by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
First edition 1995
Reprinted (with alterations) 1996
ISBN 978-0-333-67068-2 ISBN 978-1-349-25231-2 (eBook)
DDOOIl 1100..11000077//997788--11--334499--2255223311--22
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Published in the United States of America 1996 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC..
Scholarly and Reference Division
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. lOOlO
ISBN 978-0-312-12360-4 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-333-16567-6 (paperback)
Give me my robe, put on my crown, I have
Immortal longings in me.
Antony and Cleopatra, V, ii, 280-1
Contents
Preface to the 1996 Reprint: Tom Stoppard's Arcadia,
David Hare's Skylight, David Edgar's Pentecost. ix
Acknowledgements xxix
Permissions xxx
1 Introduction: Intangible Commodities 1
2 Alan Bennett: Anarchists of the Spirit 17
3 Dennis Potter: The Angel in Us 35
4 Simon Gray: Numbness of the Heart 65
5 Howard Brenton: Romantic Retreats 81
6 David Hare: A Milder Day 97
7 Alan Ayckboum: Beyond Romanticism 117
8 Epilogue 141
Appendix A: An Interview with Alan Ayckbourn 145
Notes and References 155
Bibliography 169
Index 173
vii
Preface to the 1996 Reprint
Only after completing work on this volume did I realise that its
central conceit - that romantic concepts retain their power even at
the end of the twentieth century - had been anticipated two years
before in an extraordinary play by Tom Stoppard.1 It may be that
romanticism depends for its attraction partly on its ability to
contemplate the worst: mass destruction, the end of the world, and
dystopian visions, elements characteristic of contemporary thought,
have gained currency partly through the work of such romantics as
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Byron, and John Martin.
Stoppard's Arcadia, like other plays discussed here, confronts such
a doom-laden scenario. At its climax Thomasina, the nineteenth
century heiress on the eve of her seventeenth birthday, reveals to
her tutor, Septimus, that she has realised what her descendants will
rediscover over a ce'ltury later: that the universe is growing
progressively cooler, until one day everything will be reduced to
ashes.
SEPTIMUS: When we have found all the meanings and lost all
the mysteries, we will be alone, on an empty shore.
THOMASINA: Then we will dance. Is this a waltZ?2
Not surprisingly, perhaps - this is Stop pard, after all - there is
irony in the air. What the audience already knows is that that night
Thomasina is to die, the flame from her candle setting her room in
Sidley Park alight. It is grimly appropriate that the first person to
realise that loss of heat will lead, inexorably, to the end of the
world, must herself perish by fire. In that context her optimistic
desire to waltz with her tutor is all the more poignant; it is an act of
faith, setting the death of the world, and her own, more imminent
demise, against the context of human relationships.
That context is present from the outset, when we are introduced
to Thomasina and Septimus, four years earlier, in mid-tutorial.
THOMASINA: Septimus, what is carnal embrace?
SEPTIMUS: Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's
arms around a side of beef.
THOMASINA: Is that all?
ix
x Preface to the 1996 Reprint
SEPTIMUS: No ... a shoulder of mutton, a haunch of venison
well hugged, ail embrace of grouse ... caro, carnis; feminine;
flesh.3
Loaded once again with irony, this exchange sets the rhetorical tone
for the rest of the play. If, in literal terms, carnal embrace means no
more than what Septimus suggests, Thomasina's insight by the end
of the play is that it can mean a good deal more. Arcadia is a kind of
passage from innocence to experience; on the verge of her
seventeenth birthday (and her death), she understands not merely
why the earth and its inhabitants are doomed, but why such things
mean little in the face of love. She is not the only one to make this
journey: though engaged in several affairs of a purely carnal nature
at the outset, Septimus is compelled on the eve of Thomasina's
death to realise that a more profound passion exists between them
than any he has previously experienced. None of this is explicitly
stated, but by the moment of his final remarks to Thomasina, the
audience is aware that after her death he will spend the remainder
of his life grieving for her, in the guise of the hermit of Sidley Park.
SEPTIMUS: Take your essay, I have given it an alpha in blind
faith. Be careful with the flame.
THOMASINA: I will wait for you to come.
SEPTIMUS: I cannot.
THOMASINA: You may.
SEPTIMUS: I may not.
THOMASINA: You must.
SEPTIMUS: I will not.
(She puts the candlestick and the essay on the table)
THOMASINA: Then I will not go. Once more, for my birthday.
(SEPTIMUS and THOMASINA start to waltz together)4
Septimus is unaware of the irony of his admonition that she be
careful. Nor can he be aware that this is the only chance he will
ever have to respond to her offer of a more than merely carnal
embrace. His rejection of her takes us to the emotional core of the
drama: the importance of responding to love when it is offered.
The present-day inhabitants of Sidley Park are similarly
preoccupied. Hannah Jarvis, a freelance writer, is staying there to
write a book about 'the nervous breakdown of the Romantic
Imagination'.s She explains her thesis in detail to Bernard
Preface to the 1996 Reprint xi
Nightingale, a Byronist from the University of Sussex, beginning
with her observations on the hermit (Septimus):
HANNAH: When he died, the cottage was stacked solid with
paper. Hundreds of pages. Thousands. Peacock says he was
suspected of genius. It turned out, of course, he was off his
head. He'd covered every sheet with cabalistic proofs that the
world was coming to an end. It's perfect, isn't it? A perfect
symbol, I mean.
BERNARD: Oh, yes. Of what?
HANNAH: The whole Romantic sham, Bernard! It's what
happened to the Enlightenment, isn't it? A century of
intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos
suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false
emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully.
There's an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you
want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. All destroyed by
the vandals and Goths - that's my name for the landscapists,
God rot them. By 1760 everything had gone - the topiary,
pools and terraces, fountains, an avenue of limes - the whole
sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown.
The grass went from the doorstep to the horizon and the best
box hedge in Derbyshire was dug up for the ha-ha so that the
fools could pretend they were living in God's countrySide.
And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date. By
the time he'd finished it looked like this (the sketch book). The
decline from thinking to feeling, you see.
BERNARD: (A judgement) That's awfully good.6
Completely misunderstanding what actually happened, Hannoh's
remarks prove that literary criticism is a species of autobiography.
She regards the advent of romanticism as 'decline' only because she
is afraid of her own emotions: no-one at ease with themselves
would suggest that the victory of emotion over intellect
represented that. Bernard says as much when, later, he informs her
that she lacks 'a visceral belief in yourself. Gut instinct. The part of
you which doesn't reason.'7 It is for this reason that she identifies
romanticism with chaos. Hannah rejects anything that impinges on
her emotions, preferring the realm of the rational to that of the
sentimental. In any case, as she is to discover, the 'hermit',
Septimus, was not crazy at all; he was continuing the calculations
