When
Julie declares her intention of breaking away from the house of bondage,
her sisters rise up symmetrically, one on either hand, and implore her
rather to bear the ills she has than to fly to others that she knows not
of. "Symmetry of symmetries, all is symmetry" in the poetics of M.
Brieux. But life does not fall into such obvious patterns. The
obligatory scene which is imposed upon us, not by the logic of life, but
by the logic of demonstration, is not a _scene a faire_, but a _scene
a fuir_.
Mr. Bernard Shaw, in some sense the Brieux of the English theatre, is
not a man to be dominated by logic, or by anything else under the sun.
He has, however, given us one or two excellent examples of the
obligatory scene in the true and really artistic sense of the term. The
scene of Candida's choice between Eugene and Morell crowns the edifice
of _Candida_ as nothing else could. Given the characters and their
respective attitudes towards life, this sententious thrashing-out of the
situation was inevitable.
Pages:
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324