The latest book by Eric Bentley, The Theatre of Commitment, a collection of his essays on drama and theatre covering the period from 1956 to 1966, provides a convenient occasion for some thoughts on Bentley's work in recent years. Such an assessment will not do justice to what Bentley wrote before 1956, nor will it touch on a very interesting venture of his into theatre theory, The Life of the Drama (1964). However, the trajectory of a major critic during a dozen years is not only fascinating on its own but also representative of his major preoccupations and attitudes. With every caution in mind, one can try to tease them out of this one book.
What stance is appropriate to a critic of our times? In an essay included in the current collection, "What is Theatre?", Bentley defines a position in contrast to influential American mainstream critics like Walter Kerr, adjusted to "the age of conformity, the age of 'other-directed' yes-men, the age of democrateering salesmanship." As against them, the Nietzschean or Carlylean caller from the mountain heights holds up a normative mirror to the theatre. The norms to be applied are those of Reason—spiritual curiosity and a controlled audacity constituting an inner-directed exploration of the human condition. Such a search by the artist in the theatre—and by the critic-artist of In Search of Theatre—is basically subversive of existing norms and definitions of the human condition; it goes against the grain of "middle-class culture," especially in its imperturbable American form; yet from the point of view of the society as a whole—as against the bourgeois culture—it is salutary and indispensable for a reconstitution of its values.
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