Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Trevor Whittock

Critical Essay by Trevor Whittock

SOURCE: Whittock, Trevor. “Major Barbara: Comic Masterpiece.” Theoria 51 (October 1978): 1-14.

In the following essay, Whittock discusses Major Barbara as a great English comic drama.

The English dramatic tradition—if we can divert our eyes for a moment from the figure of Shakespeare who bestrides our petty, narrow world like a colossus—is essentially a tradition of comedy. Not that Englishmen have not written, or attempted to write, tragedies. Edward Marlowe, in the words of one of his characters, did ride in triumph through Persepolis; though Shakespeare indicated how much he thought his contemporary's heroics were mostly rant and rhetoric when he made the boastful braggart Pistol quote the line. John Webster presented the skull beneath the skin; but Bernard Shaw suggested how much it was in waxen effigy only when he dismissed Webster as a ‘Tussaud laureate’. Ben Jonson penned tragedies, but it is his comedies we revive. Reel off...
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