James Bridie: Clown and Philosopher Jam es Bridie: Clown and Philosopher By Helen L. Luyben Philadelphia University of Pensylvania Press © 1965 by the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number : 64-24508 Published in Great Britain, India and Pakistan by the Oxford University Press, London, Bombay and Karachi 7476 Printed in the United States of America For my Mother and Father Contents Introduction 9 I The Dramatic Method 15 II Ambiguity in The Switchback 35 III Sengs of Innocence 51 IV The Clown Despairs 97 V Songs of Experience 129 Notes 167 Chronology 173 Bibliography 177 Index 179 Introduction define truth by deciding what it is not, or ONE MUST BEGIN TO so the hero of James Bridie's last play, The Baikie Charivari, seems to say when he kills the soothsayers clamoring around him. So this study can be defined, to begin with, in terms of what it is not. It is not a biographical study. The only remotely relevant biographical facts are that Osbome Henry Mavor, whose pen name was James Bridie, was born on January 3, 1888, and died on January 29, 1951; he was a Scotsman and a physician. (For the curious, however, a chronology is supplied as an appendix.) Nor is this a summary description of Bridie's complete works—forty-odd plays—or an attempt to relate the dramatist to the narrow scope of the Scottish theater. These three objectives already have been attained by Winifred Ban- nister in her book James Bridie and His Theatre. No attempt at mere inclusiveness has been made here; rather, the analysis is selective, with the intention of illustrating in representative plays a philosophical continuity which, when recognized, goes far toward defining the total genius of Bridie. This continuity is traced through three stages of moral awareness, which might be labeled innocence, disillusionment, and resolution, corre- sponding to three chronological periods, the early plays (1928- 1937), the middle plays (1938-1947), and the late plays (1948-1951). To be positive, then, this study attempts to show that Bridie is a moralist and that his plays are, in a special 9 10 JAMES BRIDIE 1 CLOWN AND PHILOSOPHER sense, morality plays; thus his original use of religious myth is explored, primarily his use of the myth of the fall from innocence (which includes the myth of temptation). Moreover, the study defends Bridie as a craftsman, in an attempt to correct the misconception that he is a bungler. Misinterpretation of his intention in the plays has led to criticism of their structure, which is not diffuse, unmeditated, or slapdash, but instead carefully plotted. Evidence for this view is found primarily in the conscious use of myth supported by a metaphysical use of language, but also in the use of common structural techniques (for example, dramatic fore- shadowing). As Bridie's morality goes beyond the limits of logic, so his structure disregards the limitations of realistic drama, demanding dramatic forms—farce and fantasy—which will encompass the illogical and portray a higher reality than the realistic; so his language operates on two planes, literal and poetic. Finally, Bridie's moral affinity with Shaw and Ibsen is explored, not with the intention of tracing literal borrowing but to clarify Bridie's philosophical and dramatic intention. The justification for such comparisons is obvious : Bridie wrote critically of Shaw as a playwright and adapted several of Ibsen's plays. From the two, he adopted a dramatic method which capitalizes on the use of what he called a judicial attitude (and what I refer to as judicial ambiguity) and a corresponding philosophical relativism, both of which allow the apparently irreconcilable conflicts in his play between order and disorder, humility and pride, responsibility and irresponsibility, selfless- ness and selfishness, salvation and damnation. Shaw's influence is stressed in the earlier plays, Ibsen's in the later plays, when a greater moral awareness in Bridie's protagonists suggests their understanding of the relativity of human values as distinguished from the ambiguity of divine.