罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作研究刘晓丹

文学硕士学位论文
罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作研究
刘晓丹
哈尔滨工业大学
2006 年 6 月
国内图书分类号：I-053
国际图书分类号：82-2
文学硕士学位论文
罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作研究
硕士研究生：刘晓丹
导师：秦明利教授
申请学位：文学硕士
学科、专业：外国语言学及应用语言学
所在单位：外语系
答辩日期： 2006 年 6 月 26 日
授予学位单位：哈尔滨工业大学
国内图书分类号：I-053
国际图书分类号：82-2
Graduation Thesis for the M. A. Degree
The Study of Robertson Davies’

Playwriting
Candidate: Liu Xiaodan
Supervisor: Prof. Qin Mingli
Academic Degree Applied for: Master of Arts
Specialty: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Affiliation: Dept. of Foreign Languages
Date of Oral Examination: June 26, 2006
Degree Conferring Institution: Harbin Institute of Technology

HIT Graduation Thesis for the MA Degree
摘要
本篇论文以加拿大剧作家罗伯逊·戴维斯（1913，8~1995，12）和他的
戏剧作品为主要研究对象。文章首先对加拿大戏剧发展史、国内外对罗伯
逊·戴维斯戏剧研究的状况以及英联邦戏剧作了概要性的阐述。然后，分析
了影响并激励罗伯逊·戴维斯从事戏剧创作生涯的种种因素，如家庭、早年
经历、小剧场运动以及他所处的社会环境，并在总结和归纳的基础上，对他
一生的戏剧作品进行了综合分类。其次，笔者根据戏剧创作理论，通过对戴
维斯多部作品的分析，从不同角度重点探讨和研究了罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧
创作风格和他戏剧作品的艺术特色，从而认识和了解戴维斯在他所创作的作
品中用传统的情节剧所表现的喜剧风格和他在对话、情节、人物塑造各方面
的创作特点。最后，本文拟从罗伯逊·戴维斯的代表作品《财运，我的仇敌》
中的主题和创作手法入手，研究这部作品的成功所在，从而领略剧作家罗伯
逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作魅力和他在戏剧作品中给人们带来的艺术享受，并通
过对其作品和其所从事的戏剧活动的分析，真正认识罗伯逊·戴维斯在加拿
大戏剧舞台所处的地位和他对加拿大戏剧发展所具有的作用和影响, 进而深
切感受罗伯逊·戴维斯独特的艺术风格和创作魅力。
关键词加拿大戏剧；英联邦戏剧；戏剧创作；艺术特色；戏剧主题
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Abstract
This thesis is aimed at the study of Robertson Davies (1913,8~1995,12), a
Canadian playwright, and his works. First, the thesis makes a general exposition of
the historical development of Canadian drama, the present state of the research of
Robertson Davies’ playwriting, and Commonwealth drama, which includes the
general state of Commonwealth drama, four phases of its development, and
American cultural influences on Commonwealth drama. Then, it analyzes the
elements, which influence and encourage Robertson Davies to take up playwriting
as a profession, such as his family, his early experiences, the little theatre
movement and the social circumstances of his time. On the basis of summarizing
and generalizing his works, it also gives a comprehensive classification of them,
which falls roughly into three categories: history, morality and autobiographical
plays. Next, based on dramatic theories, it continues to analyze some of Davies’
works and approach Davies’ playwriting method from different angles, thus
revealing his comic style in the form of melodrama and his dramatic features in
dialogue, plot and characterization. Finally, this thesis, focused on one of Davies’
great works, Fortune, My Foe, is preoccupied with the key points of its success in
terms of its theme and its creative methods. Meanwhile the writer clarifies her own
views on Davies’ plays in order to have a real recognition of Davies’ unique
position in the Canadian drama circle and his important influence on the
development of Canadian drama, and to have a deep feeling for the idiosyncrasies
of Davies’ playwriting and the dramatic charm of his works.
Key words Canadian drama; Commonwealth drama; playwriting; artistic features
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Contents
Chinese Abstract ....................................................................................................... I
English Abstract...................................................................................................... II
Chapter 1 Introduction.............................................................................................1
1.1 Historical Development of Canadian Drama................................1
1.2 The Drama of Robertson Davies...................................................2
1.3 Commonwealth Drama .................................................................3
1.3.1 The General State of Commonwealth Drama ...................3
1.3.2 Four Phases of Commonwealth Drama ..........................10
1.3.3 American Cultural Influence on Commonwealth Drama18
Chapter 2 Robertson Davies and His Playwriting ...............................................20
2.1 A Brief Account of His Family Background...............................20
2.2 Influences on Robertson Davies’s Playwriting ...........................21
2.2.1 Family .............................................................................22
2.2.2 Earlier Experiences .........................................................23
2.2.3 Society ............................................................................26
2.3 Robertson Davies’s Plays............................................................33
2.4 Types of Davies’ Plays ................................................................35
2.4.1 History Plays...................................................................36
2.4.2 Morality Plays.................................................................37
2.4.3 Autobiographical Plays ...................................................39
Chapter 3 Artistic Styles and Various Artistic Features......................................41
3.1 Artistic Style................................................................................41
3.2 Artistic Features ..........................................................................43
3.2.1 Form................................................................................44
3.2.2 Dialogue..........................................................................47
3.2.3 Characterization ..............................................................49
3.2.4 Plot ..................................................................................54
Chapter 4 Robertson Davies’s Fortune, My Foe ..................................................58
4.1 The Advent and Summary of Fortune, My Foe ..........................59
4.2 An Exploration of the Theme in Fortune, My Foe .....................62
4.3 The Artistic Methods of Fortune, My Foe ..................................71
4.4 The Influence of Davies’ Playwriting on Canadian Drama ........73
Conclusion ...............................................................................................................76
References................................................................................................................79
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Appendix .................................................................................................................82
Statement of Copyright & Letter of Declaration .................................................86
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................87
-IV-
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Historical Development of Canadian Drama
In China, whenever people speak of English drama, they will be focused on British
drama and American drama. To be sure, both of them have a glorious history and
great position in the world drama, with dazing brightness on the world stage. As a
matter of fact, in Canada with a vast territory of North America exists an old,
simple, and time-honored English drama, which has distinctive patterns and
characteristics, as do British drama and American drama.
The history of the development of Canadian drama seems to follow a similar
pattern in every country. It is a long, painful process of growth. In the three
hundred years, from the early 17th century to the late 19th century, Canadian drama,
mainly affected by European colonialism, had neither its own dramatic tradition,
nor acting staff. With foreign importations and continuing with thin imitations of
the masters, Canadian drama, until the 1920s and the 1930s, eventually evolved
out of the frustrations of playwrights who refused to be mere imitators. It was born
of the passion to create their dramatic art. The Dominion Drama Festival,
established in 1933, was not only a sign of vigor and prosperity of Canadian
amateur dramatic activities, but also a motive of the subsequent professional
dramatic cause. The 1940s and the 1950s saw a turning point of the great progress
of Canadian drama, during which appeared so many outstanding Canadian
playwrights, such as John Coulter, Robertson Davies, Gwen Pharis Ringwood,
Herman Voaden and Merrill Denison. All of them began to dramatize their own
unique characters, cultures and backgrounds in plays they created. During this
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time Davies’ Fortune, My Foe came into being. It was such plays as this one that
showed Canadians came to have their own real drama. As a playwright, Davies
had a great effect on Canadian national drama.
1.2 The Drama of Robertson Davies

Canadian drama ought to be a part of English drama. Yet, the vigorous flower of
Canadian drama has been somehow ignored in China and even in the world. It is
even excluded from the vision of English drama and thus far has had little
recognition.
Robertson Davies enjoyed a distinguished and multifaceted career. In his
nearly whole-century life, he experienced the whole process of Canadian drama,
from development to maturity and prosperity. From his intensive playwriting and
active participation in dramatic activities people can not only get some idea of his
writing style, the tone of his language and the themes of his plays, but also
appreciate his artistic charm, sincerity and the great passion for the dramatic cause.
Davies wrote altogether 26 pieces, most of which have been published or
produced. Of these, Eros at Breakfast and Fortune, My Foe won the prizes
respectively in 1948 and 1949 at the Dominion Drama Festival. From 1953 till
1971 Davies was designated chairman of Stratford Festival, the first–honored
organization of the dramatic circle in Canada. In 1963, in order to enhance the
development of Canadian professional theatre and to cultivate the first-rate
dramatic elite, Davies helped set up the Graduate Center for Study of Drama in the
University of Toronto―the highest academic institution for drama studies.
In Canada there are many scholars and critics who do research work on
Robertson Davies. Susan Stone and Robert Lack in their books Playwright:
Robertson Davies (1985) and Robertson Davies (1986) outlined and analyzed
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Davies’ playwriting from different angles, at different levels and in different ways.
In these two books, they both thought that Davies adopted symbolism and realism
in his characterization. His works featured satire, humor, wit and comedy, and
revealed profound themes of both the past and the contemporary. In Appreciation,
published in 1991 by Broadview, the author Hebert Huteck considered Robertson
Davies “the pioneer dramatist” (1991:42) in Canada. As for Davies and his artistic
playwriting, critics in Canada did not have an agreement. Nor did they agree as to
which play was his masterpiece. But judging from the sensation of Fortune, My
Foe at Dominion Drama Festival and its subsequent constant productions, it is out
of question that this play made Davies well known nationwide. Susan Stone called
this play “a period work” (1985:70). This is the mere reason that I attempt to take
it as the objective of my study in the last chapter of this paper.
In China there is still a need to fill in the gap in the study of Robertson
Davies. Therefore, in a sense, what I do in this paper is of great practical
significance.
This paper, which aims to have a thorough study of Robertson Davies, his
playwriting and his artistic and dramatic techniques, is undoubtedly a great
contribution to a better understanding of Canadian drama and its achievements, as
well as to the expansion of the world’s national cultures and to the enrichment of
the English drama treasure house.
1.3 Commonwealth Drama
1.3.1 The General State of Commonwealth Drama
When it comes to Canadian drama, we cannot do without mentioning the
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Commonwealth drama. Commonwealth is a free association of Britain and certain

sovereign independent states, formerly the colonies of the British Empire, and
their dependencies. The British Crown is acknowledged by all members as the
symbol of their association. From 1931 to 1972, there are about 30 countries,
including Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and some other
countries in Asia, Africa and South America, entering the Commonwealth. The
main cohesive forces are historical ties, trade, finance and defense interests and the
bond of the English Language.
Canada is one of its member countries and the history of Canadian drama
certainly has become an important part of Commonwealth drama. To better
understand the whole development of Canadian drama, first let us take some space
here to come to know about the history of Commonwealth or post-colonial drama
and its progressive state.
Commonwealth drama begins between 1950 and 1965, roughly the period of
political and cultural decolonization. Theatre and locally written plays existed, of
course, almost from the beginnings of overseas settlement, but there is no evidence
of its influence on post-colonial drama. In the early twentieth century the
Australian nationalist Louis Esson, Hal Porter, the Trinidadian C. L. R. James, the
Jamaican Roger Mais, the South African Herbert Dhlomo, and Bruce Mason in
New Zealand wrote plays. But most of the early drama was highly literary, often
written by poets and novelists, rather than theatrical and some of them read like
nineteenth-century verse drama, few of which were produced. By the 1940s the
emphasis began to change. Canadian drama, represented by dramatist Robertson
Davies, developed rapidly. The plays of Robertson Davies and the dramatists of
his age about provincial Canadian life were performed throughout Ontario
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between 1946 and 1955 and contributed to the feeling that Canada needed a
serious professional theatre. All these earlier dramatists in the colonial countries
contributed to the awareness that a local serious theatre was necessary.
From the early 1950s the dramatic activities were active in other colonial
countries. In Jamaica there had already been an influential body of political,
historical and sociological studies, which had an eager desire to create a theatre
reflecting the lives of the local people, based on the local modern dance. In
Trinidad the war had brought many expatriates to the island. They formed white
amateur drama groups, which around 1950 began to accept a few black actors and
look for local plays. West Indians, like Dennis Scott, would be writing, producing
and directing plays. In various colonies and in different ways, a new drama and
theatre were coming into being.
The 1950s was seen as a time when the seeds of a post-colonial theatre were
being planted, but still a time when it was difficult to create a cultural space for
local products, as most people in colonial countries were occupied by European
high culture, making them have little interest in local art, especially the dramatic
art. It was impossible to find the real local or indigenous plays in colonies and the
dominion areas. In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the older white dominions,
such as, as well as in the West Indian colonies, theatre productions usually came
from overseas, local theatres performed British plays and what national drama
there was tended to be the work of intellectuals and short-lived. In these areas
culture to some degree meant Europe. Culture meant the United States.
In colonial countries wrapped in the shroud of foreign theatre there was the
need to consider how a local dramatic tradition might take root, and what might be
its subject matter, style and form of performance. During the cultural nationalism
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of the 50s and early 60s Errol Hill and Derek Walcott debated what a West Indian
drama might be. Hill said that Trinidadian theatre should be based on the island’s
tradition of Carnival. Walcott thought Carnival formless and limiting. He wanted
to adapt European forms to local subject matter and incorporate local culture
through songs, dance and by developing an acting style based on West Indian body
movements and speech. Variations on these two points of view would be raised
and continue to be raised throughout the Commonwealth. Could an African theatre
be built directly upon African rituals and masquerades? Can a Maori theatre
evolve without European forms? The attitudes of Hill and Walcott seem essential
to post-colonial theatre. While pressure from the natives stimulates use of folk and
anthropological materials as a form of cultural assertion, it is limited and
backward-looking in rapidly changing societies and ignores present-day conflicts.
But as a tradition of local European-derived theatre takes root, it changes, begins
to build upon itself and continues to find useful symbols and artistic forms in local
history and culture.
World War II changed the situation, which brought about major social,
economic and cultural changes in the colonies and contributed to the rapid
political and artistic development that followed. The increase in the value of
exports, the start of local industries, an influx of servicemen and expatriates, the
presence of American bases, brought new wealth, new social attitudes, energy,
foreigners with talents and an interest in the arts, including a new group of patrons
who would support local arts. The war helped modernize and internationalize the
colonies and dominions while increasing the cultural nationalism that had been
evolving among some intellectuals in previous decades. The rapid international
movement of decolonization after the war was accompanied by the assertion of
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national culture, government policies to encourage national artists, the expansion

of education, the founding of new universities and the emergence of a new outlook
in which culture was seen rather as originating in Ibadan (Nigeria), Edmonton
(Canada), Bombay (India) or Auckland (New Zealand) than being an import from
London or New York.
The rapid development of new technology, such as television, computer
networks and the jet aircraft, meant that the new national cultures were rapidly
influenced by and became part of international culture. Part of the story of the rise
of Commonwealth drama since 1960 concerns its openness to such contemporary
movements as the French Theatre of the Absurd, the American experimental
underground theatre of the 60s, feminist theatre, the new political English drama,
European director’s theatre, even post-structural theory. Within the
Commonwealth itself there was a new circulation of ideas and models. Derek
Walcott, for example, wrote Dream on Monkey Mountain, influenced by both
Wole Soyinka’s The Road and by black American theatre, which could be
understood, within the context of West Indian back-to-Africa sentimentality, as an
exploration of the use of possession and trance. It concluded that such a cultural
tradition is not authentic or possible for those of the New World.
If the creation of Commonwealth drama was part of the new nationalism,
national cultural assertion and decolonisation following the war, it also depended
upon the expansion of education and the building of new theatres. The new
universities brought together a variety of talented artists, had performance spaces,
provided courses in both practical theatre and dramatic literature, hired some
dramatists as teachers, and even helped to publish play texts. In Nigeria, Wole
Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Ola Rotimi and others were at times university lecturers or
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research fellows, as was Errol Hill at the University of the West Indies, where he
founded a still-vital series of West Indian plays published by the extra-mural
department. James Reaney in Canada taught at the University of Western Ontario.
Mervyn Thompson was a product of the University of Canterbury. The Court
Theatre in Christchurch retains links to the University. Many of Soyinka’s early
plays were first performed in Nigerian university auditoriums and his actors were
drawn from the universities. While the Mbari Press was independent, its support
came from the university community. The new University of the West Indies, in
Jamaica, brought together such dramatists as Hill, Walcott and Slade Hopkinson.
The members of the Mona group in the early and mid-50s appear to have
continually promoted each other, acting in, directing and reviewing each other’s
plays.
Unlike the traditional British universities, which either did not have separate
drama departments or put emphasis on dramatic literature, the new universities
started drama departments with an emphasis on performance. The University of
Ibadan created a drama department, which tried to bring theatre closer to the
people by using a touring theatre truck. Later at Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria,
a theatre of mud huts around a clearing was built for performance. Local people
were recruited to improvise on an unscripted plot in their own speech. Some
workers were brought together to improvise plays about their jobs and lives.
Similar efforts occurred at many African universities, which tried to go beyond the
physical and social limits imposed by Western theatres. Even in Canada, New
Zealand and Australia, where there was less pressure towards bridging cultural and
social gaps, there was involvement by university staff in creating local theatres and
performance areas. In the black Commonwealth, a professor of English might be
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at the center of raising funds to establish a theatre or lecturers might be the moving
force behind some new experimental theatre group. In the white Commonwealth,
however, the new affluence of the postwar years, along with government policies
to encourage local arts, meant that there were patrons and government aid in
building theatres and keeping them going. Despite the greater wealth of the former
white dominions, theatre did not develop there more rapidly than in the West
Indies or Nigeria. The Third World often became the model for the white
Commonwealth.
It took two decades before there were many theatres. The Ontario Stratford
Festival began in 1953, followed by Manitoba’s Theatre Center (1958), the
National Theatre School (1960), Halifax’s Neptune Theatre (1962), the Vancouver
Playhouse (1963), Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre (1965), the Regina Globe (1966)
and Theater Calgary (1968). The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust started in
1954, the Mercury Theatre, Auckland, began in 1968, Christchurch’s Court
Theatre began in 1972, Johannesburg’s The Market started in 1976. Trinidad still
does not have a theatre devoted to serious drama, although the National Bank’s
auditorium is often available, and finding suitable performance space remains as
much a problem now as it was in the 1950s. Many of the new theatres, such as
Trevor Rhone’s Barn Theatre in Jamaica, began as private efforts by individual
dramatists. Because theatre requires community support, the emergence of
Commonwealth drama has often been linked to nationalism. Indian drama in
English has been much slower to develop than theatre in Hindi and the regional
languages. Perhaps the best theatre in India is in Bengali, which has had an active
modern cultural tradition for the past century, centered in Calcutta.
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One curious aspect of modern drama during the postwar years was the
involvement of the Rockefeller Foundation, which actively supported the new
theatre movements. Soyinka held a Rockefeller award to do research on African
ritual as drama. Rockefeller’s money supported study of drama in the USA and
training in aspects of the theatre by Derek Walcott, Slade Hopkinson, the actor
Errol Jones and George Williams (then the only lighting technician in the West
Indies). Similar support of Indian theatre went into a Hindi language national
theatre in New Delhi. Wherever one looks, there appears to have been some
American money available for cultural projects, which had no obvious political
value beyond a vague hope that it was a good thing to spread good will towards
America among intellectuals and artists.
1.3.2 Four Phases of Commonwealth Drama
The late 1950s and the early 1960s is the first phase of Commonwealth or
post-colonial drama, which was in keeping with the late modernist literary
orthodoxy that was common to both American and British universities of the
1950s. Dramatists born around 1930 who studied English at universities during the
early or middle 1950s were likely to have read a canon of dramatic literature
beginning with Greek and some Roman theatre, late medieval English mystery and
morality plays, Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration theatre and then jumped to
the modern period when the perspective became international, starting with
Norwegian dramatist Ibsen, the Irish Renaissance and English dramatist T. S. Eliot,
before moving on to the latest contrasting fashions in German dramatist Brecht
and the Theatre of the Absurd.
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During this period two people, the West Indian Derek Walcott and the
Nigerian Wole Soyinka, are worth mentioning. Derek Walcott and Wole Soyinka
are both poets and dramatists, and their plays are greatly influenced by
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Eliot, judging from their consistent use of dramatic
verse in Walcott’s Henri Christophe, The Sea at Dauphin and Dream on Monkey
Mountain, and in Soyinka’s Lion and the Jewel, The Swamp Dwellers and A Dance
of the Forests. A play like The Road, which shares in the Eliotic notion of drama,
has a core of religious ritual and mystery. A play such as Kong’s Harvest might be
seen as combining Eliot and Brecht with touches of Absurdist humor, a mixture
also found in Madmen and Specialists. While Soyinka’s sources in Yoruba ritual
are often a matter of speculation, Soyinka was indeed at the Royal Court Theatre,
London, during a time when there were experiments in the use of masks to induce
trance-like states in the actors. There is the possible relationship of The Road to
such plays as Everyman, Peer Gynt and Waiting for Godot. This does not mean
that Walcott and Soyinka were merely new branches of the European dramatic
tradition; but it does suggest how modern plays and older plays acceptable to
modernists provided Soyinka, Walcott and others from the new nations with
models for writing about, or theatrical forms useful for portraying their societies.
When Soyinka and Walcott began writing plays, radio was still an important
place of performance; so there were many plays, such as Henri Christophe, Henri
Dernier and Camwood on the Leaves, particularly written by Louis McNeice,
Dylan Thomas and others, for radio.
In Commonwealth, where resources, advanced education, local leadership
and access to power are limited, there is not the same specialization of labor found
elsewhere in the modern world; it was common for intellectuals to be political
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leaders, teachers, creative artists, journalists, and all-rounders. A similar situation

occurred in late colonial and early Commonwealth theatre, where a dramatist
founded a theatre group, wrote, directed and acted in the plays, and even
functioned as publicist, money-raiser, reviewer, and producer. Derek Walcott’s
career might be an example of the efforts that went into creating theatre. In 1950
he was one of the founders of the St Lucia Art Guild, for over a decade performing
West Indian, classic, and modern English and European plays, and holding art
exhibitions and musical concerts. Besides the plays of Derek Walcott, the Guild
premiered plays by his twin brother Roderick and other local authors. It was the
first group to take local drama on tour to the other islands. Moving to the
newly-opened University of the West Indies in Jamaica, Derek Walcott was
president of the University’s Drama Society and part of a group of dramatists,
including Errol Hill and Slade Hopkinson, who, forming small theatre companies,
directed and acted in each other’s plays at schools, nightclubs and odd venues.
Commissioned to write an historical pageant for the opening of the West Indian
Federation in 1958, Walcott moved to Trinidad, where he became a regular drama
reviewer for the local papers, put on productions of his plays with friends, and in
1959 started The Trinidad Theatre Workshop to train actors. In 1964 it performed
in public for the first time and in 1966 had its first season at the Basement Theatre
of a hotel, a theatre area capable of holding an audience of 60 to 90 according to
the acting area required for the play.
This was the group for which Walcott wrote such West Indian classics as
Dream on Monkey Mountain, The Last Carnival and 0 Babylon and which
performed The Joker vi Seville, toured the islands and played in New York and
Canada. Yet it had no home, except for temporary rented accommodations. As
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founder and Artistic Director, Walcott chose the plays, often wrote them, directed,
painted the scenery, trained the actors, found the “theatres” in which to perform,
raised money and found sponsors, obtained advertising, wrote the publicity and
had it inserted in local newspapers, sometimes wrote the reviews, wrote the
programs, arranged tours, led workshops and handled all financial negotiations,
including the use of Trinidad Theatre Workshop actors in drama productions on
local radio and television. Some summers he taught drama at the University of
West Indies campus at St Augustine. The Trinidad Theatre Workshop consisted of
amateurs, unpaid actors who held regular daytime jobs and who were still
expected to rehearse until well after midnight, be available for overseas tours, and
attend workshops two to four nights a week between plays. Such an inverted
pyramid, with the dramatist at the base supporting a large theatre group on his
shoulders, was unstable; not surprisingly, at the height of its achievement, when
the Trinidad Theatre Workshop was performing for almost six months of the year,
it collapsed, with Walcott leaving for the United States.
Like Walcott, Soyinka formed and directed his own theatre groups, found the
stages and finances, taught the actors, and even published some of the plays
through the Mbari Press. They, with many other dramatists, such as Bruce Mason
and Mervyn Thompson in New Zealand, had likewise to be jack-of-all-theatrical
trades in the 60s and early 70s.
The second period of Commonwealth drama can be said to have occurred in
the mid-60s. The first phase, as seen in the theatre of Walcott, Mason, Soyinka,
was writing high cultural dramas, using local subject matter, settings, myths,
character types and language, on the foundations of what was then felt to be
relevant in the English and modem European theatre―the modernist and humanist
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canon. It was still a literary theatre. The second phase was the incorporation of
such then-current models as Genet (French), Beckett (Irish), Brecht (German) and
the Theatre of the Absurd as can be seen in such plays as Athol Fugard’s Boesman
and Lena, Soyinka’s The Road and Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain. These
plays were more daring, experimental, self-conscious about acting and theatre
conventions, Absurdist in their use of incongruity, arid existential in questioning
the possibility of knowing truth or finding essential identities. That Walcott’s
Trinidad Theatre Workshop should have early performed plays by Ionesco, Genet
and Soyinka, as well as rehearsing Waiting for Godot, suggests both what was felt
to be significant and the way post-colonial dramatists were beginning to influence
each other. Fugard is another illustration of this second phase. Waiting for Godot
has often been the model for Fugard’s plays, even The Island; he was later
influenced by Jerzy Grotowski and such fashions as having the actors collaborate
in creating their parts rather than learn written lines.
The third phase of the early 1970s was the influence of the alternative or
off-off- Broadway theatre on Commonwealth drama, especially in Canada, New
Zealand, South Africa and Australia. The wanderings of The Living Theatre or
Peter Brook soon became an international movement taking its actors to and
finding them in India, Iran and North Africa. Soon there was a La Mama theatre in
Melbourne and other similar offshoots, like the New Zealand Red Mole Company,
which began its own international wanderings. Alex Buzo and Jack Hibberd are
perhaps the best-known Australian playwrights of this phase. The South African
Market and Space theatres, founded during the 1970s, might be regarded as part of
this movement. Some characteristics include theatre communities, which
collectively create a play, the emphasis being rather on popular culture and its
-14-
myths than high culture, on the mixture of farce with seriousness, the use of swear
words, roughness and violence on stage as if it were necessary to slam the
audience into attentiveness. Also characteristic are clichés, parody and a highly
visual style of performance in which the visual tends towards the metaphoric.
Prose replaces verse. George Walker’s plays develop from this manner and
continue to explore it. Since the model is often American, especially the plays of
Sam Shepard, one concern of many post-colonial dramatists of this period is the
debunking of American imagery and mythology, a way of questioning their
relevance to, say, Canada or New Zealand. American liberalism, with its notions of
individual self-creation, self-revelation, delight in mass culture, chance-taking and
continual change, may at first be liberating; but it can quickly become a new
cultural imperialism, an export of attitudes at variance with or inappropriate to the
situation of other lands. The plays of Trevor Rhone suggest the dangerous
attraction of the United States to Jamaicans, while Walker’s Bagdad Saloon shows
the inappropriateness of American myths and attitudes to Canada. Greg McGee’s
Foreskin’s Lament is interesting for the many areas upon which it touches. It
mirrors a major change which was taking place in New Zealand society as the new
university-educated and the new more sophisticated urban middle classes turned
away from sports as the social cement that held together a predominantly white
male culture; instead there was an interest in the arts, acceptance of Maori and
female rights, a new progressiveness that reflected the international changes of the
60s. At the play’s conclusion Foreskin launches into a lament which includes the
new information and attitudes he learned at university, which now alienate him
from his fellow athletes in the club. Among the new models are American
dramatists and especially the plays of Sam Shepard. The lament itself is one of
-15-
those long retrospective monologues characteristics of so much American drama

in which the character seems to be writing a short story in a mixture of naturalism
and expressionism. Moreover, this particular monologue seems like what is known
as a Shepard aria. Foreskin’s Lament continues the satirical use of national
stereotypes in New Zealand and Australian plays, a tradition carried on by
Williamson and Roger Hall, but the way McGee invests national myths with the
symbolic so that the naturalistic is larger than life, and self-consciously calls
attention to itself as art, appears indebted to Shepard. As in Shepard’s theatre, there
is understanding and sympathy for what is rejected, as if an older sociological
naturalism was being treated as myth, while its reasons for having existed in the
past are affirmed. Williamson and Hall move older stereotypes into the new
progressive middle class for comic and satiric purposes, but appear to be nostalgic
for older certainties; McGee is not concerned with social comedy and not nostalgic
for prejudices. Rather he recognizes the faults of a national type and that its era is
over. But he also understands its attractions.
The fourth phase of Commonwealth drama follows on from the opening of
new national cultures to women, native peoples and new immigrants, as can be
seen in the Canadian plays of Carol Bolt, Sharon Pollock, Judith Thompson and
Maria Campbell, or in Australia in the plays of Dorothy Hewlett and Alma de
Groen, or in New Zealand by Hone Tuwhare and Aprina Taylor. Although the
black South African township theatre of the 1980s often had roots in A. Boal’s
theories and in the Black Consciousness movement, it might be regarded as
parallel to other attempts by native people to create their own theatre, with their
own acting styles and performance areas.
-16-
Like the post-colonial novel, but more slowly, Commonwealth drama, under
the name of multiculturalism, is a vital plant growing in the grounds of the British
and American literature. As the quantity of good post-colonial drama increases,
such problems of periodisation by style, themes and influences will become more
difficult.
Like the other arts, theatre must change to renew itself; its renewal depends
on what Shakespeare described as mirroring the age. If from an international
perspective, Commonwealth drama is still not widely known, though several of its
writers, such as Soyinka, Walcott, Williamson and Fugard are famous. Such South
African plays as Matsemela Manaka’s Egoli, Woza Albert (1981) by Mbongeni
Ngema, Barney Simon and Percy Mtwa, and the Junction Avenue Theatre
Company’ Sophia town (1988), have been performed internationally. There are
now established theatres and increasing recognition of local theatre history. As the
plays of Williamson and Roger Hall, or the performances of Pieter-Oirk Uys in
South Africa show, there is now an affluent, better educated, larger, more
sophisticated middle class that supports theatre, especially when it recognizes its
own anxieties. Ken Saro-Wiwa and others have shown how television offers
means to reach a large audience. The plays of Walker and Nowra prove that since
the 1970s there is an audience for the kind of avant-garde drama that was formerly
only possible in such centers as New York and Paris. Serious drama is no longer a
novelty in, say, Calgary, Regina, Port of Spain or Christchurch. It has a following
and a recognized place in the national arts. If the standard themes of the immediate
post-colonial period―political disillusionment, national identity, cultural conflict
and cultural assertion―have been overtaken by fresh issues, many of the new
topics are transformations of former concerns as women, native peoples,
-17-
immigrants and other groups formerly marginalized from national consciousness

asked for their place on the stages of the new national theatres. In the plays of the
Ghanaian dramatist Ama Ata Aidoo one can see two conflicting discourses, one
the earlier anti-colonialist cultural assertion, the other anticipating the later
feminist reaction against the patriarchy that was part of the nationalist myth of
African traditions. The post-colonial might be defined as the formerly
marginalized shattering illusions of national unity.
Making a comprehensive survey of the history of Commonwealth drama, we
may find that there seems to be some other dramatists growing in the corner of the
English-speaking culture world, such as Yulisa Amadu Maddy of Sierra Leone and
Francis Ebejer of Malta, both of whom are getting international attention. This is a
sign of the rapid evolution of post-colonial English literature.
1.3.3 American Cultural Influence on Commonwealth Drama
There is an obvious connection between the emergence of post-colonial English

drama and the cultural influence of the United States during the early post-war
decades. Just as America had a modernizing influence throughout the
Commonwealth, bringing new money, new technologies, new social, cultural and
political ideas, so the emergence of a post-colonial theatre was linked to
modernization in dramatic models and in the creation of a new, often
Americanized, affluent middle class, and the new universities and their graduates,
which could support serious local theatre.
The role of the United States in the cultural and economic revolution that
occurred throughout Commonwealth is increasingly being acknowledged in the
following areas:
-18-
1) American culture, particularly the American serious drama, represented by

O’Neil, provided alternative artistic models for the dramatists of post-colonial
countries.
2) The economic and social transformations in colonial society, which were
brought about by the American culture, offered dramatists much material for their
playwriting.
3) The new mission of the American universities defined their new aims to
train high-level and high-qualified artistic talents for the stage of the colonial
countries.
4) The imitating American styles of life observed on television and films
broadened the vision of the people in colonial countries, thus improving their
awareness of self-identity.
-19-
Chapter 2
Robertson Davies and His Playwriting
2.1 A Brief Account of His Family Background
When it comes to Robertson Davies as a dramatist, many people will feel him
fresh or strange. It is true that few people in China deal with him and his plays
ever before. To better understand him, his plays and his ideals, a brief account of
his family background has to be made so that we can clearly identify what
elements have great effects on his artistic styles and characteristics in his
playwriting.
Robertson Davies was born in a small village in southwestern Ontario, called
Thameswille, on August 28, 1913, son of William Robert Davies and Florence
Shappard Davies. In 1919 his family moved to Renfrew, Ontario and in 1926 to
Kingston, Ontario. His father was first an owner and editor of the Weekly
Thameswille Herald, afterwards of Kingston Whip, and later of Whip-Standard.
Robertson Davies’s career in theatre began at the early age of three, performed in
the opera Queen Esther, as part of a chorus of children. It was at Upper Canada
College that his weakness in mathematics surfaced, which resulted in his failure to
qualify for university entrance. After the three years at Queen’s University,
Kingston, as a special student, because he lacked credentials in mathematics, he
went to study at Balliot College, Oxford in 1935 and got his degree of B. Litt in
1938. At Oxford, he became actively involved in drama as an actor, stage manager
and director of the Dramatic Society. After graduation, he took a job with the Old
Vic Company in London, as an actor and lecturer in Drama School. During the
time, he met and married the stage manager of the Old Vic, Brenda Mathews. And
-20-
they together returned to Canada. After being rejected for war service, he took the
position as literary editor of Saturday Night and then of Peterborough Examiner.
In 1945, Robertson Davies began his playwriting career, first attempt to write the
three-act play The King Who Could Not Dream, which was actually unpublished
and not produced. The late 40s, and the whole 50s were the climax of his
playwritings, during which he produced and directed many good and to some
extent influential plays then. It was specially well worth mentioning that from
1953 to 1971 Robertson Davies was appointed a Governor of the Stratford Festival,
which was the supreme authority of Canadian drama. Then in the later decades he
turned his attention mainly to novel writing and lectures in universities. He was
retired in 1981 and died on December 4, 1995 at 82.
As a matter of fact, Robertson Davies, throughout his life, has enjoyed a
distinguished and multifaceted career as novelist, essayist, critic, playwright, actor,
director, journalist, publisher, wit, humanist, scholar, professor, and academic
administrator. All of these experiences have undoubtedly a great impact on his
playwriting.
2.2 Influences on Robertson Davies’s Playwriting

Robertson Davies was a novelist, journalist, publisher, educator and so on. But no
matter what occupation he had, his passion for theater was manifest. His great
inclination or bent for drama had both the deep family origin and the far-reaching
social causes. In the following I will explore all of these from three aspects―
family, school or earlier experiences and society―to see how they have aspired or
influenced Davies’ playwriting .
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2.2.1 Family
As has been mentioned above, Robertson Davies was born in a small village of
southwestern Ontario. His father, William Robert Davies, had left native Wales at
fifteen to find work and he began his journalistic career as a printer’s devil for the
Brantford Expositor. In Brantford, he met and married Florence Sheppard Mckay,
whose ancestry was Dutch and Scottish. Robertson Davies was their third son and
by the time of his birth, his father had worked his way up in the newspaper
business to the position of owner and editor of the weekly Thamswille Herald. As
for Davies’ parents, it can be known from Robertson Davies, Playwright (Susan
Stone-Blackburn,1985):
His parents were both great readers and there were many good
books around the house. They were also theatergoers, and they
frequently took part in musicals, being really more singers than
actors.
Davies also recalled in one interview with the editor, Geraldine Anthony, of
Stage Voices (1985) that his mother had stopped by the time he was born, but his
father was acting in amateur drama group production until he was sixty.
This is all which can be searched for so far about Davies’s parents. From this
we can see that Robertson Davies was born from a family of literacy. Influenced
by his father and mother, he was drawn into the action before he began school.
Among his earliest memorable experiences was a performance by the Marks
family during World War I when he was only four years old. He absorbed his
parents’ enthusiasm for Shakespeare, and before he could read, he pored over the
pictures in the family volume of Shakespeare, which was illustrated with portraits
-22-
of famous actors in their most celebrated roles. With his parents going to the
theaters whenever a suitable play visited any of the towns where they lived,
Davies seemed to be aspired to have an intention of writing plays of his own. His
first three-page play, based on his favorite comic strip―the Boarding House and
featured major Hoople, gave him immense satisfaction.
The Renfrew Mercury, which his father owned and edited, was then his family
business. Davies at the age of eleven often helped his parents write fillers for it.
The family fortune was made in Kingston where Rupert Davies bought the
founding British Whip and combined it with another paper to create the
Whip-standard. There, at 13 or 14, young Davies demonstrated his potential as a
playwright, dramatizing the scenes from Dickens’ Great Expectations, which was
performed by his schoolmates. It is not difficult to see that Davies inherited a
passion for the theater from his parents.
2.2.2 Earlier Experiences
At 15 Robertson Davies was sent to Upper Canada College, Ontario. Later he had
to attend Queen’s University as a special student, lacking matriculation in
mathematics. Though he could never be awarded a degree, his seven years at UCC
and Queen’s encouraged and broadened his interest in music and he was active in
school dramatics, chiefly in performances of Sir Arthur Sullivan, Sir W. S. Gilbert
(both English light opera composers) and Shakespeare.
He also pursued his interest in the theoretical activities with the Queen’s
Drama Guild, which was successfully producing comedies, and he directed a
production of Oedipus Rex, in which 100 people took part. Those school years
-23-
were a time not only of active participation in theater, but also of frequent,
enthusiastic attendance in both Kingston and Toronto at productions of touring and
stock companies. Davies kept a diary in which he often commented on his visits to
the theater. It was during this time that Davies saw so many great dramatic
productions as Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, The Merry Wives of
Windsor and The Taming of Shrew, Shaw’s Man and Superman and The Apple
Cart. It was also during this time that that Davies came to get in touch with the
new drama of American Eugene O’Neill, all of which Davies took in.
To complete his formal education, his parents sent him in 1935 to Balliot
College in Oxford, which did not have the Canadian prejudice against inept
mathematicians and did not balk at awarding him a B. Litt. degree in 1938 for his
accomplishment, notably a thesis directed by Nevill Coghill on the boy actors in
Shakespeare theatre. He also worked with Sir Edmund Chambers, Percy
Simpson, and the Reverend Roy Ridley, assisting in Ridley’s work on the New
Temple edition of Shakespeare, and the gusto, which these men brought to their
work, liberated Davies from the effects of Ontario pedantry. He was active in the
Oxford University Dramatic Society, which produced Shakespeare. Davies played
Malvolio in Twelfth Night and Christopher in The Taming of Shrew, and he was
stage manager for Macbeth. During his last year at Oxford, Davies wrote his first
play, Three Gypsies, a comedy about a love affair set in Welsh country house.
When Davies finished at Oxford, his thesis was published. The study of the effects
of boy actors on the way Shakespeare wrote women’s roles and the implications
for modern interpretations of roles was well-researched, thoughtful, and
purposeful, and it was enlivened by hints of humor, a quality sadly rare in serious
scholarly study.
-24-
Davies wanted to act, and after leaving Oxford, he joined a provincial tour of
a play, in which his acting was judged to be lacking in “weight and distinction”.
Looking to better things, he moved on to the prestigious Old Vic Repertory
Theater in 1938. He was hired as an actor, but his acting was confined only to
small parts. Much as he loved acting, he was probably not cut out to be a first-rate
actor. So he was arranged to serve as a literary assistant. Because of war reasons,
Davies decided to return to Canada with his young wife.
As a matter of fact, it is hard to say whose works or which playwright

influenced his playwriting, for he saw or read so many works, given by writers of
melodrama who scenarios for the films and writers of some plays in which he
acted when he was a schoolboy or an undergraduate, that they all seemed truly
helpful.
When he was young, he was fond of seeing plays of all kinds, though he was
devoted to the classics. On the other hand, plays by master of drama, or great
technicians positively buoyed up an actor of ordinary talents and made him seem
better than he was. In Robertson Davies’ own words, “I learned something from
playwrights who were not very good technicians, but who were fine writers of
prose and whose plays never failed the amateur completely because they had an
inherent distinction” ( Anthony, 1978:64).
Davies’ earlier experiences laid a solid foundation for his career to be a

dramatist in the future. Educated at Queen’s University in Canada and at Oxford in
England, and working with the Old Vic Company, Davies came to get a vast store
of learning and know the company of intellectuals. Though his time at university
was not as perfect as what his peers felt and his time at the Old Vic was brief,
-25-
those years gave him not only some invaluable and rich experience in the theater,
but also a lifelong friendship with some of the twentieth century’s foremost
notables in the dramatic field, such as Dora Mavor Moore, Maurice Colburne and
John Martin-Harve (Canadian directors), and Sir Edmund Chambers, Percy
Simpson Revorent, Roy Ridley and Tyrone Guththrine (British directors), from all
of whom Davies gained enlightenment and instruction in theatre.
2.2.3 Society
Besides his family and his earlier experiences which had influenced Davies’
playwriting, society Davies lived in―another element that encouraged him to be a
dramatist, is worth studying. So it is necessary to introduce here something about
the state of Canadian drama prior to the second half of the 20th century.
Canadian drama reveals its roots in French garrison theater as early as 1606,
when MarcLescarbot, a Parisian lawyer, in charge of the French habitation at Port.
Royal, Nova Scotia, encouraged theatricals in order to boost the morals of the
people. He himself wrote an original marine masque in verse, Le Theatre de
Nepture, which was performed on the beach and in a barge and canoes by Indians
and voyageurs. Published in Paris in 1609, it was indeed the first Canadian play.
Afterwards in the whole 1600s, French plays were popular in Canada. Till the
mid-1700s, with the change of French to British rule in Canada, British Canada
began to introduce theatre in its garrisons. The first English Canadian play Acadius,
or Love in a Calm, was produced in Harlifax in 1774. British officers were
familiar with contemporary English plays and they began to present Sheridan’s
School for Scandal and Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. In the following more
-26-
than one hundred years, the Canadian theatrical scene was dominated by foreign
theatrical touring companies ― mainly from the USA and Britain ― and
non-Canadian plays. They toured English and French Canada, bringing Canadians
a taste for great plays.
Yet there was no interest at this time in promoting an indigenous drama for
Canada. Theatre for Canadians was simply a form of entertainment, not an original
expression of one’s own identity and culture. Indeed, Canadians equated their
identity with their European forebears. Hence they empathized with the characters
in British and European plays.
The early years of the 20th century saw little progress. Canadians did not seem
aware of the revolution in style taking place in Europe, nor did they perceive with
any comparable foresight, the sudden growth of an indigenous American drama,
beginning with Eugene O’Neill and the Provincetown plays in 1917.
After World War I, theatre flourished in Canada. Canadian indigenous drama

came to take on a new aspect in development, mainly due to three possible factors.
1) The formation of amateur acting groups
Since all Canadians were immersed in plays from outside, Canada was
completely unproductive in drama. However, one important event occurred that
would have far-reaching effects on the development of theatre in Canada. In 1906
Governor General Lord Albert Henry George Grey decided to hold an annual
competition in Music and Drama as an incentive for Canadian talent because
professional theatre in Canada was being directed and performed almost entirely
by outsiders. Thus for the first time the Canadian government became the patron
of the arts. These competitions continued until 1911 because George Grey’s tenure
-27-
as Governor general ended and he departed for England. However he had

succeeded in being the inspiration for the formation of several amateur theatre
groups in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Winnipeg. Some of these groups
survived and continued to produce plays, which opened up a path of dramatic
development in Canada.
2) The Rise of the Little Theatre Movement
The little theatre movement originally appeared in Europe in the late 19th
century, during which a somewhat debased form of amateur drama, conducted
mainly as a fashionable social exercise often under the cover of some charitable
object, came into existence. But in fact it was a kind of dramatic or theatrical
reform movement, which a group of dramatists who were determined to devote
themselves to art launched, to counter the tendency of drama commercialization.
After the founding of Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club (1855) and
Oxford University Dramatic Society (1885), a new interest in amateur drama
became prevalent which was to culminate in the little theatre movement. Many
little theatre groups were founded to present plays, which were actually
small-scale and experimental performances and would meet higher artistic
standards than those presented and organized by informal groups, to raise money.
This spontaneous, small-scale and experimental performance immediately

aroused great and wide repercussions and chain responses in the theatrical circle.
Following the Freie Buhug, founded in 1887 in France, the Freedom Stage (1889)
in Germany, the Independent Theatre (1896) in England, the Moscow Art Theatre
(1898) in Russia and the National Theatre (1899) in Ireland were successively set
up. Between 1906 and 1914 of the 20th century, little theatres sprung up like
-28-
mushroom in different cities beyond Europe such as Chicago, Boston, New Orland,
and Wisconsin of the United States. Under the influence of the little theatre
movement both in America and in Europe, the 1920s and 1930s saw the birth of
the little theatre movement across rural, urban, and suburban Canada. The Ottawa
Drama League, the London Little Theatre, the Theatre Art Guild of Halifax, and
other little theatres in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Montreal brought amateur and
semi-professional actors together in a community effort to provide more
opportunities for theatre. One of the finest of its kind was Hart House Theatre,
established in 1919 and now is located in the University of Toronto. Many early
Canadian plays were given production at Hart House Theatre as well as
performances of British, American, and European plays. One of its leading lights,
Dora Mover Moore, founded the New Play Society in Toronto, which made a
considerable contribution by training young Canadians to be actors, directors, set
designers and playwrights.
In North America, including the Unites States and Canada, the little theatre
movement was distinguished from the European by its largely amateur leadership
and following.
Three types of little theatres, which could be distinguished, were community

theatres, art theatres and college theatres or workshops, although their aims and
results overlap a great deal. The community theatre came as a result of the breakup
of the touring system, which, controlled by an organized trade theatre, for many
years provided dramatic entertainment to the cities of the entire country. The art
theatre was the direct result of the desire of many young artists to express
themselves creatively in the theatre arts. The college theatre was the most native of
the three forms.
-29-
The little theatre movement between the two world wars was flourishing like
wildfire, which undoubtedly provided the incentive for the development of
Canadian drama. Despite being an editor of both Saturday Night and then
Peterborough Examiner, Robertson Davies enthusiastically took part in the
dramatic activities of the Ottawa Drama League, the Coventry Players, and the
Montreal Repertory Theatre Studio. Around him was a group of people, who were
all full of enterprising spirit. They were directors Michael Meiklejohn, Reta
Wheatley and Dorothy Pfeiffer, and stage artists Hans Berends, Norman Holtzman,
Caesar Sylvestre, etc. On the one hand, they produced the British, American and
European plays written by Ibsen, Shaw and Shakespeare, introducing new
dramatic techniques and forms or styles to Canadians. On the other hand, they
actively performed new plays given by young Canadian dramatists. Their
performing techniques were kept to such a high artistic standard that their
performances were highly praised by Canadian little theatres.
As a playwright and director, Davies had a decisive position in the little

theatre movement in Canada. As the little theatre movement was getting
prosperous, Davies continued to apply great energy to local amateur and
professional theatres right from the 1940s to the 1060s. On the one hand he
directed and acted for some theatres such as Peterborough Summer Theatre, Brae
Manor Theatre, the Straw Hat Theatre, Peterborough Little Theatre and so on. On
the other hand Davies wrote plays, both one-acters and full-lengths for the above
theatres. Besides, Davies, with his wife Brenda, was involved in various theatrical
activities. They had vigorous discussions about interpretation, direction and
staging, and during the productions he would sometimes lent a hand backstage,
painting screens, applying make-up, making wigs and props, dressing the cast and
-30-
injecting a little whimsy. With his assistance, Canadian little theatres were in
progress from amateur to professional, which brought new light and new hope to
Canadian theatre. From his days, Canadians came to have their own plays and
Canada had many gifted performing artists, which carried the little theatre
movement forward.
3) The Establishment of The Dominion Drama Festival
As the amateur theatre groups were very active in theoretical activities all
over the country and the little theatres were flourishing, Canadians gradually had
the awareness of their native culture and art. To serve and unite these amateur
groups, the Canadian government decided to establish the Dominion Drama
Festival in 1932 to be responsible for conditioning the Canadian people to the
“play” instinct. The first competition of the D.D.F was held in Ottawa in 1933.
Sponsored by the Earl of Westborough, the Dominion Drama Festival was a
federation of local drama groups divided into thirteen regions: British Columbia,
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Western Ontario, Central Ontario, Eastern
Ontario, Western Quebec, Eastern Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince
Edward Island and Newfoundland. Annual regional festivals were held in which
any amateur acting group could compete.
Adjudicators named the best play in each region. Then these winning plays
were performed at the national competition. Judging at both the regional and
national levels was by highly competent European directors. The young actors,
Canadian amateur directors, and playwrights used the professional and
constructive criticisms they received to improve their performances at the
following year’s festival. The Dominion Drama Festival offered many prizes for
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the best play performance both in English and in French as well as diplomas for
the actors. These encouraged every aspect of play performance and production and
were usually accompanied by a cash prize.
The Dominion Drama Festival of Canada is well known both at home and
abroad. Its contributions to the development of Canadian drama probably are as
follows:
First, the Dominion Drama Festival represents the prosperity of Canadian

dramatic activities and proves highly significant in the maturing of Canadian
actors, actresses, theatre techniques and critics, which lays a solid foundation for
the upsurge and proliferation of professional companies across Canada in the late
1960s and early 1970s. Second, it first emphasizes the balanced artistic judgment
in the selection of the plays sent to the competition of the Dominion Drama
Festival. Third, all the participants profit in or benefit from improving their acting
capacities and techniques. Fourth, it provides great opportunities for the vast
audience across Canada who congregated on the local and national levels to see
sons, daughters, and neighbors perform in competition, since the D.D.F is held in
different places each time, thus inspiring them to have great interest in or desire
for the Canadian drama. Fifth, although the Dominion Drama Festival emphasizes
so much lively and artistic productions of outstanding British and European plays,
there truly appear some native Canadian dramatists, who strive to bring out their
own plays, and some of them win prizes or awards at the festival. Robertson
Davies is one of them. His Eros at Breakfast, a one-act play, produced by the
Ottawa Drama League, won the Sir Barry Jackson Trophy for best production of a
Canadian play in the D.D.F in 1948, and Davies himself won the Gratien Gelinas
Prize for author of the best Canadian play. The play was sent to represent Canada
-32-
at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. Besides, other outstanding Canadian dramatists

were devoted themselves to playwriting for the festival. For instance, John Coulter
won for The House in the Quiet Glen in 1937, and Gwen Pharis Ringwood for Still
Stand the House in 1939. The last but not least, because of the great influence of
the Dominion Drama Festival both at home and abroad, many Canadian dramatists,
directors and actors studying abroad, mainly in England and France, come back
and go about setting up professional theatrical organizations. In 1937, for instance,
Priest Lagert returned to Montreal from France when he finished his drama studies,
and established the first new-type modern professional theatre to perform classical
and modern French plays wit different styles. At the same time, other dramatists
come to do their playwriting, taking the Canadian history, culture and customs as
their play material. Such plays as Merrill Denison’s Brothers in Arms, Alank
Harris’s Twenty-five Cents, Martha Allan’s Summer Solstice, and Fairbenne’s The
Pacific Coast are all intended to wake up the Canadians’ national consciousness
and struggling spirit. Although all of these plays are crudely written in technique
of expression as well as in ideas, and even shirt of profound artistic demonstration,
they indeed make Canadians feel they have their own plays, which is very vital to
them all.
In a word, by bringing small and struggling amateur theatre groups together

from vast distances across Canada and by impelling some men of insight to great
efforts to write native Canadian plays, the Dominion Drama Festival leads them to
the road to maturity and success.
2.3 Robertson Davies’s Plays

In all his life Davies wrote twenty-six scripts―ten radio playlets, eight one-act
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plays and eight full-length pieces.
In the middle of 1940s Davies concentration was on writing radio playlets,

which were very popular in post-colonial countries, especially in Canada, a vast
sparsely-populated land, whose inhabitants preferred to take radio playlets as their
long winter pastime. In the spring of 1944 Davies decided to try his hand at
writing his radio playlets. He persuaded the Victorian Order of Nurses and Victory
Loan Campaign to let him publicize their activities in fifteen-minute slots on
CHEX, the local station that his father and Roy Thomson had started in 1942. In
the four scripts for VON he indulged his love of Victoriana, reminding the Order
of its roots. One script depicted the fatal ailments that had dispatched so many of
Peterborough’s Irish pioneers; another contrasted the nursing methods of
Dickens’s Sairey Gamp with those of Florence Nightingale; a third recreated the
battle for anesthetics in childbirth, and the last one looked at the differences
between Victorian and modern child care. His six Victory Loan playlets were
similarly light-hearted. Except one, all the others were studio productions, which
were part of a full evening of entertainment in the collegiate auditorium, and at the
same time broadcast.
In the course of his creating radio playlets, Davies was working on one-acters
in which his opinions about Canadians’ attitudes to the arts had begun to find a
central place in his writing. In 1945 his first one-acter called Hope Deferred came
into being. In the following years, Davies brought forth in succession Overlaid
(1947), Eros at Breakfast (1948), The Voice of the People (1948), At the Gates of
the Righteous (1949), A Masque of Aesop (1952), A Masque of Mr. Punch (1962)
and The Ontario Scene (1966), among which Eros At Breakfast won the Sir Barry
Jackson Trophy for best production of a Canadian play in the Dominion Drama
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Festival in 1948 and Davies also won the Gratien Gélinas Prize for author of the
best Canadian play in the festival.
Over the years of Davies’ playwriting career, he altogether wrote eight

full-length plays, namely The King Who Could not Dream (1945), Fortune, My
Foe (1949), At My Heart’s Coe (1950), King Phoenix (1950), A Jig for the Gypsy
(1954), Hunting Stuart (1955), General Confession (1956), and Love and Libel
(1960). Davies’ Fortune, My Foe, produced by the Ottawa Drama League, won the
Sir Barry Jackson Trophy for best production of a Canadian play in the Dominion
Drama Festival. Davies himself won the Gratien Gélinas Award as author of the
best Canadian play. W. A. Atkinson judged best individual actor in the role of
Professor Rowlands.
In addition to the above plays, Davies also wrote a television play called
Brothers in the Black Arts (1974) for CBC and The Centennial Play (1967) in
collaboration with four other Canadian playwrights in celebration of Canada’s
100th birthday.
Many of Davies’ plays have been frequently performed, particularly those

with overt Canadian themes, and have met enthusiastic audience response.
2.4 Types of Davies’ Plays

What kind of play is valuable? And what kind of plays can arouse people’s
great sympathy? Robertson Davies thinks the most important task of a great
playwright is to be devoted to reality and to reflect reality. Davies advocates that a
play should be about people or things he knows well and that the true features of
life should be presented on the stage. But Davies understands “reality” is a broad
sense. The real playwriting actually involves the true personality of the characters,
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the true environment and the true psychology, including the true expressions of the
playwright’s own feelings. Therefore, according to the characteristics of Davies’
playwriting, his plays can be divided into the following types.
2.4.1 History Plays
In Davies’ playwriting, it can be easily found that he writes some history plays,
which are intended to recollect and reproduce some of the historical events and
figures to the audience on stage. Hope Deferred, a one-acter, is one of his plays
about history. It tells of Count Frontenac’s struggle with the clergy, who did not
want him to present Moliere’s Tarttuffe in Quebec because of its anti-clerical bias.
It is a true story and a bitter one. It is still relevant to some Canadian attitudes to
theatre. Davies’s another history play is At My Heart’s Core. This play was written
in 1950 for the celebration of the city Peterborough’s centennial. It is not, however,
a self-congratulatory pageant play. Drawing upon the lives of three well-known
pioneering women who settled in the Peterborough-Lakefield area in the 1820s
and 1830s and whose husbands were involved in the Rebellions of 1837, occurred
in Upper and Lower Canada, Davies chose to dramatize the inner regrets―the
pain at the heart’s core―endured by these British gentlewomen who emigrated
with their husbands to the lonely Canadian backwoods. On the surface of it, it is
not primarily a national history play. Its nationalism is subdued; its historicism
devoted less to event than to character. It might more easily be called a comedy of
manners with a backwoods setting. Yet in this comedy, there are strong symbolic
echoes of the outlook expressed in the play’s few speeches that are explicitly
connected with the nation’s history―a nation’s outlook.
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2.4.2 Morality Plays
A morality play is a form of religious allegorical drama, dating from the 15 century,
which is encouraged by churchmen as edifying entertainments. It dramatizes the
living man by personifying the forces of good and evil such as the seven deadly
sins and the corresponding virtues, or some representative crisis in his life, such as
his encounter with the fact of death. In view of his interest in drama and his
general reading habits, which can be judged from what surfaces from time to time
in his writing, it is no doubt that Davies is somehow influenced by the mediaeval
morality tradition as well as his Christian family background and his Jungian
studies. Among Davies’ plays, Eros at Breakfast, General Confession, and
Question Time belong to morality plays. Their dates of composition span almost
the whole of Davies’ playwriting career. Eros at Breakfast was written no later
than 1948, quite early in his career. General Confession was written in 1956,
representing the turning point in his career, when he tried his hand at writing
novels. Question Time, written in 1972, represents the latter end of his playwriting,
though it is not his last one.
Though these plays are written in different periods of Davies’ playwriting,

they seem to be all in the mediaeval morality tradition, of which the most famous
example is probably Everyman, of the 15th-century England. As a playwright,
Davies shares with his anonymous mediaeval predecessors, not only the notion of
drama as an instrument of moral uplift, but also specific themes, dramatic
techniques, and features of style.
Each of Davies’s plays chooses a moment of crisis in an individual life for

dramatization. Eros at Breakfast is a very light one-act comedy about the internal
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economy of a young Canadian male who has just fallen in love. The play
dramatizes the crisis of him at the moment he receives a favorable answer to a
letter requesting a date with a woman he has recently met and thinks he is in love
with. General Confession is a much more serious comedy, which uses three
Aesop’s favorite fables within the play as the storyteller’s defense against charges
brought against him by various of Delphi’s citizenry. The judge is Apollo, the god
of music, arts, and order. He finds in favor of Aesop, the artist whose fables, he
judges, will delight the future children and provide wisdom for older people
perspective enough to grasp it. That wisdom is a gentle variation on what
Casanova learns. Aesop’s truth―that peace of mind is an agreeable possession―is,
for instance, achieved by Casanova, who, with the help of his better judgment, is
able to accept his personal demons and judge himself positively. Question Time
dramatizes Peter Macadam in a state of traumatic shock of a plane crash, faced
with a question put to him by the shaman, “Are you going to live or are you going
to die?” In Macadam’s attempts to answer the question put to him, as well as in
Casanova’s attempts to prepare himself for the manager’s call, the dramatic focus
provided by the moment of moral crisis is expanded into dramatic form. Despite
the different time, different themes and different plots of the three plays, Davies
actually makes a clear declaration of moral intent in his assertion that his plays are
about the relationship of the Canadian people to their soil, and about the
relationship of man to his soul. The declaration is less explicit than that of the
author of Everyman, but it clearly demonstrates the tone of the moralist, Davies
himself.
From these three plays it can be seen that Davies is quite familiar with the
mediaeval moralities and somehow influenced by the revival of the morality
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tradition. But Davies seems to differ from the mediaeval morality playwrights on
the concept of what constitutes a morality. Initially, it appears that morality plays
were specifically an instrument of Christian teaching or the doctrine of salvation.
Davies’ definition of morality, on the other hand, is essentially secular or
humanist.
2.4.3 Autobiographical Plays
In many of his plays, Davies depends heavily on his journeys, which, although not
autobiographical, reflects the shape of his life. Simply stated, a pattern for the lines
of his characters can be seen in Davies’ own experiences. In this kind of plays,
there are more objective elements, directly revealing the playwright’s feelings,
sensibilities and inner conflicts.
Davis was born in small-town Canada, grew aware of its cultural deficiencies
and moral repression and sought learning outside his boundaries. Much of his
learning took place in the British Isles, the home of his ancestors. He returned to
find Canada as ill-favored as when he left it, although he himself had changed.
Since then it appears to have been his desire to reshape small-town Canada
through the exercise of his cosmopolitan understanding and immense talent.
Although Davies traveled outside his small town, Canadians generally have not
and consequently have found their sensibilities blunted by the parochial nature of
the area in which they live.
This same life pattern, really made up of two aspects found in every Canadian
life―one in which a talented but repressed Canadian is forced to travel abroad, the
other in which a specially gifted foreigner comes to an inferior Canada and tries to
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alter it―has shaped many of Davies’ works. For instance, Hope Deferred,
performed in 1948, has relatively straightforward examples of both travelers.
Count Frontenas is an enlightened French governor who, in his plan to stage
Tartuffe, tries to bring cultural activity to a barren country. He is successfully
opposed by well-meaning clerics who fear that the play will confuse the innocent
Hurons (a race near the lake Huron in North America) about the nature of
Christian devotion. Another character in the play is Climene, a young Huron
whom Frontenas has sent to France to be schooled. As Frontenas is unsuccessfully
in staging Tartuffe, Climene knows she will be unsuccessfully in bringing any
cultural awareness to Canada. “I don’t want to remain here where I am not wanted,
and where I will be treated as an oddity and a laughing stock…I shall return: my
land doesn’t want me, I shall go where I’m wanted.”(p.56) Climene’s decision
reflects the way Davies saw Canada at that time as a puritanical, parochial
backwater.
This picture of a graceless Canada, in need of cultural redemption and Davies

experienced in his own journey of life, pervades many Davies’ plays, such as at
My Heart’s Core, Fortune, My Foe, Hunting Stuart, etc.
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Chapter 3
Artistic Styles and Various Artistic Features
Robertson Davies’ great contribution to Canadian drama was his playwriting. It
was his plays he created (of course, including other dramatists’ plays in the
corresponding period) that not only improved the quality of the little theatre
movement of Canada, but nourished the Canadian amateur theatre as well, both
helpful to lay a solid foundation for the prospect of Canadian professional theatre.
3.1 Artistic Style

In his playwriting, Davies had his own styles. To begin with, it is easy to see that
one of the styles of Davies’ plays is of being short. Of his twenty-six plays,
eighteen pieces are one-acters and radio playlets. The reason that Davies created
such short plays may be based on the idea of his playwriting. Once he was asked
about what his conception of a good play was, he answered that a good play
should be one that made people sorry when it was over; and it should be one that
seemed too short. Short plays tell short stories. So in this sense, the time in Davies’
plays or the spanning time of his stories does not last long, either.
Another style of Davies’ playwriting is of being comic. Comic plays usually

begin with harshness, but end happily. In Davies’ opinion, life is short and it is
filled with not only joy and romance, but pathos and hardships as well. What we
can understand of it is only a trifle of the whole. We should incline ourselves
toward the comic rather than the tragic. As a playwright, Davies thinks he should
have an optimistic attitude toward life. He should present the bright side or the
good side of life before his audience. Therefore, Davies in most of his plays tries
to make use of every element―humor, wit, jokes, funny behavior, etc, to set off
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the comic atmosphere or the subject by contrast. In Davies’ plays the characters,
good and evil, seem to all have tough experiences or misfortunes and undergo
certain sufferings or misunderstandings, but in the end they all seem to have good
endings. In King Phoenix (1950), Davies sets his story in Celtic Britain. Old King
Cole, his daughter, and associates represent vital nature at war with a malignant
merchant and Archdruid, who represent science. The Archdruid tries to destroy
Cole, but he escapes. At the end he dies a mythic death, rejuvenating his epoch and
turning over his crown to his daughter Helena. King Cole dies, which makes
people feel sorry, but in his acceptance of death as part of life he is fulfilled. In
another play Fortune, My Foe, using the metaphor of Don Quijote and Sancho
Panza, a displaced puppet master, Franz Szabo, teaches an embittered young
academic, Nicholas Hayward, that despite the difficulties of culture in Canada, it is
better to stay there and fight for it than to abandon the country with no hope.
Nicholas, the main character of the play, does not marry Vanessa he loves and
begin a new life at the end of the play, as he used to expect, but he finds the
possibility for fulfillment in joining the battle against cultural poverty in
mid-century Canada. In Overlaid, a comedy and most frequently performed play,
Ethel and her father, Pop, are two rural Canadians, symbolizing in turn
conservative respectability and culture. When Pop’s insurance policy matures, he
comes into $1200.00 that he wants to use to go to New York and experience
culture first hand. Ethel’s conviction “overlay” her father’s desires, and she
convinces him to remain where he is. Though the play has an unhappy ending,
which means the father does not get what he wants, he is fulfilled in spirits. Pop
says, at the end of the play, when he gives his daughter the insurance money,
“There is a special kind of power that comes from the belief that you are right.
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Whether you really are right or not does not matter. It is the belief that
counts.”(p.92)
Of course, Davies does not take the comic play for the comic play’s sake.
Davies is primarily a satirist who uses the conventions of satirical romance to
develop the perceptions that motivate his art. His play, Hope Deferred (1948), is a
good-natured satire on French Canadian Bishops’ narrow-minded views of theatre
as a corruption of moral life. Fortune, My Foe (1949), a winner of the Dominion
Drama Festival’s award, is a satire on Canadian provincialism in art using a puppet
master as a symbol of the position of art in Canada. Overlaid (1946), is also a
satire on Canadian materialism and the failure to invest in the arts. The Voice of the
People (1948) treats of small town ignorance of the arts. At the Gates of the
righteous (191948) develops George Bernard Shaw’s theme of the respect
accorded by society to the successful scoundrel, in a Shavian type of satire. In A
Jig for the Gypsy (1954), Davies combines romance and politics in a satire on
Canadian middle class pretensions. Brothers in the Black Art (1972), the only
television drama of Davies’, uses black comedy in its ironic combination of the art
of printing, loving and living.
As a playwright, Davies has changed gradually over the thirty years of his
playwriting from a straightforwa1rd satirist employing realistic characters to a
denser, more complex ironist whose characters, while real people, are symbolical.
3.2 Artistic Features

Critics hold different opinions about Davies’ artistic features of playwriting.
There is a school that finds him too “talky”. As in Shaw’s plays, the dialogue
carries the weight of the play in contrast with a script by British dramatist Pinter or
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Irish dramatist Bechett in which stage directions are as prominent as dialogue and
much of the play’s point is read “between the lines”. Some of those who object to
the “talkiness” of Davies’ plays simply prefer the more fashionable style of
understatement, a statement that is not strong enough to express facts or feelings
with full force. Others are criticizing Davies’ plays as “idea plays”. In opposition
to the school which finds Davies’ plays too intellectual are those who find too
simplistic or too prone to irrelevant jokes and strokes of “unrealistic” theatrical
effect. Of course, simplified characters, conflicts and bold effects grow out of
Davies’ conviction that melodrama, designed to produce “emotion, the hottest and
most violent that could be evoked” provides the kind of nourishment for the inner
life that he values.
Are Davies’ plays too intellectual or are they oversimplified? Do they depend
too much on just plain talk or do they go in too much for theatrical effects?
Certainly, individual tastes vary, which accounts for some conflict of opinions, and
in fact Davies’ plays encompass all those qualities. His plays are simply present in
melodrama, but full of ideas, and people, both simple-minded and intellectual,
have a preference for them all.
3.2.1 Form
Influenced by his family and the British conventional education in his early
years, Davies was exclusively devoted to the classics. And he gradually formed a
particular affection for melodrama.
Melodrama is originally a mixture of music and drama, which initiated in

Italy very late in the sixteenth century and flourished in the eighteenth century. As
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a distinct genre of drama, it is characterized by heavy use of suspense, sensational

episodes, romantic sentiment and a conventional happy ending. It is also a kind of
naively sensational entertainment in which the main characters are excessively
virtuous or exceptionally evil (hence the luminously good hero, or heroine and the
villain of deepest dye), an abundance of blood, thunder, thrills and violent action
which makes use of specters, ghouls, witches, vampires and many a skeleton from
the supernatural realism in the shape of extravagant tales of the wickedness of
drinking, gambling and murdering. After the twentieth century because of the
constant increase in irrelevant action, the audience no longer appreciates it on the
stage. But in the cinema, the extravagant posture, the dramatic chasing, the
moving scene the simple characters and the made-up stories are once more
performed and imitated, especially in TV plays and detective programs.
In Davies’ formative years, he was most deeply impressed by such plays as

The Only Way, A Cigarette Maker’s Romance and the Corsican Brothers, which
used to be performed in Canada by Sir John Martin-Itarvey on his many
transcontinental tours. The stories in these plays were good, the characters vivid
and they were heavily infused with chivalry and romance, which appealed to
Davies very much. Later Davies tried his hand at writing some plays that owed
much to these melodramas. Davies was fond of melodrama just because he liked
their central idea: they were about a single character under stress, who had a
choice of behaving worthily or contemptibly; it was a choice and his decision that
made these plays vivid. Though melodrama was thought to be out of fashion or an
outworn mode of theatre, Davies was absolutely a devotee of melodrama. He saw
melodrama all around his daily life and it seemed whenever he picked up a
newspaper, he found melodramatic plots on every page, which he thought could be
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accumulated to provide first-hand materials for his playwriting.
Most of Davies’ plays were written with Canadian settings or with a good
deal of business that holds audience attention for the moment, but sometimes
detracts from a sense of unified development of a central conflict. Davies seemed
to feel that he needed more action, more visual interest, more of kaleidoscopic
effect for dramatic interest. The result was to diminish the impact of one of his
greatest strengths: the thoughtful, warm and humorous revelation of characters.
Davies’ play, Question Time, which in fact never strays from its development of
Macadam’s inner struggle, seems to do so because of the profusion of characters
and the centers of activity whose direct association with Macadam’s inner conflict
can be forgotten. The central figure may be eclipsed rather than revealed by the
swirl of dramatic activity around him.
Though some critics, or even Davies himself, seemed to feel that his taste for
melodrama makes him old fashioned, there a good reason to argue that his
approach to melodrama puts him ahead of the times rather than behind. His view
of melodrama is Jungian: the heroine is not an autonomous human being; she is
very plainly a psychological appendage of the hero…the external image of his soul.
The villain is also a portion of the hero’s composition―a rejected and despised
portion, a portion which is recognized in consciousness only on the rarest
occasions, but a psychological fact none the less. Some of the characters in
Davies’ plays may be simplified portions of humanity, but the whole picture of
human reality presented in such a play is not simple at all. Davies may simplify
characterization by separating Casanova or Macadam into component parts, but
the inner world of man that he portrays by so doing has considerable depth. If an
ending seems to oversimplify by implying that, for instance, Macadam can sail
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through life with never a worry because he has embraced his anima, the
oversimplification is in the mind of the beholder. The endings offer new hope for
greater joy and fulfillment, but not a guarantee solution to all of life’s problems.
3.2.2 Dialogue
In the first place, Davies thinks a play should not be written in dialogue that
sounds superficially like Goldsmith, 18th-century British dramatist (as mentioned
above that Davies was influenced by him). Dialogue should sound believable in
the mouth of the character to whom it is written. When he begins to write plays
seriously he has to try to find a way of creating something like the Goldsmith
effect without writing fake Goldsmith. His first really successful play is a
one-acter called Overlaid. It has been performed hundreds of times and people still
seems to like it. It is about an almost farmer who spends his Saturday afternoon
listening to the broadcasts from the metropolitan Opera in New York. It is his
recreation, the food of his spirit, and in his special way he is a real opera enthusiast.
But his daughter kept house for him and she is not fond of opera, or indeed of
anything except her reputation for respectability, which she has created with
extraordinary sacrifice of herself and those around her. The play begins at the
crisis of a situation that has been developing over many years. Pop’s life insurance
policy is paid up, and he has come into a little money. What is to be done with it?
To tease his daughter, and to please himself with a flight fantasy, he says that he is
going to take it to New York, where he will go to the Opera, eat fancy food, flirt
with gay girls, and has a high old time until the money is gone. This scandalizes
his insurance agent and Ethel, his daughter. She makes such a fuss about it that the
old man asks her what she would do with the money if she had it, and the sad truth
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comes out. What Ethel wants more than anything else is a large gravestone, to
commemorate herself and her family in the local cemetery. The old man is moved
with pity by the pathos of her desire and gives her the money. She thinks she has
won the struggle, but it is plain to the audience that Pop is a man of humane spirit,
and that he is a lover of life and a conqueror, whereas poor Ethel is wedded to
Death and dissolution.
This is not a story to be written in an imitation of eighteenth-century dialogue,

but Goldsmith’s lessons can be applied to it. Every speech must be true to the
nature of the character who speaks it, and there must be no funny dialogue for its
own sake. This means that the dialogue can not be what people call “realistic”;
there can be none of the repetition, bumbling, half-explaining, and muddle that is
involved in everyday speech. So Davies writes dialogue in a language that is
certainly not that of any farm people he has ever known, but which may be called
heightened rural speech.
Davies sent this play Overlaid off to a playwriting contest and won. He was
much impressed by the comment of the adjudicator, who said, “This little play is
fit to stand beside the best of E.P. Conkle”. Actually Davies did not know who E.P.
Conkle was, and he had never encountered his work. How come Davies hunted
him up? He wrote plays for Scout and Guild groups, and for Church
Entertainments. Clearly the adjudicator, with that simplicity of mind of faith in his
own judgment that is given only to critics, though Overlaid was a rube play, and
must therefore have been written by a rube. A friend of Davies’, who knew of his
enthusiasm for Goldsmith, was much amused. “You had better call your next play
He Honks to Conkle”, he said.
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Instead, Davies called his next play Eros at Breakfast, sent it to the same
contest, with the same adjudicator, and won again. The adjudicator, seeing the play
signed only with pseudonyms, did not detect that Eros was from the same hand as
Overlaid, and he praised it sophistication and smoothness of finish. No Conkle this
time.
Eros at Breakfast takes place inside the body of a young man who is in love.
The scene is his Solar Plexus. The characters represent aspects of his physical
being―his heart, his brain, his liver and his lower centers. Acting as a civil service,
they prepare to deal with the problem of a man in love. The dialogue is suited to an
artificial comedy, all the characters speak in a pointed, literary style and the play
works well on the stage.
In Davies’ later two plays A Masque of Aesop and A Masque of Mr. Punch,
the dialogue is spare; the characters say what they have to say as economically as
is congruous with the sort of people they are, and then they shut up. To Davies,
this sort of dialogue is not very hard to write in plays of this kind, for they are
frankly artificial, and the brisk, no-nonsense dialogue suits their style. Where it is
difficult to be economical is in plays that present the surface of ordinary life,
hoping thereby to reveal something important that lies below the surface. In such
plays it is hard to avoid padding and unimportant lines which somehow seem to be
necessary to get characters on and off stage.
3.2.3 Characterization
Characterization does not seem to trouble Davies. That is to say, Davies has no
difficulties in finding them because he does not invent them. He meets them in the
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streets. All the characters in Davies’ plays come from life, just as art comes from
life. Davies takes his characters from the real world.
Once Davies was asked how he went about developing a character, he replied
like this:
You don’t. The character arises in your imagination and then goes
ahead. I know this sound terribly pompous and grandiose, but
you don’t really do it; it is something that happens and you write
it down. This is what imagination is. It is not invention. The
author may not know consciously every detail of the creative
process, when he begins. But his unconscious knows and it is
from the unconscious that he works. (Grant, 1994: 85)
Davies is so imaginative that under his pen, there are a variety of characters
to be portrayed, ranging from a farmer, like Pop in Overlaid, a barber, like Shorty
Morton in Voice of the People, a young academic, Nicholas Hayward and an
European immigrate, Franz Szabo in Fortune, My Foe, disreputable women
settlers in At My Heart’s Core, to the Prime Minister in Question time and
historical figures, like Old King Cole in King Phoenix. Davies’ characterization of
different figures shows his flexible creative techniques and his superb skills in
playwriting. At the same time this “open” method of characterization can deepen
and help the audience better understand the themes of Davies’s whole plays. Most
of the characters, major or minor, are characterized by being ambitious, faithful,
inflexible, kind-hearted, a little bit cynical, and full of a sense of humor and comic
behavior.
But once characters he wants have been defined and set talking, they seem to
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trouble Davies greatly, because they want to say all sorts of things that do not push
the play forward. Sometimes, these things are so amusing that Davies cannot bear
to throw them away. In creating a play, there must be an idea and the idea usually
means a character. In his play Hunting Stuart the leading character is a man in the
middle ranks of the Civil Service, whose wife is a strong United Empire loyalist
impressed by what she believes must have been the moral splendor and devotion
to principle shown by her ancestors. She is married to a man who, although he is
named Benedict Stuart, is known to have European blood and some queer relations
and she is rather ashamed of him. Later Davies himself thought how interesting it
would be if it turned out that he was the one with the splendid ancestry? Suppose
he were a descendant of the Royal House of Stuart, descending through the
stolbergs and the sobieskis? Suppose he took it into his head that he was the
rightful occupant of the Throne of Britain? Imagine a minor Canadian Civil
Servant harboring such an inadmissible idea? What would he do? And so the germ
of a play grew.
All kinds of problems have to be solved. How does he find out that he has
blood? How can it be demonstrated on the stage? What could be the attitude of his
family and neighbors? What might distinguish a real aristocrat from a U.E.L?
Once he has discovered the truth about himself, could he ever go back to his
tedious job?
The play is a comedy, but not a haw-haw-haw farce. Like many comedies, it
has a serious idea behind it, which is this: what we are is to a great degree what we
believe ourselves to be, and kingship is a condition of mind more than it is a
question of the balm, the scepter and the ball. And just as much as some people
yearn for greatness, there are many more who are terrified of it, and in this play, it
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is Stuart’s daughter who pleads with him not to wreck her commonplace life by
suggesting that she is a princess. The play has been well presented on the stage by
excellent actors, and it makes its effect. It is difficult for amateur, because the
leading role calls for so many rapid transitions of mood.
In characterization, the most interesting part for Davies is the composition of

the character’s dialogues because it is in this that the finer shades of character can
be touched in. There is danger, however, in being too interested in one’s dialogue,
because if it is worked over too carefully, it may lose spontaneity. The desire of the
playwright, it seems to Davies, is to establish a characteristic rhythm and
vocabulary for each character; in Hunting Stuart it would not do for Stuart, who is
a humble man of gentle character, to talk in the same style as his aggressive and
aggrieved wife, or his daughter’s fiancé, who is a university graduate student in
psychology. The words people choose, and the way they put them together, are the
constant study of the playwright. Any imitation of real-life dialogue is likely to
become dull if it is continued for long. What a playwright aims at is, rather an
abstraction of the speech of the sort of character he is drawing. This may be
achieved by a process of fine-tuning, once the broad sweep of the dialogue has
been sketched. Choosing the right words for the characterization is one of the most
amusing parts of the playwright’s craft. Nor should it be supposed that a play
about people who are not highly educated or ready of tongue excuses the writer
from this obligation; such people display character in speech as clearly ―
sometimes more clearly―than the educated, and they can be extremely eloquent.
Usually Davies likes to write about a single, dominating character, whose

problem shapes the play and who is surrounded by people, who in some way
throw light on him or his predicament. His first long play to have any success is
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Fortune, My Foe. It is about a young university teacher who has two problems: he
is in love with a girl who does not love him, and he cannot make up his mind to go
to the United States, where he could get a better job and more money. Essentially
it is the same problem: the girl does not love him, and his country does not love
him either―both quite like him, but they can get along perfectly well without him.
Everybody in the play throws light on his trouble in one way or another. The old
professor, who is disgusted with Canada, shows him what may lie in the future for
him. The keeper of the speakeasy shows him that fortune favors the bold rather
than the reasonable. The Czech puppet master shows him that the quality of life is
more important than financial reward. The social workers show him that the
tendency of life in new and prosperous countries is toward what is catchy and easy
rather than what is demonstrably good. The newspaper editor shows him that
success is often bought by compromise. But the character of Don Quixote, who
appears in the puppet show, shows him that some people must do irrational and
indefensible things for the sake of ideals, or mankind may as well close up the
shop. The play is essentially about Nicholas Hayward, the man who has to decide
whether he will stay in Canada or go elsewhere.
In addition, under-privileged groups and the fringes of society do not occur to

Davies as material for plays probably not only because Davies does not know
enough about them to reach far into their psychology, but also because Davies is
too much aware of the pain and wretchedness of their situation to risk falsifying it.
And Davies does not write people he despise in life, who are the self-regarding,
close-fisted, nay-saying men and women who see nothing in the world except
chances for personal advantage. Why? Because Davies regards it as one of his jobs
to provide actors with juicy, actable roles, in which they can display their art to
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advantage. Davies once said, “ I want actors to like me, because if they do, they
will give their best work to my play; I can only expect if I give them something
interesting to do. The theatre is a cooperative art; that is one of its great
satisfactions. The playwright is important, but he is not the whole show, and as he
learns his craft he discovers that actors can do as much with a look or a gesture as
he can do with half a page of dialogue. I have been an actor, and I want to give
them something that is worth their effort and worthy of their sometimes
extraordinary skills.”(Anthony, 1978:212)
3.2.4 Plot
As for plot, it seems always a difficulty for Davies in his playwriting, because
he thinks a play cannot afford the rather slow-moving passages that are perfectly
acceptable, and perhaps necessary in a novel. A play has to go on surprising its
audience until the end, and somehow this must be achieved without being merely
explosive. Therefore a strong scenario has to be constructed before any writing of
dialogue can begin, so that the writer can judge what the comparative importance
of his scenes will be, and how much time can be allowed to each of them. Very
great playwrights have managed without this sort of construction. Bernard Shaw, a
17th-century British great playwright, once said, “he simply invented a group of
characters, set them talking in his head, and wrote down what they said.” (Anthony,
1978). Moliere, 17th-century French great playwright, seems often to have started a
play with nothing more than an idea of a leading character―a citizen turned
gentleman or a man whose hobby is illness―and let the play proceed as it would.
But what works for genius is dangerous counsel for others, even if they have a
great deal of talent. Davies is very modest when evaluating himself in playwriting.
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It seems that unlike Shaw and Moliere, Davies could not trust himself to set out on
the dark seas of a play without some sort of chart.
Since Davies is a playwright as well as a novelist, he has his own

understanding of a play’s conception. In his opinion, a play is a play, not a novel or
a short story. The two things are not interchangeable. A play must have a fairly
simple and direct line of action, though this does not by any means mean that it is
simple-minded. A novel may deal with a very broad theme and great numbers of
characters. It may, for instance, be about the life of a whole town or a city.
Thornton Wilder, 20th-century American writer, produced a fine play in Our Town
by means of a special technique, which owes much to Oriental Theatre, but on the
whole such venture presents extreme difficulties for the playwright: ideas for
novels and ideas for plays are of a different order.
Davies once had a forcible and painful experience when he was asked by a
New York management to make a play from his novel Leaven of Malice. It is
about a small Canadian university city, as it is seen from the point of view of the
editor of the local newspaper. The principal character of the novel is the city itself.
Davies submitted a plan for what he thought might be achieved, and the New York
people wrote back at once to say that it would not do because they wanted a
three-act play, taking place in the editor’s office, and it was to be a love story.
Davies was a newspaper editor of the time and he knew the love stories do not
develop in the editor’s offices, and he was sure could not crowd the whole life of a
city into such a small compass. So that plan fell through. Later, the Theatre Guild
asked him to dramatize the same novel; they thought the plan ought to be free in
construction, but they wanted the town to be an American town. Davies replied
that his town wasn’t an American town, and several subtle considerations forbade
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it being transformed into one, the characteristics of a cathedral city and the nature
of American small-town newspapers being two of these. But they reached an
agreement of a kind, and Davies went to work. He cut two-thirds of the plot of the
book, and produced a play, which was certainly free in form and was even more
when the director, the late Sir Tyrone Guthrie, had finished tinkering with it. But
then the Theatre Guild had a new objection: the play contained no star part and
New York liked stars, and one part must be fattened up to suit the personality of a
star.
So he tried and the play was a flop. It had been messed with too much, and
the idea was not, in the first place a theatrically viable one.
It was not a total loss, however. In 1975 the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on the
Lake produced the play again. The first night audience seemed to like it very much,
but the much-read New York critic, Clive Barnes of the Times, wrote of it in terms
of such scorn and loathing, such inflamed and engorged contempt, as have never
greeted a play of Davies’ before. This was a New York response. But Canada
behaved quite differently. The play continued the season, meaning that the
audience averaged eighty percent of capacity throughout the run. Audience
laughed heartily and wrote letters about it to Davies, which means that Canadian
taste is not New York taste, and that a play about Canada may appeal to Canadians
without necessarily transferring successfully across the Border.
Not all plots are good plots for plays, nor are good plays necessarily
transferable to the screen. The methods of storytelling and character revelation in
plays, and films, and novels are all different in ways that may be obvious or subtle.
From Davies’ plays, we can easily find that Davies is opposed to use the
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tortuous, complicated and fantastic plots to attract the audience. His plays have no
much suspense, abrupt conversion, secret beyond understanding, and no more
intensive conflicts, or trilling scenes. Davies advocates that plays should reflect
real life and approach the ordinary life. So what reveals in most of his plays is
something we are quite familiar with in our daily life. The plots are prosaic,
though exquisite and comic. Davies’ plays can arouse the audience’s attention only
by means of stressing the themes and the characters’ destiny of his plays.
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Chapter 4
Robertson Davies’s Fortune, My Foe
Canadians’ central life is the experience of a journey in search of a new home. For
many Canadians’ ancestors the voyage was across the Atlantic and into the
Canadian wilderness where hardship added to whatever misgivings the settlers
already had about coming to Canada. Their forbearers experienced a tension
between wanting to stay in Canada and wishing they were not. In many cases they
felt additional anxiety because they were unable to leave the trying circumstances.
Their optimism and courage were offset by estrangement, loneliness and
entrapment; their thirst for adventure by a need for security.
One does not have to look far to see these experiences and feelings reflected
in Canadian literature, from Marc Lescarbot’s Le Theatre de Nepture (1606),
through Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush (1852), and Catharine Nina
Merritt’s When George The Third Was the King (1897), to Frederick Niven’s The
Flying Years (1935), and Listers Sinclair’s The Blood is Strong (1956). In fact,
examples are so many and obvious that they hardly need citing here. In recent
years, while Canadians have grown further and further away from their ancestors’
experiences, new journeys have evoked perpetuating a frame of reference, which
continues to shape the way Canadians think and consequently their literature. Over
the years, the nature of the journey has changed so that what was once actual and
represented literally is now psychological and treated metaphorically, giving
present-day literature a depth that early-Canadian writing did not possess.
Just as much of the earlier Canadian literature depended heavily on narrative
accounts of the author’s own journeys, so many of Davies’ plays, while not very
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autobiographical, reflect the shape of his life. Simply stated, a pattern for the lives
of his characters can be seen in Davies’ own experiences. He was born in small
town Canada, grew aware of its cultural deficiencies and moral repression, and
sought learning outside its boundaries. Much of his learning took place in the
British Isles, home of his ancestors. He returned to find Canada as ill favored as
when he left it, although he himself had changed. Since then it appears to have
been his desire to reshape small-town Canada through the exercise of his
cosmopolitan understanding and immense talent. Although Davies traveled outside
his small town, Canadians generally have not and consequently have found their
sensibilities blunted by the parochial nature of the area in which they live.
The same life pattern, which consists of two aspects found in everyday
Canadian life―one in which a talented but repressed Canadian is forced to travel
abroad, the other in which a specially gifted foreigner ( an immigrant ) comes to
an inferior Canada and tries to alter it―has shaped many Davies’ plays, such as
Hope Deferred (1948), At My Heart’s Core (1949), Fortune, My Foe (1949),
Hunting Stuart (1950), and Question Time (1952). In all of these plays, Robertson
Davies through the sophisticated treatment of theme provides special insight into
Canadian life. For this reason I shall in this chapter concern myself chiefly with
one of his plays, Fortune My Foe, making passing reference to others, to show
how Davies deals with the theme―cultural poverty, including the attitudes
Canadians have towards art, towards artists, and even towards theater, with his
confidence, aspiration, as well as his imagination and literary talents.
4.1 The Advent and Summary of Fortune, My Foe

Davies wrote this play under some pressure. In the summer of 1948 the Arthur
Sutherland International Players, a professional company, were presenting a
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season of stock in Kingston, Ontario. Sutherland, an old friend of Davies’s from

Queen’s wanted to end the season with a Canadian play after playing nine weeks
of the usual Broadway hits. Davies had one underway. Under the request of
Sutherland, Davies finished it quickly and rehearsed it for just five days before it
opened the first week in September. Suddenly the play found long queues at their
thicket wicket where no queues had been before. As a result, the play proved to be
extremely popular and it was held over for a second profitable week.
With the completion of it, Davies once again lashed out at the Canada’s
cultural aridity, applying a smelling sense across the country that things must
change. Displaced persons had been arriving in Canada in huge numbers during
the early post-war years, and at the same time gifted young people in the arts and
in academia, despairing of their future in Canada, were immigrating, especially to
the United States. This time, however, Davies’ play struck a newly optimistic note.
It argued that Canadians could create their own culture, a message that spoke
powerfully to the new generation. The Canadian actor, David Gardner, then a
student at the University of Toronto, considered it an important nationalistic
polemic, and Donald Davis, likewise a young Canadian actor at the University,
was challenged by its argument that “Canada was a garden that was worth tilling.”
When Clarke, Irvin published Fortune, My Foe in October 1949, the reviewers
celebrated as a rare appearance of a full-length Canadian play, possibly not only
because was contemporary and topical, explicitly Canadian, and easy to stage, but
also because it had a comparatively easy stage setting, and the costumes were
modern. Davies’ fondness for periods and for somewhat elaborate settings alarms
many little theatre groups.
Fortune, My Foe treats the individual’s own struggle to reconcile his desire
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for things of the mind and spirit with his need to make a home in Canada, where
such things are undervalued.
The action of the play opens in Chilly Jim Steele’s speakeasy on the
Cataraqui River overlooking Kingston, where he serves coffee or fruit drinks to all
comers, but encourages only the patronage of friends. One such friend is Idris
Rowlands, a middle-aged professor from Wales, whose love of literature and
failure to establish a similar love in the hearts of most of his students has made
him cynical about Canada and has very nearly been “overlaid” by Canadian
spiritual iciness:
God, how I tried to love this country! How I tried to forget the
paradise of Wales, and the quick wits of oxford! I have given all I
have to Canada ― My love, then my hate, and now my bitter
indifference. This raw, frost-bitten country has worn me out, and its
raw, frostbitten people have numbed my heart (Davies,1952:112).
His colleague, a young man at the same university Nicholas Haywood, has
also fallen victim to his native land’s indifference to intellectual and artistic
concerns. As a result he decided to go to the United States where greater
opportunities exists. In contrast to these two professors, Szabo, a marionette
master who has come to Canada in search of a new home, refuses to allow the
negative feelings associated with his encounter with the new land to dominate his
optimistic vision. Instead, with an artist’s strength he reconciles himself to his new
home determined to make it better than it was when he arrived:
I am an artist, you know, and a real artist is very, very tough. This is
my country now, and I am not very afraid of it. There may be bad times;
there may be some misunderstandings. But I shall be all right. So long
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as I keep the image of my work clear in my heart, I shall not fail

(Davies,1952:153).
Szabo’s courage arouses the previously apathetic Rowlands, and Hayward too
to an impassioned defense of Art and they both resolve to remain in Canada.
Nicholas Hayward tells Szabo:
If you can stay in Canada, I can, too. Everybody says Canada is a
hard country to govern, but nobody mentions that for some people it
is also a hard country to live in. Still, if we all run away it will never
be any better. So let the geniuses of easy virtue go southward; I
know what they feel too well to blame then. But for some of us there
is no choice. Let Canada do what she will with us, we must stay.
(Davies,1952:154)
Here we have a play which comments forthrightly on the plight of
artists and intellectuals amid Canada’s “spiritual iciness”, and the main
characters of which are not forced to flee the country in search of a home
elsewhere. Instead, they journey within and with the self-awareness and
concomitant courage so acquired they resolve to remain in Canada and
seek a new home here. It is worth speculating that these were the same
activities and decision Robertson Davies undertook in his life. Surely his
decision in 1940 to leave the Old Vic theatre company and his work with
Tyrone Guthrie, and to return to a Canada like the one his writings reflect,
required the same soul-searching journey and courage we see dramatized
in this play.
4.2 An Exploration of the Theme in Fortune, My Foe

At the very beginning of reading this play, the title’s meaning seems unclear. But it
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quickly becomes obvious that it has several meanings. One meaning of fortune for
Hayward, a dominant protagonist of the play, is money when in Act I he
introduces his ploy “to get a fortune, or at least the foundation of a fortune by
publishing a modern edition of a seventeenth-century jest book. He hopes the book
will be both a moneymaker and his entrée to a lucrative university position in the
United States. Professor Rowlands attacked Hayward’s project, not because jokes
are unworthy of serious study, but because Hayward is entertaining the project
only to attract attention and get money. Money is a foe if it entices Hayward to
waste his talent on nonsense and shoddy, catchpenny scholarship. Of course,
Hayward’s current fortune is also his foe. On his lecturer’s salary, he eternally has
to look at both sides of every nickel and marriage is out of question on the money
he is getting in a Canadian university. Moreover, since money is a measure of
worth, his miserable salary is an irritating reminder of the gap between his own
and his country’s values. Hayward may have a place here as Rowlands claim, but
it is one where he is despised because he does not teach anything useful, despised
because he wants things from life which nobody else seems to miss, and despised
because his ability commands so little money.
In Act II the meaning of fortune is mainly reflected on Buckety. Buckety, as a
drunkard, often tries to borrow money from Szabo, a Czech puppet master. Like
the cripples or half-wits kept at monasteries in Europe, he stands as a warning
which reminds the audience that life could be potentially cruel and some
misfortune might bring them to a similar conditions. Buckety’s misfortune shows
that fortune may refer not just to money, but to chance happenings, to luck both
good and ill, to the vicissitude of life.
In Act III the meaning of fortune is focused on the more profound implication
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of fate or destiny for Hayward, Rowlands and Szabo. Fortune as fate or destiny is
“my foe”, because to everyone in the play, if he wants to change his life, or if he
wants to have good luck, he must try hard, he must defeat himself to have more
adventure, and he must grasp his own destiny in his own hands, no matter where
he is, in the old world and in the new world, and in Canada and in the United
states.
Why did Fortune enjoy such popularity then the moment it came into being
in the late 1940s? There exist some possible factors in terms of its explicit
exploration of the theme. One is its overt Canadianism. With the people’s desire
for a Canadian play, there was a growing interest in fostering indigenous drama in
the 1940s. Many Canadian playwrights came to try their hands in writing “real
Canadian plays”. Robertson Davies alone put down several plays as mentioned
above. Many features of King Phonix, Hope Differed, At My heart’s Core, its
well-drawn characters, witty dialogue, exciting action, and strong emotion, were
not enough to guarantee success. Nor was the fact the play was written by a
Canadian enough to make it a real Canadian play. But Fortune was
self-consciously Canadian, about new immigrants, long-time residents, and
native-born Canadians and their love-hate relationship with Canada, about the
demands it made on them, the rewards it failed to offer them, and the necessity to
work for and have faith in a finer future Canada. Artistic deprivation and the more
general cultural deprivation were again the focus of Fortune. Besides in Fortune
Davies did not set his action far in the past as in Hope Differed or in the country as
in Overlaid, either of which might be considered somehow a special case not
necessarily representative of the “real” Canada. Fortune took place in the present
of a university town, which provided an opportunity for appreciation of the finer
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things of life if any place in Canada could but fail to do so. There is no doubt that
among Davies’ 26 scripts only Fortune is unique because it is written really by a
Canadian, Davies himself, about Canadians and for Canadians. Due to this play,
Canadian people realize that they have their own plays which reflect their own
life.
Another characteristic of Fortune for exploring this theme of cultural poverty
is that the greater length and range of characters allow for greater depth of
treatment. Fortune gives us a number of variations on the heroes who value
culture, most notably Szabo, Hayward, and Rowlands. The Philistines, too, are
represented by a variety of characters, all of who have pretensions to artistic or
intellectual values of some sort, but lack true understanding of what art is. This
range of characters allows Davies to explore fully the nature and degree of
Canada’s cultural poverty and its effects on different individuals.
The play is set in a speakeasy on the Cateraqui River near Kingston, where its
proprietor Chilly Jim serves his coffee or fruit drinks to all comers and
open-minded men can comfortably meet―men like newspaper editor Edward
Weir and Waverly faculty members, Nicholas Hayward, a young and ambitious
instructor of English, and Idris Rowlands, an elderly Welsh-born professor and
poet. Also included for purposes and low comedy and contrast is a dissipated and
frowsy Buckety Murphy, who the regulars tolerate. Much of the play is focused on
the curious father-son relationship between Hayward and Rowlands in the first two
acts. They argue extensively about Hayward’s plan to produce a scholarly edition
of an old joke book, which Hayward views the project as a means of obtaining a
position in an American university and of making enough money to marry an
attractive student, Venessa Medway. Pursuing what he calls “an ideal of
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civilization”, he is ready to abandon the homeland for which he fought in the war.
Rowlands is cast as a wise but embittered older man, whose love of literature
and failure to establish a similar love in the hearts of his students had made him
cynical about Canada, his adopted home. He blames his condition in Canada―
“This raw, frost-bitten country has worn me out, and its raw, frost-bitten people
have numbed my heart.” While his plight is not engaging, he has great faith in a
finer future of his country. On hearing Hayward intention of leaving for the U.S.,
he accuses Hayward of wanting to sell out his values simply for money and of
sacrificing his loyalty to Canada for a girl who is not worthy of Hayward’s love.
Thus it seems that, under Davies’ pen, the speakeasy, which the people patronize
for stimulation and pleasure, becomes a battlefield of their debate. To flesh the
problem between Hayward and Rowlands and resolve the impasse in their debate,
Davies adopted a device he would use often, “the play within the play”. Franz
Szabo is a Czechoslovakian immigrant, whose aim is to establish a Canadian
theatre for the Szabo marionettes, a proud family enterprise dating back to
Shakespeare’s time. Unlike Rowlands, Szabo is a practicing artist. Master of his
craft, he makes his own figures carefully by hand and has the toughness and sense
of purpose never to doubt his effort, whatever the social conditions. When Chilly’s
patrons discover Szabo’s plight, they set out to help him. The result is hasty
production of the scene in which Don Quixote charges against the windmills to
impress two influential members of the local recreation committees. Its aim is to
obtain some temporary work for Szabo. On a large scale, it raises the broader
cultural question, “What will Canada do to him?” What Canada does to him is not
encouraging. Venessa’s friend, Ursula Simonds, a parlor communist, tries to
persuade Szabo to use his play as socialist tracts. The recreation committee pair,
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Mattie Philpott and Orville Tapscott, cast as mindless do-gooders and worshippers
of respectability, is too blind to see any beauty or art in the performance. As such,
they are subjected to Davies’ unrelenting scorn. In a melodramatic scene, they are
driven from the temple of Art, Szabo’s makeshift theatre, by the inebriated
Rowlands who cannot bear to see it profaned, with his shouts of “anathema” and
blows of his stick. Rowlands has expressed Szabo’s own feelings about the
reception the Philpott and Tapscatt, representative of the Philinstines to art, give
the puppet show, but Szabo feels no despair. When Rowlands warns him that
Canada “ will freeze your heart with folly and ignorance,” Szabo replies,
“No, Professor, I do not think it will. I am an artist, you know,
and a real artist is very, very tough. This is my country now, and I
am not afraid of it. There may be some bad tomes; there may be
some misunderstandings. But I shall be all right. We artists must
be tough, and hopeful, too.” (Davies, 1952:153)
The ending is sentimental and optimistic. Hayward decides to stay in Canada,
breaking with Venessa. His final speech demonstrates his recognition of the pure
value of art, gained through Szabo, with his growth in self-awareness. Hayward
tells Szabo,
“If you can stay in Canada, I can, too. Everybody says Canada is
a hard country to govern, but nobody mentions that for some
people it is also a hard country to live in. Still, if we all run away
it will never be any better.”(Davies,1952:156)
Despite disappointments suffered by the characters, the play ends in their
common affirmation of commitment to a future in Canada, a future in which
Canada will be the better for the struggles of those who decide to stay and the
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battle with the Philistines. This is, of course, the choice Davies himself made
when he began his art career.
This play is actually a portrayal of Davies himself as well as his times.
Davies once says that all his characters are aspects of himself. But in Fortune his
ambivalent feelings about Canada can be seen clearly in Rowlands. Superficially,
the similarity between the character and his creator is suggested by Rowlands’
nostalgia for the paradise of Welsh, where Davies father’s family lived and where
Davies chose to spend his honeymoon and the quick wits of Oxford, where Davis
studied for three years.
By portraying the three major characters in different position, or with
different identity, Hayward as a native aspirant, Rowlands as a firm intellectual of
long staying in Canada, and Szabo as a potential gifted newcomer, Davies shows
different people’s different attitudes towards art and their feelings about Canada’s
inhospitality and indifference not only to art, but to her intellectuals and artists as
well. Their attitudes towards art, especially Szabo’s, are Davies’ most important
means of educating his audience. It is interesting that Davies uses Szabo to
personify the values which Hayward and Rowlands have, and more importantly,
Szabo, who is tolerant, humble, grateful, thoughtful, patient, wise, hard-working
and most of all optimistic about his future in Canada, is effective in countering
any prejudice the audience might have against immigrants which make up the
considerable percentage of the population of Canada.
Apart from the characterization of the main characters, which are intended
for digging deeper and further theme, another characteristic of Fortune in artistic
creation is that Davies also creates the minor characters as foils, thus on one hand
providing an indirect comment on the subject of art and at the same time adding
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most of the humor to the play. In terms of function Chilly Steele, Ned Weir and
Buckety Murphy can be classed as minor characters. Chilly, as an owner of the
speakeasy, is the stage much of the time, and his lines are numerous, commenting
on everything and everyone, which happens and who appears on the stage. In
addition to entertaining the audience with his unconventionally direct statements,
which are often disconcerting to other characters, Chilly’s business methods
provide entertainment. He sells everyone fruit drinks, and then gives away the
alcoholic fillip (from the bottle he keeps off the premises in the river) on a
selective basis, thus keeping on the soft side of the law and at the same time
encouraging only that clientele of his own choosing. The “in group” then provides
humor at the expense of primly respectable outsiders whose expectations of
finding a seedy dive are frustrated. Chilly is a practical, no-nonsense, natural man.
He is self-educated and has none of the social graces, yet he claims language as
his hobby and has read all of Shakespeare’s plays. Though he may seem
hard-boiled, he is kind-hearted. He provides Buckety with shelter and regular
handouts, and he takes Szabo in and gives him a job. When he sees Szabo’s
pictures of the marionette theatre, which appeals to him so much that he is
immediately bent on helping Szabo to get a similar theatre going for people in
Canada. Chilly’s enthusiasm shows that Szabo’s art evokes the same feeling in
both men, the educated represented by Hayward and the uneducated by Chilly
alike.
Edward Weir, a newspaper editor who often patronizes the speakeasy, is
another minor character whose enthusiasm for Szabo’s puppets helps to convey
the sense of true art Davies needs to establish in the play. Ten years ago, Weir saw
Szabo’s show in Prague. He remembers it vividly and recognizes the great man in
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Szabo the moment he meets across Szabo in Canada. So he seems to have some
authority and he offers to help to explain the effect of Szabo’s art. He is strongly
persuaded to help Szabo because a second puppeteer is required and no one else
but him is fit to operate a marionette. But his acute sense of his own inability to do
justice to Szabo’s puppet prompts an attack of stage fright and a string of
apologies that interfere with the beginning of the show, and the clumsy motions of
his puppet contrast comically with those of the puppets Szabo controls. All of
these laughingstocks and humor make the audience immersed in happy memories
of the play.
During the performance of the play, Buckety Murphy, a drunk in rags, is ever
present on the fringes of the scene. His position of sitting at the back, outside the
large door, facing the river and sometimes dozing, which is peripheral to the plot,
action and theme, reflects his peripheral position in society.
From what Szabo says, it can be clear why Chilly lets him hang around on
the stage:
“Did you ever visit any of the monasteries in Europe? They
always had one or two sad people about them. Cripples or half-wits
or fellows like poor Buckety. I think it was to remind the brothers
that life could be cruel, and that some misfortune might bring them
to the similar condition. Do you think Chilly lets Buckety stay here
to show his customers what drink can do if it becomes the master
of a man?” (Davies, 1952:111)
Buckety is reluctant to leave the speakeasy just in the hope that a new visitor
may be good for a handout. Often his requests for handouts are humorously
imaginative. Every time he asks for the handouts, he howls at precisely 5:02,
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which he claims is his birth cry. When Chilly exposes his swindle by noting that
he has already had a couple of birthdays this year, he shifts to the claim that it is
the anniversary of his wife’s death and he needs the drink for protection from her
ghost. Buckety adds much humor to the play.
Actually Davies’ reason for having him in the play is probably as a comment
not on the drink, but on art. Buckety has always with him pictures he posed for “at
the height of his career,” pictures of himself as Hercules dressed in a lion skin and
displaying his physique to good advantage. These “dirty pictures” Buckety
perceives as “art” and he concludes the story of his career as an artist. From the
play it is easy for the audience to distinguish what the true art is, precisely to say
Szabo’s work is art and Buckety’s not.
4.3 The Artistic Methods of Fortune, My Foe

Building upon the theme of Hope Deferred and Overlaid, Davies, in Fortune
devises a larger, more persuasive and contemporary approach to the problems of
art and culture in Canada. Like his most of other plays mainly one-acters, the
presentation of Fortune is of realism, which requires the playwright to concern
himself with the here and now, with everyday events, with his own environment
and with the movements of his time, and concentrate attention on the lot of
ordinary people. This denotes fidelity to the truth in depicting the inner workings
of the mind, the analysis of thought and feeling, the presentation of the nature of
personality and characters. Davies uses the realistic method in his plays to present
the objective reality that Canada, at mid-century, when he was beginning to write,
was accustomed to losing her artists to other countries and immigrants, with great
confidence and promise, came to Canada to make new homes for better life. Apart
from demonstrating all of these happenings, Davies digs deeper and further in
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characters’ inner world―subjective reality. In Fortune, for example, the quarrel

between Hayward and Rowlands moves superficially moderate in the first two
acts. The central conflict is really internal. It is Hayward’s inner or spiritual
struggle. It is only in the third act when Rowlands brings up Venessa’s
shortcomings that Hayward shows his real anger, which puts the play into its
climax. Davies’ skillful portrayal of the characters’ inner world intensifies the
theme of the play, which makes the audience have more tastes in the every
detailed aspect of the play.
The characterization of Venessa, who is compared to Canada, is another
device Davies uses in Fortune―symbolism, in which an object, animate or
inanimate, is used to represent or stand for something else. In Fortune, Davies,
consciously or unconsciously, compares Venessa to Canada, which is considered
as iciness, inhospitable to intellectuals and scholars and has impoverished soil for
arts to grow. Like Canada, Nenessa is as cold as icicle. She is cool and incapable
of appreciating Hayward, the representative of ambitious intellectuals and scholars
in Canada, but she is like the U.S. in the superficiality of her attraction. Wealth
and fame are attractive, but for Davies the ultimate goal is enrichment of the spirit,
not enrichment of the bank account or the ego.
The whole story of the play is unfolded around the speakeasy, mainly
revealing the discussion or debate among the patrons. Davies focuses his setting
very specifically, extending neither to the long past, and nor to the distant future.
In other words, his story is not long-spanned, but short happening. So sometimes
critics view this play as “an idea play” or discussion drama, in which the opposing
views of different characters on the issue of art in Canada are discussed at length.
This is just what Davies really wants to express to his audience in the play.
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Through the above analysis of the work it is not difficult to conclude that the
thoughtful exploration of an important subject, and the well-drawn characters with
their hopes, fears, disappointments, faith and determination, together with the
humor and the tight structure, add up to a very fine play, and it was just the play
that Canada’s last mid-century play-goers were ready for. The play is so far the
most important dramatic work yet written in Canada that it is difficult to think of
any other as being in the same class.
4.4 The Influence of Davies’ Playwriting on Canadian

Drama
Based on the above study of Robertson Davies’ playwriting, including his life
experiences and his creative ideas, we can easily find out that he has a decisive
position in the history of Canadian drama. His great contributions can be summed
up as follows:
1) With Davies’ disinterested assistance and enthusiastic participation in the
activities of little theatre movement from the 1940s to the 1960s, many Canadian
amateur groups gradually developed and flourished. Peterborough, for example,
came to form Peterborough Theatre Guide, which later bought one of the city’s
churches and converted it into an intimate 200-seat theatre and began to mount a
season of plays every year. Thus Canada tended to have its own dramatic
contingent, which not only became a principal force on Canadian theatrical stages,
but laid a solid foundation for the successive formation of Canadian professional
theatre as well.
2) The establishment and the existence of Stratford Festival under the
guidance of Davies offered an opportunity for Canadian audience to see the
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world’s first-rate plays and their professional acting. This, on the one hand, made
the Canadians, especially the amateur artists or theatrical groups, came to know
about the Shakespearean canon, and widened their vision. On the other hand, the
production of Shakespeare’s plays improved the Canadians’ tastes for art. As they
initiated their own indigenous culture, Canadians began to assimilate the essence
of the Old World’s cultural heritage. Canadian playwrights went about working on
Canadian versions of some European dramatists’ plays.
3) As far as his playwriting is concerned, Davies carried on the dramatic
tradition, which features comedy and melodrama, and at the same time he created
his own dramatic style. As a dramatist Robertson Davies has changed gradually
over the past thirty years from a straightforward satirist employing realistic
characters to a denser, more complex ironist whose characters, while real people,
are symbolical. Psychologically the plays move from a simple conception of
personality to a testing of the Jungian conception; thematically they continue to
gather force in their preoccupation with the Canadian sensibility, the influence of
heredity, and the relationship of the world of the spirit to reality. Structurally
Davies employs traditional dramatic techniques in setting extending from
medieval to contemporary life. Robertson Davies is consistent in his on-going
search for self-knowledge and wholeness both for the individual Canadian and for
Canada itself.
4) Most importantly, Davies was, and still is considered a national pioneer in

terms of drama, who was bold enough to use his pen of playwriting to write plays,
which reflected his life. The Canadian environment for theatre and other art, if not
together hostile, not precisely nourishing either, is a subject, which concerned
Davies greatly, particularly at the last mid-century. He worked not only to promote
-74-
favorable conditions for his own plays, but also to educate the public taste, to
improve working conditions and opportunities for artists, and in whatever way he
could to improve the Canadian cultural climate. Several of his early plays feature
the theme of Canadian cultural poverty. None of his plays were without Canadian
themes and Canadian setting. So his plays were considered real Canadian plays. It
is due to the appearance of his plays that Canadians came to be proud to have their
own theatre and it is due to some dramatists, represented by Robertson Davies that
Canadian drama has earned a place among Canada’s commendable cultural
accomplishments.
In addition to all of these, Davies found other ways to promote the cause of
theatre in Canada. He served as governor of the Dominion Drama Festival and the
Stratford Festival, wrote articles about Canadian theatre, provided information and
recommendations towards formulating government policy on theatre, and taught
theatre students at the University of Toronto.
-75-
Conclusion
Trough the above recollection of Robertson Davies’ artistic career and the analysis
of his dramatic creation and his representative work, Fortune, My Foe, it is not
difficult to see that Robertson Davies is a genuine outstanding playwright who
enjoyed great prestige in Canada.
Robertson Davies is not only an inheritor of the traditional drama, but a
pioneer of Canadian modern drama as well. As a dramatist, Davies has changed
gradually over his thirty years―from the late 1940s to the early 1970s―from a
straightforward satirist employing realistic characters to a denser, more complex
ironist, whose characters, while real people, are symbolical. He, in his different
plays created in different periods, characterized various characters, all of whom
are actually intended to respectively voice and reflect the social issues. Though the
characters in his plays have a sense of humor, comical actions, language full of
jokes, and amusement, they are the portrayal of real life, which is deeply worth
pondering.
Psychologically, Davies created some plays, which move from a simple
conception of personality to a testing of Jungian conception, one of the ideas,
which advocates that things like dreams and fantasy should be revealed
unconsciously and freely. From the very beginning, Davies saw playwriting as a
matter of recording communications from the unconscious. He described the
process of his playwriting, basing his account on “ a certain amount of practice
and a few vague intuitions”. When an idea occurred to him that seemed to demand
embalming, he would immediately jot it down, lest it vanish, in a notebook. Then
the idea would seem “to acquire a life of its own”, presenting itself utterly, until it
settled into a final shape. Only then would he commit the play to paper. Davies is
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undoubtedly a man of imagination. But his rich imagination must have come from
a wealth of his accumulative life experiences. It is his father’s stories of Wales, his
mother’s tales of Ontario pioneer life, his battles for dominance with his mother,
his striving to satisfy his father, his contests in the Remfrew schoolyard, his
struggles to come to terms with his romantic sensibilities, his memories of the
friendship of the Oxford and London years that provided his unconscious with a
massive hoard on which to draw and became the inexhaustible material of his
playwriting.
Thematically, Davies’ plays always centered around such themes as Canadian
sensibility, the influence of heredity, the relationship of the world of the spirit to
reality, Canadians’ attitudes toward their country, toward the art and even toward
theatre, cultural poverty, Canadian identity, etc. Most of his plays are profound in
themes and their success is attributable to their topicality. On no account can a
play without a good topic be called a good play.
Structurally, Davies employs traditional dramatic techniques in setting
extending from medieval to contemporary life. He is consistent in his on-going
search for self-knowledge and wholeness both for the individual Canadian and for
Canada itself.
Clearly, Fortune, My Foe, as analyzed above, can be regarded as Davies’ real
approach to maturity, since it is an embodiment of his talents and wisdom in
playwriting.
He achieved a dominant role in Canadian theatre. His plays challenged the
country’s self-conception and encouraged the cultural aspirations of the new
post-war generation. With his plays, he brightened every corner across the country.
Under his leadership and influence, Canada had more and better theatres. His
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name was and is still known to every household in Canada. In libraries and
bookstores, there are many books available to readers on Davies, such as
biography, collections of criticism, interviews, reminiscences, etc. Davies’ plays,
on one hand, have been frequently performed, particularly those with overt
Canadian themes and have met with enthusiastic audience response, and on the
other hand, have greatly interested the academic world. Now many of his plays are
selected into the textbooks, which are taught to drama majors in both Canadian
colleges and universities. And he himself as a playwright and his plays have
become the research target of many academic theses.
Davies’ drama production, unfortunately, has not enjoyed the broad
international success as his fiction has, due in large part to the fact that it has not
been disseminated nearly as widely. Try as he might, he was unable to get a play
produced in England, where his dramatic dream germinated, and was similarly
unable to crack Broadway. In other words, it may be possible that Davies’ plays
are of little importance, compared with British and American plays, though they
are all written in the same language. Nonetheless, in Canadians’ eyes, Davies’
plays are their own, their favorites. His plays are thought to be a miniature of his
time, from which Canadian people not only see the outside world, but also their
own life and themselves. Also his plays are a testimony of the individual
development of many Canadian playwrights like Robertson Davies himself.
Robertson Davies, such a great playwright, however, has been almost
unknown in China and though with the increasing exchange of Canadian and
Chinese cultures and more introductions of Canadian literature into China, the
Chinese people are still unfamiliar with Canadian drama, and even some particular
Canadian dramatists.
-78-
References
Abel, Lione. Metatheatre: A New View of Dramatic Form, New York: Hill and
Wang, 1963.
Anthony, Geraldine. Stage Voices, Toronto: Doubleday Canada Limited, 1978.
Benson, Eugene. English-Canadian Theatre, Toronto: Oxford, 1987.
Buitenhuis, Elspeth. Robertson Davies, New York: Norton, 1977.
Davies, Robertson. At My Heart’s Core, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1950.
Davies, Robertson. Eros at Breakfast and other Plays, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin,
1949.
Davies, Robertson. Fortune, My Foe, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1952.
Davies, Robertson. One Half of Robertson Davies, Toronto Star, August, 1980.
Davies, Robertson. Overlaid, Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1955.
Davies, Robertson. Robertson Davies, Four Favorite Plays, Toronto: Clark, Irwin,
1968.
Edwards, Murray D. A Stage in our Past, Canadian Theatre Review vol. 8, 1886.
Glibert, Helen and Joanne Tompkins. Post-colonial Drama: Theory, Practice,
Politics, London: Routledge, 1996.
Goldie, Terence W. A National Dama and A National Dramatist: The first Attempt,
Toronto Star, October 1985.
Gran,t Judith. The Enthusiasm of Robertson Davies, Canadian Theatre Review,
Vol.12, 1989.
Grant, Judith. The Rich Texture of Robertson Davies’s Fortune, My Foe, Toronto,
Star, May, 1990.
Grant, Judith. Robertson Davies: Man of Myth, Toronto: Viking, 1994.
John, Samual. Canada’s Lost Plays, vol. 1,3,4, Toronto: CTR, 1978.
-79-
King, Bruce. Post-Colonial English Drama, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992:
1-6, 67-81.
L, Stynn. J.. Drama, Stage and Audience, England: Cambridge University Press,
1975.
Lecker, Robert. The theatre As Temple: Robertson Davies’s Later Plays, Montreal:
McGill University, Twayne Publishers, 1986.
McNaugh, Renneth. Nationalism in Canada, Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson,
1966.
Morley, Patricia. Canadian Drama Series, Toronto: Gage Educational Publishing,
1977.
Perleys, Richard. Major Plays of the Canadian Theater, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1984.
Peterman, Michael. Robertson Davies, Boston: Twayne, 1986.
Rubin, Don. Canadian Theatre History, Toronto: Cope Clark LTD, 1996.
Saddlemyer, Ann. A Conversation with Robertson Davies, University of Toronto
Quarterly vol.33, 1981.
Stone, Susan. Robertson Davies, Playwright, Vancouver: University of Columbia
Press, 1985.
Tait, Michael. Playwrights in a Vacuum: Canadian Drama in the 19th Century,
Canada, Theatre Review, vol. 1, 1986.
Wagner, Auton. Contemporary Canadian Drama, Toronto: Simom and Pierre,
1985.
Watters, Reginald. A checklist Canadian Literature and Background Materials,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1959.
Whittaker, Herbert. Robertson Davies: An Appreciation, Theatre History in
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Canada, spring, Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1991.

Whittaker, Herbert. Robertson Davies and the Ethics of Monologue, Globe and
Mail, July, 1974.
阿·尼柯尔.西欧戏剧理论.北京:中国戏剧出版社,1985.
余秋雨.戏剧创造工程.上海:上海文艺出版社,1986.
http://www.amk.ca/davies/
http://www.callisto.si.usherb.ca:8080/ang140/_CanDrama/00000014.htm
http://www.unb.ca/sweb/parser/luci.cgi/
http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/TRIC/bin/get.cgi?directory=vol8_1/&file
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=636506371&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=5670836&sid=3&Fmt=3&clientId
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Appendix
A Chronology and
Checklist of Robertson Davies’ Plays
This listing is designed primarily to highlight Robertson Davies’ career as a
dramatist. It lists all his plays and about their productions.
1945
The King Who Could Not Dream, a three-act play, unpublished and unproduced.
1946
A Play of Our Lord’s Nativity, an adaptation from the Mediaeval Pageant of
Shearmen and Tailors, produced by the Coventry Players, Peterborough, 1946 and
unpublished.
1947
Overlaid, a one-act play, wins the Ottawa Drama Workshop Competition,
produced in Ottawa by the Ottawa Drama League; director: Michael Meiklejohn.
1948
Eros at Breakfast, a one-act play, produced by the Ottawa Drama, and directed by
Ian Fellows and Michael Meiklejohn, wins the Sir Barry Jackson Trophy for best
production of a Canadian play in the Dominion Drama Festival. Davies wins the
Gratien Gelinas Prize for author of the best Canadian play in the Festival. Cast: Ian
Fellows, Michael Meiklejohn, Amelia Hall, Robert Rose and Carl Lochnan.
1949
Fortune, My Foe, produced by the Ottawa Drama League, wins the Sir Barry
Jackson Trophy for best production of a Canadian play in the Dominion Drama
Festival. Davies wins the Gratien Gelinas Award as author of the best Canadian
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play. W.A. Atkinson judged best individual actor in the role of Professor Rowlands.
Producer: Arthur Sutherland; director: Brenda Davies; set by Grant Macdonald.
Cast: James Steele; Laurence Thornton; Nicholas Hayward: Drew Thompson; Idris
Rowlands: W.A. Atkinson; Edward Weir: Arthur Sullivan; Buckety Murphy: Frank
Wade; Franz Szabo: William Needles; Vanessa Medway: Marian Jones; Ursula
Simonds; Josephine Barrington; Mrs. E.C. Philpott: Jean Cruchet; Orville Tapscott:
Donald Shepherd.
1950
At My Heart’s Core, a three-act play, produced by the Peterborough Summer
Theatre, August 28. Director: Michael Sadlier. Brenda Davies creates the role of
Mrs. Frances Stewart and Kate Reid plays the role of Mrs. Catherine Parr Traill.
King Phoenix, a three-act play, produced by the North Toronto Theatre Guild;
director: Herbert Whittaker.
1952
A Masque of Aesop, written for the Preparatory School of Upper Canada College,
Toronto. Produced in the College on May 2 and 3 by G.M. Galt; costumes and
scenery by Vernon Mould; music by H.E. Atack and J.A. Dawson.
1953
Appointed a Governor of the Stratford Festival and serves until 1971.
Directs King Phoenix for the Peterborough Little Theatre and wins cup in Eastern
Ontario Regional Drama Festival.
1954
A Jig for the Gypsy, a three-act play, written for the Crest Theatre Company,
Toronto, and produced in September. Director: Herbert Whittaker; designer: John
Wilson.
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1955
Leaven of Malice, a three-act play, wins Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for
Humor.
Hunting Stuart, a three-act play, written for the Crest Theatre. Director: Robert
Gill.
1956
The Lost Scenes from The Merry Wives of Windsor, used in that season’s
production of the play.
General Confession, a three-act comedy, for the Crest Theatre Company, not
produced.
1962
A Masque of Mr. Punch, written for the students of Upper Canada College, and
premiered on 29 November. Director: Michael Carver; costumes by Ubriaco;
music by Henry E. Atack; scenery by Vernon Mould.
1966
The Ontario Scene, a one-act play and one of a five-act Centennial Play by five
different authors (Arthur L. Murphy, Yves Theriault, W.O. Mitchell, Eric Nicol and
John Mackbeth).
The Centennial Play, first produced “in the form of a preview” at the Academy
Theatre, Lindsay, Ontario, on October 6, 1966. Producer: Leon Major; director:
Frank Canino; sets and costumes by Lee Lawrence; musical direction by William
Perry; choreography by Frank Canino.
1967
The Centennial Play, presented on 11 January by The Centennial Commission and
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produced by the Ottawa Little Theatre. Director: Peter Boretski; designer: Marc
Negin; music by Keith Bissell; musical arrangements by Berthold Carriere;
choreography by Jack Robertson.
1974
Brothers in the Black Art, a television play for the CBC - TV series. Executive
Producer: Fletcher Markle; host Gordon Pinsent. Producer: George Jonas; director:
Mario Prizok. Cast: Old Jesse: Sean Sullivan; Young Jesse: John Friesen; Griff:
David Hutchinson; Phil: Stephen Foster; Evvy: Brenda Donoghue; Bess: Maureen
McRae; Lou: Ita D’ Arcy; Hilo: David Yorston; Scotty: Jack Arthur.
1975
Question Time, a two-act play, produced by Toronto Arts Productions at the St.
Laurence Centre, Toronto, on 25 February. Director: Leon Major; sets and
projections by Murray Laufer; costumes by Marie Day; sound score by Ann
Southam; lighting by Wallace Russell.
1977
Pontiac and the Green Man, a two-act play, unpublished. Commissioned as part of
the University of Toronto’s Sesquicentennial celebrations. Premiered on 26
October, the MacMillan Theatre, University of Toronto. Directed by Martin
Hunter; designed by Martha Mann; music by Derek Holman; conducted by
Michael Evans; lighting design by Michael Whitfield; choreography by Kevin
McGarrigle. The cast included David Gardner as Major Robert Rogers; Laurier L.
LaPierre as the Judge Advocate; Francess Halpenny as a Bluestocking; and Brenda.
Davies as Bellimperia Egerton.
-85-
哈尔滨工业大学硕士学位论文原创性声明
本人郑重声明：此处所提交的硕士学位论文《文本中的作者与读者》，是
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-86-
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I am much in debt to my supervisor, Prof. Qin Mingli, who
assists in the preparation, writing and revision of the paper with both critical ideas
and abundance of reference books, without his sparkling guidance along each step
of my project, the thesis would be totally inconceivable. His prudent and scientific
attitude toward teaching and research, and his rigorous and vigorous instruction to
the students impressed me deeply, which is the most valuable treasure not only
encouraging me to walk out of the hardship but also empowering my spirit for
academic pursuit.
I would also owe a great debt to other professors for their careful corrections
and valuable suggestions.
Last but not least, I must extend my sincere thanks to my husband and my
daughter, whose encouragement gives me confidence and whose care makes me
walk out of the hardship.
-87-

罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作研究 刘晓丹

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文学硕士学位论文

Graduation Thesis for the M. A. Degree

The Study of Robertson Davies’

Candidate: Liu Xiaodan

Supervisor: Prof. Qin Mingli

Academic Degree Applied for: Master of Arts

Specialty: Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics

Affiliation: Dept. of Foreign Languages

Date of Oral Examination: June 26, 2006

Degree Conferring Institution: Harbin Institute of Technology

Key words Canadian drama; Commonwealth drama; playwriting; artistic features

1.2 The Drama of Robertson Davies

1.3 Commonwealth Drama

1.3.1 The General State of Commonwealth Drama

When it comes to Canadian drama, we cannot do without mentioning the

Commonwealth drama. Commonwealth is a free association of Britain and certain

national culture, government policies to encourage national artists, the expansion

1.3.2 Four Phases of Commonwealth Drama

leaders, teachers, creative artists, journalists, and all-rounders. A similar situation

those long retrospective monologues characteristics of so much American drama

immigrants and other groups formerly marginalized from national consciousness

1.3.3 American Cultural Influence on Commonwealth Drama

There is an obvious connection between the emergence of post-colonial English

1) American culture, particularly the American serious drama, represented by

2.2 Influences on Robertson Davies’s Playwriting

2.2.2 Earlier Experiences

As a matter of fact, it is hard to say whose works or which playwright

Davies’ earlier experiences laid a solid foundation for his career to be a

After World War I, theatre flourished in Canada. Canadian indigenous drama

1) The formation of amateur acting groups

as Governor general ended and he departed for England. However he had

2) The Rise of the Little Theatre Movement

This spontaneous, small-scale and experimental performance immediately

Three types of little theatres, which could be distinguished, were community

As a playwright and director, Davies had a decisive position in the little

3) The Establishment of The Dominion Drama Festival

First, the Dominion Drama Festival represents the prosperity of Canadian

at the Edinburgh Festival in 1949. Besides, other outstanding Canadian dramatists

In a word, by bringing small and struggling amateur theatre groups together

2.3 Robertson Davies’s Plays

plays and eight full-length pieces.

In the middle of 1940s Davies concentration was on writing radio playlets,

Over the years of Davies’ playwriting career, he altogether wrote eight

Many of Davies’ plays have been frequently performed, particularly those

2.4 Types of Davies’ Plays

2.4.1 History Plays

2.4.2 Morality Plays

Though these plays are written in different periods of Davies’ playwriting,

Each of Davies’s plays chooses a moment of crisis in an individual life for

2.4.3 Autobiographical Plays

This picture of a graceless Canada, in need of cultural redemption and Davies

3.1 Artistic Style

Another style of Davies’ playwriting is of being comic. Comic plays usually

3.2 Artistic Features

Melodrama is originally a mixture of music and drama, which initiated in

a distinct genre of drama, it is characterized by heavy use of suspense, sensational

In Davies’ formative years, he was most deeply impressed by such plays as

accumulated to provide first-hand materials for his playwriting.

This is not a story to be written in an imitation of eighteenth-century dialogue,

In characterization, the most interesting part for Davies is the composition of

Usually Davies likes to write about a single, dominating character, whose

In addition, under-privileged groups and the fringes of society do not occur to

Since Davies is a playwright as well as a novelist, he has his own

罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作研究刘晓丹

罗伯逊·戴维斯的戏剧创作研究刘晓丹