between environments is usually made in terms of wealth and poverty. In all these plays, wealth means happiness, but a happiness at the expense of insensitivity to the suffering of others, for the wealthy have been protected from real life, and know nothing but the surfaces. (p. 17)

Although the hero is not clearly defined yet in the plays of the first period, he is established as the person who is opposed to the compromises of life; whose first purpose is the quest for purity through fidelity to what he considers his truest self. This purity is usually expressed in terms of childhood—that period of freedom and spontaneity before we learned the games of pretense and hypocrisy. It is another version of the Garden of Eden, Baudelaire's green paradise which represents a positive value of the past. The hero would like to cling tenaciously to the purity represented by such a vision, and consequently he tends to reject the adult world. Throughout the plays of Anouilh we hear of the hero refusing to grow up, or regretting his lost childhood. Unfortunately, this innocent paradise is not our only past. Superimposed upon it is the miserable past of man afflicted with sin, represented in most instances by the intolerable world of the poor. The hero attempts to escape from the latter and to return to the former. (pp. 18-19)

When the protagonist goes beyond the limits of his role, forgetting his past, as do Gaston and the characters of the Pièces roses, we feel he is not being true to all the aspects of his being, which includes his past as well as his aspirations in the present. The protagonists of the Pièces roses are not of a heroic stature. They are not like those who, refusing to escape into a world of dreams, face reality as it is, at the same time denouncing it and remaining aware of its limitations. (pp. 19-20)

[Anouilh's next four plays] lay more stress upon the author's fundamental ideas than had his previous plays. Eurydice (1941), Antigone (1942), Roméo et Jeannette (1945), and Médée (1946) place the heroic individual in the center of the stage as he faces reality and says no to it. The feeling of death is ever-present, and every one of the heroines goes down morally victorious. The central struggle is no longer between the protagonist's past and his aspirations. It has shifted to something more universal: the inner world versus the entire outer world, which is the only one recognized by society. The revolt against the past is only part of a larger revolt, and in Antigone there is no past against which to revolt, for Antigone creates herself only in the present. (p. 21)

Eurydice (1941) still shows some preoccupation with the escape from a sordid past, and in this respect it belongs to Anouilh's first period. But insofar as this escape is only part of a larger refusal of the compromises of life, and insofar as Eurydice treats with greater emphasis and clarity the essential notions only suggested in the first group of plays—enlarging upon them and imbuing them with a new universality—it belongs to the second period. (p. 22)

Eurydice shows, as does La sauvage, that man cannot successfully escape from his past. This theme is expressed much more clearly and forcefully in the later play. The past includes not only the persons and circumstances with which man has had dealings, but all past events—even those that seemed alien. The stranger that one happened to look at from a distance leaves an indelible imprint, because one cannot help reacting to even the most objective stimuli. (p. 23)

In Antigone (1942) there is no past weighing upon the heroine: she has chosen her role. As she tells her sister Ismène: "You chose life, and I death."… And, indeed, Antigone goes to her death, thinking it is the only answer that one can give to life if one is to remain true to oneself. She represents the universe of childhood—the kingdom of the ideal judged through subjectively chosen values. Her revolt is gratuitous; without direction; unmotivated in terms of a past. Her action arises only from a deep-felt necessity to become what she believes to be her truest self. (pp. 24-5)

Antigone's refusal of happiness is also her refusal of life, for the two terms are equated. "I want to know how I'll go about it, to be happy also," she cries out to Créon. "You say that life is so beautiful. I want to know how I'll go about it, to live." This is no refusal of reality: it is a refusal of life itself. If such a refusal is negative, with no positive values implied, it is because Antigone sees life in such terms that a positive stand has no meaning. If life is a compromise and the evil is to wish to live, then Antigone may assert her freedom by choosing death…. All those who make the compromise are no longer free in Anouilh's world, despite the strength of their will or the power of their intellect. (pp. 27-8)

The conflict in Roméo et Jeannette is between the concepts of the virtuous bourgeois, who believe one must grow up one day and accept the fact that life is not so beautiful as one had thought as a child, and the absolute refusal of Jeannette to accept life on such terms. "I don't want to grow up. I don't want to learn to say yes. Everything is too ugly," she says—reminding us of Antigone. (p. 29)

Antigone, Roméo et Jeannette, and Médée show the same conflict between the hero's or the heroine's aspirations and the world of compromise that they must face and in contact with which they would become sullied. Antigone, Jeannette, and Médée, like Orphée, say no to life and realize themselves victoriously in death. Their morality is one of completeness, and they must remain faithful to the inner self by answering spontaneously the imperious demands of the "savage" individual. Contrasted to them are the mediocre who consent to play the game, and who seek happiness by hiding the truth of life's absurdity from themselves. Lacking the necessary intelligence to perceive any facet of the truth, they simply vegetate, saying, like Monsieur Delachaume in Le rendez-vous de Senlis: "Money and love: what else can you ask for? Life is simple after all, for God's sake!" In varying degrees this simple, pleasant picture of life is opposed to the nothingness that the hero sees behind the illusion.

L'alouette, written in 1953, actually belongs to this central period of Anouilh's theater, for in it we see again the intransigent heroine who refuses to say yes to life. Unlike the other plays written during the third period, L'alouette shows us the unconquered heroine who remains true to herself. This play is thus linked in a very tangible way with the preceding group of plays; but at the same time it seems to foreshadow Anouilh's later works. (pp. 36-7)

The third group of plays includes all those written since Médée, with the exception of L'alouette (1953) and Anouilh's last play, Becket ou L'honneur de Dieu (1959). The volume ironically entitled Pièces brillantes contains L'invitation au château (1947), Cécile ou L'école des pères (1949), La répétition ou L'amour puni (1950), and Colombe (1950). Four other plays—Ardèle ou La marguerite (1948), La valse des toréadors (1951), Ornifle ou Le courant d'air (1955), and Pauvre Bitos ou Le dîner de têtes (1956)—have been gathered together under the title Pièces grincantes. L'hurluberlu is published separately but belongs in spirit to the last collection. The only brilliance in these plays is the superficial one given by the witty dialogue, the colorful or gaudy costumes, and the hollow histrionics of the frivolous characters who take the stage; but beneath this superficial brightness we feel the grating disillusion that is fundamental to Anouilh.

The playwright's interest is no longer centered on the heroic personage as he encounters life with its compromises. He now directs his attention to the mediocre people who have accepted life. Sometimes, as in La répétition, he shows what a change is effected in the life of a member of the lower race when the real world is revealed to him by a member of the heroic race. Most often, however, the unheroic claims the center of the stage. Rather than contrasting those who accept life with those who refuse it, these "brilliant" plays and "grating" plays oppose the innocent and sincere to the, sometimes unwittingly, wicked and cruel. The pathetic struggles of the few good characters, almost lost midst the others, give rise to a deep feeling of despair in their behalf, for we realize that the cards are stacked against them. This pessimistic attitude constitutes a profound criticism of the adult characters who have lost the purity of childhood. (pp. 40-1)

In the plays of the first and second periods, Anouilh's heroes gave some semblance of meaning to life by making it the means through which they realized themselves, by their very refusal of it. In the plays of the third period, however, the picture is one of compromise, and the outlook seems more pessimistic than ever. We can find no hole in the fabric of an absurd universe through which to bring in some meaning. (p. 55)

One is justified in suspecting Anouilh's heroes of "arrogant nihilism," and in asking whether they have not attempted to make of their lack of faith in humanity a system that overlooks those elements of man's constitution which are capable of saving him from himself. In the last group of plays especially, the weakness and immorality of the characters seems to point to the conclusion that man is not worth saving….

In Becket ou L'honneur de Dieu (1959) Anouilh returns to the intransigent characters of his first and second periods, but presents a more mature and positive hero than any of the earlier ones. (p. 56)

Although Becket recalls Antigone in his intractable attitude before the King, he strikes us at once as being more mature and more logical. For Becket is not revolting in a vacuum, and he is not reduced to admitting that he is acting for himself, He is defending a positive value—the honor of God—and he stands for "the unwritten law which always bends the heads of kings at last." (p. 57)

We begin to suspect that Becket is more like Antigone than is at first apparent. Although he may lack her childish arrogance, he may very well share her "nihilism," for God's honor turns out to be another way of expressing the heroic desire for an impossible absolute.

But Becket's "no" is not spoken against life; unlike Antigone's, it does not represent the will to refuse. It has a more positive side: it is spoken against compromise, and in favor of a value (God, the Church) which, however incomprehensible it may be as an absolute, does have a meaning in human terms. In this sense, Becket is more profoundly human than Antigone or Jeannette. He does not go toward death with their eagerness, scorning "filthy hope" and happiness. He accepts death because it is a necessary part of his role. (p. 60)

Several years earlier Anouilh had paused in his portrait of the world empty of heroes to tell the story of Jeanne d'Arc. Becket may be another momentary reversion to this heroic world. It is interesting to note, however, that both Becket and L'alouette indicate a more positive outlook than the earlier heroic dramas. Whether Anouilh is on the threshold of a new period we cannot say on the evidence of a single play. As yet he has not suggested any practical solution to the problems posed by life as it is revealed in his theater. But it is not the function of the dramatist to supply us with answers. It is enough if he presents his picture of the human predicament in a dramatically effective way. Philosophers and prophets may propose solutions. Anouilh has been content to show us the various roles man is condemned to play in his unfriendly universe. (pp. 60-1)

Although both Anouilh and the existentialists are ultimately optimistic in their placing of man at the center of the universe and in their conception of man as a free being, their understanding of that freedom differs. For the existentialists, man is not a creature, for he has not been created; God is dead, and man is an existent who is constantly creating himself by his own free choice. His birth and death were willed by no one and governed by no law save that of absurdity. The heroic race of Anouilh is free to choose also, but only within the bounds of their parts, for they are creatures and owe their beings to a God or destiny, however vaguely that force may be conceived. In the chaos of the universe there is at least sufficient plan for us to realize that each man has his place, whether that place has any meaning or not. And ultimately it cannot have meaning unless the creature asserts his liberty by living to the very depths of his being. It is a kind of liberty through self-realization, akin to the liberty attained by realizing the will of God and resigning one's self to acting within that will. But Anouilh's heroic liberty is not a resignation. On the contrary, it is a revolt against human standards and a refusal to take a place in a solidified universe; a refusal to lose one's plasticity and become caught in the viscosité, to use Sartre's word, of the bourgeois ideals. Here … Anouilh and existentialists join hands. (p. 73)

Despite the obvious parallels between Anouilh's outlook and that of the existentialists, we cannot conclude that Anouilh is a member of that group, or has even been influenced by them. All the ideas that the two outlooks have in common were expressed by Anouilh before Sartre had developed and popularized his brand of existentialism: man's solitude; the hero's refusal to accept any standards other than those he creates for himself; the hell created by the realization that we are what others believe us to be as well as what we desire to be; and the "dreadful freedom" of heroic man who realizes that he must choose his own being or dominate his role.

We must resist the temptation to impose any particular philosophical frame upon Anouilh's concepts, remembering that he is a dramatist first of all, or even exclusively, and any philosophy expressed through his plays must be considered an indication of the dramatist's sensitivity to and awareness of the tragic sense of life which is so much a part of our time. He has founded no system, and has established no school. But his ideas are significant because, although sometimes contradictory, they reveal Anouilh as a writer who is bound to the cause of man's freedom, and an author whose work is valid first of all for his contemporaries. He shows us the difficulties and the anguish in store for the man who will accept his responsibilities, and the dignity of man true to himself. (pp. 74-5)

Anouilh continues to reflect a profound awareness of our anxious era when man, insecure in a universe that seems devoid of reason, has come to doubt the authenticity of those values he had always accepted. Anouilh has revealed to him more clearly his predicament. If this is scant consolation, it offers at any rate a heroic inspiration (be it valid or not) for man's facing of his destiny. And because man must always face his destiny, such a theater will always be of value and interest, for it helps make him aware, not only of those forces with which he must contend, but of those qualities within himself which may give him strength for the struggle. (p. 214)