AT FIRST SIGHT ONE MIGHT SUPPOSE that the major plays of John Whiting (1917-1963) were not written by the same man. A Penny for a Song, Saint's Day, Marching Song, and The Devils are bewildering not only for their occasional obscurities but also for the disparity in their content and execution. A brief summary will make the point.
FROM ITS FIRST PERFORMANCE IN 1951 the obscurity of John Whiting's Saint's Day has caused anger. It was Whiting's first major work and he did not know how much to expect from his audience. I believe he was so at home in its world of mysterious coincidences and symbolic acts that he saw no need for detailed explanation; and since the play is highly original the spectators were bound to be baffled. But then Whiting kept telling us not to worry about analysing symbols but to allow the play as a whole to work on our senses. And in that area at least one cannot deny its force. Moreover Whiting deliberately uses ambiguity with the purpose of upsetting our expectations and involving us immediately in the chaotic world of his play.
FRIEDRICH DÜOURRENMATT SEES his art as playing a game with reality. He plays with characters, situations and ideas, manoeuvering them as in a game of chess. "The great art for me is the game, the production of a reality." In order to be assured of a measure of order and control in practising this high art of the game, Dürrenmatt needs distance between himself and his subject matter. Thus he tries to preserve in his work a distance from his personal beliefs and doubts, maintaining that "the case of the world" is invariably more interesting than "the case Dürrenmatt."
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.