Dr. White opens by drawing a parallel between Don Quixote (part one) and King Lear, both of which he sees as great counter-reformation works. He describes the independent assertion of man as a strictly Protestant notion and goes on to detail how Lear and Don Quixote both go mad in their own ways. With his dramatic readings from several sections of the novel, and while introducing Sancho Panza, he demonstrates its episodic nature and the absence of a narrative plot line. Dr. White points out that though it’s a comedy, there is something sorrowful in the story. He closes with a brief Q and A session.
Dr. explains the logic and anti-modernism of Kate’s final speech in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.Dr. White simply observes the real differences in nature between men and women. He then provides some real life examples of the difficult traditional Catholic women have in finding a good Catholic man. Women, in their nature, seek to find a man who will first pay attention to her. He then goes into Act V, Scene 2 and analyzes Kate’s final speech which brings forth the concept of hierarchy, and the consequences of not following God’s order. Dr. White then gives a brilliant description of feminism and how at its root it is a rebellion against divine order rooted in nature. What these women end up doing is making bad parodies of men.
Described by Dr. White as an elegy – both a paean and lament directed towards a dying and passing world – this second of Shakespeare’s plays on Henry IV features the recurring themes of death, disease, and corruption. Again, Hal (the future Henry V) takes center stage, with a view towards his eventual role in the final of the Henry plays. In this extensive conference, Dr. White addresses, along with making many other insightful and passing observations, the perplexing prologue offered by an allegorical character; a climactic battle which never occurs; themes of frustration and disappointment (consonant with the overall focus of the play); and, as in the play’s predecessor, Henry IV, Part 1, the person and wit of the inimitable Falstaff.
In this sweeping introduction to O’Neill’s work as an American dramatist, Dr. White argues the relevance and even necessity of understanding literature, history, and Catholicism in order to appreciate the significance of O’Neill’s play. Explaining that O’Neill was the creator of a genuine American drama, White also suggests that he could not have done so without his Catholicism, nor, the doctor provocatively maintains, without losing it. This introduction to O’Neill is consequently a tour de force review of the history of the interaction between Americanism, Modernism, and Catholicism on the cultural, literary, and artistic battlefields of the beleaguered nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Following upon his introduction to O’Neill in his first lecture, Dr. White examines the nature of O’Neill’s play and discusses both its elements and O’Neill’s approach from a number of angles. As an American with a Catholic sense but, in effect, without the Catholic faith, O’Neill’s essentially auto-biographical play reveals all the contradictions, conflicts, and essential despair characteristic of O’Neill’s personal life and his existence as an American. On the plus side, he knows renaissance drama and the “unities” – one setting, one action, one day’s time – are apparent in his work. At the same time, his play partakes of the inherent tragedy of American political and religious life. Hounded by the Faith, O’Neill spends his life running from it. In an interesting sideline, Dr. White discusses the famous American Catholic Dorothy Day and her understanding of O’Neill: “He portrayed more than any other what life with God is like.” Though he knew from memory, and could recite with energy and drama, Thompson’s Hound of Heaven, he never let God’s pursuit come to fruition. As always, Dr. White’s explication of this particular work of literature carries with it many insightful aphorisms gleaned from his sweeping and expansive knowledge of the panorama of American and Western literature as a whole. “Dead children haunt American drama”; O’Neill’s work, like so many other American productions, is full of people almost literally dying to go to confession; America, as revealed by her greatest artists, is a failed nation that compromised with materialism, as did many of the artists themselves. Still, the Catholic sense seeps through, such that, to cite just one example, O’Neill’s work is obsessed with the past, and in this respect is eminently traditional rather than modern or progressive.
The Western tradition of theater comes from the Greek tradition of theater, where art is directly connected to the worship of the gods. From the fifth century B.C., the Greeks used theater as public worship. These were grand performances, solemn, larger than life. The theaters would seat 15,000. The art was perfected at the annual spring festivals devoted to Dionysus, the god of fertility and wine. A competition was held, and three playwrights were invited to write a tragedy in three one-act plays, followed by a single act comedy. For three successive days during the festival, each playwright’s plays were performed and ten judges selected the best work. There was no higher honor than to win this competition. Sophocles won this competition several times. Aristotle praises Oedipus Rex as a model of what tragedy should be. Greek theater died with the end of the empire and there would not be another golden age of theater until the beginning of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England, up to the glory of Shakespeare. The Mass inspired the revival of this tradition of theater. The medieval Corpus Christi plays are an example of this inspiration. Once again, theater is used as worship.
