bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The New Bibliography Of Modern Drama Studies
Authors: Carpenter Charles
Published: April 2013

TWENTY-ODD YEARS AGO THE LITERATURE on modern drama, or at least the literature worth more than a glance, was minute. Today it is huge. The student of the early forties could pretty well get by on a diet of pure Gassner (Masters of the Drama camefirst came out in1940), supplemented by a few items of heavy German scholarship in M>onatshefte or Scandinavian Studies and an occasional touting of a new "discovery" in one of the plush little magazines. Apart from mere ground-covering historical accounts, three or four useful biographies of the most classic moderns, and a heap of theatrical memoirs and collections of play reviews (thos'e blights of our field), surely no more than fifteen English-language books existed in 1945 that were solid or suggestive enough to rate more than scanning. One, of course, was Shaw's Quintessence of Ibsenism; another was the study of Ibsen by his friend, Georg Brandes. Just a few more deserved to make the required reading lists: Weigand on Ibsen, Dahlstrom on Strindberg, Vittorini on Pirandello, Winther on O'Neill, Krutch's The American Drama Since 1918, and a regrettably forgotten book on Shaw by Holbrook Jackson. During the war years, substantial British and American works on modern drama, even articles, were as scarce as promising British and American playwrights.
Armand Gatti: Multiplicity Of Vision In Action Theatre
Authors: Knapp Bettina
Published: April 2013

FOR ARMAND GATTI, THE THEATRE IS NOT a form of amusement nor is it simply a pleasant distraction. It is a stimulant to action: a force designed to liberate audiences from established notions, enabling them, thereby, to acquire new insights and meaningful experiences. Gatti's theater is shorn of constricting theatrical conceptions inherent in the classical-psychological theater with its rational development of personalities, plots, and climaxes. It does not follow the lines of the avant-garde theater either which deals so heavily in personal symbolism and mythology. It is a thematic and socially oriented theater with roots in the work-a-day world.
Ugo Betti: The Theater Of “Shame"
Authors: Watts Harold
Published: April 2013

UGO BETTI CONCLUDES AN ESSAY ENTITLED "Religion and the Theatre" with a passage that points to what lies at the center of his body• of work for the stage, work that to a superficial view, has created a texture of event that is an astounding compendium of violence. Yet, as the entire essay makes clear, Betti's restrospective glance at his work his effort to relate its significance to his era-sees in his body of plays a religious assertion: the only sort of religious assertion that is likely to be viable in the twentieth century. His work, he judges, is in contrast to plays which take a religious event (the martyrdom of Bernanos' Carmelites, for example) and works towards conclusions that are both foregone and edifying. Betti also sees his plays about ordinary human beings caught up in extraordinarily melodramatic action as in sharp contrast with dramas which exploit somewhat recondite religious difficulties, such as self-acceptance on the part of sophisticated protagonists (and here Betti would seem to have in mind the theater of T. S. Eliot). Instead, Betti defines his own concern as one which drove him to consider the destinies of ordinary, passionate, wilful, and selfcentered men and women; these persons, thanks to their own natures and to the intellectual climate which nourished those natures, were hardly aware that they were finally responsible for the acts which they performed—were hardly aware that a divine attention had followed whatever they had done. In a world secular, indifferent, and relativistic, the majority of men and women act as though there were no divine attention focused on their error. Men live, most of the time, unaware of a "bewildering incongruity between our existence and what it ought to be according to the aspirations of our soul."
Storming The Fortress Of The Peking Opera
Authors: Swift Mary
Published: April 2013

AMONG THE EARTH'S MANY FORMS OF THEATRICAL ART, the Chinese opera was considered to be one of the most artistically perfect expressions of a national culture on the world stage. It is difficult to date the origin of the art. The emperor Ming Huang of the T'ang dynasty established a school for actors on his palace grounds, and the students came to be known as "The Emperor's Pear Garden Pupils." However, the present form of dramatic production is often ascribed to the Sung dynasty (960-1279 A.D.). As the art evolved, actors were required to spend years mastering Chinese opera's special combination of mime, acrobatics, and singing. Interestingly enough, in 1777 the Manchu dynasty created a theatrical bureau in Yangchow which banished from the opera certain undesirable themes and encouraged works teaching obedience to parents, to authority, and to destiny.
The Communist Anxiety A Study Of Two Chinese Plays
Authors: Tung Constantine
Published: April 2013

THE CHAOTIC AND VIOLENT GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION in Communist China has attracted much attention since its outbreak in 1965. Surprisingly, drama has played a very significant role in this "revolution." The beginning of the "revolution" is generally dated. with an article by Yao Wen-yuan in the Wen Hui Daily in Shanghai, November 10, 1965, implying anti-Party content in a historical play, Hai-jui Dismissed From Office (Hai-jui pa kuan). The purpose of the cultural revolution is to secure the future of Communhm (Mao's version) by eliminating the influence of Neo-Revisionism which, Mao believes, will eventually lead to the revival of capitalism, and the function of this violent movement is educational, designed for the young generation in whose hands, Mao correctly sees, the future of Communism lies.
The Same Enemies: Notes On Certain Similarities Between Yeats And Strindberg
Authors: Lapisardi Fredrick
Published: April 2013

THE ONLY KNOWN MEETING BETWEEN August Strindberg and William Butler Yeats is recorded by the latter artist in "The Trembling of the Veil." He writes, "I am sitting in a cafe with two French Americans, a German poet Douchenday, and a silent man whom I discover to be Strindberg, and who is looking for the philosopher's stone."

Thirty years later Yeats had reason to recall this brief meeting. When the Irish poet-playwright was in Strindberg's native Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize, he was handed a pamphlet defending Strindberg and attacking the Swedish Academy.
The Father Christmas Passage In “Paid On Both Sides"
Authors: Hazard Forrest
Published: April 2013

As HIS FIRST A'ITEMPT AT DRAMA W. H. Auden wrote a "charade" entitled "Paid on Both Sides." Like the rest of his 1930 volume of Poems, in which it was published, it contains many obscurities. One of the most puzzling passages is the six-page episode that opens with the sudden appearance of Father Christmas. Though one critic has pointed out some of the similarities between this passage and the English mummers' play, no one has clarified the dramatic function Auden intended the passage to serve or the reasons for the changes he made in the mummers' play once he took it as his model. This paper therefore will attempt to show (1) that the passage is a warning dream constituting that element of the traditional quest pattern often referred to as the call and (2) that Auden reworked the mummers’ playas he did so as to underline the relevance of its theme to modern times.
Ibsen vs. Ibsen Or: Two Versions Of A Doll's House
Authors: Rosenberg Marvin
Published: April 2013

Two SIDES OF IBSEN WERE AT WORK, and sometimes in conflict, when he wrote and re-wrote A Doll's House. First there was the artist and craftsman; second, the social thinker-Ibsen preferred the term 'prophet'-insistent that the craftsman's hand weave his social ideas into the artist's re-dreaming of the world. Artist-craftsman and thinker wrestled fiercely with the materials of A Doll's House and with each other; their struggle explains some of the play's curious problems particularly why the final scene wrenches the play out of shape.
Book Reviews
Authors: Lyons Charles , Bree Germaine , Masinton Charles , Gerstenberger Donna , Page Malcom , Faber M. , Hogan Robert , Meserve Walter
Published: April 2013

Jan Kott, Theatre Notebook: I947-1967, reviewed by Charles R. Lyons

Eugene H. Falk, Types Of Thematic Structure, reviewed by Germaine Bree

Rudolf Stamm, The Shaping Powers At Work: Fifteen Essays On Poetic Transmutation, reviewed by Charles G. Masinton

Emil Roy, Christopher Fry, reviewed by Donna Gerstenberger

John Russell Taylor, John Osborne: "Look Back In Anger": A Casebook,, reviewed by Malcolm Page

Geoffrey Morgan ed., Contemporary Theatre: A Selection Of Reviews 1966-67, reviewed by Malcolm Page

Allardyce Nicoll, English Drama: A Modern Viewpoint, reviewed by M. D. Faber

C. W. E. Bigsby, Confrontation And Commitment, A Study Of Contemporary American Drama. 1959-66, reviewed by Robert Hogan

Jack Poggi, Theater In America, The Import Of Economic Forces, 1870-1967, reviewed by Walter J. Meserve
Book Reviews
Authors: Krause David , Pronko Leonard , Hammer John , Albrecht Erich , Lightfoot Marjorie
Published: April 2013

The Playwright As Entertainer, reviewed by David Krause

Eugene Ionesco, Fragments Of A Journal, reviewed by Leonard C. Pronko

Arnold Heidsieck, Das Groteske Und Das Absurde Im Modern En DramaDas Groteske Und Das Absurde Im Modern En Drama, reviewed by John C. Hammer

Armin Arnold, Fredrich Dürrenmatt, reviewed by John C. Hammer

Sol Gittleman, Frank Wedekind, reviewed by Erich A. Albrecht

by E. Martin Browne, The .Making Of T. S. Eliot's Plays, reviewed by Marjorie J. Lightfoot
Structure In The One-Act Play
Authors: Caine Cindy
Published: April 2013

How NEW IS THE "new theater"? Insofar as structure is concerned, the modern one-act play is plainly descended from classical ancestors. Besides those instances where the standard mold is repeated, today's one-acter seems at most to be in a process of evolution, tending towards a division of classical form into its two major components: the tension line and individual sections.
Joyce's Exiles: A Problem Of Dramatic Stasis
Authors: Cunningham Frank
Published: April 2013

IN HIS NOTES TO Exiles, James Joyce assures the reader that his characters are "suffering during the action," and most of the play's weary critics seem to know exactly how the Rowans felt. Of the many critical comments on the play, perhaps none is so heartfelt as George Jean Nathan's lament that Exiles has all the "spirit and tempo of a German funeral." In attempting to determine whether the play should have been exiled into the furnace along with the author's earlier dramatic effort-modestly entitled "A Brilliant Career" and dedicated to the artist's own soul-this paper will first examine the major types of criticism which have attempted to plumb the thematic content of Joyce's lower depths and will then endeavor to assess the dramatic values of Exiles.
Textual Variations For Act Iv Of The Admirable Crichton
Authors: Lamacchia Grace
Published: April 2013

A STUDY OF PRINTED TEXTS., available manuscripts, and commentaries reveals that James Barrie wrote a number of substantially different endings for The Admirable Crichton. Although there are several textual variations for the play, the major ones occur in Act IV and concern Crichton's resignation from service in the Loam household and the following moments. Only the reading version of the play, first printed in 1914 and reprinted in the Uniform edition of 1918, was authorized for publication. None of several acting versions satisfied Barrie and therefore cannot be considered authorized. Although an acting version of the play has been available in print, it is not only unauthorized but unsatisfying.1 Texts used in productions of the play during Barrie's lifetime are not available in print and apparently have been forgotten.
Character, Conflict, And Meaning In The Wild Duck
Authors: Harmer Ruth
Published: April 2013

WHEN A PLAY IS WIDELY ACCLAIMED as a masterpiece by critics who disagree radically about its nature and meaning, it may be that the work possesses such richness of content, such poetic density, that critics are unable to comprehend its totality; it may be that it contains an element so alien to conventional notions that they are unwilling to follow where the playwright's vision has led. The critical confusion generated by Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck since it was first published in 1884 suggests that sometimes both elements are involved.
Report on the Conference on "The Image of the Negro in American Films," Ferris State College, Big Rapids, Michigan, August 17-23, 1969
Authors: Autghtry Charles
Published: April 2013

Report on the Conference on "The Image of the Negro in American Films," Ferris State College, Big Rapids, Michigan, August 17-23, 1969
Alfred Jarry And The Theater Of His Time
Authors: Grossman Manuel
Published: April 2013

INSPIRED BY Mallarme's challenge that realism was "a banal sacrilege of the true meaning of art" the Symbolists during the turn of the century in France organized a reaction against realistic art and theater. Although he was not a Symbolist in the orthodox sense, Alfred Jarry became a participant in this campaign. Jarry devoted much of his energy to a critique of realistic theater which reached a climax in 1898 when with a defiant gesture he let Ubi Roi loose upon the Paris stage. This gesture ignited the biggest explosion in the French theater since the premiere of Victor Hugo's Hernani in 1830.

Jarry's attack against realistic theater warrants study not for its vehemence, but for its significance in the evolution of the modern theater. Out of his reaction against realism and his search for a more viable alternative, Jarry developed the ideas and engaged in the experiments that made him a forerunner of both the Theater of Cruelty and the Theater of the Absurd.
Book Reviews
Authors: Nethercot Arthur , Heller Francis , Hammer John , Czerwinski  , Weisstein Ulrich , Rienzi Miguo
Published: April 2013

Charles A. Carpenter, Bernard Shaw & [Sic] The Art Of Destroying , reviewed by Arthur H. Nethercot

Arthur Schnitzler, Lugend In Wien: Eine Autobiographie, reviewed by Francis H. Heller

Rainer Taeni, Drama Nach Brecht: Eine Einführung In Dramatische Probleme Der Gegenwart, reviewed by John C. Hammer

Jerzy Grotowski, Towards A Poor Theatre, reviewed by E. J. Czerwinski

Frederick Brown, An Impersonation Of Angels: A Biography Of Jean Cocteau, reviewed by Ulrich Weisstein

Ruby Cohn, George Armstrong, and Arlin Hiken ed., Classics For Contemporaries: Old Dramas For New Theaters, reviewed by Miguo Rienzi
The Character Of Jimmy Porter: An Approach ToLook Back In Anger
Authors: Fickert Kurt
Published: April 2013

THE UNPREDICTABILITY OF WHICH CHARACTER will appear and which situation will arise in the imaginative plays of Friedrich Diirrenmatt has a limitation; in one respect, there is a recurring pattern of character and event. The denouement usually comes as a nightmarish confrontation between the protagonist and the person representing the complete frustration of his endeavors, an agent of the fate which in classic tragedy strikes down the hero, in Diirrenmatt an instrumentality of blind chance which functions instead in the life of the anti-hero.l The climax of the struggle between the character whose striving is the subject of the play and the character who negates his plans brings utter defeat to the activist-hero. At this point, however, a reversal occurs-victory snatched from the jaws of defeat,2 which also is typical in the plays of Diirrenmatt.
Serjeant Musgrave's Problem
Authors: Jordan Robert
Published: April 2013

Whether they see it as a source of strength or of weakness, there is one thing on which critics, reviewers, and columnists are agreed: John Arden writes plays on explosive issues and does not take sides or provide answers-or at least not openly. Implicit in many versions of this dictum, moreover, is the idea that a refusal to spell out a moral position in this way is a radical departure in the drama. It is because audiences were unused to an impartial presentation of material that Arden's plays, and particularly Serjeant Musgrave's Dance, were greeted at first with hostility and bewilderment.
The Character Of Jimmy Porter: An Approach To Look Back In Anger
Authors: Faber
Published: April 2013

I WANT TO SUGGEST SOMETHING about Jimmy Porter, and I want to ground my suggestions in psychoanalysis. This does not mean, however, that I plan to smother the reader in scientific jargon or to create a specialized case history over which the analyst might scratch his chin and ponder. In fact, I plan to deal primarily with the play in an effort to isolate an emotive-imagistic pattern which has hitherto gone unnoticed (or at least unplumbed)! and which may help us to understand just how inseparable are the drama's metaphors and the hero's psychology.
The Freedom Of The German Repertoire
Authors: Price Antony
Published: April 2013

PARTLY FOR HISTORICAL REASONS the German theatre is in the fortunate position of having more than a hundred and sixty permanent houses playing almost to capacity every night for eight to twelve months of the year. It is a matter of civic pride that each municipality should have a subsidised opera house and theatre rivalling those of other towns in size, quality, and the extent of its repertoire.
A Note On History And Politics In Recent German Drama
Authors: Winter Helmut
Published: April 2013

IN THIS PAPER I want to discuss some aspects of the relationship between history, politics and the drama in post-war German literature. I would like to start with a few general remarks about the state of political literature in modern Germany
The Invisible Theater: The Rise Of Radio Drama In Germany After 1945
Authors: Usmiani Renate
Published: April 2013

RADIO DRAMA IS ALMOST TOTALLY IGNORED BY CRITICS on this continent. And no wonder; for all artistic purposes, the genre has become extinct in America. Not so in Europe, where the unique possibilities of the art form have been fully realized, and where radio drama leads a flourishing artistic life, fully independent from the moloch TV which brought about its downfall in America. The striking difference between the state of radio drama in America and Europe is brought out forcefully if one compares handbooks of the art published here and there.
The Lonely Baal: Brecht's First Play As A Parody Of Hanns Johst's Der Einsame
Authors: Weisstein Urlich
Published: April 2013

ALTHOUGH IT IS GENERALLY KNOWN THAT BertoIt Brecht's first drama, Baal, stands in a direct genetic relationship to Hanns Johst's Expressionistic play Der Einsame (1917), no detailed comparison of the two works has, so far, been undertaken, although scattered references are found in nearly all the monographs on Brecht and in most essays specifically concerned with Baal-of which there has been no dearth in the last few years. Prior to the appearance of Dieter Schmidt's exhaustive textual study "Baar und der junge Brecht, the most extended discussions of the problem occurred in Ernst Schumacher's still basic survey Die drama tisch en Versuche Bertolt Brechts 1918-1933 in Bernard Dort's Lecture de Brecht and in Bj~rn Ekman's article "Bert Brecht, vom Baal aus gesehen."5 We shall have occasion to refer to these studies at various points in our analysis.
Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade
Authors: Genno Charles
Published: April 2013

PETER WEISS'S PLAY Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade is remarkable in many ways. The sheer length of its complete title portends the gargantuan scope of the work. In the title the structural device of the play-within-a-play is indicated, the two principal characters are introduced, the dominant metaphor of the madhouse world is alluded to and the tone is established. The play is an ambitious undertaking-according to some critics, too ambitious. Critical reaction ranges from unqualified admiration to angry condemnation, from acclamations of "brilliant" and "hypnotic" to repudiations such as "obscure" and "intellectually shallow." Walter Kerr dismisses it as a producer's play, exciting to direct, but as a work of literature second-rate. Certainly he .is correct in attributing much of its success in New York to Peter Brook's inspired production. His assessment would seem to be supported too by the fact that others among the world's leading directors have been drawn to it-8winarski in Berlin, Planchon in Paris, Sokolovsky in Brunn and Ingmar Bergman in Stockholm.
ONeill's Brown And Wilde's Gray
Authors: Rosen Kenneth
Published: April 2013

A DETAILED EXAMINATION OF Eugene O'Neill's The Great God Brown and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray for the purpose of either disproving or substantiating the thesis that O'Neill, in this particular play, was influenced heavily and directly by Wilde's earlier novel seems to be in order now that Professor Valgemae has suggested the connection in three recent and excellent articles. If such a connection is to be tenable, there should be some demonstrable evidence of parallels between the two works in either characterization, action, primary theme or method of presentation. Realizing that these criteria are very general and, moreover, noting that they must remain so because there are two different genres involved, I believe they are crucial categories within which elements common to the two works must be found if any meaningful relationship is to be established between the novel and the play.
Ritual Elements In John Arden's Serjeant Musgrave's Dance
Authors: O'Connell Mary
Published: April 2013

Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance WAS FIRST PERFORMED at the Royal Court Theatre on October 22, 1959. Critics were generally dumbfounded by the play, charging it had been written in riddles. Subsequent productions got notably mixed reviews, but John Arden's subtly powerful grip on his audiences counteracted his lack of clarity. Arden has admitted many times that he likes the work of Brecht and shares his "fascination for the Middle Ages"; he also admires Jonson and Shakespeare. These models account for not only Arden's rhetorical abundance but also his preoccupation with ritual in drama.
Approaches To John Arden's Squire Jonathan
Authors: Page Malcolm , Evans Viginia
Published: April 2013

JOHN ARDEN HAS LARGELY REPUDIATED the professional theater of the West End of London in the last few years, since the staging of Left-Handed Liberty in the Summer of 1965. Instead he has written such unusual works as a mime, Friday's Hiding, performed in Edinburgh, and a children's piece, The Royal Pardon, premiered at Beaford, Devon, both in 1966, together with a new translation of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale for Bath, Somerset, in 1968. He has worked also on two semi-improvisational experiments, in collaboration with his wife and the actors: an 11-hour Viet Nam "War Carnival" at New York University in 1967, and Harold Muggins Is a Martyr at the Left-wing Unity Theater, London, in 1968. He played leading roles himself in both The Royal Pardon and Harold Muggins. Late in 1968 he directed yet another of his plays, The Hero Rises Up, in the curious setting of Center 42's Victorian locomotive shed in North London. He completed a trilogy for television, so far unperformed, based on Arthurian legends, in 1969, and in 1970 an original radio play, The Bagman, was broadcast in Britain.
Marco Millions And O'Neill's “Two Part Two —Play" Form
Authors: Stroupe John
Published: April 2013

IN THE CHRONOLOGY OF HIS PLAYS supplied for Richard Skinner's Eugene O'Neill: A Poets Quest (New York, 1935), O'Neill records that in the summer of 1924, he finished Marco Millions "in its original two part two-play form, each play short full length." He adds that in the winter of 1925, he completed the "Final draft of 'Marco Millions,' condensed into one play." And in a letter published in Barrett Clark's Eugene O'Neill: The Man and His Plays (New York, 1947), O'Neill explained that as he revised the play, he chose to "rewrite and condense the two nights into one long night." Evidently, then, Marco Millions had at first been two plays, or one play in two parts, intended for production on successive evenings. But the published editions of the play consist of a Prologue and eleven scenes divided into a three-act structure and provide no clarification of what O'Neill could have meant by "two part two-play" form or "condensed into one play." It is now possible to explain O'Neill's intentions. Available for such an inquiry are O'Neill's original drafts of the play and the Theatre Guild's prompt copy from its 1928 production of Marco Millions.2
"Barefoot Into Hell": Clothing Imagery In Woyzeck
Authors: Messenger Ann
Published: April 2013

DESPITE ITS FRAGMENTARY NATURE, George Buchner's Woyzeck is a powerful drama about the economic, and consequently the physical and emotional, suffering of a poor man at the bottom of a rigidly structured society, represented here in part by the army. Its anti-hero, Franz Woyzeck, is a surprisingly modern figure for a play left unfinished at its author's death in 1837; it was not performed until 1913, when its proto-Marxist message was easily understandable. Economic necessity drives Woyzeck to take on various odd jobs in order to support his mistress, Marie, and their baby. The most significant of these jobs is that of guinea pig in a medical experiment during which Woyzeck rapidly deteriorates into fever and madness caused by a diet of peas. He discovers Marie's infidelity with a drum-major and, in moral and psychological agony, kills her. Whether Woyzeck himself dies at the end of the play is unclear.

The play is an indictment of the economic and social structure for the destruction it causes, destruction of the life and love of the natural animal called man. The obvious victims, Woyzeck and the others of his class, are not the only ones to be destroyed. The essential humanity of the Captain, the Drum-Major, and the "mad scientist" Doctor has been repressed and even, especially in the Doctor's case, extirpated by the artificiality and rigidity of the system within which they function. Throughout the play, this indictment is imaged in the frequent references to clothing, often in conjunction with references to animals or the human body. Clothing, as a mark of rank, economic status, or respectability, is something imposed on the natural, uncivilized body; it is both repressive and necessary. When it comes to take the place of the man it covers, human values have been destroyed.
Hasenclever's Humanity: An Expressionist Morality Play
Authors: Stanton Stephen
Published: April 2013

WALTER HASEN CLEVER'S FIVE-ACT PLAY Humanity (Die Menschen) 1918) superbly exemplifies the virtues and the faults of” pure" or "extreme" German Expressionism. Despite the difficulty of this rewarding experimental morality play (which might be subtitled "A Twentieth Century Pilgrim's Progress"), the explications have been few, so far as I am aware (partly because of the unavailability of a reliable English version until 1963), and they have generally been misleading or inadequate. The first and final scenes should be quoted in full to give a sense of the tone and style of the whole.
Spring And Apocalypse, Law And Prophets: A Reading Of Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning
Authors: Wiersma Stanley
Published: April 2013

THIS ESSAY IS A DEFINITION of the central paradox in Lady. Unlike the artist's philosophical-aesthetic quest for a paradox in life, the scholar's quest for a paradox in a literary work is an academic quest. The scholar's peculiar method is drawing sound conclusions from sound evidence; Fry's peculiar method in Lady is hilarious comedy, evident not only in the play as a whole, but in every scene. This study does not take within its purview Fry's techniques for provoking laughter, although it does explain how the laughter provoked is colored by paradox. This study is written to persuade readers that the apparently frothy Lady is worth profounder consideration than has been given it. This first paragraph has been a frank apology that yet another solemn essay should be written in quest of the paradox of a merry play.
Book Reviews
Authors: Martin Robert , Hinchliffe Arnold , Willeford William , Wells Henry , King Walter , Decoster Cyrus
Published: April 2013

Tetsumaro Hayashi, Arthur Miller Criticism: (1930-1967), reviewed by Robert A. Martin

Lois G. Gordon, Stratagems To Uncover Nakedness: The Dramas Of Harold Pinter, reviewed by Arnold P. Hinchliffe

Ruby Cohn, Edward Albee, reviewed by William Willeford

Richard E. Amacher, Edward Albee, reviewed by William Willeford

Michael E. Rutenberg, Edward Albee: Playwright In Protest, reviewed by William Willeford

Luther G. Jerstad, Mani-Rimdu: Sherpa Dance-Drama, reviewed by Henry W. Wells

Philippe Jullian, Oscare Wilde, reviewed by Walter N. King

Jose Ramon, El Arte Dramatico De Antonio Buero Vallejo, reviewed by Cyrus C. Decoster
Book Reviews
Authors: Rusinko Susan , Gianakaris  , Sheaffer Louis , Ware James , Nelson Raymond , Lesage Laurent , Scoti  , Calarco  , Masinton Charles
Published: April 2013

Martin Esslin, The Peopled Wound: The Work Of Harold Pinter, reviewed by Susan Rusinko

Ruby Cohn, Currents In Contemporary Drama, reviewed by C. J. Gianakaris

Egil Tornqvist, A Drama Of Souls: Studies In O'Neil's Super-Naturalistic Technique, reviewed by Louis Sheaffer

Simon Trussler, The Plays Of John Osborne: An Assessment, reviewed by James M. Ware

R. F. Dietrich, Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Superman: A Study Of Shaw's Novels, reviewed by Raymond S. Nelson

Bettina L. Knapp, Jean Cocteau, reviewed by Laurent Lesage

James H. Brandon, On Thrones Of Gold: Three Javanese Shadow Plays , reviewed by A. C. Scoti

Leroy R. Shaw, The Playwright And Historical Change: Dramatic Strategies In Brecht, Hauptmann, Kaiser And Wedekind, reviewed by N. Joseph Calarco

Walter J. Meserve, Robert E. Sherwood: Reluctant Moralist, reviewed by Charles G. Masinton

John Mason Brown, The Ordeal Of A Playwright: Robert E. Sherwood And The Challenge Of War, reviewed by Charles G. Masinton
“Punctuation" And Patterning In The Homecoming
Authors: Dawick John
Published: April 2013

NOWHERE IN MODERN DRAMA has the power of patterned action to grip an audience been demonstrated more effectively than in the plays of Harold Pinter. Using only the simplest of means-a room, several characters, a few events, restricted and often enigmatic dialogue Pinter is capable of eliciting an attention in the theatre which is almost obsessive in its intensity. This is not the result of his setting out to baffle audiences with insoluble riddles (though some of the contradictions in his earlier plays might appear to support such a charge), but of his ability to focus attention on significant detail. Instead of attempting to sweep the audience along with the explicit connections and progressions of the well-made play, Pinter challenges it to assume the creative role of responding to the sub-textual implications of his dialogue and stage-business. This would hardly be possible, however, were it not for his systematic use of a range of devices for pointing. and punctuating the action: the hesitation (indicated in the text by three dots), the pause~ the silence~ the blackout~ and the curtain. An analysis of the functions of these theatrical "stops" as they are used in The Homecoming illuminates Pinter's method of communicating in the theatre and emphasises the structural clarity of this particular play.
Sean O'Casey And Expressionism
Authors: Templeton Joan
Published: April 2013

IN HIS SURVEY OF SCHOLARSHIP ON German Expressionist Drama, Walter Sokel pointed out the need for studies which would define the relationship of German Expressionism to playwrights of other theaters. This need is particularly felt with O'Casey. Though he is the only major British dramatist to have used Expressionism to any extent throughout his work, and though it is often mentioned that he was influenced by the German movement, he has been generally treated as an "experimenter." It is the thesis of this study that the techniques of Expressionist Drama established by Strindberg and the German writers who followed him are found throughout O'Casey's plays, and more importantly, that his early attempts at Expressionism became a kind of proving ground for his last plays. One finds the techniques of Expressionism in every full-length play from The Plough and the Stars in 1926 to The Drums of Father Ned in 1958, and they figure significantly in the success of the late comedies.
Paul Claudel's Le Soulier De Satin As A Baroque Drama
Authors: Bugrhardt Lorraine
Published: April 2013

TO DISCUSS THE BAROQUE ELEMENTS IN Paul Claudel's play Le Soulier de Satin, it is necessary to establish a definition of the concept of the Baroque. Rene Wellek and Helmut Hatzfield are the prominent leaders in this discussion. Both men make excellent and well-supported points; however, both omit the more specific elements which would make the term a more viable one analytically. The attitude expressed by James Marks, although essentially negative, does point out the major defects in the theories of Wellek and Hatzfield, namely, their predominant concern in affixing the Baroque to a specific period in history, with the base for this affixation a broad psychological outline.
Sartre's Drama: Key To Understanding His Concept Of Freedom
Authors: Zivanovic Judith
Published: April 2013

A VALUABLE PRESCRIPTION FOR THOSE who would understand Sartre's notion of freedom should be: Don't confine your reading to Being and Nothingness and Critique of Dialectical Reason. Although Sartre deals with a wide range of subjects in the former, earlier work, he largely emphasizes individual freedom and aloneness. In the latter work, he encourages concerted social action. This seeming paradox requires a survey of the Sartre oeuvre to decipher, for only in this way can one fully appreciate the progression of Sartre's thought on the crucial matter of freedom. Quite obviously, a paper of this length cannot hope to deal effectively with such a large collection of works; thus it will demonstrate the complementary nature of the drama to the philosophical works and the importance of Sartre's plays in understanding his thought concerning freedom and its relation to the Other.
Stagecraft And Structure In Shaw's Disquisitory Drama
Authors: Dawick John
Published: April 2013

"Emotionalised discussion" is a reasonably apt description of the mature Shavian disquisitory drama, but what Archer (and many other critics of his day) failed to appreciate was that this new type of play required an exceptionally high degree of technical skill to make it theatrically viable. Analysis of the stagecraft and sequential patterning of Getting Married, Misalliance and Heartbreak House (which Profesor Eric Bentley has pointed out "form a trilogy of which the latest is the crown and culmination") demonstrates this and also reveals a progression from analytic to emblematic structure, a progression towards the free play of a passionate intellect responding to the great spiritual crisis of his age.
The Art Of Shavian Political Drama
Authors: Nickson Richard
Published: April 2013

THE UNEMPLOYED OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION of the thirties are singing these verses of Edward Carpenter outside number ten Downing Street at the close of Bernard Shaw's On the Rocks "to a percussion accompaniment of baton thwacks." Straightway, one critic on the Left observed that "the play ends with the marchers outside the window singing 'England Arise!' which I understand is the theme song of Mosley's Black Shirts." The playwright's conservative biographer, St. John Ervine, propounded an equally ingenious but dissimilar interpretation based on the second line of Carpenter's song, "Faint in the east behold the dawn appear." According to Ervine, "For G. B. S. the east was Russia, and the dawn was a dictator-dominated commune."
Shaw The Reviewer And James's Guy Domville
Authors: Hatcher Joe
Published: April 2013

SHAW'S INITIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE London public came about through his work as a reviewer and critic. The most important critical post he held was with Frank Harris's Saturday Review, and the articles he wrote for Harris are readily accessible in a three volume collection entitled Our Theatres in the Nineties. In Harris Shaw found an editor who would give him a free rein, who would allow him to say what he wanted to about the plays, and who was not afraid of the controversy that was almost inevitable when Shaw began in earnest his campaign to change the nature of the theater of his day.
Verfremcluhanseffekt
Authors: Hampton, Jr. Charles
Published: April 2013

As JUST ABOUT EVERYBODY KNOWS by this time, the real problem with Bertolt Brecht's VerfremdungsefJekt is that it doesn't work, a fact responsible both for the lasting popularity of Brechtian drama and for the inordinate amount of scholarly writing on the subject. For Brecht's intention, as manifested repeatedly in his theory, is to change the audience's mode of apprehension of the play from one of emotional acceptance to the scientific critical detachment necessary if the perceiver is to learn from the drama how to change the world. Yet in production, and even on the printed page, the effect is by almost unanimous opinion totally other. For while in retrospect we may recognize the tactical errors implicit in the lives and choices of Grusha and Mother Courage, as we may in that of Hamlet, our immediate suffering of the actions of the plays is as emotional, as caught up, as warm and sloppy and humanly empathetic, as is our apprehension of any traditional drama. Perhaps more so, for the effect of Brecht's structural machinations may be only to enlarge the play's encompassment of our emotional life and so increase our emotional involvement. Faced with a dramatization of the paradoxes of society we cry "Oh how true to life that is," and rather than leaving the theatre determined to alter that life, we on the contrary weep all the harder: refusing to see the paradox as a reformable social evil we embrace it instead as a universal verity.
Book Reviews
Authors: Bree Germaine , Cohn Ruby , Matlaw Myron , Johnson Walter , Coiner Miles
Published: April 2013

an Jacquot and Denis Bablet, Les Voles De La Création Theatrale, reviewed by Germaine Bree

Francke Verlag, Das Englische Theater Und Bert Brecht: Die Dramen Von W.H. Auden, John Osborne, John Arden In Ihrer Beziehung Zum Epischen Theater Von Bert Brecht Und Den Gemeinsamen Elizabethanischen Quellen, reviewed by Ruby Cohn

Rolf Scheibler, The Late Plays Of Eugene O'Neill, reviewed by Myron Matlaw

James Walter McFarlane and Graham Orton ed., The Oxford Ibsen, reviewed by Walter Johnson

Clinton F. Oliver and Stephanie Sills ed., Contemporary Black Drama From "A Raisin In The Sun" To "No Place To Be Somebody", reviewed by Miles Coiner
Dialect In The Plays Of Sean O'Casey
Authors: Snowden
Published: April 2013

ONE OF THE DISADVANTAGES WHICH BOTH Synge and O'Casey suffered on the English stage was the difficulty English audiences experienced in trying to cope with the strangeness of the Irish vernacular. It was a strangeness that originated not only in the idiom of the characters but in the prolixity of their vocabulary and the rapidity of their delivery.

In admiring O'Casey's faithful rendering of dialect, however, we might tend to overlook the very conscious control he exercised in its use, particularly in his later plays. Increasingly he employed dialect to serve clearly-defined purposes in his dramatic design.

A comparison between any of O'Casey's earliest plays and any 'realistic' play of the same period shows a marked difference in the treatment of language. T. C. Murray and Lennox Robinson used language as the barest instrument of plot and characterisation: it might express feeling or mood but is rarely allowed to obtrude. O'Casey, on the other hand, in these early plays shows a preoccupation with language and an obvious belief in its power to transform reality.
Joe Orton: His Brief Career
Authors: Fraser Kwath
Published: April 2013

No BRITISH PLAYWRIGHT SINCE Wilde has earned quite the notoriety Joe Orton won rapidly in the mid-Sixties. Within four years he wrote seven plays for which he was acclaimed, financially rewarded, condemned. Entertaining MT. Sloane set the tone of his brief career. Terence Rattigan called it the best first play he had ever seen, and helped finance a West End run; the 1965 reaction to dirty plays killed it after five months. Paradoxically Orton himself contributed to this backlash under one of his pseudonyms: in a letter to the New Statesman Edna Welthorpe confessed her nauseous disgust over such a display of perverted filth. When Loot won an award as the best play of 1966, Edna and two other disguises argued in Plays and Players about why the play should never have won any distinction at all. Indeed Orton did more than write ribald drama; he also needed to live it.
A Description Of The Cornell Collection Of Eugene O'Neill's Letters To George Jean Nathan
Authors: Highsmith James
Published: April 2013

THIS IS THE FIRST OF A TWO-PART ARTICLE on the Cornell Collection of the letters written by Eugene O'Neill to George Jean Nathan over three decades. In the next issue of Modern Drama I will describe and illustrate the content of the correspondence, which provides one of the most significant commentaries by any modern dramatist upon his own craftsmanship.
Theory And Performance In The Depression Theater
Authors: Himelstein Morgan
Published: April 2013

STUDENTS OF THE SOCIALLY SIGNIFICANT THEATER of the 1930's like to find depression plays as stimulating today as they appeared to be then, at least to the liberal and leftist intelligentsia. At times this desire to make classics even out of agitprops seems too much like the courtiers' desire to praise the emperor's new clothes. In a recent article, for example, one critic tries to boost the depression theater by outlining the dramatic theory behind it. He concludes that the social drama of the 1930's "was not an accident but an intention," that is, the plays were created as a result of the theoretical criticism of the time.! Dramatic theory is important for the light it throws on the theatrical achievements of any time, and the thirties are no exception. But to claim that dramatic theory played a significantly intentional role in creating the depression theater overstates the case.
The Early Dramas Of Reinhard Johannes Sorge: A Poet's Search For The Inner Light
Authors: Lewis Ward
Published: April 2013

WITH STRIKING IMAGERY IN THESE WORDS from a letter of May 1, 1912, a young German dramatist expresses his mystical experience upon reading the scriptures. This writer is Reinhard Johannes Sorge, an important figure of Expressionism, who in these lines employs the language of fire and flame to characterize the religious ecstasy which burns within him. This will grow in intensity until that moment when with fervor the poet proclaims his messianic message to the world.
Asian Theatre
Authors: Chaitanya Krishna
Published: April 2013

MANY ASIAN COUNTRIES SHARE COMMON THEATRICAL FORMS and conventions with India. India being the source of the theatre in Asia, these forms in many cases had migrated from India or were adopted by several Asian countries. The similarity of theatrical forms and conventions is such a dominating factor in Asian theatre that even in those countries, such as China and Japan, where the theatre developed independently, the basic dramatic principles and conventions are similar.
Strindberg And The New Poetics
Authors: Plasberg Elaine
Published: April 2013

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, in An Apology for Poetry, complained of mongrel tragi-comedies with their ludicrous mixture of horn-pipes and funerals. In one sense, Sidney's complaint seems old-fashioned, a classical insistence on purity of genre, limited by the dramas available at the time-a time when "absurd" was a synonym for bad. But Sidney was doing more than mouthing contemporary standards; he was focusing upon a problem that must concern literary critics and directors in any age. A director may be most interested in what will please now; a critic may be interested in what will please many and please long; both need in some manner to examine the demands of an audience. Sidney raises this question: to what degree can comedy and tragedy, humor and pathos, be mixed without leaving the audience in a muddle; to what degree is variety possible? Dryden and Dr. Johnson, with the example of Shakespeare before them, defended a mixed drama. Dryden, a practicing playwright, was cautious: variety, because it was pleasurable, he welcomed, provided it was well-ordered; humorous interludes were appropriate in tragedy, provided they were interludes, presented as relief from or contrast to the predominant tragic tone. Johnson, well-read, but seldom a theater-goer, defended the mingled drama because it mirrored "the course of the world, in which ... at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend." Such drama exhibited "the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow." But a sad succession of eighteenth-century "sentimental comedies"-where the dramatist in trying to satisfy all emotions ended in satisfying few or none-testified to the dangerous cohabitation of humor and pathos; David Garrick, faced with this bastard species, asked the dramatist and the audience to make up their minds: "Are you for dimples, ladies, or for tears?"
Book Reviews
Authors: Yang Daniel , Cohn Ruby , Knapp Betiina , Lesage Laurent
Published: April 2013

Walter J. Meserve and Ruth 1. Meserve ed., Modern Drama From Communist China, reviewed by Daniel S. P. Yang

David H. Hesla, The Shape Of Chaos: An Interpretation Of The Art Of Samuel Beckett, reviewed by Ruby Cohn

John A. Henderson, The First Avant-Garde (1887-1894), reviewed by Betiina L. Knapp

Bettina L. Knapp, Jean Racine: Mythos And Renewal In Modern Theater, reviewed by Laurent Lesage
The Secret agent On Stage
Authors: Ryf Robert
Published: April 2013

THERE CAN BE LITTLE DOUBT THAT THE DRAMATIZATION, by another writer, and the modestly successful stage production of Conrad's novel Victory revived his ambivalent fascination with drama and crystallized his determination to try his own hand again at writing a play. Victory ended its run in late June, 1919; by early November Conrad was hard at work on his dramatization of his novel The Secret Agent.

On November 7, he wrote to his agent, J. B. Pinker, that all his thoughts and "vital energies" were concentrated on the play, which was assuming larger and larger proportions in his mind. He had by this time finished his first draft of Act I, and was at work on Act II. He was realizing already that his chief problem was to keep the play within its proper length. "There is so much to say" he wrote, "and so much must be left out that the choice perplexes one and checks one's work." The interesting thing about this comment is Conrad's perception of what the role of the dramatist is, namely, to "say" a great many things, and to leave out a great deal. Here we see one basis for Conrad's persistent difficulties in writing drama: dialogue and cutting cannot carry a playwright all the way. What is necessary is embodiment.