The Enjoyment of Western Drama

Preface
1.    The Purpose and Aim of Drama
2.    What is a Play?
3.    Conflict: The Essence of Drama
4.    The Structure of a Play
5.    Tragedy
6.    Comedy
7.    Serious-Drama, Comedy-Drama, and Other Types
8.    Literary Movements and Reality in Drama
9.    Elements of Drama
10.    How to Judge a Play
Bibliography

 

PREFACE

　　Reading a play well is often more difficult than seeing it well performed. In order to experience the full impact of a playwright’s work, a reader must himself visualize and create all its dimensions. In a theatrical production the burden of interpretation is largely carried, with greater or lesser skill, by the director, actors and designers. Through speech, movement, gesture, rhythm, scenery, costume and lighting, the meaning and emotion of the play are communicated to the audience. The solitary reader misses the emotional contagion of a responsive audience, the atmosphere created by light, sound and speech, the cumulative effect of climatic action, and the personal qualities of the living actor. As an individual, you must exercise your imagination with cues from the printed page alone. To help you envision your own production, this anthology goes beyond the texts of the plays.

　　The opening chapter surveys the starting points and purposes of drama, its genres and techniques. This account may be read straight through, or piecemeal, and either before or after your own recreation of a play.

　　As a reader you have the opportunity for thoughtful analysis of the meaning, structure and symbolic aspects of the drama at your own pace. To enjoy a play fully is to realize that it is more than an evening’s division in the theater, more than so many words on a page; it is not once a personal statement of the dramatist and a clue to the culture that produced it.

　　I am grateful to the various persons and institutions for their assistance: to my associate in the Department of English, Professor William Melnitz of the University of California, Los Angeles; to Professor Thomas Marcparrott of Princeton University; to Professor Wendell Cole of Stanford University; to the Center Theater Group Ahmanson; to the Amazing Blue Ribbon 400 Committee. Again, I wish to express my gratitude to Rose Lam for giving her constant encouragement to my writing of this book.