Playwright As Thinker: A Study of Drama in Modern Times - Softcover

Bentley, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156720418 ISBN 13: 9780156720410

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1987

Synopsis

In this landmark work, Eric Bentley focuses on the playwright, not merely its a supplier of words to indicate a situation or to precipitate action, but rather as the crafter or auteur of the whole drama. In a notorious foreword (suppressed by the author for over forty years, since critics tended to review it instead of the book), Bentley reads last rites over the postwar Broadway theater.

Surveying a period of over one hundred and fifty years, he provides an entertaining, perceptive intellectual history of Europe, a history personified by playwrights and thinkers: Goethe, Schiller, Wagner. Strindberg, Ibsen, Pirandello, Sartre, Brecht.

As witty and contentious as when it was first published, The Playwright as Thinker now stands out more incontestably than ever for what it is: it classic that both prophesied and helped bring about the transformation of American theater. After four decades of nearly continuous publication, HBJ is proud to issue the definitive version of Bentley's original text, complete with foreword, plus a new afterword by the author and an appreciative introduction by the distinguished critic Richard Gilman.

About this title

Product Description:

The Playwright As Thinker

Synopsis:

Examines the nature of modern drama, studying the styles and achievements of such playwrights as Ibsen, Strindberg, and Brecht.

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0156720418
• ISBN 13: 9780156720410
• Binding: Paperback