Overview

This highly acclaimed critical exploration of modern drama begins with Büchner and Ibsen and then discusses the major playwrights who have shaped modern theater—Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, and Handke. A new introduction by the author assesses developments of recent years. Reviews of the earlier editions: “The best single study of the astonishing transformations dramatic art has undergone in the last century or so.”—Thomas R. Edwards, New York Times Book Review “In its field this is one of the choice books of the century. It moves toward the deepest sources of some great plays, so it deepens their effect on us.”—Stanley Kauffmann “The Making of Modern Drama has no rivals. Richard Gilman’s account of his fascinating subject is written with love, measure, and authority.”—Susan Sontag “Gilman’s book on the genesis and development of contemporary drama is acute, beautifully accomplished, and, I think, important.”—Donald Barthelme

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9780300079029

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Reviews

The best single study of the astonishing transformations dramatic art has undergone in the last century or so. Thomas R. Edwards, New York Times Book Review In its field this is one of the choice books of the century. It moves toward the deepest sources of some great plays, so it deepens their effect on us. Stanley Kauffmann The Making of Modern Drama has no rivals. Richard Gilman's account of his fascinating subject is written with love, measure, and authority. Susan Sontag Gilman's book on the genesis and development of contemporary drama is acute, beautifully accomplished, and, I think, important. Donald Barthelme

Professor Gilman's excellent short study of dramatists from Buchner to Handke is appropriately about the imaginative processes, the shifts and stresses of modern consciousness, the mysterious changes and sudden leaps, which connect the theatre to analogous revolutionary pursuits in fiction and poetry. When Buchner, in the 19th century, spoke of creation, the dramatic art, as that which glows, and surges, and glitters, and is born anew with every moment, he was foreshadowing the experimental concerns of later playwrights, Ibsen and Strindberg, Chekhov and Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett and Handke. These are the representative figures Gilman discusses in neat, instructive essays, showing us, for instance, the tendency of the modern drama to break away from orderly plot and characterization in favor of the poetic and fragmentary, as in Buchner and Strindberg, or a poetic realism, as in Ibsen and Chekhov, or the pursuit of metaphysical matters, as in Pirandello, or a didactic expressionism, as in Brecht who saw the theatre of the future growing more and more philosophical. And when Gilman rightly states that Hedda Gabler is one of the greatest anti-romantic plays we possess, for its perception is of what remains possible after the outcries and seductive whispers of our own impossible cravings have faded, we see a further illustration in Beckett and Handke, the theatre as an essay in denudation, the obliteration of the emotions, where the only force is a verbal one - ghostly words spoken by ghostly characters, as in Beckett, or self-dramatization as linguistic complexities or estrangements, as in Handke. Gilman impresses upon us, modestly but exactingly, the great seriousness and diversity of these developments. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Richard Gilman is professor emeritus of playwriting and dramatic literature at Yale University's School of Drama. He has been drama critic for Newsweek, Commonweal, and The Nation and was a contributing editor of Partisan Review for many years. He is also the author of Chekhov's Plays: An Opening into Eternity (ISBN 0 300 07256 2, pb. #10.95), also published by Yale University Press.

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