British Drama [antikvár]

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION IN preparing the present edition of this book I have entirely rewritten the final sections dealing with the development of English drama from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Dramatic affairs have moved rapidly during the past ten years, and, apart from the necessity of including notice of many plays produced or published since 1923, a fresh orientation toward the whole movement in the modern theatre seemed called for. Maybe I have adopted here an over-optimistic attitude. In these days when our newspapers, with one auspicious and one dropping eye, regularly announce to us the withdrawal of plays after theatrical careers more brief than Gertrude's widowhood, when, too, the managers complain loudly of their inability to secure dramas worthy of representation, it might certainly be argued that we are on the verge of a decline similar to that experienced in seventeenth-century England after Shakespeare and his fellows sank into silence. Prognostication in literary matters is, of course, a difficult and a hazardous task, but I still feel that, in spite of the present critical state of the theatres, the English drama of to-day is manifesting a creative spirit which tells that the life-force of Edwardian days has not yet been suffocated. That our stage is timorous and unadventuresome cannot be denied, but sufficient remains to prove that we are not entirely content to rest on laurels won by our predecessors. Nor is this critical state of the theatre confined to England alone ; on the Continent and in America there are kindred fears and kindred pessimism. Commonly the cinema is blamed for the theatre's present parlous state, but, as I have striven to indicate, condemnation of the film seems to be but a suicidal process. The theatre is one of the greatest instruments of intellectual entertainment possessed by mankind ; and now, within the I