Krasner_bindex.indd 404 8/11/2011 5:01:22 PM A History of Modern Drama Volume I Krasner_ffirs.indd i 8/12/2011 12:32:19 PM Books by David Krasner An Actor’s Craft: The Art and Technique of Acting (2011) Theatre in Theory: An Anthology (editor, 2008) American Drama, 1945–2000: An Introduction (2006) Staging Philosophy: New Approaches to Theater, Performance, and Philosophy (coeditor with David Saltz, 2006) A Companion to Twentieth-Century American Drama (editor, 2005) A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance, 1910–1927 (2002), 2002 Finalist for the Theatre Library Association’s George Freedley Memorial Award African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (coeditor with Harry Elam, 2001), Recipient of the 2002 Errol Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) Method Acting Reconsidered: Theory, Practice, Future (editor, 2000) Resistance, Parody, and Double Consciousness in African American Theatre, 1895–1910 (1997), Recipient of the 1998 Errol Hill Award from ASTR See more descriptions at www.davidkrasner.com Krasner_ffirs.indd ii 8/12/2011 12:32:19 PM A History of Modern Drama Volume I David Krasner A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication Krasner_ffirs.indd iii 8/12/2011 12:32:19 PM This edition first published 2012 © 2012 David Krasner Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of David Krasner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Krasner, David, 1952– History of modern drama, Volume I / David Krasner. – 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-5757-5 (hardback) 1. Drama–History and criticism. I. Title. PN1601.K73 2011 809.2–dc23 2011022725 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is published in the following electronic formats: ePDF 9781444343731; Wiley Online Library 9781444343762; ePub 9781444343748; Mobi 9781444343755 Set in 10.5/13pt Galliard by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India 1 2012 Krasner_ffirs.indd iv 8/12/2011 12:32:20 PM For LeAnn Fields Krasner_ffirs.indd v 8/12/2011 12:32:20 PM Krasner_ffirs.indd vi 8/12/2011 12:32:20 PM Contents Preface and Acknowledgements ix Chapter 1 Introduction 1 Part I: Trauma Drama 33 Chapter 2 The Price of Freedom 39 Chapter 3 Unhinged Subjectivity 80 Chapter 4 Aboulia 109 Part II: Modernist Beginnings 137 Chapter 5 Rising Symbolism 145 Chapter 6 Rising Expressionism 158 Part III: Realism 167 Chapter 7 Rural Realism 171 Chapter 8 Urban Realism 178 Chapter 9 Optimistic Passion 182 Chapter 10 The Campaign Against Earnestness 189 Part IV: Dissociated Sensibility 193 Chapter 11 Distorted Modernism 195 Chapter 12 Lyrical Modernism 203 Chapter 13 Sentimental Modernism 210 Part V: Avant Garde 215 Chapter 14 Eros and Thanatos 217 Krasner_ftoc.indd vii 7/28/2011 6:23:05 PM viii Contents Chapter 15 Robots and Automatons 226 Chapter 16 Farce and Parody 229 Part VI: Epic Modernism 235 Chapter 17 Gaming the System 237 Part VII: The Divided Self of American Drama 259 Chapter 18 Illusions 265 Chapter 19 Delusions 275 Chapter 20 Dreams 281 Chapter 21 Gender 289 Chapter 22 Race 293 Part VIII: Hell Is Other People 301 Chapter 23 The Farce of Intimacy 307 Chapter 24 The Tragedy of Intimacy 315 Part IX: Modernist Improvising 325 Chapter 25 Beckett Impromptu 327 Part X: Conclusion 349 Notes 351 Index 389 Krasner_ftoc.indd viii 7/28/2011 6:23:05 PM Preface and Acknowledgements This work examines modern drama beginning with Henrik Ibsen and ending with Samuel Beckett, who was, to quote the title of Anthony Cronin’s biography, “the last modernist.”1 It is written for students and teachers of dramaturgy, dramatic literature, practitioners (actors, directors, playwrights, designers), and general readers. I have tried to write broadly and analyze deeply, keeping in view those who know drama and those who have a passionate but passing interest. The book is not a substitute for reading and certainly seeing plays, but rather a research guide of some originality. I have drawn on the rich enterprise of prior scholarship: there are many books on modern drama and I have profited from their insight.2 However, with few notable exceptions, researchers take the term “modern” for granted. As a result, scholars either oversimplify the intellectual horizon of modernism or editorialize, focusing only on those aspects that support their tendentious theories. I analyze plays and playwrights which constitute multiple features of modern drama, attemp- ting to illuminate each dramatist’s particular brand of modernism. The book will not only examine the most important playwrights and plays of the period, but also analyze how the plays operated in modern cultural, philosophical, and political contexts. My aim is to offer a theory of “modern drama”: its development and consistencies as well as its contradictions, incongruities, and chronological oddities. While I do not pretend to offer a full explanation of the very broad and elusive terms “modernism” and “modern drama,” I hope to come as close as possible by examining philosophical, social, and artistic foundations. The topic’s dilemma is compounded by the need for selection, requiring the work to navigate between encyclopedic all-inclusiveness on the one hand and narrow focus on the other. This concern necessitates a balancing act, drawing upon playwrights canonical and obscure. Many playwrights appear because of their established importance; no treatment of the subject can afford to ignore them. Others are included because they influence significant albeit narrow Krasner_fpref.indd ix 7/28/2011 6:23:08 PM x Preface and Acknowledgements areas of modern drama. I employ an eclectic approach, picking à la carte dramas from diverse groups. Plays are selected as representatives of a playwright or style creating a broad potential for comprehending “modern drama,” which, when taken together, might trace a pattern and tell us something about the subject. Some will cavil that this playwright or that has been omitted; such animadversion is inevitable and unavoidable. The topic is also rendered challenging by virtue of modernism’s complexity. Literary critic Paul de Man notes that in compiling an anthology of eighteenth- century criticism, it “would not be too difficult to find essays that combine a wide programmatic interest with concreteness of particular detail,” because “that century still possessed a sense of the unity between the universal and the specific that enabled it to be of general interest even about the most specialized of topics.” With modernism, however, “the relationship between part and whole, between text and context, became a great deal more complex.”3 The period examined here is an intense, eighty-year spasm of history when the world lurched towards innovation and revolution. Playwrights distorted and splintered reality, trying to discern something deeper and truer. If the modernist ideas never coalesced into a single, large theme – the time and place each play was written and performed and the different “isms” of modernism make uniformity untenable – the dramatists were nevertheless trying to capture glimpses of human possibility against overwhelming meaninglessness and the void. Two additional points: first, modern drama was no less influential than other “modernisms” in art, literature, music, and architecture. Yet drama and theatre are frequently excluded or marginalized from scholarly examinations of modernism. This is unfortunate, indicating drama’s inferiority in academic and intellectual circles. Despite their secondary and even tertiary status, drama and theatre contributed to modernism. Second, every playwright examined in this work wrote for the theatre. Their plays were therefore not literature but drama, a distinction frequently ignored by literary departments at colleges and universities. Even most plays deemed “closet drama” (dramas to be read and not performed) had an inkling of how plays might be experienced before spectators. The playwrights were influenced by actors, directors, designers, and producers. Space limitations prevent an examination of production history; I will not annotate performances except when they bear on my interpretation.