International Journal of Research in Social Sciences

Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018

ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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MODERN EUROPEAN DRAMA

Prof. Dr.Nilesh P. Sathvara (M.A., Ph.D.)

ShriH.K.Arts College,
Ahmedabad – Gujarat (India)

Abstract

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The enactment of

drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative
modes of production and a collective form of reception. Tragedy is the major form of drama
besides comedy. A tragic plot is more linear than a comic plot. Tragic heroes and heroines in
traditional drama are above ordinary people because of their social rank and strong personality.

Key Words

Drama, Features of a Play,History, Types of Drama, Comedy, Tragedy, Tragic Hero and
Heroine, Language in Drama.

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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MODERN EUROPEAN DRAMA

Drama

Drama is a unique tool to explore and express human feeling,

Drama is an essential form of behaviour in all cultures, it is a fundamental human

activity.

In this site we are investigating the benefits Drama can have on child development when
applied functionally within a primary classroom. Drama has the potential, as a diverse medium,
to enhance cognitive, affective and motor development.

A high degree of thinking, feeling and moving is involved and subsequently aids in the
development of skills for all other learning within and outside of schools (transfer of learning).

Drama is a discrete skill in itself (acting, theatre, refined skill), and therefore it is offered
as a 'subject' in secondary school. However Drama is also a tool which is flexible, versatile and
applicable among all areas of the curriculum. Through its application as a tool in the primary
classroom, Drama can be experienced by all children.

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a
Greek word meaning "action" (Classical Greek:anTiá, drama), which is derived from "to do"
(Classical Greek: aᾖUu, drao). The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional
generic division between comedy and tragedy. They are symbols of the ancient Greek Muses,
Thalia and Melpomene. Thalia was the Muse of comedy (the laughing face), while Melpomene
was the Muse of tragedy (the weeping face). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the
dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's
Poetics (c. 335 BCE)-the earliest work of dramatic theory.

The term is also a synonym for play A "restricted usage" of "drama", in a narrow sense to
designate a specific type of play, originated with Frenchmen Diderot and Beaumarchais in the

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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18th century. Drama in this sense refers to a "serious play, not necessarily a tragedy". It is this
narrow sense that the film and television industry and film studies adopted to describe "drama"
as a genre within their respective media. "Radio drama" has been used in both senses originally
transmitted in a live performance, it has also been used to describe the more high-brow and
serious end of the dramatic output of radio.

The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience,

presupposes collaborative modes of production and a collective form of reception. The Structure
of dramatic texts, unlike other forms of literature, is directly influenced by this collaborative
production and collective reception. The early modern tragedy Hamlet(1601) by Shakespeare
and the classical Athenian tragedy Oedipus the King (c. 429 BCE) by Sophocles are among the
masterpieces of the art of drama. A modern example is Long Day's Journey into Night by
Eugene O'Neill (1956).

Drama is often combined with music and dance: the drama in opera is generally sung
through, musicals generally include both spoken dialogue and songs, and some forms of drama
have incidental music or musical accompaniment underscoring the dialogue (melodrama and
Japanese Nô, for example). In certain periods of history (the ancient Roman and modern
Romantic) some dramas have been written to be read rather than performed In improvisation, the
drama does not pre-exist the moment of performance, performers devise a dramatic script
spontaneously before an audience Drama assists in the development of:

 the use of imagination

 powers of creative self expression
 decision making and problem solving skills
 and understanding of self and the world
 self confidence, a sense of worth and respect and consideration for others.

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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Features of a Play

 Plays are normally divided into major units called Acts, which are sometimes subdivided
into Scenes. A scene usually shows a sequence of actions which happen in the same
setting, that is, in the sameplace and in the same period of time. Modern plays may have
one or two or three acts, whereas in the past, in the time of Shakespeare, for example,
they had as many as five acts.
 A play traditionally tells a story which is organised by the playwright/dramatist in a plot.
The plot contains the same events as the story but it may present them in a different
chronological order. The story is slightly different from the plot because it consists of the
main events arranged in chronological order. It can be quickly summarised.
 The order in which scenes and situations are arranged usually serves the purpose of
creating dramatic tension, suspense and climax in order to capture the audience's
attention. They are essential ingredients of a thriller.
 Before the actual text begins, you can usually find a list of the characters in the play
headed either with the self-explanatory word Characters or with Cast. The characters of a
play can be main/major characters or minor characters according to the importance of
their role in the story. They may be well-rounded characters, and show the complexity of
human psychology, or flat characters, based on only one or two aspects of personality
which never change throughout the play, or stock characters, and represent human types
such as the beautiful and virtuous heroine or the handsome and courageous hero in a
traditional love story.
 Plays develop through direct speech, usually in the form of a dialogue between the
characters but occasionally in the form of a soliloquy when a character is alone on stage
and utters his/her thoughts out loud.
 Plays usually include stage directions, where the dramatist intervenes to give instructions
for the play's production. You can easily recognise stage directions because they are
written in italics to distinguish them from the characters' speeches.
 The aim of drama is not to re-create the world of nature but to offer a different model of
our world

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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History

Actually, drama, as in plays and the theatre, has changed over time The word itself comes
from the Greek word meaning 'action, and it's with the Greeks and Romans that we start to
define classical drama. In fact,classical drama was more than just acting out a story These plays
were highly symbolic and included music, dance, poetry and audience participation.

As Christianity spread, theatre took a religious turn, which opened the door to the
morality plays of the Medieval Period in Europe, during the 15th and 16th centuries, morality
plays, which featured a hero who must overcome evil, were allegorical in nature.

An allegory is a literary device where characters or events represent or symbolize other

ideas and concepts. In the case of the morality plays, the hero represented mankind. The other
characters served as personifications of many things, including the seven deadly sins, death,
virtues and even angels and demons - anything that wanted to take over mankind's soul. In fact,
this theme has transcended through many dramatic periods. Also, the fact that these plays were
performed by professional actors makes them a transition between the classical drama and the
plays we see today.

Of course, today we have drama popping up all over the place. There is drama for what
we call the theatre, both the stage and at the movies. Staged theatre is acted out live in front of an
audience. The movie theatre is a different story. This is drama that has been acted out to
perfection and is presented as a recording to a live audience. The same goes for television, but on
a smaller screen Radio is a bit different, however. Most of us don't listen to many radio dramas,
but if we did, we would know the actors are using their voices andprobably some sound effects.
Sometimes we see these elements within audio books. In the case of the Harry Potter series, the
narrator, Jim Dale, goes to great lengths to create different voices for each of the characters, as if
there were many actors playing the different parts.

Western drama originated in classical Greece. The theatrical culture of the city-state of
Athens produced three genres of drama tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play. Their origins remain

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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obscure, though by the 5th century BC they were institutionalised in competitions held as part of
festivities celebrating the god Dionysus Historians know the names of many ancient Greek
dramatists, not least Thespis, who is credited with the innovation of an actor ("hypokrites") who
speaks (rather than sings) and impersonates a character (rather than speaking in his own person),
while interacting with the chorus and its leader ("coryphaeus"), who were a traditional part of the
performance of non-dramatic poetry (dithyrambic, lyric and epic).

Only a small fraction of the work of five dramatists, however, has survived to this day we
have a small number of complete texts by the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides,
and the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century, Menander. Aeschylus'
historical tragedy The Persians is the oldest surviving drama, although when it won first prize at
the City Dionysia competition in 472 BC, he had been writing plays for more than 25 years. The
competition ("agon") for tragedies may have begun as early as 534 BC; official records
("didaskalia") begin from 501 BC, when the satyr play was introduced. Tragic dramatists were
required to present a tetralogy of plays (though the individual works were not necessarily
connected by story or theme), which usually consisted of three tragedies and one satyr play
(though exceptions were made, as with Euripides Alcestis in 438 BC). Comedy was officially
recognized with a prize in the competition from 487 to 486 BC.

Five comic dramatists competed at the City Dionysia (though during the Peloponnesian
War this may have been reduced to three), each offering a singlecomedy Ancient Greek comedy
is traditionally divided between "old comedy(5th century BC), "middle comedy" (4th century
BC) and "new comedy" (late4th century to 2nd BC).

Following the expansion of the Roman Republic (509-27 BC) into several Greek
territories between 270-240 BC, Rome encountered Greek drama. From the later years of the
republic and by means of the Roman Empire (27 BC-476 AD), theatre spread west across
Europe, around the Mediterranean and reached England; Roman theatre was more varied,
extensive and sophisticated than that of any culture before it.

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
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Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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While Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year
240 BC marks the beginning of regular Roman drama From the beginning of the empire,
however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a broader variety of theatrical
entertainments. The first important works of Roman literature were the tragedies and comedies
that LiviusAndronicus wrote from 240 BC. Five years later, GnaeusNaevius also began to write
drama. No plays from either writer have survived. While both dramatists composed in both
genres, Andronicus was most appreciated for his tragedies and Naevius for his comedies, their
successors tended to specialise in one or the other, which led to a separation of the subsequent
development of each type of drama.

By the beginning of the 2nd century BC, drama was firmly established in Rome and a
guild of writers (collegium poetarum) had been formed. The Roman comedies that have survived
are all fabulapalliata (comedies based on Greek subjects) and come from two dramatists: Titus
Maccius Plautus (Plautus) and PubliusTerentiusAfer (Terence). In re-working the Greek
originals, the Roman comic dramatists abolished the role of the chorus in dividing the drama into
episodes and introduced musical accompaniment to its dialogue between one third of the
dialogue in the comedies of Plautus and two-thirds in those of Terence). The action of all scenes
is set in the exterior location of a street and its complications often follow from eavesdropping

Plautus, the more popular of the two, wrote between 205 and 184 BC and twenty of his
comedies survive, of which his farces are best known; he was admired for the wit of his dialogue
and his use of a variety of poetic meters. All of the six comedies that Terence wrote between 166
and 160 BC have survived, the complexity of his plots, in which he often combined several
Greek originals, was sometimes denounced, but his double-plots enabled a sophisticated
presentation of contrasting human behaviour No early Roman tragedy survives, though it was
highly regarded in its day, historians know of three early tragedians-Quintus Ennius, Marcus
Pacuvius and Lucius Accius.

From the time of the empire, the work of two tragedians survives-one is an unknown
author, while the other is the Stoic philosopher Seneca. Nine of Seneca's tragedies survive, all of
which are fabulacrepidata (tragedies adapted from Greek originals), his Phaedra, for example,

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
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Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
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was based on Euripides Hippolytus. Historians do not know who wrote the only extant example
of thefabulapraetexta (tragedies based on Roman subjects), Octavia, but in former timesit was
mistakenly attributed to Seneca due to his appearance as a character in the tragedy.

In the Middle Ages, drama in the vernacular languages of Europe may have emerged
from religious enactments of the liturgy Mystery plays were presented on the porch of the
cathedrals or by strolling players on feast days Miracle and mystery plays, along with moralities
and interludes, later evolved into more elaborate forms of drama, such as was seen on the
Elizabethan stages.

One of the great flowerings of drama in England occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Many of these plays were written in verse, particularly iambic pentameter. In addition to
Shakespeare, such authors as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, and Ben Jonson were
prominent playwrights during this period. As in the medieval period, historical plays celebrated
the lives of past kings, enhancing the image of the Tudor monarchy. Authors of this perioddrew
some of their storylines from Greek mythology and Roman mythologyor from the plays of
eminent Roman playwrights such as Plautus and Terence.

The pivotal and innovative contributions of the 19th-century Norwegian dramatist Henrik
Ibsen and the 20th-century German theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht dominate modern drama;
each inspired a tradition of imitators, which include many of the greatest playwrights of the
modern era. The works of both playwrights are, in their different ways, both modernism and
realist, incorporating formal experimentation, meta-theatricality, and social critique. In terms of
the traditional theoretical discourse of genre, Ibsen's work has been described as the culmination
of "liberal tragedy", while Brecht's has been aligned with an historicised comedy. Other
important playwrights of the modern era include Antonin Artaud, August Strindberg, Anton
Chekhov, Frank Wedekind, Maurice Maeterlinck, Federico García Lorca, Eugene O'Neill, Luigi
Pirandello, George Bernard Shaw, Ernst Toller, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Arthur Miller, Tennessee
Williams, Jean Genet, Eugèneionesco, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Friedrich Dürrenmatt,
Dario Fo, Heiner Müller, and Caryl Churchill

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
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Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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Types of Drama

Let us consider a few popular types of drama:

 Comedy - Comedies are lighter in tone than ordinary writers, and provide a happy
conclusion The intention of dramatists in comedies is to maketheir audience laugh.
Hence, they use quaint circumstances, unusual characters and witty remarks.
 Tragedy- Tragic dramas use darker themes such as disaster, pain and death. Protagonists
often have a tragic flaw-a characteristic that leads them to their downfall.
 Farce- Generally, a farce is a nonsensical genre of drama, which oftenoveracts or engages
slapstick humor.
 Melodrama – Melodrama is an exaggerated drama, which is sensationaland appeals
directly to the senses of audience. Just like the farce, the characters are of single
dimension and simple, or may be stereotyped.
 Musical Drama - In musical drama, the dramatists not only tell their story through acting
and dialogue, nevertheless through dance as well as music, Often the story may be
comedic, though it may also involve serious subjects.

Comedy

Comedy is a major form of drama of which the following general definition can be given:
"a play in which the principal characters ordinarily begin in a state of opposition to one another
or to their world - often both. By the end of the play, their opposition is replaced by harmony"
(Scholes and Klaus). The main purpose of comedy is to amuse people and its main traits are
humour, comic plot and flat characters.

Comic plot consists in a sequence of difficult, intricate or improbable situations in which

the main characters find themselves in trouble But problemsare always overcome and the end is
always happy. Love and variations on this theme are the most frequent subject matter of
comedies. The events of a comic plot follow one another at such a fast pace that the audience has

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
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no time to wonder at the improbability of the story. They accept it as a convention of comedy
and enjoy the play.

Humour is the essence of comedy, it can take many forms on the stage, from the subtly
amusing to the hilarious. This is what makes people laugh. It is often based on the privileged
position of the audience when they know more than the characters on stage.

Let us examine these different kinds of humour in detail:

Verbal humour: Puns are also often used in comedy based on verbal humour. A pun is a
play on words which have the same sound but different spellings and meanings Alternatively, it
can be an amusing use of a word or phrase which has a double meaning This form of ambiguity,
intrinsic to a pun, lends itself to comic effect.

Behavioural humour derives from the fact that a character's behaviour isunexpected and
seems absurd in the given context on the stage.

Situational humour which is based on the audience's knowledge of an essential aspect of

the situation which is unknown to some characters on thestage -eg.,a double identity or a
mistaken identity, an intrigue or a deception.

In comedy, characters are not usually developed in depth. They are usually flat characters
because the witty dialogue and the skilful handling of comic situations are more important than
the observation or development of a character's personality. Characters can represent human
types, such as the miser or the coquette. They can portray social types, such as the unspoiled
peasant or the snobbish aristocrat. They can be the stock characters frequently found in
comedies, such as the clever servant or the bossy wife. Whatever they are, they usually remain
unchanged throughout the play.

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Tragedy

Tragedy is the major form of drama besides comedy It can be defined as a play in which
the hero and his world begin in a condition of harmony which disintegrates, leaving him, by the
end of the play, in a state of isolation" (Scholes and Klaus).

Tragic plots and tragic heroes and heroines have specific features of theirown which are
typical of Shakespearean plays but can be extended to cover tragedies by other playwrights as
well.

A tragic plot is more linear than a comic plot. From the introductory situation it rises to a
climax, which is the highest point in the protagonist's fortunes, followed by a reversal of fortune
- the point of crisis - which leads tothe final catastrophe.

Tragic heroes and heroines in traditional drama are above ordinary people because of
their social rank and strong personality. As a consequence, their suffering is also much greater
than common people could bear Their catastrophe is decreed by fate and is often started by a
fatal flaw. For example, In the case of Romeo and Juliet's tragic story, the protagonists are an
innocent couple who are doomed from the very beginning by a malignant fate. In the case of
Macbeth, 'ambition' is the fatal flaw that drives him and his wife towardstheir doom. Their final
fall brings down other people as well.

Soliloquy, as well as dialogue, is used in tragedy to carry the plot forward and reveal a
character's complex personality. The language of tragedy is heightened in order to give
appropriate expression to a content not normally found in everyday life.

Tragic Plot

Tragic plot A tragic plot usually starts with an initial situation in whichthe main
characters are in harmony with their world; but then a reversal offortune always follows. The
central action is the fall of the protagonists from a condition of wealth and honour to unhappiness
and death. The plot developsthrough the following stages:

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 introduction, the presentation of the hero/ine;

 development, the hero/ine's rise to power or happiness;
 climax, the high point of the hero/ine's fortunes;
 crisis, the turning point in the hero/ine's fortunes;
 decline, deterioration in the hero/ine's situation;
 catastrophe, the hero/ine's fall, often to a condition of degradation and humiliation, and
death. An essential ingredient of tragic plot is the presenceof a hostile fate

The incidents of the plot are mainly unfortunate events which drag the protagonists to
their fall. For example, it is an unlucky chance that Romeo gets involved in the street fight in
which he kills Tybalt or that he doesn't receive Friar Laurence's message in time. The
protagonist/s is/are doomed from the beginning; this is usually shown by a series of premonitions
of death in the characters' speeches. The characters are not flat like the ones you often find in
comedy. Although Romeo and Juliet are possessed by the unique passion of love, their individual
personality shows a complexity which is more of a round character.

Tragic Hero and Heroine

In dramatic tradition, tragedy mostly revolves round one central character has identified the
following features in the tragic hero or heroine ofwho presents a complex portrait of a human
being and uses a dignified manner of speech to express human suffering A. C. Bradley, a
Shakespearean scholarShakespeare's plays. They can be extended to cover tragedies by other
playwrights as well. The tragic hero or heroine…

 is usually a person of high rank,

 is a person of noble character and exceptional qualities but suffering froma fatal
weakness,
 comes close to achieving fame, happiness and what she wishes,
 the disaster that befalls him/her is inevitable, either decreed by fate or the result of the
character's fatal weakness,

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 despite the inevitability of the outcome s/he does not accept his/her destruction without a
struggle;
 the suffering is extreme and in strong contrast to earlier happiness or wellbeing;
 the suffering and calamity usually extend beyond the protagonist to involveother
characters.

Language in Drama

There are countless ways that you can talk about how language works in a play, a
production, a particular performance Given a choice, you should probably focus on words,
phrases, lines, or scenes that really struck you, things that you still remember weeks after reading
the play or seeing the performance You'll have a much easier time writing about a bit of
language that you feelstrongly about (love it or hate it).

That said, here are two common ways to talk about how language works in a play:

1034 International Journal of Research in Social Sciences

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International Journal of Research in Social Sciences
Vol. 8 Issue 3, March 2018
ISSN: 2249-2496 Impact Factor: 7.081
Journal Homepage: http://www.ijmra.us, Email: [email protected]
Double-Blind Peer Reviewed Refereed Open Access International Journal - Included in the International Serial Directories Indexed & Listed at:
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REFERENCES

 Taxidou, Olga 2004. Tragedy, Modernity and Mourning Edinburgh Edinburgh UP. ISBN
0-7486-1987-9.
 The Cambridge Guide to Asian Theatre 2nd, rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP ISBN
978-0-521-58822-5.
 The Moscow Art Theatre Letters. New York: Routledge.
 The Popular, the Absurd, and the Entente Cordiale" TDR, V, iii (1961),119-151.
 The Theatre of the Absurd, Garden City: Doubleday, 1961.
 The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy: Playing Space and Chorus Chicago and London U
of Chicago P. ISBN 0-226-47757-6.
 Theatre for Learning (translated by Edith Anderson), TDR, VI,i (1961)18-25.
 Weimann, Robert 1978. Shakespeare and the Popular Tradition in the Theater Studies in
the Social dimension of Dramatic Form and Function Baltimore and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-3506-2.
 Weimann, Robert 2000 Author's Pen and Actor's Voice: Playing and Writing in
Shakespeare's Theatre Ed Helen Higbee and William West. Cambridge Studies in
Renaissance Literature and Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-
521-78735-1.
 ADLER, HENRY, "To Hell with Society," TDR. IV, iv (1960), 53-76.

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